PUTNAMS MAGAZINE OF LITERATURE, SCIENCE, ART, AND NATIONAL INTERESTS. VOL. I.JAXUAIRY1868.No. I. THE OLD AND THE NEW. A RETROSPECT AND A PROSPECT. TN his notes to the republication of that tremendous screed which~Mr. Carlyle calls Shooting Niagaraand After, the troubled author declares his opinioi~ that, in ifty years hence, all serious souls will have quitted literature, and that for any noble man, or useful person, it will be a credit rather to declare, I never tried literature; believe me, I have never written any thing. Mr. Carlyle may be endowed with the gift of prophecy; but, for our own part, we incline to the belief that fifty years hence will be very much like fifty years since, as far as literature is concerned, and that serious souls and noble men, as well as noble women, will be quite as ambitious of being known as the authors of something clever, as they ever were. It is just fourteen years since we had the honor to assist in getting out the first number of PUTNAMS MONTHLY; and, so far from feeling at all ashamed of it, we confess to a feel- ing of pride, rather, in the part we took in it, and, on the whole, derive considerable satisfaction in remembering the cosy little dinner in a certain cosy house in Sixteenth-street, at which the plan of the work was discussed and the adventure determined upon. As this is only a gossippy little prelude, and not a grave essay, it will not be considered improper, we trust, if we mention, con- fidentially to the reader, that the little party consisted of Mrs. Caroline M. Kirkland, Mr. George Sumner, Mr. Parke Godwin, Mr. George W. Curtis, Mr. and Mrs. Putnam, and the present writer. It was but fifteen years ago, and of that little party two are already gone. The rest remain to assist in the revival of the work which was then so pleasantly and so auspiciously begun. Fonrteen years ago, the first number of PUTNAMS MONTHLY was launched upon the troubled waters of this wayward world, as an experiment in lite~ rary navigation. Many predicted that it could not keep afloat, who yet hoped that it might, and did what they could to falsify their own predictions. But those who commenced it, and were responsible for its success, had no mis- givings; and the result justified their faith and rewarded their efforts. The MONTHLY was in every respect not only a success, but a distinguished success. It earned not only a decided reputation for itself but for many youthful adven- turers in literature, hitherto unknown, who contributed to its pages. The chief doubt in the minds of many was, whether the country could furnish the requisite number of writers to sustain an original magazine of the better class; but the experiment proved that there was plenty of latent talent which only required an opportunity for its development. The second question was, whether a public ex- isted capable of appreciating and able to support a publication such as it was the aim of the projectors to furnish. Thesc wcre strange doubts in a country that had 1 2 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Jan produced writers like Irving and Cooper, and where every laborer was a reader. But the first number dispelled all doubts, and thenceforth all went welL But the work stopped, remarks some sagacious friend. True enough. It did stop, but it did not die. Ships sometimes drop an~aor and furl their sails, and then spread their canvas again and make prosperous voyages, as if nothing had happened; while other sh.ips founder at sea and pass out of mens memories. But the MONTHLY was so strong and healthful in its constitution, so distinct in its individuality, and so much a necessity, that it could not well come to grief. Through certain misadventures, which need not be particularly noted here, the work stopped for a while, but anxious inquiries have constantly been heard as to when it would reappear; for no one seemed willing to believe that it had stopped for good. It was a strange thing, that the metropolis of the continent, the centre towards which the wealth, the intellect, the enterprise, the refinement, and the adventures of the New World all tend, should not be able to support its one original, first-class magazine; and many have been the demands why this should be so. When the old PUTNAM furled its sails for a seaso , the Atlantic ontidy was launched, and took the flood of public favor, sailing out upon the broad ocean, where it still floats prosperous. We have always and naturally been proud of that fellow-voyager, in whose build and trim we fondly recognize so much that is most familiar to us; and as PUTNAM again shakes out its sails, and heads for the open sea, it signals its consort Good-morrow, and runs up its streamer with its old motto, Excelsior. One of the sincere friends and counsellors who most earnestly hoped for the success of the MONTHLY, and yet, with characteristic frankness, expr& sed his fears that its projectors were too sanguine in their expectations, was Washington Irving. The mention of this honored name sadly reminds us of other friends who were eager to help, by their counsel or contributions, in giving stability to the work, who are no longer hero to aid or encourage us. As we glance over the names of the contributors to the earlier numbers of the MONTHLY, the black dashes which indicate the departures of those who helped us once, but can help us never more, are startling from their frequen- cy. First on the list we find the name of William North, who wrote The Living Corpse, in the first number. He was a young Englishman of good family, who had then but recently arrived in New York; a wild, impulsive creature, frank, generous, impatient of restraint, full of brilliant projects, hating routine, and bent on reforming mankind on the instant. He had published a peri- odical in London called Norths Magazine, and commenced various literary enterprises after his arrival in this country. But, after a brief career, he died by his own hand, and now lies in Greenwood Cemetery. Fitz-Jaines OBrien con- tributed Our Young Authors to the first number of the MONTHLY, and after- wards became better known by many brilliant contributions in prose and verse to various periodicals. He was a young Irishman, who landed in New York in the same week with William North. He was a man of remarkable gifts and of very comely presence, brave, generous, and impulsive. At the outbreak cf the war he volunteered in defence of the Union, and, while serving on the staff of General Lander, in Western Virginia, was mortally wounded in an encounter in which he displayed great gallantry. his death, which did not occur nntil after he had undergone the amputation of his right arm, was remarkable for the heroic cheerfulness he displayed in his sufferings. The Rev. Dr. Francis L. Hawks, who wrote the article in the first number of the MONTHLY on The Late John L. Stephens, and some others, died in the Autumn of 1866. Henry D. Thoreau, better known now than then, contributed An Excursion to Canada, and was the author of several articles in subsequent numbers. He died in 1862. Virginia in a Novel Form, a serial commenced in the first number, was the production of Mrs. Hicks, of Richmond; but whether she be living or dead is more than we know. If still living, as we trust she is, the very novel form which Virginia has since assumed, might furnish a fresh theme for her very clever pen. The Rev. Dr. Bethune, who died in Flor- ence, April 27, 1862, contributed the charming story of Uncle Bernard, which appeared in the sixth number. This story had a very remarkable adventure. It was appropriate~ by a London magazine, without any hint 1868.1 ThE OLD AND THE NEW. 3 being given of its origin, and republished here as ori~inal by one of our own magazines, without any suspicion of its American authorship; thus furnishing a very striking instance of the dangers encountered by literary pilferers in the absence of an international copyright-law. The Rev. Dr. Baird, who contributed an article on Russia, which appeared in one of the early numbers, and which attracted great attention at the time by the accuracy with which the events of the war in the Crimea were predicted, died March 15, 1863. The Rev. J. H. Hanson (author of the article in the second number, the title of which, Have we a Bourbon among us l has passed into a proverb), as well as the subject of his ingenious essays, the supposed Bourbon, are both among the dead. William S. Thayer, one of the most promising and versatile of our younger brood of jour- nalists, ho contributed to the first volume a review of Lowells Poems, in conjunction with his friend and classmate, William Howland, died in Alexandria, Egypt, where he was United States Consul, about 1864. Our necrological record is painfully long. It shows how many eminent names were on the list of our contributors, and how great a variety of talent is necessary to sustain the interest of a monthly magazine. In addition to those we have named, we can but briefly mention the names of others who well deserve a special commemoration; and chief among them is Caroline M. Kirkland, the vivacious, vigorous, genial, sensible, and erudite teacher end writer, who died as truly in the cause of the Union, as any of the heroes who gave their lives for their country on the battle-field; Richard Hildrcth, the historian, who died a year ago in Italy, whither he had gone as Consul to Trieste; Henry W. Herbert, better known, perhaps, to American readers, as Frank Forres- ter, grandson of the Earl of Pembroke, who, like William North, died by his own hand; Prof. Charles W. Hackley, of Columbia College; Maj. E. B. Hunt, of the United States Army; Lient. Bleecker, of the United States Navy; Dr. J. R. Orton, poet and., novelist; Thomas Francis Meagher, who died Governor of Montana; C. M. Webber; Calvin W. Phillco, author of Stage-Coach Stories; and Maria Lowell. whose death was so tenderly commemorated by Longfellow, in the exquisite poem entitled The Two Angels. There are others, who have strangely disappeared from the world of letters, ~fter letting thefr light shine for a brief while in the pages of the MONTiILY, who, we trust, are still among the living. What has become of Jack Lan- tern and his railroad speculations? Has he abandoned literature altogether for the law? The author of that sparkling essay on the Pacific Rail- road, which appeared in the ninth and eleventh numbers, has no right to wrap such talents as he possesses in a legal napkin. And what has become of Dick Tinto, and the author of What is the Use? Has Jervis MeEntee, who once gave us such beautiful little landscapes in verse, entirely abandoned the pen for the pencil? And where, let us ask, is Herman Melville? Ilas that copious and imaginative author, who contributed so many brilliant articles to the MONTHLY, let fall his pen just where its use might have been so remunerative to himselg and so satisfactory to~the public? It is no small satisfaction to us to remember, that the MONTHLY first tempted several neophytes in literature to come out before the public, who have remained out to their own credit as well as to the publics satisfaction and profit. Among them were William Swinton, the accomplished historian of the Army of the Poto- mac, whose Rambles among Verbs and Adjectives, which appeared in thc twenty-third and twenty-fourth numbers, were written while he was a teacher in a school in North Carolina, and which he had to quit between two days to avoid the inevitable consequences of being suspected of abolitionism. Thea there was Fred. B. Perkins, sufficiently well known now as a magazinist, whose Connecticut Georgics appeared in the sixteenth, and Conversations with Miss Chester in the twenty-sixth number. And Frederick S. Cozzens, the genial author of the Sparrowgrass Papers, which were commenced in the twenty-fourth number. Some remarkable volumes have been made up, too, from the early numbers of the MONTHLY, among which were Shakespeares Scholar, by Richard Grant White; Calverts Early Years in Europe; Mackies Cosas de Es- pagna; Mr. Curtis Potiphar Papers and Pine and I ; Political Essays, by Parke Godwin; The Sparrowgrass Papers, by F. S. Coz 4 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Jan. zens; Washington, by Mrs. C. M. Kirkland; Fireside Travels, by J. R. Lowell; Twice Married, by C. W. Philleo; Israel Potter, by Her- man Melville; The Lost Prince, by Hanson; Cape Cod, by H. D. Tho reau; Leaves from the Book of Nature, by Professor Schele de Vere; The Criterion, by H. T. Tuckerman, and Wensley, by that accomplished scholar and powerful writer, Edmund Quincy; besides the series of railroad volumes known as Maga Stories,~~ Maga Social Papers, & c. Can it with any justice be said, that a magazine which accomplished thus much was not a success? And, if such a success could be achieved fourteen years ago, is it at all unreasonable to anticipate less under the more favor- able conditions which invite a similar enterprise now? Past experience has taught us many useful lessons, which we hope to turn to our advantage. We know exactly what the public need in a magazine, and we hope to be able to furnish it. Popular taste has not much changed. Fourteen years ago it wa.s considered an act of hctri-loari for a popular periodical to express a political opinion, particularly if it was adverse to the peculiar institution of the South. But we ventured upon it without any harm coming of it, and we shall probably try it again. Certainly, we have no desire to publish a maga- zine for readers who are too feeble to endure a candid discussion, now-and then, of political subjects. Stories are the life of a magazine, we are aware. One serial novel used to be considered sufficient for an English magazine; but so great is the general craving for stories, that no magazine ventures now to have less than two. Mrs. Todgers confessed, that the greatest difficulty in a commercial boardinghouse, was to furnish a sufficiency of gravy for her guests. Stories are the gravy of a magazine, and this essential element to success shall not be wanting. American readers are accustomed almost entirely to foreign works of fiction; but we shall publish none but stories of native production. It is net possible that such devourers of stories should be incapable of producing the article so essential to their happiness. We have entite faith in our ability to bring out the required supply of American novels and romances. Like the gold in the gulches of the Rocky Mountains, they are only waiting for a little adventurous prospecting to bring them to light. Once more, then, PUnsAMs MAGAZINE takes its position in the literary firmament, with more star-dust in the atmosphere than there was at its first appearance, and with more luminaries to diminish its light, perhaps, by their superior brilliance. Many excellent friends, who have favored us by their sage advice, have strangely insisted that it will be useless to expect good contributions without good pay; as though a publisher or an editor were likely to have missed this special lesson in his dealings with authors. But there are two sides to this interesting question of pay. In order that a publisher should pay, he must himself be paid. One veteran author, by way of enforcing his views on this subject, demanded a retaining fee of five hundred dollars as an earnest of future payments, for whatever he might furnish. Experience has taught us, that in magazine-writing the best-paid authors are by no means necessarily the best. The young, fresh, vigorous, and original writers, who are yet unknown to fame, and whose names have no commercial value, are the least expensive and the most beneficial contributors to a magazine. We do not intend to delude the public by paying for the use of a name. We shall publish no articles except for their intrinsic merit, and shall always prefer a new writer to an old one. None know better than our own authors what discouraging disadvantages the publisher of an original American magazine must contend against, in being obliged to compete with the unpaid British productions which are reproduced here almost simultaneously with their publication on the other side of the Atlan- tic. And while this unequal contest between the publisher who filches his matter, and the one who pays for it, almost prohibits the possibility of profit to the latter, the American author gauges his demand for compensation by the standard of his English brother. But we are touching, perhaps, on private rights by these allusions. The commercial value of any article depends upon what it will bring in the open market, and by that test we must be governed in the question of pay. Something more we minht add; but we cheerfully subsideto the readers 1868.] THE OLD AND TEE NEW. 5 gratification, no doubt, as well as our ownto give place to the following note from our former coadjutor, GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. MR. CURTIS LETTER. Mv DEAR BRIGGS :One bright day long and long ago,it seems to mc now that it must have been soon after the war of 1812, but, upon reflection, I discover that it was in 1852I was dining with Mr. Harry Franco at Wiadusts, in Park Row. As we ate our simple repast and spoke of many things, Mr. Franco asked me what I thought of the prospect of a new and wholly American magazine; and immediately proceeded to set forth its possible character and brilliant promise so fully and conclusively, that I knew he was prophesying, and that, before many months, a phcunix would appear. That was my earliest knowledge of PUTNAMS MONTHLY. In the following Autumn, there was a little dinner at Mr. Publisher Putnams cosy Sixteenth-street house, and the details of the enterprise were discussed at length. Mrs. Kirkland was there, and was, as usual, one of the most delightful of companions. When something was said of pure literature and the classics,~~ her genial face beamed with suppressed fun, as she said: Oh! the classics? They are in great repute at Washington. When I was there, last winter, a member of Congress sat beside me at dinner, and as he had been told that I was a littery woman, he evidently resolved to make the most of his opportunities; so, after a little while, he said to me: Theres going to be a lecter to-morrow night. Ah 1 said I. Whoistolecture? I disremember his name, but his subject, said my neighbor slowly, to make sure, is The Age of Pericles pronouncing the last syllable as in the word miracles. My neighbor looked at me, as if he had not finished bis remark, and repeated the words contemplatively, The Age of Pericles. Then, with a kind of appealing expression, he suddenly asked me: What are Pericles? as if he supposed them to be a kind of shell-fish. Of course, it had been long decided that the experiment of the magazine should be tried. It is safe to suppose, when advice is asked, that a resolution has been taken. When I arose from table at Windusts, on that long-vanished June afternoon, I was as sure that there would be a magazine as if Mr. Franco had told me that it was all in type; and now, after the other dinner in Sixteenth-streetfor it is a beautiful provision of nature, that literary enterprises of great pith and moment should be matured under the benign influences of good eating and drink- ingI found myself consulting, in a bare room in a deserted house in Park Place, where nobody could find us out, with Mr. Publisher Putnam, Mr. Harry Franco, editor-in-chief, and Mr. Parke Godwin, associate editor, upon the first number of PuTv~s MONTHLY. We were an amiable triumvirate; and, although I say it, we put a great deal of conscience into our work. Our council-chamber was a third-story front room in a doomed house near to Mr. Putnams headquarters, which were then in Park Place. I say doomed house; for, although a comfortable and staunch building, it was a dwelling-house, and as fashion had at last flown even from Park Placethe spot below Bleecker-street where it lingered longestthe house was patiently wait- ing to be demolished, and make way for a store. Every day we met and looked over manuscripts. How many there were! And how good! And what piles of poetry! The country seemed to be an enormous nest of nightingales; or, perhaps, mocking-birdscertainly cat-birds. I can see now the philosophic Godwin tenderly opening a trembling sheet, traced with that feminine chirography so familiar to the editorial eye, and in a hopeful voice beginning to read. After a very few lines a voice is heardmethinks from Francos chair: Yes, yes; guess thats enough; Walter di Montreal, thy hour has come, and the familiar chirography flutters into the basket. I suppose, my dear Briggs, you have long ago forgotten how many excellent suggestions Mr. Franco made. His nimble wit, his experience, his instinct of the popular taste, oiled all the dry and doubtful spots upon the ways, so that, when the

1868.] THE OLD AND TEE NEW. 5 gratification, no doubt, as well as our ownto give place to the following note from our former coadjutor, GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. MR. CURTIS LETTER. Mv DEAR BRIGGS :One bright day long and long ago,it seems to mc now that it must have been soon after the war of 1812, but, upon reflection, I discover that it was in 1852I was dining with Mr. Harry Franco at Wiadusts, in Park Row. As we ate our simple repast and spoke of many things, Mr. Franco asked me what I thought of the prospect of a new and wholly American magazine; and immediately proceeded to set forth its possible character and brilliant promise so fully and conclusively, that I knew he was prophesying, and that, before many months, a phcunix would appear. That was my earliest knowledge of PUTNAMS MONTHLY. In the following Autumn, there was a little dinner at Mr. Publisher Putnams cosy Sixteenth-street house, and the details of the enterprise were discussed at length. Mrs. Kirkland was there, and was, as usual, one of the most delightful of companions. When something was said of pure literature and the classics,~~ her genial face beamed with suppressed fun, as she said: Oh! the classics? They are in great repute at Washington. When I was there, last winter, a member of Congress sat beside me at dinner, and as he had been told that I was a littery woman, he evidently resolved to make the most of his opportunities; so, after a little while, he said to me: Theres going to be a lecter to-morrow night. Ah 1 said I. Whoistolecture? I disremember his name, but his subject, said my neighbor slowly, to make sure, is The Age of Pericles pronouncing the last syllable as in the word miracles. My neighbor looked at me, as if he had not finished bis remark, and repeated the words contemplatively, The Age of Pericles. Then, with a kind of appealing expression, he suddenly asked me: What are Pericles? as if he supposed them to be a kind of shell-fish. Of course, it had been long decided that the experiment of the magazine should be tried. It is safe to suppose, when advice is asked, that a resolution has been taken. When I arose from table at Windusts, on that long-vanished June afternoon, I was as sure that there would be a magazine as if Mr. Franco had told me that it was all in type; and now, after the other dinner in Sixteenth-streetfor it is a beautiful provision of nature, that literary enterprises of great pith and moment should be matured under the benign influences of good eating and drink- ingI found myself consulting, in a bare room in a deserted house in Park Place, where nobody could find us out, with Mr. Publisher Putnam, Mr. Harry Franco, editor-in-chief, and Mr. Parke Godwin, associate editor, upon the first number of PuTv~s MONTHLY. We were an amiable triumvirate; and, although I say it, we put a great deal of conscience into our work. Our council-chamber was a third-story front room in a doomed house near to Mr. Putnams headquarters, which were then in Park Place. I say doomed house; for, although a comfortable and staunch building, it was a dwelling-house, and as fashion had at last flown even from Park Placethe spot below Bleecker-street where it lingered longestthe house was patiently wait- ing to be demolished, and make way for a store. Every day we met and looked over manuscripts. How many there were! And how good! And what piles of poetry! The country seemed to be an enormous nest of nightingales; or, perhaps, mocking-birdscertainly cat-birds. I can see now the philosophic Godwin tenderly opening a trembling sheet, traced with that feminine chirography so familiar to the editorial eye, and in a hopeful voice beginning to read. After a very few lines a voice is heardmethinks from Francos chair: Yes, yes; guess thats enough; Walter di Montreal, thy hour has come, and the familiar chirography flutters into the basket. I suppose, my dear Briggs, you have long ago forgotten how many excellent suggestions Mr. Franco made. His nimble wit, his experience, his instinct of the popular taste, oiled all the dry and doubtful spots upon the ways, so that, when the rJ~fl 6 stays were knocked away, the good ship of our hopes and fears slid smoothly out1. and was at once launched in deep water. The Rev. Mr. Hanson brought his story about the IRey. Eleazar Williams, as the lost Bourbon. Mr. Franco instantly sug ~~csted the current use, proper title, which has passed into Have we a Bourbon among us 0 One day, after the first number was made up, Mr. Franco said, in his crisp way, There must be an article upon the present state of parties, in the next number. Thereupon, God win, who was our statesman and political thinker, dropped his modest eyes; but Mr. Franco added, I dont mean political parties; I mean Browns. Alas I it was in that manner that our best society was described. The lovely maidens, whose exquisite draperies floated off Lyons looms; the polished youth, who encir@led them in the modest waltz of the German, what time they placed bottles of champagne upon the floor beside their chairs for refreshinentthese were described as Browns society. The result of Mr. Francos hint was Mrs. Potiphars first appearance. When she came out, it seems that somebody spoke of her, and of the person who had written about her, to Mr. Brown. I dont know him, said Mr. Brown; and there was an end of that Thac fellow. The paper upon the Bourbon excited a curious interest. The subject was discussed every where, and, in very many minds, the question soon became, Havent we a Bourbon amon~, us? One morning a message was sent up to the editorial rooms from headquarters, that the Bourbon was then and there visible in the flesh. Down we went, and found a tall, large-framed man, erect and portly, of a deep- bronze hue and of a bland expression. His hands were soft, like a Princes or an Indians. The head was round, and receded from the forehead. The face was very full, and was certainly very like the face of the Bourbon kings upon the Louis dors of France. If he were not the Seventeenth Louis, there was no apparent reason why he should not be. He was quite as royal a looking gentleman as any king of his time; as mild of mien as his reputed father; and he undQubtedly led a much better l~e at Green Bay than his illustrious predecessor, the grand monarch, or his kinsman the Regent at Yersailles. The reverend Prince died in 1858, and opinions still differ whether he were a full-blooded Prince royal or a half-breed Indian. In one of the earlier numbers of PuTNAMs MONTHLYthat for July, 1853there is a letter Number One of Parepidemus. It is very short, only three pages, and the really attentive and perceptive reader must have felt that it was by none of the familiar writers of the magazine, and was both in a different vein and a different spirit from the usual magazine, literature. The last sentence was suggestive of a foreign authorship: Let me sign myself my dear sir (as we are all strangers and pilgrims, so myself in an especial sense), your obliged and faithful Parepidemus. The letter is a mere fragment, a brief expression of a divine doubt, a simple and sincere questioning of the iiature and result of intellectual and moral effort and expression. One little characteristic sentence will reveal the writer to those who know him, or who knew his works. He is speaking of something more than mere self-relief in the work of the great artist, the high, inspired purpose, which may be detected in St. Peters or in the Tempest, and then adds: Imperfect, no doubt, both this and that is: short of the better thing to comethe thing that is. Yet not impotent, not wholly unavailing. Parepidemus was Arthur hugh Clough, the young English scholar and poet, whom Matthew Arnold mourns as sincerely as Milton mourned Lycidas, and whom the whole younger generation of thoughtful, cultivated Englishmen remember with affectionate regret, and deplore as a man whose remarkable powers should have made him a leader of the best. He was born in England, and was early brought to this country; then returned, and was one of the beloved scholars of Dr. Arnold at Rugby, with Tom Hughes, Dean Stanley, Palgrave, and others; and went from Rugby up to Oxford, and, as his companions all fondly believed, to still higher and higher influence and honors. His powers were indisputable, his attainments remark- able, and his character most lovely. But a conscience subtly sensitive, a mind too exquisitely balanced, held him in the incessant unrest of the deepest moral and intellectual inquiry. He had the ambition which is part of the dowry of genius. He knew, and valued, and desired the prizes in the career for which he was fitted. But something restrained his hand: Ought I to take the crown? he asked, as if unworthy, as if his title were not perfect, as if the very desire were a deceit; and while he asked, the crown grew shadowy and faded away. One little poem, PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. 1868.] THE OLD AND THE NEW. 7 printed originally in the very thin volume of his verses, which every owner dearly prizes, I will transcribe here, ns singularly expressive of him: I have seen higher, holier things than these, And therefore must to these refuse my heart; Yet I am panting for a little ease; P11 take, and so depart. Ah, hold? The heart is prone to fall away, Her high and cherished visions to forget, And, if thou takest, how wilt thou repay So vast, so dread a debt? How will the heart, which now thou trustest, then corrupt, yet in corruption mindful yet, Turn with sharp stings upon itself! Again Bethiuk thee of the deht! Blast then seen higher, holier things than these, And therefore must to these thy heart refuse? With the true best, alack! how ill agrees The best that thou wonldst choose! The Sum,num Pulchrum rests in heaven above; Do thou, as hest thou maysl, thy duty do; Amid the things allowed thee, live and love; Some day thou shalt it view. Clough came to this coun:try in 1852, with the intention of taking pupils in the higher studies, and lived at Cambridge. He was greatly beloved by those who knew best the rare qualities of his genius, and his friendships were with the best men and women. There was an attractive blending of scholarly shyness, melan- choly, and geniality in the impression he made; and he had the fullest sympathy with the freedom and the promise of American life. But his sad self was relentless. He could not escape the old wonder and questioning. What he wrote in poetry and prose had a strain of sincere, child-like pathos, wholly unsurpassed in contem- porary lite~ature. And it characterizes all his writings. It is not a pathos of sighs and sobs, and elegiac weeping and wailing, but a melancholy like that of the Autumn in Nature, a primeval sadness. It was while he was in Cambridge that he wrote the two letters of Parepidemus, the second of which appeared in the August number of 1853. But he soon went back to England; was appointed to a position in the education department of the Privy Council; married; worked hard, and in 1859 finished a translation of Plutarch. In 1861 he was obliged to relinquish work; went to Greece and Constantinople; returned, and wandered about Europe, reaching Florence in the Autumn. There he died on the 13th of November, 1861, and there he lies buried under the beautiful cypresses of the Protestant cemetery. Since his death, many of his letters and his manuscript poems have been privately printed in England, and an edition of the poems that he had already printed was published soon after his death. Cloughs particular friend in this country was Charles Eliot Norton, of Cambridge, who edited a beautiful edition of his poems, which was published by Ticknor & Fields, in 1862. Mr. Norton pre- faced them with a tender and modest memoir, and from that and an article by him in the North American Review for October, 1867, upon the privately printed volume, a very accurate impression of the rare and lovely genius of Clough may be obtained. His name is not yet very familiar in English literature, but it yearly becomes more so. His life, seemed, of course, to many, a failure; but the union of real sincerity with real power never fails, however tardy be its recognition. It is refreshing to think of the antique nobility of soul, the true simplicity, the unshrink- ing devotion to the most celestial ideal, the patience, humility, and unselfishness of this thoroughly trained scholar and this true poet. A photograph of Clough hangs in Nortons study. It is a broad, balanced, serene, massive head, full of sweetness and wisdom, and of the child-like simplicity of modest genius. If I think of the pleasant and various society of our contributors, those who are living still, and those who are dead, there is no figure more significant and impressive, however modest and shadowy, and unknown to his companions, than that of Clough. I suppose that Mr. Franco and Godwin, and the poor fellow who was snuffed out by Mr. Browns brief remark, might fill many pages with their recollections of the pleasant cradle-and-crib days of the young PUTNAM. Those three 8 PTTNAM5 MAGAZINE. [Jan. were the MO1~THLY nurses. They saw that infant phenomenon safely through his prodigious childhood, and how rapidly he obtained his growth! There are books in good standing, every where, which I can never see but with the feeling of the pedagogue towards his pupils, who have become illustrious. My boys, sir; my boys! he remarks with complacency, as the famous poets, or travellers, or novelists pass by. Our books, sir; our books ! say the old trium- virate of PUTNAM, as they hear the praises of the works, the manuscripts of which they luckily did not reject. Reject? I should say not. I knew ye, Hal ! Their shrewd wits detected the signs at once, and saluted the genius unaided. And what editor ever does reject~ a manuscript? Ladies, or fair ladies, I would wish you, or, I would request you, or, I would entreat you, not to fear, not to tremble, but to understand that when your manuscript returns, it is not becaus of any judgment upon its merits. Heaven forefend! It is only that, although nothing could be more, etc., etc., yet it is not exactly suitable to the pages of this magazine, and is, therefore, respectfully returned, or declined, with thanks. It is merely that this is a red roseand very heautiful it is !where a white lily was wanted. The enclosed pearl is returned with the most sincere thanks be was an opal which was needed to complete the necklace. cause This, as we know, was the spirit of the original triumvirate of PUTNAMS MONTHLY; and this, we are very sure (are we not ?), will be the spirit of its more modern management. More modern? We, then, are ancient! Among the fresh voices which now swell the blithe choir of our literature, we are as those who have come down from a former generation! How this latest-born into the Monthly world springs and sparkles! Ah! Mr. Franco, if it is not our child, let us submit, and believe it to be our grandchild. I seem to recognize our family likeness. Methinks I detect the air of the PUTNAM of long ago. May Heaven bless you, young stranger! May you live long and happily! Forgive an old- fashioned benediction, but may you be a better man than your father! So prays, dear Briggs, your affectionate grandf, I mean, faithful friend, GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. THIRTEEN YEARS OF THE NATION. 1854-1867. IN one of the latter numbers of the first series of PUTNAMS MONTHLY, we published an article entitled Our Parties and Politics. The date, Sep- tember, 1854, was immediately after the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Bills, repealing the Missouri Compromise, and opening our National Territories to slavery. On that hint we spoke. We now resume the discussion, after an in- terval of thirteen years. During this period events have occurred more im- portant in our history, as a people, than even those of our war for Independence, because involving a population ten times larger in a struggle ten-fold more sub- lime and terrible, resulting in a revolu- tion not merely of our national rigime, but of our social institutions and entire System of industry. Mr. Pierce had but two years before been elected by majorities which swept all but three of the States; Jefferson Davis, his bosom-friend in Mexico, who had been most efficient in securing his nomination, was his Secretary of War; the fugitive slave-law had been passed; the revival of the African slave-trade was broached; Mr. Buchanan was Min- ister to England, and was plotting the Ostend Manifesto; Captain George B. McClellan was detailed on secret service in the harbors of Cuba~, under instruc- tions from the Secretary of War; Gem Quitman, Lieut. Beauregard, and others, were plotting fillibustering raids against that island for which the Government soon after made an offer of one hundred millions; the Senate, House, and nearly all the State governments, our foreign diplomacy, our army and navy, our civil service, custom-houses, post-offices, all

8 PTTNAM5 MAGAZINE. [Jan. were the MO1~THLY nurses. They saw that infant phenomenon safely through his prodigious childhood, and how rapidly he obtained his growth! There are books in good standing, every where, which I can never see but with the feeling of the pedagogue towards his pupils, who have become illustrious. My boys, sir; my boys! he remarks with complacency, as the famous poets, or travellers, or novelists pass by. Our books, sir; our books ! say the old trium- virate of PUTNAM, as they hear the praises of the works, the manuscripts of which they luckily did not reject. Reject? I should say not. I knew ye, Hal ! Their shrewd wits detected the signs at once, and saluted the genius unaided. And what editor ever does reject~ a manuscript? Ladies, or fair ladies, I would wish you, or, I would request you, or, I would entreat you, not to fear, not to tremble, but to understand that when your manuscript returns, it is not becaus of any judgment upon its merits. Heaven forefend! It is only that, although nothing could be more, etc., etc., yet it is not exactly suitable to the pages of this magazine, and is, therefore, respectfully returned, or declined, with thanks. It is merely that this is a red roseand very heautiful it is !where a white lily was wanted. The enclosed pearl is returned with the most sincere thanks be was an opal which was needed to complete the necklace. cause This, as we know, was the spirit of the original triumvirate of PUTNAMS MONTHLY; and this, we are very sure (are we not ?), will be the spirit of its more modern management. More modern? We, then, are ancient! Among the fresh voices which now swell the blithe choir of our literature, we are as those who have come down from a former generation! How this latest-born into the Monthly world springs and sparkles! Ah! Mr. Franco, if it is not our child, let us submit, and believe it to be our grandchild. I seem to recognize our family likeness. Methinks I detect the air of the PUTNAM of long ago. May Heaven bless you, young stranger! May you live long and happily! Forgive an old- fashioned benediction, but may you be a better man than your father! So prays, dear Briggs, your affectionate grandf, I mean, faithful friend, GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. THIRTEEN YEARS OF THE NATION. 1854-1867. IN one of the latter numbers of the first series of PUTNAMS MONTHLY, we published an article entitled Our Parties and Politics. The date, Sep- tember, 1854, was immediately after the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Bills, repealing the Missouri Compromise, and opening our National Territories to slavery. On that hint we spoke. We now resume the discussion, after an in- terval of thirteen years. During this period events have occurred more im- portant in our history, as a people, than even those of our war for Independence, because involving a population ten times larger in a struggle ten-fold more sub- lime and terrible, resulting in a revolu- tion not merely of our national rigime, but of our social institutions and entire System of industry. Mr. Pierce had but two years before been elected by majorities which swept all but three of the States; Jefferson Davis, his bosom-friend in Mexico, who had been most efficient in securing his nomination, was his Secretary of War; the fugitive slave-law had been passed; the revival of the African slave-trade was broached; Mr. Buchanan was Min- ister to England, and was plotting the Ostend Manifesto; Captain George B. McClellan was detailed on secret service in the harbors of Cuba~, under instruc- tions from the Secretary of War; Gem Quitman, Lieut. Beauregard, and others, were plotting fillibustering raids against that island for which the Government soon after made an offer of one hundred millions; the Senate, House, and nearly all the State governments, our foreign diplomacy, our army and navy, our civil service, custom-houses, post-offices, all 1868.] ThIRTEEN YEARS OF THE NATION. 9 preferment, much of our business, and even our society, and a large majority of our churches, were controlled by men who either were pro-slavery, or preferred to remain on friendly terms with the in- stitution, rather than incur the dangers of a quarrel with it; Parson Brownlow had written a savage work in its de- fence, and was challenging Northern clergymen to dispute its divine author- ity; the stand made under Van Buren, and Adams, and the Democratic Free- Soilers of 48, had apparently accom- plished the purpose of its leaders in defeating Cass and electing Taylor; in- stead of a self-sacrificing martyrdom for principle, it proved to have been prompted only by personal spite, which, being satisfied, the Van Burens and most of their supporters, except a few sincere free-soilers, were humbly doing penance for the sin of pretended devotion to freedom, by dancing attend- ance in the ante-chambers of democratic officials, arid defending their fidelity to the party before the dull, unwilling ears of Tammany. The United States Mar- shals, appointed solely for their sub- serviency to slavery, gloried hr assist- ing slave-traders in fitting out their vessels, and slave-holders in recovering their negroes; Uncle Toms Cabin~~ had been written, and its leaven was rapidly spreading, but had not yet affected the voting masses; Gerrit Smith, Dr. Ho we, Henry Ward Beecher, Owen Lovejoy, the saints at Oberlin, and a few hundred others, were doing a quiet and limited business over the underground railway; John Brown had not yet left his farm in the Northern wilds; the Republican party was not yet formed. In a word, the anti-slavery sentiment seemed like Christianity at the hour of the crucifixionas if it could never be a party, nor even a sect, but was a mere flicker, for which the world was waiting to say, There! it is gone I In the survey of Our Parties and Politics, to which we refer, we affirmed that our war for National Independence grew out of a new ideathe American ideathe conception of a State founded on the inherent freedom and dignity of the individual man ; . . . an idea which, we said, still transcends the highest practical achievements of our race. . . . But, among the States which form the elements of the Con- federacy, there are some not strictly democratic, and scarcely republican. They are aristocracies or oligarchies, built upon a diversity of races. Their political and social privileges are con- fined to a class, while the rest of their inhabitants are slaves. The consequence has been a growing divergency, though it was not always apparent or even sus- pected, between the convictions, the in- terests, and the tendencies of one half the Union, which was eminently free and democratic, and those of the other half which was slave-holding and aristo- cratic. We asserted that when, in the progress of empire, the question arises whether the social system of the one or the other shall prevail, to the ex- clusion, which is unavoidable, of its op- ponent, a strenuous grapple and fight would be imminent. And we closed by demanding THE REPEAL OF THE FUGITIVE-SLAVE LAwTHE REsToRATIoN OF THE Missouni CoM- PROMIsENo MORE SLAVE STATES No MORE SLAVE TERRITORIEsTHE HOMESTEAD FOR FREE MEN ON THE PUBLIc LA~us. Two years after, the Republican party met in its first National Convention at Philadelphia, and organized on this platform, nominating Fremont for the Presidency. An obscure individual, re- membered by a few as having once rep- resented Sangamon District, Illinois, in the House, and opposed the Mexican War, in an awkward, ingenious, and ex- tremely unpopular argument, received a few complimentary votes for Vice-Pres- ident, in competition with Mr. Dayton, the nominee. Captain U. S. Grant, hardly suspected of being an ex-army officer by those who bought molasses or cord-wood of him, was generally taken for a steamboat captain tempo- rarily stranded by stress of ill-luck, or who had hardly the requisite energy and pluck to succeed in a business call- ing for so much of those qualities, and 10 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Jan who had therefore collapsed into a spec- ulator in sundries. Mr. W. T. Sherman was teaching school in Louisiana. Gens. Sickles, Butler, and Logan, were rou,,h- and-tumble Democratic lawyers of some notoriety. Two of the most prominent and promising officers of our little army were Col. Albert Sidney Johnston and Lieut.-Col. R. B. Lee. Brief as is the period since then, we have bitt two men in official life, Mr. Seward and Mr. Chase, whose prominence has not been either created or overthrown during this eventful epoch. Even these two repu- tations have been greatly changed. Mr. Seward, then the Gibraltar of Radical- ism, has become a leader of the Con- servatives. Mr. Chase, maintaining with marvellous unity his political consist- ency, has acquired his chief fame as a Minister of Finance, and founder of the National Banking System. Of the men in power at that time, the most accom- plished representative of the Aristo- Democratic party, Jefferson Davis, emerges from confinement as an arch- traitor and chief rebel, and accepts his liberty upon bail, offered by the two Abo- litionists whom he then chiefly despised, Gerrit Smith and Mr. Greeley. Yancey, the Wendell Phillips of the South, and Howell Cobb, Mason, Toombs, Slidell, Floyd, Hunter, Wigfall, Foote, and Rust, whose imperious demands, thun- dered forth in the Senate, were obeyed in every department of the Government, have sought refuge from the utter over- throw of their power, in exile, or in the grave. Of the great American People, who, it was then thought, could not be stirred to action, either against the Union or for the abolition of slavery, a half mil- lion of men have sprung to arms in the former cause, and more than thrice that number in the latter. The four millions of slaves, for whom not even the most sanguine hoped to see emancipation during this century, are not only free, but hold in their hands, by the refusal of the late rebels to codperate with them in the work of reconstruction, the political power of the South. Virginia, the great mother of Presidents, and market of slaves, reorganizes her State Government on the basis of that rightful political equality between slave and master. which Jefferson, her most distinguished statesman, was one of the first and fore- most to assert. A political party, not then in existence, has prevailed in every Northern State, ruled the destinies of the Union for six years, overthrown op- posing institutions by decrees as revolu- tionary of antecedent conditions as were ever issued by czar or emperor, and en- forced their changes by armies as pow- erful as were swayed by an Alexander, C~esar, or Napoleon, and is now recon- structing the Union on a basis of uni- versal suffrage, which secures the as- cendancy of the same party, and of its ideas, ultimately, not merely in the tran- sient politics, but in the fundamental constitution and laws of the lately slave- holding and rebellious States. Never before in the worlds history has there been so sublime a vindication of the power of an idea to mould parties, rev- olutionize governments, raise and mass armies, overthrow institutions, and change the social destinies of races. In the fulkst sense our great struggle was, on both sides, a war of ideas. Though it took the form, at least in our minds, of a struggle between government and rebellion, yet the rebellion was itself a government, as thoroughly representa- tive, and as skilfully organized, as the National Government. It represented the powerful ideas of the superiority of the white race over the black; of the greater fitness of an aristocratic class than a working class to govern; of the material aggrandizement and pecuniary profit of slavery; of the sovereignty of each State; of the dread and supposed danger of setting free four millions of untutored slaves, and giving them rights approximating those of their late mas- ters, if not fully equal; and of a Chris- tianity and code of morals and ethics in which the above ideas were assumed to be sound, and in the light of which the freeing a slave was on a par with steal- ing a horse, and general emancipation was deemed to be wholesale massacre. These ideas inspired the pro-slavery 11 TIIIP.TEEN YEAfl5 OF TIIB NATION. party, prevailed throughout the Democ- racy, were endorsed in the elections of Pierce and Buchanan, and were repre- sented in various degrees in 1860, in the nominations not only of Breckinridge and Lane, but also of Douglas and Johnson, and of Bell and Everett. In the aggregate, they polled a larger pop- ular vote than that cast for Mr. Lincoln. But on the question, how these ideas could best be made to prevail, their up- holders were divided. The Breckin- ridge-Lane wing said, Out of the Union!, The other two factions re- plied, No; in the Union! But other- wise the ideas that underlay the three parties were the same. The measures of the Republican party were confined to preventing the extension of slavery, by annexation, or in the terri- tories. But their ideas were deeper, viz. that the respects in which men are un- equal, are incidental and secondary, compared with the great and important senses in ~vhich they are equal; that slavery is wrong, unchristian, unprofit- able, quarrelsome, tyrannical, anti-repub- lican, and barbarous; that it quenches freedom of speech and of the press, sup- presses education, perpetuates ignorance, and promotes brutality; that it wastes land, oppresses labor, debauches states- manship, and undermines republican government; that it is insatiable in its requirements, deceptive in its supposed profits, unprofitable, and inhuman. That while, for the sake of the other interests involved in the Union, and peace, it might be tolerated, it was only as we would tolerate the serpent coiled around our child, fearing to strike it dead, not for the sake of the serpent, but of the life it endangered. Aboli- tionists and Republicans differed only in the intensity with which they held these ideas. These were the ideas which obtained the ascendancy in the election of Lincoln. It was in vain, therefore, that Republicans pointed to the mode- ration of their platform. The South looked behind their platform, and grasped correctly their fundamental idea, that slavery was wrong. With this idea in the ascendancy, said they, platforms will advance from the limita- tion to the al~olition of the wrong. Doubtless they saw truly. Mr. Seward had said, at Cleveland, many years before, Slavery must be abolished, and you and I must do it. Mr. Lincoln en- dorsed the doctrine of the irrepressible conflict. It may be claimed that the anti-slavery idea barely sufficed to elect Lincoln, and that the idea which mus- tered into the field the armies of the Union, was the love of the Union, and not hostility to slavery. This is true. But as the anti-slavery idea had first to obtain ascendancy in the Government before slavery would seek to destroy the Union, it was, after all, the prior tri- umph of the anti-slavery idea that ar- rayed the Union sentiment on the side of freedom. Until this triumph, the whole force of the mere Union senti- ment, in the Northern States, had been devoted to securing concessions to the demands of slavery. The first political crisis of the North, known as the Great Northern Uprising, consisted in the ac- cession of the Union sentiment to the anti-slavery sentiment, and their agree- ment to fight shoulder to shoulder. This was characterized by the noble stand taken by Douglas, Benjamin F. Butler, Daniel S. Dickinson, Edwin M. Stan- ton, John A. Logan, Andrew Johnson, John A. Dix, Gen. W. T. Sherman, Daniel E. Sickles, and a large wing of the Democracy, whose unionism had previously led them into conciliatory policies towards slavery. Upon the accession of what were styled the War-Democrats to the Union cause, the allied Republican- Union parties carried on the war during the first two years. The Secession party of the South received a similar accession from the previously Union sentiment of that section, including such staunch, original opponents of secession as Alex- ander H. Stephens, Gilmer, John Bell, Foote, and, indeed, nearly every prom- inent Southern Unionist except John M. Botts. In both the Union and the rebellion, while the candidates selected for the Presidency represented the dis- tinctive idea of their respective sections, 1888.] 12 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Jan. Mr. Lincoln representing freedom, and Davis, slavery, the candi~1ates for Vice- President on both sides were chosen for their Unionism, or as representing on behalf of each side the reluctance, rather than the energy, with which it entered into the contest. In both the Union and the Confederacy, also, the party oppos- ing the war was compelled, by over- whelming pressure and force, to cloak its real sentiment of hostility to the war under cover of hostility to the mode in which it was conducted. Daviss op- position claimed that he was too arbi- trary, and listened too little to counsels of others; Lincolns, that he was too familiar, and yielded to pressure too much. Davis, claiming for himself not only an experience in statesmanship equal to that of any civilian in the country, but an equally large familiarity in military affairs, desired to surround himself by satellites, and exiled his rivals to foreign missions or to private life. Jie called no prominent Southern statesman to his cabinet, or into the field. Generals like J. E. Johnston, who dis- agreed with him in politics, must suc- ceed brilliantly indeed to atone for the divergence. Mr. Lincoln, on the con- trary, made up his cabinet of his presi- dential rivals and no others, and placed an immense majority of Democrats in command in our armies, and kept them there with great tenacity. Even when, as in the cases of Buell, Porter, and McClellan, the Republican party was clamorous for their removal, he waited patiently until a Democratic General-in- Chief, on his own motion, chose to relieve them. Having made up his cabinet originally of Republicans, no sooner was he reinforced, by the acces- sion of Union War-Democrats, than he selected from among them an ex-mem- ber of Buchanans cabinet for Secretary of Warand found in him the ablest war-secretary of the century. Towards the rebel army, Davis imper- sonated discipline, severity, and bad faith, for he turned the bayonets of his troops against each other after their terms had expired, to compel them to remain in the service. But towards the Union army, Lincoln impersonated par- don, never allowing a soldier to die if his signature would save him, even though at the alleged sacrifice of dis- cipline. Davis, entering the struggle with a brilliant reputation, waned into a hated and despised leader long before his cause was lost. Lincoln, entering upon his office almost without reputation, grew into a mighty ascendancy over those who, at first, might well have scorned to be his rivals, and, long before his cause was won, had achieved a popular- ity that was politically omnipotent. The burning impetuosity with which the South plunged into the war, was less remarkable than the vast, almost incomprehensible moderation of the North. If I were to choose, said Davis, in one of his public addresses, between the companionship of Yankees and hyenas, I should infinitely prefer the hyenas. With malice toward none, with charity for all replied Mr. Lincoln. Congress resolved that the war was not waged to destroy slavery or the States, but that, as soon as the rebel armies should disperse and the Union be sus- tained, the war would cease. Mr. Davis replied, We will have independence or extermination. Mr. Seward instructed our diplomats abroad to deny that the fate of slavery was involved in the con- test. European liberals replied natural- ly, then it is a war of mere dominion, with which we have no sympathy. Why ask us to sympathize with an effort of twenty-four States to conquer twelve? But the ideas that underlay the strug- gle were stronger than the policies of leaders. For the first two years of the war, Mr. Lincoln conducted it on the most conservative principles: Demo- cratic generals returned fugitive slaves, and were sustained. Republican generals freed them, and were removed. Demo- crats, who opposed the war, applauded the administration; and a large wing of Republicans were disgusted with Mr Lincolns conservatism. Suddenly, like a clap of thunder out 1868.] 13 THIRTEEN YEARs OF THE NATION. of a clear sky, came the promise, in Sep- tember, 1862, of a Proclamation of Emancipation o~i January 1st, 1863. But one or two obscure Democratic officers resigned. A few Democratic votes fell off, enough to elect Seymour in New York, and to shake Republican majorities in other States. But those who remained were Republicans thence- forth. The Republican vote was weeded out, but it grew more rapidly for the upheaval of the soil and uprooting the tares. Meanwhile, the army was sloughing off its failures, and educating its gene- ralsBurnside, Hooker, Kearney, Grant, Sherman, Thomas, and Sheridan. The opposition at the North attempted but failed to oppose the draft. Twenty- five thousand troops around New York, and an equal number in Ohio and In- diana, were required to thwart the op- position, represented by Ben. Wood and Chauncey 1~urr, Yallandigham and Pen- dleton. Our fearfully decimated, but vigorously reinforced, armies learned tales of suffering from their emaciated comrades, returning from rebel prisons, that improved their discipline on the battle-field, and ended that habit of easy surrender, in which they were at first encouraged by incompetent and conservative generals. They be- gan to fight with invincible obstinacy and to win victories. Yet in every strictly military respect, in discipline, courage, generalship, endurance, and zeal, the supporters of the rebellion were fully equal, and at first superior, at the average, to the Union forces. But, in the maintenance of their finances and industrial resources, and in care for the comfort and health of their armies, the contending parties showed the most marked contrast. The Sanitary and Christian Commissions, organized by the philanthropic men and women of the North, resulted in sustained aid and timely kindness to our soldiers in the periods of their most critical straits. The Bureau of Freedmen and Refugees identified the Government with benevo- lence at the South. All these agencies had no counterpart within the rebel lines. Aid to the wounded rebel soldier, except he fell into our hands, was con- fined to the surgeon~s knife, and the rude sympathy of his companions-in- arms. No commissions of benevolent men and women, except in a few excep- tional and fitful instances, nursed the sick, shrived the dying, or buried the dead. The South was untrained to or- ganized benevolence. But, as the war progressed, the North principally contrasted with the South in the maintenance of its industry and re- sources. Much of our superiority was doubtless due to our actually greater wealth and diversity of industry, which rendered us less dependent on import& tions from abroad for the means of war; but much, also, to the abler management by our Treasury Departmentof our loans and currency. To have attempted to conduct so great a war with no other currency than gold, and the heterogene- ous bills of the State banks, many of which, in the Western States, had failed, would have been like attempting to float a steamer on a morning dew. Both parties issued paper-money. The Con- federacy issued theirs with as little system, and the same result, as pertained to the Assignats of the French Revolu- tion. Secretary Chase, however, founded the National Banking System, by which the debts of the nation became a most valuable commodity to the banker, and the very corner-stone of his business. The umbilical cord, which connected the frail offspring currency with the parent gold, was maintained by the pay- ment of gold interest; and by founding the National bank-notes on the security of bonds payable in gold, making the legal tenders convertible into bonds payable in gold, and taxing the State bank-notes out of existence, the visible connection between gold as the basis, and our entire currency as the credit superstructure, never was severed. The country felt the healthy stimulus of an abundance of money without the col- lapse of depreciation. The fight, said an eminent rebel to one of our officers, is between our meat and your money. So long as we can feed our men, you 14 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Jan. cannot conquer us. So long as your money holds out, you cannot be pre- vented from carrying on the war. Our money held out, because our Na- tional credit and finances were, on the whole, admirably managed. Business throughout the North was never more prosperous, while industry at the South was prostrate. Our cities increased in thrift, population, and energy. Instead of the grass growing in our streets, acres of new marble and iron blocks went up. Chicago, which in 1860 packed 300,000 barrels of pork, ran up to 1,200,000 in 1864. Our theatres were never so crowded. Our churches never so rapid- ly multiplied, enlarged their accommo- dations, and paid off their debts. Our parks never so overflowed with gayety and fashion. Under the active demand for our fabrics and wares, stimulated by a protective tariff; our mines, factories, and furnaces, were never so driven with work, and never made better dividends. Our farmers got high prices. Individ- uals in all kinds of business were getting out of debt, and paying off their mort- gages. Immigration was pouring into the country more rapidly than ever be- fore. Even the non-combatants of the South, attracted by our financial pros- perity, came North and brought their money with them. Meanwhile, with the tightening of the block de, and the in- ability of the South to get out their cotton, Confederate finances collapsed. Their legal tenders were worth but two or three cents on the hundred, and the bitter gibe of the Southern peace-party was, that they took their money to market in the basket, a ad brought home the meat in their pocket-books. They could supply their army with neither adequate food, clothes, shelter, nursing, or medicine, and three fourths of the troops who had enlisted so enthusiastic- ally at the outset, were now branded on the rolls as deserters. From these causes, more than all others, resulted the collapse of the rebellion. Yet the fall of the rebellion was none the less a tri- ninph of ideas, none the more a victory of brute force, because the ideas that conquered wielded the largest purse, the heaviest reinforcements of men, and the greatest material resources. It was because slavery, starting ahead in the race, and working over the larger area a d the finer territory of our country, had resulted in a sparser population, less intelligence, and less wealth; that it had been condemned by the people in the triumph of the anti-slavery senti- meat. The failure of the rebellion, through want of pecuniary resources, vindicated the strongest anti-slavery argument, viz. that slavery is unprofitable. Its failure, from ,the overweening vanity of Davis, vindicated another anti-slavery position, viz, that slavery develops vain and empty statesmen. Its failure, from want of kindness and good faith towards the rebel troops, sustained a third point in the abolition creed, that slavery was treacherous and cruel. On the other hand, the expansive power of our ma- terial resources proved the higher states- manship of that free-labor system, with- out which there could be no diversity of industry. Our larger benevolence to- wards our soldiers established our claims to a purer Christianity; and the more liberal and truly Democratic policies of Lincoln, in the selection of his cabinet, the appointment of his generals, and his treatment of the army, were an imper- sonated demonstration of the superior- ity of those free institutions which had lifted one so inexperienced, uncouth, and plebeian, into a loftier grade of statesmanship than belonged to the accomplished, gifted, but perfidious representative of slavery. The ideas that gave rise to the conflict mould- ed its results. Freedom had made the North richer, more populous, and more independent, than slavery had made the South. This was the moral reason why the Republican party op. posed the spread of slavery in the tern- tcries, the numerical reason why they elected Lincoln, and the material reason why they out-reinforced their antag- onists, and so subdued the rebellion. Never was there so purely, therefore, a war of principles; or a struggle, in which the ideas involved, so manifestly 1868.] THIRTEEN YEARS OF THE NATION. determined the strength and endurance of the contending armies. Even when the sudden and startling tragedythe assassination of Lincoln, and attempted massacre of his cabinet and chief generalsclosed the magnifi- cent drama of the war with a revelation of baseness, humiliating to every Ameri- can, the martyrs life-long faith in the superiority of freedom, and the mean- ness and turpitude of slavery, was sealed, beyond future denial, as a fundamental truth of ethics and of history. The emancipation of four millions of blacks, and the destruction of ten State governments, in the progress of the war, had introduced into the problem of re- construction two new difficulties. There was not merely the Union of the loyal States with the disloyal States to be re- stored, but ten new State governments must be created for the conquered States. Not merely was peace between the Gov- ernment a~i the rebels to be declared, but the terms of peace between the cx- masters and ex-slaves had also to be adjusted. For, as says Montesquien, slavery is that state of perpetual war, ia which one antagonist is always van- quished, and the other is forever on guard. To permit the State organizations, which had formed the Confederacy, to be incorporated into the Union, would have been both suicidal and illegal. Il- legal, because no officer connected with them had for five years sworn to support the Constitution of the United States, and every office in them was therefore legally vacant, and the whole fabric of State government was lapsed and void; suicidal, because ~each of these govern- ments was officered by rebels, whose only legal right, if they were to be regarded as citizens of the United States, was to be hanged for treason, or if aliens, then to be readmitted to citizenship on such terms as should be prescribed. To allow them to continue in the control of ten States, would be to enter into partner- ship with the rebellion, not to overthrow it. Gen. Sherman proposed to Gen. John- ston a plan of surrender by which these State governments would have been preserved. Had President Johnson then foreseen his subsequent quarrel with the Republican party, he probably would have affirmed the Sherman-Johnston treaty. The country is indebted to the energy of Secretary Stanton, alone, for the fact that this treaty was rejected, and that the ret~onstruction proclama- tions, which soon followed, were based on the theory that the State govern- ments were destroyed, and that new ones mtnt be created: The President therein built more wisely than he knew, for, in assuming that new State governments must be formed, he neces- sarily raised the question, by what au- thority they should be constituted, and who should vote in forming them. The former question could only be answered in favor of Congress. The latter proved the entering-wedge to universal suffrage. Unwittingly, therefore, the President, in issuing proclamations of reconstruction, and in defining therein who should vote, paved the way for reconstruction by Congress, on the basis of impartial suf- frage, and refuted in advance the posi- tions he subsequently took that the States could not destroy their relations to the Union, and that the National government had no power to recon- struct them. Mr. Lincoln, in his letters to Gov. Hahn and Gen. Wadsworth, had fore- shadowed strong predilections in favor of universal suffrage as the basis of re- construction. His humane instincts would have moved him strongly to couple with it universal amnesty. No sentiment of animosity towards rebels, as such, would have inspired his course. But, at the close of the war, the mass of the Northern people felt far more ani- mosity towards rebels than desire that the freed race should have any political rights. They called aloud for the pun- ishment of traitors, but, as a mass, at- tached much less consequence than was due to the building up of a loyal con- stituency at the South, and the estab- lishment of peace by the ballot. Jour- nals and statesmen feared to breast public clamor by favoring amnesty or advocatimr suffra0e. In this immature 16 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Jan and chaotic state of public opinion, the Presidents reconstruction policy, at the time it was adopted, met with very little dissent. The President failed to see that he had committed the fatal blunder, by attempting reconstruction on the white vote only. But most of our Republican statesmen were no further ahead. Thaddeus Stevens, Edwin M. Stanton, B. Gratz Brown, Mr. Sumner, and a few others, and one or two journals only, dissented from the scheme. Not until the evils resulting from the plan began to develop, in black codes that substantially restored slavery, did the people and politicians begin to move forward to universal suffrage. But when the white vote organized State and city governments, that elected none but rebels to power, such as Gen. Hum- phreys in Mississippi, Mayor Monroe in New Orleans, Raphael Semmes in Mobile, and the like; and when the ex-rebels, coming together in legislatures, enacted that ~o negro should own land or hire a house, thus practically breaking up his home, and compelling him to work as a menial; when they required him to hire out for a year during the first weeks of January, and in default allowed him to be sold for a term of years; when they adopted systems of apprenticeship for blacks, which were not applied to whites; when they provided the lash and whipping-post for black but not for white; when they excluded colored witnesses from courts of jus- tice; when they organized rebel re- giments, which surrendered under Lee, en masse, into State militia, who dis- armed the black troops that conquered under Grant; when they revived the fugitive-slave law for blacks who did not work out their contracts, but no punishment for whites who did not pay the wages due on the same eontracts; when they reluctantly, and only under impudent protests, assented to the repeal of the ordinances of secession; when they drove out Northern emigrants, as- sailed the Freedmens Bureau, organized bands of negro-killers, and finally cul- minated these outrages in the massacres of Republicans and negroes, at Memphis and New Orleans, and evinced a general readiness to perpetrate the same out- rages all over the South; when the President imperiously demanded that the Freedmens Bureau, the only pro- tection the negro had, should be abol- ished; when he denied the power of Congress to enact laws for reconstruc- tion, and enforced his denials by scurril- bus exhibitions which excited contempt and removed all fear; when Southern courts were deciding the Civil Rights Bill to be unconstitutional, and South- ern State officers were trampling upon its provisions, and defying the Congress that enacted it; then, fin ally, the Republican Congress began to move to- wards reconstruction, on the basis of uni- versal suffrage. But they moved slowly. Their first step seemed even a step back- ward. It merely provided that unless the South should grant suffrage to the blacks, their number of representatives in Congress should be diminished in proportion to the number of blacks dis- franchised. The inference was, that by accepting that limitation, the Southern States might return to the Union with the blacks still unenfranchised. It was a dangerous offer to make, and would have been fatal to our future peace had it been accepted. But, fortunately, there was allied with this indifference to jus- tice, in Congress as in the people, a sentiment of hostility to rebels, which was useful, not for its own sake, but for what it accomplished for the blacks. The clause of the offer, excluding lead- ing rebels from Federal office, caused it to be rejected with scorn. Not a Southern State acted upon it, though several Northern States passed it as a Constitutional amendment. The rejection of this proposition, with the other coOperating causes alluded to, at length brought Congress up to the great work of enacting that reconstruc- tion should take place on the basis of universal suffrage, excludin~, only a few leading rebels. The first workings of this plan, which is now on trial, have been all that could be expected. The moment the right of the ballot was con- ferred, and even before it was exercised, 1868.] THIRTEEN YEARS OF THE NATION. iT the Sozith was at peace. The Freedmens Bureau, backed by the National bayo- nets, was a far less adequate protection to the negro than the simple promise of the ballot. In the Gulf States, the whites have held aloof from the regis- tration and the polls, knowing that the blacks would out-vote them, and hoping against hope that the reconstruction policy of Congress would in some way, by Democratic victories at the North, be reversed. The effect of this conserva- tive policy would be to throw the gov- ernment of those States almost wholly into the hands of the white and black Republicans. This would fulfil the pre- diction of De Tocqueville, made thirty years ago, that the cotton States would one day form State governments ad- ministered mainly by the black race. In Virginia the whites voted, and were beaten by a small majority. As the whites vote for the disfranchisement of the blacks, of course, the latter have no choice but to vote in solid phalanx for the continuation of their right of suffrage. No violence has char- aGterzed these elections, but such a re- sult on future occasions is not improb- able. As a question of statesmanship, however, the problem of reconstruction is solved. What remains is mere detaiL When the ballot wfts given to the negro, the races were assured the same harmony which exists between them in Brazil and Mexico, where, whatever other causes of dissension may exist, the races have ever remained at peace with each other. They were saved from the wretched social struggles, betweenwhites and blacks, which have impoverished several of the West India Islands. The majorities of the Republican party in the Northern States have been shaken slightly by the suffrage question, but to nothing like the extent they suffered immediately after emancipation. The votes, against granting suffrage to col- ored men in Northern States, indicate no dissatisfaction with the Congressional policy, because none claim that any great end of political statesmanship could be subserved by thc extension of the ballot to a few scattering negroes at voL. i.2 the North. It will eventually be done, not from necessity, but for consistency. The Republican party, which has thus overthrown slavery, and in whose hands is the restoration of the Union, is in the ascendant in every Northern State; not- withstanding the apathy of a portion of the Republican party in the recent electionsan apathy which will vanish under the visibly safe and beiieficial workings of universal suffrage at the South, and will be electrified into en- thusiasm long before their reinforced majorities will be required for the next Presidential campaign. By the recon- struction of the ten Southern States, on the basis of the equality of all loyal men, most of those States will speedily range themselves under its banners. Under these circumstances, the Republican party, which is now emphatically the Democratic party of the country, not only in its principles, but in prestige and power, is liable to the dangers which always attend power, viz, corruption and venality. But under whatever influences it may hereafter rise or fall, its future destinies cannot erase from the page of history its brilliant achievements for hu- man freedom. Nothing but its own recreancy, in the future, to the principles which have inspired it in the past, can forfeit its strong hold upon the grati- tude of the oppressed, and the admira- tion of all, in the present and future generations, who believe in democracy or love liberty. Not less important than the sweeping revolution in the governing ideas of the country, or than the downfall of slavery, has been the consolidation of the mem- bers of a feebly-bound league or con- federacy into a great and powerful na- tionality, which, with a larger freedom to the individual, combines an immeas- urably greater power in the State. Con- gress is no longer a debating society. It may not produce as good debaters as when Webster, Clay, and Calhoun pour- ed out their resonant and reverberat- ing war of wordswordswords; and when eloquence was deemed the ane quality of a statesman. But more im- portant legislation has been moulded, by [Jan. PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. a silent sneer from Thaddeus Stevens, than Websters most brilliant orations ever discussed. The statesmanship of the past four years has been that of actionconstant, overwhelming action beside which words became paltry. Something of the preference of achieve- ment over oratory, which marks military men, has marked the civilians of our miit~ry period. So far from being wanting in great statesmen, the states- manship of the past six years has been that to which the great spirits of the first Revolution would bow in reverence, and to which our statesmen, for the coming century, will point as their model for imitation, and their authority in all controversy. Lincoln, Stanton, Chase, Fessenden, Seward, Trumbull, Colfax, Wade, Grant, Sherman, Sheridan, Thomas and the like, are names as classic in history as Chatham, Burke, Fox, Pitt, Canning, Marlborough, Wel- lington, Napoleon, Murat, Key. They are trie founders of that period in our history when the United States devel- oped into a Nation, capable of maintain- ing every right, of not merely its present fprty, but of its future hundred millions of people, no longer scattered over thirty-seven States, but crowded into seventy. Ten years ago, we knew not whether or not our nationality was stronger than South Carolina. Our so- called statesmen feared to test the ques- tion. Webster weakly declared he dared not penetrate the veiL Jack- son made much empty fame by swearing he would test it, and then, waiving the real point at issue, by recommending a repeal of the duties. Could so weak a bond suffice for our future republic? The longer the question was postponed, the more blood it would cost to solve it. As it is, the solution has cost much, but it is~ worth far more. Those who fell in the struggle have not lost in exchanging a fleeting life for a glorious immortality. Of the great amount of treasure invested in it, but a small portion was destroyed. Most of it Was money loaned by our own people to the Government, ~who immediately repaid it to the people. There has been a great building up of debt, but, so far as this debt is held in this country, every dollar of it has its balancing credit, and the country, as a whole, is no poorer for the aggregate. It involves taxes, but nearly all of these return in interest and other forms to the people who pay them. It is in the power of every tax-payer to pay off his share of the national debt by buying and holding in his left hand the amount of bonds on which he pays taxes with his right. Thus the one offsets the other, and he stands as if there were no debt. If he does not wish, or cannot afford, to own the bonds on which he pays the interest, it is because he can use his money to better advantage else- where, and it is a relieg not a burden, to him, that some one else holds them for him. The national debt is the aggre- gate of many small sums, each of which was invested by its owner in government bonds because he could get a better in- terest for it there than elsewhere. It consists, therefore, of surpluses which, had there been no national loan to in- vest in, would have been invested by each lender in loans to individuals, either in extending credit on his sales, in mortgages on real estate, in erecting property to let, or in the various other forms of credit. Any and all of these would have create& an aggregate of private debts, the interest on which would correspond to the taxes now paid on the government debt. Before the war, these private debts were a large and expensive part of our currency: large, because there was not currency enough in the country to make its ex- changeshence, the people had to man- ufacture currency for themselves; ex- pensive, because private obligations~ circulating as currency, were received at a heavy discount, held at a high rate of interest, negotiated at a rob- bing commission, and were liable to all the chances of individual insolvency as well as general disaster. All sorts of I 0 Us, store orders, notes, book accounts, & c., formed the principal medium of exchange in the rural dis- tricts. Now the same surplus funds, which would else have flowed into 18 ( THIRTEEN YEARs OF THE NATION. $2,~OO,OOO,OOO of private debts, has flowed into $2,500,000,000 of public debt. The advantages are, that itisina form universally acceptable, reliable, and valuable. Through its agency, un- counted millions of dollars worth of ex- changes may take ph~ce, without ever relying on mere individual promises, ) where formerly private notes and ac- counts were the only security. The business which we now call cash is all transacted by using the national debt as a medium of payment; and the reason why so much more business can be done on cash than formerly, is be- cause the national loans have furnished the medium in sufficient quantity to substitute public for private credit in all transactions. Business is on a more stable foundation, because the public credit is more secure, as well as more ample. In this important respect, and as a great national savings bank and bank of deposit, the national debt subserves uses that more than compen- sate for the expenses of its collection. The nation is now the Nations banker, and never before were individual and the national interests made so mutually adjutant to each other. Only to the extent that our bonds are held abroad, or are exported to pay for fabrics which we ought to produce at home, is the Nation drained of its resources. Only to the extent of the actual destruction of buildings, property, and labor, was the war a drain on our wealth while it continued. The net financial loss by the war consists of the property visibly destroyed in its prosecution, nearly all of which falls on the South, and the value of the labor employed in the war, less the increased value of the labor of those who remained at home, in consequence of the stimulus given to industry by the war. The fact that our aggregate production was never greater than during the war, shows that our loss in labor and production was on the whole nominal. Two thousand millions of debt due to our own citizens, loaned by themtoGovernment,andpaidbackto them by Government, is no more a drain on our national resources than two thousand millions in mortgages executed among the individuals of a community to each other; no part of the sum loaned going out of the community. Five or six years will repair all the actual destruction occasioned by the war, and leave us far richer than before, though not a dollar of the debt be paid. Emancipation is no destruction of labor, but only a transfer of its ownership from the master to the slave; all that the former loses, the latter gains. The generally prosperous condition of our industry disproves the pretence that the war has left behind it pecuniary oppression, to offset the form of oppres- sion from which it aimed to emanci- pate us. As we look forth into the future of the United States, we behold its be- loved flag waving over an empire am- ple enough, in its present dimensions, to hold a hundred and fifty millions of people, presided over by a Govern- ment now lifted into a degree of power proportionate to its future responsibil- ities; containing a population from whom every barbarizing institution has been removed; pervaded by laws cal- culated to secure in its fullest perfection to every citizen, be he rich or poor, native or alien, white or black, Christian or infidel, ignorant or learned, virtuous or vicious, the right to liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Every where in our broad land education is freeand religion knows no obstruction. What shall prevent the American people from moving calmly and surely onward to a destiny and glory of which our most en- thusiastic statesmen have not dreamed? 1868.] 19 DOBBS HIS FERRY. A LEGEKD OF THE LOWER HUDSQE. Tux days were at their longest, The heat was at its strongest, When Brown, old friend and true, Wrote thus, Dear Jack, why swelter In town, when shade and shelter Are waiting here for you? Quit Bulls and Bears and gambling, For rural sports and rambling Forsake your Wall-street tricks, Come without hesitation, Check to Dobbs Ferry Station, We dine athalf-past six. I went,a welcome hearty, A merry country party, A drive, and then croquet, A quiet, well-cooked dinner, Three times at billiards winner The evening sped away, When Brown, the dear old joker, Cried, Come, my worthy broker, The hour is growing late, Your room is cool and quiet, As for the bed, just try it Breakfast at half-past eight. I took Browns hand, applauded His generous care, and lauded Dobbs Ferry to the skies. A shade came oer his features We should be happy creatures, And this a paradise, But, ahl the deep disgrace is, This loveliest of places A vulgar name should blight: But, death to Dobbs I well change it, If money can arrange it, So, pleasant dreams,good-night I I could not sleep, but raising The window, stood, moon-gaz~g, In fairy-land a guest; On such a night, et cetera See Shakespeare for much better a Description of the rest I mused, how sweet to wander Beside the river, yonder; And then the sudden whim Seized me my head to pillow On Hudsons sparkling billow, A midnight, moonlight swim!

DOBBS HIS FERRY. A LEGEKD OF THE LOWER HUDSQE. Tux days were at their longest, The heat was at its strongest, When Brown, old friend and true, Wrote thus, Dear Jack, why swelter In town, when shade and shelter Are waiting here for you? Quit Bulls and Bears and gambling, For rural sports and rambling Forsake your Wall-street tricks, Come without hesitation, Check to Dobbs Ferry Station, We dine athalf-past six. I went,a welcome hearty, A merry country party, A drive, and then croquet, A quiet, well-cooked dinner, Three times at billiards winner The evening sped away, When Brown, the dear old joker, Cried, Come, my worthy broker, The hour is growing late, Your room is cool and quiet, As for the bed, just try it Breakfast at half-past eight. I took Browns hand, applauded His generous care, and lauded Dobbs Ferry to the skies. A shade came oer his features We should be happy creatures, And this a paradise, But, ahl the deep disgrace is, This loveliest of places A vulgar name should blight: But, death to Dobbs I well change it, If money can arrange it, So, pleasant dreams,good-night I I could not sleep, but raising The window, stood, moon-gaz~g, In fairy-land a guest; On such a night, et cetera See Shakespeare for much better a Description of the rest I mused, how sweet to wander Beside the river, yonder; And then the sudden whim Seized me my head to pillow On Hudsons sparkling billow, A midnight, moonlight swim! 18684 DOBBS His FERRY. 21 Soon thought and soon attempted, At once my room was emptied Of its sole occupant; The roof was low and easily, In fact, quite Japanese-ily: I took the downward slant, Then, without stay or stopping, My first and last eaves-dropping, By leader-pipe I sped, And through the thicket gliding, Down the steep hillside sliding, I reached the rivers bed. But what was my amazement The fair scene from the casement, How changed I I could not guess Where track or rails had vanished, Town, villas, station, banished All was a wilderness. Only one ancient gable, A low-roofed inn and stable, A creaking sign displayed, An antiquated wherry, Below it Donns His FERRY In the clear moonlight swayed. I turned, and there the craft was, Its shape twixt scow and raft was, Square ends, low sides, and fiat, And, standing close beside me, An ancient chap who eyed me, Beneath a steeple-hat; Short legslong pipestyle very Pre-Revolutionary I bow, he grimly bobs, Then, with some perturbation, By way of salutation, Says I, How are you Dobbs! He grum and silent beckoned, And i, in half a second, Scarce knowing what I did, Took the stern seat, Dobbs throwing Himself midships, and rowing, Swift through the stream we slid; He pulled awhile, then stopping, And both oars slowly dropping, His pipe aside he laid, Drew a long breath, and taking An attitude, and shaking His fist towards shore, thus said: Of all sharp cuts the keenest, Of all mean turns the meanest, Vilest of all vile jobs, Worse than the Cow-Boy pillagers, Are these Dobbs Ferry villagers A going back on Dobbs I Twould not be more anomlous If Rome went back on Romlus, 22 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Jau. (Old rum-un like myself,) Or Hail Columbia, played out By Southern Dixie, laid out Columbus on the shelf! They say Dobbs aint melodious, lits horrid, vulgar, odious, In all their crops it sticks, And then the worse addendum Of Ferry does offend em More than its vile prefix; Well, it does seem distressing, But, if Im good at guessing, Each one of these same nobs, If there was money in it, Would ferry in a minute And change his name to Dobbs! Thats it, theyre not particlar, Respecting the auriclar, At a stiff market rate, But Dobbs especial vice is, That he puts down the prices Of all their real estate! A name so unattractive Keeps villa-sites inactive, And spoils the brokers jobs; They think that speculation Would rage at Pauldings Station, Which stagnates now at Dobbs. Pauldings I thats sentimental! An old Dutch Continental Bushwhacked up there a spell; But why he should come blustering, Round here, and fillibustering, Is more than I can tell; Sat playing for a wager, And nabbed a British Major: Well, if the plans and charts From Andr6s boots he hauled out, Is his name to be bawled out Forever, round these parts? Guess not! His pay and bounty And monment from the county Paid him off every cent, While this snug town and station, To every generation, Shall be Dobbs monument Spite of all speculators And ancientlandmark traitors, Who, all along this shore, Are ever substitutin The modern, highfalutin, For the plain names of yore. Down there, on old Manhattan, Where land-sharks breed and fatten, Theyve wiped out Tubby Hook, That famous promontory, 1868.1 DOBBS His FERRY. 28 Renowned in song and story, Which time nor tempest shook, Whose name for aye had been good, Stands newly-christened Inwood, And branded with the shame Of some old rogue who passes By dint of aliases, Afraid of his own name! See how they quite out-rival, Plain barnyard Spuytenduyvil, By peacock Riverdale, Which thinks all else it conquers, And over homespun Yonkers Spreads out its flaunting tail! Theres new-named Mount St. Vincent, Where each dear little inncent Is taught the Popish rites Well, aint it queer, wherever These saints possess the river They get the finest sites! Theyve named a place for Irving, A trifle more deserving Than your French foreign saints, But if he has such mention, Its past my comprehension Why Dobbs should cause complaints; Wrote histories and such things About Old Knick and Dutch things, Dolph Heyligers and Rips, But no old antiquary Like him could keep a ferry, With all his authorships! By aid of these same showmen, Some fanciful cognomen Old Cronest stock might bring As high as Butter Hill is, Which, patronized by Willis, Leaves cards now as Storm-King ~ Cant some poetic swell-beau Re-christen old Crum Elbow And each prosaic bluff, Bold Breakneck gently flatter, And Dunderberg bespatter With euphony and stuff! Twould be a magi~um opus To bury old Esopus In Times sepulchral vaults, Or in oblivions deep sea Submerge renowned Poughkeepsie, And also ancient Paltz; How it would give them rapture Brave Stony Point to capture, And make it face about; Bid Rhinebeck sound much smoother, Than in the tongue of Luther, And wipe the Cattskills out! Well, DoBBs is DoBBs, and faster Than pitch or mustard-plaster 24 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Jan. Shall it stick hereabouts, While Tappan Sea rolls yonder, Or round High Torn the thunder Along these ramparts shouts. No corner-lot banditti, Or brokers from the City Like you here Dobbs began Wildly both oars to brandish, As fierce as old Miles Standish, Or young Phil. Sheridan. Sternwards he rushedI, ducking, Seized both his legs, and chucking Dobbs sideways, splash he went The wherry swayed, then righted, While I, somewhat excited, Over the water bent; Three times he rose, but vainly I clutched his form ungainly, He sank, while sighs and sobs Beneath the waves seemed muttered, And all the night-winds uttered In sad tones,Dobbs! Dobbs! Dobbs!~ Just then some giant boulders Upon my head and shoulders Made sudden, fearful raids, And on my face and forehead, With din and uproar horrid, Came several Palisades; I screamed, and woke, in screaming, To see, by gas-lights gleaming, Browns face above my bed Why, Jack I what is the matter? We heard a dreadful clatter And found you on the shed! Its plain enough, supposing You sat there, moon-struck, dozing, Upon the windows edge Then lost yourself, and falling, Just where we found you, sprawling, Struck the piazza ledge; A lucky hit, old fellow, Of black and blue and yellow It gives your face a touch, You saved your neck, but barely, To state the matter fairly, You took a drop too much! I took the train next morning, Some lumps my nose adorning, My forehead, sundry knobs, My ideas slightly wandering, But, as I went, much pondering Upon my night with Dobbs; Brown thinks it, dear old sinner, A case of after dinner, And wont believe a word, Talks of hallucination, Laws of association, And calls my tale absurd. 1868.] JEWELS OF THE DEEP.CORALB. 25 Perhaps it is, but never, Say I, should we dissever Old places and old names, Guard the old landmarks truly, On the old altars duly Keep bright the ancient flames; For me, the face of Nature, No luckless nomenclature Of grace or beauty robs; No, when of town I weary, Ill make a strike in Erie, And buy a place at DoBns! .44----- JEWELS OF THE DEEP. CORALS. Unheard by them the roaring of the wind, The elastic motion of the waves unfelt; Still, life is theirs, well suited to themselves. GLIDIr~a slowly over the blue waters of the Mediterranean, you often see sud- denly beneath you, at no great distance from the surface, a meadow of surpass- ing beauty. Long green grasses, waving gently to and fro, shine with emerald beauty, speckled with flickering lights; and all over the little prairie are scattered flowers in brilliant colors. The restless- ly heaving water increases the splendor of the scene; and dazzling hues of green, orange, and deep red, shine upward through the transparent waves. But the oar splashes, and, in an instant, all the beauty of coloring has vanished, and the whole region is clad in a dull, dingy gray. You become aware that you are in the midst of a colony of animals, so small that the naked eye can hardly dis- cern them, and yet so powerful, by the strength of their united forces, that they have built whole islands in distant oceans, and raised lofty mountain-ranges in the very heart of Europe. But they are most sensitive little beings, and the slightest touch of a foreign body, a single ray of the sun, or an angry splash of a headlong wave, make them shrink back into their narrow home. They are altogether a strange, mys- terious race, these Maidens of the Sea, as the ancient Greeks used to call them. Their beauty of form and color, their marvellous economy, their gigantic cdi- fices, all had early attracted the attention of the curious, and given rise to fantastic fables and amusing errors. Tlley were well known to the chosen people, for, singing of the grandeur of Tyre, the prophet states that Syria was thy mer- chant by reason of the multitude of the waves of thy making: they occupied in thy fairs with emeralds, purple, coral, and agate; and ancient Job even mentions coral among the most precious things, and yet was not fit to be mentioned in comparison with wisdomthus proving the high value which already in those early days was attached to the red corals. We learn, from other sources among pro- fane writers, that priests wore them as amulets, and physicians prescribed them in many diseases as useful remedies; whilst Pliny enters into a more detailed account of the manner in which they were used for purposes of ornamentation, how weapons were adorned with them, and costly vessels derived additional value from a few deep-red branches of the Flowers of the Sea. For flowers they were held to be from time immemorial, and, for centuries even of our Christian era, these bright-colored, delicate forms, which, taken out of their element, changed miraculously in an in- stant into dingy brown stones, were be- lieved to be real water-plants, which the contact with the air turned at once into

1868.] JEWELS OF THE DEEP.CORALB. 25 Perhaps it is, but never, Say I, should we dissever Old places and old names, Guard the old landmarks truly, On the old altars duly Keep bright the ancient flames; For me, the face of Nature, No luckless nomenclature Of grace or beauty robs; No, when of town I weary, Ill make a strike in Erie, And buy a place at DoBns! .44----- JEWELS OF THE DEEP. CORALS. Unheard by them the roaring of the wind, The elastic motion of the waves unfelt; Still, life is theirs, well suited to themselves. GLIDIr~a slowly over the blue waters of the Mediterranean, you often see sud- denly beneath you, at no great distance from the surface, a meadow of surpass- ing beauty. Long green grasses, waving gently to and fro, shine with emerald beauty, speckled with flickering lights; and all over the little prairie are scattered flowers in brilliant colors. The restless- ly heaving water increases the splendor of the scene; and dazzling hues of green, orange, and deep red, shine upward through the transparent waves. But the oar splashes, and, in an instant, all the beauty of coloring has vanished, and the whole region is clad in a dull, dingy gray. You become aware that you are in the midst of a colony of animals, so small that the naked eye can hardly dis- cern them, and yet so powerful, by the strength of their united forces, that they have built whole islands in distant oceans, and raised lofty mountain-ranges in the very heart of Europe. But they are most sensitive little beings, and the slightest touch of a foreign body, a single ray of the sun, or an angry splash of a headlong wave, make them shrink back into their narrow home. They are altogether a strange, mys- terious race, these Maidens of the Sea, as the ancient Greeks used to call them. Their beauty of form and color, their marvellous economy, their gigantic cdi- fices, all had early attracted the attention of the curious, and given rise to fantastic fables and amusing errors. Tlley were well known to the chosen people, for, singing of the grandeur of Tyre, the prophet states that Syria was thy mer- chant by reason of the multitude of the waves of thy making: they occupied in thy fairs with emeralds, purple, coral, and agate; and ancient Job even mentions coral among the most precious things, and yet was not fit to be mentioned in comparison with wisdomthus proving the high value which already in those early days was attached to the red corals. We learn, from other sources among pro- fane writers, that priests wore them as amulets, and physicians prescribed them in many diseases as useful remedies; whilst Pliny enters into a more detailed account of the manner in which they were used for purposes of ornamentation, how weapons were adorned with them, and costly vessels derived additional value from a few deep-red branches of the Flowers of the Sea. For flowers they were held to be from time immemorial, and, for centuries even of our Christian era, these bright-colored, delicate forms, which, taken out of their element, changed miraculously in an in- stant into dingy brown stones, were be- lieved to be real water-plants, which the contact with the air turned at once into PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Jan. stone. Nor is this belief extinct among men: the dwellers on the coast of South- ern Italy still swear to it, and laugh in their beard whea the foreign savant speaks of them as life-endowed animals. It seems now astonishing how men could quarrel so long and so pertinaciously over the apparently simple question, whether corals belonged to the vegeta- ble or the animal kingdom. More for- tunate in this respect than many other organic forms, whose social status is not yet recognized, corals were already, in the beginning of the last century, raised to the dignity of animals. This was not achieved, however, without much trouble and much ludicrous blundering. It was a young physician from Marseilles, called Peyssonel, whom the FrenchAcad- emy had sent to the coasts of Barbary for the purpose of studying salt-water plants, who first discovered their true nature, and observed how they expanded and contracted at will and moved their arms ~rith a purpose. lie communicated his discovery to the great R6aumur; but the illustrious naturalist was still so firmly bound by precedent and scholastic method, that he refused to endorse the bold doctors statement, withholding however; with equal courtesy and dis- cretion, his correspondents name; for what is now praised as a noble progress in science, appeared to him a rash state- ment likely to injure the growing repu- tation of his young friend. It was only after an interval of twenty years, when Trembley had published his beautiful discovery of sweet-water polypi, and Jussien, the master of botany, had given to corals their papers of dismissal from his kingdom, that R~aumnr made the amende honorable, and acknowledged both the correctness and the great value of Peyssonels discovery. But where was the victim of his previous reluctance to appreciate his merit? He had gone, in disgust and despair, to the West Indies, and there he had disappeared from the sight of men, sc that to this day we know neither the time nor the place of his death. Since then we have learnt much, but by no means all yet, about the birth, the life, and the end of corals. In the hot summer-months, when the waters are bringing forth, as in the days of the creation, the moving creature that has life, millions of diminutive, jelly-like spawn are thrown out by the parent- animal. For a while they enjoy their freedom, and seem to luxuriate in the exercise of their powers of locomotion, which they are never hereafter to recover; but soon they become weary, and settle down upon some firm, stationary body. At once they begin to change their form; they become star-like, the mouth being surrounded by tentacles, very much as the centre of a flower is surrounded by its leaves. After some time, each one of these ray-like parts pushes out exten- sions, which in their turn assume the shape of tiny stars, and establish their own existence by means of an independ- ent mouth. In the meanwhile lime has been deposited at the base of the little animal, by its own unceasing activity, and torms a close-fitting foot, which ad- heres firmly to the rock. Upon this slender foundation arises another layer, and thus, by incessant labor, story upon story, until at last a tree has grown up with branches spreading in all direc- tions. But where the plants of the up- per world bear leaves and flowers, there buds forth here, from the hard stone, a living, sensitive animal, moving at will, and clad in the gay form and bright colors of a flower. This flower is the animal itself, seen only in its native element, and unfit for air and light. What we call coral is its house, outside of which it prefers to live rather than within. How they build their dwelling, human eye has never seen. We only know that the tiny animals, by some mysterious power given them by the same great Master on high, who has given us a body after his image, and im- mortal souls, absorb without ceasing the almost imperceptible particles of lime which are contained in all salt-water, and deposit them, one by one, in the in- terior. This is done now more, now less actively; and the denser the deposit is, the more valuable the coraL Gradually this substance hardens and thickens, un 1868.] JEWELS OF THE DEEP. CORALS. 21 til in the precious coral, the This Nobilis of science, a large tree is formed, which often reaches the size of a mans waist. It is perfectly solid and compact, and adorned on the surface with delicate, parallel lines. Thus on the tree-shaped limestone grows the life-endowed body of the polypus; it moves, it feeds,it produces others, and then is turned again into stone, burying itself in its own rocky house, whilst on its grave new gen- erations build unceasingly new abodes. This is the so-called Blood Coral of the common people, the favorite of an- tiquity, and the fashion of our daynext to the pearl, the most precious jewel of the deep. It is not easy to obtain a piece of liv- ing coral, for the purpose of studying its wondrous structure and admiring its exceeding beauty. The great depth at which the mysterious little animals dwell in the ocean secures them against the mere amateur fisherman; and the pro- fessional ccftal-fisher, the son of super- stitious races in Southern Italy, is ex- tremely reluctant to admit outsiders into the secrets of his trade. If you ask him to bring home for you a few value- less pieces, he is afraid of witchcraft, and the vessel you have given him for the purpose is filled with every animal from the deep but corals. If yoa follow him in your own boat, as he sails out for his days work, he is more seriously fright- ened still, and takes to the open seapre- ferring to lose rather a whole days labor and profit than to betray his favorite fishing-ground. He cannot comprehend why you should be willing to pay him well for what has no value in his eyes; and, like the Arab who suspects every travelling Frank of seeking after con- cealed treasures, the poor Neapolitan fancies you possess a charm by which you can change hi~ shells and sponges into precious pearls and corals. Even after you have succeeded in persuading him thaPyon are no sorcerer, and never studied in the school of that great ma- gician, Virgil, he fears you may betray the few, simple mysteries of his trade, or the locality from which he derives his support. It requires much time, much money, and especially mtch patience, to convince him of your innocence, and, even when all these obstacles are removed, he still pertinaciously adheres to his he- reditary superstition, that it is of no use to try catching corals alive, as they are sure to die of fright as soon as they be- hold the light of day. Hence it was by an accident only that I was fortunate enough once to see how corals are fished, and to examine them closely when fresh caught. It was a Sunday, and we were saun- tering up to the tall olive-trees of St. Hospice, near Nice, in order to enjoy there our self-caught meal of lobsters and cuttle-fish, when we suddenly caught sight of an odd-looking craft lying far out in the beautiful bay of Villafranca. The sails hung carelessly about, and the bowsprit stood bold upright, being crowned at the top with a couple of saints carved in wood, while below two huge eyes were painted on the waist of the vessel. It is a coraline, said one of our party, an Abb6, familiar with all the features of the country; poor people, who will stay here many weeks, catch nothing, spend all they have, and finally sell or pawn their boat to enable them to return home.~~ They have come for the great coral- tree, said our boatman, who was carry- ing the hampers. You know the one that grows down in the dark grotto near Mount St. Alban. There is no year that some Neapolitans or Sicilians do not come up here in search of the treasure, but no one has ever yet found it. Can you imagine, asked the Abb6, that these people really believe in an immense tree of coral, which grows a hundred fathoms below the surface of the sea in a grotto, large, like an ancient oak-tree, and stretching out its gigantic branches in all directions, but drawing them in instantly, like a cuttle-fish, when a net comes near? That is the story here, and these poor fishermen believe in it as firmly as in their Holy Virgin, and laugh us to scorn when we attempt to reason with them, and prove to them the impossibility of such a thino~ 28 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Jan. We made up our mind, on the next day, to go on board the odd-looking boat, and to see what could be learnt from the crew. Fortunately, one of our party was a Neapolitan, well known to all the fishermen on the (Jhiaga, and speaking their curious dialect. By a number of masonic signs he made him- self known; and the air of mistrust and repugnance with which he had at first been received, gave way to a less sus- picious manner. The padrone, or master of the vessel, was an oldish man, with a deeply-furrowed face, and a hard ex- pression about the mouth, which did not promise a very mild government on board. They are a strange class of men, these padroni of coral-boats, hundreds of whom come annually from Naples and Sicily, from Genoa and Sardinia, and sail, with the exception of a few adven- turers bound from the coast of France, along the coast of Algiers in search of precious treasures. How on earth they manage to sail, far out of sight of land, without telescope or compass, and there on the broad ocean to find, year after year, the precise place where, far down in the deep, there lie vast masses of rock, which contain in cleft and crevice the desired coral branches, is more than or- dinary seamanship can explain. Three things only they need to aid them in these venturesome journeys, which recall to us forcibly that first great search after the Golden Fleece: money in large sums for the outfit of their coralines, a good stock of falsehoods to screen their real purposes, and an invincible silence to oppose to all direct questions. They have a saying among themselves, that purse, and falsehood, and silence, must all three be as deep as the sea in which they mean to fish. Our padrone owned himself his little vessel, which did not measure over five tons; his son, a clever, restless little scamp, served as ship-boy; and three sailors sufficed to handle the nets and to work the boat. They had come across the Mediterranean from Torre del Greco, near Naples, in search of the fabled giant- tree, which his favorite saint had shown the padrone in a dream. There was no log and no compass on board, and all their provisions consisted of the never- failing galetta, a white ship-biscuit, and some water; for there is no cooking on board these coralines. The padrone was proud of having a few onions and some dried fish in a locker, the key to which never left the lucky owners pocket. We found that the fishing was done with a large net, fastened by a stout rope to the stern of the vessel. At the end of this rope hung first an iron cross, con- sisting of two hollow tubes laid cross- wise, through which strong ash poles had been thrust, and to this were fast- ened a number of old sardine-nets, no longer fit for their first purpose, and countless ends and bits of wide-meshed pieces of rope, as thick as a fingerthe whole apparatus a mass of rags and rotten net-work. But the more such wretched-looking pieces of net-work the padrone can fasten to his iron cross, the better are his chances. When the sea is perfectly quiet, he lets them sink down to a depth of sixty or even a hundred fathoms, where they slowly spread and unfold themselves over a vast extent. Then he hoists his lateen-sail and slowly drifts before the wind, or, in a calm, sets his men to work at the huge oars of the vessel. If not so engaged, they stand watching at the sheets, the oars, and the tiny capstan, to obey instantly his orders. His one great purpose is to wrap as large a number of his fluttering pieces of net-work as he can around the branches of coral below, to tear them by main force from the parent-stems, and to wind them up, together with the frag- ments of rock to which they are at- tached. The padrone seeks by the aid of his mysterious science a favorable spot where corals grow, and his delicate and experienced touch feels instantly, by the gentle stretching of the rope, when the net has caught hold of coral branches. The little vessel, no longer obedient to sail or rudder, is held in check by the stout rope, and hence jumps forward and backward as the net seizes and lets go again far down at the bottom of the sea. The work is hard, and the per- 1868.] JEWELS OF THE DEEP.CORAL5. 29 spiration is running down the neck of the poor sailors. At times the nets are caught between rocks, and the boat must tack aad veer in all directions to try to loosen them; at other times the padrone makes desperate efforts to creep in between overhanging rocks, into a narrow cleft, for there, in eternal shade and almost inaccessible recesses, they believe they find the largest and most valuable coral branches. Thus they try and drift along, they work and toil and draw up perhaps twenty times a day, and each time it is a mere lottery. And this is the very charm which this kind of fishing has for the poor children of the South; they hope and hope on, and, sick or well, old or young, not one of them would, when the season comes, willingly give up his chance of finding some precious tree that is to make him rich for life. At last the padrone thinks he has a net fulL The sailors, whistling a tune through tb~ir teeth, man the capstan and work with their hearts beatinga jerk, and the net is loosened and comes up slowly, slowly. All eyes are eagerly bent upon the place where it will appear on the surface; at last it shines with a white gleam, far down still. If the pieces of net-work appear wide spread, the evil omen is greeted with muttered curses: Dio graria! Miatedetto! If they hang straight down, heavy-la- den, the deepest anxiety is seen ia all features, and the excitement be- comes intense. Now it shines reddish! Santissimct! exclaims the master, and the men work with renewed energy. At last it is alongside. It is heaved on board with great care, and now comes the task of picking out the precious treasure from the meshes of the net-work, and to loosen them from the fragments of stone on which they were growing. With these stones a thousand odd and outlandish citizens of the deep are curi- ously intermingled. Here hang worth- less horn-corals, and among them the Black Hand of the sailors, which they love dearly in spite of its uselessness, be- cause it is an unfailing sign of the pres- snee of genuine coral. There come up sepia-fishes with starino~ eyes, long wav- ing arms, deformed bodies, biting beaks, and mighty suckers, abounding in weird and ghost-like shapes. Between these frightful forms wave seaweeds with broad, green, and purple fronds; while little tufted bunches of red and white and violet and yellow lie marvellously close to feathers, crusted all over by the salt sea-wave. Elflsl~ faces, with huge staring eyes, peep at you from every side, and seem to threaten you with wild, unearth- ly horrors if you dare touch them. A fulness of strange things, unseen and un- suspected by the dweller on firm land, comesthus forth from the hand of Nature, in her great workshop of the unfathom- able, fertile sea. But they are all pitched overboard; only, the men are sure first to open the shell-fish and to swallow the contents with truly marvellous dexterity, before the shells are allowed to return to their dark homes below. The branches of coral are carefully picked out down to the smallest fragment, and great is the joy of the lucky finder, if he discover a piece naturally bent in the shape of a little horn, for it is an amulet, a sure protection against the dire effects of the Evil Eye. The whole is thrown into a large chest, the key to which the pa- drone wears hanging around his neck along with a tiny bag of holy relics; and if there should be a peculiarly thick branch among them, he places that in some mysterious, hidden corner, for it is very valuable, as the price of coral in- creases almost in geometrical proportion with its size. When all that has been fished up is saved, the boat returns to the harbor and delivers the result of the days labor to an agent, who carefully and judiciously assorts the pieces according to size and color, and sends them at once to Naples, Leghorn, or Genoa, where they are quickly worked up into every kind of ornament. But woe to the poor sailors, if the net should come up empty, or, worse still, if it should catch at some projecting point of rock, and refuse to come up alto- gether! It is they alone who are blam- ed; it is they who have, by their idle- 80 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Jan. ness or their wickedness7 forfeited the favor of saint and Madonna, and who must now labor and toil until exhausted nature refuses to sustaia them any longer. The only way to examine the living animal is to seize the little fragment of rock or the shell to which the mysteri- ons creature is fastened, at the very moment that it appears near the surface, and to dip it, if possible, without expos- ing it to the air, immediately into a ves- sel with salt-water, which you hold ready for the purpose. At first there is nothing to be seen but a vague, indis- tinct mass of grayish substance. You suspend the animal and its tiny abode by a string in the middle of the glass globe, and carry it to a dark place; for the coral will not display its beautiful form and colors in the gleaming light of the day. It takes hours often before the obstinate little creature condescends to give a sign of life. At last you fancy that the club-shaped extremity of the dingy red substance begins to wrinkle up into little rings here and there. You take up your magnifying glass, and you see, with joy and satisfaction, that the eight star-shaped indentations, which mark the diminutive wart-like rising, assume a white tinge, contrasting pleas- antly with the red at their base, which grows every moment to a more lively hue. The lines widen and show an opening between two bright-colored lips; a vague, undefined substance rises slowly, like a transparent globule, but soon it grows and swells, and at last it stretches out eight bright, leaf-like arms, edged all around with delicate fringes. Now the whole resembles strikingly a beautiful flower of eight leaves, not un- like a gentian or a campanula, and you acknowledge at once how pardonable was the error of those who, for genera- tions, insisted upon believing the strange animals to be nothing more than sub- marine flowers, endowed with the power of motion. The colors are brilliant beyond all that the art of man can produce. In the true coral a resplendent, almost dazzling red surrounds the base of the bell-shaped body of the animal, whilst the latter it- self, and the arms, appear as if carved out of transparent crystaL And as soon as one of the diminutive creatures, bolder than the restor more hungryhas set the example, the others follow in rapid succession, and soon the whole little branch is covered with living flowers, crowding each other so closely that it seems as if they would prevent one an- other from unfolding. Flower~, how- ever, are still and motionless; here all is full of life and activity. They move in slow, measured ways, it is true, but with what variety! Now the beautiful carolla looks like a half-opened bell, with its delicate white leaflets rising out of a deep-red crown; now again it re- sembles an urn with faintly-drawn out- lines of classic purity, and then it changes into the shape of a wheel with eight spokes. As you are still gazing and marvelling at all this exuberance of colors and beau- tiful forms, which the bounty of the Creator has bestowed upon the dweller in the deep, far below the warm light of the sun and the admiring eye of man, you touch the vessel that holds these wonders, and in an instant the scene is changed. Quicker than the eye can fol- low, the fringes that adorn the arms dis- appear, the arms fold themselves up and draw in towards the centre, where the mouth was but just now standing open, ready to receive its invisible food, the beautiful bell is shut up, and the bright red lips close once more, so that there is nothing left again but the in- significant little branch of dingy color. They are evidently most sensitive little creatures, these strange little animals; like true children of the dark deep, they can bear neither heat nor light, nor the slightest touch of a foreign body, and although they close in an instant, they dare not unfold their beauty again for hours. In spite of this delicate sensitiveness, nothing looks apparently more simple than the structure of these polypi. Each one is firmly seated in the red, leathery substance, in which his tiny cell is hol- lowed out. By means of his moveable arms and their cilia, he creates a little 1808.] JEWELS OF TH~ DEEP.CORALS. 31 whirlpool before his mouth, and seizes the infusoria that serve him as food, together with the particles of lime which he needs for his house. What- ever thus eaters passes down into the common receptacle, where it is digest- ed; for the coral polypus is not only a sociable animal, fond of living in large numbers together, but he is a perfect socialist and communist. It is only by the common labor of thousands and tens of thousands of these diminutive beings, that the coral branch can be formed, which is to become in the hands of man a jewel of priceless value. This result, moreover, can only be obtained by the readiness with which each in- dividual surrenders the frut of his labor for the benefit of the whole community. Each polypus, ever busy with its eight agile arms, works night and day, catch- ing as many tiny things as he can seize in the water. He takes the first taste, as of right, throws out all that is unfit for his purposes, and then sends the sur- plus down in~to the common stock, from whence it is afterwards distributed equal- ly, through countless channels, into every part of the living tree. The common substance, which serves as highroad for what comes and what goes, and in which dwells; so to say, the life of the com- munity, is the thick, red bark which covers the cells of the polypinot a skin to cover and warm the little animals, but the very mother and nurse of the whole stock, the bond that holds them all together, and the place where the inner, solid kernel is made, which sup- ports the whole tree. Through a thou- sand little openings and wide-meshed net-works passes the nutritious juice of milky whiteness, which oozes out if the covering be cut, and which the fishermen hence call coral-milk. It is propelled onward and upward by microscopic cilia, similar to those in the inner vessels of the human body. Thus here also the astounding wisdom of God is beautifully displayed, and the almost unknown body of the stone-animal is as fearfully and wonderfully made as that of man him- eeif. Far away from the Mediterranean, in the vast waters of the Pacific Ocean, and amid the South Sea Islands, a kindred race of the true coral, the Madrepores, have been at work for countless genera- tions. They are the humbler brethren, unadorned with beauty and unable to furnish man with costly jewels. But as every where in Nature the humbler is the more useful, and the smaller the more powerful, so here also. These corals have raised, by indefatigable labor, colossal structures, by the side of which the walls of ancient Babylon, the Chinese wall, and the Pyramids of Egypt, dwin- dle into dwarfish proportions. Amid the most violent storms, and in the most agitated seas, where wind and wave. would easily destroy the grandest works devised by the skill of man, they erect their marvellous edificesarchitects so feeble and insignificant, that, when they are drawn out of their elements, they vanish, and can hardly be perceived. Their works are works of beauty. Like enchanted islands, these circular coral- reefs bask in the brightest li~ht of the tropics. A bright green ring encloses a quiet inland lake; the ground is white, and, the water being shallow, it shines brilliantly in the gorgeous floods of light that fall upon it, whilst, outside, the dark black billows of the angry sea ap- proach in long lines of breakers, tossing their foaming white crests incessantly against the impregnable ramparts. Above there is a clear blue heaven, and, all around, the dark ocean and the hazy air blend harmoniously into each other. The contrast is beautiful beyond all similar scenes: within all is peace, and soft, mirror-like beauty; without, all is strife and eternal warfare. But the battle is here emphatically not to the strong. The small and lowly polypi, by whose united labor and strength these colossal walls have been raised to say to the ocean, so far and no farther thou shalt go! defy the mighty waves. Year after year, generation after generation, the tempest beats upon their fragile homes, and the mountain-like waves of the ocean come thundering on, like armies of giants, to rush upon the slender reef. But ever and ever the attack is repulsed, and the 82 PUTNAMS ~fA~AZINE. [Jan minute animals work quietly, silently, with modest industry and untiring ener- gy, at their heaven-appointed task; and the living force, though so small, tri- umphs victoriously over the blind, me- chanical force of the furious waves. Their great works either stretch out far into the ocean like huge barriers, in continuation of the natural coast, or they form gigantic rings of rock, upon which soon plants spring up, soil is formed, and at last a habitation is prepared for man himself. The little polypi find them- selves there in strange company. First, there are the only enemies which they are as yet known to have. Oufside the reef as well as inside of the lagoon, but always within reach of the coral-rocks, large shoals of small fishes are found, which actually feed upon the pulpy, leathery substance of the polypi, and secrete the indigestible material it con- tains, thus producing a kind of cal- careous pulp which soon changes into fertile soil and serves as an excellent ground for palm-trees and other plants. But as the eater is always eaten in all nature, so here also the avenger is at hand. Hungry dogs are waiting pa- tiently on the reefs and shallows, and as soon as the voracious fish rises to the surface, where alone he finds the tender polypus, they pounce upon their prey and swallow it eagerly. On shore, where the graceful palm-trees flourish, a feast is provided for another class of hungry claimants. With a heavy thump a cocoa- nut falls upon the hard ground, shaken down, before it is perfectly hardened, by a sudden gust; at once land-crabs are seen hurrying up at the sound of the simple dinner-bell, and one of them seizes it, bores with its long, sharp claws into one of the eyes, where the shell is soft- est, and sucks with delight the sweet, milky juice. In light, fragile boats, daring Malays come from far and near, and dive into the thick grove of coral-trees, where they are sure at all seasons to find a valuable vari- ety of turtle, which often reaches the enormous weight of a hundred and twenty pounds. As soon as they per- ceive one of these monsters, they chase it and try to drive it into shallow water, or at least, by constant skilful hunting to~ and fro, to exhaust it, so that they can approach quite near. As soon as this has been accomplished, an active, agile man jumps upon the back of the turtle, takes hold of the slender neck, and, riding boldly on his strange mount, profits by the first firm footing he can obtain to use it as a lever and to turn the animal on its back, when it falls an easy prey to its captors. Thus plants and animals,~ and man himselg all owe their food and their life to the tiny coraL But, small as it is, its power of production is so enormous that these diminutive polypi could long since have filled up the basins of the great ocean, and covered the continents of the earth, if their existence was not limited, by an all-wise Providence, within certain local boundaries and fixed conditions of temperature. For, with the exception of a few rare varieties, corals cannot live where they are not permanently covered with water, or at least continually bathed by breakers. Nor can they exist below a depth of about two hundred feet, partly because the enormous pressure of the weight of the water above them would be fatal to all kind of life, and partly because they require a higher temperature than that which prevails at so great a depth. The bright colors in which most of these polypi are clad prove, moreover, that light, the gay painter of nature, is indispensable to their existence, and this element they can only enjoy in the regions nearer the surface. But, above all, being citizens of the animal kingdom, they need, like all animals, oxygen to support their life, and this food is not attainable where the air cannot impart it to the water directly by contact with the surface, or send it, by the agitation of the waves, down to a certain limited depth. Thus we meet here also with those great im- mutable laws, by which the Creator of all things has assigned to each one of His creatures its abode upon earth, and bestowed upon it powers of grateful en- joyment. Great and wonderful are His works, teaching us every where, on land 1868.] Too Tnuu. 33 and at sea, on the mountain-top and far down in the depth of the ocean, not merely to glance at the surface, but to look down into the deep, where the costliest jewels are hid in the dark abyss; nor merely to glance at the clouds and the sky, but to lift up our eyes to the heavens, where there are wonders yet awaiting us, that eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man. TOO TRUEAN AMERICAN STORY OP TO-DAY. CHAPTER I. THE JEWELS. AT half-past four of a warm June afternoon, Mr. Cameron came down from his law-office in the Ti s Building, and, walking to Broadway, took his seat in the stage for the Hudson River Railroad station, as he was in the habit of doing six days in the week and eleven months of the year. To the gentleman opposite and to the one at his side he bowed, both being his neighbors; that is, their country-seats were in the vicinity of his own. An iiiterchange of calls, and an occasional pleasant remark as they jour- neyed to and from the city, was as far as the acquaintance had, as yet, pro- gressed. Both neighbors were new men, 1. e., they had just made their fortunes. Their superb villas had gone up the pre- vious summer, while Mr. Camerons more modest house had stood its ground against the tide of fashion for twelve years. Mr. Bulbous, the gentleman op- posite, was finely dressed, with a slight pomposity of air, and large white hands which looked able to grasp and hold a great deal of his own and other peoples property. Upon these capacious palms he was just drawing a pair of green kid gloves, which might remind even an un- imaginative person of greenbacks. Bul- bous had taken the stage at Wall-street which magic street had been the scene of his operations since the first rise in gold, three years before. He had won and lost, won and lostbut ever winning more than losinga very lucky gambler, who could now pave his porte-cochire with silver pebbles, and his vestibule with gold tiles, if he so decreed. In three years he had grown to be a solid man: why should we ask if his con- voL. r..-3 science had also grown heavy? Certain it is, his accomplishments were of the practical rather than of the ornate order~ and though his villa boasted of classic and renaissance tastes, his own character may be described as decbfledly iDoric heavy, broad, coarse. Within his elegant rooms he knew no more of Homer and the Gods, of Jupiters satellites and the tidal waves of Light, of Ruskin and Tennyson, than in those sober days when gold was at par and he quite below it. In these respects he was not so rich as the quiet lawyer who was his vis-a-vis. The fat little man at Mr. Camerons right hand, and whose estate joined his own on the banks of the Hudson, had made his money through a rocket-like rise in pork, when he was so fortunate as to be able to fill large orders from the Government. There is something awful in immense wealth as there is in all rare and vast things! The lawyer smiled as the fat little fellow mopped his shining face with his handkerchief but a touch of respect subdued his amusement. H knew that Mrs. Grizzle had purchased a diamond necklace the preceding week, for which she had given more than the amount of his entire yearly income: and ought not the remembrance to serve as a check to his sense of the ridiculous? Warm day, observed Mr. Grizzle, making another dab at his forehead, must ho gitting off to Newport. Cant stand it here,the lard fairly fries out of me. Mrs. Grizzle wants to git off right away. Going, Mr. Bulbous? Not at present, sir.~~ I told wife twas rather early. Sh~ said she sposed it was for them that were tied to business, but people with nothin to do but spend their money

1868.] Too Tnuu. 33 and at sea, on the mountain-top and far down in the depth of the ocean, not merely to glance at the surface, but to look down into the deep, where the costliest jewels are hid in the dark abyss; nor merely to glance at the clouds and the sky, but to lift up our eyes to the heavens, where there are wonders yet awaiting us, that eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man. TOO TRUEAN AMERICAN STORY OP TO-DAY. CHAPTER I. THE JEWELS. AT half-past four of a warm June afternoon, Mr. Cameron came down from his law-office in the Ti s Building, and, walking to Broadway, took his seat in the stage for the Hudson River Railroad station, as he was in the habit of doing six days in the week and eleven months of the year. To the gentleman opposite and to the one at his side he bowed, both being his neighbors; that is, their country-seats were in the vicinity of his own. An iiiterchange of calls, and an occasional pleasant remark as they jour- neyed to and from the city, was as far as the acquaintance had, as yet, pro- gressed. Both neighbors were new men, 1. e., they had just made their fortunes. Their superb villas had gone up the pre- vious summer, while Mr. Camerons more modest house had stood its ground against the tide of fashion for twelve years. Mr. Bulbous, the gentleman op- posite, was finely dressed, with a slight pomposity of air, and large white hands which looked able to grasp and hold a great deal of his own and other peoples property. Upon these capacious palms he was just drawing a pair of green kid gloves, which might remind even an un- imaginative person of greenbacks. Bul- bous had taken the stage at Wall-street which magic street had been the scene of his operations since the first rise in gold, three years before. He had won and lost, won and lostbut ever winning more than losinga very lucky gambler, who could now pave his porte-cochire with silver pebbles, and his vestibule with gold tiles, if he so decreed. In three years he had grown to be a solid man: why should we ask if his con- voL. r..-3 science had also grown heavy? Certain it is, his accomplishments were of the practical rather than of the ornate order~ and though his villa boasted of classic and renaissance tastes, his own character may be described as decbfledly iDoric heavy, broad, coarse. Within his elegant rooms he knew no more of Homer and the Gods, of Jupiters satellites and the tidal waves of Light, of Ruskin and Tennyson, than in those sober days when gold was at par and he quite below it. In these respects he was not so rich as the quiet lawyer who was his vis-a-vis. The fat little man at Mr. Camerons right hand, and whose estate joined his own on the banks of the Hudson, had made his money through a rocket-like rise in pork, when he was so fortunate as to be able to fill large orders from the Government. There is something awful in immense wealth as there is in all rare and vast things! The lawyer smiled as the fat little fellow mopped his shining face with his handkerchief but a touch of respect subdued his amusement. H knew that Mrs. Grizzle had purchased a diamond necklace the preceding week, for which she had given more than the amount of his entire yearly income: and ought not the remembrance to serve as a check to his sense of the ridiculous? Warm day, observed Mr. Grizzle, making another dab at his forehead, must ho gitting off to Newport. Cant stand it here,the lard fairly fries out of me. Mrs. Grizzle wants to git off right away. Going, Mr. Bulbous? Not at present, sir.~~ I told wife twas rather early. Sh~ said she sposed it was for them that were tied to business, but people with nothin to do but spend their money 34 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Jan. couldnt begin too soonha! ha! You see, she bought some diamonds lately, and shes in a hurry to get where she can show em. Women-folks are queer humans, dont you think so l Really, I beg your pardon, sir, said the broker, stiffly. Not at all, not at all, cheerily. Be as non-committal as a barrel of unin- spected mess, when the fair sect are to be invoiced. Every man has his own opinion on that delicate subject. Some considers em primesome dont. Theyre an obstinate lot to drive, take em on foot ;all theyre good for is for tender- linesha! ha! Grizzle had carried on his conversation in a loud voice, leaning a little forward; he was as talkative as he was good-na- tured; very fond of his littlejokes,so little, sometimes, as to be invisible to any one but himself. A lurch of the stage now threw him o ft~ his seat over against Mr. Bulbous, ~~ho drew himself up with icy blandness. Really, now, gasped little Grizzle, struggling back to his place, these cusses are as bad as a fall in the market to unsettle ones balance-sheet. Didnt intend to come at you, Bulbous, with a knock-down argument.Ha, beg your pardon, sir! this to Mr. Cameron, from whose hand he had thrust a small packet by his unexpected sortie; and, with the quickness characteristic of all his movements, he picked up the par- cel before its bearer had time to re- cover it. Before handing it back, however, he glanced at the superscription and ex- prcss seals (in that little act cropped out the hopeless Yankecism of the pork-merchants character), and a look of surprise smoothed out the dimples in his cheeks. Seems to be valuable ~ said lie, with a little cough. He had discovered that the packet came from over the seasthat it was marked jewelry, $20,000 value, insured, etc.; all his curiosity twinkled in his eye, and from thenceforth to the end of the ride he fidgetted into various at- tempts to draw the lawyer into conver sation, whereby he might learn some- thing of this surprising affair. But Mr. Cameron was lost in his own reflections, He kept careful hold of his treasure, and was wise enough to turn the address out of sight, ke4ing much cooler about it than his inquisitive neighbor, who grew quite subdued in his consciousness of Mrs. Grizzles neck- lace, when here was this gentlemanly, but plain, professional man, receiving jew- elry from Scotland to the tune of twen- ty thousand dollars. Before the stage reached its terminus, Grizzle had arrived at the conclusion that this was property held in trust for some client, who had fallen heir to an estate in Great Britain, which was partly true; but the client was the lawyers own daughter. Ones thoughts can compass a great deal in brief time, and Mr. Camerons, during the ride, bad not been idle. He felt a little, just a little, regret that he, too, had not added to his legitimate business some side speculation which should have made him the monetary equal of these two neighbors. Yet, wherefore? He despised, in a calm, un- conscious way, both of them; one for his cold blood and pomp of egotism, in which there was nothing of the finer shades and colors of the gentleman; the other for his unmitigated vulgarity. He was the superior of both, and knew that, secretly, they deferred to him. Where- fore should he, then, feel a pang of envy? It was not often that Mr. Cameron cherished discontent. Usually his self- love took the shape of approval of his own wisdom, which had chosen the full enjoyment of life as it progressed; due work, due leisure, due reward; time for love, means to gratify simple but ele- gant tastes, rich interludes of soul-life passed in the company of books, of na- ture, and of his wife, whose spiritual in- tuitions, like his own, were kept vivid by culture. Doctors may disagree in regard to the nature of cholera, filling the ear with the din of their discordant opinions upon infection, contagion, sporadicity, & c.; one malady there is, which even doctors must agree is both infectious and con- 1868.] Too Tuuz. 85 tagious, and that is the Manimon-fever. When exposed to its influence, but few can resist it. How general and direful has been the epidemic, during the last five years, all of us only too well realize; and Mr. Cameron, constantly mingling with those who were passing through all its stages, had at last grown slightly feverish. He was thinking how, had he A taken certain oil-stocks, as a friend had advised him two years before, he might now be showing these glaring million- aires to what beautiful and noble uses money could be converted. His wife was a lady, and it did choke him a little when Mrs. Grizzles glittering carriage dashed past their pony rockaway, throw- ing the dust in her eyes. Do not imagine, dear, romantic maiden reader, that this middle-aged attorney is our hero; he is only the father of our heroines. Though lie may not be at all interesting to you, there are those of his own age who still read and enjoy ro- inance, an~ who not only read and enjoy, but are youthfully ardent in their sym- pathies, while they have the advantage of understanding human nature and hu- man emotion far better than they once (lid, and of seeing straight through such limpid transparencies as young ladies souls. You may take it for granted that the love-letters he once wrote were very much like those you are now receiving; and that he is as much astonished to discover a gray hair, simultaneously with the fact that his eldest daughter is of age to begin acting her part in the ever- lasting drama, as you will be at the same things just a little while in the future. Alas! Time neither slumbers nor sleeps; yet, if he takes away, he also gives, and Mr. and Mrs. Cameron are much better material for the true artist than their lovely young daughters, to whom you are shortly to be introduced. To k-nozo life, we must live it. It is a mystery why, when we have just ac- quired some of the wealth of experience, all the beardless youths and cherry- cneeked misses should ignore us with a delicious self-conceit. We may tell them that we are their superiors; that, if they will be patient and listen, we can teach them something; but they laugh at us, as at any other make-believe. Youth is wise in its own conceit; it never yet was troubled with doubts of its own sagacity; the bubble of life is ever round- ing, soaring, bursting, according to the law of bubblesthe last rainbow-globe as beautiful as the first, and as brief in its beauty. This is as it should be; whatever is, is right. It would be a most doleful thing for babies to enter the world with gray heads, reproving their mothers for having brought them into such wicked society, refusing to pull flowers because to-morrow they will fade, or to eat boa- bons because they will turn to acid in little stomachs. If young people had the prudence and wisdom of their elders, the world would come to an end before an hundred years from sheer inanition there would be nothing new under the sun; no wiseacres to moralize, and no impatient, eager readers to skip the moralizing. Mr. Camerons income seldom exceeded six thousand dollars a year. In the good old days before the war, it answered his purposes tolerably. There had been an instance in his practice when he was counsel in a big case of a contested will, and had received a fee of ten thou- sand dollars; but that event was unique in his experience. With that money he had built a charming house on a five-acre bit of beautiful earth, bound, on one side, by the silver binding of the Hudson, and thereafter had dwelt there in comfort, not eager to be rich, but enjoying the best and finest that could be had for his earnings. It was only the propiuquity of Bulbous and Grizzle which had given him the Mammon-fever that June after- noon. Propinquity is to blame for much that happens. When he stepped off the cars at a station not far beyond Wash- ington Heights, and lifted his hat in farewell to those gentlemen, he began to feel a reaction. The river lay in the warm light like molten gold poured upon lapis lazuli; a murmurous wind ran through the trem- ulous birches and whispered to the 36 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Jan. shadowy maples that watched above the lawn; the roses on the porch clung to the trellis in clusters of amorous sweet- ness; a high hedge shut out the nearness of Grizzles new paint and evergreens; little round groups of verbenas laughed at him from the cool grass as lie walked up the path; nothing was there in earth or sky or water to remind him of the superior quality of the Grizzle happi- ness. It always was pleasant for Mr. Came- ron to find himself approaching home; that day it was doubly so, for the city bad been hot and tiresome, and he held in his hand a magnificent present for Milla, the younger of his two daughters. Yet, at thought of the present, he sighed one of those faint sighs which tell of a constant care or sorrow Poor Milla! said he, I would throw this casket in the river if I could give you back what your aunt took from you. It wa~ a pleasant scene upon which he looked, as he stood for a moment, unper- ceived, in the open casement of the win- dow. Through the vista of the long parlor, cool, yet full of light and per- fume, he saw the library, and beyond that, through a bay-window, the green trees of the garden. By the library- table sat his only boy, the youngest of his three children, a fine-looking lad of fourteen. He had pushed his books from him, and, with head bent down on the table, was listening to the gay conversa- tion transpiring in the parlor. There were a young lady and gentle- man, and a child curled up in an arm- chair. The young lady, Mr. Camerons eldest daughter, Elizabeth, was standing ip for her lover to bind about her head a fillet of myrtle and white flowers which he had been weaving. A light was radiating in her face like that of sunlight behind a rose; he had not bound the fillet without telling her how well it became her; and who, that has been young and beloved, does not know how sweet it is to be praised, under such circumstances? She was not vain of her beauty, but she delighted in it when it gave him pleasure. The gentleman might have been any where between twenty-eight and thirty- eight, though he looked not a day over the first-named age. He had the yellow moustache and dark-blue eyes of a Ger- man; his form was elegant, his dress fastidious; beyond that, he was not handsome. He stood, however, in no need of handsome features. Pretty men always shrank into insignificance in the company of Louis iDassel. A quiet power dwelt in his eye, a knowledge of the world in his air and conversation, more attractive to women than pretti- ness; while just that touch of foppish- ness was in his dress which proved hi~ not averse to being admired. You are right, Louis; white is the most becoming wear for Lissa, said the little girl in the arm-chair. You have as much taste as a woman, Mr. Dassel. Where did you learn to make wreaths?~~ Oh, Louis knows every thing! Ive often told you so, Milla. Elizabeth said this in such good faith as must have been flattering to the ob- ject of it; he laughed a little, making answer Theres one thing I do not know, Milla; and that is, how much Bettine loves mefor she never will confess. Well, I am wiser than you there, Mr. Dassel; for Im quite certain she loves youdesperately! Oh, Milla! cried her sister. Thank you, Milla, for making her blush so prettily. Look at her now! Well worth looking at was Elizabeth at that moment. Her white dress, soft, and falling in profuse folds, her dark hair with its green fillet, her eyes shin- ing with the light, her cheek rosy with the bloom of happiness. Delicious idle- ness of summer-hours! Mr. Cameron remembered when Lissas mother had looked just so, and hehov- ered silently in the window, loth to in- terrupt the little scene, and recalling, with a thrill, the days of his own court- ship. The couple before him were to be married in September, and he was will- ing they should gather every rose of this sweetest summer-time as it bloomed. 1868.3 Too TRUE. 37 The fathers eye wandered from the group to the face of the boy in the li- brary. There was a scowl upon it, as he, too, watched the betrothed pair; yet his face was a pleasant one, to which scowls did not seem habitual. It is strange what an unreasonable dislike Robbie has taken to Mr. Dassel, thought Mr. Cameron. I suppose Louis has been impatient with him over his Greek, at some time, and the boy has conceived a fancy that he i~ ill-tem- pered. meyer saw any indication of it. Children are apt to think their teachers severe. All the fault I have to find with Dassel is, that he is a foreigner. I could have wished my daughter to marry a native-born American. Still, what differ- ence does the mere birth make? He is one of us, in heart. It was his love of liberty, his hate of tyrants, which drove him to this country. He might have been rich and honored, had he been will- ing to live under the yoke of despotism. His birth,his education and accomplish- ments, justify our pride in him. As to making a living for himself and Eliza- beth, doubtless he will do as well as I and my Lissa have done. And now, b3fore her father steps in, let us glance at Milla Cameron. As she leaned back in the great chair of green satin brocatelle, she looked like a lily floating between its emerald leaves. You would not know whether to call her a child or woman. Her size was that of a girl of twelve; her face was infantile in its exquisite, waxen fairness; yet, its expression was that of womanhood. She was, really, sixteenonly three years younger than Elizabeth; but very slight and small, with a sort of preternatural beauty, childish, and still spiritual. Tier pale, golden hair glistened around her face and shoulders in an ethereal vail. There was nothing fretful and pinched in her features, as is so often seen in those of invalids; she was dainty, deli- cate, and pale, but joyous and lovable. Suddenly she clapped her hands to- gether with a gay laugh: Theres papa in the window, getting ready to lecture you I How was it we did not hear the whistle? said Mr. Dassel, turning, quite self-possessed, to greet Mr. Came- ron, while Lissas cheek was as red as a carnation when her father came to kiss it. Too thoroughly preoccupied, I dare say, answered Mr. Cameron; and then he passed on to his younger daughter, whose face was all smiles at his approach, but who had not left her chair to greet him. Heres your aunt Mildrcds leg- acy; it came by the steamer yesterday. Go, Robbie, and call your mother; we must examine the packet together. You will be quite an heiress, Milla. Dear aunt Mildred! how sorry I am she is dead, she said, holding the packet between her small hands, looking up wistfully. 11cr father walked into the library and back again. Mildred had been his favorite sister in the days of their child- hood; she had been three months dead and buried, over the water, and the grief was a fresh one. Mrs. Cameron came in with Robbie; she had a flower in her hand, which she placed in her husbands button-hole as she kissed him,their romance was still in progression. Here are Millasjewels. Shall I break the seals? The little party looked on with in- terest, while he removed the wrappers from the casket, turned the tiny key, and exposed the treasures within. Millas little white fingers drew out one beauti- ful article after another, holding it up to the light: first, a superb set of dia- monds, necklace and nil; then another of diamonds and emeralds. The stones had been reset in the latest style. They glittered in her lap as if the lily had been delu0ed with dew. Mr. Dassel, at Mr. Camerons request, gave them a critical examination. He knew all about jewelswas as expert in pronouncing upon them as if brought up to be a dia- mond merchant. This central stone in the necklace, and this in the brooch, are both particu- larly fine. Some of these emeralds are very valuable. The whole collection would be worth, in Paris, thirty thou- sand dollars; here at the present rate of 88 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Jan. axehange, they are, of course, worth much more. Did you say they had belonged to a sister of yours, Mr. Cameron? Yes; or, rather, she bought them for Mum. Intending to leave a certain sum to her namesake, she put it in this shape, as secure and compact. She purchased the stones, and had them set a year ago, when told by her physician that she could not live mauy months. She wrote to me, before her death, her wishes in the matter. Dear auntie, said Mills, again. Her eyes were full of tears, and she added, very soft and low, I shall give them to you, Elizabeth. What do I want of them l What do you want of them l To keep and to wear, darling, of course. I shall never wear them, Lissa.. I wish you to have them. Come I they shall he my bridal presenta magnifi- cent one, you will allow. Not so fast, little girl. Your aunt Mildred attended to all that. She meant you, and no one else, to have them. They constitute your fortune. If you should ever want for means, you have but to dispose of them, when the time of necessity comes, and you are comfort- able for life. It is named in the will that you are never to give them away; and you are not to make any use of them, except to wear them, until you are of age. You see, your aunt knew what a generous heart my little girl has, and she did not desire you to impoverish yourself. Thus said Mr. Cameron. This is your fortune, Milla. 0, papa, you can always take c~ re of me, I guess. They would do Eliza- beth and Louis so much more good. Try them on, Milla. No, Lissa, you try them on, and then I can see their effect. I could not see them on myself. Louis, put them on your lady. Dassel took the set of emeralds and diamonds, clasping the necklace about the throat, and bracelets about the wrists, of his betrothed, and with one star for the hair he fastened the fillet of myrtle. These should have been for you, Bettine, he whispered. Softly as the words were spoken, Mills heard them. A single sparkle of fire shot from her eyes, and then she grew very pale. She believed no one noticed her emotion, and strove to conquer it. Presently the bell rang for dinner, and the gems were returned to the casket. Leave Milla with me; we will bring up the rear, said Robbie. Shant I carry you, Mills? You look tired l asked her father, tenderly. No,no, papa, with such decision, that the others left her to follow with her brother when she pleased. Little darling, murmured her brother, kissing her, as soon as the others were out of sight. Elizabeth is a fine girl, but she is not half as beau- tiful as you. Nobody in the world could look prettier in these things than you, 515. Dont tell me so, Robbie. Iy heart aches horribly this afternoon. I know all about these jewels. Aunt Mildred never expected me to wear them. She thought~ it a convenient shape into which to put the money. She knew that I will never marry, Robbie, and this money is to support me. No husband will ever take care of me, Robbie! Im not a little child, any lon~er; and I dont wish you to act as if I were. But dont tell mother; it will give her so much pain. Every one believes me a babyand, in- deed, I have beenuntil very lately. Now, Mills, how strangely you talk. No one thinks you a baby. At least, I dont. As to whether you ever will marry, that is a question. Youre good enough and pretty enough for the best man that ever lived. If I were not your brother, and younger than you, I should marry youthat I know! People can be happy without being married; and Im resolved that, if you are never wed- ded, I shall never be. We will live together, always. You can wear your pretty jewels to please me; you will not be obliged to sell them, because I shall make money enough for both. Dont cry, Mills, dont! Mother will not enjoy the dinner unless you are there. She wrung her hands together, chok 1868.] Too TRITE. 89 ing down her sobs. There were those who loved Milla as their own lives, knowing the trials before her; but in this, the first hour of her suffering, as a woman, they dreamed not of the cliange. Only the quick-sighted boy, who had heard Louiss words and seen their effect, iingered behind to express a sympathy for an emotion whieh he could but dimly comprehend. Come, Milla, for mammas sake. He half lifted her from the chair, walking by her side as they followed after the others to the dining-room. When she stood up, it became evident why Milla was marked out for the pecu- liar love and cherishing of her family. She was deformedher back having been injured by an accident in her in- fancy. This deformity had nothing of a re- pulsive character; it was so slight as to be scarcely apparent, with that bright veil of glittering hair worn always about her shoul~ders; but it impaired her health, and, as the years of childhood wore away, shadowed her with a painful self-consciousness. She had been a beautiful, sprightly child, the idol of the house, which numbered among its inmates her aunt Mildred, who then was a young lady, unmarried, very fond of frolicking with the two-year-old darling. In one of those frolics, while tossing the child high in air, she lost her hold by some mischance, and the little crea- ture fell in such a way as to injure her spine. The remorse, consequent upon this terrible accident, never ceased to haunt Mildred Cameron. Night and day she plead with the mother for the privilege of tending the sufferer: she was engaged at the time, but refused to marry until the child had recovered as much health as she would ever have. The Camerons were of Scotch de- scent. Mildred married a distant rela- tive, a scion of the ancient tree, and removed to Scotland, where her hus- band had estates. She had a small sum of money of her ownabout equal to that with which her brcther started in life. This she had never used, but con- stantly invested it so as to increase it, always with the purpose of securing a support to Milla. She knew the frc- quency with which fortunes were made and lost in America, and foresaw that a time might come when it would be well for the helpless girl to have a certain reliance. When her own health failed, she reckoned up her gains, and found she had six thousand pounds at her dis- posal. With this sum she bought the stones and had them set, thinking that, if the money did not draw interest, neither would it be lost in speculation. The loving aunt had made all the restitution in her power, but Milla, as she gathered up the shining wealth, had but gained a new pang with her jewels. CHAPTER U. THE SILENT WITNESS. TnE same afternoon upon which Mr. Cameron carried home Millas jewels, in the third-story front room of a tenement- house in M. street, Mrs. Bellows was getting supper. Although nearly sun- set, the air, which came in at the two windows, seemed little less hot than that which radiated from the cooking-stove. The children looked tired and fretful as they hung at these windows, and the mother did not wear her most amiable expression as she moved the pan of fried potatoes from the griddle to the hearth murmuring that Abel was late. The house had a decayed look, but it was neat, inside and out,evidently not yet surrendered to the tender mercies of our foreign population, though it had fallen from its ancient splendor as the residence of a down-town merchant, and was now occupied by half-a-dozen fami- lies. These people were all American belonging to the respectable poorwho cherish a pride, in their way, quite as commendable as th~t of their more for- tunate neighbors. A school-teacher and his family occupied the first floor; on the second was a widow, whose small annuity was made the measure of her expenditures; on the third, Abel Bel- lows, porter, while a pale girl, who col- ored photographs, had the hall-bed- 4:0 PUTNAMS MAGAZiNE. [Jan~ room; on the fourth, two more widows, with sewing-machineseach and all more or less intelligent and ambitious, after the manner of our native-born people. Several had seen better days; more, hoped yet to see them. So that, while an air of poverty and privation pervaded these precincts, it was blent with neatness and order. The third-floor tenants were the least refined of the inmates. These were regular Yankees, with all New Eng- lands industry and smartness. A live- ly rag-carpet covered the floor, in the centre of which stood the table, decently laid for supper. Over an old-fashioned mahogany bureau hung a colored lithograph of Washington, while quite a pile of books was arranged on either side, including (bound in calf) Josephus, the Uni- versal History, Baxters Saints Rest, the Cas1-et. and the Scottish Chiefs; with sundry illustrated newspapers of the day. A Connecticut clock graced the centre of the mantelpiece. Towards this Mrs. Bellows threw many a weary glance; there was no doubt that the swing of the pendulum occupied pre- cisely the same length of time at each sweep of its arc that it did on the shortest winter dayfor the old clock was as exact as any New England spinster, in all its waysbut it did seem, on this languid afternoon, to take an unconscionable time to its work. Its ten minutes of seven, and I reckon shes slow at that; though, to be sure, she was right when the bells struck for six. Them potatoes wont be fit to eat if Abel dont git along right away, and she wiped the sweat from her forehead with the Corner of her apron; Matthew, peek out the winder wad see if yer fathers comm. At that moment the door of the room opened, and a man stepped softly within. He, too, was wiping the sweat from his face, and looking very warm. He was a middle-sized and middle-aged man, with bright, honest blue eyes, brown hair, and light complexion. He glanced at his wife with a deprecating look, as he said: Hope I havnt kept supper waitin, Abby. Twas so warm, I couldnt make much headway with my walk. If you call it warm out o doors, what do you think it is, shut up in hero with this cook-stove? 0, yis, young ones, you can all laugh and holler, now fathers come home,but theyve been as cross as bears all day,and no won- der, stewin in this oven. Why didnt you let em out in the street, if twas any cooler? Because I aint the woman, Abel Bellows, to let my children run on the street, associatin with you dont know who, to say nothin of the danger. Ive got to bring them up in a garret, it seems, but I shant bring em uponthe street. I dont know where your prides gone. Its little a mother can do, when theyre own father haint spunk enough to keep his family decent. Set down, all of you; suppers ready. No great shakes of a supper, nuther; but its all there was in the house to git. Strawberries are down to ten cents a box; but you didnt leave a cent of market-money, Abel. Didnt I? Wall, I guess I didnt happen to have any. But Ive got a months pay now, Abigail, and you shall have the berries for breakfast. Here, Toddle, father 11 help him up, and he placed the smallest Bellows in the high chair by his side; but when he had helped his wife, and the little ones, to the fried potatoes, with scraps of bacon and bread-and-butter, and had taken his cup of tea, he forgot to put any thing on his own plate, but sat star- ing at the brick wall opposite. His wife regarded him with wonder, but said nothing, for the heat had rendered her a little cross. Presently he with- drew his gaze and fixed it upon hers. Ive got something on my mind, Abby. That worries yer? That worries me. His habitually pleasant face had a graver look upon it than she usually saw there, and as she noticed how un- easy he was in his mind, and that his eye fell before hers, the one dread of 1868.] Too TRUE. her life sprung up. She laid down her knife and fork, pushing her chair a little back, piercing him through with a sharp, angry regard: You dont dare to tell me its lot- tery-tickets, Abel Bellows? It aint lottery-tickets this time, Abby; I most wish it was. If it aint lottery-tickets, what can it be? asked the woman, with a sigh of relief. Its nothing that concerns us in par- tikler; taiat no business of mine at all, in fact. But its a weight on my mind a dead weight. Its heavier than them loads used to be in the hardware store, before I got my place with Borden & De Witt. What on earth is it? queried Mrs. Bellows, sitting up again and eating rapidly, for curiosity had restored her appetite and removed her ill-humor. I cant tell nobody; for I dont know myself. For the ~JI~ords sake, what a fool you are, husband! What are you talkin ~bout, if ye dont know nothin? Im afraid I know it, Abby; Im afraid. And I dont want to. Thats jist itId fur ruther not. Its awful! and it worries me most sick. I should think as much! You havnt tasted your supper yit. I havnt see you so careless of your victuals since the store was robbed. Thats jist it, again, wife; its about that very robbery. lie glanced at the children, and, lowering his voice, whis- pered across the table Im afraid Ive found out one of the parties concerned in it. Abel Bellows, do tell ! Yes! and the very last person in the world you would suspect. Who ? I darent say, even to you, Abby, for Im not certain; and it might be wrongin him. But, Ive got a clue, and Im going to foller it up. I guess I shouldnt go round blab- bin it, if I was told a secret, said the wife, with a touch of sarcasm in her voice. I know you could keep the secret, 41 Abbynobody better. Id like to tell you as much as youd like to hear; but I dont think it would be right jist yit. Wait a littlewait a little.Hay, Tod- dle, how you cram your mouth! Let him cram it, if he likes. lm sure I wonder he has any appetite, shet up in this prison, without a blade of grass to tech his feet from one weeks end to another. Im sick of the city, Abel. I wish you would go back to Connecticut, and take a farm. I will, Abby, whcn my ship comes in. From Havana, I spose you mean. Ive looked too long for that ship. My minds made up, husband. Youve sol- emnly promised me you wont squander any more of your small wages on lottery- tickets; and if you break your word again, as youve done before, Ill take the children and go on to where I come from. I can git a livin there, I reckon. Dont talk so, Abby, please dont. What would I do without you and the childrenwithout little Toddle here? He turned to the dimpled little fellow, as dear and beautiful to him, in his faded apron and bare feet, with his tow- head and round blue eyes, as any curled darling of the avenue. Dont fret, wife, no more. By next Spring, if I have good luck, you shall have a place in the countryone that will be jist the kind. Yes, Abby, next Summer shall find us where we want to be. Ive picked out our house already. You know I took a little excursion over to Brooklyn last Sunday. I rode clear out into the suburbs, and then I got out of the cars and walked, it was so pleasant. And I came to the handsomest little place you ever saw; it would suit you and the little ones to a T. I stopped and leaned over the front fence, and I made up my mind that was the spot I was looking fornone o your brick city-houses, all up and down stairs, but a large, wide, white house, with green shutters, and a piazzer all round, like them houses down to Norrich; and flowers in the yard, with a big garden back, where the children can run and holler, and you could have your PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Jan rows of lettuce and onions, as handsome as flowers to my eyes. I was so struck with it, that, when a gentleman came out, I asked the price, and if it was for sale. What did he say? He said it could be bou~ht, and the price was ten thousand dollars. Thats about the figuredont you think so, Abigail? If youd like to go, Ill take you out there, next Sunday, and get your views of the property. Mrs. Bellows did not seem very much fluttered by this vision of an earthly paradise. She had beheld too many castles-in-air fade and burst. Never was there a poverty-stricken and suffering family who lived in such ideal grandeur as Mr. Bellows. He was always bringing home silk dresses and Paisley shawls, always getting a pony for the boy and a piano for the girl, always moving into a beautiful brown-stone palace or coun- try villain imagination; that is, he always was looking forward to the day when he should draw a prize. And supposin I did like it, what then? 11cr voice was rising, as she asked this, looking him full in the face. Why, then, I hopewell buy it next Spring.~~ How would you pay for it l The bluff, hearty man seemed to shrink and grow smaller before the cool scorn of this question. Why, I supposeI hopeI expect to have better luck. Before Spring She arose to her feet, pain and anger whitening her face. Not another word, Abel; youve broken your promise. Youve been wasting your money on tickets again. I only took a hall this time, he pleaded, nervously rattling his fork against the side of his plate. It was only ten dollars, and Im sure to have my luck turn, some day. Only ten dollars I looking wearily at the darned and faded clothes of her little ones, at the greasy supper and close room, and walk~g to the window to hide her face, she burst out crying. Poor woman! if it had been the first time, or the hundredth !but it was not. Her husband might quite as well have been a drinking man; his one habit was as wasteful, though he was always so kind. The meal was quite spoiled for Mr. Bellows, now; he swallowed his cup of tea and left the table, looking guilty, and as if he wanted very much to approach and comfort his suffering wife, but was hardly bold enough to make the attempt. The children stared at their mother in mute astonishment, until little Toddle, quite overcome by sympathetic distress, joined in her cry- ing with a chorus of wails. His father took him up, soothed him; then, as if gaining courage by having the child on his arm, approached the weeping wo- man, and crooked his other arm about her neck, saying awkwardly, There! there I dont, Abby! You scare the little fellow. Abel Bellows, I dont know what under the sun and earth I ever married you for! I dont, no more, he answered, rue- fully, unless twas because I Tas a Bel- lows, and you could blow me up a favorite pun of his, worn threadbare long ago; and perhaps because I was Abel, and you thought Id be able to take care of you. But, never mind, wife, itll all come out right. Next year at this time we wont be here. He kissed her check, and sat down in the window, jolting Toddle on his knee; while she, silent, and, it may be, sullen and de- spondent, cleared up the dishes and washed them. All this time the father jolted the baby, humming over and over ]3low the bellows, old man, until the child was asleep, when he slipped his night-gown on him, as deftly as a woman could have done it, and deposited him in the trundle-bed, in the back room. The two other children were nodding against the window-sill, tired out with the heat, as he said, lifting them also to a place beside little Toddle. Then he walked back and forth sev- eral times through the close room; the 1868.] Too TRUE. 43 gas was lighted in the street, and a faint night-wind began to rustle the window- shade. Its getting a trifle cooler, outside; I cant stand it,in here. Do you feel like taking a walk, wife? Mrs. Bellows had not recovered from her fit of depression; at first she did not answer; then, sulkily Im too tired; and I cant leave the children. Theyre all right, sound asleep; wont wake up till mornin. I shant leave em, Abel Bellows waking up in a fright and finding them- selves alone ;and perhaps comm back and seem the house a-fire, and they a-smotherin up in the third story. Yccs can go out and enjoy yourself; but a womans work is never done. Ive got Matthews trousers to patch. Ill ask Miss Bayles to mind the little ones; shed as lief as not. Come, let us go down on the Bowery, and get a glass of sofla-water or lemonade. I dont have the stomach to enjoy soda-water, when the young ones haint had a treat for weeks. Im not goin; so you neednt wait for me. With a soft sigh, Abel turned and went out. A single gas-jet burned dimly in the hall; he paused beneath it, fumbling for something in his pocket. Presently he found what he was search- ing for, and held it up to the light, which flashed over it in a dazzling, magical manner, fascinating to behold. The little object which he held up thus, for renewed examination, was a sleeve- button, of anticlue pattern, and probably of considerable value, for the button, which was of rich gold, held in its centre an emerald of large size and superb lustrea real jewel, whose lam- bent light emanated from it in a green aureole. I know them buttons well, and I know who owns the mate. I found it there, true enough. My! my heart stopped beatin when I saw it in that spot, and realized who it belonged to. It looks baddesperate bad. that stuns worth money; its curious he haint complained of losin it. Just then a light step resounded near; Miss Bayles had come out of the hall- bedroom, and was approaching him; he thrust the shimmering, flashing sleeve- button back into his pocket, turning towards her with a flush, like that of guilt, on his merry, frank face. I feel lonely this evening; I was going in to see your wife. Mr. Bellows cast a look of mingled pity and admiration at the pale face, as he answered the sweet voice Step right in, then; shell be un- common glad to see you, for shes a little in the dumps herselg this evenin. To tell you the truth, Miss Bayles, said the man, reddening, and changing his weight from one foot to the other, Ive gone and done it agin, and most broke her heart, I reckon. But you know, Miss Bayles, you do me the justice to believe, that I did it all for the best l regarding her with an anxious smile. Why, yes, Mr. Bellows, I know you did it because you hoped to win a prize And make up all Ive spent in that way, and shut up Abbys complaints, and make her happy, as she deserves to be. But that does not make it right for you to break your plighted word,whilc fifteen years of experience ought to teach you how slender your c7iance8 are. I know, I know it alL But when Ive wasted so much money, bought so many tickets that didnt draw, Im certain my chance must come soon. Dont you see it? Ive spent about four thousand dollars in tickets since I got in the habit of first buyin em, and Ive never drawed but two hundred dollars yet; so I dare not stop now, I must get my money back. I must keep on until I do get it back. Miss Bayles shook her head disap- provingly; he almost fancied that tears came into her dark eyes; he fidgetted back on to tlie other foot, changing the subject to his stereotyped question, whenever he met the delicate, sad-look- ing artist Hows business to-day, Miss Bayles? Now he knew the lady was not in 44 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Jan. business for herselfthat she was paid by the job, not week; and this was his way of showing interest in her welfare. Impossible it would be to describe the respectful, tender tone and manner, in which the common-place inquiry was made. The young lady understood all the sympathy which it implied, smiling brightly as she said, We have all we can do, just now, thank you. Thats good, was the hearty re- sponse. Ive been tryin to git wife to go out for a mouthful of fresh air, but she wont; and when a woman wont, she wont, the song says; so I hope youll cheer her up a little, Miss Bayles; and he descended the staircase, leaving the young visitor to cheer desponding Mrs. Bellows. When Abel reached the street, he looked up and down. lie had proposed a stroll in the Bowery, to recreate him- self with a sight of the crowds sure to be o~st in that vicinity; but his wifes rebuff had destroyed all desire for the little treat of lemonade or ice-cream, which he would have enjoyed if shared with her. Then, too, that thing which he had found, and which burned in his pocket like a coal of living fire, was the means of turning his steps in another direction. Hardly aware of what was leading him, or whither he was going, that trouble of mindthat haunting mystery and terror which had taken up its un- welcome abode in his breastimpelled him to retrace the route he had so re cently trodden, and, much to his own surprise, he at length found himself in R street, looking up at the closed windows of a tall marble store, across the main entrance of which glittered the name of the firm who were his employersBorden & De Witt. If a policeman had suddenly put the ques- tion, what was he doing there? he could not have answered; he was porter in the store, and had left it for the night, without any purpose to come back and stare at its blank outside walls. Borden & IDe Witt were importers of silks, shawls, and lace-goods. Abel Bellows had been with them as porter several years, enjoying their confidence, and even their respect; for, humble as was his position, who could deny gen- uine respect to his willing industry, his healthy, merry temperament, and to his own modest self-respect, pleasant fruit of American soil? It was now nearly a month gone that Abel came down, one morning, to open the store. When he unlocked the pon- derous bolts, and stepped in on the first floor, he was surprised at the silence which reigned. Usually the watchman, a careful, sober man, well-fitted for his post, was quite ready to be relieved of his tedious night-duty; but on this oc- casion he did not make his appearance. Fallen asleep, perhaps, thought the porter, loudly calling his name, without obtaining an answer. He then pro- ceeded to look up his friend, when he observed some disorder in the ar- rangement of goods; his heart beat a little faster as he ascended the broad staircase to the second story, but he stood quite still when he saw the watch- man there, lying upon the floor, dead, in a pool of his own blood. When the first shock left him power to move, he rushed out after the police. An examination showed the poor watchman to have been dead for several hours, and the store to have been robbed of about twelve thousand dollars worth of dress-silks, a couple of costly camels- hair shawls, and a quantity of expensive lace; in all, goods to the amount of twenty thousand dollars. No clue had, as yet, been obtained as to the robber or robbers. The goods had evidently been selected with the view to get as much value into as small a compass as possible; the whole could have been carried in a couple of ordinary trunks. It was believed that the robber had killed the watchman in self-defence, as the revolver which the latter carried had been fired twice, the ball from one dis- charge lodging in a pillar near by; the other had not been found. His death had been effected by a blow from a stool, which lay broken near at hand. 1568.1 Too TRUE. 45 The excitement had partially sub- sided; the victim was buried, his widow pensioned by the firm, the police in- structed that their continued vigilance would be liberally rewarded :what new interest was it that drew Abel Bellows, on this languid summer-even- ing, back to the familiar street, to gaze up at the building, which he had quitted not two hours previously? Early that morning, while sweeping out a portion of the third floor, he had accidentally overturned a pile of small paper-boxes, containing laces. As the covers flew off one or two, something dropped with the soft goods, which made a slight, ringing noise, and rolled away a few feet distant. He thought it a small gold coin, which had come by chance into the box, along with its legitimate contents; but, upon picking it up, found it to be a sleeve-button. He held it, and gazed at it, as if the green stone with which it was set had been the glittering eye of a basilisk. He knew to whom the button belonged; he had observed the pair, frequently, in the snowy wristbands of their owner, for they were of peculiar pattern, while the brilliancy of the gems must have attracted the attention of the most in- different person. How came the button in the box? and why had the loser not proclaimed his loss? The person to whom it belonged had no business to send him to that part; of the store, though he might possibly have been called there on an errand. It was from those very boxes the laces had been abstracted on the night of the robbery. How their owners, when examining into their losses, could have overlooked this stray button, he could not see. He placed the silent witness carefully in his vest-pocket, and resumed his sweeping. All that day Abel remained in a state of subdued excitement. He could not make up his mind to inform his em- ployers of his discovery. Indeed, the most of the time he succeeded in per- suading himself that he was, that he must be, mistaken in the inference which he drew from the simple fact of the button being in that box. It was the restlessness consequent upon this state of mind which had drawn him back, to stare, by gas-light, at the house of Borden & De Witt. [To be continued.] P RED ERIC K S B U R G. DECEMBER 13, 1862. A 5ULLEN river spanned by narrow bridges That trembled on its tide; In the gray distance cannon-bristling ridges, A host on either side; A pause as of the storm that ere its onset Pauses to gather breath; A silence as of men that know with sunset Their sun may set in death; And then across the darkly-rolling river, Across the creaking planks, That swayed and trembled with an ominous shiver, We surged in serried ranks. On through the misty morning, chill and cheerless, That weakly threatened rain, Like child-reft Niobe pent with tears, yet tearless, Yearning to weepin vain.

1568.1 Too TRUE. 45 The excitement had partially sub- sided; the victim was buried, his widow pensioned by the firm, the police in- structed that their continued vigilance would be liberally rewarded :what new interest was it that drew Abel Bellows, on this languid summer-even- ing, back to the familiar street, to gaze up at the building, which he had quitted not two hours previously? Early that morning, while sweeping out a portion of the third floor, he had accidentally overturned a pile of small paper-boxes, containing laces. As the covers flew off one or two, something dropped with the soft goods, which made a slight, ringing noise, and rolled away a few feet distant. He thought it a small gold coin, which had come by chance into the box, along with its legitimate contents; but, upon picking it up, found it to be a sleeve-button. He held it, and gazed at it, as if the green stone with which it was set had been the glittering eye of a basilisk. He knew to whom the button belonged; he had observed the pair, frequently, in the snowy wristbands of their owner, for they were of peculiar pattern, while the brilliancy of the gems must have attracted the attention of the most in- different person. How came the button in the box? and why had the loser not proclaimed his loss? The person to whom it belonged had no business to send him to that part; of the store, though he might possibly have been called there on an errand. It was from those very boxes the laces had been abstracted on the night of the robbery. How their owners, when examining into their losses, could have overlooked this stray button, he could not see. He placed the silent witness carefully in his vest-pocket, and resumed his sweeping. All that day Abel remained in a state of subdued excitement. He could not make up his mind to inform his em- ployers of his discovery. Indeed, the most of the time he succeeded in per- suading himself that he was, that he must be, mistaken in the inference which he drew from the simple fact of the button being in that box. It was the restlessness consequent upon this state of mind which had drawn him back, to stare, by gas-light, at the house of Borden & De Witt. [To be continued.] P RED ERIC K S B U R G. DECEMBER 13, 1862. A 5ULLEN river spanned by narrow bridges That trembled on its tide; In the gray distance cannon-bristling ridges, A host on either side; A pause as of the storm that ere its onset Pauses to gather breath; A silence as of men that know with sunset Their sun may set in death; And then across the darkly-rolling river, Across the creaking planks, That swayed and trembled with an ominous shiver, We surged in serried ranks. On through the misty morning, chill and cheerless, That weakly threatened rain, Like child-reft Niobe pent with tears, yet tearless, Yearning to weepin vain. 46 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Jan No sun reflected in our bayonets gleaming Shone from the leaden skies, As in our hearts no sun of hope was beaming To lighten in our eyes. Yet on, though hopeless, fearless still as ever, Across the swaying planks, Across the sullen, blackly-flowing river Strode our unfaltering ranks. And up the further shore; then quickly forming, Stood still with bated breath, Till came the stern command, Prepare for storming I And we prepared for death. A sudden leap, as of a torrent leaping Free from its icy bands, A mighty sweep, as of a tempest sweeping Vast over desert-sands: A little space metliought my brain was turning, Awhile my heart stood still, And then through brain and heart rushed, fiercely burning, A wild, tumultuous thrill. And I, too, leapt into the seething ocean Of battle, and was swept On to the centre of the dark commotion, Where Death his revel kept. A blinding flash, a burst of sudden thunder, An awful, curdling cry Of anguish, and the wild, despairing wonder Of life just taught to die: An arrowy flame that from the gloom outspringing Smote.me so that I sank, My senses numbed, and in my ears a ringing A pang, and then a blank. And then slow-floating, bending, lifting, falling, A wrathful cloud was spread That brooded over us in shapes appalling, Still changed to shapes more dread: They saw them not who wrestled with the torrent, Making uncertain head Against the billows of that sea abhorrent, A true Sea of the Dead. But we, flung out upon the battles margin Like wrecks or stranded weeds Left by the faithless wave, whose onward charging They led, when it recedes: We saw such visions as the eye of mortal But seldom sees in life, As though of fiends upwhirled from hells dark portal To join congenial strife. Yet round us still the tide of fight was boiling, Now rolled upon the foe, Now backward from those cruel heights recoiling With many an ebb and flow. 1868.] FREDERIOKSBIJRG. 47 And thus till pitying Night came down in sorrow To end the hopeless strife, And Death and Sleep stood sentry till the morrow By the shut doors of Life. But II slept not. Softly, sadly, slowly, The solemn moon uprose And showered her mellow radiance, mild and holy, Alike upon the foes. And one by one the stars unveiled their splendor Along the blue above, The eyes of angelsso I fanciedtender With pity and with love. I felt their dewy kisses on my forehead Charming away my pain: So peace fell on me, and those visions horrid Merged in the gloom again. Scarce had they vanished from my sight, when straighiway Down the broad bridge of light That leads to heaven through the moons fair oate Came many a lovelier sprite. b way, And one among them eminent in beauty Oer all, of form and face Like hers to whom my earthly love and duty Were vowed in happier days. Her glorious eyes, dim with a strange, sad yearning, Bent oer me: on my cheek Her breath was soft; and thrilled ith life returning, I sighed, and strove to speak. But, lo! that instant swept a cloud before me; It passed, and none was nic,h The moon and stars shone calmly, coldly oer me, The night-wind whispered by. I know no more. They tell me that, defeated And crushed, yet still a day We held our ground, then sullenly retreated, Turning lika boars at bay When closer pressed: and so, defiant ever, Across the moaning planks Once more we passed and oer the darkling river; But, ah! with narrower ranks. They tell me this upon my pallet lying Beside thy waters clear, Placid Potomac, maimed, it may be dyino With no loved voice to cheer No loving hand to smooth my aching pillow: The hand is cold afar The voice is hushed. As well, perhaps, the willow Should wreathe my maiden war. Yet not in vain I die. Tenfold fruition Shall bless the soil which blood Hath fertilized. There is no loftier missica Than death for Freedoms good. 48 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Jan THE BEGINNING OF NEW YORK. Tnnnx have been many methods of writing Historyall bad. There is the 1?ealistic. The great principle of this is, to prove that, in the year 1123, a boot-jack, that could not now be bought of your artist in leather for, say one pound ten, could have been purchased for twopence hapenny; and that the illustrious Duke Hurly-Burly had to take off his jerkin, poke out his tongue, ~nd fall into a perspiration, before he could sign his namewhich remains illegible to all but the initiated. There is the Picturesque. This differs in no essential particular from the writ- ing of romances. There is the Scientific: subdivided into the geological, the chemical, the mechanical, the physiological, the iso- thernial, and many others. Then there is what we historians call the Philosophical. This consists in the establishment of one great central whim- wham, around which the planets are made to revolve. It has the merit of simplicity of motive. Then there is the method of Diedrich Knickerbocker, which has some good points to it: but he rambles too much. Last, but by no means least, is an- other method, which includes all the merits and avoids all the defects of all the rest. Indeed, it is the best that can possibly be devised, if I may be allowed to say so; and I say so whether I be allowed or not. Why should I be modest about it? It is MY SYSTEM, which I now proceed to illustrate. Before I begin on my main topic, however, I must do a little in the way of removing obstacles. Whoever has readand who has not? The History of New York, compiled and given to the world by the industri- ous Diedrich Knickerbocker, must have been impressed with the minute erudi- tion of that fai ous work. To this no one will more heartily hear testimony than the present writer. In fact, those only who, like myself, have been en- ga~d in kindred pursuits, can adequate- ly appreciate it. Yet am I hound to protest against certain of his statements, honestly made as no doubt they were. For truth is truth, and the authority of no name should be permitted to stand against it. I must admit, however, that in the main he is correct: and the first objec- tion I make to him is, not that he did not begin soon enough, but that he has neglected to indicate to us the precise location of the first germ, so to speak, of hisof ourcommonwealth. This singular omission is but another proof of how difficult it is for the most pains- taking annalist to cover every possible contingency of future inquiry. The goodness of Providence is also exhibited in this matter. For, if the great men who have passed away had absolutely exhausted every field of investigation, how would it be possible for us, whose vocation it is to pick up the crumbs that have fallen from their tables, to make a living at all? Indeed, would it be worth while for us to exist? His account of the creation of the world may pass muster. But then there is a terrible hiatus, and he skips almost at once to sundry Indians and Dutch- men, not much more than two centuries ago. Diedrich, Uncle Diedrich, (for I will not venture to call you my brother,) this will not do. The scientific mind of the present age demands exactitude: and exactitude in this matter I have hope to furnish it. Shades of Herodotus and Knicker- bocker, assist me nowshade of Knick- erbocker, particularly! For I humbly propose to supply, after a fashion of my own, the sole link wanting in that in- imitable chain of events which you have so admirably forged. And here I

48 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Jan THE BEGINNING OF NEW YORK. Tnnnx have been many methods of writing Historyall bad. There is the 1?ealistic. The great principle of this is, to prove that, in the year 1123, a boot-jack, that could not now be bought of your artist in leather for, say one pound ten, could have been purchased for twopence hapenny; and that the illustrious Duke Hurly-Burly had to take off his jerkin, poke out his tongue, ~nd fall into a perspiration, before he could sign his namewhich remains illegible to all but the initiated. There is the Picturesque. This differs in no essential particular from the writ- ing of romances. There is the Scientific: subdivided into the geological, the chemical, the mechanical, the physiological, the iso- thernial, and many others. Then there is what we historians call the Philosophical. This consists in the establishment of one great central whim- wham, around which the planets are made to revolve. It has the merit of simplicity of motive. Then there is the method of Diedrich Knickerbocker, which has some good points to it: but he rambles too much. Last, but by no means least, is an- other method, which includes all the merits and avoids all the defects of all the rest. Indeed, it is the best that can possibly be devised, if I may be allowed to say so; and I say so whether I be allowed or not. Why should I be modest about it? It is MY SYSTEM, which I now proceed to illustrate. Before I begin on my main topic, however, I must do a little in the way of removing obstacles. Whoever has readand who has not? The History of New York, compiled and given to the world by the industri- ous Diedrich Knickerbocker, must have been impressed with the minute erudi- tion of that fai ous work. To this no one will more heartily hear testimony than the present writer. In fact, those only who, like myself, have been en- ga~d in kindred pursuits, can adequate- ly appreciate it. Yet am I hound to protest against certain of his statements, honestly made as no doubt they were. For truth is truth, and the authority of no name should be permitted to stand against it. I must admit, however, that in the main he is correct: and the first objec- tion I make to him is, not that he did not begin soon enough, but that he has neglected to indicate to us the precise location of the first germ, so to speak, of hisof ourcommonwealth. This singular omission is but another proof of how difficult it is for the most pains- taking annalist to cover every possible contingency of future inquiry. The goodness of Providence is also exhibited in this matter. For, if the great men who have passed away had absolutely exhausted every field of investigation, how would it be possible for us, whose vocation it is to pick up the crumbs that have fallen from their tables, to make a living at all? Indeed, would it be worth while for us to exist? His account of the creation of the world may pass muster. But then there is a terrible hiatus, and he skips almost at once to sundry Indians and Dutch- men, not much more than two centuries ago. Diedrich, Uncle Diedrich, (for I will not venture to call you my brother,) this will not do. The scientific mind of the present age demands exactitude: and exactitude in this matter I have hope to furnish it. Shades of Herodotus and Knicker- bocker, assist me nowshade of Knick- erbocker, particularly! For I humbly propose to supply, after a fashion of my own, the sole link wanting in that in- imitable chain of events which you have so admirably forged. And here I 1868.] THE BEGINNING OF NEW YORK. 49 must account for my power to ~o this, by a little confession. Having, in my heedless and injudicious days, indulged one evening in an inordinate supper of roasted shell-fish, which I imprudently neglected to modify with a correspond- ing quantity of whiskey-punch, that night they were disorderlyand, lo! as in a moving panorama, the whole sequence of events swept slowly past me in my troubled sleep, and much I saw and much I heard, some small portion of which I shall now unfold. Scarce had the confusion of the Deluge subsided into comparative quiet, and the horrible efflux of sand and trash caused by the breaking away of the Highlands of the Hudson ceased its disturbance of the pure waters of the flay, when two settlers took possession of what is. now the island and city of New York. They located themselves on the eastern shelv- ing side of a ledge of rocks, in a little cove including what is now the foot of More street. They were oysters. There is a little of the oyster in every in- digenous and unadulterated New-Yorker to this day. Overlaid, it may be, by hurry, excitement, and dissipation, your true son of Manhattan is at bottom a luxurious and contented molluse. As a community also, New York is yet an ostrea edulis, and in that faith is mis- governed. The Pistols of to-day treat it in the style of Falstaffs ancient, as Mine oyster Which I with sword will open. I will retort the sum in equipage. I will retort the sum in equipage! i. e., according to foot-note, I will pay you again in stolen goods. (Univer- sal Shakespeare! most certainly, at one period, of his life he was a ward poli- tician. Here is the whole theory of municipa~ corruption.) But, it is won- derful. You may cut out its heart, or swallow it whole, and it will make no resistance, and scarcely complaint. But all this is premature. To return. They (the oysters) took down the map, and,. having examined it, said the gentleman, in a lush and glairy voice: Here will we cuddle. Is it not the most commodious situa- tion in the whole world? VOL. I.4 Yes, returned the lady. A salt- tide on one hand, to give us tone, and fresh water on the other, to fatten us. This was a very sensible, nay, saga- cious determination of philosophy, in- asmuch as they could not possibly re- move themselves any where else. And here, said they to each other, the wild desert beyond us shall send down whatever the desert pi~oduces: and, by-and-by, we shall have the saponicity of bananas in our palates, and now-and- then a Duchesse dAngoukime pearto say nothing of oranges, pineapples, cod- fish, and guanodelicious! And they snapped their shells. All the luxuries of every season and of every clime! pursued the lady. And, in the course of time, said the gentleman, they will build sewers, and there will be a game flavor everywhere. And then, you know, in the Winter, when its very, very cold, well have a counter- pane of ice, and thats, oh, so cosy! And so genteel! added the lady. This is still an unanswerable argu- ment in New York. All this, it must be understood, was said prophetically; for oysters in those days were much wiser than they are nowand yet, like many wise men, had not much common sense, or they had kept themselves further from New York, for the sake of their posterity, if not their own. So far so good. Now, there is to every great historical theory one weak point. We have arrived at the weak point of mine, if there can be such a thing. What we want to accomplish is thisthe transition from the oyster to the oyster-eater, or Indian. The opera- tion is delicate; but, trust in me, and all will come out right. Here goes. It is an established physiological fact, that in seven years or so the whole corporeal frame, bones, flesh, blood, and all, is completely renewed. It stands then as a self-evident proposition, that if a man lives seven years on nothing but oysters, at the end of that period he will have become an oyster himseli. Such was the case with the Indians of the Manhadoes, or New York. 50 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Jan. Hallo! My good friend, it is the converse of this you want to prove. Dear, dear, dear, dear, sure enough I Well, Ill tell you how it was, then. It is sufficiently known that maize or In- dian corn is indigenous to this conti- nent. Undoubtedly, before there were any trees on the banks of the Hudson river, it grew freely and spontaneously there. In all human probability, the oysters gathered it for their winter sup- ply. They are very fond of meaL Ask Downing, jr. I myself have seen in- numerable skeletons of oysters in the cornfields along the Tappaan Zee. Now, as an oyster is a much smaller animal than a man, we may reasonably conclude that he renews his corporeality much more rapidly; and so, a single season, or, say seven weeks, transmuted a num- ber into Indian corn. Again, in process of time, the forest grew on the banks of the Hudson; and then, as this plant requires sunshine to mature it, the corn died out and left only the Indian. Is that satisfactory to you? Any how, here the Indians were. I presume you will not deny that. Ben- son J. Lossing says so: and he knows. Besides, I am a historian. It is neces- sary to my purpose that they should have been herethey must, therefore, have been herethey were here. If any fellow writes a big book to refute me I will make mincemeat of him in the newspapers. [Here a war-whoop.] There were several tribes inhabiting the island; of whom the most import- ant, and the only one then existing whose descendants ( a few of the same sort left ) fiovirish in the city at the present day, were the Numberwuns. In fact, it is a curious matter of record that there never yet has been discovered a country where these aborigines were not to be found. To the Numberwuns the earth be- longs, and all things therein. With the first dawn of history they went forth conquering and to conquer, and they have gone on so ever since, and they will go on in the same way to the end of time. Did Alexander invade India? They were with him. Did Napoleon give ~ngdoms to his family? They got one. Did the last election turn one way or tother? They carried it. Cun- ning varlets that they are I Even as Bis- marck(their blood flows in his veins) absorbs half the small states of Ger- many and calls them Prussia, so do these secure the petty and the mighty offices; but in the name ofO Died- rich, Diedrich Iit begins with a P. (big P.), tooin the name of(Here I must be allowed to lay down my pen and indulge in a guffaw, which I freely admit is unworthy of a grave historian) ho! ho 1ha! ha II shall die of laughingofP-r-r-r-inciple I This State produced the greatest sa- chem of them allhim that with a mag- nificent concentration of genius crushed into a single brief expression their entire history throughout the ages: TO THE VICTOR ]3ELONG THE SPOILS! This was the awful motto borne on the banner of the Ta-ma-nees, a later New York tribe; and now all the rest, even their most bitter enemies, have taken it up and fight under itpublicans and sinners that they are. And of the other early tribes, and their habits ?do you ask? We think of the Indian now, as of a sort of centaur, hanging by the heel to his horse, and shooting buffalo or United States mount- ed riflemen. In the early times it was d~fferent. All along the coast they were fishermen, with names so horribly dis- sonant that they offend the fastidious ear, and lead to the belief that they might have frightened away most ene- mies by merely repeating their own cog- nomens. The noblest and the bravest, the best, the wisest, the purest, the most moral, (even as it has happened unto this day,) inhabited the island of New York, and were called Manhadoes. They had a council-wigwam on the height just south of the present Bowling Green, where they debated the taxes and assess- ments, and whence they could see about, to disconcert the expeditions of the hostile savages of Connecticut, Long Island, Staten Island, Coney Island, Gibbet Island, and the Jarseys, all emi- nent (as they used of old time to say) 1868.] THE BEGINNING OF NEW YOEK. 51 bordragers, water-melon brigands, and squash-riflers. This they did, on the whole, pretty successfully. But, to the Northay, to the North and West J am coming to that, presently. I should have mentioned previously, in connection with the Numberwuns, that no sooner had these varlets been hocus-pocused from oysters into In- dians, than they began to live on shell- fish, themselves. Cannibals? No less, I am sorry to say. We devour each other in New York to this day; and it is horrible to observe into what a dif- ferent creature the original oyster has developedhow his placid and well- poised character is deformed into a hur- ried, bustling, speculating, money-gam- bling, kerosene-nos~g, two-legged mon- strosity. And now, about the appearance of The Manhadoes. Do you think they looked any thing like our eminent friend, the great Amer- ican tragedhn, when, in his lusty youth, he used to do Metamora for the delec- tation of the East side of the town? Not much. How about the sachems of Tammany? How about the war-horse of the Demo- cracy? and them of The Pewter Mug? My young friend, why will you! But they were not the grand Indian, either. They were a clam-eating people. And I hold it to be impossible to sub- jugate the world on clams. Something, indeed, may be achiev@d on codfish and potatoes; but, for solid conquest, give me pork. Here an immense and entic- ing field of physiological speculation opens before me. But I must give it the go-by; for the dignity and directness of historical composition urge me on. The Manhadoes were a clam-eating people. Therefore were they thralls or tributaries of the Five Nations of the interior. It appears that the barbarians of the northern and western part of what is now the State of New York (pork-eaters, mainly), still retain this ascendancy over the Pah-dees, the Row-dees, the Ta-ma-nees~ and other cognate tribes of savages now thriving in The Manhadoes. And this is but a just retribution. The Mynheers ousted The Manhadoes; they, in time, were overwhelmed by the Yank-ees; and they by the Pah-dees;~ which last tribe, in conjunction with the Row-dees, Lager- beers, and Rumpubs, do now most in- tolerably plunder and oppress the veri- table lords of the soil, on the island of Manhattan. Some people affect to be- lieve that the turn of the Quash-ecs or Cuff-ces-(so they are indifferently called)will come next. It may be so. Nay, it is not improbable. The whole philosophy of history is to be found in that neat statement of Solomon: EVERY DOG HAS 1115 DAY. Truly, the evolution of these things is a most absorbing study. This matter of the aboriginal and suc- ceeding tribes of The Manhadoes, their customs, costume, arms, and methods of warfare, would furnish forth a rare dissertation. An authentic account of the Shod-ces would be especially valu- able. This is a tribe not very~ long known on the island,. but who have already developed to a remarkable ex- tent all the characteristics of the un- varnished savage, from whom they are lineally descended. But I have been already digressing most unjustifiably, and must get back into the main current of my disquisition. Returning, I encounter Diedrich Knickerbocker in my way. I must shovel him out of my way. My theory demands that it should be done. What does he say about the beginning of New YorkI speak now of it, as it comes into the sphere of modern inquiry and civilization? Substantially, he asserts that Oloffe the Dreamer founded New York.* Now, with all due deference for that able and impartial historian, I am con- strained to say that the internal evidence in the case seems to me sadly at variance with his conclusions. Oloffe the Dreamer, indeed! I should like to know, if Oloffe the Dreamer be the progenitor of the people of New York, how comes it that they are all such wide-awake fellows I * list, of New York. Book II. chap. v., vii. 52 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Jan. No, no. I fear that we must trace here the finger of his editor, one Washington Irving, who was a little of a wag, and who has been, more than once I am grieved to say, betrayed into some slight deviation from the exact standard of truth, which it is the historians only safety to cling to with the utmost tena- city. Again, he devotes much space and attaches much importance to the char- acter and proceedings of Antony Van Corlear, the Trumpeter.* Altogether too much. Antony Fan Corlear played but a trilling part in the annals of the city. I do not believe he resided in New York (or Nicuw Amsterdam, as it was then) for any length of time. Here again the internal evidence rebuts the account of Diedrich Knickerbocker, or, rather, of his unscrupulous sophistica- tor. Now, just look at it. If Antony the Trumpeter had lived in our city at that earlyperiod, it stands to reason that in the ordinary course of events, by this time 1868, more than two hundred years, there would have been a multi- plicity, an ever-increasing brood, of Trumpeters in New York. How shows the fact? Why, it is notorious that the metropolis of this Union has never had one solitary trumpeter to her back scarcely even a blower in her borders. Any body may live, any body may die: New York cares not. It is discour- aging to be a great man here. The only object of being a great man is to get a monument, after one is dead. Oh, my genius, New York will never give you one. Yet is there something grand in this indifference. New York(now I am about to make a singularly fine comparison)New York is like the statue of Memnon, or Ramises, I forget which (nor is it material)or perhaps I am thinking of the Sphinxin the Egyptian desert. Every fool can see why. So I shall not insult every fool by explaining. No; Antony the Trumpeter was not a resident of Nieuw Amsterdam. This * lIst, of New York. Passim. is the interpolation of Washington Ir- ving, whose innate levity of disposition appears occasionally in his other writ- ings(for it appears that the villain got into print in various ways independent- ly of tacking himself to a better man and injuring his reputation by foisting upon him sundry passages of pretended history)and not the assertion of the upright and staid Diedrich Knicker- bocker. Antony the Trumpeter was NOT a resident of Nieuw Amsterdam. He could not have been. But, when we look in another direc- tion, how different the view! I am strongly inclined to the opinion, that, when Antony the Trumpeter, as is duly and correctly set forth by Diedrich Knickerbocker himBeif, went upon his embassy to the Eastward in the time of Peter the Headstrong, the people there- away were so taken with his accom- plishment that they never allowed him to return; and of this, I am the more confident in view of the fact, that there is at least one aspiring city in that quarter (as has been sufficiently intima- ted by one of her own children *), whose entire population now consists of Trum- peters ;not to speak of the prevalence of this sort of music in all that country.j Oh, my native city, what an irreparable misfortune to thee to have lost him ! ~ I am sorry to have been thus obliged, even apparently, to controvert Knicker- bocker; but History knows no preju- dices, History knows no partialities. As a pure mirror reflects only what is, so she reflects only and simply what is past. I am willing to admit, moreover, that the Fan Poffenburghs, OT windy men pure and unmixed, of whom the historian speaks, were here at an early period, and have left descendants (though not so many a~ one might have * Vide Uolmess Annals of the Universecdition of 1805edition of 1817rum seqq. nult. Vide Daily Papers, N. E. I I am told that some towns of the Westnot yet snfficiently old to have a grown-up historian abound astonishingly in players on the instrument. But they come, for the most part, rather nnder the head of blowers, than of regular tru~ipeters. The Southern portion of our country has, also, produced some very fine specimens of the former class. list. New York. Book V. chap. ix. 1868.] THE BEGINNING OF NEW YoEK. 58 ~xpected) to represent them in our city to this day. And, on this compromise, I, for the present, leave him. I know it is unpleasant to people to have their early impressions made ducks and drakes of in this way by us modern historians, the Niebuhrs, the Froudes, the Bancrofts. When I first learned that there never was a wolf that never suckled Romulus, and that Remus was what we call a myth, that bluff King Hal was a graduate of the Theological Seminary on the Ninth avenue, and that the Revolutionary heroes in general were rail-riders on fences, noddies, and p01- troons, I confess I felt a pang. But, when I turned my attention to historical composition myself, I perceived the ne- cessity of these things. For, what is the first aim of a writer? Novelty. And how is novelty in historical composition to be attained, except by saying some- thing different from what has been said before? If Livy arid Lingard, indeed, had not written, if no documents existed, if not a line had come down from any previous age, how much pleasanter, how much easier, how much more satisfactory, would it be now, to write history! No accounts to compare; no unaccommo- dating discrepancies to reconcile; no im- mense files of horrible Dutch records in a horrible ci~mp hand, such as I have encountered, to be explored and done battle with; noconfound them all, say I, that ever wrote history before me, with the sole exception of that great and good man, Diedrich Knickerbocker, whose memory I reverence and love (but who, nevertheless, as reported, was wrong in some particulars, as I have already proved). But I must be brief. Tacitus is hence- forth my model. When I first began to write this monograph, seeing that there was but one point to be elucidated, I had no idea to what extent the theme would grow. I feel now like a balloon just beginning to fill with gas, and, if I would, there is no telling to what size I should expand, to what height I should rise, or how much dead-weight I should carry up with me. What do I say l In one word, I feel like a Van Poffenburgh. Nevertheless, I will be brief. Every lawyer knows that the first and most important step in discovering who did do a thing, is to ascertain who did not. So you see we have already made an im- mense stride in this investigation. In- deed, the preponderance is always greatly with the negative. And we have not so much more to do as you may have feared. It appears that, as regards the first final settlement of New York, there were eight hundred and seventeen persons who nsight, could, would, or should have had this honoronly they didnt. Not to put too fine a point on it, there were rather more; for any sailor then living in Europe might have been the man. What I mean is, that I have pur- sued these eight hundred and seventeen separate and distinct theories into their causes and consequences, and up to their first source. The statement of these matters occupies four folio volumes of~ about the cubical contents of those pub- lished through the liberality of our Leg- islature, under the style of Documents Relating to the Colonial History of the State of New York. As I suppose that the general public have hardly the time to spare for the consideration of all of these, I waive the eight hundred and sixteen, and state only the eighthundredandseventeenth, asking them to believe that I have care- fully and conscientiously compared them all, and that I speak only the plain truth, when I say that this following is undoubtedly the history of Tax MAN. Gustavus Potzlingerby the glory of earth! by the splendor of pinchbeck! I had rather own that name than that of the pious iEneas, or King Alfred, or Peter the Great, or any other founder or establisher of a state ! Gustavus Pot- zlinger, or, freely, the tippler was a common sailor. He was born under the shadow of one of the great dykes of Holland, and belonged to the breed of Musquashes or Burrowers.* From his * Not to 1~ oonfounde4 with the Borrowers, which are a separate race, mentioned by the earliest historians. 54 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Jan. birth, he had taken schnapps before his first morning meal, to keep out the rheumatism; and the moss would have grown on his shoes in his mothers kitchen, only he never had any shoes to wearnot even wooden ones. From his earliest days, the instinct of schnapps and the instinct of trade went hand in hand in developing his truly noble character. Would that I had a thousand pages in which to trace fo~ you his beautiful infancy, his delectable childhood, the generous traits he ex- hibited when a boy, his virtuous youth, his well-grounded stability as a man! Alas! I have scarce one. Therefore must I leap at once to that most memo- rable day wherein he was one of the crew that rowed Hendrik Hudson ashore on The Manhadocs to have a talk with the sachems of that tribe. I know that most historians do not mention this visit: but it occurred. As they approached the land, to the schna~~py and tradeful soul of Potzlinger loomed up a mighty business: but vague as yet. But when they met, the savage and the tempter, in the Council- Wigwam of the Aborigine, and he ob- served how Hendrik, with an acute judgment of human nature after a few whiffs of friendly smoke, did treat the great sachem Neywesinckwink or Asi- wacaligo, or whatever his name was (for it has not been handed down to us), to a little tipple schnapps, in the Dutch vernacular, and fire-water, as the In- dian aptly styled ita sudden revela- tion burst on Potzliuger. Noting how kindly the children of Nature took to the spirit of Art, Gustavus bethought himself that there was a stiver, or may- hap a dozen, to be turned in the trade: and not only that, but that here was a good opportunity to get his own daily and necessary drink for nothing, as one may say. Accordingly, confidiun nought to living soul, on his return to his native ditch, he raked and scraped together all the money that he had made or saved, or could beg, borrow, or steal, and, by the very first ship that came out, in 1610, arrived with his stock of miserywhich I truly believe, to make the matter worse, he smuggled. For convenience sake (his own and his cus- tomers) he established himself in closa proximity to the Council-Wigwam, just on the corner where the war-path di- verged from the fishing-path, built him- self a rude cabin, and thence dispensed liquid comfort, gunpowder, and fish- hooks, to the rejoicing savagesfor a consideration in wampum or skins. I wish I had time and space to de- scribe the ecstacy into which fell the great sachem, the first time Potzlinger allowed him more than enough :for the dream which I dreamed that he dreamed is a very wonderful dream in- deed. But I forbear. Nor shall I go into details of Potzlingers growing for- tunes. Suffice to say that he waxed rich amain, and came to be a man, by virtue of his business tact and assiduity, of great influence and authority among the sachems of The Manhadoes; of so much, indeed, that he was at one time known, both far and near, from the borders of The Massachusetts to the confines of Coacjuanock, as Emperor Potzlinger. And now, Diedrich Knickerbocker, historian, I have a parting word to say to you. In dissenting from so great an authority, I nevertheless feel safe in throwing myself again upon the pal- pable facts. In New York, dreamers there are noneblowers and trumpeters, how few! Whereas, I desire to ask, in what family of this composite public of ours, whether th~ be Manhadees, Yank- ees, Pah-dees, Row-dees, Ta-ma-nees, Shod-ecswhether they be Mynheers o; Lagerbeerswhether they be Cuff-ees, Rumpubs, or evex Numberwunsare not the features of Potzlinger to be traced! Yes, this is the true story of the beginning of the letropolis, Diedrich Knickerbocker (corrupted by Washing- ton Irving, it may be) to the contrary not- withstanding. Yes, Potzlinger founded NewYork, andthis great cityhasitsgerm in, and deduces its development from, THE COENEII GHOCEIIY. What more reasonable and just, then, than that the corner groceries should govern it now l 1868.] THE CARPENTER. 66 THE CARPENTER. A CHRISTMAS STORY. I. IT was the Winter of the year when the armies of Grant and Lee were locked in the death-grapple for Richmond, and the night of war, involved in incerti- tude and disaster, with lurid gleams of hope leaping and vanishing like can- non-flashes in the smoke of conflict, was yet, unknown to any, darkly working into its triumphant dawn. At that time there stood, as there still stands, in the open country a few miles north of Washington, the estate familiarly known round about as Elka- iiah Dyzers Placea place owned by an old gentleman-farmer of that name, and occupied by him and his old wife and their sQns. A pleasant place to see at any time, but chiefly in the growing seasons, or in rich summer-light, with its ample slopes of well-tilled farm and orchard land spreading back from the dusty highway; the light-green crops in ordered rows and plots upon the dry- brown soilthe pennoned maize, the wheat, the garden products; the gnarled old apple-trees, and peach and pear trees, laden with their fruitage; here, a deep- green pasture-field, with kine and horses ~ feeding; there, the dusky distant barns; and beyond, master of all, and set far back from the highway, to which its flank was. turned, the large and quaint old two-story brick dwelling, painted in a neutral tint made more indefinite by age, and relieved against a broad depth of dark umbrageous woodland, towering on the other side; high-stud- ded in its rooms, but seeming dispro- portionately low because of its great length; with stunted chimneys, and a short, sharp pitch of forward roof scooping from the ridge-pole in a long descending sweep to the dwarfed back end,a place upon which one might gaze satisfied, and dream the old Vir- gilian dream of teeming earth, and bees, and perfumed breezes; and the odorous breath of kine; and herbs and grass; and the contented low of oxen; and milk from amber udders foaming in the pail under the rosy-circled star; and sun-browned, labor, and the deep smile of harvests; and life robust, and sweet, and sane; and home, with rustic cheer, with friends, with kindred, the sweet and hardy wife, the sprawl and laugh of sturdy babes, wealth, joy, large-hand- ed hospitality; and plenty flowering over the ravages of battle, and peace emerging with full sheaves of blessings and songs and gifts and garlands, from the cloven heart of war. Now, however, the place lay dim in the winter-light of Christmas Eve. The night had set in. Here and there, re- mote and at wide distances, were soli- tary and sullen gleams in the murk from the windows of other dwellings. No sound came from the bosom of the dark peace, the deep tranquillity, the winter loneliness, nor was there nny motion save that of a cold and gentle breeze moving noiselessly through the obscure and frozen air. But under the vast night-blue, thick-studded with the innumerable stars, and beyond the un- certain shapes of bushes and low trees, and the dark swales of the farm, the dim old house showed joyously, with all its lower windows overflowing with festal light, and every curtain drawn away, as if that the living radiance, composed of the steady beam of lamps and the jovial dance of open fires, might the more comfort the darkness. If aught there were to chequer its senti- ment of Christmas cheer, it was in the aspect of one window in the forward end, upon whose panes the lustre of firelight only, flashed and failed duskily, sometimes quivering up with a bright struggle, then sinking into a dark glow, like a sense of the felicity of the season

1868.] THE CARPENTER. 66 THE CARPENTER. A CHRISTMAS STORY. I. IT was the Winter of the year when the armies of Grant and Lee were locked in the death-grapple for Richmond, and the night of war, involved in incerti- tude and disaster, with lurid gleams of hope leaping and vanishing like can- non-flashes in the smoke of conflict, was yet, unknown to any, darkly working into its triumphant dawn. At that time there stood, as there still stands, in the open country a few miles north of Washington, the estate familiarly known round about as Elka- iiah Dyzers Placea place owned by an old gentleman-farmer of that name, and occupied by him and his old wife and their sQns. A pleasant place to see at any time, but chiefly in the growing seasons, or in rich summer-light, with its ample slopes of well-tilled farm and orchard land spreading back from the dusty highway; the light-green crops in ordered rows and plots upon the dry- brown soilthe pennoned maize, the wheat, the garden products; the gnarled old apple-trees, and peach and pear trees, laden with their fruitage; here, a deep- green pasture-field, with kine and horses ~ feeding; there, the dusky distant barns; and beyond, master of all, and set far back from the highway, to which its flank was. turned, the large and quaint old two-story brick dwelling, painted in a neutral tint made more indefinite by age, and relieved against a broad depth of dark umbrageous woodland, towering on the other side; high-stud- ded in its rooms, but seeming dispro- portionately low because of its great length; with stunted chimneys, and a short, sharp pitch of forward roof scooping from the ridge-pole in a long descending sweep to the dwarfed back end,a place upon which one might gaze satisfied, and dream the old Vir- gilian dream of teeming earth, and bees, and perfumed breezes; and the odorous breath of kine; and herbs and grass; and the contented low of oxen; and milk from amber udders foaming in the pail under the rosy-circled star; and sun-browned, labor, and the deep smile of harvests; and life robust, and sweet, and sane; and home, with rustic cheer, with friends, with kindred, the sweet and hardy wife, the sprawl and laugh of sturdy babes, wealth, joy, large-hand- ed hospitality; and plenty flowering over the ravages of battle, and peace emerging with full sheaves of blessings and songs and gifts and garlands, from the cloven heart of war. Now, however, the place lay dim in the winter-light of Christmas Eve. The night had set in. Here and there, re- mote and at wide distances, were soli- tary and sullen gleams in the murk from the windows of other dwellings. No sound came from the bosom of the dark peace, the deep tranquillity, the winter loneliness, nor was there nny motion save that of a cold and gentle breeze moving noiselessly through the obscure and frozen air. But under the vast night-blue, thick-studded with the innumerable stars, and beyond the un- certain shapes of bushes and low trees, and the dark swales of the farm, the dim old house showed joyously, with all its lower windows overflowing with festal light, and every curtain drawn away, as if that the living radiance, composed of the steady beam of lamps and the jovial dance of open fires, might the more comfort the darkness. If aught there were to chequer its senti- ment of Christmas cheer, it was in the aspect of one window in the forward end, upon whose panes the lustre of firelight only, flashed and failed duskily, sometimes quivering up with a bright struggle, then sinking into a dark glow, like a sense of the felicity of the season 56 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. laboring in an old mans breast with shadows of trouble and care. A moment, and the fire upon that hearth, leaping in evanescent gleams amidst the snakes of smoke which coiled and swirled around the huddle of logs and faggots heaped in the cavernous chimney, and conjoined in one great smoky serpent which fled writhing up the flue, flapped out in slieets with a dense, crackling roar, swallowing them all, making the burnished brass tops of the straddling fire-dogs shine like balls of gold, and filling with a flood of tawny splendor the large old-fashioned room, antiquely furnished, odorous with the dry sweetness of the abundant wreaths of ground-pine which adorned it, and so shadowed on walls and ceiling with red-berried, dark-green branches, that it looked like a cave of holly. At once there was a sudden movement among the family all gathered there, sitting or standing in a group a little distance from ~he hearth, watching the fire; and old Elkanah Dyzer himself who had remained for some time in his huge oaken chair, with his hands upon his knees, and a look of peevish gloom upon his massive and resolute features, suddenly sprang up, six feet four, mighty in brawn, and magnificent in stalwart age, cut three clear pigeon- wings in the air with all the grace and agility of his youth of twenty-one, and came down lightly on the floor in a grand attitude, with a snap of his fin- gers like a pistol-crack, a proud toss of his haughty head, a stormful and gen- erous laugh, and deep from his full- breathed lungs a ringing Whoop I and aha for the good fire t There was a general stir, and a Inur- mur of soft, mingling laughter, and all eyes were turned on the old man ad- miring~y. His son, John Dyzer, a tall, erect, ret~iccnt-looking young man, with the military air and black moustache derived from his year~ s service as a Union volunteer at the opening of the war, straightened from his lounging posture near the mantelpiece, and watched his father with half-suppressed approving mirth flushing his impassive [Jan. and handsome visage. His wife, Emily, a lovely blonde, dressed in white and cherry-ribbons for the evening, who was sitting on a low seat on the other side of the fireplace near her daughter, Lilian, turned her charming head to gaze on the old giant; her gentle face, framed in its drooping gold-brown tresses (and a little pale and wan, as be- came the mother of two children, one dead), lighting with amusement, her lips parting to show the smiling teeth, and a deeper lustre glowing in her blue, earnest eyes; and the tiny Lilian, sit- ting by her in a small rocking-chair, a fair aiid chubby tot of five years old, in a blue dress, with short yellow curls, and pale, pensive countenance, the in- fant Madonna of a stiff lubber doll which she was rocking to its staring sleep, dropped this diabolical fetish of all girl-babyhood, to clap her smali hands, crimsoning with glee; while the youngest son, Tom, a fine, lissome, innocent, ruddy young fellow of twenty, deep in the bashful tremors and de- spondencies of first-love for pretty Fan- ny Redwood, a guest from the city, now up-stairs at her toilette, and actu- ally with a crick in his neck from hav- ing kept his head for about twenty minutes turned over his shoulder, as he sat with outstretched legs, and hands in his pockets, watching for her t~ come down, quite forgot her for about a quarter of a minute, and laughed long and loud; and a happy smile ap- peared even upon the sad, calm face of old Mrs. Dyzer, turnedwith its tight lace- cap and brown hair streaked-with gray, to gaze at her good mana face comely yet, in spite of years and sorrow, stately even in its smiling with the dignity of suffering borne in silenceshe who rarely smiled now since the loss of her two sons George, a soldier of the Union, reported missing at Fredericks- burt, and long given up as dead; Ru- pert, the first-born, a soldier in the rebel army, never heard from, banned by his father, his name forbidden to be spoken in that house forever. I cant do it like you, father, said John Dyzer curtly, his mind upon the 1868.1 Tun OAflPENTER. 5T marvellous pigeon-wing. Old mans ahead of me yet. Young mans no- where. Guess theres no young men now- a-days like father, said Tom, admir- ingly. Elkanah D~zer smiled like an old lion flattered by his cubs, showing his N teeth, every one of the thirty-two still white and sound; glanced down at himself in his evening-party costume of brown old-fashioned clothes, double- breasted buff vest, and frilled shirt- bosom, with which his big hand toyed; passed the hand over his smooth-shaven, healthy-colored face, and up on the ample dome of his bald head, and down to the locks of short, curly gray hair, which still pretty thickly fringed his temples; and then, as one satisfied that he was in good trim, moved his proud visage slowly around, smilingly survey- ing the group with broad, blue eyes, well-opened under their high-arched, shaggy brews. Father Dyzer, I believe youre as vain as any peacock, said Johns wife, Emily, in her most charming voice. Elkanahs face instantly put on that look of helpless confession, which the strongest of the sons of men assume, and fancy bland indifference, when de- tected by a woman. Cant do that l he said, reverting to the pigeon-wing with the idea of re- gaining lost ground. Why, thats very easy. So. And he did it again. 0 vanity! vanity! exclaimed Emi- ly, with charming mockery. Father J~yzer, you want to tempt me to ask you to dance with me this evening. Little Lilian at once crimsoned with intense elfin merriment. Oh, grandpas going to dance with mamma! she cried, in her small sil- very voice. Grandpa, are you going to dance with my mamma when the neighbors and friends come in? Neighbors and friends! Hah! well discriminated! muttered the old man with a snort. Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings. Semi-Union neighbors and semi-secesh neighbors. Six-water grog, anyway. How many friends, well know before long. Before long. His face darkened for an instant into savage gloom; then, with a toss of his head, he smiled his leonine smile. Dance with your mamma, midget? he went on in his sounding voice. No; cant dance with her. Besides, shed rather dance with somebody elsewith Faulkner. Emily bent her head quickly, and, spite of herself, colored scarlet. The old man looked slowly around, serenely smiling, with a purring satisfaction, feeling, with a sort of innocent vindic- tive complacency, that he had paid her back at the rate of a four-hundred- pound shot for a very small bullet. In an instant she looked up, lightly laugh- ing, with a quick glance at her hus- band. His eyes were intently bent upon the floor; a slight frown dented his forehead, and his face was cold and grave. As she saw his look, a spasm of almost hate for him contracted her heart, and quivered away in a hurt feel- ing and a flood of passionate love, the light laughter all the while upon her face and lips. Faulkner? she said gaily. Why, Father Dyzer, I like my old sweetheart, Faulkner, very much, especially because hes such a friend of Johns, and so dear to us all; but Id as lief dance with you as him, and Id rather dance with my own husband than either of you. John Dyzers face did not change, and, as one not hearing what was said, he slowly walked away. Emilys heart recoiled, and became like stone against him. Still smiling gaily, she suddenly became aware that old Elkanah was staring down at her with open mouth and features all wreathed in glee. Why, hear the girl! lie burst out, with a jovial roar. Theres a girl, now! Theres a speech for you. Shed rather dance with her own husband than either of us! Spoken like a lady! John, you dog, why dont you down and kiss your wife for that, like a man! Tut, fathertnt, tut, tnt, tnt, tnt, replied John Dyzer. Emily could have stabbed him. 58 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Jan. What! you wont! Then, by Gad- ger and Badger, I will I cried the old man, laughing. And would, with tlie lumbago. He made one stride that shook the floor, and would have stooped to kiss her, but she sprang up from her low seat, glowing like a rose, and, smiling like an angel, flung her arms around him,and kissed him again and again; then dancing baekward, suddenly turn- ed, and flew from the room with a speed that swept the air into perfume behind her flying skirts, and made the abundant sprays of holly tremble. Elkanah stood, open-mouthed, flush- ed, the hot tears very near his eyes, staring, like one dazed, into the pas- sage where she had vanished, full of affection for her, full of stupefaetion, and, in the general whirl of his faculties, puzzling his very unfeminine many s head to know what it all meant. By the gods of war! he muttered to hipiself, somethings the matter with that girl. Now, whats up? He turned again to the fire, and stood cogitating. Well, grandpa, suddenly arose with entire irrelevance the small silvery voice, the question is, who are you going to dance with? She said it so queerly, and with such gravity and earnestness, that Elkanab, used as lie was to her old-fashioned ways, rolled his eyes down at her, va- cantly wondering. Dance with? he returned in a mo- ment. With you, little midget. She looked very sorrowful instantly, and shook her curly head slowly. No, grandpa, not with me,. because Im too lame this eveningtoo lame. See, now. And rising, with the stiff doll in her arms, she limped to and fro for his inspection; then gravely sat down again in her little rocking-chair, with a face pensive and pale. John Dyzer, who was softly and slow- ly pacing the room, paused in his walk, then coming to his little girl, bent down like the good and tender father that he was, and kissed her very fondly; and she, abruptly dropping dolly to fling her little arms around his neck, mur- inured, My only papa. She had once fallen, and fractured her ankle, and was sometimes troubled now with a swelling of the knee, which made her lame. Never mind, Lily, said her father. When the children come, youll have a good time playing with them. And youll get well, and dance, one of these daysdance like a jumping-jackdance like grandpa himself. No more dancing for me! broke forth Elkanali from his ruminations; not till my boy George comes home. Then P11 dance. But thatll never be nevernever! He turned his back to the fire, and stood with his hands behind him, ab- sently musing. Every one was silent. In a moment, his wandering eyes hap- pened to rest upon the face of his wife. She was sitting in her sober dress, her hands placidly folded together, her pa- tient and noble features composed and calm; but on her cheeks, in the tawny firelight, was the glisten of tears. Why, what is it, dear old lady? said Elkanah,in a booming undertone. What ails the old mans darling? Ah, I forgotthinking of George. Of both, she said calmly. Elkanahs massive features darkened, though but for an instant. Always the same, he said, almost harshly. 0 woman womankind! Yet, when he talked of going, your anger was beyond all. And when he went, it almost broke your heart. Now, after all hes doneafter all the bitter- ness and trouble hes brought upon us in our old age, your spirits soft for him. And yours, too, Elkanab, she said quickly. I stamp it down! returned the old man, fiercely. I cant help a feeling, now-and-then. Nature tussles in me, thinking of the good, sweet boy I had before he got to be the ingrate son, the vile rebel, the breaker of our hearts, the dishonor of my house, the traitor to his country. But I stamp it down! he hissed, striking his foot upon the floor. C 1808j THE CA1~PENTER. 59 Oh, the villain! By the Everlasting! if he ever darkens this threshold, Ill lay him dead! Hush, Elkanah I cried his wife, with a tiashing eye, and her face roused and severe. Recollect yourself! My children are always my children. No such language before me. Such words put you far from mefarther even than your thought of him has already put you. Now, silence! The old man shrunk a little, shrugged his shoulders, and relapsed into sulky quietude. Its the only thing that has ever come between us, he said presently, in a sort of grieved growl, and with a peevish and grumbling visage. The only thing. Well, few old married folks can say as much as that. Now, this comes from talking of forbidden sub- jects. And I was wrong to say any thing, anyway. Ruth, my dear he stepped forward, smiling, withhis left hand in his frilled bosom and the other extended, and stood in courtly attitude, his right leg well-advanced, bowing to his wife with the magnificent old-time courtesy your pardon. Forgive the hot old man. Let it be peace between us. On Christmas Eve, my dearon Christmas Eve. For a moment she did not move. Thea slowly, with a faint flush still on her severe countenance, she reluctantly put her left hand into his. He hesi- tated a second, then bent and kissed her fingers, stepped backward with a grandiose bow, and stood in silence. Going from me, he presently mur- mured to himself; shaking his head mournfully. After all these many years. Wealth, home, friendsall go- ing; the family breaking up, the old ties, the old existence, all going. And the old wife going too. There was a sound of rustling dresses and soft footsteps on the stairs. Hah! he burst out again, abruptly reviving, with a laugh, here she comes! 0 Muse of Poetry, descend! Heres Fanny Redwood! Lovely as the dawn. The blush-rose is comingwith her rose-dress on. And itsO that I were young again! A bachelor Id be. And Fannyd have a suitor. For shed just suit me. Amidst the d~livery of this impromptu effusion, and the general laughter and applause which followed, a lovely young girl, curtseying, smiling, and blushing, entered the room, followed by Emily. She was of middling stature, and beau- tifully formed; had dark hair and eyes; a heart-shaped face, suffused with deli- cate bloom; an innocent red mouth; an air dreamful and maidenly; and moved with motions like caresses, natu- rally and often curtseying, and graceful as a solitary doe. She was exquisitely attired in a soft, rose-colored silk, with lace corsage, which glistened in the tawny sheen of the fire, and was alto- gether as fair a creature as ever stood beneath the dark-green holly. Tom instantly took his hands out of his pockets, and rose, advancing, and droop- ing from his unconstrained posture into about as awkward a young man, con- scious of his boots and solicitous of his neck-tie, as breathed in the District of Columbia. To add to his distress, the lovely Fanny, as he drew near her, and an interview seemed inevitable, some- how glided past him with one of her soft caressing curtseys in the most natu- ral way in the world, leaving it only open to him, in decent self-respect, to walk on to the wall, and stand gazing with a rueful countenance,as if it was what he meant to do from the first, at the crossed American flags, drooping in~ looped folds, with the tattered and broken regimental fin0 his brother John had carried into battle, hanging there between them, surrounded with deep garlands of ground-pine and holly branches. There! rang his fathers voice, as the flagged and garlanded wall sudden- ly darkened. Down goes the fire again. Upon my soul, Tom, I believe you let Daniel Snow pick out green wood for the hearths. Phew! Just see the smoke! I didnt, father, replied Tom, look- ing at the logs, from whose red glow great serpents of smoke were down- 60 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Jan. shooting, and coiling over backward, to conjoin with the huge boa which fled whirreting up the chimjiey. Its just the same wood thats in the other rooms and that burns well enough. The old man glanced to his right through the open door of the adjoining room, and from thence to the room be- yond, both of which were in full illumi- nation; then went across the lighted entry into the room opposite, and saw that the two rooms beyond that were also all ablaze. Well, he said, coming back, old uncle Peter Dyzer, if his ghost walks to-night, must satisfy his love of a free fire in every room but this. lola! Here it comes again! And as he spoke, out flapped the roaring flame once more, and lit with full splendor the leafy chamber. Elka- nah rubbed his hands gleefully, and took out his great gold watch. Six oclock, he announced. A goode hour yet before any one comes unless its Faulkner in from town. He had hardly spoken, before there was a loud rat-tat-too at the hall-door. The old man glanced behind him at the side-door, which led directly into the room. I wonder if thats Faulkner, he said, smilingly. Hes usually in on us from this side.Here you, Toni; youve left a hatchet on the hearth. Take it away now. Yes, fatherin a minute, respond- ed Tom, intent upon his charmer, and forgetting the mandate directly. Presently the old negro, Daniel Sno man-of-all-work on the estate with oth- ers, was seen shuffling through the pas- sage, in full company rig, to the door. A moment, and there was a bounding step, a mellow laugh, and a rich, gay, quick, melodious voice, intermingling with the soft quacking African re- sponses of the delighted ~Daniel. A five-dollar greenback for old Daniel. (Yes, sah; thank ye, sah.) Knocked just to bring him on for my Christmas gift. (Yes, sah; yes, sah.) Five for him, if he comes, said I. (Yes, sah.) With a merry Christmas to his good old heart. (Yes, sah; the same, sab. Much obleeged, sah.) And a merry Christmas to all here! With the last words, young Faulkner danced over the threshold, in elegant costume, and stood with indescribable cordial grace, his extended kid-gloved hands thrown open in playful greeting, while the phantom of black Daniel, wagging his up-thrown, mirthful head, and showing all his ivories, crossed the passage behind him. The next second he had crumpled off his gloves with an air of sleight-of-hand, and was moving, amidst a tumult of welcomes, from per- son to person, with laughing fascination and gay, tender charm. Of middle height; slender, sinewy, and elegant; a figure that naturally fell into beauti- ful and alluring attitudes; with light- brown curling locks, half shading his low, dense, passionate forehead; dark glances, witching and melancholy; rud- dy chees; high nose; a manly mous- tache, coquettishly upturned at the ends; a beautiful laughing mouth; a bold but dimpled chin. Well might women love him! But, Scipio-Hylas that he was, he kept them all at bay. Brave, sweet, loving, joyous, ardent, amative, proud, generous; well-read, well-bred, proficient in every manly exercise; one who fenced, danced, sang divinely, wrote charming verses, talked brilliantly, had in him the slum- bering spells of eloquence; one good at a hunt, a regatta, on a horse, with a rifle; loving all pretty girls lightly and purely, none deeply; very gallant and attentive to old women; friendly to all men, and easily loved by them; in great request and favor with every body, chief- ly with the ladies, for ball, theatre, opera, saloon, dinner, escort, commis- sion; a Paladin in the bud, but now a perfect squire of dames. Add, as a sin- gular thing in one so amative, a young man of perfectly unspotted life. This, partly from excessive imagination, never realizing its ideal; partly from natural purity and haughty self-respect, dis- daining to stoop below the vision; chiefly, because in him, passion like, ambition, like his gifts, his attainments, 1868.] ThE CARPENTER. 61 his latent power, lay withdrawn and inert in a temperament of dream. Thus Michael Faulkner, at the age of twenty- six, strangely young in appearance, and looking like some lovely youth of twen- ty; rich in his own right; son of the old rich General; once a sweetheart of Emilys, and for years a fast friend to John, to whom he had been the gayest and friendliest rival, and for whom he cherished a deeper attachment than was usual with him. They were friends still. John met him like the rest, betraying no other sign of change towards him than might have been conveyed in a yet more iron grip Qf his strong hand. He was in that uncertain mood in which one, tor- tured by the deep suspicion that his beloved wife is drifting from him into love with his bosom-friendas yet sus- picious of her only, and unable yet to determine whether the friend is also a just object for doubtsuspends judg- ment on both in wary scrutiny. What was the case? Subtle, and hard to stateharder for many people to comprehend. There are seasons in a womans life when her conjugal love, oppressed by the monotony, the com- monplace, the humdrum, cold familiar- ity, the perpetual same intimacy, be- comes not dead, but dormant, and ex- istence, void of the old romantic joy, creeps on in weariness and indefinite sad yearning. In such a season, Emily, with perfect innocence, found a sudden and novel relief, fed by many sweet memories and associations, in the wild and tender fascinations that enhaloed Faulkner. He, for his part, drew un- consciously to her who in earlier days had deeply touched his fancy, but now was transformed to his imagination with all the added powerful pensive charm of her completed womanliness, the divine dower of the joys and griefs of her maternity. The mutual spell was strong; innocent in itself, they in- nocently yielded to it; and so far all was welL What is this experience? Twoa man and a womanfriends, new-comers to an enchanting rural solitude, have wandered, an hour after their arrival, to the banks of a strange stream. There is a boat tethered to the shore: let us enter, and push off a little way. How sweet to sit thus, hand in hand, lost in reverie, floating tranquilly in the purple evening on the bosom of the placid water! How sweet the dreamful drift- ing! how soothing the smooth-slipping flow of the bright tide! how lulling the even, all-pervading murmur in the trance of the sunset-air !Ah, that gen- tle gliding is the flow of doom; that magic murmur is the roar of the cata- ract. They are in the current of Nia- gara! Standing, sitting, walking about the room, taking his part in the talk and merriment, John Dyzer ever kept an eye upon his wife and friend. She was sit- ting in her low seat near little Lilian when Faulkner came in, and, with a mad pulse leaping in his own breast, her husband saw her bend her averted head over the childs dress, smoothing its folds, and marked the quicker pal- pitation of her bosom. It was only when Faulkner, in his tour of saluta- tion among the group, paused, bowing, for an instant before her, that shelooked up hurriedly, half-timidly, into his face, smiling, with heightened color, her head drooping again as he passed by. This, too, her husband observed. And now, with ever-increasing certainty in regard to both, and with a stern and solemn misery at his heart, he followed their movements as they wandered about the room, and every little while for a mo- ment drew together, and marked the recurring indefinite signs of love be- tween themof love forever ending and beginning, retiring, advancing, and deepening on and onhe pausing near her with clasped, drooping hands, and tender, clinging eyes, and all-imploring charm; she, rapt and innocent, im- merged in reverie, with veiled and wan- dering glances, and bosom quicklier rising and falling, and paler bloom the enchanted dream, the languor, the slumber, the relaxed postures, the tell- tale looks, the softer smiling, the lin- gering, low replies, the gracious silences 62 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Jan. the unconscious lovers, lulled by the siren music of their hearts, unmeditat- ing wrong, unthinking harm, vaguely entering the current of the sweet and terrible stream. There was another observerold El- kanah. He had noticed for some time, in a rather purblind way, the thicken- ing intimacy between Faulkner and Emily; and now, quickened by what had occurred within the few minutes past, his broad blue eyes, under their pent-house brows, were vigilant upon the pair, and every moment a dreadful suspicion of what already existed, or was coming on, between them, slaked by his hearty fondness for Faulkner and his love for Emily, was kindling in his fiery brain. To his other troubles, this one added, he thought, would be worse than all. He had a way of talking to himself alone or in company, in an inarticulate bass undertone, like the booming of some. enormous bee; and presently, as first one and then another of the group roamed away across the passage into the rooms beyond, leaving him stand- ing on the hearth, with only the little child sitting silently near him, it was in this voice that he entered upon a re- capitulation of all that flung columns of darkness among the lights of his Christmas Eve. Something wrong, I , he said, comino on, or come already, betwebn Faulkner and Emily. 0 house of troubles, troubles! But it cant be. Therell be murder done on Faulkner if such a things afoot. And whatll become of Emily! And my son John going back to the war, with his life spoiled and his heart broken! And little Lily ailingperhaps to die, like the other. George lost and dead. Ru- pert worse than dead, if hes living the infernal young, heart-rending vil- lain! Every thing goinggoing. Even poor little Toms got a girl that goes from him. All going together. And ruin hanging over me. The old home, where Ive lived so long, going from me in my old age. How can I ever break it to them! Theyve got to know that we must soon leave all to the auc- tioneer, and begin the world again, among strangers. Country going too, Im afraid. The blaze of victory lights the Shenandoah; but oh, the corpses, the corpses! Grant in the dead-lock at Richmond. Shermans made the grand march, and now hes in for the mad, belly-breaking wrastle. And the old wife going from me. Ah, thats the worstthe worst of all! And I to keep up stout heart, and be merry and bold, on Christmas Eve !the last here the lastthe last! 0 my God! my God! Tie ceased abruptly, and sat down in Emilys low chair beside the child, his hands drooping between his knees, his gloomy visage bent upon the leaping antlers of the flame. For a little while there was complete silence in the hol- lied room, only broken by the murmur of distant voices and laughter from the other apartments. Grandpa, at length said little Lilian, in her plaintive voice, I want to hear my Olian harp very, very much indeed. The old man smiled. Do you, darling? And so you shall, if the wind wills, he answered. Lets see. Where shall we put it, so that you wont get the draught? Here, I reckon. He had risen as he spoke, and, taking from a shelf near by the iEolian harp, he opened the window on the left-hand side of the fireplace a little way, and set the instrument in the aperture; then resumed his seat and attitude beside the child. For a minute all was stilL But pres- ently stole up on the silence, holy and solitary as the breaking dawn, the long, low strain of remote and thrilling sweet- ness, wild, delicate, and lonely, and hung hovering for a moment in the charmed air, then failed away in a dim, mysterious cadence, which, ended, yet seemed to linger, like the spirit of bright things departed, of tender summers gone. Little Lilian listened with a face of breathless ecstacy. The wind-harp was 1868.] Tnu CARPENTER. 63 again still, remaining soundless in the minutes that followed, and the child finally resigned herself with a little sigh. Grandpa, she said presently, what was Jesus Christ l The old man glanced at her smiling- ly, with his never-failing surprise at the oddity of her abrupt questions. A mechanic, my dear, he presently answered. What our fine Southern gentlemen call a common mud-sill, he added, sardonically. A carpenter God bless him! Lilian quietly sat, cogitating his reply, while the old man wagged his sturdy head, grimly chuckling over the signifi- cance of his response with an enjoyment beyond words. Grandpa, the silver elfin-voice be- gan again, will Jesus Christ come here this evening l Elkanah stared at her in blank won- derment, then burst into a bellow of laughter. Well, you are a young one! he said, wagging his old head with hearty amusement. If I ever heard the like of that! Now, what put that into your noddle, Lilykin l 4 put it in my own self, she an- swered with intense positiveness. But will he , grand pal Well, I dont know. He might, replied Elkanah, jocosely. Because hes alive, grandpa, ear- nestly pursued the child. Old uncle Peter always said he was alive, and going round doing good. Only that hed grown old and gray walking ia the world so many hundred yearsjust as old loafer Tomeny painted his pic- ture in there on the fireplace. And thats all true, grandpa; aint it? Of course, replied the waggish El- kanah, tickled to his very midriff. Well, then, I guess he might come, ontinued the little prattler, with a sat- isfied air. And I wish he would, for I want to see him very, very much. Elkanah laid back his head, and roared and shook with merriment. Fi- nally, subsiding, mellowed to the core with mirth, he relapsed into his former position, his hands between his knees, his head bent forward, gazing at the elk-horned flames, and tittering secretly. The little girl sat sedately, taking it all with perfect seriousness. Now, sup-posing he was to come here this evening, she resumed and we was sitting here, and talking, and he should knock at the doorand then, you know, we wouldnt hear him, grandpa. The flames suddenly died down, in- volved in light-blue smoke, aad the hearth gave forth a strange and lovely amber-light upon the darkening room. At the same moment there was a faint, sweet chord of mysterious, trembling music from the harp. Well said Elkanab, what then I Then continued the child, he would say, Behold, I stand at the door, and knock. The fire became so strangely low, and cast so weird a light, that the old man felt a sort of wonder creeping over him, and, without replying, or moving from his crouching attitude, turned his face slowly around, with the singular glow and cross-bars of shade upon his fea- tures, and scanned the shadowed room, embowered in holy foliage, and hal- lowed by that dusky, amber radiance. The distant voices had ceased, and the house was still. The unusual light, the breathless hush that lay upon all, sur- prised him, and he slowly turned his head back again, with a secret thrill. At that moment there was a gentle knock at the door. II. Elkanah did not move, but only re- volved his great eyes and stared ia blank astonishment at the little girl. She sat very placidly, looking at the fire. There was a moments pause. Come in, he boomed, in a stento- nan tone. At that instant a red cinder flew from the hearth, with a loud crack, upon Lilians dress, and in the momentary alarmed diversion of his attention, as 64 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Jan. he hastened to fillip it back into the fire, the old man heard the opening and shutting of the door. it was with a feeling of vacant amaze, almost rising into fright, that, turning his head, as he did immediately, he saw a large, gray stranger standing in the room. The old man rose slowly from his seat to his full height, with wondering eyes astare upon the new-coiner. The latter stood composedly gazing at him. He was tall and stalwart, with uncov- ered head; a brow not large, but full, and seamed with kindly wrinkles; a complexion of rosy clearness; heavy- lidded, firm blue eyes, which had a steadfast and draining regard; a short, thick, gray beard almost white, and thinly-flowing dark-gray hair. His coun- tenance expressed a rude sweetness. He was dressed in a long, dark overcoat, much worn, and of such uncertain fash- ion that it almost seemed a gaberdine. As he stood there in the gracious dark- ling light, he looked an image of long and loving experience with men, of im- movable composure and charity, of se- rene wisdom, of immortal rosy youth in reverend age. A faint perfume exhaled from his garments. In the lapel of his coat he wore a sprig of holly. His left hand, in which he also held his shape- less hat, carried a carpenters plane. Elkanah stood, almost quaking in- wardly in the presence of this august stranger, in whose aspect were singu- larly blended the prophet and the child. The child in him inspired love; the prophet, awe. He drew and he re- pelled. This must be yours, said the stran- ger, in clear, slow accents, sweet and vibrating, extending, as hs spoke, the implement in his hand. I found it at your gate-post on the highway. Why, yes, faltered Elkanah, with a slight start, taking the plane. Toms work, I know. He was shaving away there where the gate shut hard, and, just like the little love-daft noddy, he leaves the tool behind him. I am a wayfarer, said the stranger, after a pause, and would like permis- sion to remain with you a little while. Why, certainly. God bless me! what am I thinking of? abruptly broke forth Elkanab, recovering immediately at the chance of offering hospitality, and beaming into smiles. You are welcome, sir, right welcome. My name is Elkanah Dyzer. S.t ye down, sir sit ye down. HahI spang! Up goes the merry fire! he cried, laying the plane upon the mantel, and bustling forward his own oak chair for the stran- ger, as the blaze laughed upward with a flood of light. You are right wel- come. Your hand, sir, and, bowing with stately courtesy, he extended his own. The stranger slowly took the proffered hand, with a pressure so gradual, so cordIal, and so strong, that Elkanah felt it down deep into his very heart. As the sublime Scripture phrase has it, his bowels yearned to this new friend, and, despite the reverent distance which the lofty and sweet reserve of the stran- ger maintained, he felt a sudden inti- macy as of many years, born from his quality of manly love. At the same time, his old brain was still in a daze of wondering confusion. Sit ye down, sirsit ye down, he chirruped, stepping backward with a wave of both hands; while the stran- ger, slow in all his motions, paused standing beside the chair. And if I might not be thonght over-bold, sir, he went on, confusedly engaged with the odd coincidence of the strangers ad- vent and personal aspect with the childs words, what might I call your na occupationthe name of your occupa- tionnoyesO dear me, dear me! And Elkanah tweaked his great eagle nose in comical bewilderment, some- what dubious what he had asked for, but impressed that it was the name, after all, as he intended. I am a carpenter, said the stranger, simply, in a rather low but distinct voice. My name__~ Ah, yes; excuse me, said Elkanah, unaware that he was interrupting, in the haste of his flurried belief that he had got the information he meant to ask for. Carpenter. A name I like 1868.] Tnz CAIIPENTzR. 65 wellas I do you, sir, if youll excuse an old mans frankness. Sit ye down, Mr. Carpenter. You are right wel- come. The stranger bent his grand and gen- tle head with a slow smile, like one amused at the new name accidentally conferred upon him, yet well content to let it be so; and, tossing his shapeless hat upon a footstool in the angle be- hind the fireplace, took the oaken chair. Little Lilian, who had been intently looking at him with an air of breathless satisfaction, and had not uttered one word, now rose, deposited dolly care- fully upon his hat, limped back be- tween his knees, and stood a-tiptoe with her small arms upreached to him. He took her up instantly on his breast, and kissed her with a long kiss upon the mouth. I know who you are, she whis- pered eagerly. And I wont tell no- body. The stnjnger made no answer. She snuggled close upon his bosom, and into his beard, for a minute or so, in perfect quietude; then suddenly clam- bered down, and resumed her seat in the little chair, with an air of confiden- tial and solemn gratification. I declare, said Elkannh, softly laughing, and rubbing his hands as he sat down before the fire near the stran- ger, its the queerest thing I ever knew. Do you know, Mr. Carpenter, you quite gave me a turn when you came in? Ive got the nerves of an ox, anyway, but I tell you I felt queerish for about the first time in my life. Well, now, it was the oddest thing! And by Gee and Dee, odd it is still I Ill tell you how it was, he con- tinued, after a pause, before the slow- speaking carpenter could reply. Lit- tle magpie there was twittering a lot of stuff we have over here a good deal in the family. Of course, you never heard of my old uncle Peter iDyzer Old miser Dyzer, skin a fly, sir, Sell the skin, and turn the money in, as the boys used to rhyme it about him. I inherited this fine old place from him. von. i..~5 Well, of all the queer, odd, eccentric, funny old chaps that ever weremy, my !But he wasnt loony on a bargain, sirno, indeed; and hed plenty of hard horse-sense, and took good care of his property, you can rely: but he had notions, sir, on some subjects, that would make you think him mad as any March hare you ever knew.~~ The old man paused, shaking with restrained mirth. You ought to have seen him,~~ he resumed. Tall, big-boned, dry as a chip in all his speech and ways. And plumed himself on a kind of resem- blance he had to President Washing- ton. On Sundays, sirhe never went to church read Tom Paine, Volney, Diderot, Voltaire, and all the French fellows of those days, and hated clergy- men (priests as he called em) worse than pisonswore by Tom Jefferson too, in politics, and in every thing else, except his knuckling under to slavery and there Im with him, sir, there Im with him :well, sir, as I was saying, on Sundays hed rig himself out like President Washington, claret-colored, square-tailed coat, long satin vest, ruffles, knee-breeches, black-silk stock- ings, buckled shoes, cocked hat, and so forthand take a walk all over the place, flourishing a gold-headed cane;, peert as a lizard, sirpeert as any liz- ard you ever saw. With a train of his darkeys behind him (hed buy em, take out their manumission papers, and keep em on wages; Lesson for bloody aristocrats, hed say)with a train of em behind him, in even line, the women first mothers before men, hed say; then the male adults; then the little girls; then the boys, ranged in their order down to the smallest walk- ing piccaninny Brothers in Adam, sisters in Eve, hed say. He at the head, flourishing his gold-headed stick, every now-and-then turning, and halt- ing them to see if they were in exact line. Keep the straight line! hed bawl; every real trouble in life comes from not keeping the straight line! ~ And if he saw one of em out of line, hed march down, pull ears if it was & 66 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Jail. girl; rap pates if it was a boy; punch her in the ribs with the gold head of his cane if it was a woman; and if it was a man, by George! hed pull him out, and thrash him like a sack, sir! And Elkanah drooped his head, shak- ing with silent inward laughter. Thats a sample-lot of old Peter Dy- zer, he resumed. Lord, sir! I could sit here all night and tcll ye stories about him! Well, as I was going on to say, one of old Peters fancies was pic- tures. Hed got hold of an old loafer, Tomeny by name, a house-painter, as near as I could ever gather, with the strongest taste for apple-jack you ever knew in your life, and he kept him here to paint pictures for him. The horrid- est old daubsmy sakes! Id like to show you a lot of em up garret, though theyre pretty well faded out now. But uncle Peter thought Tomeny the prince of painters, an unappreciated genius, and all thatTomeny the Great, he always called him ;and when he died, he buried him with a handsome grave- stone at his poor old apple-brandy- soaked head, and on it just the words, Simon Tomeny, Painter, as if that was enough for all posterity. Now, one of old Peters maddest notions was that Jesus Christ was still alive, and grown old and gray with walking the earth for eighteen hundred years, as well he might, indeed. Hed got hold of the old story of Ahasuerus, the Wandering Jew, dye see. Thats him thats Christ, says old Peter. But, Mr. Dy- zer, one would say, thats the man the story says Christ put a curse on, bidding him walk the world till he came again. All a flam, says rough old Peter; the Good Man he commonly spoke of Christ as the Good Man the Good Man never put a curse on any one. Its Christ himself I tell you. Or, perhaps one might say, Why, Mr. Dyzer, what should Christ be going round the world for? Going round doing good, snaps uncle Peter. Ah, my Lord, my Lord! the mad old fellow! Well, sir, with his own handsfor old Peter was a shifty manhe put a facing of prime old oak on the chimney-place in yonder; and dye know, he got old loafer Tomeny to paint on the right-hand side of itan ugly thing to tell, sir, but its truea portrait of himself as Judas, grasping the bagdid you ever hear the like of that now Iand on the other side a figure of Christ, old and gray, as he fan- cied him. Tomenys master-piece, he called it. Well, little humming-bird there was bringing up all this in my mind, as I said, ai~d you can perhaps fancy the turn it gave me when you came in, with your gray hair and beard, and long coat, and the plane, and all that. And the queerest thing of all is I hope youll excuse me for saying so, for the pictures a wretched piece of imagery, as much as you can see of it for the faded colorsthe queerest thing is, that you do look something like the figure of Christ as old Tomeny has painted it. And Elkanah again laughed softly. rubbing his hands, with his eyes on the silent-smiling carpenter, who had lis- tened, as the old man vaguely thought, with the~ air of one to whom the story was not entirely new. Its a sort of pretty notion, too, that of old Peters, presently resumed Elka- nah. And little chattering blue-jay there, gave it quite a fairy turn in my mind by asking, just before you came, sir, if Jesus Christ, old and gray, was coming here to-night. Dear me! it made me laugh till I felt juicy all through; but it grew in me afterwards what a pretty thing it was, and for so young a child to say. Such a pretty thing! And how would you think of Christ, sir, as coming here to-night, if such a thing could be I I think of him always, said the carpenter, slowly, in solemn, sweet vibra- tions, as the all-loving man. Yes, he might come, perhaps as you fancy him in this house, gray and oldcome as cheer-bringer, dispeller of evil, uniter of the estranged, assuager of sorrows, reconciler, consoler. Always the wise friend, the lover true. Something so. The old man silently cogitated the reply, with eyes poring on the fire. Pardon the liberty, he said sud 1868.] TIrE CARPENTER. 67 denly, but what might your profession be? I walk the hospitals, returned the stranger, quietly. Nursing the Union soldiers? Union and rebel, was the answer. I hope, said the old man, after a moments pause, kindling and flushing a little with a faint misgiving, I hope that you stand by the country, sir. Sir, this is a loyal house. One son only, my boy that once was, Rupert but we never mention his name here, sir, never, for hes in the ranks of the rebelshe only brings dishonor on the breed of old Elkanah Dyzer. But we strive to atone for it. My boy John served in the Union army, and hes going again. My boy Tom wants to go, and shall. Wait, laddie, I said a year ago, till your bones harden a little more; youll fight the better for it; and the times come for him. My boy George his voice faltered was lost at Fredericks- burg--and. blown to bloody atoms on the field of battle, or alive rotting in some rebel prison, Im content and proud, for its in the service of his coun- try. And I myself old as I am, Im going too. The young eyes that saw the bright flag dance so long when every thing laughed with promise, shall see it, now theyre old, flap defiance to the last as all goes down in war. Theres but one flag, one country in the world for me. I stand by them both forever. What you say is well, answered the stranger. I like what you say. Well! retorted the fiery old man, is there any thing better? There is nothing better than what you say, replied the other firmly. Elkanah cooled down instantly, a little perplexed with the air the stran- ger had of cherishing some equal, per- haps more comprehending, truth. I dont know what it is draws me so to you, and makes me so free-spoken on a short acquaintance, he said pres- ently, in a kind of marvelling way. If it was the Good Man himself, I couldnt feel more open-hearted and like telling you all my troubles. Ive told you some already. Youll stay with us this evening? Pray do! he said hastily. Spend the night. Stay some days. Well make you welcome. I want to know you better, sir. I think you, said the stranger, but I can only spend a little time with you, and must go my way this evening. Elkanali looked rather rueful. Well, he said, brightening, youll spend the evening, anyway. Therell be a lot of people in, by-and-by, from round about. Were to have a grand jollification in the old house. Ah,me! The lastthe last! The stranger looked at him inquir- ingly. I wilt tell you, said Elkanah hur- riedly, hitching up his chair closer. See here, he boomed in his under- tone; I havent told any one yet, but Ill free my mind to you, for I feel to do it. ilish I Im a ruined man. A speculationno matter what. Its fail- ed. The strangers lips parted, and his serene face looked almost roused. I shall have a little left. Not much, said the old man mournfully. But well have to sell this place where Ive lived so many years, and begin the world again. In my old ageseventy years old, sirseventy years. Its hard. The stranger laid his gentle hand upon the old mans arm. Elkanah quivered, his lip trembled, and his eyes grew dim. Is there no resource, said the car- penter. None, replied the old man, with sardonic bitterness. Unless its to sell old miser Dyzers picture. Infernal old doddi-poljolt head! Old crack-brain- ed, crazy noddy-peak! I used to laugh over it, but for the last week its been like wormwood and gall to me. What do you mean? said the car- penter. Ill tell you. Another story re- turned Elkanah, half savagely. I mentioned that old Peter Dyzer left me this place. I was a young fellow, rather given to pleasure, and it was uncles notion that farming would make a man 68 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Jan. of me. Well, it did: I own that. I came down here from Pennsylvania-- my State, sirmy State; I worked hard, and got well off by my own ex- ertions. At forty, I married. Well, except a scant five hundred dollars, the place was all old Peter left me. Now, farmings like any other business: the more capital you put in, the more profit youll get out. And, save the five hun- dred, Id no capitaL I had to put in work. I did it. What did your uncle do with his money? asked the carpenter. He hadnt any, replied Elkanah in a glowering, muffled roar. Old miser iDyzer, as they called him, wasnt as rich as people rumored him. He left all to methis place and all that it contains, the will said. Well, the place itself was all. All. If with his shrewdness and close bargaining, hed made any money, I suppose he gave it to loafer Tomeny for pictures, and the miserable old billi- veezeb drank it up in apple-brandy. And what about the picture? asked the carpenter. 0 jlllery-poo 1 blurted Elkanah, with utter contempt. My good sir, pray read what he wrote and left me in this bank-book. I was reading it this afternoon. Read it aloud, sir, if youll be so kind. The stranger slowly took the little bank-book, bound in dingy red, which the old man had produced from his skirt-pocket, and read aloud what was written there in a stiff, bold hand: Mr Elkanah Dyzer. Respected Nephew: I Leave you All. Keep the Straight Line. Work a d get Wealth. A Man not worth Money, is the most Miserable Divell in the World, excepting Always a Man who is worth Nothing Else. Maintain Open Fires. None of Count Rumford s New-Fangled Stoves for Me. Putt Fires on Every Hearth on Christmas Eve and Day, if your Means affoord, call in your Neighbors and Friends, and Draw Wide your 6urtains that your Light may be Seen of All Men. Dress the Apartments with Plenteous Holly. You Cannot have Any too Aluch. Stand Fast by the Great Republic. Live and Die in the Principles of Thomas Jeffer- son, the Greatest Birth of Time in this Coun- try, and his Thoughts and Influence of Rich Importance to us All Forever, it Mattering Nothing what the Federalists, the Tories, and the Divells of Hell do Say. No Slaves. All Men are Equal. Pay Wages for your Labour. Vote and Act with Any Party that Aims to Liberate our Bond- men, and Make Democracy the Absolute L w of our Country. We must Cut Loose from All the Thinkings and Practises of the Old World in Every Respect. Cherish Womankind. They Should have Representation and Equal Voice in the Gov- ernment of a Free Country. What Degrades Women injures Men. Mothers are the True Men of Any Land. Women are ens Equals, and great Mothers are their Supe- riours. I Leave you the Valuable Paintings of the Great Tomeny, whose Early Loss at the Ad- vanced Age of Sixty Years, I must Deplore. You will Treasure them and Not Dispose of Any, excepting in the Event herein Set Forth. When Ten Years have Past by, I Enjoin you, or your Heir or Heirs to Cover and Ex- punge with several1 Coats of Paint, the Por- trait of Me in My Character of Judas grasp- ing the Bag. This I Suffer to Remain so Long that you May be Daily Counselled against the Sin of Greed which is in the Dyzer Blood, and May work Ill. The Com- panion Painting of the Good Man Christ in His True Aspect, I do Solemnly Enjoin you to Leave Where it Now is Placed; excepting Only should the Estate by Embarrassme t or Loss be about to Pass from your Ownership, or that of your Lawful Heirs, in which Event you or They, as Provided in My Will, Must Sell the Painting at its Value. It Esteemed by an Excellent Virtuoso in such Matters, to be Worth Fefty Thousand Dol- lvrs in Goold. Your uncle. Peter Dyzer. The reading concluded with a sort of angry groan, ending in a snort, from Elkanah. Where is this picture? said the carpenter. Elkanah rose with a beckoning ges- ture, and they both passed into the adjoining room, lit by lamps and fire- light, and all bosky with evergreen. 1868.] THE CAnPENTEB. 69 The jamb or face of the fireplace was paneled with solid oak. The right- band side, where the picture of Judas had been, was painted over in oak-grain. On the other side was a full-length figure, about two feet high, in a dark gaberdine, with a rosy face, gray hair, and short white beard, the whole en- margined by a clumsy imitation of a wreath of holly-leaves and scarlet ber- ries. As a work of art, it was utterly worthless, though not without a certain pleasing effect, chiefly owing to the blurring of the outlines, and the obscur- ity of the once staring colors which the wood had absorbed. Aided by the dimness into which its hues and lines had fallen, it did have, as the old man had said, a curious general resemblance to the gray carpenter, who stood with a Lamp in his hand examining it with a fixity of attention which it certainly did not deserve. Thats it, said Elkanali, with a disdainfuVsniff, as the other concluded his scrutiny. Thats the precious gem I Worth about two York shillings, I say. What say you? I am of your uncle Peters judg- ment, replied the carpenter, composed- ly. Fifty thousand dollars, I say. Elkanah glared at him, his face ablaze, his voice choking with sudden rage. The carpenter opposed resistance to the glare, with a look firm, impassive, in- domitable as a fortress-wall. The old mans anger rebounded from it, baffled, as a lion might rebound, leaping against stone; and, with a gasp, he bounced to the other end of the room. All right, sir, he said, wheeling about, and coming back with polite smiles and bows, in which smothered fury, sarcastic amusement, and deference were all expressed and blended. I respect you very much, sir. I do in- deed. And every one is entitled to his opinion. Pardon me, but, if you please, well not discuss this matter further. Id really rather not, if youll indulge me. He saw that the carpenter was look- ing past him, with heavy-lidded, drain- ing gaze, into the other room, and he turned. Faulkner and Emily were there, vivid in the fire-sheen, murmuring te each other, in enchanted attitudes. Be. hind, in shadow, at a window, with reverted head and chewing lip, pale, silent, vengeful, was John. The car- penter, with moveless eyes, was absorb- ing it all. Oh, said Elkanah, with a slight movement; my boy Johnthe one at the window. The others his friend. And thats Johns wife, Emily. Come in, sir; Ill introduce you. What is the friends name? asked the carpenter quietly, without moving. Faulkner, sir Michael Faulkner. Son of the General, replied Elkanah. A sweet boy, said the carpenter, in a tone of deep affection. A born lover. Elkanah, already moving to the door, flirted about, slapping his hands to- gether. By the big Pedee! A hit I he exclaimed. Youve said the word. And he looked at the carpenter mean- ingly, and with wonder and admiration. Mrs. Dyzer, Tom, and Fanny Red- wood at that moment entered the fire- lit apartment, and the next the whole family, gathered in its lights and shad- ows, were gazing with mute faces all turned one way in curious wonder and interest, at what seemed the grand original of Peter Dyzers rude picture, coming in with Elkanah from the pan- eled room, with his strange aspect of blended youth and age, his child sweet- ness, his prophet majesty, his look of rosy innocence and gray wisdom. What do you think of that for a likeness? chirruped Elkanah, proudly beaming. At my particular request, hes come off the oak fireplace to spend the evening. My friend, Mr. Carpenter. They all bowed smilingly, but still in some wonder, and, before the old man could proceed to the more special intro- ductions, the carpenter, somewhat to his amazement, yet in a way quite in keeping with his unconventional aspect and manner, was moving with a sort of measured alertness among the group, paying his simple and affectionate ad- TO PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Jan. dresses to each person, with the air of; being already on familiar terms with them, and of knowing all about them; thus establishing himself in close rap- port with every one, as only a man of powerful intuitions, vivid impressions, and great magnetic force and dignity could have done, and leaving them with a sense as if something electric and very sweet had swept through them. To each he gave his hand with some apt word; but coming to Faulkner, he put his arm around him, and, drawing him to his breast, lightly kissed him on the forehead, saying gently, My son. The tender voice, the unusual daring action, which sent sweet lightning through Faulkners veins, left the others with a soft, mysterious thrill. They stood like enchanted figures, statue-still, in the dancing lights and shadows of the leafy room. In the hallowed quiet, the wind-harp was sounding. Well I cried Elkanah, breaking the momentary muteness, and bursting into laughter, this is jolly I Mr. Car- penter, youre a new face, but we count you an old friend. I shant wonder if you turn out to be uncle Peters Good Man himself; after all. Make yourself at home, sir. We all like you well. The companys coming, and, hey I but well have a staving jamboree! Therell be a swingeing supper by-and-by. And refreshments soon. Youll say, sir, that Mrs. Dyzers apple-toddy is the best you ever drank in your life. And if Miss Faulkner there, who gets such sweet love-tokens, doesnt entirely change characters with Mr. Redwood here, who doesnt get any(never mind, Fanny my robin, therell be plenty for you when you get to the hallelujah meadows, if not sooner)hell make you a punch, sir, that youll say is the best you ever drank, too. Hes a rouser to make punch, I tell you, though he only sips it like a lady himself. And Ive Bourbon in my cellar, sir, twenty-five years old; and Sherry, and a Madeira, sir, thats enough to make the island blush for shame redder than the cochi- neal they say its gone to growing. Oh, but well have a most flambustuous time! Excuse us, sir, if we seem to neglect you a little for a half hour or so. You came early, and weve a few preparations to make still. But make yourself at home, sir. Take the liberty of the house. Walk through, sirwalk through. The rooms are all open. And dumfoodledoodebusticate me, he con- cluded with a sturdy roar of glee, if we dont have one thundering stayer of a Christmas Eve, if its the last!, And so ending, amidst general merri- ment, the grand old Pennsylvania giant strode away with flamboyant gayety, and a step that shook the floor. The company dispersed, some wander- ing, some busied with minor arrangG. ments for the evening. Little Lilian sat silent in pensive, deep delight, satisfied beyond words with the presence of him she had long looked for, and sometimes listening to the holy murmur of the wind-harp. The carpenter, taking, as he had been bidden, the liberty of the house, was roaming from room to room, absorbing all, often returning to the fire- lit chamber, and always passing beyond to pause before the picture. In these journeyings, he now-and-then met solitary members of the group with which he had so ingratiated himself, and each time, as if to strengthen his hold upon them, he paused for a word. It was in this way that he came upon Faulkner. The young man was stand- ing in the firelit room, with clasped hands drooped, in his wonted attitude of singular grace, tranced in musing. I was thinking of you,~~ he said, dreamfully, lifting his dark, tender eyes to the carpenters face as the latter approached him. The carpenter put his arm around him, and drew him to his breast. Faulk- ner, a little faint with emotion, let his head droop upon the stalwart bosom. When I saw you, I loved you, said the gray stranger. And I, returned the young man, looking up with frank affection. You 1868.] TEE CARPENTER. fl made me feel the reality of something I thought an abstraction. The love passing the love of wo- men, said the carpenter. The same, answered the youth. The love of Shakespeare for the un- known, David for Jonathan, John for the Redeemer. The manly love. The carpenter held him for a moment gathered to his heart, then silently re- leased him, and paced away. He had a noiseless movement, not at all stealthy, but that of a man of gentle soul and breeding, and so he often came upon the others when they did not know he was near. It was thus he found the charming Fanny, in the same apartment, innocently dreaming upon the fire, and like a rose in bloom. She started, but into her habitual caressing curtsey, as she saw him close by. Joy and salutation, sweet child and darlino~ he said with fondest smiling. Thou art like some torch, perfumed and scarl~t. The lovely Fanny glowed to burning crimson at this dazzling orientalism, and conscious, too, of the fatherly affec- tion of his first address, forgot to curt- sey, and instinctively drew nigh him for a moment; then with that expres- sion only, and with innocent, grateful eyes, drew backward, and, bending and blushing, sidled away. The carpenter continued his perambu- lations. A little while after he came upon John, standing in the centre of the lighted apartment across the passage way, gazing, with arms tightly folded, and face of gloomful misery, through the doorways to the second room be- yond, where Emily and Faulkner were walking together. We meet again, said the carpenter, cheerily, extending his hand, which the young man instantly grasped in his own. The carpenter held it long, with well- returned pressure. This from me, dear comrade, he said with martial affection. From me, lover of soldiers. Johns face kindled in its pallor, with pride, with pleasure, with secret, sturdy liking, at the magnetic grasp, the foun- tain-opening words; and, forgetting for the moment his trouble, he looked wist- fully after the gray friend, as the latte~ went on to the second room beyond. Faulkner paced slowly off at his ap- proach, leaving Emily standing musing- ly alone. She looked up, mildly smiling, as the carpenter drew near. Well met again, daughter, he said fondly, pausing before her. Dear ever to me, the true wife of my soldier. And bending his grand and gentle head, he went by. One would have thought that he had struck some chord. Emily, dimly star- tled, thrilled and pleased, stood faintly flushing, her eyes cast down, her hand on her bosom, breathlessly considering, with the air of one coming from a dream. Presently she looked up. The carpenter had disappeared. Meanwhile, Tom, who had been scout- ing around after the beauteous Fanny, without being able to come up with her, at last found her in the firelit room, with none but little pensive Lilian present. Here was his chance, he thought, and, with a loud hem, in he walked, bold as a lion on the threshold, but meek as any lamb when he got near her. Des- perate, however, he made an effort, stam- mered inarticulately and finally said yes, actually saidthat it was a fine evening! Fanny at once replied, very innocently that it was; and in a moment, Tom having exhausted the fresh and engaging topic of the weather, and hav- ing half turned away in whirling em- barrassment as to the next thing to say, she, curtseying from him in the most unconscious manner, vanished into old Peter Dyzers room. Its no use, said poor Tom, talkin~ aloud to himself after his fathers style, in his new abandonment. Shes too good for me, anyway. Im going to the warthats a comfort. And Ive got the lock of her hair that Emily snipped off for methats another. She doesnt care a hooter for menot one hooter. Think so l said a blunt voice. Tom reddened like fire. The carpenter was near him, with pursed mouth, smil- ing. PuTNAMs MAGAZINE. [Jan. Yes, I do, blurted poor Tom, stout- ly, seeing no other way out of the mat- ter now, save open confession to this old friendly father. She always gets away from me when I come up to her. Because she loves you, bluffly said the carpenter. Tom stared, with rolling eyes, at this astounding announcement. See here, my boy, said the old stranger, are you courageous? Seceshll find out before long, re- plied Tom, indignantly. Id face a battery. Very well. Lets see if you can face a girl, said the carpenter. You just go in there, my boy, walk up to her prompt, and say, Fanny, I love you. See what that will do. Go, now) Tom started off with sudden valor, into the next room. What took place there during the next two minutes, shall not be revealed; but at the end of that time, out came Tom, swelling with pride, and grinning with victory, arm in ann with the lovely Fanny, whose heart- shaped face, suffused with heightened bloom, had the most curious air of un- conscious innocence imaginable. The old carpenter gazed at them, with head bent sideways, pursed mouth and peer- ing eyes, and a smile almost jovial if it had not been so gentle, as they passed slowly by. A few minutes afterwards, old Elka- nah, having concluded his share in the little arrangements, was sauntering through the passage, when he suddenly heard his wife laughing, and, as he thought, hysterically. The old man started as if he had been shot, grew cold and pale, and listened. In a mo- inent, again came the laughter, this time more assuring, and evidently pro- ceeding from the room with the pic- ture. Great God! he murmured. Ruth Dyzer laughing! My old wife laugh- ing! Thats a sound we havent had in this house for many a day. Whats happened? He stole cautiously into the firelit room, where little Lilian sat alone, and gazed with blinking eyes into the apart- ment beyond. To his utter amazement, there stood his wife, close to the serene- ly smiling stranger, with her apron held to her face, laughing with all her might, quivering all over with uncontrollable joy. He saw the carpenters lips move, as if uttering some brief word, and in- stantly her mirth was restrained. Elkanah slapped his hands on his thighs, and burst into noisy glee. The carpenter paced slowly off, and Mrs. Dyzer came dancing out to her husband, perfectly radiant, with skirts and ribbons fluttering and waving in the leaping bloom of the fire, flung her arms around his neck, gave him one smacking kiss, and, before he could snatch her to kiss back, she was off and actually running away. The old man started after her with a bound, stopped, swayed, and broke into laughter, with his eyes blind with tears. Ruth, Ruth, old darling, old rose for- ever sweet, ruy robin red, my joy, come backcome back to me I he cried with groping arms, and spluttering mirth and tears, and eyes that vainly strove for undimmed vision. Come backcome back to me, old sweetheart dear! Shes gone. 0 Lord, she kissed me! The old wifes not going, after all. The red-hot devil, harpoon-tailed and horned, take the estate and welcome Ive got my old wife still! And shes laughing! Ruth Dyzers laughing! My Goddlemity! what a young fool I am! he burst out with a fresh peal, wiping his eyes with his sleeve. Now what made her laugh? Oh, by George! Mas- ter Carpenter, youve got jokes inch- deep with cream in~you, to make Ruth Dyzer laugh I My conscience! what was he saying to her to make her laugh! And she ran out and kissed me. 0 Lord! 0 Lord! And whistling soft- ly, he began to dance with an air of deliberation ludicrous to see. Pretty doings for old folks, I say, said the small elfin voice from the hearth. Old Elkanah stopped with a leg in the air, stared at the demure midget, serenely rocking herself with dolly, and 1868.] THE CABPENTER. with a peal of mirth, strode from the room. A little while, and the leafy cavern, redly glowing then in shadowy gloom, beheld a darker drama. John, white as death, was there, with chewing mouth and dusk-lit eyes. Beyond, in the fuller and paler light of the adjoin- ing room, standing together, their backs turned towards him, were Faulkner and Emily. He watched them through the doorway. The dream, the invincible sweet madness, hardly disturbed as yet, had returned upon them, and, though their lips had never breathed a word, nor their hearts awakened to a sense of the reality, their f6rms in every sen- timent, in every trait and curve, be- trayed their love. He saw it all. It was unmistakable now. He had meant to wait only to be fully assured that it was sothen, never to speak one word, but return to the army, and spend his silent disdain in death upon the enemys lines. But the experience of war, which had been his already, gives strange direc- tions to mens after-thoughts and lives. There stood the false, false friendthe false, false wife, that he had loved. Here, by the fireside near him, was his child; afar, deep in its winter-grave, was the baby-darling that he mourned. And there, their mother in her treason, and near her, with poisoning charm and hell-born beauty, he who had allured her. By all the depth of his former love for him, rose high to the utmost welkin of his life, his torrent-surge of hatred. To burst in upon himto cleave through to the very neck in blood that fair young head of curls I Something shot through himhe be- came tense and hard through all his frame, as if transformed to animate irona dreadful ether spread dilating through his veins mad, deaf and blind, he whirled without a sound, slung up the hatchet from the hearth, and rushed with a thick, red darkness bellowing in his brain The hatchet was torn from his hand, and he was held in clamps of adamant. In that tremendous clutch, the very de- sire to struggle sank from him, and he became strengthless and icy-cold. Glim mering through the fading darkness of his mind, he saw the carpenter. You are hasty, young man, the latter said, with stern composure. John glared at him with glassy eyes. The cold sweat stood upon his face. He felt, with agonizing shame, like some helpless brute, caught in the toils, and confronted by a man. You do not understand this matter at all, said the carpenter, speaking slow- ly. I do. There is nothing that will not come right. Leave it to me. He released him. The very action implied a grandeur of serenity and con- fidence which was all-mighty. John trembled. My comrade, I love you, said the carpenter, still speaking slowly. . Lean the weight of your heart upon me. Trust me well. Go, now, and walk in the cold air. Come not back here till you can come, a man. John stood motionless, with bowed head. I trust you, he hoarsely faltered at length. And, without another word, he got his hat, and went out of doors. The carpenter remained still till he heard the shutting of the door; then silently laid down the hatchet, and took the large oaken chair, beside the little girl. She rose, and came to stand be- tween his knees. His left hand caressed her curly head; his right lay upon his knee; his eyes mused vacantly. I fell down once, and broke my ankle; and sometimes it makes me lame. Im lame now, said the little prattler, with great cheerfulness. I know it, replied the carpenter. But nobody told you, she returned, earnestly. How could you know it? By your magic art? Yes, said the carpenter, seemingly unamused by the big old phrase of the tiny mouth. In a minute, Emily came in alone. She looked strangely restless. A hectic spot burned in her cheek. Her blue eyes were brilliant with uneasy fire. For a few moments, she silently flitted about the room, occasionally glancing PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Jan. at the carpenter, who never looked at her. At length she came to him, and, kneeling down, began a pretence of ad- justing the childs dress. A keen eye might have divined that her only desire was to be near him. It is not your only child? he said quietly, without moving. She was still for a moment. No, she answered, gently. We had another. He is dead. The presence of the stranger seemed to rest her. She remained kneeling, very still, with bent head, in his sooth- ing neighborhood. Her soul appeared to know its first term of utter peace for many days. You think of him? said the car- penter, in a deep, hushed voice. For a little while she was silent. Then, gradually, she lifted her face to his, pale and wan, and exalted with un- utterable tender sorrow. Yes. I think of him, she murmured fervidry and slowly. Sometimes it seems as if all the under-currents of my life ran only to him. He gazed in silence upon her rapt countenance, with a look of sweet solem- nity, and his deep voice issued in meas- ured cadences upon the sacred pause, like balm, like dew, like clear, celestial music. Think of him always, he said, and with the thought of him, my daughter, be your life kept noble. Nor deem him separated from you forever, who, in the peace of heaven, yearns to his mothers arms. Behold, the high soul returns to its darlingsthe deep heart shall find its own! Beautiful in their pure brightness are the early dead. Beautiful is deathConsoler, Sanctifier, Redeemerbeautiful as life is beautiful, when to the best self true. Nor in death, nor in life, shall there be any loss, nor doubt, nor change, to the well-be- lieving and deep-beloving heart. The true wife shall not fail from her hus- band. The true mother cannot lose her child. She bent her head, brooding on the indeterminate and mystic words, and in a. moment, he felt a warm tear drop upon the hand which rested on his knee. Then, with a sudden, passionate movement, she pressed her lips to his hand, and rose, and flitted from the room. The carpenter stooped quickly, lifted the little girl, and gathered her to his bosom. She snuggled close to him, her little arms around his neck, her face concealed, her yellow curls mingling with his beard. His gray head bent above her in the happy firelight, and his lips murmured, Saved. They sat quietly for a while. At last John came in, perfectly calm, and even cheerful, and stood by the mantel, gaz- ing at the fire. Presently entered Tom and Fanny. Then Mrs. Dyzer, strange- ly joyous, with a beaming glance at the carpenter, as she sat down before the hearth. Then Faulkner. Lastly, and together, Emily and old Elkanah. Emi- ly, as nobody but the all-noticing car- penter observed, had been weeping. But she looked very happy, and, with a sort of virginal timidity, took a scat near her husband. Well ! said the old man, looking around him, with lion-smiling, here we are, all together again, like Nebu- chadnezzar Browns cows, when he had but one. And now, he added, plump- ing down into a chair, by the grand gorrifications, Mrs. Ruth Dyzer, Im going to have an explanation! Youll please to tell me, lady madam, what was that joke of Mr. Good Mans there, with four inches of fat on its ribs, that made you laugh? Out with it, now! Mrs. Dyzer clapped her apron to her face, and laughed till she shook. He told me my fortune, she gasped presently. The devil he did! said Elkanah. The carpenter was looking with a roused, intuitive face at the countenance of Faulkner, on which there was a strange expression. The knowledge of his passion for Emily was there, new- come to him, with no intention of re- treating. The carpenter read him like an open page. Certainly, he said, with his stern eyes still on the young man, hastily put- 1868.1 TuE CAJIPENTEB. ting down the little girl. I can tell fortunes. Didnt you know that? He rose with an alacrity he had not yet shown, and took the hatchet from the hearth. You come in here, one by one, he said, moving towards Peter Dyzers room, and Ill tell you your fortunes. The next instant he was inside, and had shut the door behind him. They stared at each other, and then burst into general uproarious laughter. What the deuce did he take the hatchet for? spluttered old Elkanah, shaking all over. Perhaps hes going to tell the for- tunes by axionomancy, like Her Trippa to Panurge, said the jesting Faulkner. It needs a hatchet for that. Well, whos going first? cried the old man, with gayety. Im going, my own self, said little Lilian. And suddenly in she went, limping, and shut the door behind her, while th~y all stared. The carpenter stood in the centre of the lonely room. He bent, and took her up on his breast. All good, all joy for you, sweet baby, he said. To be well of your lame knee; to live long and happy; to remember me always; to grow up beau- tiful and good and strong; to die very old, and become a splendid angeL That is your fortune, sweet babe and dar- hag. He set her down. The little one, without one word, tottled out, closing the door, and, amidst a general peal of merriment, resumed her chair, with a face of solemn satisfaction. What did he say, yellow-bird? cried Elkanah. I wont tell nobody, she serenely answered. They all roared together. Well, what did he do with the hatchet? asked another. He had it up on the mantelpiece, she replied, positively. They all roared again, being now in that condition in which people laugh at any thing. But see how solemn she looks, put in Faulkner, as the mirth subsided. Pon my word, its like the cave of Trophonius, where they went in gay and came out sad! Well, who next? By Crackie! thh is fun I shouted the old man. Whc next for the cave of Trophonius? There was a general tumult. Every body wanted Elkanah to go, but, red with glee, he resisted. Ill go, said Faulkner, starting away, smiling. See how gay I am,~ he playfully added, turning when near the door. But Ill come out sad. The door closed upon his face of play- ful warning, and, left together, they waited, listening to the inarticulate murmur of voices from within. The carpenter still stood in the cen- tre of the room. Welcome, sweet boy, he said, as Faulkner advanced gayly. Welcome, thou in whom mixes the perfumed na- ture of woman with so much of man- liness I I greet you, born lover of women! Lover of you, said Faulkner, blush- ing coyly, with down-dropped lashes, and drooping into a posture of leopard- grace. Lover of Emily Dyzer. Beguiler of a wife. Betrayer of a friend, was the stem, low answer. Three sentencesthree blowsthree claps of awakening thunder. Faulkner turned deathly white, staggered, stood still, and put his hand to his forehead, which slowly reddened into a dark brand. In the other room the laughter was ringing loud. What fortune for him who dreams when he should wake? said the stern and heavy voice, after a dread pause. What fortune for the youth, slave to amativeness, misnamed Love, who should be its hardy and virile master?~ The young man gazed at him with dark, burning, woful eyes, like one struck with sudden despair and agony into stone. Go on, continued the relentless voice. Go on in your course. But to each act, its returns. To every good, public or secret, though crowned with PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Jan. crucifixion, its award of blessing return- ing to the souL To every evil, however prosperous, however hidden, its inex- orable, avenging sequel. Such is the law of things. On to your burning dream on the bosom of the paramour, and slowly waken in the scorch of hell! At this dreadful speech, delivered in a voice like low, clear thunder, and from a front of prophet majesty and fire, Faulkner reeled on his feet, and stretched out his arms with a subdued, imploring cry. Shall I tell you the order? pur- sued the merciless voice. The ro- mance will meltthe amour will be done. What, then, for you? Return? The innocent years are far behind you, half-despised. Your passions are un- chained. Forward! Harden on into worldliness. Enter, a fresh and loving youthemerge, a diseased and jaded libertine. On, till perhaps the libertine merges in the old devotee. But still the unquenchable embers light the sick white ashes. Still, in the correctness and decorum of the outward life, the soul depraves, and the man becomes the demon. Wake in the dread midnight, old, clogged, and wrung with maladies, and feel the sharper bite of unavailing remorse, and the memories of youth come back with wormwood. And Death, and the Infinite, with its unpaid returns to follow! Oh, happier far for you the swifter fateyour skull cloven through by him you have so wronged a mans life ruined in your blood, the wife crazed, the child an orphan, the family desolateand you a murdered corpse upon the hearth by you de- spoiled and extinguished. Deadened by the closed door, the mirth pealed ghastlily. Spare me! gasped Faulkner. I did not think. I did not know. There has been nothing wrong between us. You have recalled me to myself. I thank you. I never meant harm. Her husband has watched you, and thinks the worst, said the carpenter. I will go at once from the house, and never come here more, said the young man, hurriedly. And leave him to hate and loathe you, was the severe rejoinder. He will kill me, moaned Faulkner in agony. Not that I fear to die, he added, his head upfiung in pale and gallant pride. But, oh! he faltered, by his hand, against whom I could not struggle! My God! my God! 0 wretch that Ii am! Leave not this house, said the re- morseless voice. Go straight to him, and own your fault. Yours the sin take you the expiation like a man. There was a moment of intense still- ness. I will, said Faulkner, with sub- lime submission. His head was bowed; his hands were clasped upon his bosom; he stood in repentant silence. A long and mourn- ful pause ensued. Oh, my son! said the near voice, grand and tender; my boy, my best- beloved, child of my soul, my own! and weeping, he felt himself enfolded by the stalwart arms, and clung in weakness to the all-loving breast. All bright and holy fortunes to you, my beloved, my darling. But not for you, with gifts, with eloquence and learning, this life of enervationthese days of dalliance and idle ease. Awake! arouse! Go, the apostle of all love and every loving cause. Plant thou, in thy strength and sweetness of nature and fortune, thicker than grass, brighter than flow- ers, the seeds of truth and liberty and comradeship in America. To theeto such as thouthe human race, the im- mense care of the future. To thee, child of the morning, the fiery sowing of the morning that shall never fade. On to immortal laborto the divine sorrow and the joy! Still be thou lover of women. But love thou to uplift them, Teach them the lore of heaven. Sow their lives deep with exalting thoughts, with gracious memories. Behold! all who sit in darkness and know not light all who wander in enmities and know not lovethe poor, the ignorant, the oppressed, the vileare thy apostolate! Serve, struggle, endure! Go; to brows like thine belong every crownsee that ( 1868.] THE CABPENTEE. 77 thou fail not of the crown of thorns! My son ~and, bending, he kissed him on the mouth with this kiss I dedi- cate you to a manly life. He released him, and drew backward. For a moment, Faulkner stood, thrill- ing with eestaey, blind with emotion; then, wiping his eyes, he tottered to the door. Pallid, desperate, his face wet with tears, he dashed in upon them. His appearance was the signal for one uproar of mirth. They hardly glancedthey never looked at him. Remembering his words as he went in, they actually thought he was acting, and with shut eyes, bobbing heads, and faces between their knees, they pealed and shook till they were giddy. John only, who had begun to laugh with the rest from mere contagion, was instantly sobered amidst the confusion, by Faulkner flying up, and seizing him by the arms. I am less guilty than you think me, he sighed amidst the cloistering tumult, yet too guilty to live. Kill me. The young man instantly divined something of what had happened, and, with a sudden burst of manly and gener- ous feeling, he threw his arm around Faulkners shoulder, and pulled him away to the centre of the room. Hush! he said. I forgive you. No more now. We will talk soon. Away, away for a while, lest they sus- pect something. Ill see you presently. Faulkner glided from view, and John went back to the circle, loudly laugh- ing. I swear 1 cried Elkanah, ha-ha-ing till the tears ran down his cheeks, if this doesnt beat all! Did ye see Mikes face? he screamed with a fresh peal. Such a mimic I never did know. He beats old Harry Placide. Lord! Lord! but the cave of Trophonius is the best game I ever played in my life! You go in, father, cried John, and at once there was a beseeching merry chorus of yes, yes, you goyou go! No, I wont, gasped Elkanah, jump- ing up, shaking with merriment. Yes, yes! and they all surrounded him, with deafening clatter, pushing him, pulling him, he holding back: quivering from head to foot, till they got him through the doorway into the room, and held him, trying to escape, and too faint with mirth to succeed. Heres our prisoner, cried first one and then another. Now tell his for- tune in spite of him. Well leave him, and guard the door. The carpenter stood gravely by the side of the picture, with his left arm resting easily on the mantelpiece, while his right held the hatchet. No, said he; you can all stay. Your fortune, sir, is here. He touched the picture with the handle of the im- plement. You are a ruined man. You must retrieve your losses with this valuable painting. Ruined! ruined! they all mur- mured, releasing the old man, and look- ing at each other with frightened faces. Elkanah, his mirth suddenly quenched, glowered darkly-red with rising anger, and his blue eyes flamed. Yes, ruined, said the carpenter, austerely. He forgot his grand old uncles injunction to keep the straight line. He yielded to the sin of greed which is in the Dyzer blood. He was well enough off, and could not let well enough alone. He speculated, is ruined, and his homestead and family are sacri- ficed. Sir, shouted Elkanah, looming with wrath, this has passed all limits! How dare you divulge my secret! How dare you insult me with your infamous irony about that daub! Peace! said the carpenter, imperi- ously. Accept the lesson. The pic- ture retrieves alL Receive the pardon and the bounty of the wise and loving Dead! Quickly he wedged in the helve of the hatchet between the panel and the jamb, and pried with an immense strength. The oaken front bent for- ward under the strain, tore from its fastenings with griding screech, fell heavily with a volleying cloud of dust, and out of the black, oven-like cavity, tumbled, with solid chink, a portly bag of gold, and another, and another, and 78 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Jan. another. The space within was full of them. Fifty thousand dollars were in that hole. There was a moment of dead stupe- faction. Then, with a hoarse cry, the old man bounded forward, and fell upon his knees, clutching the gold. The carpenter paced slowly to the back part of the room. Some of them, half- weeping with terror and gratitude, would have seized him as he passed, but there was something in his de- meanor so cold and stern that their hands fell away. Gold! gold! shouted Elkanah, with frightful volubility, springing to his feet, red, greedy, horrible, with a bag in his hands. Saved! saved! saved! Oh, the heavy, good gold! Gold at two- twenty in the market. A hundred and ten thousand dollars worth hereoh, more, maybemore, morewhy not more! Ah, hah! but I am saved! And proudproudproud! No war for me, now. To the eternal pit with the heart-shattering country, that robs me of my money, my peace, my boys! Ah, but Ill have them backthey shant go. John shant go, nor Tom Ill disown em, and Ill curse them, if they try it on. No, they shant go. And Ill have George back, if hes liv- ingIll track the States for himIll ransom him from the rebs, if theyve got him. And RupeIll kill him if I find himah, hah, hah, hah !he pealed with maniacal laughter. And here well live, all happy and free. Happy and free, with gold are we. Substitutes, if they draft usoh, ho! oh, ho! And my old wifewhere are ye, birdie ?I cant see ye in my new gold spectaclesshell have a new silk gown, heavy and richoh, two of em, if they dont cost too much. And oh, my neighbors, but Ill be revengedIll tramp on em! Oh, you half-Union, half-secesh curs ! but I dont care which ye are, now. Only Ill pay ye back for your looks and whispers! Oh, the faces Ive seen for a week back! Theyve got it rumored among em that the old man was going down; and oh, the coldness, the hanging back, the sneers, the smiles, the looks, the whis. pers! But the old mans up again, and Ill ptly em back ;for the old mans up again, with gold, gold, sweet, sweet gold! Oh! what is better Inothing nothingnothingnothingnoth- ing! He ceased, choking with his hungry fury, and in dead stillness, while every white and frighted face stared mutely at the other, he fell to kissing the bag. In the silence, a mighty blast of wind arose and sighed around the house with solemn suspiration, and from the other room~the wind-harp rang hollowly and loud, and failed in delicate and eerie spirit-music. Following upon the after- silence, came the voice of the carpenter, clear, scornful, and still. Love is better than gold, he said, slowly. The old man slightly started, turned very white, and shivered as the warn- ing voice smote heavily in upon him. It was but a spasm, and could not be maintained with such as he. Already ashamed a little of his vulgar rapture, yet furtively hugging it in secrecy; his greedy feeling meanly creeping, yet lin- gering, in the refluent tumult of the noble elements which were so strong in him; with a dim sense of how poor a figure he made with his new wealth and new-born avarice, in contrast with the august poverty and towering by- ingness of the man behind him; con- scious, too, how much of love and gratitude he owed him, yet afraid to turn and face him, now ;he stood, silently, almost cowering, his face, like his soul, puckering, a red heat tingling and prickling over him, humiliated and ill at ease, with the heavy weight of money in his hands. There was an utter suspension of all sound and mo- tion. Suddenly the hush was broken by a hubbub of mingled laughter, stamping, children~s voices, and a rattling tattoo at the front door. Quick! shouted Elkanah, starting, and tossing the bags into the cavity, as these evidences of the returning human world struck upon his ear. Quick! ( 1868.] THE CARPENTER. TO the guests are arriving. Silence, all! Not a word of this. Hurry! Up with the panel again! Quickthe hatchet! A broom to sweep this floor! Fanny, my robin red-breast, not a word. Silence all. So! A minutes activity and confusion, and the room had resumed its usual appearance. The gray Christ on the panel again shut in the bale and bless- ing of the gold. Composed and silent before it, as one to whom good and evil were the same, stood the carpenter. The family, relieved, though frightened still, had hurri& d to receive their guests. All was in a bustle of welcoming in the rooms beyond. But in the fire-lit cham- ber, while the carpenter stood solitary in the room adjoining, was Elkanah, also alone; and all to himself; his voice was booming. Better, better,yes, love is better, he said, again and again. But, oh! he added at last, oh, that I could feel it as well, as say it! Oh, unless some- thing happens to change me, that I could be as I was a little while ago, happy, happy, happy in my trouble, loving my old wife, my boys, my home, my countryand what every damned fool in these United States calls ru- ined! Iv. For the next hour there were con- tinual arrivals, and the house resounded with trampling feet, and talk, and mirth, and revelry, and the voices and noise of children. The first-comers were a large bevy of these little ones, girls and boys, convoyed by black servants, and gathered from half a dozen houses by Elkanahs wagons, sent around for that purpose. Immediately upon their appearance, Daniel Snow, with assist- ants, came upon the scene, supplanting all the lamps with wax candles, red, white, and blue, and lighting with these patriot tapers every apartment, includ- ing that hitherto lit by firelight only. The children quite usurped one room to themselves with their games, and were there, here, and every where be- sides. They made the house ring, while their fathers and mothers, sturdy farm- ers and country people, with their sons, daughters, and wives, made it rustle and roar. Amidst all, cheerful and com- posed, walked the carpenter, saying little to any one, and oftenest lingering near the children. The various members of the family took their part in the common enjoy- ment somewhat feverishly, unable to be rid of the thought of the strange stroke of fortune which had fallen upon the household. Perhaps the calmest of all was John, who, amidst the general merry-making, sat apart for a long time with his arm around Faulkner, all to4d, and nothing but affection between them, while the carpenter watched them with a loving eye. Emily, singularly restless, bright with lovely color, gay with the gayest, but never staying long in one place, flitted from room to room. She never came near Faulkner, nor did he seek her. Occasionally she wandered near her husband, with coy, virginal glances, but always, though half-surprised at his look of silent kindness, she timidly hurried away. Amidst all, with grandiose virility, with mountainous gayety, with stormy jocundity, moved Elkanah. He felt somewhat dashed within, noticing that his wife, though comely and laughing still with the new life that had so inex- plicably come upon her, was again cold to him; and he knew that his behavior over the discovery of the treasure had much to do with her deportment. Touched by this sense, but still un- quelled, and a little hardened by the thought of itsometimes, too, perplexed to observe a strange air of listening and expectancy which had come upon her- he yet let his spirits rise to their Alle- ghany height, and kept them at that summit: till at last, up they went to the fathom of the soaring eagle, scream- ing iji his joy at the arrival of Bob Toner, with his fiddle. 0 jolly Bob! 0 slim young man, with chubby, ugly, ruddy face that laughed all over, and immense shock of red hair, at which the 80 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE.. [Jan. girls warmed their hands in fun, but lit their hearts in earnestand had he been a Mormon, wouldnt he have been in town! For all the young women round about were dead in love with Bob, and half Bladensburgh, and all the county far and near, were his conquest, only he was too wise and good to take it. Soul-warming, heart-enticing Bob, with fly-away coat, and trousers trimly set upon his killing legs, and waistcoat like the plumage of a bird of Paradise, and necktie made for murder! Bob entering, with derisive, doleful screech from fiddle of Maryland, my Mary- land, and instantly the whole house in a yell of laughter, and every body run- ning, and Bob twenty deep in girls and women, with children clinging to his legs, and pounding him like fun for sheer jollity, and men crowding about holding their jovial sides, and old Elka- nah looming and bellowing above all, and hey! for a dance this very minute, to son~e blithe old tune of Liberty and Union! Into it they go, while the thunder of Shermans guns, all unknown to them, roars victory over the quaking hearts of rebels in captured Savannah, and the light of liberty and empire that shall not die, pours from the breaking clouds into it they go to the tune of Yankee Doodle. Staunch Bob! Liberty and Union-loving Bob! They, the neither- hearted, who keep a rebel flag and a Union flag to hang out as either army comes, must this night kindle to their country, and dance to the grand old lilt, inwoven deep with jubilance, ran- tankerous defiance, proud Revolutionary fire, historic graves of grandsires, and the great name of Washington! Re- viving Bob! Inspiring Bob I They, the true sons and daughters of Maryland, steadfast through doubt and loss, shall feel the merry music pour sunshine and fragrance around their hearts, as they beat the floor with flying feet and souls aglow! 0 kindly, genial Bob, d~ncing like mad himself, and making one break and discord in the melody as he pats with the fiddle the back of old black Daniel, bringing in the tray, and deftly resumes again, the excited dancers never noticing the break, but footing-it like angels, while Daniel thinks of the lost daughter, sold in slavery, that makes him wake in dreams in the dead nights, but soon shall meet him,free! 0 rous- ing Bob! fiddle like a fiery wind! fid- dle till the pulses lose their beat in music! till the windows clash and rattle in their frames, and the floor resounds with regular dull thunder! till the feet dizzy, and the arms toss recklessly, and coattails, skirts, and ribbons fluttering fly and whirl, and the red dancers dance delirious! till the bright flags and tat- tered war-flag quiver on the wall! till all the odorous ground-pine garlands shake, and the immortal dark-green holly trembles And Elkanah, standing solitary and removed, with fond heart swelling, and the big tears coursing down his cheeks, booms to himself amidst the noise 0 that my son George would only come home,that I might dance again! Suddenly, amidst the long-continued activity and din, down goes the music. At once all stop in tumult, then a ring- ing cheer, and the throng commingle joyously, wiping their heated faces, with universal laughter and multitudi- nous clamor of merry voices. And then the clink of glasses, and all in fresh commotion streaming away to the lower apartment, where Daniel Snow presides over a mighty bowl of prime old apple- toddy, and punch and wine, and Bob Toner gives the ringing toast: Our hosts, our friends, sweethearts and wives, the soldiers and the sailors, and America, our country, forever! Hip, hip! hurrah! Three stunning cheers! The sparkling and swiriing tides of revelry were beginning to flow back upon the deserted rooms, when Emily suddenly appeared in lovely agitation, her hand upraised, and hurrying light and color in her eyes and on her cheeks and parted lips. Oh, quick! she said, come quick, and see the prettiest sight you ever saw! Hish! Come softly. Those who happened to be therea few of the guests, Mrs. Dyzer, Tom and 4 1808.] THE CARPENTER. 81 Fanny, Faulkner and Johnfollowed her on tiptoe across the passage, into the chamber we have so often called the fire-lit room. The door of the adjoining apartment was half open, and, obeying her hushing hand, they all stole quietly up and peeped in. There, in the full illumination of the tapers and the fire- light, sitting in a large oak chair near the centre of the room., was the gray carpenter, crowded all around and over with a murmurous buzz of children. Girls and boys, thickly clustering, dense around his knees, perched upon his lap, close to his sides, mounted upon the arms of his chair, climbing over the back, peering around the edges, twit- tering, chirping, laughing, humming, prattling all together. He sat quietly, rosily smiling, deep in children. They fluttered around him like birds, they bloomed around him like flowers, they wreathed around him like vines, they swarmed around him like bees. Close to his breast he held the little lame girl, Lilian. The tender light of heaven was on them all. The watching group stood breathless- ly, gazing with open mouths and eyes upon the lovely picture. No heart but was stirred. Emily had stolen softly to her husbands side, silent, brooding upon the scene with parted lips, her face rapt and yearning, her white dress divinely tremulous, and lifting and falling with the tremor of her limbs and the palpita- tions of her bosom. John gazed, with clenched, drooping hands and bent head, his countenance surcharged with tender and melancholy gloom. 0 my husband! he heard his wife fervently murmur, see how fondly he holds our little lame girl! See the dear children gathered all around him! Oh, lovely, lovely sight! Suffer little chil- dren to come unto Me it makes me think of that for of such is the king- dom of heaven Oh, my divine Re- deemerOh, my Friend, my Saviour! He gazed in silence for a moment~ then, filled with strong emotion, he slowly and softly moved away, and paused in shadow with bent head, in the corner near the window which held VOL. i.G the harp. A slight movement passed through the group, and, without speak- ing, they stole on tiptoe from the room. Emily, still looking backward on the beauteous spectacle, retreated last. John remained in the shadow, brooding and alone. There was a flying step, a quick rustle near him, and Emily, pale and agitated, was close against him, by his side. John, JohnOh, my husband, save me! she wildly whispered. I love you only, my darling. Save mesave me from my dangersave me from my- self! Dont let me wander from you. I will tell you all. You do not know but I will tell youoh, help inc in my peril! And you are sometimes so in- differentand seem so hard and cold and then life drags heavily with me. Oh, my love, be true and tender to mc my love, my husband!~ The stern and reticent man quivered wi~h controlled emotion. I try to be, Emily, he faltered, after a pause. That, I always try to be. Save me, John! she hurriedly im- plored, with springing tears. My only love, do not be cold to medo not let me wander from you! That good old manthat strangeroh, I cannot tell you nowbut three times. to-night he has brought up my hearts. best feelingshe has recalled me to my best selfto my dear love for you, my darlingto my dead babyto our little living one, my own husband! And when I saw him there with the dear children, and our poor baby nestling in his breastOh, John, love me, and take me back, close, close to you, my own husband, my first, my only love, my love forever! Save mesave me from myselg and never let me wander from you, in life or death never let me wander any more. Silently he threw his powerful arm around her, and drew her to his breast. With all her strength she clung to him. His eyes were blind with drop- ping tears, but he felt her soft, warm bosom throbbing against his heart, and his veins thrilled through with light and sweetness. Gathering her closelier 82 PUTNAMS MAaAZINE. [Jan. to him, he bent his face to hers. His lips were wetted with her sacred tears; diffused with sad and gentle ecstacy throughout his sense, he felt the milk and cinnamon breath of his beloved, his wife, his own; and with the long and passionate holy kiss of wedded souls,love, fortressed against doubt or temptation, was reborn. V. They were gone, and the carpenter had left his swarm of children to their games, and now stood in the hallowed room. For the moment, he was quite alone. The guests, at the proposal of some stirring toast, had again all troop- ed away to the other side of the house, and were dense and joyous around the punch-table. The hour was wearing on to nine. The supper was to be at ten. As the gray man stood near the side- door, with a dreamy air of listening, the co~npany began to drop in again by twos and threes. Presently, among them appeared the stately form of El- kanah. After him came his wife, flushed and palpitating, yet struggling to keep calm. She drew near the car- penter and sat down. From the distant rooms the jollity rang loud. You are happy, said the carpenter, calmly smiling, to his glowing and beaming host, who had advanced to- wards him, softly laughing, and rubbing his hospitable hands. am I! responded the old man, with a burst of glee. Happy this night am I! I complete your joy, said the car- penter, with composure. Elkanah Dyzer, I bring you a Christmas gift. Your son George is coming here to- night, alive and well. The old man reeled towards him one step, with paling visage. Mrs. IDyzer sprang up, laughing furiously, and clap- ping her hands. He told me! she cried. He told me my fortune! Better than yours, my Elkanah Ibetter than yours! My George is comingcoming home to his mothercoming, coming home! He was wounded and taken prisoner at Fredericksburg, resumed the car- penter, while they all breathlessly list- ened, some hushing the guests as they came in. There l~e lost his left arm. He was kept in the rebel prison at Salisbury. He escaped at last, and got to Washington, helped on his way by a faithful negro, who stuck by him to the last, and is now a soldier in one of th6 black regiments. He was very ill. I nursed him in the hospital. With a gasp of passionate love and gratitude, Elkanah reeled forward an- other step, outstretching his mighty arm with open hand to the carpenter. For some reason the latter did not respond to the proffered clasp. He remained in his attitude of supreme composure, re- pellant, and serenely sweet. 0 my Godmy boy George! ex- claimed the old man, tottering back, and dashing his hands to his forehead. My Georgemy George I Where is he I he suddenly cried with an electrifying burst, and face aflame Where is that nigger I Bring me that nigger ivho saved my sonbring him here, that I may give him my hand, my heart, my allthat I may enrich himthat I may load him down till his back cracks with benefits! Bring him herebring me that black American, whiter than Gods own snow against the white mans trea- son to Democracybring him here, that I may give himoh, my boy, my George; my saved and ransomed George; my son, my son I Where is he? speak! he gasped where is he now? I hear a step upon the path, said the calm carpenter. There is a foot upon the sill. ~nter! he cried aloud, and with his hand he struck the door. It flew open. With a spring a young man bounded inwan, white under his tan, lit with excitement, his soldiers overcoat falling from his shoulders, his manly figure clad in faded army-blue, his armless sleeve dangling beside him. With a cry, he dashed off his cap, his foot beat a loud appel upon the floor and mother I father! he shouted, leaping to their arms. 1868.] THE CARPENTER. 83 Up went the stormy cheer that shook the holly, and to and fro the surge like ocean in his strength, and pouring in from every room the hurrying stream of men and women in tumultuous com- motion, and a gain and again the cheers that woke the dead rafters, re-bellowing from the hearts of Maryland! And still as death amidst that roar of emotion, George, with his one arm tight around his mother, his stump clinging to his fathers side, their arms girded fast around him, their heads all bowed in silent weeping; John and Emily, white and tremulous, crowding near him; Tom and Fanny crying in each others arms close by; Faulkner, pale as mar- ble, near the door, upholding little Lilian that she might see; and all around the mad and furious throng, swaying, and prancing, and mingling, and cheering as if their hearts would break; till at last, George detached himself, with showering kisses on mother, Tather, brothers, sisters, and turned electric, glowing like fire, and at once the roar went down in a tempest of greetings, frantic kisses from the women, merciless hand-shaking from the men, and How are ye, George? and God bless ye, George! and Friend of yours, George! and Youve waxed the rebels, George! and Bully for you, George! and universal hullabaloo and thundering laughter, and at last a lull. Ha, ha! laughed George, still darted at by an occasional woman for a smacking kiss, and patted on the back by red-hot men coming homes worse than a battle! By the Lord Harry! but youve made my arm ache, boys and girls! Presidents levees nothing to it. His arm! pealed Elkanah, swell- ing aloft, with the tears still in his eyes, and proudly smiling. His arm, o friends and neighbors! But not the one hes given to his country. See, see! he cried, lifting the half-empty sleeve of his son. Look at this splendid trophy of my boy, haughtier than the blazon of conquerors and kings! The arm he gave to his coun try. 0 my dear son ! he passionately embraced him. Soldier of Democracy! bulwark of freemen! saviour of slaves! while such as you are left, the republic never can go down! lie said it grandly, in a voice like the rich, bass shudder of organs, and a deep murmur, born from the sorcery of elo- quence, pulsed responsive through the throng. The old wife, with her silk apron to her face, stood, leaning on the breast of the carpenter, gently weeping. Suddenly, as the joyous commotion began again, she detached herseig and, with one more fervent kiss for George, flew away to the kitchen. Supper at ten, and every thing of the best; but a mothers swelling heart must have something special for George. George hiniself somehow, looked cu- riously uneasy, and if any one among the excited gathering had been cool enough to observe, he might have seen him glancing anxiously and often towards the serene carpenter. The latter still stood near the door, unmoved amidst the din. And you, said Elkanah, approach- ing him with big and aching heart, and almost weeping at his lofty and reserv- ed demeanor. You, who have come here, like our household fancy, old and gray, and been our light and blessing, and brought us back our son like Laz- arus from the dead, why do you stay outside the old mans heart, that loves you almost to breaking, amidst all his joythat loves you better than the old wife, or the boys, or any thing on earth now? Is it because of the gold? To the ditches with itIll scatter it on the highways before Ill lose you. Pray, dont be angered with the foolish, wicked old man, that never knew, till you made him feel it, that love was better than money, or any thing beside! o take me in to you! I never knew what it was to have a real friend before. The world will be cold to me when you are gone. Heaven wont be sweet without you, old youth, so old, so young, so good, so dear! See! I am foolish with my feeling for you! My heart is sweet and soft because of you, 84 PUTNAMS MAaAZINz. [Jan. for every living thing! I couldnt shoot a bird now, for the lovingness thats in me. I couldnt spade a worm out in my fields. iNo, no; I couldnt harm a fly, my old hearts so soft and tender. Is it? rejoined the strange, gray man, in a voice like ominous low thunder. Then enter! With his hand he struck the door. It opened with a shock that also closed it, and, as if shot in, a figure stood upon the floor. Trembling, drooping; with bowed head; a dark slouched hat, be- neath which the face showed, lean, sharp, colorless, as if cut from white paper; a form attenuate, clad in dark civilians clothes; the arms piteously, helplessly rising, falling; imploring, despairing. The old man staggered back, gazed, glared, reeled forward one pace, swayed on his feet, lifted his clenched hands and dashed them down in air with a terrific yell; then stood, collec~d, livid, dumb. It was his rehel son. A stony silence smote the room. Suddenly, without warning, a black surge had swept in upon the general joy. All stood bewildered, motionless. Only George hurriedly whispered to Tom that mother did not know that iRupert was coming, and for Gods sake run and keep her back, for there was going to be a scene. The young ma flew. In the frightful hush, some nei4~hbors, who knew Rupert, softly advanced with sickly smiles on their white faces, and timorous glances, and entered the space between him and the old man, as if to greet him. Back! thundered Elkanah, out- stretching his terrible arm. I am master here. Let none approach him. They fell away in terror. Some ac- tually turned their backs and fled. The space between the father and the son was vacant. It was too late or futile. Tom was down in agony on his knees. The mother was coming, running, hetween an opening lane in the throng, with a fearful cry as she saw her boy. White as ashes she came, with frantic speed, but, as if some baleful magic guarded the approach, no sooner had she reached her husband, than she stopped, flung up her arms, reeled over stiff in swoon, and would have fallen like stone upon the floor, hut that the carpenter strode to her side, and caught her as she fell.A dozen arms took her from him, and carried her away. That is well, said the dreadful old man in a hollow voice. We want no women here. Livid, implacable, with pent-house shags of brows lowering over eyes of blue-hot steel, with teeth set hard, and puckered visage, and front of towering brawn, he stood confronting the wretch- ed heing hefore him. I feel as if the devil had suddenly brought me in a cup of tea, he said presently, in sardonic, griding tones, like the harsh clang of distant falling brass. The hapless object on whom these gro- tesque words fell, feebly lifted his arms once, and let them sink again; then, as one resigning hope, drooped his head so low that his hat fell off draggling his black, sweat-bedabbled hair over his shrunken visage, white as leprosy. George, pale to blueness underneath his swarth, cast a hurried, beseeching glance at the carpenter, as depending on him to make the intercession. The carpenter, moveless, rosy, unshaken, re- mained mute, in utter composure, with his eyes fixed on the old man. Unable to longer keep silent, George turim~d to his father. Father, he said, in abrupt, trem- bling tones, for my sake, for all our sakes, forgive Rupert. Dont be cruel dont be unnatural, He has suffered much. He was misguideddeceived; he has entirely repented. Forgive him, I beg you. We were sick together in the hospital, and he is sick and weak still. Our good friend here nursed us both, like our own mother. We never can repay him for all his tender kind- ness. It was his plan to bring us here to-night. Father, I beseech you, forgive my poor brother. ( 1808.1 THE CARPENTEE. 85 It was all that George could say. Feeble, despite its earnestness, it fell from the old man like a flattened bullet from the side of an iron-clad. Emily tried to come forward to add her plead- ing, but John held lier back, knowing his father well, fully realizing the situa- tion, and convinced that words were useless. Every one else remained in Jekening expectancy. How comes he here? said Elka- nah, sternly pointing his finger at the cowering shape before him. lie is a rebelwhy is he not also a prisoner I He has been released, said George. By whom? came the savage interro- gation. By the man of all our hearts, cried George, with sudden glow. By the man with millions of haters, who him- self calls no man enemy. Abraham Lincoln, said the carpen- ter. A profound murmur pulsed through the room. Yes, cried George, with gathering confidence, by our President. This good friend here went to see him, and laid the case before him. He told him of our service to the country; he told him how Rupert had been led away; he told him of you, father, and all your devotion; of mother grieving for her Lost boyof all; and the President gave the order for Ruperts release at once, and we brought him here. A faint flush crept upon the old mans contracted face, and, in a gesture of respect, he lowered his head to his up- carried hand. Then, with a powerful shudder, as when some mighty bull shakes the flies from his hide, he be- came erect, hard, and still. I utter nothing a~ainst Abraham Lincoln, he said, in low, reverberating tones. He is my President. God bless him in his living, and in his dying, God bless him! In the solemn, almost tender silence which ensued, the outcast gathered courage. Father, he faltered, in a weak, husky voice, forgive me! I do not ask you to receive me back again, but only forgive me, and bless me, and let me go my lonely way comforted. I was fool- ishI was young You were not a boy, interrupted the harsh old man. You are twenty- eight years old. You nre not a child you are a man. I know it, father, he huskily fal- tered; but I was young in feeling. You know you used to chide me for making life so unrealfor my romantic way of looking at every thing. It was in that way I looked at the rebellion. It seemed to me so right, so grand. It came to me in my folly like a great cause. Father, I have learned differ- ently from bitter experience. I am wiser. Things look very different to me now. I should think they might, rejoined the old man in a heart-quaking roar. Three hundred thousand graves stud the land. Your work, and the work of monsters like you! Weeping and mourning in every household. Widows, orph~ns, childless fathers every where. The country in convulsion, and totter- ing on the brink of ruin. The lands best and bravest, horribly shattered and mangled, hobbling about on crutches, or buried in bloody trenches. I should think things might look different! Sir, I am not your father, but your judge. You are a murderer! The miserable creature covered his face with his hands. hope died within him, and every breaking heart within the room, stricken to marble, and almost ceasing to beat in the iron silence, owned to itself that his case wna hope- less. Look at that flag! pcalcd the old man, falling into a posture of formidable antique di~nity, with his masterful arm stretched towards the wall. It is the flag of mankind! To that, you, and your crew of vile liberticides, are trai- tors. What have you fought for? That the dandy might spit in the mechanic~s face! That the lord might insult the farmer! That the necks of the many might wear the yokes of the few! Some monarchysome new, mongrel feudal hell on our Republican soil! That was 86 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Jan. your cause. A fine glittering house, laid on sodden whites, and brutified blacks, squashed out of their manhood. Up aloft, your pirates murder-cloth, whose every flutter threw a pall upon some innocent householdand down below, in the putrid cellarage, our rottiug pris- oners, our dead and mangled braves. A fine, flue palace for my lord, the king! For this you have fought long. And now, success assureQ you desert your work, and come here, and ask for- giveness! Oh, impudence without a name! Convulsed with fury, he paused, grinding his teeth hard. George, half- dead with horror, sank on his knees, with his arm across a chair, his head flung down upon it, his empty sleeve dangling beside him. I pass by the horrible voice, like sounding bronze, resumed I pass by the misery, the shame, the desolation you have left upon us here for years. I pass4 Father, said Rupert, lifting his head, with forlorn dignity one word. I am too weak and ill to speak. Let me only say that my error and my crime came from my sense of duty; and, bad as my cause has proved to be, I joined it in all honor, and carried myself like a man and a soldier. What was your service? champed the old man. Infantry? Cavalry? Speak, you devil! Artillery, gasped iRupert. Hah! outburst his father, with a tremendous explosion, I have seen your work. Twice have I been to bat- tle-flelds. I saw the black and bursted bodies, torn and swollen, in the grisly hollows of Bull Run! I saw the corpses of my murdered countrymen, rent with shrapnel and shell, when I went groping for your brother, with eyes stung with dreadful tears, on the bloody terraces of Fredericksburg! What arm restrains me that I smite not the soul from your carcass! Go! he thundered, with a mighty sweep of his arm, and eyes like blue, fierce fire Hence, or I squelch you like a snake, beneath my feet! The curses of the living, the murrain of the dead, blight you! You man with- out a country, man without a flag, go, skulk the earth like Cain! Back with you !tread the roads worn by the flayed and bloody feet of our heroes. The mounds heave at you as you pass, and vomit forth their ashes and their bones upon you! The skeletons from which dropped the black flesh, dense with vermin, in the winter misery, the summer horror, of Andersonville and Belleisle, may they haunt your dreams! Off !son without a father, man without a landoff with you, forever! Bitterly weeping, Rupert fell away to the door. There was a slight and hushed commotion in the despairing room. Women, who had silently sank in dead swoon, were being noiselessly removed. Then all was still again, and for a moment there was a dread syncope and pause. The carpenter advanced with solemn and stately tread, composed and calm, but dilated to his fullest manly majesty, and, from brow to foot, he seemed all clothed with an august and strong illu- mination. Weakened by the recoil of his fury, and bracing himself with vio- lence to meet the one he felt to be his true antagonist; looming in virile brawn, with massive, corrugated lion-facet and locked jaws, and eyes like orbs of fero- cious azure glow; hard, savage, aroused, redoubtable as an embattled tower, the old man confronted him. Both were still. No words could paint the Titan sculpture of that moment. All heark- ened for the first immense crash of the expected duel. All waited, with eyes strained in pain, for the gray stranger to speak; but his lips were firm, and, to the general surprise, he only, in utter silence, extended slowly his left arm. Every one turned. They were lead- ing in Mrs. IDyzer, and she was near. The extended arm received her, and those that led her retired. Silently the carpenter sustained her short and totter- ing step, till she paused near her hus- band. She stood, very quiet. Not a line of her dark dress quivered; her wealth of unbound hair, streaked with reverent silver, streamed upon her shoulders; her ( 8I~ THE CARPENTER. face was gray and dead; her lifted eyes were like stone; her raised hands were clasped together; only her ashen lips ceaselessly moved in speechless implor- ing. In the long, soundless pause, it seemed as if heaven and earth were still. His mother! said the carpenter. It was as if a shock struck the room. The brief speech had the effect of a thunderclap, and in a roaring inward whir and overthrow, which never reach- ed the outward silence, every heart was bathed as with bright fire. Oh, how he uttered those words I They were eiectrifying. The stern energy, the melting tenderness, the divine depth of significance, the heart-shaking associa- tions that he threw into them, would have reached a soul though housed in granite. Elkanah felt them to the very marrow of his bones. In one instant, his vigor of pride and fury was dis- solved, and he was cold. Slowly, without moving from his dreadful posture slowly, while the pallid assemblage gazed with dry, hot eyesthe old man turned his head, as if the weight of all the world hung to it, till at last it became fixed, and his appalling gaze rested upon the ghastly countenance beneath his own. She never spokespeech was impossible; it had been like the effort of one bursting from death, for her to merely reach his side; but without ceasing, her hueless lips moved in an agony of mute beseeching. Not a breath was heard; not an eyelash quivered; the tapers burned nnwaver~ ing; the shadows slept upon the floor; no leaf of the dense, branchy roof of holly trembled. The old husband, the old wife of many years, stood moveless- ly, their eyes locked to each others faces with a fixed regard. But in his soul, like the rush or remembrance to the drowning, was a hurrying stream of memories and images, the fond old days, the sweet, glad times of marriage, the cradle by the fire-lit hearth, the in- fants dimpled hand caressing the white nursing bosom, the young mothers face thrilling with the divine joy of mater- nity, the babys shoe, the prattle, the tiny dresses, the li~ht, the comfort, the magic sights and sounds of home. All the weak, weak things that have power to shake the hearts of the mighty, came to him as lie stood gazing at her. The moment was sublime. She pleads for her first-born, said the carpenter, in low, clear tones, like soundless light upon the silence, and awful in the grandeur of their pathos. The old mans visage gradually sway- ed away, and his large eyes, from which the flame had gone in glisten, rested upon the calm, lit face of the illumina- ted man before him. Erect, bent for- ward, he stood like a leaning column, intent upon the carpenter. In the silence, George, mad, wild, unknowing what was happening, sud- denly sprang up, though without noise, and in the pallid swarth of his fierce face, his lips curved open for some fiery utterance. A commanding gesture from the other, striking him mute upon the instant, also summoned him to his side. He came, with measured, clinging steps that dully struck the floor, and paused with down-bent head beside his sum- moner. Without haste, the latter took his empty sleeve by the extremity, and lifted it up before the old mans eyes. This pleads for him, he said, sol- emnly. For a moment, he upheld the brave, pathetic sleeve, then let it fall. A strange and indeterminate stir went through the assembly, and, as if from the arrival of a new spirit among them, there was a change. Elkanah Dyzer was weeping! He had not altered his attitude nor posture; he still leaned forward, colum- nar; but his head was bent, and the big drops, as from the eyes of some stricken deer, fell visibly to the floor. At once relief came to the pent bosoms of the throng, and from womens eyes, and from mens eyes unused to tears, the moisture began to flow. Shall I add my pleading l said the carpenter, in a gentle yet sovereign voice. No! Not one word of weaker supplication from my lips. Tis God Himself implores you in this mothers heart and bosom yearnin~ for her child 1868.1 88 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Jan. this arm the soldier gave to his coun- try, not to destroy, but to restore. A change had come upon him. The rosy color had died from his face in a clear splendor, and his form, regnant and masculine, was clothed with inspi- ration, as with a dazzling aureole. I have dreamed a dream of my country, he said slowly. I saw her, angel of the cradle, mother of all that are, in her strength of loving beneficence to her many children, and to every member of the race of man. Out of her womb issued the armed soldier, cham- pion of her Democracy, savior of earths slaves. Not to rend my land in twain. No; but to bind anew, in love, her warring citizens, to unite the broken ties of kindred, to give the brother to his earliest mates, to reconcile the father to the son, to restore the mother to her child. rrhe old wife lay clinging to her hus- bands breast, and he, through all his obstinate height, was shaken and con- vulsed like one in some mute frenzy. Come hither, Rupert, unto me, said the carpenter. Come hither, my own dear boy? The wretched being, who stood weep- ~ng bitterly, leanin against the wall, feebly staggered to his side. The staunch old savior threw his strong right arm around him, and with the other encircled the weeping George. I nursed them both together in the hospital, he resumed, in a gentler strain. Their cots were side by side. I sat between them. When father and mother forsake them, I will not cast them out. Ec~ually they are mine. My life is in them. Elkanah Pyzer, fcccive thy sons! Thou, whom I learn- ed to love before I knew thee, and whose faults of nature are from stocks of virtue, receive from me this Christmas gift, more than all the riches of the world. Take back these loving broth- ers, two henceforth in one. Thou canst not refuse Me. The old man flung up his arms, tense, stiff, with a mighty struggle; his face, shrunken, colorless, seemed to blacken; the old wife clung madly to his breast. Lostlost! he gasped; dead dead, forever. There was a moments pause, and the sublimely tender voice, full-fraught with the deep music of eighteen centuries, sounded upon the silence. For this, thy son, that was dead, is alive again; he was lost, and is found. A rending struggle shook the old mans frame; then, as one exhausted, his upstretched arms fell laxly down down upon the neck of his rebel son. One instant only, they lay there flaccid- ly; the next, they gathered the first- born to his breast, and frantically he covered the pallid, sleeping face with moaning kisses and with tears. Yet, even as they all clung to him, his wife, his sons and daughters, and the voices of their love and weeping mingled with the sobbing of the room, he tore him- self way, as if with the last effort of his waning strength, to fling himself upon the breast of the carpenter. Ten- derly, and with a mighty clasp, the loving heart received him, and, with their heads bowed upon each others shoulders, the two old men stood in the reverent silence, locked in each others arms. Love! said the gray redeemer hiftino his clear face, bright with death- less smiling, and wet with the sweet waters of immortal tears, Lovelove! That includes all. There is nothing in the world but thatnothing in all the world. Better than all is Love. Love is better than all. The family, the guests, were throng- ing around him, ~yet not to listen or to gaze, but with his noble presence, his deep words in every heart, to unloose near him in silence pierced with sob- bing, their passion of affection for each other. Each life that moment lived in an cestacy of charity. Friends grasped each other by the hand. Neighbors forgot their petty fends, their lurkin0 enmities, and met in tremulous greet- ing. The secret rebel struck hands with the tepid loyal, and both rose glowing into love of country. The daughters arms were round the fathers neck. The son was clinging to 1868.1 THE CAnPEKTEE. 89 his mother. Sisters were sobbing in their brothers embrace, and guileless lovers, unashamed, clasped each other in crying joy. Bright in holy shadow bloomed the graves of darlings. Deep ia the spirit-air the fadeless fields un- rolled, the shining cities rose, the bells of heaven were ringing sweet and low. Till at last, upon the murmuring hush, the sacred tremor, the rapt and happy sorrow, the exaltation and the vision, came the innocent silver-laughter of a little child. It was the sweet return of Earth. In the immediate stir, the weeping grew louder, mixed with trembling, laughing voices; the figures be0an to mingle; the sound of feet awoke the floor; re- mark and response brake forth; a handkerchief was waved; another and another, and suddenly the air was full of snowy flags, all flying, flying, flying; the faces began to toss and light and glow; the multitudinous voices arose upgatherin~ like the sound of many waters; and one weak voice among them broke into a cheer, the signal for another from beyond; there was a whir swelling into a roar of commotion ; - and at once, with handkerchiefs all madly waving, figures swaying, women leap- ing, orbic mouths and faces flaming, out burst the long-pent hurricane in frantic cheers. Cheers that jarred the rooms and clashed the windows; made the flags quiver on the wall, and the dense holly shower its scarlet berries, and drop its leaves; cheers that made Elkanah totter back, and fall in aching rapture on his Ruperts neck, with wife and sons and daughters bunched tight about with interwoven armsa solid grove of family affection tied moveless in the tornado-whirl around them. Cheers dizzying, redoubling, hoarsening into fury from determined lungs; the leaves down-flittering, specks of white from the ceiling dropping, the lights of the patriot-tapers wavering, the phre- netic flames of the hearth uproaring in the gale of gowns, the elements let loose, the joyous tornado rising into the delirious simoom for Ruperts welcome home! And, hark! amidst the tre mendous incommunicable tumult, the wild bald-eagle scream of Bob Toners fiddle! And they dancewho hears the tune ?it might have been a dirge! they dance like drunken seraphim they dance and cheerthey stop the cheer to dance the harderthe family- group is moving away, all locked to- gether,they dance, moving with it,in furious glad music, with sobs, with cries, with laughterthey prance, they caper, they plunge, they whirl, like m~nads, like bacehantes, raving, raging till, at last, all stream away together, leaping, bounding, through the door- way, across the passage into the apart- ments beyond, where in lessening tm ult the dance goes on, and the room is left in solitude. There is a limping step upon the stairs, and in tottles little pigmy Lilian, blue-dressed and yellow-curled, drag- ging a big shawl, which she proceeds to endeavor to wrap around her. Present- ly enters old giant Elkanah, hurried, pale, trembling, with a strange look and light upon his face, and stares, craned over, with weak astonishment upon the doings of his grandchild. God bless me I little one! he stammers; what are you u to with that shawl ?Wheres my best friend gone to I Grandpa, replies the mite , gravely, wrapping herself up with intense deter- mination, what you said to uncle jRupert was horrid gollawash. And you told him to Go! And I went up stairs to get this shawl. And I had an aufal huntawful. And then I found it. And Im going along, too, with my dear uncle Rupertthis very min~~~~ No, darling, replied the old man, tenderly, forgetting to laugh, in his emotion, no; uncle Rupert is not going awaynever, lies going to live with us always.But wheres Mr. Carpenter l My goodness, grandpa! said the little midget, ceasing to enwrap herself. Not going! Then Ill stay my own self. But theres been a. awful change of front somewhere! Lily, dear, said the old man, weak- ly, bending down to her, cant you tell 90 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Jan. me wiere uncle Peters old Good Man has gone to? Hes not in the rooms, for Ive looked. Aint he, grandpa? Then I guess hes gone back to heaven this very night, she answered. 0 my friend! sighed the old man, rising to his feet with a burst of con- trolled and tender grief. My strange, best benefactor, could Ibutjustoncesee you again! 0 my heart, my heart! so drained of all its blood, so full of light, so full of sorrow and gratitude, so full of gentleness and love! Could I but once look on your dear facecould I but once see you, even at a distance, again.~~ Grandpa, said the small, silver voice, wrap me up well in this shawl, for its cold, and take me out, for may- be, you know, hes outside the door. The old man feebly started, and, stooping, wrapped her in the shawl; and taking her up on his breast, where she ~ffectionately nestled, went out into the winter-darkness, grand and cold, and lit by many stars. For a moment, coming from the lighted room, they saw nothing in the vast, dim obscurity. Behind them, the noise of the revellers was loud, muffled in the cloak of the frigid outer ~i1ence. Presently, the dark swales of the farm became apparent, with clumps of vague bushes, and amorphous shapes of trees, rising here and there. Their eyes sought the path, which led away from the door, and curved over a sort of mound or hillock against the east, to bend again to the distant road. And there they beheld him. Look, grandpa! said little Lilian. I see him there. The moon was coming up, though still below the horizon, and half the heavens were lit with an immense pure radiance. He stood upon the mound, looking toward them, enlarged in aspect by the frozen air, a grave and manly figure, darkly defined against that great light arising on the world. They gazed on him with straining eyes. Within, the glad noises of the joy of earth rang merrily. Without, was the form of love undying, moveless in icy darkness against the peaceful and tender light of God. A moment, and they saw him raise his hand in benediction and fare- welL The old mans eyes filled with tearsthe little child nestled low upon his breast. He was gone. 46---- J U S TI T IA . A roon bruised statue on a Venice column, Which has no grace, except the grace of name; And yet whose features, worn and sad and solemn, Put the long record of the past to shame. A battered face whose beauty has departed, An artists dream which had its ending here; A hope which faded even as it started; A joy which found fulfilment in a fear. But still, no time destroys what once was spoken, No years can alter the Divine decree; Though Justice suffer, and her rule be broken, The day has come when Venice shall be free. Not now a statue, beaten by the ages, Not now a record of an evil Past: Her glory shall illumine all the pages Where the dark shade of tyranny was cast.

90 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Jan. me wiere uncle Peters old Good Man has gone to? Hes not in the rooms, for Ive looked. Aint he, grandpa? Then I guess hes gone back to heaven this very night, she answered. 0 my friend! sighed the old man, rising to his feet with a burst of con- trolled and tender grief. My strange, best benefactor, could Ibutjustoncesee you again! 0 my heart, my heart! so drained of all its blood, so full of light, so full of sorrow and gratitude, so full of gentleness and love! Could I but once look on your dear facecould I but once see you, even at a distance, again.~~ Grandpa, said the small, silver voice, wrap me up well in this shawl, for its cold, and take me out, for may- be, you know, hes outside the door. The old man feebly started, and, stooping, wrapped her in the shawl; and taking her up on his breast, where she ~ffectionately nestled, went out into the winter-darkness, grand and cold, and lit by many stars. For a moment, coming from the lighted room, they saw nothing in the vast, dim obscurity. Behind them, the noise of the revellers was loud, muffled in the cloak of the frigid outer ~i1ence. Presently, the dark swales of the farm became apparent, with clumps of vague bushes, and amorphous shapes of trees, rising here and there. Their eyes sought the path, which led away from the door, and curved over a sort of mound or hillock against the east, to bend again to the distant road. And there they beheld him. Look, grandpa! said little Lilian. I see him there. The moon was coming up, though still below the horizon, and half the heavens were lit with an immense pure radiance. He stood upon the mound, looking toward them, enlarged in aspect by the frozen air, a grave and manly figure, darkly defined against that great light arising on the world. They gazed on him with straining eyes. Within, the glad noises of the joy of earth rang merrily. Without, was the form of love undying, moveless in icy darkness against the peaceful and tender light of God. A moment, and they saw him raise his hand in benediction and fare- welL The old mans eyes filled with tearsthe little child nestled low upon his breast. He was gone. 46---- J U S TI T IA . A roon bruised statue on a Venice column, Which has no grace, except the grace of name; And yet whose features, worn and sad and solemn, Put the long record of the past to shame. A battered face whose beauty has departed, An artists dream which had its ending here; A hope which faded even as it started; A joy which found fulfilment in a fear. But still, no time destroys what once was spoken, No years can alter the Divine decree; Though Justice suffer, and her rule be broken, The day has come when Venice shall be free. Not now a statue, beaten by the ages, Not now a record of an evil Past: Her glory shall illumine all the pages Where the dark shade of tyranny was cast. 1868.] LIFE IN GREAT CITIES. 91 LIFE IN GREAT CITIES. I. NEW YORK. INDUSTRY, FRUGALITY THEN PROSPERITY, WEALTHTHEN ART, POWERTHEN LUXURY, CORRUPTIONTHEN RUIN! Suon has been the story through all the ages: will such be the story in New York? Let us look at this vast city as it is to-day. Seven hundred and twenty-six thousand * human beings lie down to sleep on this little island, and rise up toeat. And yet not one of them ever produces a grain of wheat or an ounce of food: thirty-eight thousand and fifty-six more females than males; it follows that this number not only are not, bu~ e~nnot be, married. Yet, to eat and to love are the two controlling desires of man. Looking more close- ly, we discover, further, that four hun- dred and twenty-three thousand one hundred and twenty-one of this people are not marriedmore than one half. It seems certain that God intended us to eat and to love, and yet, here is a population of nigh a million, which finds it exceedingly difficult to do either in an honest and legitimate way. Why are these people in so peculiar and dangerous a position? The answer is most complex, and no two persons would give the same. But the principal reason is, that they do not wish to raise the food they eat; they prefer to use their wits rather than their hands. Not only are they without food, but the water they drink and waste is brought through great pipes of mason- ry forty miles long, from the Croton River; and sixty millions of gallons a day come pouring into the city; for which they pay annually about one million dollars money of the realm. Add to this the interest on the cost of the works ($30,000,000), and we have the cost of water, per year, about three millions of dollars. This is not all some seven thousand * licensed grog- shops dispense every drink known to man, except water :and at what cost? It is not easy to say exactly; but as there are three million gallons of whiskey brought to the city yearly, and as there are imported into it wines, brandies, rums, cordials, & c., & c., to the amount of $6,092,000; teas to the amount of $11,116,623; coffee to the amount of $19,732,381; it follows that this people do not go dry. The figures show that one fifth of all our imports are of this luxurious character. Let us try to approximate the cost of these little foxes. There are 150,000 t families in the city; allow to each Tea Rnd coffee $1 per week $150,000 Wines End Whiskies, $2 300,000 Tobacco $2 300,000 Bugles, (under which rankribbons, & c.,) $2 per week 300,000 $1,050,000 and we have a sum of over $52,000,000 per year, or about $350 to each fam- ily, for what may be called luxuries, superfluities, orworse. Eating is a fearful thing, and is becoming fearfully difficult; and yet every one of those seven hundred and twenty-six thousand (with exceptions) has an implicit faith that food is com- ing into his or her mouth daily, while they produce no eatable thing. Such faith is a miracle! Wheat and flour are grown and made in Genesee, and Minnesota, and Mis * Including Kings, Queens, and Richmond Coun ties. In 1830803,658. In 1353723,386. Now 000,000. f Census in 1830148,058.

1868.] LIFE IN GREAT CITIES. 91 LIFE IN GREAT CITIES. I. NEW YORK. INDUSTRY, FRUGALITY THEN PROSPERITY, WEALTHTHEN ART, POWERTHEN LUXURY, CORRUPTIONTHEN RUIN! Suon has been the story through all the ages: will such be the story in New York? Let us look at this vast city as it is to-day. Seven hundred and twenty-six thousand * human beings lie down to sleep on this little island, and rise up toeat. And yet not one of them ever produces a grain of wheat or an ounce of food: thirty-eight thousand and fifty-six more females than males; it follows that this number not only are not, bu~ e~nnot be, married. Yet, to eat and to love are the two controlling desires of man. Looking more close- ly, we discover, further, that four hun- dred and twenty-three thousand one hundred and twenty-one of this people are not marriedmore than one half. It seems certain that God intended us to eat and to love, and yet, here is a population of nigh a million, which finds it exceedingly difficult to do either in an honest and legitimate way. Why are these people in so peculiar and dangerous a position? The answer is most complex, and no two persons would give the same. But the principal reason is, that they do not wish to raise the food they eat; they prefer to use their wits rather than their hands. Not only are they without food, but the water they drink and waste is brought through great pipes of mason- ry forty miles long, from the Croton River; and sixty millions of gallons a day come pouring into the city; for which they pay annually about one million dollars money of the realm. Add to this the interest on the cost of the works ($30,000,000), and we have the cost of water, per year, about three millions of dollars. This is not all some seven thousand * licensed grog- shops dispense every drink known to man, except water :and at what cost? It is not easy to say exactly; but as there are three million gallons of whiskey brought to the city yearly, and as there are imported into it wines, brandies, rums, cordials, & c., & c., to the amount of $6,092,000; teas to the amount of $11,116,623; coffee to the amount of $19,732,381; it follows that this people do not go dry. The figures show that one fifth of all our imports are of this luxurious character. Let us try to approximate the cost of these little foxes. There are 150,000 t families in the city; allow to each Tea Rnd coffee $1 per week $150,000 Wines End Whiskies, $2 300,000 Tobacco $2 300,000 Bugles, (under which rankribbons, & c.,) $2 per week 300,000 $1,050,000 and we have a sum of over $52,000,000 per year, or about $350 to each fam- ily, for what may be called luxuries, superfluities, orworse. Eating is a fearful thing, and is becoming fearfully difficult; and yet every one of those seven hundred and twenty-six thousand (with exceptions) has an implicit faith that food is com- ing into his or her mouth daily, while they produce no eatable thing. Such faith is a miracle! Wheat and flour are grown and made in Genesee, and Minnesota, and Mis * Including Kings, Queens, and Richmond Coun ties. In 1830803,658. In 1353723,386. Now 000,000. f Census in 1830148,058. 92 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Jan. souri, and Maryland; and four million barrels of flour, and nine million bushels of wheat, get to the city of New York cycry year. And, moreover, there is not an ox in Texas, a hog in Illinois, a grouse in Wisconsin, a smelt in Maine, a potatoe any where, which may not arrive at the felicity of being devoured by one of the great mob of citizens whose chief happiness it is to live in New York city. By a vast eombination of force and genius, this food is got from all quarters of the earth, and is put into the mouths of these New Yorkers everyday; filling them with strength and life; and yet most of them hold it to be no miracle at all! Allow a pound of flour per day, and half a pound of meat to each person, and we have 265,000,000 lbs. flour, at 7 cts 18,550,000 132,000,000 lbs. meat, at 15 eta 10,800,000 $38,350,000 less b~y fourteen millions than we have estimated for the four luxuries just before mentioned. Yet every one knows that these last are the great staples of life; the others mere nonsense I If we cannot have bot luxuries and comforts, saith the witty man, give us the luxu- ries I How does all this food get here? Ah, that is a question! In Europe they used to say, All roads lead to Rome. Here we say, All roads lead to New York. Thirty-two thousand miles of iron rolls stretch out over the continent, fro~n the piney woods of Maine to the golden hills of Colorado, and on them, night and daynight and day, in storm, in sunshine, in heat, and cold3the iron horse drags his monstrous loads, all of which centre in New York. Then, from the beautiful bays and rivers of all New England, from all the shores of the Atlantic, come out sloops, and sehooners, and ships with snowy sails, which the good winds blow to New York; and upon every raging canal, dull old boats, with capacious insides, slowly but certainly float to New York. And then what ? Washington and Fulton Markets are disgraceful spots, certainly; but they are the great distributing centres for the food of the city. From the hour of three in the morning, until the shades of evening hide their filth under its darkness, a throng of carts, wagons, and trucks, crush, and collide, and swear, until they get at this food; which they then whirl away for the breakfasts and dinners of those countless thousands. And this is what goes on every day in the year. Think for a moment of the force and genius necessary to bring this steady miracle to pass; and remember that these railroads have cost some fifteen hundred millions of dollars, and these ships and boats as many millions ore. Think, too, of the thousands and thou- sands of heads and hands, always at work to get these New Yorkers fed. flow is it jaid for? This is another vast and mysterious question. Remem- ber that the smartest men and women get to great cities, and that their dex- terity is great; that they are inspired with a profound and persistent desire to get other peoples money. Eleven hun- dred different trades, professions, or oc- cupations, appear in the Business Diree- tory; all of which go to make up a deeent average man or woman of New York. The world has moved very far from Father Abrahamhas it improv- ed? These professions range from judges on the bench to vermin-exterminators; from great publishers to masonic em- blem-makers, of whom there isone. Drinking is the first, and foremost, and most vivacious. In the wine and liquor business are some. .3,950 Grocers, are some 2,030 Butehers count 1,100 Bakers count about 050 Then come lawyer, about 2,000 Doctors, about 1,130 Tailors, about 1,000 Hair-dressers, some 350 Equal in numbers, the clergy 856 But there are two classes whom we will venture to mention, who seem an integral part of modern society. There are some fifteen hundred professional thieves in the city, not countinn the aldermen and councilmen. These men eat, and in some cases grow rich. A ( 18~8.1 LIFE IN GREAT CITiEs. 93 retired thief, named Fox, died within a short time in Brooklyn, and one is now living in the city, both of whom amass- ed fortuncs of $60,000 or $70,000. It ~eems to be a good business, and the men engaged in it are very capable. It is easy to see how they pay for their food. The other class is the prostitutes. The number of abandoned women known to the police is small, less than three thou- sand; but this does not express the numbers who get their food in this way. Accuracy is not possible, but the estimates range from twenty-five thou- sand, upi~rard. Distressing and danger- ous as this is, it is still more distress- ing and dangerous in such cities as Lon- don, Liverpool, Edinburg, and Glasgow. There the streets reek. A serious ques- tion is now forcing itself upon public attention: Shall this class continue to spread disease brbadcast in the com- munity, or shall it be put under medical supervisioi l It is a most urgent and most perplexing question. But we see after what fashion some twenty or thir- ty thousand women earn their bread. The m chant dominates all. To-day he is the prince of New York. Time was when the great lawyer remained in his office in dignified seclusion, when science or learning dominated trade. But, to-day, lawyer, doctor, professor, preacher, artist, bow before the mer- chant. He controls money and dispenses patronage. Sitting in a dingy count- ing room of South-street, he sends his ships to the farthest cities, he brings thence the goods or the luxuries of the world. He makes New York into a vast Baz~ar or Market, where all may and do come to buy and sell. Figures tell their story: The tonnage entering and leaving the port for the year ending January 30, 1866, was 5,206,210. And this means so many tons of merchandise brought here or carried away. The Custom- House retums for the year 1865 exhi- bit. Imports $219,644,714 Exports $209,345,809 The seventy-one banks of the city comprise a capital of $55,00 ,000; and the daily business at the Clearing-House is some $100,000,000, and has been as much as $175,000,000, in one day. Business has lost its old character of substantial respectability, and now par- takes largely of speculation. It is most hazardous, most engrossing, most de- structive of life, and health, and hoppi- ness. You bet on the rise or fall of merchandise, or on the solvency of thousands of buyers. If you lose, you fail; if you win, you are a millionaire. In such a state of affairs it is easy to see how the morals of business gradually and surely deteriorate. ]Jlianufactures. It must not be sup- posed that buying and selling is the sole business of New York. Besides this, there is a vast beehive, where men work and produce every thing except food. Away from the line of Broadway, and the trading streets, there is a perpetual din and whirl and drive of machinery, which goes on producing, producing, producingspurred forward by the de- sire for wealth and the divine instinct of industry, become frantic. Work never ends, and its results are vast. lathe year 1860, 4,375 establishments produ- ced $159,107,369. They employed 90,- 204 men and women, to whom they paid $28,451,915average, $315and used a capital of $61,212,754. No one will suppose that here all The men are brave, and all the women virtuous;~ but some may fancy that all are rich. Let me make a few brief statements. The year 1863 was a pros- perous one, equal or above the average. In that year the incomes of New Yorkers, as returned for taxation, and pretty fairly too, showed but eighteen thousand and thirty-four persons who had incomes above $5,000. Five of them reported above $500,000, and one $1,843,637. The great majority live on incomes of less than one thousand dol- lars. Only fifteen thousand persons oc- cupy a whole house, and 480,386 live in tenement houses: of these 15,214 live, or rather rot, in cellars. They are the underground tribepariahs, outcasts enough to make a large city I And 4 [Jan. PuTNAMS MAGAZiNE. 94 further, 52,258 out-of-door poor were relieved by charity in the year 1865. And yetand yet every body wishes to come to New York, and nobody wishes to go away from it. The whole taxable property of the city,* according to the assessor, was near $609,000,000aboUt $840 to each per- son; upon which taxes to the amount of $18,203,952 were paid; some twenty- five dollars to each man, woman, and child. Several millions of this it is computed were stolen; but of that fairly spent, look at what is necessary to make this people behave themselves: Police department $2,211,556 Salaries and expenses of courts 649,961 Juvenile Asylum 50,990 Almshouse, & c 988,450 $3,900,957 Why do people go on so badly, and spend such vast sums as this? Possibly the police reports may help to show. The ~report for the quarter ending January 31, 1867, states, that over one fourth of all arrests were for intoxica- tion, and one half of all persons arrested were born in Ireland. The vice and crime of New York, therefore, express her own wickedness; but also include a frightful amount imported from the other side of the water. But all this ignorant and vicious class are allowed to vote, and to elect judges and what not, and they are now bent upon having free rum; forgetting that all the cost has to be paid for out of their poor earnings, in increased rents and dear food. .Z?eli1sion. We see how merchants, manufacturers, thieves, & c., win their bread. The three learned professions~~ live by trying to cure or alleviate the miseries men inflict on themselves, or on one another. They are entitled to fair wages for doing this, and to our pro- foundest thanks. A few lawyersa very fewhave incomes of from twenty to fifty thousand dollars; butto get these they have worked years, have sacrificed enjoyment, have shortened their lives. The greater number secure * In 1865. something between one and three thou- sand dollars. Physicians get nearly the same, though the extremes are not so great. The clergy are paid from $2,000 to $8,000 a year, and on the whole live well. But they fail to enjoy such a measure of health as so serene an occu- pation should secure. In a commercial city like this, a class of men who do not attempt to make money, whose lives are reflective rather than active, whose thoughts are of another world rather than this, might easily be undervalued, if not despised. That they are not, speaks well for them, and well for the people; it would seem to show that Gold is not Godnot yet I The witty Frenchman has said In America they have invented two hun- dred religions and only one gravy!,, We have in New York three hundred and fifty-three churches, nearly every sect known to ci~ilized man. The average members in some five of the leading sects, is three hundred and twenty; which seems to show a reli- gious population of but 112,960 persons. These, however, represent families, and a population probably of some 224~774 which, however, is only about one fourth of all. It has been stated that the religious destitution of New York is greater than that of Pekin ; * yet the problem of how to induce people to go to church has not been solved here. The richest and leading sect in the city has seats for 110,750; but has an average attendance of only 28,613.t This seems to show, not that we want churches, but people to go into them. The material masters the spiritual here also, and the great worldly prizes are not in the church. Where, then, do we look for the great, strong, worldly men? Certainly not in the church certainly not in the ranks of those who follow a meek and lowly Master. In- deed, the meek and lowly men do not abound in a large citynot in America at least. Schools. In every quarter of these United States exists such a determina * Dr. Sutphen. Census of 1860. 1869 J LIFE IN GREAT CITIES. 95 tion to be educated, as amounts to a passion. The Irish element in this city is thoroughly imbued with it, and has. taken possession of the school-boards perhaps for pelfbut mainly to obtain for their children the very best educa- tion they can get, at the expense of the city; under a mistaken impression that it costs them nothing. This is the class which readily assists at, if it does not urge, the introduction of a higher and higher range of studies; and the child of the day-laborer rejoices in the pros- pect of passing through the Free College, and being President of the United States, while his father may shovel dirt into the offal-carts of the street. This insures a great deal of present confusion and discontent; but I am assured that the end, when we reach it, will be something quite surprising. It appears that, in 1866, there were 268 schools, which cost $2. 377,928; and that there were taught in them 206,309 pupils of various ages, sexes, nnd colors. They were taught English studies in variety, French, Ger- man, Latin, Greek, and mathematics. At the Free College every child may arrive at a reading of Xenophon in the original Greek, and at a comprehension of the calculus. While they are taught all this, and are stimulated by an ardent emulation on the part of teachers as well as scholars, not one line is taught of the laws of health, the duties of ma- ternity, or the morals of property; and of these the teachers are believed to be as ignorant as the children. And this is going on in a city, where, to-day, five hundred lawyers can be hired for cne half the wages of a good journeyman carpenteD! It is a curious and most novel phase of modern civilization. I have authority for saying, no American boy now learns the mechanical arts, if by any possibility he can live otherwise; and that almost wholly these pursuits are filled by foreign-born men. There are in the State 49,597 clerks (pay, $2 to $3 a day); 11,754 masons (pay, $5 a day). Libraries, public and private, are on the increase; but two only are yet remarkable for number of booksthe one, the Astor, a free gift of John Jacob Astor and his son, which now contains some 150,000 volumes; and the other, the Mercantile, the produc- tion of the young men of the city, which has a collection numbering some 80,000 to 90,000 volumes. Both are much frequented. The one finest, grandest, and most beautiful thing yet accomplished by this people, is the Central Park; which in a few years has been converted, from a slough and desolation, into one of the most striking pleasure-grounds in the world, where soft grass, green trees, and gay flowers, attract poor and rich in crowds. Eight years ago this spot was one of the foulest and most un- sightly that could be seen any where; now it is one of the most delightful. It must be admitted, that all this has been accomplished with an unlimited, almost lavish, expenditure of moneywhich none begrudge, because all contribute and all enjoyand this explains the swift and marvellous change which has been wrought. Ten millions of dollars will not quite cover its cost.* Here thousands and thousands of the poor resort, to get their only taste of nature, their only breath of sweet air, their only forgetfulness of brick walls and squalid quarters; and here their poor, pale, sickly little children catch a glimpse of Paradise. This, however, is not the only amuse- ment of this goodly town. Theatres, concerts, opera-houses, minstrel per- formances, free waiter-girls and costly beer, allure the pleasure-seekers in every quarter; and any thing in the shape of entertainment is sure of a crowd of citizens or strangers. They pay well; for it seems that about seven millions go out of the pockets of the people into the pockets of the managers every year. Think how much dreary wit is paid for, how much cheap stuff is sold high; and consider what better can be done. In the year 1643, over two centuries ago, lots on the Great Highway were laid out and given t~ the Dutch * Cost of ground, $5,028,844; of construction, $4,986,035. Dec. 31, 1866. 90 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Jan. settlers; and Martin Crigier got one on tlie west si] e opposite the Bowling Green. The fort was then on White- hall-street, and just above Martin was a burying groundbut nobody was will- ing to live above that. If Martins ghost revisits usand I do not doubt ithe sees on his pasture-lot tall warehouses, which rent for $30,000 a year; above him is Trinity Church, almost the only fine piece of architecture in the city and it nothing remarkable. Then if he comes to the T Schaape Wytie, or sheep pasture, he will find a lane called Wall- street. Dare he enter at number 13? A fearful sound proceeds thenceit is the yelling of human voices. In a large, handsome room several hundred well- dressed menthey are not savages gray heads and downy chins together, are struggling and shoutingit is fear- ful. Is murder about to be done? Not at allit is only some gentlemen buying and ~el1ing Erie. They are a private party of the best-natured fellows in the world, who pick up a precarious living by pretending to be bulls or bears for the moment. A keen susceptibility to the abstract idea of Truth is not thought to prevail there; but if they are indeed bulls and bears, and if animals have no souls, is it not unrea- sonable to look for it? There is no stranger sight in this whole city, none stranger in the uni- verse, than this Board of Brokers. That so many men, of good manners, and good character, and gentle aspira- tions, are found to be most anxious to pay money to be allowed to do this business, is startling. It is almost im- possible to keep their numbers within bounds. The ghost will care little about the superb hotels which are planted along Broadway, because ghosts need no din- ners and have no five dollars a day to pay for food and lodging; but he may stop for a moment to look at a tall white marble block, which a poor and once despised Scotch adventurer has built for the use of his newspaper, now pretty well known as the Herald. This has grown steadily and persistent- ly until it is worth to the owner about a quarter of a million of dollars a year; and it has done this without any politics, or any principles, or any litera- ture; purely out of work, and pluck, and audacity, and the keenest sense of the wants of the medium or lower classes of society. It is a vast success which men worship. Farther up, above the glitter of the superb jewelry-shops of Tiffany and Ball & Black, another white marble block will attract his eye. He cannot get in because the doors are choked; but through the great windows of plate- glass, he can see crowds of women with anxious, greedy eyes, faces borden iy on insanity, apparently worrying long lines of pale young men. These young men keep them at bay by piling up barri- cades of drygoods, of every shade and pattern ever produced. Those anxious women do not wish to hurt those pale young men; they only wish to get clothes to cover their nakedness. This is Stewarts -a spot better known to the female mind of America than the graves of the Fathers or the shrines of the Saints. Harpers Bazar states, that over $300,000,000 are spent yearly for drygoods in these United States; and I say that the women of New York get a very large share of this substitute for the fig-loaf, which mother Eve first tried. But I venture also to say, that the amount of misery, actual torment, to the female mind, growing out of the fact that man is an unclothed animal, is beyond the computation of Pierce or Davies. It was once believed, and may still be believed by some, that labor- saving machines do save labor. It is not so; for this day there are twenty varieties of most wonderful sewing- machines, each of which will do the work of fifty hands, and ybt it is almost impossible for American women to get themselves clad. Thenoh, Messrs. Harper, why would you do it ?every week is produced a new crop of bon- nets, and mantles, and peplums, and skirts, and bosoms, and backs, and sashes, and ruffles, and flounces, and plaits, andwhat not beside? These, 1868.J 9Z LIFE IN GREAT CITIES. 9 every woman lias got to havethink of it! must choose what her particular style of beauty most needs to make it more ravishing; and not only has she to choose-a terrible mental strainbut to find some other woman to make them all. The wardrobe, which was once a single garment of a single piece, is now fifty garments each of fifty pieces. Can we wonder that our women fade young? that their souls are distracted? We cannotwe do not. Alas! alas! Martin Crigiers ghost will wander along between the superb houses of Fifth avenue, and no doubt will dis- cover, in some way, that things are not as in his time, but that a roof to cover one costs somewhere from $40,000 to $200,000, and even then fails to secure perfect bliss. But if he gets into this throng of carriages and people, which concentrates at Fifty-ninth street and Fifth avenue, he may get crushed. No, he is a ghost; and he will look on and wonder ~t the lines of well-dressed peo- ple and prancing horses that are enter- ing the Central Park. He will see few Dutch faces, but many Jewish nQses; and he will see bulls~~ and bears, but they are not the kind he used to shoot here; they are simply the wild animals of the Stock Board. Martin will return to heaven thanking his Maker that he lived here two centuries ago, if he is at all the reasonable ghost I take him to be. The People. What is the effect of a great metropolis upon the people who live in it? New York has hardly a character or a habit. How can it have? when between the year 1851 and 1803 were landed on its wharves over two million and a half of human creatures; and in 1866 two hundred and thirty- three thousand five hundred more.t Besides, to the city swarm also the active, the hopeful, the grasping, the despairing, from every part of our own landall ready to try their luck, or their skill, at the great wheel of life. All are stimulated to the utmost; the prizes are few but great, the risks heavy, the temptations strong. These * 2,334,671. 233,418. vot. r.7 tell upon character. The men (who are ambitious and mean to win, and who never give it up) wear a bold, adventur- ous air; they dress well,eat well, and spend money freely, when they have it. Their grasp is powerful; they do not fear to undertake great enterprises, or to incur any amount of responsibility. When they failand they almost all do failthey get up and try again, or they go to the dogs. They are not troubled with diffidence or conscience, and ambition dominates soul. They love great houses, and fine upholstery, and fast horses, be~ause these are the mintstamp of success; but about art,or literature, or science, they know little, though some few are beginning to believe there may be something in them, though just what it is, is quite vague. If they have any idea except to be millionaires, it is to combine in some way Cash and Christianity; and thus produce a cross between Saint Francis Xavier and Commodore Vanderbilt. So far it has not been done. The great men no longer seek in politics, literature, art, or science, a field for the greatest talent. No prizes are comparable to those which commerce offers, and railways insure, and we must look for the greatest grasp among the Comings and the Stewarts, the Forbess and the Lows the Yanderbilts and the Ogdens of to-day. The women are not unlike the men handsome, stylish, courageous, and some- what reckless. They love clothes, and jewels, and operas, and society; but no one chooses to remain in her own circle, or among her own people, so long as there is a class or a society which seems to be above her. She is therefore restless and racked. She fears the frown of Mrs. Grundy, and must live in the enchanted region bounded by Madison square, Fourth and Sixth avenues; be- yond this is outer darkness. Within this limit reIlts range from two to ten thousand a-year, and life is scaled up to that expenditure. How it is~ done, how people who have incomes of four thou- sand a-year manage to spend fifteen, no one tells. It is a secret, but it is done. 98 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. The woman of the best society has nothing to do but spend money, and she does nothing else; she is absolutely without occupation, except the business of society. She knows a little French, a little German, a little music, a little poetry, a very little housekeeping, and a vast deal of dress. But of herself, of the relations of mind and body, of the laws of health ,diet, air, exercise,of maternal duties, of the natural sciences, absolutely nothing. And yet her edu- cation has cost from a thousand to fifteen hundred dollars a year! I have alluded t4maternal duties: so little are they understood or appreciated as I learn upon competent authority that large numbers of the best families find relief from them in the services of skilled expertsone of whom lives in one of the most superb mansions of the city, and has amassed a fortune of half a million. Society is constantly shifting it is a~ kaleidoscope. Few, if any, of the leaders of ten years ago remain; all are gonegone, and none know whither, or care. Society is too eager, too busy, to stop and drop a tear upon ruined fortunes or blasted hopes. ~ Let the dead bury their dead, is its motto. Marriage is becoming more and more difficult, if not impossible; and its con- trary more and more common. The streets are thronged with beautiful girls, lovely as peach-blows; but they desire to begin life with all the elegance arid expenditures to which their mothers have used them; and as men do not exist with purses long enough to marry them, and as the:e is no market to which they can be carried, the prospect is dismal. The other extreme, the opposite and complement of the best society, is to be found in Water and Cherry streets, where men, women, and children crowd into reeking cellars and holes of the earth; without fire, without food, with- out beds, without hope of man or God. Fifteen thousand of this class! Between these extremes come the great body of common people who live decently, eat [Jan. well, work hard, and secure a fair measure of worldly comfort. This, then, is what the eleven hun- dred occupations of the city (not count- ing horse-racing) produce: a few very rich, many very poor, neither very hap- py; and the great mass, neither rich nor poor, neither happy nor wretched. The children200,OOO of themhave the hardest of it in this great city. Shut up in houses and narrow yards, they can neither shout, nor run, nor climb, as they do in country-pastures and leafy woods; their lungs are never filled with sweet-hay-smelling air; they never catch fish, or find birds nest3, or seek wild flowers, or build huts, or make gardens. How can they, then, have that natural, free, healthy, full development which makes great men and women? What is the consequence? We see it, in that great cities go to decay when the fresh blood of the pas- tures does not flow into them; we see it in the spare bodies, and pale faces, and weakened digestions, and sensitive nerves, of city-children; and we see it in the awful mortality which sends one half of them to the grave before they reach the age of five years. It is so among the best of themwith those who live in good houses, who eat good food, and have tender parents. How is it with those who have none of these, who are neglected, wretched, and ill- treated, from the day they are born? Thirty thousand of this kind, between the ages of five and twelve, exist in this city *and sixty thousand of all! A significant factrather. Two things it is worth while to understand. One isthe irresistible tendency to concentration which prevails in all civilized States. It shows itself in that Boston drains Massachusetts, Chicago Illinois, Cincinnati Ohio, St. Louis Missouri, and I~{ew York drains all. Here, too, all tends to greater and greater concentration, and businesses cannot now be begun without fortunes, which thirty years ago men were con- tent to end with. I have a memoran * neport of Corn. of charities and Corrections, 1555. SOS.] LIFE IN GEEAT CITIES. 99 dum of real estate, belonging to ten men of this city (not including Old Trinity), which shows a taxable value of $51,- 405,500over five millions to each man. As the whole property for the past year shows $555,442,012, it follows that these ten men own one tenth of all; and we can easily understand that a few gen- erations might see their heirs owners of the whole. The great businesses also follow the same law. Two merchants, dealing only in drygoods, sold, in the year 1865, goods to the amount of over seventy millions eachand neither were nor are content with that. Where will they end? The greatest manufactures seem to be in books, hoopskirts, and pianos a curious combination. The other thing isthat out of this accumulated wealth comes no great man or fine thing, if we except the Astor Library and Cooper Institute. There is a vital, noble, earnest cla~s of men and women ja the city, surely. They work and they hope. They never despair. But they work at a disadvantage, be- cause they are unorganized. How can they be brought together, how can they make their work, their earnest- ness, their faith, tell? It is the ques- tion of the day. There are great and active charities which do much and wish to do more. They can exist only by begging, begging. Who gives voluntarily, willingly, gladly? Who? There are neither fine galleries of art, nor admirable free hospitals, ncr homes for the despairing, nor homes for people of small means, nor co- operative industries, nor generous emi- gration societies. None of them.* What the money does, is simply to get more money. A most striking failure in this direction is, that no rich mans son achieves distinction in art, literature, or science; or, with perhaps one exception, in politics. It is astounding. Where is that noble * Our author is, perhaps, too severe in his judg- ments. Let us not under-state the beneficent en- ergies of our ten righteous men, or abanc~on all hope of more adequate provision for the future. EDIT. ambition which made the Greeks the wonder of the world? Where that love of knowledge which makes men seek and seek to know the secrets of crea- tion? Where that thirst for perfection, which moulds men into statesmen and patriots? Where that quick sympathy for weakness and suffering, which stamp- ed Jesus of Nazareth the Son of God? Allall overwhelmed with the materi- alism of this age, with the greed for money! Is this indeed so? The love of the common weal has no hold upon the men of wealth and ability. Hardly a man of this class devotes himself to the public service, or looks after the public good. He sees the city government in the hands of men without character, without con- science, without dignity; and he does nothing but pay what they demand! The struggle forever goes on between the spiritual and the temporal, between the noble and the base, between virtue and - vice; and there is a grave fear that vice wins here, as it has won else- where. Our churches do not save us, nor our schools, nor will either or any political party; we try to believe they will, but they will not, they never have. Rogues laugh at them. We spend on our schools $2,337,928, but on our police and courts $2,861,517. Half a million most on the last! What will save usten righteous men? Ten righteous men who will spend their ineomes ean. Property, property alone can save the city. It has always been looking after its rights, never anxious about its duties. Property can make itself friends with the poor, it can help the weak and despairing, it can secure emigration, it can make decent homes for all, it can demand and have a decent city government, and it can protect itself. Already it. is taxed heavi- ly, and the rings will n~t cease to make it lay eggs for them. It can do all things, not by individual and spas- modic action, but by a thorough and business organization, where it shall em- ploy money, brains, and character. Will property do it? Gentlemen, the question is before you. 100 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Jan. THE LATE FRANCIS L. HAWKS. J~ the opening number of PUTNAMS MONThLYour illustrious predecessor, which, after flourishing in its time in the Attic graces of the best of contribu- tors, like the fabled stream of Elis van- ished for a while, submerged beneath a sea of political troubles, to reappear to-day in a land sacred to liberty among those first joyous utterances of the voice of Maga was a memorial of a departed friend, a man of action and of letters, whose influence is still felt in the community for which he lived and died. This tribute was paid by the Rev. Dr. Hawks to John L. Stephens, the pioneer of American travel in the East, an original archieological explorer in Central America, and one of the founders and chief promoters of that great national enterprise, the means to-day of so much of the material prosperity of~ the United States, and of other nationsthe Panama railroad. It was every way an appropriate and characteristic tribute. Dr. Hawks stood in personal relations to his friend Mr. Stephens of a peculiar nature. He had a ready sympathy with the discoveries of the energetic traveller, was prompt to assist his antiquarian researches with the matured counsel of his own learned studies in that direction; and, as the rector of the church in which Stephens worshipped, was drawn to him by the en- dearing associations of Christian fellow- ship. The judgment which Dr. Hawks then pronounced of the labors of his friend, time has amply confirmed. The Panama railway, the great practical undertaking among others of a similar character of his life, then at the begin- ning of 1853 unfinished, exists as pre- dicted, a monument indelibly connect- ed with the name of John L. Stephens. There is another view in which this article of Dr. Hawks was characteristic of its author. It was quite in unison with his disposition, that he took part in the very outset in the then somewhat novel and hazardous experiment of a new magazine, dependent for its support upon the better literature of the country, and consequently upon the better class of readers. It is safe to say that, at that time, few responsible publishers would have any thing to do with such an undertaking. Previous enterprises of the kind had for the most part lan- guished in the hands of projectors with- out capital, or of editors whose brain- work, however excellent, was incapable of supplying that requisite material aid. Under such circumstances, given a true cause, Dr. Hawks never hesitated in lending to~ it his support,the in- fluence of his name, and the encourage- ment of his counsels. His faith wa~~ never wanting in an emergency of that kind. With an eye intent solely upon the good to be accomplished, he over- loQked or thrust aside all minor dis- couragements, and no disappointment could eradicate from his mind the seeds of his ever-springing conviction that what in this world, which a beneficent Deity has decreed to be the scene of effort and netion, ought to be, must be. Such men, since the short period of human life seldom measures the career of great results, have often to submit to failures; and of these wounds and in- juries to a sanguine spirit, Dr. Hawks certainly, in his day, had his full share; but not the less valuable was his irre- pressible spirit and energy. If he was on several occasions in adva.nce of his time, or of the means at his command~ others have since succeeded by adopting the principles which he advocated and labored to embody in living realities. The life of Dr. Hawks, though neces- sarily limited in its sphere by his con- sistent devotion to his profession as a clergyman of the Protestant Episcopal Church, was within that well-defined boundary distinguished by its multi-

100 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Jan. THE LATE FRANCIS L. HAWKS. J~ the opening number of PUTNAMS MONThLYour illustrious predecessor, which, after flourishing in its time in the Attic graces of the best of contribu- tors, like the fabled stream of Elis van- ished for a while, submerged beneath a sea of political troubles, to reappear to-day in a land sacred to liberty among those first joyous utterances of the voice of Maga was a memorial of a departed friend, a man of action and of letters, whose influence is still felt in the community for which he lived and died. This tribute was paid by the Rev. Dr. Hawks to John L. Stephens, the pioneer of American travel in the East, an original archieological explorer in Central America, and one of the founders and chief promoters of that great national enterprise, the means to-day of so much of the material prosperity of~ the United States, and of other nationsthe Panama railroad. It was every way an appropriate and characteristic tribute. Dr. Hawks stood in personal relations to his friend Mr. Stephens of a peculiar nature. He had a ready sympathy with the discoveries of the energetic traveller, was prompt to assist his antiquarian researches with the matured counsel of his own learned studies in that direction; and, as the rector of the church in which Stephens worshipped, was drawn to him by the en- dearing associations of Christian fellow- ship. The judgment which Dr. Hawks then pronounced of the labors of his friend, time has amply confirmed. The Panama railway, the great practical undertaking among others of a similar character of his life, then at the begin- ning of 1853 unfinished, exists as pre- dicted, a monument indelibly connect- ed with the name of John L. Stephens. There is another view in which this article of Dr. Hawks was characteristic of its author. It was quite in unison with his disposition, that he took part in the very outset in the then somewhat novel and hazardous experiment of a new magazine, dependent for its support upon the better literature of the country, and consequently upon the better class of readers. It is safe to say that, at that time, few responsible publishers would have any thing to do with such an undertaking. Previous enterprises of the kind had for the most part lan- guished in the hands of projectors with- out capital, or of editors whose brain- work, however excellent, was incapable of supplying that requisite material aid. Under such circumstances, given a true cause, Dr. Hawks never hesitated in lending to~ it his support,the in- fluence of his name, and the encourage- ment of his counsels. His faith wa~~ never wanting in an emergency of that kind. With an eye intent solely upon the good to be accomplished, he over- loQked or thrust aside all minor dis- couragements, and no disappointment could eradicate from his mind the seeds of his ever-springing conviction that what in this world, which a beneficent Deity has decreed to be the scene of effort and netion, ought to be, must be. Such men, since the short period of human life seldom measures the career of great results, have often to submit to failures; and of these wounds and in- juries to a sanguine spirit, Dr. Hawks certainly, in his day, had his full share; but not the less valuable was his irre- pressible spirit and energy. If he was on several occasions in adva.nce of his time, or of the means at his command~ others have since succeeded by adopting the principles which he advocated and labored to embody in living realities. The life of Dr. Hawks, though neces- sarily limited in its sphere by his con- sistent devotion to his profession as a clergyman of the Protestant Episcopal Church, was within that well-defined boundary distinguished by its multi- 1868.] THE LATE FRANcIs L. HAwKs. 101 farious acLivities. Then, too, he began life early, and though distinguished in the pulpit at an age when most who attain reputation are still in their no- vitiate, he had previously made him- self a name in the pursuit of the law not, where it is associated with virtue such as his, an unprofitable schooling for his subsequent sacred calling. Born in Newbern, North Carolina, in 1798, he traced his ancestry on the fathers side to England, and on the mothers to Irelanda good genealogy for a family combining, in more than one distinguished example, worth and elo- quence. The father of Dr. Hawks was a man of sterling character; his mother, of devoted Christian piety. The in- genuous disposition of his youth was thus fostered by every manly influence. With a natural gift of oratory, he was distinguished in his college-days at the University of North Carolina, at Chapel Hill, by his fluent, graceful speaking. A favorite with his fellow-students, he was chosen to deliver the valedictorythe popular post of honor at the Commence- ment exercises. lie then became a pupil in the law-office of the lion. William Gaston, subsequently pursued his studies at Litchfleld, Connecticut, at the well- known law-school of Judges Reeve and Gould, and, returning to North Carolina, was, at the ~ge of twenty-one, admitted to the bar of his native State. He became at once engaged in practice, his ready eloquence and enthusiasm ren- dering him an acceptable jury-lawyer; whilean odd and characteristic com- bination, something of which attended him through lifehe united with this pleasing exercise of his faculties the dry occupation of reporter of the decisions of the Supreme Court of North Carolina. Hawks North Carolina Reports, sev- eral volumes in law-calf; commence the long series of his published works. That such a man, in a country and time unfettered by the strict subdivision of labor which every year more and more prevails in our great cities, should be something of a politician, was almost inevitable; and, consequently, we are not surprised to find our eloquent young lawyer serving a term in the State Legislature, anda tribute to his graver powersbecoming a member of the Convention of North Carolina for the revision of the State Constitution. Dr. Hawks married early a lady of Connecticut, with whom he became acquainted while pursuing his legal studies in that State. It was a happy union; after a few years continuance dissolved by death, which plunged the survivor into the profoundest grief. He turned to those consolations of religion, the only sure solace of a troubled life, already familiar to him, and resolved, abandoning the law, to devote his life to the Church of his fathers and of his affections. He left fame and fortune at the bara certain brilliant career of political prosperity which would doubt- less have carried him, had he chosen to pursue it, to the highest honors of the Republicto enter upon the exacting duties of a profession which has indeed its own high rewards, though seldom, it must be admitted, tempting to the exchange of such an opening of vigor- ous mental enjoyment and profitable success for its self-denying, and, in an earthly point of view, poorly compen- sated, labors. The choice once made, was never regretted. Dr. Hawks was a man of strong impulses, and acted very much from feeling; but no one ever knew him, in the midst of his deepest dis- couragements, waver in this determina- tion. The holy duties which he took upon himself in his vows of ordination at the hands of his friend, Bishop Ravenscroft, in 1827, at the age of twenty-nine, grew only more holy and sacred with him to the end. 1-le may be said to have begun his ministry at New Haven, Connecticut, whither he was speedily summoned as the assistant of his friend, the Rev. Dr. Harry Cros- well. He there won golden opinions for his eloquence, and must be well remembered by the surviving Yale Col- lege students of that period who flocked to hear him. He was in no long time after associated with the venerable Bishop White, in his ministry at Phila- delphia, and in 1831 was called to the 102 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Jan. rectorship of St. Stephens Church, New York, which he accepted, and was soon after transferred to the charge of an- other city congregationSt. Thomas Churchin the pastorate of which he was employed twelve years, the heart of his life. There the reputation which had preceded his coming, ripened into a steady admiration and regard as he rose to the height of his extraordinary powers in the pulpit. It would not he an easy undertaking to define the nature of his talents as an orator; for in all such cases there is some indescribable instinct or inwoven faculty, the invisible breath of genius, which secretly animates the whole. The more obvious training may be detected, and the more palpable mani- festations described; but there is some- thing which will always escape analysis and defy description. No words, even his own, can reproduce, for instance, the effect of the eloquence of 1-Jenry Clay; f~ they cannot carry with them the magnetic influence of the orator. We can say only, on the best of au- thority, as we take upon trust the reports of the effects of Garrick and Siddons, that they wielded a rare and precious power over their listeners. If you would know more, you must your- self be Garrick or Siddons, Clay or Hawks. The voice has passed away; books will not supply it; the critics admiration cannot utter it; if you do not find it in the depths of your own heart, it is but an idle record. Yet we fondly linger over our recollections of the orator, and would fain prolong on the empty air notes which, to the ear of mortals, have almost made their last distant vibration in their journey to a world beyond. Few, who often listened to our preacher at this meridian period of his career, can forget a peculiarity of his speaking, the continuous easy utter- ance with which his periods flowed on without any suspicion or reality of artifice; how the whole nature of the man seemed embarked on the swelling tide, as it swept away the prejudices or subdued the feelings of his auditors in its resistless course. A voice rich and deep, more remarkable for this con- stantly sustained compulsive current than for any occasional felicities,, was supported by the most graceful action, still ardent and unaffected. There were no spasmodic efforts, nothing unequal or disjointed: it was simply the evolu- tion of the subject and inspiration of the man. It was the same wherever he spoke, in private conversation at the semi-familiar meetings of the religions or other societies with which he was connectedthe tide of his emotions rising as his wealth of learning and fertility of illustration were summoned at the call of his powerful imagination. No better expositor of a devotional, scientific, or historical question has ever appeared in New York, certainly nbt within the experience of the present generation. His logical mind seized at once upon the constituent elements of every subject presented to him; his method, consequently, was clear and easy, and this so much neglected art of reasoning enabled him, as it did the ancient rhetoricians, and notably Edward Everett in our own time, to speak copiously and without weariness to his hearers. But he was a much more hearty speaker than Everett. There was a certain molten language of the South, an eloquence kindled by a warmer sun than our crisped northern accents. The atra-bilious temperament of IDr. Hawks, the settled glance of his keen dark eye, his stoutly compacted frame of medium height, his powers of endurance, should not be overlooked in forming an estimate of his powers as an orator. He has been known, on more occasions than one, to speak several hours, discussing subjects of fact and argument, invoking all his faculties of judgment and memory, without weari- ness to himself or his audience. While rector of St. Thomas, in 1830, Dr. Hawks visited England to execute a commission of the General Convention of the Episcopal Church to procure the early colonial documentary history of that Church in America. He was kindly received by the Archbishop of Canter- bury, and other authorities, and in a 1868.1 THE LATE FRANCIS L. HAWKS. 103 few months accomplished the object of his mission. While in London, he had the goQd fortune to fall in with the wit- ty Canon of St. Pauls, the Rev. Sydney Smith. This prime joker was, according to his wont, disposed to give his visitor a taste of his quality, which, as not unusual with him, he turned to a little innocent mirth at the expense of a brother clergyman. There is W., said he, travelling in this country alluding to a most estimable New York rector whose English birth entitled him to a proper admiration of the ecclesi- astical Establishment of the land of his fathers You should look after brother W. Do yoil know, that his regard for the voluntary system is fast oozing out of him; that his sleep is disturbed by visions of cathedrals and prebendal stalls, and that it has been saidI will not vouch for its truththat he has been practi4ng before a looking-glass in his private apartment, clothed in a bishops apron! The good W. did indeed attain the dignity, but Ritualism not being then developed, was content, as his brethren and successors are to this day, with the less imposing garni- ture of the American Episcopate. Syd- ney Smith also took an odd way to impress his guest with the social stand- ing of a metropolitan Canon. How much, Doctor, do you think I could swindle the British tradesmen out og before being stopped? Oh, Sydney! said his wife, deprecatingly. Why not? said he; it is a measure of value; and he named a pretty round sum, sufficient for the respectability of a churchman in his position. The purely literary works of Dr. Hawks were commenced at this middle period of his career, a goodly series, numbering before its close some score of volumes. Characteristically it began with several volumes for children: Un- cle Philips Conversations on Ani- mals, Trees, The History of Vir- ginia, and the Evidences of Chris- tianity simple, winning, truthful books, for the writer had the rare art of engaging the attention of the young. He then projected and established the New York Review, and subsequently the Church Journal, assisting in other pe- riodicals. To the ecclesiastical history of America he gave volumes on Vir- ginia and Maryland; to the general history of the country, volumes on North Carolina; studies of antiquities in books on Egypt and Peru. He in- troduced Commodore Perrys Expedi- tion to the world by a valuable Ethno- logical preface; he wrote books on the canons of the church, and other topics of ecclesiastical interest; delivered vari- ous lectures on American antiquities; was one of the chief restorers of the New York Historical Society, after it had fallen into a state of decrepitude; and was among the most energetic of the founders of the American Ethno- logical and Geographical Societies. Here, one might think, with the ex- ercise of an arduous profession meeting the demands on a popular preacher in a large city, was work enough for one man; but Dr. Hawks added to these, and others, the labors of an educational reformer. Enlisting his friends in the profitless undertaking, he built a school, collegiate it might be called, at Flush- ing, L. I., and gave it his personal su- perintendence. His views were liberal and just, but the expenditure exceeded his means, and he was compelled to relinquish the effort when he had ap- parently ~one through all the rough work of a founder. We can only say of it, that it deserved to succeed. Its failure brought liabilities with it of a most oppressive character, which inter- fered with the Doctors assumption of a bishopric to which he was elected, and led to his leaving New York for a time for New Orleans, where, with unfailing energy, he took his position with the most influential preachers of the day, built a new church by his exertions, and would, if the wealth of the State had permitted, have founded a glorious State university. His memory is cherished in New Or- leans by its surviving men of distinc- tion, who became acquainted with him during his residence in that city. A common friend, the Hon. Charles Gay- 104 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Jan. arr~, the historian of Louisiana, writes from that place: I never fail to think of Dr. Hawks when I pass by a church which he contrived to erect in New Orleans. It was he who had drawn the plan; and well do I remember the fondness with wh~ich he watched the progress of the construction. It was his escorial. I more than once passed an hour with him in the sacred edifice, amidst lumber and plaster, whilst he directed or urged the workmen. That church was his pride. It was his child of brick and mortar. I recollect his saying to me: Is it not strange, my friend, that nobody will give me credit as an architect, as a provident, far-see- ing administrator, and a rigid econo- mist? These, I think, are my peculiar merits, if I have any; and he would accumulate numbers to show how much lie could save in any given undertaking which would be entrusted to his ex- clusive management. This was an amusing peculiarity to his friends, who perceived that the wealth of Rothschild would have slipped through his fingers, not for the gratification of any of his personal wants, but in the execution of some grand scheme of public improve- ment, or in the endless distributions of private charity. Mr. Gayarr~ also relates this charac- teristic story: The Doctor, when in New Orleans, happened, it is said, to be pinched for money. He needed, I believe, some fifteen hundred dollars for pressing emergencies. His congrega- tion made up the sum for him. On that very day there came to him, from the West, a clergyman who was in very bad health. The Doctor was grieved to the heart, particularly when he was informed that nothing else than a trip to Europe would benefit the sufferer. The result was, that the clergyman went on rejoicing across the ocean, and that the Doctors congregation discov- ered, to their dismay, that they had in vain attempted to relieve him from his embarrassments. . . . The most distinc- tive trait of his character was, I think, ~ contempt for meanness of any kind. He was horrified at its very shadow, and he would attack the apparition with a vigor of indignant sarcasm, which, sometimes, was truly amusing. He may emphatically be said to have been born a gentleman, and never to forget it. How freely he spoke his mind on every subject! How careless of selfish and prudential considerations! How keenly he abhorred those who, to use his own expression, were always chasing the shadow of a shilling round the corner I In 1849, Dr. Hawks, relieved from his pecuniary embarrassments by a liberal subscription of his friends, returned to New York from New Orleans, and, the great city, with the exception of a short interval passed in a pastoral charge at Baltimore, was thenceforth his home, as it was always, with its enlarged oppor- tunities, his appropriate sphere of ac- tion. He had yet some seventeen years of life before the end which cometh to all. They were spent in the due ex- ercise of his ministry, mainly at Calvary Church. He was also much engaged in his laborious archa~ological studies, an antagonist relief, perhaps, demanded by nature, the reaction and support of his spontaneous rhetorical exercises. For our man of fancy and imagination was also a man of facts; and many an hour too many, as they involved confine- ment to his studywould he spend in the driest of investigations. These studies, and his congenial ministerial avocations, were rudely broken by the war of the Rebellion. In this Dr. Hawks, owing to a chivalric fondness for his native State of North Carolina, became somewhat entangled. Not that he took part in the conflict, or aided and abetted the people of the State, but that he would not, as a man of honor so he felt it to be, and feeling, with him, in such a case, was a matter of principleseem to be against them. It was a position of difficulty especially to such a man. An easy acquiescence of indifference would, not discreditably, have served many under such cir- cumstances. But the repression of his opinions, as Mr. Gayarr6 says, was no part of the philosophy of Dr. Hawks. 1808.] THIS ITALIAN QuESTION. 105 He did not obtrude any views he may have held upon the public; he sought not, so far as we are aware, to exercise any influence adverse to the National interests at Washington; but he spoke his mind freely in private; his words were commented on in return, and he withdrew from the city for a ~time, to be reinstated towards the close of the war by a new congregation largely composed of his old friends. They were about building a new church for him, in the tasteful plans of which he took a great interest, when a fatal illness came upon him. He bore a part in the cere- mony of laying the corner-stone, on the 4th of September, 1866. It was his last act in public. Before the month closed, his friends were gathered round his couch to listen to his last wordsthe eathusiastic utterances of the faithful Christian divineof resignation and affection. He died on the 24th. His death was sincerely lamented. Calvary Church was crowded, at his funeral, by a throng of lamenting friends and parishioners. A monument has been erected, bearing his sculptured profile, over his remains in the peaceful graveyard adjoining the village Epis- copal Church at Greenwich, Connecti- cut. The church which he was about founding, and to which he gave,the name of the Holy Saviour, has been finish- ed, and was opened on the anniversary of his death with memorial services. Eloquent commemorative discourses on his life and character have been deliv- ered from its pulpit by his friends, the Rev. Drs. Edward Y. Higbee and Wil- liam F. Morgan. An interesting me- morial~~ has been published by the Rev. Dr. N. S. Richardson. The learned and other Societies with which he was con- nected have paid their tributes to his worth; and by the generous liberality of one of his most constant friends, Mr. William Niblo, a most pleasing memo- rial of his life and studies, the rare and valuable historical portion of his lib- rary, a gift of about three thousand volumes, has been purchased from his family, and enshrined in a costly setting in a separate room of the New York Historical Society, whose welfare, while living, it was his delight to promote. THE ITALIAN QUESTION. THE vast perspective of an intervening ocean should not only calm but clarify our vision, intent on the political and social events of Europe; moreover, stand- ing, as we do, amid the triumphs and sacrifices of a prolonged struggle for unity and freedom, not our sympathies only,.but our rational convictions, should enable us clearly to perceive, and con- sistently to maintain, the eternal prin- ciples of justice and right i~n estimating the facts of the hour across the sea; neither the blandishments of imperial- ism, nor the sophistries of selfish policy, can dim or distort the honest perception of an intelligent and loyal American citi- zen, who owes it to himself; to the cause of universal liberty, and to her faithful and thwarted aspirants all the world ver, to recognize the absolute right, and to vindicate the eternally true in civic life and governuiental action. Casting a fond and earnest glance, from these our free shores, upon that marvellous peninusula whence Roman power of old, medheval liberty afterwards, and Arts perennial triumph always, dis- pensed the redeeming principles of modern civilizationwhat do we see? A beautiful country, rich in the most needful products of the earthgrain, wine, and oilwith numerous rivers, bays, and harbors, opening on a sea tra- versed alike by the commerce of the East and West, and whose shores are the consecrated shrines of history; with a net-work of railway connecting its once isolated and antagonistic cities; with vast industrial resources to be developed, an entire educational sys

1808.] THIS ITALIAN QuESTION. 105 He did not obtrude any views he may have held upon the public; he sought not, so far as we are aware, to exercise any influence adverse to the National interests at Washington; but he spoke his mind freely in private; his words were commented on in return, and he withdrew from the city for a ~time, to be reinstated towards the close of the war by a new congregation largely composed of his old friends. They were about building a new church for him, in the tasteful plans of which he took a great interest, when a fatal illness came upon him. He bore a part in the cere- mony of laying the corner-stone, on the 4th of September, 1866. It was his last act in public. Before the month closed, his friends were gathered round his couch to listen to his last wordsthe eathusiastic utterances of the faithful Christian divineof resignation and affection. He died on the 24th. His death was sincerely lamented. Calvary Church was crowded, at his funeral, by a throng of lamenting friends and parishioners. A monument has been erected, bearing his sculptured profile, over his remains in the peaceful graveyard adjoining the village Epis- copal Church at Greenwich, Connecti- cut. The church which he was about founding, and to which he gave,the name of the Holy Saviour, has been finish- ed, and was opened on the anniversary of his death with memorial services. Eloquent commemorative discourses on his life and character have been deliv- ered from its pulpit by his friends, the Rev. Drs. Edward Y. Higbee and Wil- liam F. Morgan. An interesting me- morial~~ has been published by the Rev. Dr. N. S. Richardson. The learned and other Societies with which he was con- nected have paid their tributes to his worth; and by the generous liberality of one of his most constant friends, Mr. William Niblo, a most pleasing memo- rial of his life and studies, the rare and valuable historical portion of his lib- rary, a gift of about three thousand volumes, has been purchased from his family, and enshrined in a costly setting in a separate room of the New York Historical Society, whose welfare, while living, it was his delight to promote. THE ITALIAN QUESTION. THE vast perspective of an intervening ocean should not only calm but clarify our vision, intent on the political and social events of Europe; moreover, stand- ing, as we do, amid the triumphs and sacrifices of a prolonged struggle for unity and freedom, not our sympathies only,.but our rational convictions, should enable us clearly to perceive, and con- sistently to maintain, the eternal prin- ciples of justice and right i~n estimating the facts of the hour across the sea; neither the blandishments of imperial- ism, nor the sophistries of selfish policy, can dim or distort the honest perception of an intelligent and loyal American citi- zen, who owes it to himself; to the cause of universal liberty, and to her faithful and thwarted aspirants all the world ver, to recognize the absolute right, and to vindicate the eternally true in civic life and governuiental action. Casting a fond and earnest glance, from these our free shores, upon that marvellous peninusula whence Roman power of old, medheval liberty afterwards, and Arts perennial triumph always, dis- pensed the redeeming principles of modern civilizationwhat do we see? A beautiful country, rich in the most needful products of the earthgrain, wine, and oilwith numerous rivers, bays, and harbors, opening on a sea tra- versed alike by the commerce of the East and West, and whose shores are the consecrated shrines of history; with a net-work of railway connecting its once isolated and antagonistic cities; with vast industrial resources to be developed, an entire educational sys 106 PUTNAM5 MAGAZinE. [Jan. tern to be inaugurated; with a people full of native intelligence, vivacious, sensitive, enthusiastic needing civic discipline and mental culture, but apt, earnest, ~nd gifted; all these elements of prosperity having, within a decade, been brought into harmonious possi- bility of expansion and purification by the wisdom of the greatest of modern statesmen, and the patriotic faith and sentiment of the most gifted and baffled race in Europe. By what sacrifices, through what suffering, was thus much of national life realizedlet the dun- geons of Spielberg, the scaffolds of Vienna, the siege of Rome in t848, the battles, the captivities, the exiles, and the martyrdoms, of half a century, attest. At last, the most advanced state of the realm, by her progressive r~gime, and the comprehensive sagacity of her Prime Minister, won to herself the liberal sym- pathies of the entire country; by arms, by negotiation, by the French alliance, but, Above all, by the national impulse and aspiration, Italy became one; sac- rificing a portion of her i?orthern terri- tory to remunerate her imperial coadju- tor, who, by his pusillanimous treaty of Villafranca, violated his solemn pledge to fight till Italy was free from the Alps to the Adriatic; and left her, shorn of Nice, and with Venice and Rome languishing stillthe one under Aus- trian, the other under ecclesiastical tyr- rany: finally, the former was rescued and added to the kingdom, whose capi- tal was transported to Florence. And to whom, as the representative leaders, was this vast amelioration, this auspi- cious revolution owing? To Cavour and Garibaldi; the one,by his political ge- nius and noble aims, winning over the arbiters of Europe to his views, and, by his practical wisdom, developing the resources, and inaugurating the reforms whereby the example of Sardinia leav- ened with vital prosperity the inert mass of Italian life; the other, by the magnetism of his integrity, disinterest- edness, and patriotic courage, incarna- ting the national sentiment of the coun- try, representing the people in all sim- plicity, frankness, and trutha chain- pion bre~1 in a school of toil, frugality, and faith, and so pure and candid of soul as to crystallize around him, by the very laws of moral gravitation, the sympathies and the confidence of his countrymen. How he swept the myrmi- dons of Bomba from Sicily and Naples, and sent the Austrian slidrri in terror from Varrese; how he fought, con- soled, counselled; what he dared and accomplished; an exiled sailor in South America, fighting as a volunteer in the liberal armies; a genial ship-captain among the merchants of China; a fru- gal candle-manufacturer on Staten Isl- and; entering Naples at the head of an army, or quietly seeking his island- home when his services were no longer needed; always and every where hav- ing primarily in view, and earnestly at heart, the unification and freedom of Italyall this, and much more, the world knows by heart, and is not likely to forget. But Cavour died; Garibaldi dis- banded his legions; the king took up his abode at the Pitti palace; the peo- ple began to publish newspapers, open schools, initiate Protestant worship; railroads were opened between Turin and Genoa, Venice and Bologna, Flor- ence and Rome; the anniversary of Dantes birth was celebrated in his native city with splendor and unanimity as a national fite; parliamentary de- bates, free journalism, new industrial enterprises,-in a word, civic life and law were substituted for despotic silence and slavish stagnation. Much remained to be done, but the road of progress and peace was opened; social regeneration had yet to be accomplished, but the outward conditions therefor were estab- lished; old feuds and factions were to be reconciled, but free discussion al- ready brought healing on its wings; the spirit of the age had penetrated Italy; the principle of progress had obtained root; the land of Petrarch, of Michael Angelo, and of Columbus, so long defrauded, degraded, and de- filed, had been united into a constitu- tional monarchy of the nineteenth cen- tury. 1868.] Tux ITALIAN QUESTION. 107 With so many essential elements of national prosperity to develop, and her financial resources wholly inadequate to the national exigenciesto stand and wait, for the logic of events to settle the Roman question, was alike the dic- tate of prudence and faith. We need not dwell on the diplomatic experiments of the Italian Government to come to an amicable understanding with the Pope; on the latters obstinate adherence to obsolete ecclesiastical rights and pre- cedents; to the fierce discussions over the confiscation of church property; to the sacerdotal excommunication of the king; to the natural impatience of the liberals, and the protests and pleadings of the bigots. For years, in the centre of a nation governed on principles of modern civilization, a cityhallowed to the learned and Christian world by the most cherished historical associations with a limited adjacent territory, has presented the anomaly and the reproach of a rule bated on and regulated by mediawal absolutism; the details of which have been memorably indicated by Edmund About, and the evidences of which, alike ignoble and cruel, are familiar to every traveller; and appeal to universal humanity in the visible tokens of abject misery. That so incongruous an obstacle to national peace and prog- ress should, in this age, be allowed to continue is, in the nature of things, im- possible; all the enlightened and hu- mane agree in this conviction; the only question has been one of time and methods. As to the so-called religious interests involved, no intelligent devotee of the faith represented by the Roman Church can doubt that the severance of the temporal from the spiritual power of the papacy is essential to the latters authority and influence in the world; that life begins with renunciation, is as true of Christian sway as of individ- ual progress; once free from the scan- dalous reproach of the worst govern- mental administration in the world, and planted purely and solely on her religious organization, the Church of Rome will become to her worthy chil- dren newly consecrated; while Italy, whose path of freedom and prosperity she clogs, will expand in the full enjoy- ment of civil rights no longer at van ance with religous privileges. Thus regarded as a domestic question, the matter might, it would seem, have been safely left to the arrangement of the Italian Government and pepole; and as political regeneration gradually bore its legitimate fruits of enlighten- ment and justice, we might reasonably hope that the Eternal City would, at last, become the centre of a free, edu- cated, and prosperous nation. As usual, however, the bane of Ital- ian prosperity has proved foreign in- tervention; her fatal gift of beauty deprives her of the greatest of hu- man privileges, to be let alone. It serves the purpose of the French Emperor to conciliate the church party of Franceto smother every spark of popular enthusiasm for liberty, lest it ignite the mine of retributive repub- licanism perpetually threatening Eu- rope; hence his insistance on fulfilling to the letter the treaty of September, and the determination to enact the re- spectable r6le of Protector of the Pope. In the face of this forced alliance be- tween Victor Emanuel and Napoleon III., we are told that Garibaldi was foolish and fanatical to attempt to con- centrate the national feeling into self- assertion, which should settle the Ro- man question through the occupancy of the Eternal City by the representatives of the nation. Of course, the retrograde party in Europe, and their organs, stig- matized the movement of Garibaldi as senseless and inexcusable; but let us judge him more candidly. What are the real facts of the case? So far from an insane desire prematurely to press this vital question to an issue, Gari- baldi declared to an intimate friend, a few months since, that he was con- vinced there would be no more neces- sity for fighting; that the annexation of Rome was a mere question of time, and that, after the stipulated with- drawal of the French troops from the Pontifical territory, the Italians, at the right moment, would march in, and, by 108 an amicable arrangement, provide for the personal comfort and dignity of the Pope, as head of the church, while the beneficent reforms of constitutional gov- ernment would at length include the debased, impoverished, and oppressed Roman territory. It was with this hope that the unswerving, self-sacrificing, and life-long consistent champion of Italy, retired to his home, crowned with the benedictions of his countrymen, and en- rolled among the few-and-far-between disinterested patriots of the world. But, in the meantime, that world did not stand still; two changes modified the situation: first, the liberal party were baffled, the financial embarrassments of the Italian Government increased, and its prestige seriously compromised; and second, the schemes of Napoleon had begun to plague the inventor;~ he had withdrawn ignominiously from his Mexican experiment, and found more than his match, in the field of European diplouriacy, inBismarckthat statesman, first worthy of the name on the Conti- nent since the untimely death of Cavour, had successfully initiated the unifica- tion of Germany; ought not that of Italy, by the law of natural sequence, to follow? Was it irrational to sup- pose that the baffled French Emperor would, in his present political abeyance, and with great popular discontent at home to mollify and manage, carry his l)rotectorate of the papacy to the ex- tremity of war? Was not public senti- ment ripe i~1 regard to the moral neces- sity of making Italy free and indivisible from the Alps to the Adriatic? Had she not patiently waited, bravely en- dured, earnestly discussed and demon- strated her rights and duties? Did not the liberal press of Europe agree in jus- tifying Italian action and French neu- trality? Certainly there has not been a time, since the reconstruction of the kingdom of Italy, when public sym- pathy and political events seemed more favorable to auspicious action in the premises: the very fears of a European war prevalent, seemed a kind of guar- antee that the Italians would be let alone, if they bravely, but without un [Jan. worthy violence, asserted their national integrity, and put the key-stone to their arch of freedom. But, argue the critics, even if prac- ticable, this should have been done by the head and legal representatives of the nation, and not by Garibaldi and his volunteers: granting this, what, if the head of the nation vacillated at this crisis; what, if among its leading rep- resentatives there was no valiant and dominant spirit to take the initiative what, if a time had come when the national sentiment was inadequately represented-the national will without requisite personification? Painful as is the admission, we must allow that the King of Italy has grievously disap- pointed his friends. Kindly, honest, and physically brave, his dissolute habits had become the scandal of the capital; with his vast income, his debts were enormous; demoralized, he is no longer the nucleus of public faith and private honor. The most pure and wise of modern Italian statesmenthe Marquis dAzeglio, whose family, for generations, have been favorites with the house of Savoyformally and ear- nestly remonsfrated with the King, as- suring him that the vital efficiency of his government was seriously diminished by his want of self-respect; and im- plored him, for the sake of their causii~ and country, to reform his habits, and elevate his personal character to the level of his political responsibilities and social duties. The reproach and the plea were received with the utmost kindliness; but they had no practical effect. IDAzeglio retired from court after having declined the proffered hand of his regal and recreant friend, to the latters permanent chagrin; and, a few months later, closed his illustrious ca- reer. Now, with all these encourage- mentsthe apathy of the authorities, the eagerness of the people, the waning prestige of Napoleon, the appeals of the Romans themselves to the party of ac- tion, and, we may add, the sympathies of liberal Europewas it not a proba- bility fitted to inspire a less sanguine votary of freedom than Garibaldi, that PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. 4 1868.1 Tun ITALIAN QUESTION. 109 an intrepid demonstration against Rome, as an effete ecciesiasticism, would au- spiciously precipitate the national feel- ing and faith into a practical recogni- tion of the p~pular will? With the idolatry of success in its external and material phasewhich is one of the most hopeless traits of the ageit is easy to call Garibaldi a fool, and for the imperial press to eulogize the weak acquiescence of Victor Emanuel in the mandates of his cunning ally; but the mere fact that the hirelings of the Pope, backed by the French troops, after ob- stinate fighting, dispersed or killed a far inferior force of undisciplined and poorly equipped Italian patriots, and sent their countrys peerless champion a prisoner to the government he helped to establish, will not add to the security or sanctity of his Holiness, nor to the fame or stability of his imperial pro- tector. Had there been any fair ground to hope for prompt and judicious par- liamentary action in behalf of this great question, the time chosen by the party of action for such a demonstration as would rally the people to the rescue, might be regarded as unfavorable. But Ricasoli had been displaced from the Ministry. Ratazzi, a creature of cir- cumstances, and long regarded as un- duly influenced by the French Emperor, occupied his place; an indefinite post- ponement of a vital interest seemed the order of the day: and, as so memorably happened in our war for the Union, popular sentiment had become a needful inspiration to governmental action. The antecedents of Garibaldis attempt go far to justify it. It was declared by the leading English journals that the Kings proclamation, asserting the obli- gations of the September treaty, and the prompt arrest of the revolutionary leader, were all the measures he was bound to take in the premises, on dip- lomatic grounds. To guard the entire frontier, and garrison the chief towns of the Roman territory, would require an immense army, and involve a vast expense. Having officially protested, according to the terms of his pledge to the French Emperor, he could, it was argued by the most enlightened pub- licists, consistently submit to the na- tional will, occupy Rome, protect the pontiff; and, in such a position, if Louis the unscrupulous made war upon him, he directly outraged a free nation and the best public sentiment of Europe, and placed himself in an attitude justly provocative of armed retaliation, as the violent and illegal opponent of Conti- nental progress. The escape of Garibaldi, from surveil- lance at Caprera, will form another adventurous chapter in his wonderful life. On the 27th of October he openly addressed the people of the Italian capital, saying: With the fraternal aid of the army, the people will soon enter into possession of Rome. Certainly there was reason to believe in the secret con- nivance or tacit acquiescence of the government; and ample and precious opportunity for the King, had his moral courage been equal to the exigency, to have taken the initiative, anticipated the French in the occupancy of the Eternal City, and thus maintained the national integrity. Twelve thousand Romans, through the Senator-Marquis Cavalette, sent a protest and appeal to Pius IX., declaring that domiciliary visits and imprisonments continue, beseeching him to interpose in the universal interest of the coantry, and professing respect toward the Father of the Faithful, whose authority will be weakened by bloodshed, from which z~he Church recoils. But neither the dictates of Christian justice and national welfare addressed to the Pope, nor the aspiration of Garibaldi~ to prove to the world that we have no need of foreign tutclage sustained by the Paris liberal press and the arguments of Prince Napolcon urged upon the Emperorcould stay the hands of civil arrogance and selfish despotism. The mercenaries of an effete ceclesiasticism, thousands strongnot including one of the indicted assassins of President Lin- colnattacked the hero and patriot of Italy and were beaten, equipped and armed with artillery as they were until five thousand French troops rein- 110 PUTNAMS MA~AzIxE. [Jan. forced th& retreating battalionsand overwhelmed by numbers, after a two hours desperate fight, the Garibaldians were routeddragging their intrepid leader by force from the thick of the combat, to surrender to the army of his King, and from the prison of Vigerano turn longing eyes to the land of his adoption and his honored exile. Thus again had the cunning usurper of the French throne, by brute force, snatched freedom from Italy; bitter must have been the memory, in that dark hour, of the treacherous peace of Yillafranca, which sent the noble Ca- your chagrined from his illustrious career into brooding retirement; more bitter still the thought of that brave retreat from the walls of Rome, so long valiantly defended against the same Gallic invaders, when, in the marshes of Venitia, the dauntless chief saw his heroic wife perish from exhaustion. Never was a more ignoble victory whether we consider the disparity of numbers in the contending forces, their relative valor, or the comparative jus- tice of their causethan that of Monte Rotondo. One of the most patient students of the past, among living writers, James Anthony Froude, while he doubts the reality of a 8cienee of historybe- cause that word implies foresight and prescience too exact and reliable to be ascribed to so precarious a subject as human affairs, yet recognizes a moral law perpetually vindicatingitself through the events of time. And little as we can confidently predict of Italys future it is safe to prophesy that this baffled and bloody experiment of Gari- baldi will quicken and concentrate the national sentiment of his country, deep- en the ignominy of despotic intrigues against her unity and freedom, add to the hatred and scorn of the medieval absolutism of the Roman rule, expand and intensify public sentiment in be- half of political justice, and give fresh impulse to that union and self-reliance of the Continental nations, which shall emancipate their destiny from the ca- pricious policy and remorseless ambition of a self-constituted imperial arbiter of Europe. Inconsistent hesitancy has marked the conduct of all the actors in this political tragedy, except that of the champion of Italy; again and again the imperial orders for the embarkation of troops at Toulon were countermanded; the Garibaldian hymn rose unchecked from roadside and piazza, and rallying appeals were freely uttered, even while revolutionary armaments were stopped at the Roman frontier, and royal proc- lamations forbade the advance thereon; all authorities trembled but the man conscious of right and resolved upon self-sacrifice; between subtle priestcraft and sanguinary Republicanismbe- tween the Black and Redunscrupu- lous Louis lacked the pure heroism to cling to the Whiteemblem of truth an inactivity not masterly only, but simply just; while the demoralized King and the time-serving Minister temporized, compromised, and finally yielded the nations self-reliance and self-respect to imperial arrogance. Mean- while French soldiers again profaned Italian soil, and French rifles shot down Italian patriotsthereby kindling an indignant animosity in the hearts of that outraged people, the issue whereof must be baneful, and may be fateful for the ostensible failures of right are the latent defeats of wrong; without that mutinous shot at Sumter, and that Union rout at Bull Run, we could not so soon nor so certainly have had Get- tysburg and Appotomax. Conflicting as are the electric messages beneath the sea, they agree in proclaiming that the soul of Italy is arousedthat her inter- vening foe is ominously counselled for- bearance at Rome, and her perp]exed and timid representatives, royal and ministerial, are, at last, forced by the pressure of popular feeling to claim what their betrayed crusader would have placed in their hands that Rome, so essential to Italian unity, and so inexpressibly dear to Italian faith. Vainly may we prophesy in detail of the future, or follow the tortuous policy of foreign courts and councils; but as 1868.] Thn VOYAGE. Tnz LYRIST. :111 Americans, with the light of science and the warmth of humane aspirations around and within us, we can see clearly through the selfish and super- stitious mists of diplomatic Circulars, imperial Conferences, and Papal Encycli -cals, to the will and the welfare of the Italian nationonly simplified and em- phasized by reverses, and incarnated with more vital influence by Garibaldi captive, than victorious. Whichever of the rumored methods of settling the Roman question there- fore are ultimately adopted; whether the territory is ceded to Italy, and the city guaranteed to the Pope; whether French soldiers garrison its diminished realm, or Italians guard its frontier; whether those who voted for annexa- tion are punished, or those who fought the insurgents are blessed; whatever treaties, concessions, concordats, excom- munications, or guarantees are signed, sealed, and delivered; the national des- tiny of Italy will be achieved through unification of territory and government, and the national honor and sentiment of her people, so long outraged, as well as the patriotic hope of her incorrupti- ble champion, so often baffled,by tlie inevitable moral law of Gods universe, will be vindicated and triumphant. THE VOYAGE. o GoD! I thank Thee for a tranquil mind That in my evening I can turn with joy Back to the morning of my life, and find, With all my imperfections, small alloy: Yet would I not begin again, a boy, And risk my course anew. When I look back, I shudder at the dangers I have past The rocks and shoals on passions stormy track I barely scaped. I marvel that, at last, In Thy good providence, Im safely bome To this calm haven with whole mast and sail Though with the wear-and-tear of age much worn. Here shall I moor, where storms no more prevail, Till comes, as comes to all, the inevitable gale. THE LYRIST. AND so you tell me that he built for men No grand, harmonious edifice of song No obelisk of verse enduring long Who bore, Aladdin-like, a charm~d pen, And left the slave unsummoned ;chose the glen, And shunned the eminent mountain, and the throng That watch beneath it? You have witnessed, then, The work he didthe tender wed with strong, As lustre with the marblenor will praise? Is it because these jewels that he flung In regal fashion were not trimly strung, Or gathered in one coronal of rays? Go, blame the birds that taught him while they sung Gods lyrics through the golden summer-days!

1868.] Thn VOYAGE. Tnz LYRIST. :111 Americans, with the light of science and the warmth of humane aspirations around and within us, we can see clearly through the selfish and super- stitious mists of diplomatic Circulars, imperial Conferences, and Papal Encycli -cals, to the will and the welfare of the Italian nationonly simplified and em- phasized by reverses, and incarnated with more vital influence by Garibaldi captive, than victorious. Whichever of the rumored methods of settling the Roman question there- fore are ultimately adopted; whether the territory is ceded to Italy, and the city guaranteed to the Pope; whether French soldiers garrison its diminished realm, or Italians guard its frontier; whether those who voted for annexa- tion are punished, or those who fought the insurgents are blessed; whatever treaties, concessions, concordats, excom- munications, or guarantees are signed, sealed, and delivered; the national des- tiny of Italy will be achieved through unification of territory and government, and the national honor and sentiment of her people, so long outraged, as well as the patriotic hope of her incorrupti- ble champion, so often baffled,by tlie inevitable moral law of Gods universe, will be vindicated and triumphant. THE VOYAGE. o GoD! I thank Thee for a tranquil mind That in my evening I can turn with joy Back to the morning of my life, and find, With all my imperfections, small alloy: Yet would I not begin again, a boy, And risk my course anew. When I look back, I shudder at the dangers I have past The rocks and shoals on passions stormy track I barely scaped. I marvel that, at last, In Thy good providence, Im safely bome To this calm haven with whole mast and sail Though with the wear-and-tear of age much worn. Here shall I moor, where storms no more prevail, Till comes, as comes to all, the inevitable gale. THE LYRIST. AND so you tell me that he built for men No grand, harmonious edifice of song No obelisk of verse enduring long Who bore, Aladdin-like, a charm~d pen, And left the slave unsummoned ;chose the glen, And shunned the eminent mountain, and the throng That watch beneath it? You have witnessed, then, The work he didthe tender wed with strong, As lustre with the marblenor will praise? Is it because these jewels that he flung In regal fashion were not trimly strung, Or gathered in one coronal of rays? Go, blame the birds that taught him while they sung Gods lyrics through the golden summer-days!

1868.] Thn VOYAGE. Tnz LYRIST. :111 Americans, with the light of science and the warmth of humane aspirations around and within us, we can see clearly through the selfish and super- stitious mists of diplomatic Circulars, imperial Conferences, and Papal Encycli -cals, to the will and the welfare of the Italian nationonly simplified and em- phasized by reverses, and incarnated with more vital influence by Garibaldi captive, than victorious. Whichever of the rumored methods of settling the Roman question there- fore are ultimately adopted; whether the territory is ceded to Italy, and the city guaranteed to the Pope; whether French soldiers garrison its diminished realm, or Italians guard its frontier; whether those who voted for annexa- tion are punished, or those who fought the insurgents are blessed; whatever treaties, concessions, concordats, excom- munications, or guarantees are signed, sealed, and delivered; the national des- tiny of Italy will be achieved through unification of territory and government, and the national honor and sentiment of her people, so long outraged, as well as the patriotic hope of her incorrupti- ble champion, so often baffled,by tlie inevitable moral law of Gods universe, will be vindicated and triumphant. THE VOYAGE. o GoD! I thank Thee for a tranquil mind That in my evening I can turn with joy Back to the morning of my life, and find, With all my imperfections, small alloy: Yet would I not begin again, a boy, And risk my course anew. When I look back, I shudder at the dangers I have past The rocks and shoals on passions stormy track I barely scaped. I marvel that, at last, In Thy good providence, Im safely bome To this calm haven with whole mast and sail Though with the wear-and-tear of age much worn. Here shall I moor, where storms no more prevail, Till comes, as comes to all, the inevitable gale. THE LYRIST. AND so you tell me that he built for men No grand, harmonious edifice of song No obelisk of verse enduring long Who bore, Aladdin-like, a charm~d pen, And left the slave unsummoned ;chose the glen, And shunned the eminent mountain, and the throng That watch beneath it? You have witnessed, then, The work he didthe tender wed with strong, As lustre with the marblenor will praise? Is it because these jewels that he flung In regal fashion were not trimly strung, Or gathered in one coronal of rays? Go, blame the birds that taught him while they sung Gods lyrics through the golden summer-days! PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. DICKENS IN AMERICA. A WELCO~tE awaits Dickens wherever he may go in the United States. With as many readers of his hooks here as in his native land, the great English anther holds in subjection by the power of his genius, hundreds of thous- ands of American citizens, who are eager to acknowledge personally their allegiance. There is everything to secure hhn a hearty reception. The sympathy that always exists between the esteemed author and appreciative reader is strong and widely expanded. His good service to morals and literature is univer- sally acknowledged, and gratitude for the en- tertainment and happiness he has so liberally diffnsed,is the common sentiment of all Americans, young and old. Curiosity to see the great man, though not the loftiest of motives, will not be the least effective of those, which will impel the miil- titude to flock after him. Dickens, however, according to all accounts, has something more than tjie mere lineaments of his face, th ecut of his coat and the sound of his voice, where- with to satisfy the public interest. His Read- ings are dramatic performances of such ex- cellence, that, if he were not the great author, whom alj are curious to see and hear, hut only the actor, so consummate is lis power, he would secure full houses wherever he went, and divide the popular applause with the greatest favourites of the opera or theatre. It has been an unusual thing for an author, since the discovery of printing, to recite in public his own productions. In fact we must admit that it is no slight shock to our- conventional ideas of decorum to find the man of literary genius, facing the vulgar gaze, and by the tricks of the mimic art, conjuring up the tears and laughter of the theatre-going multitude. Scott would not have done such a thing, and yet, with his skill as a reader, his comic force, as a mimic, and his great literary and personal popularity, he could without doubt, have paid off all his great debts with the mere recitation of a few pages of the Heart of Mid Lothian, or the Antiquary.~ Thus he might have at the same time saved his sensitive honor and prolonged his life. It is certainly an unusual thing for great authors to exhibit themselves on the public stat e as Dickens is doing, but it is still more unusual, for great authors, to possess the dramatic capacity he has for entertaining an audience. Dickens Readins will be un- doubtedly a great success. He proposes to remain in the United States about four months. During that time he will give probably eighty night, and twenty day performances. Each one of them, with the tickels from one to one dollar and a half a piece, will average un- doubtedly over a thousand dollars. Dickens may thus return to England with a hundred thousand dollars of gold, as the rich and easy product of his four months vacation spent in the United States. There is no one in this prodi~al country who will be0rudge the dol- lar he may have contributed, or feel himself entitled to any gratitude, for he will think that he has got his moneys worth, and that if it had not gone into Mr. Dickens pocket, it would have gone probably into that of Mon- sieur Maretzek or Manager Bateman. Mr. Dickens is said to have felt some qualms about his second reception in the Uni- ted States, in consequence of his hook the American Notes. In a new preface to the latest American edition he evidently shows some uneasy twitches of sensibility on this point, lie says: My readers have opportunities of judging for themselves whether the influences and ten- dencies which I distrusted in America had any existence but in my imagination. They can examine for themselves whether there has been anything in the public career of that country since, at home or abroad, which sug- f ests that these influences and tendencies real- ydid exist. As they find the fact they will judge Inc. If they discern any evidences of wrong-doing in any direction I have indicated they will acknowledge that I had reason in what I wrote. If they discern no such thing, they will consider me altogether mistaken but not wilfully. Prejndiced I am not, and never have been otherwise than in favor of tile United States. I have many friends in America; I feel a grateful interest in the country; I hope and believe it will work out a problem of the high- est importance to the human race. To repre- sent me as viewing America with ill-nature, coldness, animosity, is merely to do a very foolish thing, which is always a very easy one. We have always thought, as Die~ens ac- cepted if he did not seek the position of a national guest on his former visit, that it would have been more courteous to have said nothing, if he could not say what was com- plimentary of his great entertainer. A fas- tidious delicacy shrinks from freely uttering criticism of a host with lips upon which the flavor of a generous feast is still lingering. It was this motive which induced the cour- teous reserve of Thacker~y, who was the most charming writer of travel~, and much 112 [Jan.

PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. DICKENS IN AMERICA. A WELCO~tE awaits Dickens wherever he may go in the United States. With as many readers of his hooks here as in his native land, the great English anther holds in subjection by the power of his genius, hundreds of thous- ands of American citizens, who are eager to acknowledge personally their allegiance. There is everything to secure hhn a hearty reception. The sympathy that always exists between the esteemed author and appreciative reader is strong and widely expanded. His good service to morals and literature is univer- sally acknowledged, and gratitude for the en- tertainment and happiness he has so liberally diffnsed,is the common sentiment of all Americans, young and old. Curiosity to see the great man, though not the loftiest of motives, will not be the least effective of those, which will impel the miil- titude to flock after him. Dickens, however, according to all accounts, has something more than tjie mere lineaments of his face, th ecut of his coat and the sound of his voice, where- with to satisfy the public interest. His Read- ings are dramatic performances of such ex- cellence, that, if he were not the great author, whom alj are curious to see and hear, hut only the actor, so consummate is lis power, he would secure full houses wherever he went, and divide the popular applause with the greatest favourites of the opera or theatre. It has been an unusual thing for an author, since the discovery of printing, to recite in public his own productions. In fact we must admit that it is no slight shock to our- conventional ideas of decorum to find the man of literary genius, facing the vulgar gaze, and by the tricks of the mimic art, conjuring up the tears and laughter of the theatre-going multitude. Scott would not have done such a thing, and yet, with his skill as a reader, his comic force, as a mimic, and his great literary and personal popularity, he could without doubt, have paid off all his great debts with the mere recitation of a few pages of the Heart of Mid Lothian, or the Antiquary.~ Thus he might have at the same time saved his sensitive honor and prolonged his life. It is certainly an unusual thing for great authors to exhibit themselves on the public stat e as Dickens is doing, but it is still more unusual, for great authors, to possess the dramatic capacity he has for entertaining an audience. Dickens Readins will be un- doubtedly a great success. He proposes to remain in the United States about four months. During that time he will give probably eighty night, and twenty day performances. Each one of them, with the tickels from one to one dollar and a half a piece, will average un- doubtedly over a thousand dollars. Dickens may thus return to England with a hundred thousand dollars of gold, as the rich and easy product of his four months vacation spent in the United States. There is no one in this prodi~al country who will be0rudge the dol- lar he may have contributed, or feel himself entitled to any gratitude, for he will think that he has got his moneys worth, and that if it had not gone into Mr. Dickens pocket, it would have gone probably into that of Mon- sieur Maretzek or Manager Bateman. Mr. Dickens is said to have felt some qualms about his second reception in the Uni- ted States, in consequence of his hook the American Notes. In a new preface to the latest American edition he evidently shows some uneasy twitches of sensibility on this point, lie says: My readers have opportunities of judging for themselves whether the influences and ten- dencies which I distrusted in America had any existence but in my imagination. They can examine for themselves whether there has been anything in the public career of that country since, at home or abroad, which sug- f ests that these influences and tendencies real- ydid exist. As they find the fact they will judge Inc. If they discern any evidences of wrong-doing in any direction I have indicated they will acknowledge that I had reason in what I wrote. If they discern no such thing, they will consider me altogether mistaken but not wilfully. Prejndiced I am not, and never have been otherwise than in favor of tile United States. I have many friends in America; I feel a grateful interest in the country; I hope and believe it will work out a problem of the high- est importance to the human race. To repre- sent me as viewing America with ill-nature, coldness, animosity, is merely to do a very foolish thing, which is always a very easy one. We have always thought, as Die~ens ac- cepted if he did not seek the position of a national guest on his former visit, that it would have been more courteous to have said nothing, if he could not say what was com- plimentary of his great entertainer. A fas- tidious delicacy shrinks from freely uttering criticism of a host with lips upon which the flavor of a generous feast is still lingering. It was this motive which induced the cour- teous reserve of Thacker~y, who was the most charming writer of travel~, and much 112 [Jan. DICKENS IN AMEEIOA. the superior of Dickens as the observer of foreign manners and society. The American Notes, was not one of those impulses the expression of which, ac- cording to the cant of the day, genius is una- ble to resist. The book might have been easily foregone. We doubt whether it is ever read by the present generation of Mr. Dickens multitudinous readers. In fact we believe it would have long since passed from the memo- ry, if its name had not been revived by its association with the novels of Dickens, in the repeated editions of his works. The book is no longer felt as a grievance by the old in America, and the young know noth- ing of it, but by tradition. The former have long since forgiven the publication as a youthful indiscretion, though at the time of the first appearance of the American Notes the best friends of the author in America, among whom was Washington Irving, regret ted it. It is now twenty-five years, since Dickens first visit to this country. With what numer- ous and permanent structures has his creative genius covered that wide space of time! How well he has fnlfilled the promise of his early days! He had just completed the Old Cu- riosity Shop, when he set sail, in 1842, for the United States. Since then, he has written The American Notes, the Battle of Life, The Chimes, Christmas Carol, Cricket On the Hearth, Dombey & Son, Martin Chuzzlewit, Oliver Twist, Pie tures from Italy, David Copperfield, Bleak House, Little Dorritt, Hard Times~ Great Expectations, Tale of Two Cities, Uncommercial Traveller, Our Mutual Friend, Mughy Junction and be- sides established two of the most popular magazines of England, the Household TdTords~7 and All the Year Round, over which he has exercised a general supervision, besides contributing to their columns many miscellaneous articles of the recent American editions. Of these and other works in course of publication, it is stated at least three hundred thousand have been sold. Though a severe critic might wish that, for the sake of his literary fame, Dickens had been less profuse and more reserved in his writ- ings, there is not a line in all of them that any true friend of humanity would care, for the sake of morality, to blot out. Throughout he remains faithful, as he began, to the great cause of the worldits reform. A tine friend of his race, he has striven to lift his Tellow men to the loftiest heights of which human nature is capable, and has courageously de- scended to the profoundest depths to reach the objects of his tendem care. His cause has been always that of the oppressed, and ever acknowledging the right of man to the full development of his individual and social power, he has done his utmost to batter down every obstacle to human progress. His cause is thus our own cause, and is another bond of sympathy between the great English author and democratic America. Those who recollect Dickens as he appeared on his first visit to the United States, will find him greatly changed. He was then thirty years of age; he is now fifty-five. He was then a round, smooth-faced, full-eyed, long- haired, boyish-looking person, with a good deal of youthful display of flashy dress and jewelry, and the free and easy manners of a young man too conscious, perhaps, of his im- l)ortance. He is now much sobered by time, and his experience of the world. his hair is thinned and whitened here and there with the marks of age and the trials of life. Wrin- kles have gathered thickly about and given a deeper setting to his eyes, while his whole face, once so round and beaming, has become furrowed and shrunken, with indications of a more thoughtful reserve. He, too, must observe great changes here. The literary idol of his youth, Washing- ton Irving, who so modestly protested against the worship of the youthful devotee, is no longer here to acknowledge, as he would have rejoiced to do, one who with the advance of time has reached a higher niche in the tem- ple of fame than his own. Many more ob- scure, who extended to him on his first visit a hospitable welcome, are also dead. Dickens will not fail to notice the deep scars, yet unhealed, though, as we hope and believe, destined soon to disappear, of the great rebellion. He will marvel, too, to find how little the material prosperity of the North has been checked by the drains of an immense war upon its resources. He will seek in vain, in New York, for his old habitation, the Carlton House in Broadway, now displaced to make way for a great warehouse, and wonder at the progress of a city, which has in the short space of twenty-five years more than doubled its population. Though he will meet a no less appreciative recognition of his genius from the new gener- ation of his admirers in America, increased ten-fold in numbers, he will probably find it tempered by that reserve of demonstration which is the natural result of the multiplied interests, and less indiscriminate idolatry, of a more cosmopolitan people. The purpose, however, of Dickens as a public exhibitor of his dramatic talent, will be better served now in the United States tl~an it could have been a quarter of a century since, for he will find everywhere larger, more appreciative and liberal audiences. VOL. i.8 1868.] 113 114 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Jan. GENERAL GRANT. WITH A PHOTO-LITHOGRAPHIC PORTIIAIT.* HERE is the likeness of GENERAL GRANT, one of the first-fruits of a new process in photo- graphyeinploying the arts of photo-sculpture and lithographywhich promises an enlarged means of pleasure and profit to the world in the ready and economical multiplication of the designs of artists. We do not know that we could make a better choice in the interests of the public or better consult its pleasure than in presenting this familiar, firmly set figure, and calmly resolved, still undisturbed battle-worn visage. This is General Grant, who now appears to the world in the calmness after the tempest, in the repose and serenity following the accomplishment of great deeds. It is not necessary at this time of day to speak of him as a warrior and a patriot. That theme is not to be disposed of in a para- graph; nor would we here anticipate the will of the people in any prophetic utter. nces regarding his occupation of the Presidential chair after the next election. It would not be diflicult, we think, in an easy observation of the events of the time, to arrive at such a conclusion, and potent argu- ments might be given why such a conclusion is desirable. We would simply cast a glance upon General Grant as he sits in our picture, the man of to-dayin his high office at Washing- ton, an impersonation of the power, the law. the dignity of the country. There may be read, we think, in his countenance a firm resolution, but no assumption ; not a particle of affectation; a consciousness of strength bnt no severity; an easiness of approach, but no familiarity. If wc understand the man rightly, he has no theories of government other than a fair obe- dience to the Constitution and the law, which his military virtues leave him no choice or incli- nation but to vindicate and enforce. We have never heard anything said of his policy so we presume he has no whims or idiosyncrasies at war with the regular expression of the wilrand wisdom of the people. We are free to say that in this speculative age of bold politi- cal experiments, we regard this as something entitled to much respect in a public character. We have had no conversations with General Grant on the subject, and consequently have not been baffled in any interi-ogatories of a political or other nature; we have not even had the plea- sure, like Senator Wade, of talking horse with him. But we are quite as well assured of this, as of anything within our direct cognizance, that General Grant has one leading consciousness on thc subject of Government, a sound conservative tendency, in harmony with the processes of nature and the best experience of the worldthat ssationat life is a growth and not a manu- facture. Hence if he shall be elevated by the will of the people to the Presidency we have no fears that he will be found engaged in any foolhardy experiments in pulling to pieces, twisting or tinkering the much-vexed body politic. He will respect its constitution, and, laying aside theories and nostrums, allow it a fair opportunity of healthy action. As for his silence, which so much disturbs some of our political friends, we hold it to be one of the most commendable of his virtues. Speech, says the proverb, is silver; it is often brass; but silence is gold. In this talking age and country, what a proof is it of the latent wis- dom of the nation that it appreciates as ~he most sterling quality of General Grant his invincible silence. It is the most promising sign of the times. May our public men take the lesson to heart and profit by it. A beautiful little fable, by the Spanish Yriarte, The Big Bell and the Little Bell, which has been happily translated by an English writer, points the moral of the day: Within an old cathedral, hung Whose daily tinklings through the year A mighty bell, So faintly fell, Which never, save at Easter, swung The peasants hardly gave an ear One solemn knell; To that small bell. And then so sternly all around Its echoes fell, The hermit, ha who ownd the same, The peasants trembled at the sound And loved it well Of that big bell. Resolved that it should share the fame Not far fro~n the cathedral stood So Of the big bell; tolling it but once a year, A hermits cell, With one brief knell, And in its belfry-tower of wood He taught the peasants to revere A little bell, His little bell. * The photo-sculpture by Messrs. MeXaye & Co., transferred to paper by the American Photo-Litho graphic Company (Osbornes process).

114 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Jan. GENERAL GRANT. WITH A PHOTO-LITHOGRAPHIC PORTIIAIT.* HERE is the likeness of GENERAL GRANT, one of the first-fruits of a new process in photo- graphyeinploying the arts of photo-sculpture and lithographywhich promises an enlarged means of pleasure and profit to the world in the ready and economical multiplication of the designs of artists. We do not know that we could make a better choice in the interests of the public or better consult its pleasure than in presenting this familiar, firmly set figure, and calmly resolved, still undisturbed battle-worn visage. This is General Grant, who now appears to the world in the calmness after the tempest, in the repose and serenity following the accomplishment of great deeds. It is not necessary at this time of day to speak of him as a warrior and a patriot. That theme is not to be disposed of in a para- graph; nor would we here anticipate the will of the people in any prophetic utter. nces regarding his occupation of the Presidential chair after the next election. It would not be diflicult, we think, in an easy observation of the events of the time, to arrive at such a conclusion, and potent argu- ments might be given why such a conclusion is desirable. We would simply cast a glance upon General Grant as he sits in our picture, the man of to-dayin his high office at Washing- ton, an impersonation of the power, the law. the dignity of the country. There may be read, we think, in his countenance a firm resolution, but no assumption ; not a particle of affectation; a consciousness of strength bnt no severity; an easiness of approach, but no familiarity. If wc understand the man rightly, he has no theories of government other than a fair obe- dience to the Constitution and the law, which his military virtues leave him no choice or incli- nation but to vindicate and enforce. We have never heard anything said of his policy so we presume he has no whims or idiosyncrasies at war with the regular expression of the wilrand wisdom of the people. We are free to say that in this speculative age of bold politi- cal experiments, we regard this as something entitled to much respect in a public character. We have had no conversations with General Grant on the subject, and consequently have not been baffled in any interi-ogatories of a political or other nature; we have not even had the plea- sure, like Senator Wade, of talking horse with him. But we are quite as well assured of this, as of anything within our direct cognizance, that General Grant has one leading consciousness on thc subject of Government, a sound conservative tendency, in harmony with the processes of nature and the best experience of the worldthat ssationat life is a growth and not a manu- facture. Hence if he shall be elevated by the will of the people to the Presidency we have no fears that he will be found engaged in any foolhardy experiments in pulling to pieces, twisting or tinkering the much-vexed body politic. He will respect its constitution, and, laying aside theories and nostrums, allow it a fair opportunity of healthy action. As for his silence, which so much disturbs some of our political friends, we hold it to be one of the most commendable of his virtues. Speech, says the proverb, is silver; it is often brass; but silence is gold. In this talking age and country, what a proof is it of the latent wis- dom of the nation that it appreciates as ~he most sterling quality of General Grant his invincible silence. It is the most promising sign of the times. May our public men take the lesson to heart and profit by it. A beautiful little fable, by the Spanish Yriarte, The Big Bell and the Little Bell, which has been happily translated by an English writer, points the moral of the day: Within an old cathedral, hung Whose daily tinklings through the year A mighty bell, So faintly fell, Which never, save at Easter, swung The peasants hardly gave an ear One solemn knell; To that small bell. And then so sternly all around Its echoes fell, The hermit, ha who ownd the same, The peasants trembled at the sound And loved it well Of that big bell. Resolved that it should share the fame Not far fro~n the cathedral stood So Of the big bell; tolling it but once a year, A hermits cell, With one brief knell, And in its belfry-tower of wood He taught the peasants to revere A little bell, His little bell. * The photo-sculpture by Messrs. MeXaye & Co., transferred to paper by the American Photo-Litho graphic Company (Osbornes process).

114 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Jan. GENERAL GRANT. WITH A PHOTO-LITHOGRAPHIC PORTIIAIT.* HERE is the likeness of GENERAL GRANT, one of the first-fruits of a new process in photo- graphyeinploying the arts of photo-sculpture and lithographywhich promises an enlarged means of pleasure and profit to the world in the ready and economical multiplication of the designs of artists. We do not know that we could make a better choice in the interests of the public or better consult its pleasure than in presenting this familiar, firmly set figure, and calmly resolved, still undisturbed battle-worn visage. This is General Grant, who now appears to the world in the calmness after the tempest, in the repose and serenity following the accomplishment of great deeds. It is not necessary at this time of day to speak of him as a warrior and a patriot. That theme is not to be disposed of in a para- graph; nor would we here anticipate the will of the people in any prophetic utter. nces regarding his occupation of the Presidential chair after the next election. It would not be diflicult, we think, in an easy observation of the events of the time, to arrive at such a conclusion, and potent argu- ments might be given why such a conclusion is desirable. We would simply cast a glance upon General Grant as he sits in our picture, the man of to-dayin his high office at Washing- ton, an impersonation of the power, the law. the dignity of the country. There may be read, we think, in his countenance a firm resolution, but no assumption ; not a particle of affectation; a consciousness of strength bnt no severity; an easiness of approach, but no familiarity. If wc understand the man rightly, he has no theories of government other than a fair obe- dience to the Constitution and the law, which his military virtues leave him no choice or incli- nation but to vindicate and enforce. We have never heard anything said of his policy so we presume he has no whims or idiosyncrasies at war with the regular expression of the wilrand wisdom of the people. We are free to say that in this speculative age of bold politi- cal experiments, we regard this as something entitled to much respect in a public character. We have had no conversations with General Grant on the subject, and consequently have not been baffled in any interi-ogatories of a political or other nature; we have not even had the plea- sure, like Senator Wade, of talking horse with him. But we are quite as well assured of this, as of anything within our direct cognizance, that General Grant has one leading consciousness on thc subject of Government, a sound conservative tendency, in harmony with the processes of nature and the best experience of the worldthat ssationat life is a growth and not a manu- facture. Hence if he shall be elevated by the will of the people to the Presidency we have no fears that he will be found engaged in any foolhardy experiments in pulling to pieces, twisting or tinkering the much-vexed body politic. He will respect its constitution, and, laying aside theories and nostrums, allow it a fair opportunity of healthy action. As for his silence, which so much disturbs some of our political friends, we hold it to be one of the most commendable of his virtues. Speech, says the proverb, is silver; it is often brass; but silence is gold. In this talking age and country, what a proof is it of the latent wis- dom of the nation that it appreciates as ~he most sterling quality of General Grant his invincible silence. It is the most promising sign of the times. May our public men take the lesson to heart and profit by it. A beautiful little fable, by the Spanish Yriarte, The Big Bell and the Little Bell, which has been happily translated by an English writer, points the moral of the day: Within an old cathedral, hung Whose daily tinklings through the year A mighty bell, So faintly fell, Which never, save at Easter, swung The peasants hardly gave an ear One solemn knell; To that small bell. And then so sternly all around Its echoes fell, The hermit, ha who ownd the same, The peasants trembled at the sound And loved it well Of that big bell. Resolved that it should share the fame Not far fro~n the cathedral stood So Of the big bell; tolling it but once a year, A hermits cell, With one brief knell, And in its belfry-tower of wood He taught the peasants to revere A little bell, His little bell. * The photo-sculpture by Messrs. MeXaye & Co., transferred to paper by the American Photo-Litho graphic Company (Osbornes process). 7 ~ ~ A~I 1~0 770 -~LFlW0@RArFrIc C0,A~7Y ~ PftO CES~,) MONTHLY CHRoNIcLE. MONTHLY CHRONICLE. CURRENT EVENTS. UNITED STATES. GEN. BUTLERS several letters, published late in September and early in October, assert- ing that the law does not require tbe payment of the principal of the 5.20 bonds in coin, created considerable discussion both at home and abroad. He fortified his point ingeniously by alle~ng that simultaneously with the pas- sage of the Five-Twenty Loan Act the Legal- Tender Act was passed, making legal-tenders receivable in payment of all debts, public and private, except interest expressly payable in gold; and that while interest is made payable in gold nuder the Five-Twenty Loan Act, nothing being said about the principal, it is a fair inference that the latter is payable in cur- rency. The position agrees essentially with that of Mr. Pendleton of Ohio, the latter dis- cussing it as a question of economy to the people, and the former as one of law. But it has been disposed of; so far as concerns the action of the Treasury Department, by the letter of Secaetary MeCulloch, holding that the bonds are payable in gold. The subsequent letter of Mr. Thaddeus Stevens, indorsing the Butler-Pendleton theory, would indicate that it will be supported in Congress with consider- able strength. TuE elections of State or local officers were held on the fourth day of September in Cali- fornia, on the ninth, in Maine and Montano Territory, on the eighth of October in Pennsyl- vania, Ohio, Indiana, Iowa, and West Virginia, and on the 5th November in New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Maryland, Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Kansas. California, on a total vote of 92,776, gave Ilaight (democratic) 49,604, Gorhan, (Rep.) ~0,050, and Fay, 2,088; a majority for Haight .ver both of 7,466, and carried both branches of the legislature democratic, involving the loss of one republican U. S. Senator. West Virginia, out of ii new senators elected 10 republicans, and 1 democrat. Of those holding over 10 are republicans, and 1 conservative, making the Senate now 20 re- publicans to 2 conservatives. The House of Delegates stands about as last year, i. e. 46 re- publicans and 10 conservatives. No State officers were elected, and the vote was light. In Maine a Governor and Legislature were elected, the State going republican by 18,500 majority, a loss of 14,000 on the majority of last year, viE.: 26,687. The democrats gained some members in the legislatere, but leaving the republicans a majority in both houses. Montana Territory elected James M. Cavan augh (democrat) in place of Samuel McLean (democrat) to Congress, by the usual majority. Montana has always been lar5ely democratic, they having a majority of 27 out of 89 on joint ballot in the legislature. Cavanaugh was nominated over a notorious secessionist, and represented the more union class of the democ- racy. Pennsylvania elected Judge Sharswood (democrat) Judge of the Supreme Court, by 927 majority over Judge Williams (republi- can). The democratic vote was, however, con- siderably less than last year, when the re- publicans elected Gov. Geary by 17,000 majority. Tile republicans still have a majority in both branches of the legislature despite the gain of some democratic members. Ohio elected Gen. Hayes (republican) over Judge Thurman (democrat), and the entire republican State ticket by 8,000 majority. The democrats carry the legislature, and ob- tain thereby a U. S. Senator on the expiration of tile term of Senator Wade. In Indiana local officers only were elected. The vote was light. St. Josephs county (Schuyler Colfaxs) gave 900, an unprecedented republican, majority. Several counties in- creased their majorities on those of the last year, when the State gave 14,202 republican. Iowa went republican by 25,000 majority, as a~ ainst 35,830 iast year. New York went democratic by 48,922 ma- jority, electing the entire democratic State ticket, and a majority of 8 in the Assembly, which stands 68 democrats to 60 republicans. The last Assem.bly stood 82 republicans to 46 democrats. The Senate stands 76 repub- licans, 15 democrats, 1 independent. Tile democratic State ticket thus elected consists of homer A. Nelson, Secretary of State; William F. Allan, Comptroller; Wheeler H. Bristol, Treasurer; M. B. Champlain, Attorney-Gen- cial; Van Rensselaer Richmond, Engineer and Surveyor; John D. Fay, Canal Commissioner; Solomon Schen, State Prison Inspector, and Martin Grover, Judge of Appeals. The judges of the Supreme Court elected were: I. Dis- trictAlbert CardoEo, dem.; II. Abraham B. Tappan, dem.; III. Rufus W. Peckham, dem. (re-elected); LV. Augustus Bockes, rep. (re- elected); V. Le Roy Morgan, rep. (re-elected); VI. John M. Parker, rep. (re-elected); Vii. James C. Smith, rep. (re-elected); VIII. Geo. Barker,. rep. (gain). The total vote in New York city was 111,747, the largest ever cast, and showing a democratic majority for the city alone of 60,467. Massachusetts elected Guy. Bullock, repub 1868.] 115

MONTHLY CHRoNIcLE. MONTHLY CHRONICLE. CURRENT EVENTS. UNITED STATES. GEN. BUTLERS several letters, published late in September and early in October, assert- ing that the law does not require tbe payment of the principal of the 5.20 bonds in coin, created considerable discussion both at home and abroad. He fortified his point ingeniously by alle~ng that simultaneously with the pas- sage of the Five-Twenty Loan Act the Legal- Tender Act was passed, making legal-tenders receivable in payment of all debts, public and private, except interest expressly payable in gold; and that while interest is made payable in gold nuder the Five-Twenty Loan Act, nothing being said about the principal, it is a fair inference that the latter is payable in cur- rency. The position agrees essentially with that of Mr. Pendleton of Ohio, the latter dis- cussing it as a question of economy to the people, and the former as one of law. But it has been disposed of; so far as concerns the action of the Treasury Department, by the letter of Secaetary MeCulloch, holding that the bonds are payable in gold. The subsequent letter of Mr. Thaddeus Stevens, indorsing the Butler-Pendleton theory, would indicate that it will be supported in Congress with consider- able strength. TuE elections of State or local officers were held on the fourth day of September in Cali- fornia, on the ninth, in Maine and Montano Territory, on the eighth of October in Pennsyl- vania, Ohio, Indiana, Iowa, and West Virginia, and on the 5th November in New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Maryland, Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Kansas. California, on a total vote of 92,776, gave Ilaight (democratic) 49,604, Gorhan, (Rep.) ~0,050, and Fay, 2,088; a majority for Haight .ver both of 7,466, and carried both branches of the legislature democratic, involving the loss of one republican U. S. Senator. West Virginia, out of ii new senators elected 10 republicans, and 1 democrat. Of those holding over 10 are republicans, and 1 conservative, making the Senate now 20 re- publicans to 2 conservatives. The House of Delegates stands about as last year, i. e. 46 re- publicans and 10 conservatives. No State officers were elected, and the vote was light. In Maine a Governor and Legislature were elected, the State going republican by 18,500 majority, a loss of 14,000 on the majority of last year, viE.: 26,687. The democrats gained some members in the legislatere, but leaving the republicans a majority in both houses. Montana Territory elected James M. Cavan augh (democrat) in place of Samuel McLean (democrat) to Congress, by the usual majority. Montana has always been lar5ely democratic, they having a majority of 27 out of 89 on joint ballot in the legislature. Cavanaugh was nominated over a notorious secessionist, and represented the more union class of the democ- racy. Pennsylvania elected Judge Sharswood (democrat) Judge of the Supreme Court, by 927 majority over Judge Williams (republi- can). The democratic vote was, however, con- siderably less than last year, when the re- publicans elected Gov. Geary by 17,000 majority. Tile republicans still have a majority in both branches of the legislature despite the gain of some democratic members. Ohio elected Gen. Hayes (republican) over Judge Thurman (democrat), and the entire republican State ticket by 8,000 majority. The democrats carry the legislature, and ob- tain thereby a U. S. Senator on the expiration of tile term of Senator Wade. In Indiana local officers only were elected. The vote was light. St. Josephs county (Schuyler Colfaxs) gave 900, an unprecedented republican, majority. Several counties in- creased their majorities on those of the last year, when the State gave 14,202 republican. Iowa went republican by 25,000 majority, as a~ ainst 35,830 iast year. New York went democratic by 48,922 ma- jority, electing the entire democratic State ticket, and a majority of 8 in the Assembly, which stands 68 democrats to 60 republicans. The last Assem.bly stood 82 republicans to 46 democrats. The Senate stands 76 repub- licans, 15 democrats, 1 independent. Tile democratic State ticket thus elected consists of homer A. Nelson, Secretary of State; William F. Allan, Comptroller; Wheeler H. Bristol, Treasurer; M. B. Champlain, Attorney-Gen- cial; Van Rensselaer Richmond, Engineer and Surveyor; John D. Fay, Canal Commissioner; Solomon Schen, State Prison Inspector, and Martin Grover, Judge of Appeals. The judges of the Supreme Court elected were: I. Dis- trictAlbert CardoEo, dem.; II. Abraham B. Tappan, dem.; III. Rufus W. Peckham, dem. (re-elected); LV. Augustus Bockes, rep. (re- elected); V. Le Roy Morgan, rep. (re-elected); VI. John M. Parker, rep. (re-elected); Vii. James C. Smith, rep. (re-elected); VIII. Geo. Barker,. rep. (gain). The total vote in New York city was 111,747, the largest ever cast, and showing a democratic majority for the city alone of 60,467. Massachusetts elected Guy. Bullock, repub 1868.] 115 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. lican and present incumbent, over John Quincy Adams, democrat, and the entire re- publican State ticket, by 27,000 majority. But it is claimed that the secret organization known as the P. L. L. (Protective License League) have secured a majority of the Legislature, which will enable them to substitute a license law for that of prohibition. Of the senators recently elected, 28 are for license and 6 for prohibition; and of 195 representatives 150 are for license. New Jersey elected a Senate, Assembly, and county officers. The aggregate democratic ma- jorities for the counties would carry the State democratic by about 15,000 majority. This was about equal to the democratic majority of 1862, which was diminished in 1865 to 2,500. The republicans carried the State for Ward rep., in 1866, by 2,970 over Runyon, dem., for Governor. The democrats elect all six of the new senators, giving them 1 majority in the Senate, where the republicans had five last year. In the Assembly they have gained about 20 members, giving them from 28 to P0 majority, where the republicans had 6 last year. No Governor or State ticket was elect- ccl, the present Governor Ward being repub- lican. Mamyland went democratic by 40,000 ma- jority, electing Oden Bowie, dem., over Hugh Lenox Bond, rep., and filling about every offi- cial position in the State with democrats. In Illinois the elections were local. In Cook county (Chicago), Gen. Osborne, rep., was elected County Treasurer by 4,003 in the city, and about 5,000 in the county. Wisconsin elected Fairchilds, rep., by about 4,000. Tb e democrats gain six or eight mem- bers of Assembly, and three or four senators, hut leave the republicans still a large majority in both houses. Minnesota elected Marshall-, rep., Governor by about 4,000 majority. The entire demo- cratic ticket in St. Paul was elected by 700 majority. Kansas elected the entire repub- lican State ticket. In the States of Kansas, Minnesota, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, the people voted upon the question of striking out the word white~ from the suffrage clause in the State constitu- tion, so as to allow colored citizens to vote. The details of these votes have not come to hand. In Ohio a very considerable vote was polled, and in Minnesota it was nearly carried; hut in all it was defeated by heavy majorities. In Kansas the people also voted on the ques- tion of striking from the constitution the word male. It is believed the vote in favor of fe- male suffrage was larger than for colored suf- frage, but the measure shared the same fate after a very active canvass, in which numerous meetings were addressed by Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucy Stone Blackwell, and other advocates of womanhood suffrage. The elections leave the republican party in possession of the Governor and Legislature of Maine, New hampshire, Massachusetts, Ver- mont, Rhode Island, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, West Virginia, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Michigan, Tennessee, Missouri, Iowa, Oregon, Nebraska, and Nevada nineteen States. They have also the Governor and Senate in New York, the Legislature in Con- necticut, the Governor only in New Jersey and Ohio; while the democrats have both Governor and Legislature in California, Mary- land, and Kentucky. Among the causes of the republican losses or defeats in these elections is the fact that the republican party has no longer the stir- ring campaign appeal, based on the dangers of the dissolution of the Union, or of the return of the rebel element to power. The enact- ment by Congress, and quiet acceptance by the South, of universal suffrage, excluding only those rebels who, in rebelling, have vio- lated an official oath to support the Constitu- tion of the United States, have excluded all possibility of the recurrence of either of those dangers which formed the burden of radical appeal during the war, and while the terms and mode of reconstruction were still un- settled. hence the republican canvass lacked the pith of a powerful motive, and, compared with former campaigns, was tame and spirit- less. The burden of taxation, the uncertainty imparted to business by the contraction of the currency and tightening of the money mar- ket, and decline in almost all prices except that of gold, which is still higher than it was immediately after Lees surrender, and the consequent great cost of living, and low value of salaries and wages, all tended to impart discouragement to the people, who, without being able to tell what was wrong, listened eagerly to the democratic charge that this state of things was due to republican malad- ministration, and so voted for a change, or did not vote at all. The feeling that in reconstructing the South on the basis of admitting all negroes to vote, and excluding a very large mass of whites as rebels, Congress bad gone far enough in radi- calism was quite general among conservative republicans. Even those who favored these radical policies felt that they could not be re- pealed, aud so rested as after a victory won, instead of going forth to fight new battles. In New York the democrats assumed a very judicious platform, mildly disapproving the disfranchisement of repentant rebels and the universal enfranchisement of blacks, pledging honorable payment of the national debt, avoid- ing any indorsement of the President, and excluding from the canvass all extremists and repudiationists, and laying great stress on al- leged frauds of republican officials, in the mana0ement of canal and other State funds. 116 [Jan. t 1868.] MONTHLY Onnoacr~. 117 Above all, the democracy brought out in full force the enormous foreign vote in the city of New York. In California a split in the re- publican party assisted the democrats. Mani- fold causes thus conduced to the result, which was generally anticipated by both parties. Tux acts of Congress which govern the work of reconstructiug the Southern State overnments and the Union, are a proposed constitutional amendment, passed June 13 1866, known as the Fourteenth Amendment; a reconstruction act, passed March 2, 1867, and a supplementary act, passed March 23, 1867. The amendment, which must become a part of the Constitution of the United States, and be ratified by any Southern State prior to its readmission, provides : 1. That all persons born in the United States are citi- zens, and must have equal civil rights. 2. That if any State shall deprive any class of its adult male citizens of the right of suffrage, its representation in Congress shall be propor- tionally reduced, so as to correspond only with its number of actual voters. 3. That no person shall hold any office under the United States who engaged in the rebellion after taking an official oath to support the Constitntion (which disability Congress may remove by a two-third vote); and 4. That the public debt shall not be questioned nor the rebel debt assumed. The act of March 2 di- vides the ten rebel States into five military districts, supersedes their State governments as provisional, and places them under military control of five generals to be appointed by the President. These are nowGens. Schofield, for First District (Virginia); Canby, for Sec- ond (North and South Carolina); Pope, for Third (Georgia, Alabama, and Florida) ; Ord, for Fourth (Mississippi and Arkansas), and Hancock, for Fifth (Louisiana and Texas). Tbe supplementary act of March 23, requires these generals, before 1st September last, to make a registration of all male citizens quali- fied to vote, and who swear that they have not engaged in the rebellion after having taken an official oath to support the Constitu- tion. All rebels who are not in the view of Congress perjured, are therefore permitted to register and vote. On completing the regis- tration, the district commander must give thirty days notice of an election, at which the registered voters may vote for or against a convention, and for delegates. A majority of the votes registered must be polled, and a majority of those polled must be for the con- vention, or no convention will be held. These two facts concurring, the general notifies the convention to meet. It meets to frame a con- stitution, which, if ratified by a majority of the registered electors, shall be sent by the president of the convention to the President of the United States, who shall transmit it to Congress, and if approved by the l*tter, tha State shall be re-admitted into the Union, and its representatives received into Congress. Registrations have been held in most of the Southern States. In Louisianawhere the population in 1856 is stated at, whites, 347,- 529; blacks, 340,273; majority of whites, 7,256the registration shows, competent to vote, of colored, 82,907; white, 44,732; colored majority, 38,175. So large a difference cannot be accounted for by the disfranchising clause, and can only be attributed to the neglect of whites to register. In South Carolina the whole number of registered voters is 125,336, of whom 45,751 are whites, and 79,585 blacks; colored majority, 33,834. Gen. Pope reports the reaistration in his district as follows: GeorgiaWhite, 95,214; colored, 93,453. Total, 188,671. AlabamaWhite, 74,450; colored, 90,350. Total, 164,800. ridaWhite, 11,100; colored, 15,357. Total, 26,537. The whole number of registered voters in Georgia, Alabama, and Florida, is as follows: White, 180,844; colored, 199,164. Total, 380,000. The average white vote in these States be- fore the war was as follows: Georgia, 102,585; Alabama, 82,324; Florida, 12,769. Alabama voted for a convention, which met at Montgomery on the 5th November, and is still in session. Of the one hundred members elected, eighty-four were present. They in- cluded sixteen colored members, and but one conservative. Their proceedings thus far have been characterized by earnest loyalty. Their principal business has been the adoption of a report admitting all ax-rebels to vote except those who have violated the rules of honora- ble warfare. Georgia voted for a convention. About 105,000 votes were cast, out of 186,000 regis- tered, of which about 30,000 were white. The majority for convention was about 15,000, and Union delegates were elected in every dis- trict reported. In Mississippi, of the whole number regis- tered, 9,000 more than a majority voted for convention. Only one conservative delegate was elected. Ex-United States Senator A. G. Brown and General Alcorn, Senator elect, can- vassed the State for the convention. Arkansas has voted for the convention. In Florida the whites declined to vote, and the convention was carried by a considerable ma- jority. In Texas the registration (complete except one county) resulted, whites, 5,001; color& . 4,143. Total, 9,153. In North Carolina 103,060 whites, and 71, 657 blacks registered. The convention was PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. carried, and nearly all the dele~ates elected were radical. In Virginia the registration resulted, whitcs, 116,982; blacks, 104,712. The vote stood: Whites. Blacks. Total. 13cr Convention 14,835 92,507 107,342 Against Convention 61,249 638 61,887 Majority for Convention 4 ,455 Total white votes cast 76,054 Total black votes cast 93,155 Total vote 169,229 The convention met on Tuesday, December ii. Throughout the South the party opposed to reconstruction on the Congressional basis was lethargic until roused into active resist- ance to that policy by democratic majorities in some of the Northern States. All the elec- tions thus far held were peaceful except at Richmond, Va., where one negro (radical) was killed. Generally throughout the South all physical violence towards the blacks has greatly lessened, or wholly ceased, since they were granted the right of suffrage. THE death of ox-Governor Andrew, of Mas- sachusetts, on 30th October, of apoplexy, oc- casioned profound sorrow throughout the country. He was born May 31, 1818, gradu- ated ~t Bowdoin College at the age of 19, was admitted to tile bar in 1840, and practised witil distinction, especially in the Fugitive Slave cases; after 1848 he was closely identified with the anti-slavery party in Massachusetts. In 1858 he was elected from Boston to the State Legislature; in 1860 was a delegate to the Chi- cago Convention, and the same year was elected Governor of Massachusetts, in which office he served five termsbeing the historic Governor of that State during the warin which he was an ardent advocate of vigorous and radical measures. He declined the presi- dency of Antioch Colle~,e, presided over the First National Unitarian Convention in 1865, and advocated License against Prohi1~ition during the past year. He was a logical and vigorous orator, a kind, genial and humane man, of untiring industry and energy, and the most prominent candidate east of the Allegha- nies for the next Vice-Presidency. In the death of Governor Andrew the country loses one of her purest patriots and ablest states- men. FIvE hundred miles of the Union branch of the Pacific Railway, the greatest work of internal improvement ever yet attempted by any nation, had been completed on October 23, and with the completion of thirty-one miles more, now nearly finished, the highest point on the route would be reached, from which the locomotive lights would shine over the Rocky Mountains toward the Pacific. Doubtless ere this number of PUvEAMs goes to tress tile reader may ride without change of oars from New York to the summit of the Rocky Mountains. EZEICO. IN our sister republic of Mexico, Juarez has been re-electe4 by a close vote over Gen- eral Parfiric Diaz, who seems to comniand in a marked degree the confidence. of the Mexi- can people. Great stagnation in business prevails throughout the republic, and the gov- ernment is suffering for the means to dis- charge its current expenses. It is attempting to effect a loan of $12,000,000 in tile United States. EUROPE. Tots issue which had for some time been maturing in Italy, between the Pope and the party of action, led by Garibaldi, culmi- nated on the 24th of September, by the arrest of Garibaldi by order of King Victor Emman- uel, in consequence of the proclamations is- sued by the former, calling upon the Italian people to rescue Rome and the States of the Church from the temporal government of the Pope, and by restoring them to Italy, to complete the unity of the nation under Victor Emmanuel. ThePope had previously publicly denounced the decrees of Victor Emmanuel for the sale of the Church lands in Italy, and the Government of Italy stood in an attitude of admitted hostility to that of the Pope; nevertheless, bound by the treaty of Sep- tember to defend the Pontifical territory against invasion by his own subjects, Victor Emmanuelwhether from regard to the treaty, from fear of Napoleon, or from some secret understanding with the party of action, remains yet to be revealedtook measures of pretended rigor, but really of masterly inac- tivity, to suppress the movement. Garibaldi was arrested at Sienna Longa, as he was about to cross the Roman frontier, and was brought in a special train to Florence, and from thence sent to the fortress of Alessandro, from whence he issued fresh proclamations to the Italian people to march on Rome. Serious riots weic got up by his followers at Modena, Milan, Genoa, and Naples, with tise view of exciting a revolutionary feeling among the people against the course of the Italian Government, in opposing Garibaldi. Some feeble disturb- ance occurred also in the Papal States, which was easily suppressed. No effort at revolu- tion occurred in Rome, though many arrests were made of parties charged with belon~- lug to the party of action. Garibaldi was next sent to Caprera, where he was still allowed to issue his proclamations. Mean- while the papal troops, numbering about 10,- 000, were withdrawn from the out lying town and concentrated at Rome. The party of ac- tion continued to assemble on the frontier, notwithstanding the arrest of numeross bodies 118 [Jan. MONTHLY CHRONICLE. af men and the seizure of their guns and am- munition by the Italian Government. The first outbreak was at Acquapendente, where a gem der and thirty Pepaliiei were captured by the insureents. General Menotti Garibaldi, who assumed command during his fathers imprisonment, soon found himself at the head of forces stated at from three to five thousand men, with which he took post at Veroli, in the province of Frosinoni. Here his first engagement with the Papal Zonaves, on the 13th, resulted hi a severe defeat to the latter, the Garibaldians losing five killed and fifteen wounded. This was followed by simi- lar petty conflicts at Farnese and Albino, in Viterbo. On the 16th, another party of in- surgents took possession of the town of Ne- rola, under command of Signor Acerbis, a member of the Italian parliament, and in- trenched themselves. On the 16th, Napoleon held a meeting of his council and determined on inimediate intervention. The London Ti s of the 17th advised Italy to seize Rome first, and treat with France afterward. On the same day the Garibaldians appeared in the western district between Rome and the sea, took possession of the sea-port of Ostia, and severed communication between Rome and Florence. Reinforcements of papal volunteers recruited in lirance and Spain arrived in Rome. Napoleon made an imperative demand on Italy for the enforcement of the treaty of Sep- tember. The Freiseb fleet at Toulon prepared to sail. Garibaldi escaped from Caprera, it was reported, on an American ship. A depu- tation headed by a Senator of Rome, and com- posed of the Roman Municipal Council, pre- sented to the Pope a petition signed by 12,000 citizens, praying that the Italian troops might be allowed to occupy the city of Rome. On the 20th, Ratazzi resigned his position at the head of the Italian Cabinet, and Cialdini and Menabrea undertook the formation of a new ministry. Italy yields to the demands of France and pledges observance of the Septem- ber treaty. General Garihaldi. arrives and assumes command of the insurgent forces. On the 22d, an attempt to start an insurrection in Rome be0an with the explosion of a mine under the barracks of the Papal Zouaves. None were killed, and order was soon restored. Under the failure of Cialdini to form a minis- try, Ratazzi still acted as Premier. On the 25th, the insurgents, under Garibaldi in per- son, retook Bagnorea, and marched in two columns on the city of Rome, arriving at the heights of Monte Rotundo, within sight of Rome. The papal forces were beaten in two engagements at Torreto and Monte Rotundo and were driven or retired before the insur- gents into the city. Garibaldi reached Monte Rotundo with 10,000 men. On the 26th, the French fleet sailed from Toulon for Ci vita Veechia, the ifoniteer alleging that this step was rendered necessary by the fact that Italy was without a ministry, and that Garibaldi was menacing Rome. On the 27th, an obsti- nate engagement occurred between the insur- gents under Garibaldi and the Papalini, result- ing in the rout of the latter, who retreated into the citywhich was thrown into the greatest excitement, being in hourly expecta- tion of an attack from Garibaldi, who had now reached the walls of the city. Pope Pins IX. retired from the Vatican into ttie citadel or castle of St. Angelo, and issued an Encyclical to the Bishops, deploring the dangers which menaced his temporal power. Victor Emman- uel issued a proclamation denouncing Garibaldi and declaring that the policy of France was approved by the Italian Government. The greatest disorder prevailed in the city of Rome, and the revolutionists were firing Orsini shells in the street, expecting momently the arrival of Garibaldi. On the 29th, the French trans- ports arrived at Civita Veechia and the troops disembarked and occupied Rome. M. Mons- tier issued a circular, explaining that when armed rebellion against the Holy Father shall be crushed, and the Pontifical Territory freed from the tread of hostile soldiers, France wilt withdraw her troops and call a conference of the great powers to settle forever the Roman question. The Italian army had crossed the Papal frontier, and the commanding general called upon Garibaldi to disarm and disperse his forces. The arrival of the French troops in Rome was received in silence by the people, while throughout Italy the timid course of the government occasioned intense dissatisfactiou. On the arrival of the French and Italian forces at Rome, Garibaldi retired to Monte Rotundo. To the summons of the King to disarm, he replied by a refusal, and demanded that the King change his cabinet so as to place the Government of Italy in accord with the National will. Napoleon proposed to submit the Roman question to the citizens of Rome and the inhabitants of the Provinces by popu- lar vote. The Italian government declined alleging that it is a question in which the whole nation is concerned. Gen. Menabree charged the French with violating the Sep- tember treaty in invading Italy. Rumors of Prussian Intervention were contradicted by Count Bismarek, who declared that at present the Government is neutral. On November 4th, at 6 oclock in the morning. the Papal troops marched out and attacked Garibaldi at Monte Rotundo. The battle was obstinate, and Garibaldi, who brought into action 10,000 men, was successful, until by re- inforcements of French Zonaves lie was de- feated, routed, and obliged to snrrender to the Italian forces. About 800 Garibaldian were killed and 2,000 were made prisoners. Garibaldi and his son Menotti were sent to Florence s prisoners of war. Thus ends the 1868.] 119 120 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Jan. second attempt of Garibaldi to revolutionize Rome. In this, as well as in the establish- ment of the Republic of Rome, in 1849, he succeeded against the immediate forces of the Pope, but succumbed to the overwhelming power of France. The main question, how- ever, between the Popes demand for the maintenance of his temporal power, and the urgent demand of the Italian people for the unity of the nation and the establishment of the capital at Rome, h~is not yet been settled. Its adjustment will form one of the problems of European diplomacy, and may yet lead to unforeseen complications and a great conti- nental war. In the progress of this Emeute, the Pope has evinced an uncompromising de- termination to waive no jot or tittle of his temporal power, though to sustain it should involve all Europe in bloodshed. The Italian people, both in the Papal States and through- out the kingdom of Italy, have shown as much vigor as could be expected from a people who knew that their destinies could not be deter- mined by their own strength, but depended on the will o,f foreign powers. The Pope, it is said, has consented to a General Conventinu. THE speech of tIme Emperor Napoleon at the opening of the corps Legistat/ on Novem- ber 19, was eminently pacific, considering that the development of Prussia into a United Ger- man Empire must be accepted peacefully by France. He declared that the Papal question affected all Europe, but expressed a desire speedily to adjust it and withdraw the French troops. He urged the perfection of tIme French railway system, free trade and the mainten- ance of a strong military establishment as the best guaranty of peace. On the same day the Queen opened the Parliament of Great Brit- ain by a speech promising to introduce a Re- form Bill for Scotland and Ireland. Tnz Pan Anglican Convention, which as- sembled at the Arehiepiseopal palace of Lam- beth, England, on September 23, drew togeth- er a considerable number of Episcopal prelates of the Colonial and United States Protestant Episcopal churches, in communion with the Church of England, but was not patronized by the leading bishops of England. It aimed to effect greater unity of action among all branch- es of the Episcopal Church. LITERATURE. Iv is too early a day to determine the influ- ence of the late civil war upon the literature of the country. That the unprecedented struggle, stirring the nation to its depths, calling into requisition every physical power, every energy of the will, stimulating ingenuity and invention in manifold new directions, should not be felt in the finer products of the mind, would be a result contrary to every reasonable expectation, and without precedent in the history of the world. Great thoughts are of necessity the inspirers of great actions. Man cannot act nobly without thinking nobly. The stagnation of peace is broken not only by the encounter of arms but by the clash of opinions. Men who were not mercenary hire- lings, but the men who marched in the vol- unteer army of America, welcoming their gory beds, could be incited only by the most generous enthusiasm and devot~d spirit of self-sacrifice; and no man of feeling or of thought could fail to he animated by their ex- ample. The scholar is never insensible to the influences of his time. He lives in the breath of the nobler aspirations, and catches the first reflection in the glowing world around him, of the page in which he reads of the glories of Greece and Rome, of the lives of the 4evoted men of every period, their costly triumphs of mind, their sacrifices in their dedication to virtue. The heroic actions of the age are drawn by sympathy upon himself; they give color and richness to his studies; the insi0ht of experience, the warmth of reality. They are something more than a mere theme for speculation, a gallery of delight, a terrace for a wandering and variable mind to walk up and down with a fair prospect;~ they inspire an invigorating atmosphere imparting new life. We would not attempt to measure this in- fluepee by any of its manifestations in the lite- rature of the day. We think it may be noticed there; but its great results are not yet develop- ed. The seed is sown, but we must wait the growth of the tree before we gather the fruit. Apart from this higher inspiration there are various incidental influences growing out of the war which affect the contemporary lit- erature. It has received not merely a new direction in thought; not only have new materials, not to be overlooked or neglected, been accumulated for its subjects, but very important modifications have been made in what we may call its material means and re- sources. The mode of publication has changed. The failure and exhaustion of the cotton crop cut off an extensive supply of the chief commodity used in the manufacture of paper, the price of which was also greatly en- hanced by the taxation consequent upon the war, which it shared in common with every other article of consumption. The market, too, was diminished, and, spite of every pro- tective duty, the comparatively unfettered foreign competition damaged still more the resources of the native publisher. Fewer books, of course, appeared, and those generally of a more important character than the mass of works which had previously crowded the shelves of the bookseller. An entire brood of

120 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Jan. second attempt of Garibaldi to revolutionize Rome. In this, as well as in the establish- ment of the Republic of Rome, in 1849, he succeeded against the immediate forces of the Pope, but succumbed to the overwhelming power of France. The main question, how- ever, between the Popes demand for the maintenance of his temporal power, and the urgent demand of the Italian people for the unity of the nation and the establishment of the capital at Rome, h~is not yet been settled. Its adjustment will form one of the problems of European diplomacy, and may yet lead to unforeseen complications and a great conti- nental war. In the progress of this Emeute, the Pope has evinced an uncompromising de- termination to waive no jot or tittle of his temporal power, though to sustain it should involve all Europe in bloodshed. The Italian people, both in the Papal States and through- out the kingdom of Italy, have shown as much vigor as could be expected from a people who knew that their destinies could not be deter- mined by their own strength, but depended on the will o,f foreign powers. The Pope, it is said, has consented to a General Conventinu. THE speech of tIme Emperor Napoleon at the opening of the corps Legistat/ on Novem- ber 19, was eminently pacific, considering that the development of Prussia into a United Ger- man Empire must be accepted peacefully by France. He declared that the Papal question affected all Europe, but expressed a desire speedily to adjust it and withdraw the French troops. He urged the perfection of tIme French railway system, free trade and the mainten- ance of a strong military establishment as the best guaranty of peace. On the same day the Queen opened the Parliament of Great Brit- ain by a speech promising to introduce a Re- form Bill for Scotland and Ireland. Tnz Pan Anglican Convention, which as- sembled at the Arehiepiseopal palace of Lam- beth, England, on September 23, drew togeth- er a considerable number of Episcopal prelates of the Colonial and United States Protestant Episcopal churches, in communion with the Church of England, but was not patronized by the leading bishops of England. It aimed to effect greater unity of action among all branch- es of the Episcopal Church. LITERATURE. Iv is too early a day to determine the influ- ence of the late civil war upon the literature of the country. That the unprecedented struggle, stirring the nation to its depths, calling into requisition every physical power, every energy of the will, stimulating ingenuity and invention in manifold new directions, should not be felt in the finer products of the mind, would be a result contrary to every reasonable expectation, and without precedent in the history of the world. Great thoughts are of necessity the inspirers of great actions. Man cannot act nobly without thinking nobly. The stagnation of peace is broken not only by the encounter of arms but by the clash of opinions. Men who were not mercenary hire- lings, but the men who marched in the vol- unteer army of America, welcoming their gory beds, could be incited only by the most generous enthusiasm and devot~d spirit of self-sacrifice; and no man of feeling or of thought could fail to he animated by their ex- ample. The scholar is never insensible to the influences of his time. He lives in the breath of the nobler aspirations, and catches the first reflection in the glowing world around him, of the page in which he reads of the glories of Greece and Rome, of the lives of the 4evoted men of every period, their costly triumphs of mind, their sacrifices in their dedication to virtue. The heroic actions of the age are drawn by sympathy upon himself; they give color and richness to his studies; the insi0ht of experience, the warmth of reality. They are something more than a mere theme for speculation, a gallery of delight, a terrace for a wandering and variable mind to walk up and down with a fair prospect;~ they inspire an invigorating atmosphere imparting new life. We would not attempt to measure this in- fluepee by any of its manifestations in the lite- rature of the day. We think it may be noticed there; but its great results are not yet develop- ed. The seed is sown, but we must wait the growth of the tree before we gather the fruit. Apart from this higher inspiration there are various incidental influences growing out of the war which affect the contemporary lit- erature. It has received not merely a new direction in thought; not only have new materials, not to be overlooked or neglected, been accumulated for its subjects, but very important modifications have been made in what we may call its material means and re- sources. The mode of publication has changed. The failure and exhaustion of the cotton crop cut off an extensive supply of the chief commodity used in the manufacture of paper, the price of which was also greatly en- hanced by the taxation consequent upon the war, which it shared in common with every other article of consumption. The market, too, was diminished, and, spite of every pro- tective duty, the comparatively unfettered foreign competition damaged still more the resources of the native publisher. Fewer books, of course, appeared, and those generally of a more important character than the mass of works which had previously crowded the shelves of the bookseller. An entire brood of 121 MONTHLY CHflONIOLE. ensation novels and other anserine produc- tions, with their quack advertisements, were swept away. The cheep and much of the worthless perished at a blow. This, of course, was a decided gain, relieving the public of an imposition of trash, and the trade of an inju- rious and contagious influence. Oddly enough, as the cost increased, the style and standard of publication was vastly improved, rendering books still more costly. An inflated I currency gave the signal for higher prices, and the trade, to their credit, took advantage of the opportunity to give greater solidity and elegance to their manufactures. The River- side Press, at Cambridge, led the way in printing; good library editions were called for; artists were employed; a virtuoso ma- nia, affecting the luxury of Dibdin and Earl Spencer, sprang up. The decade will he memorable in the annals of American bibliog- raphy for large paper and costly workman- ship. Nor has the influence yet abated. It has become a discredit to a publisher to issue a book in the inferior style which, so much to the injury of purchasers, was in vogue ten years ago. Bookbuyers have discovered that what is worth having must needs be costly in its production; that the cheapest is very far from the b~st, and that a really good book is worth paying something for. So much for the outside appearance of books. There are some facts of recent occur- rence in reference to their character and circu- lation worth noticing in a review of the peri od. The War Literature, as it may be termed, has reached an unprecedented extent, furnishing already the materials for large li- braries and collections. A bibliographical cat- alogue has been published by Mr. John R. Bartlett, of Rhode Island, embracing 6,073 titles of books and pamphlets in an octavo volume of 477 pages; and a supplement of five hundred titles, it is said, might even now be added ta the work, which, for some time to come, will receive other additions. The literature, in fact, steadily kept pace with the gigantic march of the war. Its probable dura- tion, at the outset, was no better appreciated by authors than by politicians. The first publication of any consequence undertaken in relation to it was the Rebellion Record, pro- jected by Mr. Putnam and conducted by Mr. Frank Moore. The calculation at the begin- ning was that one, or at most two volumes would suffice for this work. It has now reached eleven and will be cut short at twelve. Various narratives were begun in the same way, and lengthened their protracted series to the dismay of publishers and subscribers till new and condensed editions became necessary. Df course these works were for the most part compilations from necessarily imperfect materials; and will be resorted to only as 4uarries whence the future Bancrofts will pluck a block here ad there for their more lasting literary edifices. But in the mean time their profitable sale has benefited authors and publishers, and afforded one among the thousand recent illustrations of the saying of Lucan, belluns utile multis. The war histories of Greeley, Abbott, acid Headley have each exceeded a hundred thousand in circulation; and the biographies of Lincoln, of which Dr. hollands takes the lead, stimulated by the agency and subscription system, have reaped a liko harvest of popularity and profit. More than a hundred thousand dollars, we are told, has been received by the author of one of the Lives, which exceeds the sum expected from, and thus far unhandsomely withheld by Congress, for the support of the widow of the illustrious subject of these volumes. If Senators and Representatives, to the scandal of the country, fail to do their duty in this matter, it might be well for Mrs. Lincoln, with Victoria for a precedentfor have we not here, too, our Queens ofSocietytotnrnher attention to the booksellers. If, indeed, all who, directly or indirectly, have been in- debted to Abraham Lincoln for the acquisi- tion of a hundred thousand dollars, were to bestow upon his family a small percentage on this addition to their fortunes, there would be no occasion to expose the gifts of his friends for sale for the maintenance of his widow. The capabilities of publishing in the United States have been recently shown in two very opposite examples, in the reception of Long- fellows translations of Dante and of Dr. Ilol- lands popular Kathrina. The former, a work of elaborate care and of strict fidelity to the original, requiring for its appreciation a reverent and loving study, leisure and a disci- plined mind; issued moreover in a costly edi- tion, has, we understand, met with a cordial support. This is no mote than is due to the genius of the translator and the great merit of his work; but it is something to say of any reading public, and we hail it as an indica- tion encouraging to the reception of the best literature hereaftem. Dr. Hollands is of course, a very different work; but the fact here, too,is significant,that within a few months twenty-three thousand of a narrative poeni, the story of the conversion, in a peculiar way, of a skeptic, should be called for by the people. In these references to the publications of the year we must not forget, as facts of the season, the completion of Dr. Holmes ingeniously constructed and original novela brilliant suc- cess in the difficult walk of home life The Guardian Angel ; the publication of another American romance, Norwood, by the Rev. Dr. Beecher; and with this attention to con- temporaries the appearance of the new edi- tions of the perennial works of Washiubton Irving, and the revival, with a candid and well- written memoir, by his son of the select works 1868.1

121 MONTHLY CHflONIOLE. ensation novels and other anserine produc- tions, with their quack advertisements, were swept away. The cheep and much of the worthless perished at a blow. This, of course, was a decided gain, relieving the public of an imposition of trash, and the trade of an inju- rious and contagious influence. Oddly enough, as the cost increased, the style and standard of publication was vastly improved, rendering books still more costly. An inflated I currency gave the signal for higher prices, and the trade, to their credit, took advantage of the opportunity to give greater solidity and elegance to their manufactures. The River- side Press, at Cambridge, led the way in printing; good library editions were called for; artists were employed; a virtuoso ma- nia, affecting the luxury of Dibdin and Earl Spencer, sprang up. The decade will he memorable in the annals of American bibliog- raphy for large paper and costly workman- ship. Nor has the influence yet abated. It has become a discredit to a publisher to issue a book in the inferior style which, so much to the injury of purchasers, was in vogue ten years ago. Bookbuyers have discovered that what is worth having must needs be costly in its production; that the cheapest is very far from the b~st, and that a really good book is worth paying something for. So much for the outside appearance of books. There are some facts of recent occur- rence in reference to their character and circu- lation worth noticing in a review of the peri od. The War Literature, as it may be termed, has reached an unprecedented extent, furnishing already the materials for large li- braries and collections. A bibliographical cat- alogue has been published by Mr. John R. Bartlett, of Rhode Island, embracing 6,073 titles of books and pamphlets in an octavo volume of 477 pages; and a supplement of five hundred titles, it is said, might even now be added ta the work, which, for some time to come, will receive other additions. The literature, in fact, steadily kept pace with the gigantic march of the war. Its probable dura- tion, at the outset, was no better appreciated by authors than by politicians. The first publication of any consequence undertaken in relation to it was the Rebellion Record, pro- jected by Mr. Putnam and conducted by Mr. Frank Moore. The calculation at the begin- ning was that one, or at most two volumes would suffice for this work. It has now reached eleven and will be cut short at twelve. Various narratives were begun in the same way, and lengthened their protracted series to the dismay of publishers and subscribers till new and condensed editions became necessary. Df course these works were for the most part compilations from necessarily imperfect materials; and will be resorted to only as 4uarries whence the future Bancrofts will pluck a block here ad there for their more lasting literary edifices. But in the mean time their profitable sale has benefited authors and publishers, and afforded one among the thousand recent illustrations of the saying of Lucan, belluns utile multis. The war histories of Greeley, Abbott, acid Headley have each exceeded a hundred thousand in circulation; and the biographies of Lincoln, of which Dr. hollands takes the lead, stimulated by the agency and subscription system, have reaped a liko harvest of popularity and profit. More than a hundred thousand dollars, we are told, has been received by the author of one of the Lives, which exceeds the sum expected from, and thus far unhandsomely withheld by Congress, for the support of the widow of the illustrious subject of these volumes. If Senators and Representatives, to the scandal of the country, fail to do their duty in this matter, it might be well for Mrs. Lincoln, with Victoria for a precedentfor have we not here, too, our Queens ofSocietytotnrnher attention to the booksellers. If, indeed, all who, directly or indirectly, have been in- debted to Abraham Lincoln for the acquisi- tion of a hundred thousand dollars, were to bestow upon his family a small percentage on this addition to their fortunes, there would be no occasion to expose the gifts of his friends for sale for the maintenance of his widow. The capabilities of publishing in the United States have been recently shown in two very opposite examples, in the reception of Long- fellows translations of Dante and of Dr. Ilol- lands popular Kathrina. The former, a work of elaborate care and of strict fidelity to the original, requiring for its appreciation a reverent and loving study, leisure and a disci- plined mind; issued moreover in a costly edi- tion, has, we understand, met with a cordial support. This is no mote than is due to the genius of the translator and the great merit of his work; but it is something to say of any reading public, and we hail it as an indica- tion encouraging to the reception of the best literature hereaftem. Dr. Hollands is of course, a very different work; but the fact here, too,is significant,that within a few months twenty-three thousand of a narrative poeni, the story of the conversion, in a peculiar way, of a skeptic, should be called for by the people. In these references to the publications of the year we must not forget, as facts of the season, the completion of Dr. Holmes ingeniously constructed and original novela brilliant suc- cess in the difficult walk of home life The Guardian Angel ; the publication of another American romance, Norwood, by the Rev. Dr. Beecher; and with this attention to con- temporaries the appearance of the new edi- tions of the perennial works of Washiubton Irving, and the revival, with a candid and well- written memoir, by his son of the select works 1868.1

121 MONTHLY CHflONIOLE. ensation novels and other anserine produc- tions, with their quack advertisements, were swept away. The cheep and much of the worthless perished at a blow. This, of course, was a decided gain, relieving the public of an imposition of trash, and the trade of an inju- rious and contagious influence. Oddly enough, as the cost increased, the style and standard of publication was vastly improved, rendering books still more costly. An inflated I currency gave the signal for higher prices, and the trade, to their credit, took advantage of the opportunity to give greater solidity and elegance to their manufactures. The River- side Press, at Cambridge, led the way in printing; good library editions were called for; artists were employed; a virtuoso ma- nia, affecting the luxury of Dibdin and Earl Spencer, sprang up. The decade will he memorable in the annals of American bibliog- raphy for large paper and costly workman- ship. Nor has the influence yet abated. It has become a discredit to a publisher to issue a book in the inferior style which, so much to the injury of purchasers, was in vogue ten years ago. Bookbuyers have discovered that what is worth having must needs be costly in its production; that the cheapest is very far from the b~st, and that a really good book is worth paying something for. So much for the outside appearance of books. There are some facts of recent occur- rence in reference to their character and circu- lation worth noticing in a review of the peri od. The War Literature, as it may be termed, has reached an unprecedented extent, furnishing already the materials for large li- braries and collections. A bibliographical cat- alogue has been published by Mr. John R. Bartlett, of Rhode Island, embracing 6,073 titles of books and pamphlets in an octavo volume of 477 pages; and a supplement of five hundred titles, it is said, might even now be added ta the work, which, for some time to come, will receive other additions. The literature, in fact, steadily kept pace with the gigantic march of the war. Its probable dura- tion, at the outset, was no better appreciated by authors than by politicians. The first publication of any consequence undertaken in relation to it was the Rebellion Record, pro- jected by Mr. Putnam and conducted by Mr. Frank Moore. The calculation at the begin- ning was that one, or at most two volumes would suffice for this work. It has now reached eleven and will be cut short at twelve. Various narratives were begun in the same way, and lengthened their protracted series to the dismay of publishers and subscribers till new and condensed editions became necessary. Df course these works were for the most part compilations from necessarily imperfect materials; and will be resorted to only as 4uarries whence the future Bancrofts will pluck a block here ad there for their more lasting literary edifices. But in the mean time their profitable sale has benefited authors and publishers, and afforded one among the thousand recent illustrations of the saying of Lucan, belluns utile multis. The war histories of Greeley, Abbott, acid Headley have each exceeded a hundred thousand in circulation; and the biographies of Lincoln, of which Dr. hollands takes the lead, stimulated by the agency and subscription system, have reaped a liko harvest of popularity and profit. More than a hundred thousand dollars, we are told, has been received by the author of one of the Lives, which exceeds the sum expected from, and thus far unhandsomely withheld by Congress, for the support of the widow of the illustrious subject of these volumes. If Senators and Representatives, to the scandal of the country, fail to do their duty in this matter, it might be well for Mrs. Lincoln, with Victoria for a precedentfor have we not here, too, our Queens ofSocietytotnrnher attention to the booksellers. If, indeed, all who, directly or indirectly, have been in- debted to Abraham Lincoln for the acquisi- tion of a hundred thousand dollars, were to bestow upon his family a small percentage on this addition to their fortunes, there would be no occasion to expose the gifts of his friends for sale for the maintenance of his widow. The capabilities of publishing in the United States have been recently shown in two very opposite examples, in the reception of Long- fellows translations of Dante and of Dr. Ilol- lands popular Kathrina. The former, a work of elaborate care and of strict fidelity to the original, requiring for its appreciation a reverent and loving study, leisure and a disci- plined mind; issued moreover in a costly edi- tion, has, we understand, met with a cordial support. This is no mote than is due to the genius of the translator and the great merit of his work; but it is something to say of any reading public, and we hail it as an indica- tion encouraging to the reception of the best literature hereaftem. Dr. Hollands is of course, a very different work; but the fact here, too,is significant,that within a few months twenty-three thousand of a narrative poeni, the story of the conversion, in a peculiar way, of a skeptic, should be called for by the people. In these references to the publications of the year we must not forget, as facts of the season, the completion of Dr. Holmes ingeniously constructed and original novela brilliant suc- cess in the difficult walk of home life The Guardian Angel ; the publication of another American romance, Norwood, by the Rev. Dr. Beecher; and with this attention to con- temporaries the appearance of the new edi- tions of the perennial works of Washiubton Irving, and the revival, with a candid and well- written memoir, by his son of the select works 1868.1 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. of Irvin,s friend and early associate in let- ters, James K. Paulding. We have said the literature of the day has gained and is likely to gain by the influences of the war in earnestness and sincerity. We think this may he observed in that chief exhi- bition of its powers, the Press of the country. The thron,ing interests of the continent re- quire conciseness of statement, and must, more and more, receive scientific and philosophic handling. Something of this is already wit- nessed. The increased capital required to con- duct a leading newspaper, will demand and obtain increased fidelity and responsibility. In a kindred walk, Periodical Literature has certainly increased in value and importance. The ability displayed in such publications as The NorthAmerican Review, The Atlantic ffonth- ly, The Gale y, hours at Rome, and others which might be named; and in uch weekly journ- als as The 7V~ition and The Round Table, gives earnest that the intellectual resources of the country are likely to keep pace with its materi- al prosperity. The support given to the best foreign journals is also an item in the account. English publishers of reputation, as Chambers, Routledge, Daldy, Macmillan, have visited America, and have found a market for their best publications which no prohibitory tariff can destjoy. We have even the new phenom- enon of the stars and stripes blended with the flag of England, on the cover of a maga- zine issued by an enterprising London house for simultaneous publication in both countries, challengin,, attention hy the name of the best- known street in America, the Bce dwei, of New York. Every honest intellectual effort is to be wel- comed. There may be too many physicians and too many lawyers in a community; but the evil, if it exist, of too many publishers or of too many pnblicatio~is will soon correct it- self by the infallible agencies of the economy of trade. The point, we believe, is not yet reached of surplus intellectual activity and sup- ply. The more the attention of the public is called to literature, the more readers there will be; and the rivalry of competition in this and in other instances must benefit the consumer in the quality and quantity of the article. It is said there are a great many magazines already, and the cry is, still they come. But there need be no fear on this head. The peo- ple, if any remedy is required, have it in their own hands. It is quite constitutional for one to buy them or not, as he may please. But in fact, to a great extent, the magazine mania, as it has been termed, is in many instanecs but unother form of book publication, since it is mostly sustained by the serial novels of popu- lar authors, whose works the public find it more convenient and agreeable to purchase in chapters than in volumes. Other considera- ions, as the convenience of an unbound book, which a ma,, azine an oh as our own renliy is, the variety of entertainment, and the pleasure of a frequent visit from authors whose writings are esteemed, have much to do with it also. The model subscriber to a anagazine, in fact, has a personal interest in the work; is a species of partner in the enterprise; has a community of interest with others, and enjoys a welcome sense of continuity, of a pleasure whichends not with the hour, but lies a prom- ise of renewal from month to month. We trust to have many such friendly appreciators of PUTNAaE5 MAOAZINE. Tax old Knickerbocker interest of man- ners and customs on the banks of the Hudson, first cultivated and more then half invented by Washington Irving, has supplied the theme of various pleasant volumes of fiction and apparently is not yet exhausted. The spirit of Ichabod Crane, and Wolferts Roost, with a flavor of old Diedrich, pervade a sketchy novel in verse from the Riverside press (1-Jurd & Houghton), entitled One Wife Too Many; or ]h~p Va Biijhem. A TaieDf Tappean Zee. Its author is the Ray. EDWARD Horauus, a Pres- byterian clergyman of New York, whose pre- vious productions in verse, The Fire on the Hearth in Sleepy Hollow and The Dutch Pilgrim Fathers, may be regarded as studies preparatory to the volume before us. The Fire on the hearth, in a series of ready rhymes, celebrates the old Dutch anniver- sary of Christmas, with its hearty rollicking associations, its bundant good cheer, and the thoughtful reveries which all family festivities must inspire. The Dutch Pilgrim Fathers, in a similar vein, is a direct challenge to New England, and is of course hi,,hly eulogistic of those good old times, which certainly maybe as easily located in the ancient island of Man- hattan as any where on this restless globe. Not that people were ever quite so good and happy as they are represented in such pictures; but that it is upon the whole consolatory to human nature, and a proof of its desires and capabili- ties, to suppose them so. One Wife Too Many has its scene and era in this same old bountiful re,,ion of the imagination. The story is a kind of reversed Enoch Arden. In- stead of the innocent, weli-meaning wife hav- ing two husbands, the equally ingenuous hus- band gets on his hand two wives. How this caine about is very prettily narrated in bound- ing rhymes and verses of varying metres, which set forth in ebullitions of humor and sentiment how Rip Van Bigham imme- diately upon his marriage to the fair Katrina in holland, bidding farewell to his wife, sailed to seek a home for her in the goodly colony of the New Netherland. This lie found on the banks of the Tappean Zee, where in due time a homestead was erected with the aid of his neighborstroops of indomitable Dutchmen 122 [Jan. I

PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. of Irvin,s friend and early associate in let- ters, James K. Paulding. We have said the literature of the day has gained and is likely to gain by the influences of the war in earnestness and sincerity. We think this may he observed in that chief exhi- bition of its powers, the Press of the country. The thron,ing interests of the continent re- quire conciseness of statement, and must, more and more, receive scientific and philosophic handling. Something of this is already wit- nessed. The increased capital required to con- duct a leading newspaper, will demand and obtain increased fidelity and responsibility. In a kindred walk, Periodical Literature has certainly increased in value and importance. The ability displayed in such publications as The NorthAmerican Review, The Atlantic ffonth- ly, The Gale y, hours at Rome, and others which might be named; and in uch weekly journ- als as The 7V~ition and The Round Table, gives earnest that the intellectual resources of the country are likely to keep pace with its materi- al prosperity. The support given to the best foreign journals is also an item in the account. English publishers of reputation, as Chambers, Routledge, Daldy, Macmillan, have visited America, and have found a market for their best publications which no prohibitory tariff can destjoy. We have even the new phenom- enon of the stars and stripes blended with the flag of England, on the cover of a maga- zine issued by an enterprising London house for simultaneous publication in both countries, challengin,, attention hy the name of the best- known street in America, the Bce dwei, of New York. Every honest intellectual effort is to be wel- comed. There may be too many physicians and too many lawyers in a community; but the evil, if it exist, of too many publishers or of too many pnblicatio~is will soon correct it- self by the infallible agencies of the economy of trade. The point, we believe, is not yet reached of surplus intellectual activity and sup- ply. The more the attention of the public is called to literature, the more readers there will be; and the rivalry of competition in this and in other instances must benefit the consumer in the quality and quantity of the article. It is said there are a great many magazines already, and the cry is, still they come. But there need be no fear on this head. The peo- ple, if any remedy is required, have it in their own hands. It is quite constitutional for one to buy them or not, as he may please. But in fact, to a great extent, the magazine mania, as it has been termed, is in many instanecs but unother form of book publication, since it is mostly sustained by the serial novels of popu- lar authors, whose works the public find it more convenient and agreeable to purchase in chapters than in volumes. Other considera- ions, as the convenience of an unbound book, which a ma,, azine an oh as our own renliy is, the variety of entertainment, and the pleasure of a frequent visit from authors whose writings are esteemed, have much to do with it also. The model subscriber to a anagazine, in fact, has a personal interest in the work; is a species of partner in the enterprise; has a community of interest with others, and enjoys a welcome sense of continuity, of a pleasure whichends not with the hour, but lies a prom- ise of renewal from month to month. We trust to have many such friendly appreciators of PUTNAaE5 MAOAZINE. Tax old Knickerbocker interest of man- ners and customs on the banks of the Hudson, first cultivated and more then half invented by Washington Irving, has supplied the theme of various pleasant volumes of fiction and apparently is not yet exhausted. The spirit of Ichabod Crane, and Wolferts Roost, with a flavor of old Diedrich, pervade a sketchy novel in verse from the Riverside press (1-Jurd & Houghton), entitled One Wife Too Many; or ]h~p Va Biijhem. A TaieDf Tappean Zee. Its author is the Ray. EDWARD Horauus, a Pres- byterian clergyman of New York, whose pre- vious productions in verse, The Fire on the Hearth in Sleepy Hollow and The Dutch Pilgrim Fathers, may be regarded as studies preparatory to the volume before us. The Fire on the hearth, in a series of ready rhymes, celebrates the old Dutch anniver- sary of Christmas, with its hearty rollicking associations, its bundant good cheer, and the thoughtful reveries which all family festivities must inspire. The Dutch Pilgrim Fathers, in a similar vein, is a direct challenge to New England, and is of course hi,,hly eulogistic of those good old times, which certainly maybe as easily located in the ancient island of Man- hattan as any where on this restless globe. Not that people were ever quite so good and happy as they are represented in such pictures; but that it is upon the whole consolatory to human nature, and a proof of its desires and capabili- ties, to suppose them so. One Wife Too Many has its scene and era in this same old bountiful re,,ion of the imagination. The story is a kind of reversed Enoch Arden. In- stead of the innocent, weli-meaning wife hav- ing two husbands, the equally ingenuous hus- band gets on his hand two wives. How this caine about is very prettily narrated in bound- ing rhymes and verses of varying metres, which set forth in ebullitions of humor and sentiment how Rip Van Bigham imme- diately upon his marriage to the fair Katrina in holland, bidding farewell to his wife, sailed to seek a home for her in the goodly colony of the New Netherland. This lie found on the banks of the Tappean Zee, where in due time a homestead was erected with the aid of his neighborstroops of indomitable Dutchmen 122 [Jan. I 1868.] MONTHLY OHIIONICLE. 123 who muster in grand style for the service like the forces of Hard Koppig Piet who went forth to the siege of Fort Casimir. First came the Vans, the foremost men in name, And numerous, broad, and sometimes trusty men; Van Wart, in after years well known to fame; Van Bonschoten; Van Tassels of the glen; Van Honveaburgh Van Schaick; Van Bergen (Ben); The twin Van horns, Dant, famous for his wind, And If ans, the mighty drinker of those days; And following these, came, dancing, close behind, Van Topps, whom children loved to praise Anthor was he of happiness to boys, And skilled artificer of spinning-toys. Then came Van Dyke, whose grand ancestry Dragged half-drowned [holland, drenching, from the sea, (Nor should the pygmy bearing that great name Obscure the effulgence of its ancient fame.) Next Rip Van Dam, surnamed the Roarer, came, Amphibious he, and webbed of foot and hand; Van Buren next, from whom sprang Martin and Prince John, illustrious bnr~.hers of the land. Then the Vandiefe, Vanbliefs, and sharp Van Zanfits, Van Houghtens, and Van Nostran , and Van Gantz, Van Giesons, and Van Nests, and old Van Hatch; And broods of yonkers following, to match; And last Van Bung, with load of needful pans, Closed up the rear of all the tribe of Vans. Then came far-sighted, good Jacobns See, Surnamed Forecaster, and ordained to be The father of a numerous family. Next himgreat Michael Pauw; ancestor he Of Hune Paws, of the fierce democracy. Having, we say, with the comprehensive aid of these and other worthies, built himself a house, Rip thought it was high time to invite his wife to it. Accordingly he charged the Captain of the good ship Rollicker, which had brought him over, to return on his next trip with the lady. This the skipper would have accomplished; but he found her in ill health, and as he was sailing her death was signalled; and he came with ill tidings to Rip, who, like a faithful lover, cherished her memory till, after being sorely beset by an irrepressible Dutch widow, he consents, as much for peace sake as any thing, to the union. Of course Katrina was only in a trance, and one day reaches the homestead on the Tappaan Zoo. Here was a problem to solve, for there was no conceal- ment as in the case of the self-denying Enoch: the parties met, and some action was to be taken. The Dominic, a capital fellow, admirably depictured, who had tied the new knot, was called in. Seduced by the good cheer of the whulom widow Anneke, he temporized; and supporting himself by the authority of the Patriarchs, permitted both wives to he tried. It was a new country, he said, and the thing might be tolerated. This was a lax decision for a Dutch dominie; but he was sadly per- plexed, and he made it. The new family, in consequence, was thrown into utter confusion, and was fast going to ruin. The women quar- relled all day, and Rip incontinently took to drinking. The Dominie was again called in, and this time proved himself more of a Solomon in his jud,,ment and less in his practice. He now advises a separation; one of the ladies to take the farm, the other the man. This brought out the true wife and disclosed the adventurer. The widow chose~the acres ; the first affection triumphed in the lovers arms. Anneke consoles herself by a third marriage to a stout burgher of Spuyten Dnyvel, the Dominic gains another fee, and the retiring widow offering the farm for sale, it is purchased by the benevolent neighbors and presented to Rip and Katrina, who transmit a numerous offspring to fight for their country in the War for the Union. This, bating of course the unpleasant morality of the bigamy, is a very pretty story; but the reader must make its acquaintance in the authors trippin0 rhymes. He will find they will well repay his perusal. The descriptive passages are excellent; nature plays her part in the hymns of the seasons; and with the abundant mirth and jollity be- fitting the traditional manners of the Dutch fathers there is withal on proper occasions, fitly spoken, a truly religious spirit. We com- mend in particular for their humor and char- acter the pictures of the Dutch Dominie and that thorn planted in his side, his half-de- mented wife. It is hardly fair to detach a pas- sage from its proper supports in the story; but one or two traits of the Dominie may serve to indicate the manner of the book. His buckled shoes; his broad three-cornered hat; Knee-breeches, ti~ht above the swelling hose; The easy way in which he always sat, And smoked his pipe with calm, serene ro- pose Would i~i our day look oddly, I s ppose. In our fast times, the Dominie might be thought Long-winded, for he preached a full long hour, And sometimes two, when Satan must be fought Until the truth had triumphed oer his power: Such wind would make our Gospel milk turn sour. But in the days when people came from far, And walked ten miles to church, sometimes a score, Bringing their lunch along, it was no bar If they took back, beside the feast, in store A basket-full of Gospel crumbs or more. Things different seem from different points of view: We like short sermons, they liked sermons long; They liked the old, we like to have thin s new; We like the doctrines weak, they liked them strong; We believe, as they did, our religion true, But then we wish as little as will do. Hence they the church clock placed outside the tower, That all to church might always punctual be, Nor lose a moment of the sacred hour: We place it inside, that the Dominic The time to let us out may promptly see. Mit. CIsAiturs Asron Bausrans nIse1esfer~ estee Theory of Government (Leypoldt and unit) is a timely political, not partisan, essay

1868.] MONTHLY OHIIONICLE. 123 who muster in grand style for the service like the forces of Hard Koppig Piet who went forth to the siege of Fort Casimir. First came the Vans, the foremost men in name, And numerous, broad, and sometimes trusty men; Van Wart, in after years well known to fame; Van Bonschoten; Van Tassels of the glen; Van Honveaburgh Van Schaick; Van Bergen (Ben); The twin Van horns, Dant, famous for his wind, And If ans, the mighty drinker of those days; And following these, came, dancing, close behind, Van Topps, whom children loved to praise Anthor was he of happiness to boys, And skilled artificer of spinning-toys. Then came Van Dyke, whose grand ancestry Dragged half-drowned [holland, drenching, from the sea, (Nor should the pygmy bearing that great name Obscure the effulgence of its ancient fame.) Next Rip Van Dam, surnamed the Roarer, came, Amphibious he, and webbed of foot and hand; Van Buren next, from whom sprang Martin and Prince John, illustrious bnr~.hers of the land. Then the Vandiefe, Vanbliefs, and sharp Van Zanfits, Van Houghtens, and Van Nostran , and Van Gantz, Van Giesons, and Van Nests, and old Van Hatch; And broods of yonkers following, to match; And last Van Bung, with load of needful pans, Closed up the rear of all the tribe of Vans. Then came far-sighted, good Jacobns See, Surnamed Forecaster, and ordained to be The father of a numerous family. Next himgreat Michael Pauw; ancestor he Of Hune Paws, of the fierce democracy. Having, we say, with the comprehensive aid of these and other worthies, built himself a house, Rip thought it was high time to invite his wife to it. Accordingly he charged the Captain of the good ship Rollicker, which had brought him over, to return on his next trip with the lady. This the skipper would have accomplished; but he found her in ill health, and as he was sailing her death was signalled; and he came with ill tidings to Rip, who, like a faithful lover, cherished her memory till, after being sorely beset by an irrepressible Dutch widow, he consents, as much for peace sake as any thing, to the union. Of course Katrina was only in a trance, and one day reaches the homestead on the Tappaan Zoo. Here was a problem to solve, for there was no conceal- ment as in the case of the self-denying Enoch: the parties met, and some action was to be taken. The Dominic, a capital fellow, admirably depictured, who had tied the new knot, was called in. Seduced by the good cheer of the whulom widow Anneke, he temporized; and supporting himself by the authority of the Patriarchs, permitted both wives to he tried. It was a new country, he said, and the thing might be tolerated. This was a lax decision for a Dutch dominie; but he was sadly per- plexed, and he made it. The new family, in consequence, was thrown into utter confusion, and was fast going to ruin. The women quar- relled all day, and Rip incontinently took to drinking. The Dominie was again called in, and this time proved himself more of a Solomon in his jud,,ment and less in his practice. He now advises a separation; one of the ladies to take the farm, the other the man. This brought out the true wife and disclosed the adventurer. The widow chose~the acres ; the first affection triumphed in the lovers arms. Anneke consoles herself by a third marriage to a stout burgher of Spuyten Dnyvel, the Dominic gains another fee, and the retiring widow offering the farm for sale, it is purchased by the benevolent neighbors and presented to Rip and Katrina, who transmit a numerous offspring to fight for their country in the War for the Union. This, bating of course the unpleasant morality of the bigamy, is a very pretty story; but the reader must make its acquaintance in the authors trippin0 rhymes. He will find they will well repay his perusal. The descriptive passages are excellent; nature plays her part in the hymns of the seasons; and with the abundant mirth and jollity be- fitting the traditional manners of the Dutch fathers there is withal on proper occasions, fitly spoken, a truly religious spirit. We com- mend in particular for their humor and char- acter the pictures of the Dutch Dominie and that thorn planted in his side, his half-de- mented wife. It is hardly fair to detach a pas- sage from its proper supports in the story; but one or two traits of the Dominie may serve to indicate the manner of the book. His buckled shoes; his broad three-cornered hat; Knee-breeches, ti~ht above the swelling hose; The easy way in which he always sat, And smoked his pipe with calm, serene ro- pose Would i~i our day look oddly, I s ppose. In our fast times, the Dominie might be thought Long-winded, for he preached a full long hour, And sometimes two, when Satan must be fought Until the truth had triumphed oer his power: Such wind would make our Gospel milk turn sour. But in the days when people came from far, And walked ten miles to church, sometimes a score, Bringing their lunch along, it was no bar If they took back, beside the feast, in store A basket-full of Gospel crumbs or more. Things different seem from different points of view: We like short sermons, they liked sermons long; They liked the old, we like to have thin s new; We like the doctrines weak, they liked them strong; We believe, as they did, our religion true, But then we wish as little as will do. Hence they the church clock placed outside the tower, That all to church might always punctual be, Nor lose a moment of the sacred hour: We place it inside, that the Dominic The time to let us out may promptly see. Mit. CIsAiturs Asron Bausrans nIse1esfer~ estee Theory of Government (Leypoldt and unit) is a timely political, not partisan, essay PUTNAMS MA ~AZINE. of the school of those admirable pamphlets on public interests, with which the Rev. Syd ney Smith at once entertained and instructed the public. Whatever Mr. Bristed writes is marked by a peculiar impress of his personal- ity; with an acute and thoughtful discussion of the subject in hand, while the reader is pretty sure to get some glimpses and flavors of English university life, the turg and the idio- syncrasies of a man who mingles the refine- ments of mental cultivation with the enjoy- ments of fortune and fashion. Thi8 is as it should be. The tree should have a relish ci the soil and atmosphere in which it grows, as in the perfected world of Virgil, dyers were to be dispensed with, and the rams and lambs were to walk about in the meadows honestly clad in purple, yellow and vermilion. Since the days of Montaigne, this has been the vir- tue and the privilege of the Essayists; and if the old Gascon were living, as we wish he were, in his castle in his fancy-nurtured re- tirement, and were to entrust us with a com- mission to send to him what was worth read- ing in America, we should certainly consign to his specular tower, from time to time, the writings of Mr. Bristed. If there is any thing which may properly be looked for in this coun- try, it is what from the more cultivated class of writevs we have had too little of a whole- somc independence and individuality. Our men of letters have too often been silent when they should have spoken; and the fools have of course rushed in to supply the vacuum. It is a benefit to the state and the community, when men of cultivation and literature employ their opportunities in the discussion of pub- lic questions; and it is a good sign of the times, that, after too long a toleration of igno- rance and imbecility, they are beginning to speak out on questions of importance. There never has been a period in the history of any nation, when a service of this kind was more imperatively demanded. Regarding the especial topic of Mr. Bris- teds essay, much, of course, is to be said. He finds interference, or the law of force an increasing and dangerous power in modern political action; and ingeniously, and not with- out a good show of reason, attributes much of the favor or tolerance with which it is received to the glittering success of Louis Napoleon, whom he considers the immoral parent of Jefferson Davis, andhe probably would not object to the addition as depreciating the family relationsic magma componere parvis Fernando Wood. In one of the speeches of this eminent servant of the public, he is reported to have said: Martin Van Beren had said to him, shortly before his death, that he had only found out after he was out of office, how to get along with the American people. Said he, The American people will forgive any thing in a public officer except cowardice. Whatever else may be charged against me, said time speaker, no man can accuse me of that. * Mirabeau was the modern fimther of the senti- meat, LAudace, tonjcurs laudece. The truth is, however, that these and kin- dred adventurers belong to an old di- vision of the human family, schemers and men of audacity, who would any day, with the self-lover in Bacon burn their neighbors house to roast their own eggs in the ashes. The danger, we are inclined to think, is not so much from individual usurpation end example, as from a temporary in- convenience or inability of society to ac- commodate itself to the circumstances in which it has been suddenly placed. The rich yield of gold in California and Australia, and the scientific improvements of the age, have given an immense development to the human race; population has increased with wealth; luxury and extravagance have devel- oped their abundant evils: an old state of things is passing away; the new is not yet fully established. This is especially true of our own country, which has in addition to provide foran unexampled debt,which has nec- essarily multiplied laws and statutes to an en- precedented extent. Our old city govern- ments, for instance, were on the model of vil- lage life: they have now to control the dan- gerous classes of the huge metropolis. More government was neededand we are in dan- ger of getting too much. Ascending in the scale, the war power was exorbitant in its de- mands, and for the time they had to be paid. The considerations bearing on the gmreral question will be found ably, and sometimes curiously treated by Mr. Bristed. There is one topic on which he discourses with espe- cial unction, the Maine prohibitory, or, as he is pleased to term it, the Aquarian legislation, forbidding by statute all drinks but water. In the course of this argument, which is happily relieved by many striking social illustrations, and much felicity of statement, he has occa- sion more than once to refer to the writings of Governor Andrew. Were that estimable statesman, whose death at this time is so much to be lamented, yet living, he might be pleased, with Mr. Bristed, in the corroboration of their views afforded in the recent election, by the judgment of the sturdy voters of Massa- chusetts. The probibitionists have failed; for they have run into the absurdity of con- founding the use and abuse of a very good thing. Some legislation in aid of temperance may be required. We should be content with regulating, in the cause of enjoyment and virtue, what it is neither desirable nor possible to eradicate. Iv is now more than thirty years since * Report of time New York Tribune, cited in time New York Times, Nov. 11th, lStll. 124 [Jan. 4 125 MONTHLY CHRONICLE. 1808.] that faithful chronicler, William Dunlap, pub- lisheci his History of the Rise and Progress of the Arts of Design in the United States, an interval which, among its many special mar- vels of development in the life of the nation, has certainly not been without its creative and sustaining processes in the great world of art. It might be curious to trace the parallel rise of artists and authors, and observe how faith- fully they keep pace with one another in sen- timent and character; to note the genius of Leslie responding to that of Irving; the land- scape of Durand reflecting the woods and fields of Bryant; the canvas of Leutze or Huntington a mirror of the medieval pictur- esque of Longfellow; and the force and sin- cerity of Parley a translation into another language of the native energy of Cooper. We might, perhaps, find in such a comparison, extended to a review of the genius of other lands, that art and literature are but manifestationsexponents of the powers of a nation; and that to rise in one great depart- ment of excellence is to rise in all. However this may be, there is abundant proof in the ample volume before us, Boofi of the Art- ists, by Ilxrsav T. TUCKERHAN, (Putnam & Son,) of the fertility and value of American at production of the present time. The work has a method of its own; it is not a formal history, or simply a collection of materials hut a species of philosophical survey of the entire field, in which thoughtful and ingenious speculations are weaved around the central in- terest of biography. There are personal de- tails in abundance; particular notices of the most important paintings and statues, with incidental mention of their purchasers and owners; in fine, the book is a sufficient guide to the knowledge and appreciation of the Art of America past and present. For the first time the subject is fairly presented as a whole; and the reader who has not studiously looked into the matterand few have had the oppor- tunitywill be surprised to perceive how hountifnl the theme is in interest, how varied in character, how picturesque in its details; and, what is the consummate flower of all these, how warm and glowing the picture is in those moral lights of the struggle of genius with difficulties; of the culture of the taste and the affections; of the assertion of the powers of intellect and the imagination; of the victory which, through all discouragements, at- tends the full devotion of the faculties to a service of love and purity. It is to the honor thus far of American art as of American let- ters, that the page and the canvas have never been prostituted by unworthy means to un- worthy ends. No one has cause to blush upon entering an American library or pic- ture-gallery. Whatever our artists have ac- complished has been with a steady gain of power in the ri~ht direction. Considerations likc these must present themselves to the mind of the most care- less reader as his eye runs over the pages of Mr. Tuckermans attractive vol- ume. Starting with the early portrait paint- ers, chiefly of the Revolutionary era, with such honored names at the entrance as Copley, Trumbull, West, Stuart, Aliston, Les- lie and their brethren, who are still repre- sented among us in the illustrious examples of Sully and Morse, the record, so short a time separates us from the first beginning of artin the country, is presently crowded with the throng- ing exhibitors of our day. The Book of the Artists contains them all along the century from Smybert to Bierstadt, the chiefs who have now their renown with years and achievements, shining in single chapters in planetary state; with hosts of younger celeb- rities in nebular groups fast resolving under the genial critics telescope into independent stellar systems. The Landscape Painters, who have done so much for the reputation of the country, have appropriately a section of their own; while the Sculptors, but one of whom, we believe, Greenough, figured in Dunlaps narrative, close the work in a like attractive group. Many new names of artists known in our galleries, but of whom little has been written, are to be found in the volume; with much that is new relating to others, as, among various instances, in the chapters given to West, Morse, Inman, Chapman and Powers. The local coloring which connects the artists life with the influences of home scenery, climatic impressions, and the associations of travel, gives a particular interest to the au- thors sketches. Indeed, he would seem to have caught much of the spirit of their work from his observations in their studios. His intimacy with many of them has given him peculiar opportunities of exhibiting the lights and shades of character. Altogether, looking at the spirit in which the writer has worked, the materials he has in hand, the in- terest of the theme, and, in a great degree, the novelty of the work, with its eminently na- tional character, we may confidently commend it to our countrymen, now that they have been at least sufficiently supplied with war histo- ries and narratives of pain and suffering, as a worthy memorial of the gentler arts of Peace. THE students of American history must be gratified by a new and important addition to their stock of original materials, in a vol- ume just issued by the Bradford Club, en- titled, The Army Correspondence of Colonel John L rens, in the years 1T17S, now first printed from Original Letters addressed to his father, Henry Laurens, President of Con- gress. The letters are numerous, and having been confidentially and officially written front the camp (for Colonel Lanreits, it will be re

125 MONTHLY CHRONICLE. 1808.] that faithful chronicler, William Dunlap, pub- lisheci his History of the Rise and Progress of the Arts of Design in the United States, an interval which, among its many special mar- vels of development in the life of the nation, has certainly not been without its creative and sustaining processes in the great world of art. It might be curious to trace the parallel rise of artists and authors, and observe how faith- fully they keep pace with one another in sen- timent and character; to note the genius of Leslie responding to that of Irving; the land- scape of Durand reflecting the woods and fields of Bryant; the canvas of Leutze or Huntington a mirror of the medieval pictur- esque of Longfellow; and the force and sin- cerity of Parley a translation into another language of the native energy of Cooper. We might, perhaps, find in such a comparison, extended to a review of the genius of other lands, that art and literature are but manifestationsexponents of the powers of a nation; and that to rise in one great depart- ment of excellence is to rise in all. However this may be, there is abundant proof in the ample volume before us, Boofi of the Art- ists, by Ilxrsav T. TUCKERHAN, (Putnam & Son,) of the fertility and value of American at production of the present time. The work has a method of its own; it is not a formal history, or simply a collection of materials hut a species of philosophical survey of the entire field, in which thoughtful and ingenious speculations are weaved around the central in- terest of biography. There are personal de- tails in abundance; particular notices of the most important paintings and statues, with incidental mention of their purchasers and owners; in fine, the book is a sufficient guide to the knowledge and appreciation of the Art of America past and present. For the first time the subject is fairly presented as a whole; and the reader who has not studiously looked into the matterand few have had the oppor- tunitywill be surprised to perceive how hountifnl the theme is in interest, how varied in character, how picturesque in its details; and, what is the consummate flower of all these, how warm and glowing the picture is in those moral lights of the struggle of genius with difficulties; of the culture of the taste and the affections; of the assertion of the powers of intellect and the imagination; of the victory which, through all discouragements, at- tends the full devotion of the faculties to a service of love and purity. It is to the honor thus far of American art as of American let- ters, that the page and the canvas have never been prostituted by unworthy means to un- worthy ends. No one has cause to blush upon entering an American library or pic- ture-gallery. Whatever our artists have ac- complished has been with a steady gain of power in the ri~ht direction. Considerations likc these must present themselves to the mind of the most care- less reader as his eye runs over the pages of Mr. Tuckermans attractive vol- ume. Starting with the early portrait paint- ers, chiefly of the Revolutionary era, with such honored names at the entrance as Copley, Trumbull, West, Stuart, Aliston, Les- lie and their brethren, who are still repre- sented among us in the illustrious examples of Sully and Morse, the record, so short a time separates us from the first beginning of artin the country, is presently crowded with the throng- ing exhibitors of our day. The Book of the Artists contains them all along the century from Smybert to Bierstadt, the chiefs who have now their renown with years and achievements, shining in single chapters in planetary state; with hosts of younger celeb- rities in nebular groups fast resolving under the genial critics telescope into independent stellar systems. The Landscape Painters, who have done so much for the reputation of the country, have appropriately a section of their own; while the Sculptors, but one of whom, we believe, Greenough, figured in Dunlaps narrative, close the work in a like attractive group. Many new names of artists known in our galleries, but of whom little has been written, are to be found in the volume; with much that is new relating to others, as, among various instances, in the chapters given to West, Morse, Inman, Chapman and Powers. The local coloring which connects the artists life with the influences of home scenery, climatic impressions, and the associations of travel, gives a particular interest to the au- thors sketches. Indeed, he would seem to have caught much of the spirit of their work from his observations in their studios. His intimacy with many of them has given him peculiar opportunities of exhibiting the lights and shades of character. Altogether, looking at the spirit in which the writer has worked, the materials he has in hand, the in- terest of the theme, and, in a great degree, the novelty of the work, with its eminently na- tional character, we may confidently commend it to our countrymen, now that they have been at least sufficiently supplied with war histo- ries and narratives of pain and suffering, as a worthy memorial of the gentler arts of Peace. THE students of American history must be gratified by a new and important addition to their stock of original materials, in a vol- ume just issued by the Bradford Club, en- titled, The Army Correspondence of Colonel John L rens, in the years 1T17S, now first printed from Original Letters addressed to his father, Henry Laurens, President of Con- gress. The letters are numerous, and having been confidentially and officially written front the camp (for Colonel Lanreits, it will be re

125 MONTHLY CHRONICLE. 1808.] that faithful chronicler, William Dunlap, pub- lisheci his History of the Rise and Progress of the Arts of Design in the United States, an interval which, among its many special mar- vels of development in the life of the nation, has certainly not been without its creative and sustaining processes in the great world of art. It might be curious to trace the parallel rise of artists and authors, and observe how faith- fully they keep pace with one another in sen- timent and character; to note the genius of Leslie responding to that of Irving; the land- scape of Durand reflecting the woods and fields of Bryant; the canvas of Leutze or Huntington a mirror of the medieval pictur- esque of Longfellow; and the force and sin- cerity of Parley a translation into another language of the native energy of Cooper. We might, perhaps, find in such a comparison, extended to a review of the genius of other lands, that art and literature are but manifestationsexponents of the powers of a nation; and that to rise in one great depart- ment of excellence is to rise in all. However this may be, there is abundant proof in the ample volume before us, Boofi of the Art- ists, by Ilxrsav T. TUCKERHAN, (Putnam & Son,) of the fertility and value of American at production of the present time. The work has a method of its own; it is not a formal history, or simply a collection of materials hut a species of philosophical survey of the entire field, in which thoughtful and ingenious speculations are weaved around the central in- terest of biography. There are personal de- tails in abundance; particular notices of the most important paintings and statues, with incidental mention of their purchasers and owners; in fine, the book is a sufficient guide to the knowledge and appreciation of the Art of America past and present. For the first time the subject is fairly presented as a whole; and the reader who has not studiously looked into the matterand few have had the oppor- tunitywill be surprised to perceive how hountifnl the theme is in interest, how varied in character, how picturesque in its details; and, what is the consummate flower of all these, how warm and glowing the picture is in those moral lights of the struggle of genius with difficulties; of the culture of the taste and the affections; of the assertion of the powers of intellect and the imagination; of the victory which, through all discouragements, at- tends the full devotion of the faculties to a service of love and purity. It is to the honor thus far of American art as of American let- ters, that the page and the canvas have never been prostituted by unworthy means to un- worthy ends. No one has cause to blush upon entering an American library or pic- ture-gallery. Whatever our artists have ac- complished has been with a steady gain of power in the ri~ht direction. Considerations likc these must present themselves to the mind of the most care- less reader as his eye runs over the pages of Mr. Tuckermans attractive vol- ume. Starting with the early portrait paint- ers, chiefly of the Revolutionary era, with such honored names at the entrance as Copley, Trumbull, West, Stuart, Aliston, Les- lie and their brethren, who are still repre- sented among us in the illustrious examples of Sully and Morse, the record, so short a time separates us from the first beginning of artin the country, is presently crowded with the throng- ing exhibitors of our day. The Book of the Artists contains them all along the century from Smybert to Bierstadt, the chiefs who have now their renown with years and achievements, shining in single chapters in planetary state; with hosts of younger celeb- rities in nebular groups fast resolving under the genial critics telescope into independent stellar systems. The Landscape Painters, who have done so much for the reputation of the country, have appropriately a section of their own; while the Sculptors, but one of whom, we believe, Greenough, figured in Dunlaps narrative, close the work in a like attractive group. Many new names of artists known in our galleries, but of whom little has been written, are to be found in the volume; with much that is new relating to others, as, among various instances, in the chapters given to West, Morse, Inman, Chapman and Powers. The local coloring which connects the artists life with the influences of home scenery, climatic impressions, and the associations of travel, gives a particular interest to the au- thors sketches. Indeed, he would seem to have caught much of the spirit of their work from his observations in their studios. His intimacy with many of them has given him peculiar opportunities of exhibiting the lights and shades of character. Altogether, looking at the spirit in which the writer has worked, the materials he has in hand, the in- terest of the theme, and, in a great degree, the novelty of the work, with its eminently na- tional character, we may confidently commend it to our countrymen, now that they have been at least sufficiently supplied with war histo- ries and narratives of pain and suffering, as a worthy memorial of the gentler arts of Peace. THE students of American history must be gratified by a new and important addition to their stock of original materials, in a vol- ume just issued by the Bradford Club, en- titled, The Army Correspondence of Colonel John L rens, in the years 1T17S, now first printed from Original Letters addressed to his father, Henry Laurens, President of Con- gress. The letters are numerous, and having been confidentially and officially written front the camp (for Colonel Lanreits, it will be re 120 Fum& Ms MAGAZINJ~. membered, was at the period indicated a member of the staff of General Washington, and at times was acting as his private secre- tary), their interest may he readily appreciated. They cover the military movements in Penn- sylvania prior and subsequent to the encamp- ment at Valley Forge, including the stern in- cidents of that critical period, the siege of Fort Muffin, and a full account, written from the field, of the Battle of Monmouth. These papers have hitherto been unknown to, or ont of the reach of our historians. The originals are now, with a very valuable series of the Henry Laurens Papers, in the possession of the Long Island Historical Society, forming an important portion of their recent acquisi- tions. It is somewhat singular that, with the attention for some time past given to Ameri- can records of this kind, and the historical characters of the Revolutionary era, so little should be popularly known of the Laurenses, father and son, particularly of the latter, whose chivalrous career and death in battle at the early age of twenty-seven, after having rendered the most important services to his country, at home and in France, entitle him to the endearing memories which attach to such heroes as Warren and Montgomery. The explanation of this neglect is, that the hero, born and dying in the South, has shared in the inattention which has generally befallen the historical worthies of that portion of the country. Had New England, with its literary preservative means, the care of such a reputa- tion, the Bradford Club could not at this day have the credit of presenting the claims of Colonel Laurens to notice as a novel sub- ject to their friends. This, however, is now done in a privately printed volume of rare elegance, which includes, besides the Let- ters, which are written in a remarkably can- did, engaging style, an interesting introduc- tory memoir from the genial pen of the South- ern author, William Gilmore Simms. There is also a choice engraving by Burt, from an original portrait, the first of Colonel Laurens ever executed. The Club, we may state for the informa- tion of distant readers, is an association of less than a half dozen merchants of New York, who, sustained by a limited number of sub- scribers, have engaged in the publication, from time to time, of valuable original mate- rials for the study of American history. They have thus fi~r been fortunate in their subjects and editors, and, we may add, in the luxury of their books, given by their printer, Mr. Munsell, of Albany. This is the seventh of their re~ular issues; among them are Fitz Greene Hallecks Croakers, the Hon. Mr. Murphys curious Anthology of New Neth- erland, and Buckingham Smiths faithfully edited Narrative of the Career of IDe Soto. IN a volume entitled Yi?ie Culture De- mended 14i Idoderm Lefe (Appleton & Co.), Da. YOUMANS has rendered an acceptable ser- vice to all who would understand intelligently the elementary principles involved in the i?n- portant educational questions of the day, by bringing together a series of addresses and arguments on the general subject, with espe- cial reference to the claims of scientific study in a knowledge of the world around and within us. Among the writers whose views he has presented to us, are Whewell, Tyndall, Faraday, Liebig, Herbert Spencer, and the leading European authorities, while our own country is well representcd by Wayland, Dr. Draper, President lull, of Harvard, and Pres- ident Barnard, of Columbia College. Much attention is given in these discourses, and in the papers contributed by the editor, to the proper order of studies, and the development and discipline of the facultiestopics which are very happily discussed by Presidents Hill and Barnard, both of whom agree in depre- cating the usurpation of the perceptive by the ratiocinative powers in the early period of life. All Dr. Youmans authorities, more or less, unite in the view that the exclusive classical training handed down by tradition in the old universities, fails to supply the demands of modern culture, is limited in its nature, and at least so far as especial attainments are concernedfallacious in its pretences. They would substitute for it, or supplement it with, a study of the laws of life and the material world. This is certainly an improvement in the elements of the contest, as it was formerly maintained, between time classics and the pure mathematics. Much, it must be admitted, is to be gained by a proper devotion to the nat- ural history sciences, and it is hut a truism, though a neglected one, to assert that the study of our physical well-being should pre- cede all others. The sound body is the indis- pensable habitation for the sound mnind. The advantage of the study of the classics in our schools and colleges is not that the pupils be- come adepts in philological acumen, which is attained by very few, but that they are, as it were, introduced to the best society, both an- cient and modern, in a knowledge of great authors, and acquire a taste for literature which awakens at once their moral and in- tellectual faculties. The conscience is educat- ed with the judgment. All the great world of thought and feeling is opened to the view; the student of Homer and Plato, of Virgil and Horace,ofShakespeare, Dante, and Milton, is not occupied with plants and insects, but with living men, comparing their powers and facul- ties, approving or disapproving their actions, and at every step forced to inquire what sym- pathy their virtues or their vices find in him- self. Then there is an indefinable refinement of taste, a culture of the imagination, a hu

120 Fum& Ms MAGAZINJ~. membered, was at the period indicated a member of the staff of General Washington, and at times was acting as his private secre- tary), their interest may he readily appreciated. They cover the military movements in Penn- sylvania prior and subsequent to the encamp- ment at Valley Forge, including the stern in- cidents of that critical period, the siege of Fort Muffin, and a full account, written from the field, of the Battle of Monmouth. These papers have hitherto been unknown to, or ont of the reach of our historians. The originals are now, with a very valuable series of the Henry Laurens Papers, in the possession of the Long Island Historical Society, forming an important portion of their recent acquisi- tions. It is somewhat singular that, with the attention for some time past given to Ameri- can records of this kind, and the historical characters of the Revolutionary era, so little should be popularly known of the Laurenses, father and son, particularly of the latter, whose chivalrous career and death in battle at the early age of twenty-seven, after having rendered the most important services to his country, at home and in France, entitle him to the endearing memories which attach to such heroes as Warren and Montgomery. The explanation of this neglect is, that the hero, born and dying in the South, has shared in the inattention which has generally befallen the historical worthies of that portion of the country. Had New England, with its literary preservative means, the care of such a reputa- tion, the Bradford Club could not at this day have the credit of presenting the claims of Colonel Laurens to notice as a novel sub- ject to their friends. This, however, is now done in a privately printed volume of rare elegance, which includes, besides the Let- ters, which are written in a remarkably can- did, engaging style, an interesting introduc- tory memoir from the genial pen of the South- ern author, William Gilmore Simms. There is also a choice engraving by Burt, from an original portrait, the first of Colonel Laurens ever executed. The Club, we may state for the informa- tion of distant readers, is an association of less than a half dozen merchants of New York, who, sustained by a limited number of sub- scribers, have engaged in the publication, from time to time, of valuable original mate- rials for the study of American history. They have thus fi~r been fortunate in their subjects and editors, and, we may add, in the luxury of their books, given by their printer, Mr. Munsell, of Albany. This is the seventh of their re~ular issues; among them are Fitz Greene Hallecks Croakers, the Hon. Mr. Murphys curious Anthology of New Neth- erland, and Buckingham Smiths faithfully edited Narrative of the Career of IDe Soto. IN a volume entitled Yi?ie Culture De- mended 14i Idoderm Lefe (Appleton & Co.), Da. YOUMANS has rendered an acceptable ser- vice to all who would understand intelligently the elementary principles involved in the i?n- portant educational questions of the day, by bringing together a series of addresses and arguments on the general subject, with espe- cial reference to the claims of scientific study in a knowledge of the world around and within us. Among the writers whose views he has presented to us, are Whewell, Tyndall, Faraday, Liebig, Herbert Spencer, and the leading European authorities, while our own country is well representcd by Wayland, Dr. Draper, President lull, of Harvard, and Pres- ident Barnard, of Columbia College. Much attention is given in these discourses, and in the papers contributed by the editor, to the proper order of studies, and the development and discipline of the facultiestopics which are very happily discussed by Presidents Hill and Barnard, both of whom agree in depre- cating the usurpation of the perceptive by the ratiocinative powers in the early period of life. All Dr. Youmans authorities, more or less, unite in the view that the exclusive classical training handed down by tradition in the old universities, fails to supply the demands of modern culture, is limited in its nature, and at least so far as especial attainments are concernedfallacious in its pretences. They would substitute for it, or supplement it with, a study of the laws of life and the material world. This is certainly an improvement in the elements of the contest, as it was formerly maintained, between time classics and the pure mathematics. Much, it must be admitted, is to be gained by a proper devotion to the nat- ural history sciences, and it is hut a truism, though a neglected one, to assert that the study of our physical well-being should pre- cede all others. The sound body is the indis- pensable habitation for the sound mnind. The advantage of the study of the classics in our schools and colleges is not that the pupils be- come adepts in philological acumen, which is attained by very few, but that they are, as it were, introduced to the best society, both an- cient and modern, in a knowledge of great authors, and acquire a taste for literature which awakens at once their moral and in- tellectual faculties. The conscience is educat- ed with the judgment. All the great world of thought and feeling is opened to the view; the student of Homer and Plato, of Virgil and Horace,ofShakespeare, Dante, and Milton, is not occupied with plants and insects, but with living men, comparing their powers and facul- ties, approving or disapproving their actions, and at every step forced to inquire what sym- pathy their virtues or their vices find in him- self. Then there is an indefinable refinement of taste, a culture of the imagination, a hu MONTHLY CIHiONICLE. manizing power, a subtle magnetism of human life, which a dry study of material objccts never can inspire. But there is really no oc- casion for any conflict in the matter; the ques- tion is mainly one of proportion, of adapta- tion of infinite art to the finite opportunities and varied organization of short-lived man. To arrive at this proportion, to adapt its sys- tem not merely to the supposed wants of modern civilization, hut to the powers of the individual, is the great problem which the reformers of education have to solve at the present day. When they have done their best they will probably find Dame Nature, the old schoolmistress, occasionally graduating her favorite pupils, without much regard to their academic devices. Vzirv many good hooks of European trav- el have been written by Americans. Indeed there has been a constant succession of them for the last half century. They began, as was the fashion of the time, and the need of the occasion, when information was required, with being very literal and descriptive, with a sort of guide-hook patience of investigation and fidelity of statement,copious resources of book making, which Murray has for some years past ~pretty effectually cut off from the race. Yet these industrious chronicles had their merit, and it is sometimes a relief at pres- ent to turn from the overdone modern dis- quisition to the facts and personal incidents in the narrative of such wayfarers, for instance, as good Dr. Griscom and the accomplished Carter. There were a number of that school, who told us all about~ post-horses, and waiters, and bills of fare, and cathedrals, and Chats- worth, and Blenheim, and other well-known haunts of the tourist, it was something then to be a traveller, when the attention of the reader might he gained so easily. Nowadays one must go a little deeper beneath the surface, or seem to do so, which sometimes answers the purpose as well. Willis was one of the first to impart the graces of expression to the old story, and to add some piqnancy to the old material. His Pencillings by the Way were read weekly in the old Mirror, with a delight which the tourist of the present day of hackneyed felicities can hardly expect to inspire. Sanderson, the clever Philadel- phian, came along ahout the same time with his Sketches of Paris, a lively book which reflected much of the genius of the place. It was a capital guide, in the days of Louis Philippe, to the entertaining haunts of the gay city. We remember, in our admiration of his pages, renewing one of his experiences in a cheap dinner at Fricoteaus, in the Latin quar- ter; but had no desire to repeat the experi- ment in that region, preferring to fbhlow on his tracks at Verys and Vefours and the Rocher de Cancale. There was Isaac Apple- ton Jewett, too, the first, we are inclined to think, of the tourists who chose their points, grouped the incidents, and served the whole smothered in a piquant sauce of entertaining critical disquisition. He was a good writer, con- tributing his chapters to the AmericanMonth- ly Magazine, which Park Benjamin, when the literary fervor was languishing in the modern Athens, came from Boston to New York to edit. Slidell Mackenzies capital book on Spain will be remembered; and its pleasant, but less known follower, The American in England, should not be forgotten. The later tourists of eminence in their day are numerous, and many of them still hold their place in our libraries. Several books of Feni- more Cooper, overshadowed hyhis novels, have been too lightly suffered to slip from the pub- lishers stock, and might well bear revival. Irvings Sketch Book and Longfellows Outre Mar belong to the region of poetry and invention, though when they are content with actual scenes, nothing can be more f ithful. Emersons English Traits and hawthornes Our Old Home are proba- bly as subtle and spirited volumes as have been written about England since the wise and witty Erasmus recorded his observations of the country. Spain and Egypt have been favorite grounds of our tourists, and lately they have made some successful inroads upon Italy. Story has given a faithful daguerreotype of Rome, and HowmmLs, worthy of association with the choicest of our company of travellers, has done as much for snottier haunt of the imagination in his Venetian Life, a book which it gives us pleasure to see has rapidly passed to a third edition. It is, as every hody knows, full of interesting details, gathered in a consular residence of several years; is candid and independent in its observations, is in- formed by the sympathies of a scholar, and blends a veIn of philosophy with an enjoy- ment of the world. These are good qualities of which our reading public, to their credit, would willingly have more. Consequently, Mr. Howells goes on serving up other hits of Italy, with equal gusto. His Italian Jour- neys (Hurd & Houghton) are qiite as at- tractive as his chapters on Venice, and have the charm of variety in a frequent change of scene. They are a series of tccbieaux vivccnts, always picturesque, and at times quite dra- matic. Bw the side of Mr. Howells books we may place The t2ha agste Country, which in a few months has reached a second edi- tion, (Routhedge), by Dx. RoazaT ToMzs, also a picked man of countries, an author whose vivid, emphatic pictures of life and socie- ty, of whatever land lie writes, are always ac- ceptable to the public. In these sketches of the wine-producing regions ahout Rheims, 1868.3 121

MONTHLY CIHiONICLE. manizing power, a subtle magnetism of human life, which a dry study of material objccts never can inspire. But there is really no oc- casion for any conflict in the matter; the ques- tion is mainly one of proportion, of adapta- tion of infinite art to the finite opportunities and varied organization of short-lived man. To arrive at this proportion, to adapt its sys- tem not merely to the supposed wants of modern civilization, hut to the powers of the individual, is the great problem which the reformers of education have to solve at the present day. When they have done their best they will probably find Dame Nature, the old schoolmistress, occasionally graduating her favorite pupils, without much regard to their academic devices. Vzirv many good hooks of European trav- el have been written by Americans. Indeed there has been a constant succession of them for the last half century. They began, as was the fashion of the time, and the need of the occasion, when information was required, with being very literal and descriptive, with a sort of guide-hook patience of investigation and fidelity of statement,copious resources of book making, which Murray has for some years past ~pretty effectually cut off from the race. Yet these industrious chronicles had their merit, and it is sometimes a relief at pres- ent to turn from the overdone modern dis- quisition to the facts and personal incidents in the narrative of such wayfarers, for instance, as good Dr. Griscom and the accomplished Carter. There were a number of that school, who told us all about~ post-horses, and waiters, and bills of fare, and cathedrals, and Chats- worth, and Blenheim, and other well-known haunts of the tourist, it was something then to be a traveller, when the attention of the reader might he gained so easily. Nowadays one must go a little deeper beneath the surface, or seem to do so, which sometimes answers the purpose as well. Willis was one of the first to impart the graces of expression to the old story, and to add some piqnancy to the old material. His Pencillings by the Way were read weekly in the old Mirror, with a delight which the tourist of the present day of hackneyed felicities can hardly expect to inspire. Sanderson, the clever Philadel- phian, came along ahout the same time with his Sketches of Paris, a lively book which reflected much of the genius of the place. It was a capital guide, in the days of Louis Philippe, to the entertaining haunts of the gay city. We remember, in our admiration of his pages, renewing one of his experiences in a cheap dinner at Fricoteaus, in the Latin quar- ter; but had no desire to repeat the experi- ment in that region, preferring to fbhlow on his tracks at Verys and Vefours and the Rocher de Cancale. There was Isaac Apple- ton Jewett, too, the first, we are inclined to think, of the tourists who chose their points, grouped the incidents, and served the whole smothered in a piquant sauce of entertaining critical disquisition. He was a good writer, con- tributing his chapters to the AmericanMonth- ly Magazine, which Park Benjamin, when the literary fervor was languishing in the modern Athens, came from Boston to New York to edit. Slidell Mackenzies capital book on Spain will be remembered; and its pleasant, but less known follower, The American in England, should not be forgotten. The later tourists of eminence in their day are numerous, and many of them still hold their place in our libraries. Several books of Feni- more Cooper, overshadowed hyhis novels, have been too lightly suffered to slip from the pub- lishers stock, and might well bear revival. Irvings Sketch Book and Longfellows Outre Mar belong to the region of poetry and invention, though when they are content with actual scenes, nothing can be more f ithful. Emersons English Traits and hawthornes Our Old Home are proba- bly as subtle and spirited volumes as have been written about England since the wise and witty Erasmus recorded his observations of the country. Spain and Egypt have been favorite grounds of our tourists, and lately they have made some successful inroads upon Italy. Story has given a faithful daguerreotype of Rome, and HowmmLs, worthy of association with the choicest of our company of travellers, has done as much for snottier haunt of the imagination in his Venetian Life, a book which it gives us pleasure to see has rapidly passed to a third edition. It is, as every hody knows, full of interesting details, gathered in a consular residence of several years; is candid and independent in its observations, is in- formed by the sympathies of a scholar, and blends a veIn of philosophy with an enjoy- ment of the world. These are good qualities of which our reading public, to their credit, would willingly have more. Consequently, Mr. Howells goes on serving up other hits of Italy, with equal gusto. His Italian Jour- neys (Hurd & Houghton) are qiite as at- tractive as his chapters on Venice, and have the charm of variety in a frequent change of scene. They are a series of tccbieaux vivccnts, always picturesque, and at times quite dra- matic. Bw the side of Mr. Howells books we may place The t2ha agste Country, which in a few months has reached a second edi- tion, (Routhedge), by Dx. RoazaT ToMzs, also a picked man of countries, an author whose vivid, emphatic pictures of life and socie- ty, of whatever land lie writes, are always ac- ceptable to the public. In these sketches of the wine-producing regions ahout Rheims, 1868.3 121

MONTHLY CIHiONICLE. manizing power, a subtle magnetism of human life, which a dry study of material objccts never can inspire. But there is really no oc- casion for any conflict in the matter; the ques- tion is mainly one of proportion, of adapta- tion of infinite art to the finite opportunities and varied organization of short-lived man. To arrive at this proportion, to adapt its sys- tem not merely to the supposed wants of modern civilization, hut to the powers of the individual, is the great problem which the reformers of education have to solve at the present day. When they have done their best they will probably find Dame Nature, the old schoolmistress, occasionally graduating her favorite pupils, without much regard to their academic devices. Vzirv many good hooks of European trav- el have been written by Americans. Indeed there has been a constant succession of them for the last half century. They began, as was the fashion of the time, and the need of the occasion, when information was required, with being very literal and descriptive, with a sort of guide-hook patience of investigation and fidelity of statement,copious resources of book making, which Murray has for some years past ~pretty effectually cut off from the race. Yet these industrious chronicles had their merit, and it is sometimes a relief at pres- ent to turn from the overdone modern dis- quisition to the facts and personal incidents in the narrative of such wayfarers, for instance, as good Dr. Griscom and the accomplished Carter. There were a number of that school, who told us all about~ post-horses, and waiters, and bills of fare, and cathedrals, and Chats- worth, and Blenheim, and other well-known haunts of the tourist, it was something then to be a traveller, when the attention of the reader might he gained so easily. Nowadays one must go a little deeper beneath the surface, or seem to do so, which sometimes answers the purpose as well. Willis was one of the first to impart the graces of expression to the old story, and to add some piqnancy to the old material. His Pencillings by the Way were read weekly in the old Mirror, with a delight which the tourist of the present day of hackneyed felicities can hardly expect to inspire. Sanderson, the clever Philadel- phian, came along ahout the same time with his Sketches of Paris, a lively book which reflected much of the genius of the place. It was a capital guide, in the days of Louis Philippe, to the entertaining haunts of the gay city. We remember, in our admiration of his pages, renewing one of his experiences in a cheap dinner at Fricoteaus, in the Latin quar- ter; but had no desire to repeat the experi- ment in that region, preferring to fbhlow on his tracks at Verys and Vefours and the Rocher de Cancale. There was Isaac Apple- ton Jewett, too, the first, we are inclined to think, of the tourists who chose their points, grouped the incidents, and served the whole smothered in a piquant sauce of entertaining critical disquisition. He was a good writer, con- tributing his chapters to the AmericanMonth- ly Magazine, which Park Benjamin, when the literary fervor was languishing in the modern Athens, came from Boston to New York to edit. Slidell Mackenzies capital book on Spain will be remembered; and its pleasant, but less known follower, The American in England, should not be forgotten. The later tourists of eminence in their day are numerous, and many of them still hold their place in our libraries. Several books of Feni- more Cooper, overshadowed hyhis novels, have been too lightly suffered to slip from the pub- lishers stock, and might well bear revival. Irvings Sketch Book and Longfellows Outre Mar belong to the region of poetry and invention, though when they are content with actual scenes, nothing can be more f ithful. Emersons English Traits and hawthornes Our Old Home are proba- bly as subtle and spirited volumes as have been written about England since the wise and witty Erasmus recorded his observations of the country. Spain and Egypt have been favorite grounds of our tourists, and lately they have made some successful inroads upon Italy. Story has given a faithful daguerreotype of Rome, and HowmmLs, worthy of association with the choicest of our company of travellers, has done as much for snottier haunt of the imagination in his Venetian Life, a book which it gives us pleasure to see has rapidly passed to a third edition. It is, as every hody knows, full of interesting details, gathered in a consular residence of several years; is candid and independent in its observations, is in- formed by the sympathies of a scholar, and blends a veIn of philosophy with an enjoy- ment of the world. These are good qualities of which our reading public, to their credit, would willingly have more. Consequently, Mr. Howells goes on serving up other hits of Italy, with equal gusto. His Italian Jour- neys (Hurd & Houghton) are qiite as at- tractive as his chapters on Venice, and have the charm of variety in a frequent change of scene. They are a series of tccbieaux vivccnts, always picturesque, and at times quite dra- matic. Bw the side of Mr. Howells books we may place The t2ha agste Country, which in a few months has reached a second edi- tion, (Routhedge), by Dx. RoazaT ToMzs, also a picked man of countries, an author whose vivid, emphatic pictures of life and socie- ty, of whatever land lie writes, are always ac- ceptable to the public. In these sketches of the wine-producing regions ahout Rheims, 1868.3 121 128 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Jan. Dr. Tomes gives us the benefit of his official consular experience in his one or two years residence at that place, when the new custom regulations of the United States, of which he had charge, rendered his position by no means a sinecure. The result of a compre- hensive study of the whole process of Cham- pagne growth and manufacture, is presented in his volume, with notices of the great deal- ers, and sketches of provincial life in France, a fund of spirited table-talk, worthy com- panionship with the festival explosions of the best vintage secured in the region. THE publication of the Louisa 7shehlbach Historical Novels (Appleton & Co.) is an episode in the bookaciling records of the last few years. The demand for these works, out of Germany, is, we believe, altogether con- fined to this country. At least they have not been translated, or the translations republished in England. They are thus copyright works, and are an illustration of the suggestion made by Mr. Parton, in his recent essay on literary property, of the value to a publisher of trans- lations of acceptable foreign authors. The books themselves, which cover quite a num- ber of the stock availabilities of romantic his- tory, are built up largely of the materials af- forded by memoirs and the gossiping chron- icles of the periods treated of; with a partien- lar leaning to the court of Frederick the Great and the era of the French Revolution. The narrative is methodically arranged with an eye to stage effect, and a constant change of scene in melodramatic tableaux. The books are not history, and not altogether novels; but a blending of fact and invention, in a style nt- tractive to a large class of readers, but little acquainted with the original authorities. PRoFEssoR JOHN TYNDALLS recent work on Sound (Appleton & Co.) is a valuable contri- bution to the scientific literature ofthe day. In a course of eight lectures he gives a complete exposition of all that is at present known upon the subject. The style is marked by an unu- sual clearness of statement and felicity of illus- tration; and as the work is intended for pop- ular reading, algebraic formulas and technical terms have been avoided as far as possible. The absence of the experiments which formed no small part of the original lectures, has been supplied by an abundance of engravings. Professor Tyndalls researches in this branch of physics, and in the kindred subject of heat, have gained him a prominent place among the scientific investigators of the day, and fully sustain the reputation which the Royal Insti- tution has acquired from the labors of Davy, Brewster, and Faraday. To those housekeepers who have become familiar with BLoTs practical and economical receipts through his lectures, his new volume, Handioolc of Practiced Cookery (Appletons), needs no recommendation. Perhaps Ameri- can taste would be better satisfied with more puddings and pastry, and fewer varieties of meat and fish; but then Blots mission is to purify and reform the American style of eat- ing. The book is well worth the attention of all ladies who wish to make cooking more of a flue art. AT the head of the Christmas books, of which the season is prolific, we are disposed to place the new illustrated edition of Snow Bound, (Ticknor & Fields,) by the venerable WHITTIER, whose poetic fervor burns only the more warmly with age, as the logs on the hearth-stone, after the sputter and smoke are over, thoroughly penetrated by the fire, glow with their intensest flame. Ills verse has gained in simplicity and not lost in power. The tranquil, idyllic pictures of Snow Bound, in which home and the affections are set in a frosty framework of out-door scenery, invite the pencil of the artist. Mr. Fena in his designs has gracefully followed the author through the changing scenes of his narrative, seconding his genial reveries at every turn; and has been most ably assisted in his pleasant task by the engravers, Messrs. Anthony and Linton, whose wood-cuts vie with the best productions of the English school. The paper on which the work is printed is smooth and solid, presenting one of the choicest imprints of the Cambridge University Press. The Ghost, by WILLIAM D. OCONNOR, (Put- nam & Son,) expressly challenges attention, as its name imports, as a Christmas story. In an elegantly printed little volume, the author, aided by two excellent illustrations by Thomas Nast, relates with spirit the story of a money- loving landlordthe scene is laid in the good city of Bostonwhose heart was softened by his recollections of a departed early com- panion, a man of genius and suffering, who left him as a legacy an injunction to serve Ills fellow-creatures in obedience to the great law of charity. This haunting suggestion is the ghost, who on a Christmas Eve finally, through the instrumentality of a loving daughter and the appeal of a female tenant, gets the better of the old mans obduracy. When he has ex- perienced the luxury of doing good the spectral visitors mission is naturally at an end. TURNING from the little work of fiction just noticed, inculcating the law of Christian kind- ness, it is a pleasure to come upon a volume re- counting some of the practical triumphs of this spirit, which are the glory of the present cen- tury. There are spread before us in The Ro- mance of Charity, by JOHN DE LIEFDE (Rout I

128 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Jan. Dr. Tomes gives us the benefit of his official consular experience in his one or two years residence at that place, when the new custom regulations of the United States, of which he had charge, rendered his position by no means a sinecure. The result of a compre- hensive study of the whole process of Cham- pagne growth and manufacture, is presented in his volume, with notices of the great deal- ers, and sketches of provincial life in France, a fund of spirited table-talk, worthy com- panionship with the festival explosions of the best vintage secured in the region. THE publication of the Louisa 7shehlbach Historical Novels (Appleton & Co.) is an episode in the bookaciling records of the last few years. The demand for these works, out of Germany, is, we believe, altogether con- fined to this country. At least they have not been translated, or the translations republished in England. They are thus copyright works, and are an illustration of the suggestion made by Mr. Parton, in his recent essay on literary property, of the value to a publisher of trans- lations of acceptable foreign authors. The books themselves, which cover quite a num- ber of the stock availabilities of romantic his- tory, are built up largely of the materials af- forded by memoirs and the gossiping chron- icles of the periods treated of; with a partien- lar leaning to the court of Frederick the Great and the era of the French Revolution. The narrative is methodically arranged with an eye to stage effect, and a constant change of scene in melodramatic tableaux. The books are not history, and not altogether novels; but a blending of fact and invention, in a style nt- tractive to a large class of readers, but little acquainted with the original authorities. PRoFEssoR JOHN TYNDALLS recent work on Sound (Appleton & Co.) is a valuable contri- bution to the scientific literature ofthe day. In a course of eight lectures he gives a complete exposition of all that is at present known upon the subject. The style is marked by an unu- sual clearness of statement and felicity of illus- tration; and as the work is intended for pop- ular reading, algebraic formulas and technical terms have been avoided as far as possible. The absence of the experiments which formed no small part of the original lectures, has been supplied by an abundance of engravings. Professor Tyndalls researches in this branch of physics, and in the kindred subject of heat, have gained him a prominent place among the scientific investigators of the day, and fully sustain the reputation which the Royal Insti- tution has acquired from the labors of Davy, Brewster, and Faraday. To those housekeepers who have become familiar with BLoTs practical and economical receipts through his lectures, his new volume, Handioolc of Practiced Cookery (Appletons), needs no recommendation. Perhaps Ameri- can taste would be better satisfied with more puddings and pastry, and fewer varieties of meat and fish; but then Blots mission is to purify and reform the American style of eat- ing. The book is well worth the attention of all ladies who wish to make cooking more of a flue art. AT the head of the Christmas books, of which the season is prolific, we are disposed to place the new illustrated edition of Snow Bound, (Ticknor & Fields,) by the venerable WHITTIER, whose poetic fervor burns only the more warmly with age, as the logs on the hearth-stone, after the sputter and smoke are over, thoroughly penetrated by the fire, glow with their intensest flame. Ills verse has gained in simplicity and not lost in power. The tranquil, idyllic pictures of Snow Bound, in which home and the affections are set in a frosty framework of out-door scenery, invite the pencil of the artist. Mr. Fena in his designs has gracefully followed the author through the changing scenes of his narrative, seconding his genial reveries at every turn; and has been most ably assisted in his pleasant task by the engravers, Messrs. Anthony and Linton, whose wood-cuts vie with the best productions of the English school. The paper on which the work is printed is smooth and solid, presenting one of the choicest imprints of the Cambridge University Press. The Ghost, by WILLIAM D. OCONNOR, (Put- nam & Son,) expressly challenges attention, as its name imports, as a Christmas story. In an elegantly printed little volume, the author, aided by two excellent illustrations by Thomas Nast, relates with spirit the story of a money- loving landlordthe scene is laid in the good city of Bostonwhose heart was softened by his recollections of a departed early com- panion, a man of genius and suffering, who left him as a legacy an injunction to serve Ills fellow-creatures in obedience to the great law of charity. This haunting suggestion is the ghost, who on a Christmas Eve finally, through the instrumentality of a loving daughter and the appeal of a female tenant, gets the better of the old mans obduracy. When he has ex- perienced the luxury of doing good the spectral visitors mission is naturally at an end. TURNING from the little work of fiction just noticed, inculcating the law of Christian kind- ness, it is a pleasure to come upon a volume re- counting some of the practical triumphs of this spirit, which are the glory of the present cen- tury. There are spread before us in The Ro- mance of Charity, by JOHN DE LIEFDE (Rout I

128 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Jan. Dr. Tomes gives us the benefit of his official consular experience in his one or two years residence at that place, when the new custom regulations of the United States, of which he had charge, rendered his position by no means a sinecure. The result of a compre- hensive study of the whole process of Cham- pagne growth and manufacture, is presented in his volume, with notices of the great deal- ers, and sketches of provincial life in France, a fund of spirited table-talk, worthy com- panionship with the festival explosions of the best vintage secured in the region. THE publication of the Louisa 7shehlbach Historical Novels (Appleton & Co.) is an episode in the bookaciling records of the last few years. The demand for these works, out of Germany, is, we believe, altogether con- fined to this country. At least they have not been translated, or the translations republished in England. They are thus copyright works, and are an illustration of the suggestion made by Mr. Parton, in his recent essay on literary property, of the value to a publisher of trans- lations of acceptable foreign authors. The books themselves, which cover quite a num- ber of the stock availabilities of romantic his- tory, are built up largely of the materials af- forded by memoirs and the gossiping chron- icles of the periods treated of; with a partien- lar leaning to the court of Frederick the Great and the era of the French Revolution. The narrative is methodically arranged with an eye to stage effect, and a constant change of scene in melodramatic tableaux. The books are not history, and not altogether novels; but a blending of fact and invention, in a style nt- tractive to a large class of readers, but little acquainted with the original authorities. PRoFEssoR JOHN TYNDALLS recent work on Sound (Appleton & Co.) is a valuable contri- bution to the scientific literature ofthe day. In a course of eight lectures he gives a complete exposition of all that is at present known upon the subject. The style is marked by an unu- sual clearness of statement and felicity of illus- tration; and as the work is intended for pop- ular reading, algebraic formulas and technical terms have been avoided as far as possible. The absence of the experiments which formed no small part of the original lectures, has been supplied by an abundance of engravings. Professor Tyndalls researches in this branch of physics, and in the kindred subject of heat, have gained him a prominent place among the scientific investigators of the day, and fully sustain the reputation which the Royal Insti- tution has acquired from the labors of Davy, Brewster, and Faraday. To those housekeepers who have become familiar with BLoTs practical and economical receipts through his lectures, his new volume, Handioolc of Practiced Cookery (Appletons), needs no recommendation. Perhaps Ameri- can taste would be better satisfied with more puddings and pastry, and fewer varieties of meat and fish; but then Blots mission is to purify and reform the American style of eat- ing. The book is well worth the attention of all ladies who wish to make cooking more of a flue art. AT the head of the Christmas books, of which the season is prolific, we are disposed to place the new illustrated edition of Snow Bound, (Ticknor & Fields,) by the venerable WHITTIER, whose poetic fervor burns only the more warmly with age, as the logs on the hearth-stone, after the sputter and smoke are over, thoroughly penetrated by the fire, glow with their intensest flame. Ills verse has gained in simplicity and not lost in power. The tranquil, idyllic pictures of Snow Bound, in which home and the affections are set in a frosty framework of out-door scenery, invite the pencil of the artist. Mr. Fena in his designs has gracefully followed the author through the changing scenes of his narrative, seconding his genial reveries at every turn; and has been most ably assisted in his pleasant task by the engravers, Messrs. Anthony and Linton, whose wood-cuts vie with the best productions of the English school. The paper on which the work is printed is smooth and solid, presenting one of the choicest imprints of the Cambridge University Press. The Ghost, by WILLIAM D. OCONNOR, (Put- nam & Son,) expressly challenges attention, as its name imports, as a Christmas story. In an elegantly printed little volume, the author, aided by two excellent illustrations by Thomas Nast, relates with spirit the story of a money- loving landlordthe scene is laid in the good city of Bostonwhose heart was softened by his recollections of a departed early com- panion, a man of genius and suffering, who left him as a legacy an injunction to serve Ills fellow-creatures in obedience to the great law of charity. This haunting suggestion is the ghost, who on a Christmas Eve finally, through the instrumentality of a loving daughter and the appeal of a female tenant, gets the better of the old mans obduracy. When he has ex- perienced the luxury of doing good the spectral visitors mission is naturally at an end. TURNING from the little work of fiction just noticed, inculcating the law of Christian kind- ness, it is a pleasure to come upon a volume re- counting some of the practical triumphs of this spirit, which are the glory of the present cen- tury. There are spread before us in The Ro- mance of Charity, by JOHN DE LIEFDE (Rout I

128 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Jan. Dr. Tomes gives us the benefit of his official consular experience in his one or two years residence at that place, when the new custom regulations of the United States, of which he had charge, rendered his position by no means a sinecure. The result of a compre- hensive study of the whole process of Cham- pagne growth and manufacture, is presented in his volume, with notices of the great deal- ers, and sketches of provincial life in France, a fund of spirited table-talk, worthy com- panionship with the festival explosions of the best vintage secured in the region. THE publication of the Louisa 7shehlbach Historical Novels (Appleton & Co.) is an episode in the bookaciling records of the last few years. The demand for these works, out of Germany, is, we believe, altogether con- fined to this country. At least they have not been translated, or the translations republished in England. They are thus copyright works, and are an illustration of the suggestion made by Mr. Parton, in his recent essay on literary property, of the value to a publisher of trans- lations of acceptable foreign authors. The books themselves, which cover quite a num- ber of the stock availabilities of romantic his- tory, are built up largely of the materials af- forded by memoirs and the gossiping chron- icles of the periods treated of; with a partien- lar leaning to the court of Frederick the Great and the era of the French Revolution. The narrative is methodically arranged with an eye to stage effect, and a constant change of scene in melodramatic tableaux. The books are not history, and not altogether novels; but a blending of fact and invention, in a style nt- tractive to a large class of readers, but little acquainted with the original authorities. PRoFEssoR JOHN TYNDALLS recent work on Sound (Appleton & Co.) is a valuable contri- bution to the scientific literature ofthe day. In a course of eight lectures he gives a complete exposition of all that is at present known upon the subject. The style is marked by an unu- sual clearness of statement and felicity of illus- tration; and as the work is intended for pop- ular reading, algebraic formulas and technical terms have been avoided as far as possible. The absence of the experiments which formed no small part of the original lectures, has been supplied by an abundance of engravings. Professor Tyndalls researches in this branch of physics, and in the kindred subject of heat, have gained him a prominent place among the scientific investigators of the day, and fully sustain the reputation which the Royal Insti- tution has acquired from the labors of Davy, Brewster, and Faraday. To those housekeepers who have become familiar with BLoTs practical and economical receipts through his lectures, his new volume, Handioolc of Practiced Cookery (Appletons), needs no recommendation. Perhaps Ameri- can taste would be better satisfied with more puddings and pastry, and fewer varieties of meat and fish; but then Blots mission is to purify and reform the American style of eat- ing. The book is well worth the attention of all ladies who wish to make cooking more of a flue art. AT the head of the Christmas books, of which the season is prolific, we are disposed to place the new illustrated edition of Snow Bound, (Ticknor & Fields,) by the venerable WHITTIER, whose poetic fervor burns only the more warmly with age, as the logs on the hearth-stone, after the sputter and smoke are over, thoroughly penetrated by the fire, glow with their intensest flame. Ills verse has gained in simplicity and not lost in power. The tranquil, idyllic pictures of Snow Bound, in which home and the affections are set in a frosty framework of out-door scenery, invite the pencil of the artist. Mr. Fena in his designs has gracefully followed the author through the changing scenes of his narrative, seconding his genial reveries at every turn; and has been most ably assisted in his pleasant task by the engravers, Messrs. Anthony and Linton, whose wood-cuts vie with the best productions of the English school. The paper on which the work is printed is smooth and solid, presenting one of the choicest imprints of the Cambridge University Press. The Ghost, by WILLIAM D. OCONNOR, (Put- nam & Son,) expressly challenges attention, as its name imports, as a Christmas story. In an elegantly printed little volume, the author, aided by two excellent illustrations by Thomas Nast, relates with spirit the story of a money- loving landlordthe scene is laid in the good city of Bostonwhose heart was softened by his recollections of a departed early com- panion, a man of genius and suffering, who left him as a legacy an injunction to serve Ills fellow-creatures in obedience to the great law of charity. This haunting suggestion is the ghost, who on a Christmas Eve finally, through the instrumentality of a loving daughter and the appeal of a female tenant, gets the better of the old mans obduracy. When he has ex- perienced the luxury of doing good the spectral visitors mission is naturally at an end. TURNING from the little work of fiction just noticed, inculcating the law of Christian kind- ness, it is a pleasure to come upon a volume re- counting some of the practical triumphs of this spirit, which are the glory of the present cen- tury. There are spread before us in The Ro- mance of Charity, by JOHN DE LIEFDE (Rout I

128 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Jan. Dr. Tomes gives us the benefit of his official consular experience in his one or two years residence at that place, when the new custom regulations of the United States, of which he had charge, rendered his position by no means a sinecure. The result of a compre- hensive study of the whole process of Cham- pagne growth and manufacture, is presented in his volume, with notices of the great deal- ers, and sketches of provincial life in France, a fund of spirited table-talk, worthy com- panionship with the festival explosions of the best vintage secured in the region. THE publication of the Louisa 7shehlbach Historical Novels (Appleton & Co.) is an episode in the bookaciling records of the last few years. The demand for these works, out of Germany, is, we believe, altogether con- fined to this country. At least they have not been translated, or the translations republished in England. They are thus copyright works, and are an illustration of the suggestion made by Mr. Parton, in his recent essay on literary property, of the value to a publisher of trans- lations of acceptable foreign authors. The books themselves, which cover quite a num- ber of the stock availabilities of romantic his- tory, are built up largely of the materials af- forded by memoirs and the gossiping chron- icles of the periods treated of; with a partien- lar leaning to the court of Frederick the Great and the era of the French Revolution. The narrative is methodically arranged with an eye to stage effect, and a constant change of scene in melodramatic tableaux. The books are not history, and not altogether novels; but a blending of fact and invention, in a style nt- tractive to a large class of readers, but little acquainted with the original authorities. PRoFEssoR JOHN TYNDALLS recent work on Sound (Appleton & Co.) is a valuable contri- bution to the scientific literature ofthe day. In a course of eight lectures he gives a complete exposition of all that is at present known upon the subject. The style is marked by an unu- sual clearness of statement and felicity of illus- tration; and as the work is intended for pop- ular reading, algebraic formulas and technical terms have been avoided as far as possible. The absence of the experiments which formed no small part of the original lectures, has been supplied by an abundance of engravings. Professor Tyndalls researches in this branch of physics, and in the kindred subject of heat, have gained him a prominent place among the scientific investigators of the day, and fully sustain the reputation which the Royal Insti- tution has acquired from the labors of Davy, Brewster, and Faraday. To those housekeepers who have become familiar with BLoTs practical and economical receipts through his lectures, his new volume, Handioolc of Practiced Cookery (Appletons), needs no recommendation. Perhaps Ameri- can taste would be better satisfied with more puddings and pastry, and fewer varieties of meat and fish; but then Blots mission is to purify and reform the American style of eat- ing. The book is well worth the attention of all ladies who wish to make cooking more of a flue art. AT the head of the Christmas books, of which the season is prolific, we are disposed to place the new illustrated edition of Snow Bound, (Ticknor & Fields,) by the venerable WHITTIER, whose poetic fervor burns only the more warmly with age, as the logs on the hearth-stone, after the sputter and smoke are over, thoroughly penetrated by the fire, glow with their intensest flame. Ills verse has gained in simplicity and not lost in power. The tranquil, idyllic pictures of Snow Bound, in which home and the affections are set in a frosty framework of out-door scenery, invite the pencil of the artist. Mr. Fena in his designs has gracefully followed the author through the changing scenes of his narrative, seconding his genial reveries at every turn; and has been most ably assisted in his pleasant task by the engravers, Messrs. Anthony and Linton, whose wood-cuts vie with the best productions of the English school. The paper on which the work is printed is smooth and solid, presenting one of the choicest imprints of the Cambridge University Press. The Ghost, by WILLIAM D. OCONNOR, (Put- nam & Son,) expressly challenges attention, as its name imports, as a Christmas story. In an elegantly printed little volume, the author, aided by two excellent illustrations by Thomas Nast, relates with spirit the story of a money- loving landlordthe scene is laid in the good city of Bostonwhose heart was softened by his recollections of a departed early com- panion, a man of genius and suffering, who left him as a legacy an injunction to serve Ills fellow-creatures in obedience to the great law of charity. This haunting suggestion is the ghost, who on a Christmas Eve finally, through the instrumentality of a loving daughter and the appeal of a female tenant, gets the better of the old mans obduracy. When he has ex- perienced the luxury of doing good the spectral visitors mission is naturally at an end. TURNING from the little work of fiction just noticed, inculcating the law of Christian kind- ness, it is a pleasure to come upon a volume re- counting some of the practical triumphs of this spirit, which are the glory of the present cen- tury. There are spread before us in The Ro- mance of Charity, by JOHN DE LIEFDE (Rout I

128 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Jan. Dr. Tomes gives us the benefit of his official consular experience in his one or two years residence at that place, when the new custom regulations of the United States, of which he had charge, rendered his position by no means a sinecure. The result of a compre- hensive study of the whole process of Cham- pagne growth and manufacture, is presented in his volume, with notices of the great deal- ers, and sketches of provincial life in France, a fund of spirited table-talk, worthy com- panionship with the festival explosions of the best vintage secured in the region. THE publication of the Louisa 7shehlbach Historical Novels (Appleton & Co.) is an episode in the bookaciling records of the last few years. The demand for these works, out of Germany, is, we believe, altogether con- fined to this country. At least they have not been translated, or the translations republished in England. They are thus copyright works, and are an illustration of the suggestion made by Mr. Parton, in his recent essay on literary property, of the value to a publisher of trans- lations of acceptable foreign authors. The books themselves, which cover quite a num- ber of the stock availabilities of romantic his- tory, are built up largely of the materials af- forded by memoirs and the gossiping chron- icles of the periods treated of; with a partien- lar leaning to the court of Frederick the Great and the era of the French Revolution. The narrative is methodically arranged with an eye to stage effect, and a constant change of scene in melodramatic tableaux. The books are not history, and not altogether novels; but a blending of fact and invention, in a style nt- tractive to a large class of readers, but little acquainted with the original authorities. PRoFEssoR JOHN TYNDALLS recent work on Sound (Appleton & Co.) is a valuable contri- bution to the scientific literature ofthe day. In a course of eight lectures he gives a complete exposition of all that is at present known upon the subject. The style is marked by an unu- sual clearness of statement and felicity of illus- tration; and as the work is intended for pop- ular reading, algebraic formulas and technical terms have been avoided as far as possible. The absence of the experiments which formed no small part of the original lectures, has been supplied by an abundance of engravings. Professor Tyndalls researches in this branch of physics, and in the kindred subject of heat, have gained him a prominent place among the scientific investigators of the day, and fully sustain the reputation which the Royal Insti- tution has acquired from the labors of Davy, Brewster, and Faraday. To those housekeepers who have become familiar with BLoTs practical and economical receipts through his lectures, his new volume, Handioolc of Practiced Cookery (Appletons), needs no recommendation. Perhaps Ameri- can taste would be better satisfied with more puddings and pastry, and fewer varieties of meat and fish; but then Blots mission is to purify and reform the American style of eat- ing. The book is well worth the attention of all ladies who wish to make cooking more of a flue art. AT the head of the Christmas books, of which the season is prolific, we are disposed to place the new illustrated edition of Snow Bound, (Ticknor & Fields,) by the venerable WHITTIER, whose poetic fervor burns only the more warmly with age, as the logs on the hearth-stone, after the sputter and smoke are over, thoroughly penetrated by the fire, glow with their intensest flame. Ills verse has gained in simplicity and not lost in power. The tranquil, idyllic pictures of Snow Bound, in which home and the affections are set in a frosty framework of out-door scenery, invite the pencil of the artist. Mr. Fena in his designs has gracefully followed the author through the changing scenes of his narrative, seconding his genial reveries at every turn; and has been most ably assisted in his pleasant task by the engravers, Messrs. Anthony and Linton, whose wood-cuts vie with the best productions of the English school. The paper on which the work is printed is smooth and solid, presenting one of the choicest imprints of the Cambridge University Press. The Ghost, by WILLIAM D. OCONNOR, (Put- nam & Son,) expressly challenges attention, as its name imports, as a Christmas story. In an elegantly printed little volume, the author, aided by two excellent illustrations by Thomas Nast, relates with spirit the story of a money- loving landlordthe scene is laid in the good city of Bostonwhose heart was softened by his recollections of a departed early com- panion, a man of genius and suffering, who left him as a legacy an injunction to serve Ills fellow-creatures in obedience to the great law of charity. This haunting suggestion is the ghost, who on a Christmas Eve finally, through the instrumentality of a loving daughter and the appeal of a female tenant, gets the better of the old mans obduracy. When he has ex- perienced the luxury of doing good the spectral visitors mission is naturally at an end. TURNING from the little work of fiction just noticed, inculcating the law of Christian kind- ness, it is a pleasure to come upon a volume re- counting some of the practical triumphs of this spirit, which are the glory of the present cen- tury. There are spread before us in The Ro- mance of Charity, by JOHN DE LIEFDE (Rout I 1868.1 MONTHLY CHRoNIcLE. 129 ledge & Sons), a condensation of a larger book, received with favor some months ago, entitled, Six Months Among tim Charities of Eu- rope. The author, in a pleasant narrative, interspersed with pietorial sketches of foun- ders and buildings, describes the rise, prog- ress, and present condition of some of the most eminent of the benevolent, educational, and relief establishments for the aid of pov- erty and suffering in central and northern Europe, from the Northern Oeean to the Alps, in the Netherlands at Zutphenan appropriate spot for a work of merey, that where Sir Philip Sidney fell and diedat Ilamburgh, on the Rhine, in Switzerland. Assoeiative effort of this benevolent character, independent of immediate Church organization, seems to find a natural home in the Protestant countries of Europe, examples which, doubtless, have the effect of arousing the Church to renewed ex- ertions in her aneient work. It is astonishing in these cases what one man or woman, prop- erly qualified and inspired for the work, may aceomplish. Dr. Liefdes story is throughout an luterestiug one. Travellers to Europe and those who read at home would do well to make themselves acquainted with his narra- tives. The virtues of other lands are certainly as well worth, studying as the vices, which travellers are apt to learn more about. IT is somewhat difficult to settle down to a critical estimate of an anthers poems, when the verses come to us in such fine holiday trim as the poems Lucite, by Owzu MERE- mvii (Ticknor & Fields), and lqorth Coast, and Other Poems, by Robert Buchanan (Routledge & Sons). The eye is first at- tracted by the brilliant decorations, the thick, glossy paper, the gold-leaf, and the manifold artistic graces of the Brothers Daiziel; and it is not till, as it were, we have divested the beauty of her ball-room finery and extrava- gance of dress, that we are able to see her in her simple personal attractions. It is Ball and Black with their diamonds, or the laces and silks of Stewart, or the skilful manipula- tion of Dieden that we are for the time ad- miring. The ladys turn comes at last, and we forget them all. We may, however, be doing injustice to the brilliance of the attire in which their publishers have invested two of the favorite authors of the day, since, though rich, it is in exceedingly good taste, and the merit of the productions is proof against any application of the old saying of the workmanship surpassing the material. Besides, the realistic character of the illustra- tions bas its subduing effect, bringing the gazer down to a sober appreciation of the text. The reputation of Lucile, indeed, is suffi- olently established; for, has it not been in blue and gold, and consequently in the hands of all fair readers of poetry in America, VOL. i.9 a familiar companion, since its first publica- tion ?a charming novel, with its society airs and more private sensibilities and heart ad- ventures, tickling the fancy with its seem- ingly careless but most artistical rhyming. Now, with its portrait of the author, Rohert Lytton, as a frontispiece, a countenance marked with the impress of thought and feeling, and the finely-drawn, earnest, and, at times, passionate illustrations of Dc Man- ncr, the work may fairly be said to renew its existence. The volume of Robert Buchanan, with the exception of three of its numerous separate poems, is entirely new to the public. It is too little to say of it that it well sustains the reputation of the author. Meg Blanc, the opening poem, is the story of a heroine of the northern seas, a shuple, stout-hearted woman of the north coast, schooled in adversity, braving the ocean in deeds of daring and hu- manity, sustained km a great private sorrow by the strength of a sorrow yet deeper, her love for bet half-wittect son. These are the elements of a pathetic poem ofgreat power and maral beauty. The treatment of the theme, with the cool breath of the ocean and its sublimities tem- pering the scene, is worthy of the old ballad age. An English and another Scottish Eclogue, exhibit a fine spirit of characteriza- tion of certain religious phenomena of the two countries. A Saints Story~~ is in an origi- nal vein, with a peculiar fascination in its wild humors. A Poem to David is a tribute to the memory of the Seottish poet, David Gray, in which a complaint of death is turned to minister to the expression of tenderness and affection. We might particularize others, for the lyre of the author has many strings, hut must be content with a general commendation of the work, and of the thoughtful and fre- quently forcible character of the illustrations,. especially in the views of the see-shore of the opening poem, by T. Dalziel, and the fantasies of the Saints Story, by Houghton. The animal subjects, by J. Wolf, The Moor lien and Highland Deer, are full of spirit. Yi Legends of St. Gwendoline (Putnam & Son) is the story of a lady of the Court of King Arthur, and fair Guenever, whose heart, long finding no suitor, among those who claimed it, to satisfy its longings, was at last smitten by the prowess of a knight, whose marriage to another drove gemitle Gwendoline to sorrow and retirement. There an angelic vision was vouchsafed to her troubled spirit, which thenceforward sought consolation and repose in the holy work of founding an ab- bey; but even in good works and in the hour of death her disappointment did not for- sake her. At the time of her departure, when the nuns fain would ask for her heart to be

1868.1 MONTHLY CHRoNIcLE. 129 ledge & Sons), a condensation of a larger book, received with favor some months ago, entitled, Six Months Among tim Charities of Eu- rope. The author, in a pleasant narrative, interspersed with pietorial sketches of foun- ders and buildings, describes the rise, prog- ress, and present condition of some of the most eminent of the benevolent, educational, and relief establishments for the aid of pov- erty and suffering in central and northern Europe, from the Northern Oeean to the Alps, in the Netherlands at Zutphenan appropriate spot for a work of merey, that where Sir Philip Sidney fell and diedat Ilamburgh, on the Rhine, in Switzerland. Assoeiative effort of this benevolent character, independent of immediate Church organization, seems to find a natural home in the Protestant countries of Europe, examples which, doubtless, have the effect of arousing the Church to renewed ex- ertions in her aneient work. It is astonishing in these cases what one man or woman, prop- erly qualified and inspired for the work, may aceomplish. Dr. Liefdes story is throughout an luterestiug one. Travellers to Europe and those who read at home would do well to make themselves acquainted with his narra- tives. The virtues of other lands are certainly as well worth, studying as the vices, which travellers are apt to learn more about. IT is somewhat difficult to settle down to a critical estimate of an anthers poems, when the verses come to us in such fine holiday trim as the poems Lucite, by Owzu MERE- mvii (Ticknor & Fields), and lqorth Coast, and Other Poems, by Robert Buchanan (Routledge & Sons). The eye is first at- tracted by the brilliant decorations, the thick, glossy paper, the gold-leaf, and the manifold artistic graces of the Brothers Daiziel; and it is not till, as it were, we have divested the beauty of her ball-room finery and extrava- gance of dress, that we are able to see her in her simple personal attractions. It is Ball and Black with their diamonds, or the laces and silks of Stewart, or the skilful manipula- tion of Dieden that we are for the time ad- miring. The ladys turn comes at last, and we forget them all. We may, however, be doing injustice to the brilliance of the attire in which their publishers have invested two of the favorite authors of the day, since, though rich, it is in exceedingly good taste, and the merit of the productions is proof against any application of the old saying of the workmanship surpassing the material. Besides, the realistic character of the illustra- tions bas its subduing effect, bringing the gazer down to a sober appreciation of the text. The reputation of Lucile, indeed, is suffi- olently established; for, has it not been in blue and gold, and consequently in the hands of all fair readers of poetry in America, VOL. i.9 a familiar companion, since its first publica- tion ?a charming novel, with its society airs and more private sensibilities and heart ad- ventures, tickling the fancy with its seem- ingly careless but most artistical rhyming. Now, with its portrait of the author, Rohert Lytton, as a frontispiece, a countenance marked with the impress of thought and feeling, and the finely-drawn, earnest, and, at times, passionate illustrations of Dc Man- ncr, the work may fairly be said to renew its existence. The volume of Robert Buchanan, with the exception of three of its numerous separate poems, is entirely new to the public. It is too little to say of it that it well sustains the reputation of the author. Meg Blanc, the opening poem, is the story of a heroine of the northern seas, a shuple, stout-hearted woman of the north coast, schooled in adversity, braving the ocean in deeds of daring and hu- manity, sustained km a great private sorrow by the strength of a sorrow yet deeper, her love for bet half-wittect son. These are the elements of a pathetic poem ofgreat power and maral beauty. The treatment of the theme, with the cool breath of the ocean and its sublimities tem- pering the scene, is worthy of the old ballad age. An English and another Scottish Eclogue, exhibit a fine spirit of characteriza- tion of certain religious phenomena of the two countries. A Saints Story~~ is in an origi- nal vein, with a peculiar fascination in its wild humors. A Poem to David is a tribute to the memory of the Seottish poet, David Gray, in which a complaint of death is turned to minister to the expression of tenderness and affection. We might particularize others, for the lyre of the author has many strings, hut must be content with a general commendation of the work, and of the thoughtful and fre- quently forcible character of the illustrations,. especially in the views of the see-shore of the opening poem, by T. Dalziel, and the fantasies of the Saints Story, by Houghton. The animal subjects, by J. Wolf, The Moor lien and Highland Deer, are full of spirit. Yi Legends of St. Gwendoline (Putnam & Son) is the story of a lady of the Court of King Arthur, and fair Guenever, whose heart, long finding no suitor, among those who claimed it, to satisfy its longings, was at last smitten by the prowess of a knight, whose marriage to another drove gemitle Gwendoline to sorrow and retirement. There an angelic vision was vouchsafed to her troubled spirit, which thenceforward sought consolation and repose in the holy work of founding an ab- bey; but even in good works and in the hour of death her disappointment did not for- sake her. At the time of her departure, when the nuns fain would ask for her heart to be

1868.1 MONTHLY CHRoNIcLE. 129 ledge & Sons), a condensation of a larger book, received with favor some months ago, entitled, Six Months Among tim Charities of Eu- rope. The author, in a pleasant narrative, interspersed with pietorial sketches of foun- ders and buildings, describes the rise, prog- ress, and present condition of some of the most eminent of the benevolent, educational, and relief establishments for the aid of pov- erty and suffering in central and northern Europe, from the Northern Oeean to the Alps, in the Netherlands at Zutphenan appropriate spot for a work of merey, that where Sir Philip Sidney fell and diedat Ilamburgh, on the Rhine, in Switzerland. Assoeiative effort of this benevolent character, independent of immediate Church organization, seems to find a natural home in the Protestant countries of Europe, examples which, doubtless, have the effect of arousing the Church to renewed ex- ertions in her aneient work. It is astonishing in these cases what one man or woman, prop- erly qualified and inspired for the work, may aceomplish. Dr. Liefdes story is throughout an luterestiug one. Travellers to Europe and those who read at home would do well to make themselves acquainted with his narra- tives. The virtues of other lands are certainly as well worth, studying as the vices, which travellers are apt to learn more about. IT is somewhat difficult to settle down to a critical estimate of an anthers poems, when the verses come to us in such fine holiday trim as the poems Lucite, by Owzu MERE- mvii (Ticknor & Fields), and lqorth Coast, and Other Poems, by Robert Buchanan (Routledge & Sons). The eye is first at- tracted by the brilliant decorations, the thick, glossy paper, the gold-leaf, and the manifold artistic graces of the Brothers Daiziel; and it is not till, as it were, we have divested the beauty of her ball-room finery and extrava- gance of dress, that we are able to see her in her simple personal attractions. It is Ball and Black with their diamonds, or the laces and silks of Stewart, or the skilful manipula- tion of Dieden that we are for the time ad- miring. The ladys turn comes at last, and we forget them all. We may, however, be doing injustice to the brilliance of the attire in which their publishers have invested two of the favorite authors of the day, since, though rich, it is in exceedingly good taste, and the merit of the productions is proof against any application of the old saying of the workmanship surpassing the material. Besides, the realistic character of the illustra- tions bas its subduing effect, bringing the gazer down to a sober appreciation of the text. The reputation of Lucile, indeed, is suffi- olently established; for, has it not been in blue and gold, and consequently in the hands of all fair readers of poetry in America, VOL. i.9 a familiar companion, since its first publica- tion ?a charming novel, with its society airs and more private sensibilities and heart ad- ventures, tickling the fancy with its seem- ingly careless but most artistical rhyming. Now, with its portrait of the author, Rohert Lytton, as a frontispiece, a countenance marked with the impress of thought and feeling, and the finely-drawn, earnest, and, at times, passionate illustrations of Dc Man- ncr, the work may fairly be said to renew its existence. The volume of Robert Buchanan, with the exception of three of its numerous separate poems, is entirely new to the public. It is too little to say of it that it well sustains the reputation of the author. Meg Blanc, the opening poem, is the story of a heroine of the northern seas, a shuple, stout-hearted woman of the north coast, schooled in adversity, braving the ocean in deeds of daring and hu- manity, sustained km a great private sorrow by the strength of a sorrow yet deeper, her love for bet half-wittect son. These are the elements of a pathetic poem ofgreat power and maral beauty. The treatment of the theme, with the cool breath of the ocean and its sublimities tem- pering the scene, is worthy of the old ballad age. An English and another Scottish Eclogue, exhibit a fine spirit of characteriza- tion of certain religious phenomena of the two countries. A Saints Story~~ is in an origi- nal vein, with a peculiar fascination in its wild humors. A Poem to David is a tribute to the memory of the Seottish poet, David Gray, in which a complaint of death is turned to minister to the expression of tenderness and affection. We might particularize others, for the lyre of the author has many strings, hut must be content with a general commendation of the work, and of the thoughtful and fre- quently forcible character of the illustrations,. especially in the views of the see-shore of the opening poem, by T. Dalziel, and the fantasies of the Saints Story, by Houghton. The animal subjects, by J. Wolf, The Moor lien and Highland Deer, are full of spirit. Yi Legends of St. Gwendoline (Putnam & Son) is the story of a lady of the Court of King Arthur, and fair Guenever, whose heart, long finding no suitor, among those who claimed it, to satisfy its longings, was at last smitten by the prowess of a knight, whose marriage to another drove gemitle Gwendoline to sorrow and retirement. There an angelic vision was vouchsafed to her troubled spirit, which thenceforward sought consolation and repose in the holy work of founding an ab- bey; but even in good works and in the hour of death her disappointment did not for- sake her. At the time of her departure, when the nuns fain would ask for her heart to be

1868.1 MONTHLY CHRoNIcLE. 129 ledge & Sons), a condensation of a larger book, received with favor some months ago, entitled, Six Months Among tim Charities of Eu- rope. The author, in a pleasant narrative, interspersed with pietorial sketches of foun- ders and buildings, describes the rise, prog- ress, and present condition of some of the most eminent of the benevolent, educational, and relief establishments for the aid of pov- erty and suffering in central and northern Europe, from the Northern Oeean to the Alps, in the Netherlands at Zutphenan appropriate spot for a work of merey, that where Sir Philip Sidney fell and diedat Ilamburgh, on the Rhine, in Switzerland. Assoeiative effort of this benevolent character, independent of immediate Church organization, seems to find a natural home in the Protestant countries of Europe, examples which, doubtless, have the effect of arousing the Church to renewed ex- ertions in her aneient work. It is astonishing in these cases what one man or woman, prop- erly qualified and inspired for the work, may aceomplish. Dr. Liefdes story is throughout an luterestiug one. Travellers to Europe and those who read at home would do well to make themselves acquainted with his narra- tives. The virtues of other lands are certainly as well worth, studying as the vices, which travellers are apt to learn more about. IT is somewhat difficult to settle down to a critical estimate of an anthers poems, when the verses come to us in such fine holiday trim as the poems Lucite, by Owzu MERE- mvii (Ticknor & Fields), and lqorth Coast, and Other Poems, by Robert Buchanan (Routledge & Sons). The eye is first at- tracted by the brilliant decorations, the thick, glossy paper, the gold-leaf, and the manifold artistic graces of the Brothers Daiziel; and it is not till, as it were, we have divested the beauty of her ball-room finery and extrava- gance of dress, that we are able to see her in her simple personal attractions. It is Ball and Black with their diamonds, or the laces and silks of Stewart, or the skilful manipula- tion of Dieden that we are for the time ad- miring. The ladys turn comes at last, and we forget them all. We may, however, be doing injustice to the brilliance of the attire in which their publishers have invested two of the favorite authors of the day, since, though rich, it is in exceedingly good taste, and the merit of the productions is proof against any application of the old saying of the workmanship surpassing the material. Besides, the realistic character of the illustra- tions bas its subduing effect, bringing the gazer down to a sober appreciation of the text. The reputation of Lucile, indeed, is suffi- olently established; for, has it not been in blue and gold, and consequently in the hands of all fair readers of poetry in America, VOL. i.9 a familiar companion, since its first publica- tion ?a charming novel, with its society airs and more private sensibilities and heart ad- ventures, tickling the fancy with its seem- ingly careless but most artistical rhyming. Now, with its portrait of the author, Rohert Lytton, as a frontispiece, a countenance marked with the impress of thought and feeling, and the finely-drawn, earnest, and, at times, passionate illustrations of Dc Man- ncr, the work may fairly be said to renew its existence. The volume of Robert Buchanan, with the exception of three of its numerous separate poems, is entirely new to the public. It is too little to say of it that it well sustains the reputation of the author. Meg Blanc, the opening poem, is the story of a heroine of the northern seas, a shuple, stout-hearted woman of the north coast, schooled in adversity, braving the ocean in deeds of daring and hu- manity, sustained km a great private sorrow by the strength of a sorrow yet deeper, her love for bet half-wittect son. These are the elements of a pathetic poem ofgreat power and maral beauty. The treatment of the theme, with the cool breath of the ocean and its sublimities tem- pering the scene, is worthy of the old ballad age. An English and another Scottish Eclogue, exhibit a fine spirit of characteriza- tion of certain religious phenomena of the two countries. A Saints Story~~ is in an origi- nal vein, with a peculiar fascination in its wild humors. A Poem to David is a tribute to the memory of the Seottish poet, David Gray, in which a complaint of death is turned to minister to the expression of tenderness and affection. We might particularize others, for the lyre of the author has many strings, hut must be content with a general commendation of the work, and of the thoughtful and fre- quently forcible character of the illustrations,. especially in the views of the see-shore of the opening poem, by T. Dalziel, and the fantasies of the Saints Story, by Houghton. The animal subjects, by J. Wolf, The Moor lien and Highland Deer, are full of spirit. Yi Legends of St. Gwendoline (Putnam & Son) is the story of a lady of the Court of King Arthur, and fair Guenever, whose heart, long finding no suitor, among those who claimed it, to satisfy its longings, was at last smitten by the prowess of a knight, whose marriage to another drove gemitle Gwendoline to sorrow and retirement. There an angelic vision was vouchsafed to her troubled spirit, which thenceforward sought consolation and repose in the holy work of founding an ab- bey; but even in good works and in the hour of death her disappointment did not for- sake her. At the time of her departure, when the nuns fain would ask for her heart to be PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. taken and enshrined in silver on the altar of the Virgin in the abbey, Myne hearte (saythe she) yee shall bnrne, and upon St. Catherines Clyffe yee shall east its ashes to ye winds, for sithenee in life it had no earthile rest, nor treasnre, so neither in death maye it have. The qnaint~spelling of this sentence is an in- dex of the old legendary air of the story, which is brief though expanded by luxury of type and a series of well-exeented photographs from characteristic designs by Ehninger, into a sumptuous quarto. The whole work, in the delicacy of the text and the beauty of the illus- trations, h an air of great refinement. The work is anonymous; bnt we may venture to say its simple ~raeefulness is worthy of a eul- tivated ladys hand. It is appropriately dedi- cated, by permission, to the author of The Idylls of the King. ANOTHER artistical work in which photo~ raphy is employed as a substitute for engrav- ing is an illustrated holiday edition of iBuaas Tarn OShanter (Widdleton). it is printed in quarto iii ample typographical luxury. The designs, which exhibit a close study of the Scottish Physiognomy and an appreciation of the varied elements of the poem, are by E. H. Miller, whose work is skilfully rendered by Gardner, the well-known photographer at Washington. The illustrations are eight in number, in addition to the fine portrait, aJso a photograph, which faces the title page. A Landscape Boolc by American Artists and American Authors (Putnam & Son) is the revival or recasting, with additional illus- trations and letter-press, of the Home Book of the Picturesque, issued in a limited edi- tion some sixteen years ago, and which has long been out of print. The artists embrace Cole, Church, Cropsey, Durand, Gignoux, Kensctt, Miller, Richards, Smillie, Talbot and Weir, the interest in whose productions time certainly has not diminished; and no less may be said of the authors, including Cooper, Irving, Bryant, Bayard Taylor, Street, Whit- tier, M. E. Field, Tuekerma~i and Hillard. The engravings are on steel by Beckwith, Hal- pin and Hunt. Touches of Nature by Eminent Artists and Authors (Routladge) is a quarto volume of am- pie margin, in which Messrs. Strahan and Co., of London, in the words of their dedication of the book to Dr. Norman Macleod, have gathered much of the richest fruit of the magazines whichthey publish. In other words, here are, from Good Words, and ether sources, a comprehensive series of engravings on wood after the best designers of the day, Millais, Holman Hunt, Marcus Stone, Tenniel, eVatson, and others. The subjects, nearly a hundred in number, mostly from domestic life, are of various degrees of interest, and are all more or less impressed with the sincerity of the new school which sprang into being with the studies of the so-called Pre-Raphael- ites. Benedicite (Putnam & Son) is the title given to a book ofgreat fervor and moral beauty, illus- trative of the power, wisdom and goodness of God, as manifested in his works.. It is the pro- duction of an English gentleman, a physician, Dr. G. CHAPLIN CHILD, who has brought his study of the sciences and of the forces of na- ture to aid in the most interesting manner the cultivation of a truly devotional spirit. As the title intimates, the thread which hinds togethee~ the authors series of chapters is the Bene- dicite, Bless ye the Lord, the ii~vocation of the natural world in the Song of the Three Children to join in the ascriptions of praise and thanksgiving which filled their hearts at their great deliverence. The heavens, the plan- etary world, the seasons, the elements,the earth, with its products and inhabitants, are passed in review, magnifying the debt of gratitude to an Almighty Father, which the providence of more than twenty centuries has added to the knowledge and experience of the wisdom of Daniel and his sainted companions. But the debt was felt to be infinite then, and the strain can reach no higher now. It is to the credit of Dr. Child that he has written a popu- lar book on scientific phenomena which may be read with equal pleasure by learned and unlearned, by young and old, which is inter- esting for its facts, and which inculcates a religious sentiment without the least affecta- tion of any kind. The style, flowing on with- out eff6rt, is particularly pleasing. We com- mend the hook heartily for family reading. it should be added at once to all Sunday- school and parish libraries throughout the country. The elegance with which the work is printedit is from the Riverside press also fairly brings it within the class of Christ- mas gift-hooks. Prayers of the Ages, compiled by CAROLINE S. WHITMARsH (Ticknor & Fields), is also an elegant holiday volume prepared by the edi- tor in a catholic spirit which seeks to unite the aspirations of all ages and peoples. In ap- propriate sections, Heathen and Mohamed- an Prayers, Praise, Self-renunciation, Trouble, Confession, and others, the ut- terance of spiritually-minded writers of Eastern and classic lands, and of the modern world to our own day and hemisphere are brought to- gether. The juxtaposition of names is some- times curious, as in the pages where Jeremy Taylor, Wilberforce, Theodore Parker follow in succession; hut something of this is of course inevitable in so general a compilation; while much of the incongruity is avoided by 180 [Jan.

PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. taken and enshrined in silver on the altar of the Virgin in the abbey, Myne hearte (saythe she) yee shall bnrne, and upon St. Catherines Clyffe yee shall east its ashes to ye winds, for sithenee in life it had no earthile rest, nor treasnre, so neither in death maye it have. The qnaint~spelling of this sentence is an in- dex of the old legendary air of the story, which is brief though expanded by luxury of type and a series of well-exeented photographs from characteristic designs by Ehninger, into a sumptuous quarto. The whole work, in the delicacy of the text and the beauty of the illus- trations, h an air of great refinement. The work is anonymous; bnt we may venture to say its simple ~raeefulness is worthy of a eul- tivated ladys hand. It is appropriately dedi- cated, by permission, to the author of The Idylls of the King. ANOTHER artistical work in which photo~ raphy is employed as a substitute for engrav- ing is an illustrated holiday edition of iBuaas Tarn OShanter (Widdleton). it is printed in quarto iii ample typographical luxury. The designs, which exhibit a close study of the Scottish Physiognomy and an appreciation of the varied elements of the poem, are by E. H. Miller, whose work is skilfully rendered by Gardner, the well-known photographer at Washington. The illustrations are eight in number, in addition to the fine portrait, aJso a photograph, which faces the title page. A Landscape Boolc by American Artists and American Authors (Putnam & Son) is the revival or recasting, with additional illus- trations and letter-press, of the Home Book of the Picturesque, issued in a limited edi- tion some sixteen years ago, and which has long been out of print. The artists embrace Cole, Church, Cropsey, Durand, Gignoux, Kensctt, Miller, Richards, Smillie, Talbot and Weir, the interest in whose productions time certainly has not diminished; and no less may be said of the authors, including Cooper, Irving, Bryant, Bayard Taylor, Street, Whit- tier, M. E. Field, Tuekerma~i and Hillard. The engravings are on steel by Beckwith, Hal- pin and Hunt. Touches of Nature by Eminent Artists and Authors (Routladge) is a quarto volume of am- pie margin, in which Messrs. Strahan and Co., of London, in the words of their dedication of the book to Dr. Norman Macleod, have gathered much of the richest fruit of the magazines whichthey publish. In other words, here are, from Good Words, and ether sources, a comprehensive series of engravings on wood after the best designers of the day, Millais, Holman Hunt, Marcus Stone, Tenniel, eVatson, and others. The subjects, nearly a hundred in number, mostly from domestic life, are of various degrees of interest, and are all more or less impressed with the sincerity of the new school which sprang into being with the studies of the so-called Pre-Raphael- ites. Benedicite (Putnam & Son) is the title given to a book ofgreat fervor and moral beauty, illus- trative of the power, wisdom and goodness of God, as manifested in his works.. It is the pro- duction of an English gentleman, a physician, Dr. G. CHAPLIN CHILD, who has brought his study of the sciences and of the forces of na- ture to aid in the most interesting manner the cultivation of a truly devotional spirit. As the title intimates, the thread which hinds togethee~ the authors series of chapters is the Bene- dicite, Bless ye the Lord, the ii~vocation of the natural world in the Song of the Three Children to join in the ascriptions of praise and thanksgiving which filled their hearts at their great deliverence. The heavens, the plan- etary world, the seasons, the elements,the earth, with its products and inhabitants, are passed in review, magnifying the debt of gratitude to an Almighty Father, which the providence of more than twenty centuries has added to the knowledge and experience of the wisdom of Daniel and his sainted companions. But the debt was felt to be infinite then, and the strain can reach no higher now. It is to the credit of Dr. Child that he has written a popu- lar book on scientific phenomena which may be read with equal pleasure by learned and unlearned, by young and old, which is inter- esting for its facts, and which inculcates a religious sentiment without the least affecta- tion of any kind. The style, flowing on with- out eff6rt, is particularly pleasing. We com- mend the hook heartily for family reading. it should be added at once to all Sunday- school and parish libraries throughout the country. The elegance with which the work is printedit is from the Riverside press also fairly brings it within the class of Christ- mas gift-hooks. Prayers of the Ages, compiled by CAROLINE S. WHITMARsH (Ticknor & Fields), is also an elegant holiday volume prepared by the edi- tor in a catholic spirit which seeks to unite the aspirations of all ages and peoples. In ap- propriate sections, Heathen and Mohamed- an Prayers, Praise, Self-renunciation, Trouble, Confession, and others, the ut- terance of spiritually-minded writers of Eastern and classic lands, and of the modern world to our own day and hemisphere are brought to- gether. The juxtaposition of names is some- times curious, as in the pages where Jeremy Taylor, Wilberforce, Theodore Parker follow in succession; hut something of this is of course inevitable in so general a compilation; while much of the incongruity is avoided by 180 [Jan.

PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. taken and enshrined in silver on the altar of the Virgin in the abbey, Myne hearte (saythe she) yee shall bnrne, and upon St. Catherines Clyffe yee shall east its ashes to ye winds, for sithenee in life it had no earthile rest, nor treasnre, so neither in death maye it have. The qnaint~spelling of this sentence is an in- dex of the old legendary air of the story, which is brief though expanded by luxury of type and a series of well-exeented photographs from characteristic designs by Ehninger, into a sumptuous quarto. The whole work, in the delicacy of the text and the beauty of the illus- trations, h an air of great refinement. The work is anonymous; bnt we may venture to say its simple ~raeefulness is worthy of a eul- tivated ladys hand. It is appropriately dedi- cated, by permission, to the author of The Idylls of the King. ANOTHER artistical work in which photo~ raphy is employed as a substitute for engrav- ing is an illustrated holiday edition of iBuaas Tarn OShanter (Widdleton). it is printed in quarto iii ample typographical luxury. The designs, which exhibit a close study of the Scottish Physiognomy and an appreciation of the varied elements of the poem, are by E. H. Miller, whose work is skilfully rendered by Gardner, the well-known photographer at Washington. The illustrations are eight in number, in addition to the fine portrait, aJso a photograph, which faces the title page. A Landscape Boolc by American Artists and American Authors (Putnam & Son) is the revival or recasting, with additional illus- trations and letter-press, of the Home Book of the Picturesque, issued in a limited edi- tion some sixteen years ago, and which has long been out of print. The artists embrace Cole, Church, Cropsey, Durand, Gignoux, Kensctt, Miller, Richards, Smillie, Talbot and Weir, the interest in whose productions time certainly has not diminished; and no less may be said of the authors, including Cooper, Irving, Bryant, Bayard Taylor, Street, Whit- tier, M. E. Field, Tuekerma~i and Hillard. The engravings are on steel by Beckwith, Hal- pin and Hunt. Touches of Nature by Eminent Artists and Authors (Routladge) is a quarto volume of am- pie margin, in which Messrs. Strahan and Co., of London, in the words of their dedication of the book to Dr. Norman Macleod, have gathered much of the richest fruit of the magazines whichthey publish. In other words, here are, from Good Words, and ether sources, a comprehensive series of engravings on wood after the best designers of the day, Millais, Holman Hunt, Marcus Stone, Tenniel, eVatson, and others. The subjects, nearly a hundred in number, mostly from domestic life, are of various degrees of interest, and are all more or less impressed with the sincerity of the new school which sprang into being with the studies of the so-called Pre-Raphael- ites. Benedicite (Putnam & Son) is the title given to a book ofgreat fervor and moral beauty, illus- trative of the power, wisdom and goodness of God, as manifested in his works.. It is the pro- duction of an English gentleman, a physician, Dr. G. CHAPLIN CHILD, who has brought his study of the sciences and of the forces of na- ture to aid in the most interesting manner the cultivation of a truly devotional spirit. As the title intimates, the thread which hinds togethee~ the authors series of chapters is the Bene- dicite, Bless ye the Lord, the ii~vocation of the natural world in the Song of the Three Children to join in the ascriptions of praise and thanksgiving which filled their hearts at their great deliverence. The heavens, the plan- etary world, the seasons, the elements,the earth, with its products and inhabitants, are passed in review, magnifying the debt of gratitude to an Almighty Father, which the providence of more than twenty centuries has added to the knowledge and experience of the wisdom of Daniel and his sainted companions. But the debt was felt to be infinite then, and the strain can reach no higher now. It is to the credit of Dr. Child that he has written a popu- lar book on scientific phenomena which may be read with equal pleasure by learned and unlearned, by young and old, which is inter- esting for its facts, and which inculcates a religious sentiment without the least affecta- tion of any kind. The style, flowing on with- out eff6rt, is particularly pleasing. We com- mend the hook heartily for family reading. it should be added at once to all Sunday- school and parish libraries throughout the country. The elegance with which the work is printedit is from the Riverside press also fairly brings it within the class of Christ- mas gift-hooks. Prayers of the Ages, compiled by CAROLINE S. WHITMARsH (Ticknor & Fields), is also an elegant holiday volume prepared by the edi- tor in a catholic spirit which seeks to unite the aspirations of all ages and peoples. In ap- propriate sections, Heathen and Mohamed- an Prayers, Praise, Self-renunciation, Trouble, Confession, and others, the ut- terance of spiritually-minded writers of Eastern and classic lands, and of the modern world to our own day and hemisphere are brought to- gether. The juxtaposition of names is some- times curious, as in the pages where Jeremy Taylor, Wilberforce, Theodore Parker follow in succession; hut something of this is of course inevitable in so general a compilation; while much of the incongruity is avoided by 180 [Jan.

PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. taken and enshrined in silver on the altar of the Virgin in the abbey, Myne hearte (saythe she) yee shall bnrne, and upon St. Catherines Clyffe yee shall east its ashes to ye winds, for sithenee in life it had no earthile rest, nor treasnre, so neither in death maye it have. The qnaint~spelling of this sentence is an in- dex of the old legendary air of the story, which is brief though expanded by luxury of type and a series of well-exeented photographs from characteristic designs by Ehninger, into a sumptuous quarto. The whole work, in the delicacy of the text and the beauty of the illus- trations, h an air of great refinement. The work is anonymous; bnt we may venture to say its simple ~raeefulness is worthy of a eul- tivated ladys hand. It is appropriately dedi- cated, by permission, to the author of The Idylls of the King. ANOTHER artistical work in which photo~ raphy is employed as a substitute for engrav- ing is an illustrated holiday edition of iBuaas Tarn OShanter (Widdleton). it is printed in quarto iii ample typographical luxury. The designs, which exhibit a close study of the Scottish Physiognomy and an appreciation of the varied elements of the poem, are by E. H. Miller, whose work is skilfully rendered by Gardner, the well-known photographer at Washington. The illustrations are eight in number, in addition to the fine portrait, aJso a photograph, which faces the title page. A Landscape Boolc by American Artists and American Authors (Putnam & Son) is the revival or recasting, with additional illus- trations and letter-press, of the Home Book of the Picturesque, issued in a limited edi- tion some sixteen years ago, and which has long been out of print. The artists embrace Cole, Church, Cropsey, Durand, Gignoux, Kensctt, Miller, Richards, Smillie, Talbot and Weir, the interest in whose productions time certainly has not diminished; and no less may be said of the authors, including Cooper, Irving, Bryant, Bayard Taylor, Street, Whit- tier, M. E. Field, Tuekerma~i and Hillard. The engravings are on steel by Beckwith, Hal- pin and Hunt. Touches of Nature by Eminent Artists and Authors (Routladge) is a quarto volume of am- pie margin, in which Messrs. Strahan and Co., of London, in the words of their dedication of the book to Dr. Norman Macleod, have gathered much of the richest fruit of the magazines whichthey publish. In other words, here are, from Good Words, and ether sources, a comprehensive series of engravings on wood after the best designers of the day, Millais, Holman Hunt, Marcus Stone, Tenniel, eVatson, and others. The subjects, nearly a hundred in number, mostly from domestic life, are of various degrees of interest, and are all more or less impressed with the sincerity of the new school which sprang into being with the studies of the so-called Pre-Raphael- ites. Benedicite (Putnam & Son) is the title given to a book ofgreat fervor and moral beauty, illus- trative of the power, wisdom and goodness of God, as manifested in his works.. It is the pro- duction of an English gentleman, a physician, Dr. G. CHAPLIN CHILD, who has brought his study of the sciences and of the forces of na- ture to aid in the most interesting manner the cultivation of a truly devotional spirit. As the title intimates, the thread which hinds togethee~ the authors series of chapters is the Bene- dicite, Bless ye the Lord, the ii~vocation of the natural world in the Song of the Three Children to join in the ascriptions of praise and thanksgiving which filled their hearts at their great deliverence. The heavens, the plan- etary world, the seasons, the elements,the earth, with its products and inhabitants, are passed in review, magnifying the debt of gratitude to an Almighty Father, which the providence of more than twenty centuries has added to the knowledge and experience of the wisdom of Daniel and his sainted companions. But the debt was felt to be infinite then, and the strain can reach no higher now. It is to the credit of Dr. Child that he has written a popu- lar book on scientific phenomena which may be read with equal pleasure by learned and unlearned, by young and old, which is inter- esting for its facts, and which inculcates a religious sentiment without the least affecta- tion of any kind. The style, flowing on with- out eff6rt, is particularly pleasing. We com- mend the hook heartily for family reading. it should be added at once to all Sunday- school and parish libraries throughout the country. The elegance with which the work is printedit is from the Riverside press also fairly brings it within the class of Christ- mas gift-hooks. Prayers of the Ages, compiled by CAROLINE S. WHITMARsH (Ticknor & Fields), is also an elegant holiday volume prepared by the edi- tor in a catholic spirit which seeks to unite the aspirations of all ages and peoples. In ap- propriate sections, Heathen and Mohamed- an Prayers, Praise, Self-renunciation, Trouble, Confession, and others, the ut- terance of spiritually-minded writers of Eastern and classic lands, and of the modern world to our own day and hemisphere are brought to- gether. The juxtaposition of names is some- times curious, as in the pages where Jeremy Taylor, Wilberforce, Theodore Parker follow in succession; hut something of this is of course inevitable in so general a compilation; while much of the incongruity is avoided by 180 [Jan.

PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. taken and enshrined in silver on the altar of the Virgin in the abbey, Myne hearte (saythe she) yee shall bnrne, and upon St. Catherines Clyffe yee shall east its ashes to ye winds, for sithenee in life it had no earthile rest, nor treasnre, so neither in death maye it have. The qnaint~spelling of this sentence is an in- dex of the old legendary air of the story, which is brief though expanded by luxury of type and a series of well-exeented photographs from characteristic designs by Ehninger, into a sumptuous quarto. The whole work, in the delicacy of the text and the beauty of the illus- trations, h an air of great refinement. The work is anonymous; bnt we may venture to say its simple ~raeefulness is worthy of a eul- tivated ladys hand. It is appropriately dedi- cated, by permission, to the author of The Idylls of the King. ANOTHER artistical work in which photo~ raphy is employed as a substitute for engrav- ing is an illustrated holiday edition of iBuaas Tarn OShanter (Widdleton). it is printed in quarto iii ample typographical luxury. The designs, which exhibit a close study of the Scottish Physiognomy and an appreciation of the varied elements of the poem, are by E. H. Miller, whose work is skilfully rendered by Gardner, the well-known photographer at Washington. The illustrations are eight in number, in addition to the fine portrait, aJso a photograph, which faces the title page. A Landscape Boolc by American Artists and American Authors (Putnam & Son) is the revival or recasting, with additional illus- trations and letter-press, of the Home Book of the Picturesque, issued in a limited edi- tion some sixteen years ago, and which has long been out of print. The artists embrace Cole, Church, Cropsey, Durand, Gignoux, Kensctt, Miller, Richards, Smillie, Talbot and Weir, the interest in whose productions time certainly has not diminished; and no less may be said of the authors, including Cooper, Irving, Bryant, Bayard Taylor, Street, Whit- tier, M. E. Field, Tuekerma~i and Hillard. The engravings are on steel by Beckwith, Hal- pin and Hunt. Touches of Nature by Eminent Artists and Authors (Routladge) is a quarto volume of am- pie margin, in which Messrs. Strahan and Co., of London, in the words of their dedication of the book to Dr. Norman Macleod, have gathered much of the richest fruit of the magazines whichthey publish. In other words, here are, from Good Words, and ether sources, a comprehensive series of engravings on wood after the best designers of the day, Millais, Holman Hunt, Marcus Stone, Tenniel, eVatson, and others. The subjects, nearly a hundred in number, mostly from domestic life, are of various degrees of interest, and are all more or less impressed with the sincerity of the new school which sprang into being with the studies of the so-called Pre-Raphael- ites. Benedicite (Putnam & Son) is the title given to a book ofgreat fervor and moral beauty, illus- trative of the power, wisdom and goodness of God, as manifested in his works.. It is the pro- duction of an English gentleman, a physician, Dr. G. CHAPLIN CHILD, who has brought his study of the sciences and of the forces of na- ture to aid in the most interesting manner the cultivation of a truly devotional spirit. As the title intimates, the thread which hinds togethee~ the authors series of chapters is the Bene- dicite, Bless ye the Lord, the ii~vocation of the natural world in the Song of the Three Children to join in the ascriptions of praise and thanksgiving which filled their hearts at their great deliverence. The heavens, the plan- etary world, the seasons, the elements,the earth, with its products and inhabitants, are passed in review, magnifying the debt of gratitude to an Almighty Father, which the providence of more than twenty centuries has added to the knowledge and experience of the wisdom of Daniel and his sainted companions. But the debt was felt to be infinite then, and the strain can reach no higher now. It is to the credit of Dr. Child that he has written a popu- lar book on scientific phenomena which may be read with equal pleasure by learned and unlearned, by young and old, which is inter- esting for its facts, and which inculcates a religious sentiment without the least affecta- tion of any kind. The style, flowing on with- out eff6rt, is particularly pleasing. We com- mend the hook heartily for family reading. it should be added at once to all Sunday- school and parish libraries throughout the country. The elegance with which the work is printedit is from the Riverside press also fairly brings it within the class of Christ- mas gift-hooks. Prayers of the Ages, compiled by CAROLINE S. WHITMARsH (Ticknor & Fields), is also an elegant holiday volume prepared by the edi- tor in a catholic spirit which seeks to unite the aspirations of all ages and peoples. In ap- propriate sections, Heathen and Mohamed- an Prayers, Praise, Self-renunciation, Trouble, Confession, and others, the ut- terance of spiritually-minded writers of Eastern and classic lands, and of the modern world to our own day and hemisphere are brought to- gether. The juxtaposition of names is some- times curious, as in the pages where Jeremy Taylor, Wilberforce, Theodore Parker follow in succession; hut something of this is of course inevitable in so general a compilation; while much of the incongruity is avoided by 180 [Jan.

PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. taken and enshrined in silver on the altar of the Virgin in the abbey, Myne hearte (saythe she) yee shall bnrne, and upon St. Catherines Clyffe yee shall east its ashes to ye winds, for sithenee in life it had no earthile rest, nor treasnre, so neither in death maye it have. The qnaint~spelling of this sentence is an in- dex of the old legendary air of the story, which is brief though expanded by luxury of type and a series of well-exeented photographs from characteristic designs by Ehninger, into a sumptuous quarto. The whole work, in the delicacy of the text and the beauty of the illus- trations, h an air of great refinement. The work is anonymous; bnt we may venture to say its simple ~raeefulness is worthy of a eul- tivated ladys hand. It is appropriately dedi- cated, by permission, to the author of The Idylls of the King. ANOTHER artistical work in which photo~ raphy is employed as a substitute for engrav- ing is an illustrated holiday edition of iBuaas Tarn OShanter (Widdleton). it is printed in quarto iii ample typographical luxury. The designs, which exhibit a close study of the Scottish Physiognomy and an appreciation of the varied elements of the poem, are by E. H. Miller, whose work is skilfully rendered by Gardner, the well-known photographer at Washington. The illustrations are eight in number, in addition to the fine portrait, aJso a photograph, which faces the title page. A Landscape Boolc by American Artists and American Authors (Putnam & Son) is the revival or recasting, with additional illus- trations and letter-press, of the Home Book of the Picturesque, issued in a limited edi- tion some sixteen years ago, and which has long been out of print. The artists embrace Cole, Church, Cropsey, Durand, Gignoux, Kensctt, Miller, Richards, Smillie, Talbot and Weir, the interest in whose productions time certainly has not diminished; and no less may be said of the authors, including Cooper, Irving, Bryant, Bayard Taylor, Street, Whit- tier, M. E. Field, Tuekerma~i and Hillard. The engravings are on steel by Beckwith, Hal- pin and Hunt. Touches of Nature by Eminent Artists and Authors (Routladge) is a quarto volume of am- pie margin, in which Messrs. Strahan and Co., of London, in the words of their dedication of the book to Dr. Norman Macleod, have gathered much of the richest fruit of the magazines whichthey publish. In other words, here are, from Good Words, and ether sources, a comprehensive series of engravings on wood after the best designers of the day, Millais, Holman Hunt, Marcus Stone, Tenniel, eVatson, and others. The subjects, nearly a hundred in number, mostly from domestic life, are of various degrees of interest, and are all more or less impressed with the sincerity of the new school which sprang into being with the studies of the so-called Pre-Raphael- ites. Benedicite (Putnam & Son) is the title given to a book ofgreat fervor and moral beauty, illus- trative of the power, wisdom and goodness of God, as manifested in his works.. It is the pro- duction of an English gentleman, a physician, Dr. G. CHAPLIN CHILD, who has brought his study of the sciences and of the forces of na- ture to aid in the most interesting manner the cultivation of a truly devotional spirit. As the title intimates, the thread which hinds togethee~ the authors series of chapters is the Bene- dicite, Bless ye the Lord, the ii~vocation of the natural world in the Song of the Three Children to join in the ascriptions of praise and thanksgiving which filled their hearts at their great deliverence. The heavens, the plan- etary world, the seasons, the elements,the earth, with its products and inhabitants, are passed in review, magnifying the debt of gratitude to an Almighty Father, which the providence of more than twenty centuries has added to the knowledge and experience of the wisdom of Daniel and his sainted companions. But the debt was felt to be infinite then, and the strain can reach no higher now. It is to the credit of Dr. Child that he has written a popu- lar book on scientific phenomena which may be read with equal pleasure by learned and unlearned, by young and old, which is inter- esting for its facts, and which inculcates a religious sentiment without the least affecta- tion of any kind. The style, flowing on with- out eff6rt, is particularly pleasing. We com- mend the hook heartily for family reading. it should be added at once to all Sunday- school and parish libraries throughout the country. The elegance with which the work is printedit is from the Riverside press also fairly brings it within the class of Christ- mas gift-hooks. Prayers of the Ages, compiled by CAROLINE S. WHITMARsH (Ticknor & Fields), is also an elegant holiday volume prepared by the edi- tor in a catholic spirit which seeks to unite the aspirations of all ages and peoples. In ap- propriate sections, Heathen and Mohamed- an Prayers, Praise, Self-renunciation, Trouble, Confession, and others, the ut- terance of spiritually-minded writers of Eastern and classic lands, and of the modern world to our own day and hemisphere are brought to- gether. The juxtaposition of names is some- times curious, as in the pages where Jeremy Taylor, Wilberforce, Theodore Parker follow in succession; hut something of this is of course inevitable in so general a compilation; while much of the incongruity is avoided by 180 [Jan. MONTHLY CHRONICLE. the special classifications. Thus the Church Collects have an appropriate place by them- selves. The children are of course entitled to a place at the Christmas board, and Messrs. Routledge have made provision for them in a charming illustrated edition of those old favorites of the nursery by Jane and C. Tay- lor, of Ongar, the Original Poems. Some of these poems for little people are better known in England than America. One, how- ever, is in the recollection of every hodythe verses with the reply to so many reminders of maternal kindness My Mother. The rest deserve to be as familiar among our house- hold words, and are likely to be, in the attract- ive dress of the present edition. For a similar class of readers MARY Howrrr, discoursing of Our Four-footed Friends far- nishes a vehicle for the spirited designs of Harrison Weir, whose animal painting is worthy of Landseer himself; while for the lovers of something more quaint and humor- ous James Greenwood narrates The Purgatory of Peter the Crue4 who for his evil acts in torturing men and animals was condemned, after a sudden death, the conseqi~ience of his atrocities, to the life of a beetle, when he learns something from his new acquaintances hi Natural History of the pleasure of being tor- tured. It is a hook to be encouraged by time Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Ani- mals. The author is quaintly and resolutely supported in his moral lesson by the pencil of the new humorous designer, ERNEST GRISET. DIcKENs Christmas Stories closes our list in a full-paged volume of the Globe Edition (Ilurd & Houghton) capacious enough to hold also the Pictures from Italy and The American Notes. We do not know that there is any thing especially attractive in this con- nection except the cheapness of the whole. This well-printed volume presents also the portrait of the author, as he will soon he seen by tens of thousands of our amusement-seek- ing citizens, a view of his residence at Gads- bill, and two striking designs by Mr. Darley. FINE ARTS. WE propose 1in this department of the Magazine, to give every month a brief summa- ry of the progress of American Art; or, per- haps, it would be more correct to say, of Art in America, as we shall include notices of foreign works, paintings, exhihited in this country. It will he our aim to present just amd thorough criticisms, recognizing merit wherever it appears, and when it becomes our duty to speak of faults, to do so in a kindly spirit. Artists frequently complain, and sometimes with justice, that their works are condemned, either by critics ignorant of the first principles of art, and capable only to mislead the public, or by prejudiced advo- cates of some particular school, who can see no merit in pictures that are not painted on their theories. In either case, artists and public suffer alike, the artist in the sale of his pictures, and the public in the perver- sion of their taste. We shall endeavor, in these pag~es, to serve artist and public with strict impartiality, as the friend of both, be- stowing censure where censure is due, but always more ready to praise, than to condemn. These prefatory remarks are not intended to convey the impression that American artists want to be coddled, or that they are afraid or unwilling to have the truth spoken of their works. In almost all respects, American ar- tists stand upon an equality with those of Eu- rope, and require no mans courtesy. But the feeling is very prevalent among them that most art-critics, knowing less of pictures than they ought to, seek to hide their ignorance under a mask of severity; and we wish mere- ly to indicate the spirit which we intend shall animate our own criticism. Tnz most striking Art feature of the Fall and Winter, is the great interest suddenly manifested by the New York public in water- colors. Heretofore this beautiful art has been under a cloud in America, and those who have attempted to make it popular have met with nothing but discouragement. Until this Fall the number of artists who had seemingly given themselves to water-color, might be told on the fingers of one hand. In this city there were hut two or three menthe Hills, father and son, and Charles ParsonswImo could with justice he called water-colorists, and neither of them received, until very lately, the recog- nition due him. True, in the case of the Hills this was partly owing to the peculiari- ties of their style ; but the subjects chosen by Mr. Parsons were not as are always popu- lar in oil-paintings. His treatment was broad and natural, and entirely free from the idio- syncrasies that offended people in the work of the Hills ; yet his finest efforts remained on his hands, and indeed were scarcely noticed when exhibited. To the Artists Fnnd Society of this city belongs the credit of bringing wa- ter-colors, for the first time, In an attractive and striking light before the public. Many of our readers will remember the impressions made by the fine collection in the East Room of the National Academy Building, last Winter, the first large collection of water-colors ever formed in this country. Out of the whole num- ber of works on exhibition in that mom, not 1868.] 181

MONTHLY CHRONICLE. the special classifications. Thus the Church Collects have an appropriate place by them- selves. The children are of course entitled to a place at the Christmas board, and Messrs. Routledge have made provision for them in a charming illustrated edition of those old favorites of the nursery by Jane and C. Tay- lor, of Ongar, the Original Poems. Some of these poems for little people are better known in England than America. One, how- ever, is in the recollection of every hodythe verses with the reply to so many reminders of maternal kindness My Mother. The rest deserve to be as familiar among our house- hold words, and are likely to be, in the attract- ive dress of the present edition. For a similar class of readers MARY Howrrr, discoursing of Our Four-footed Friends far- nishes a vehicle for the spirited designs of Harrison Weir, whose animal painting is worthy of Landseer himself; while for the lovers of something more quaint and humor- ous James Greenwood narrates The Purgatory of Peter the Crue4 who for his evil acts in torturing men and animals was condemned, after a sudden death, the conseqi~ience of his atrocities, to the life of a beetle, when he learns something from his new acquaintances hi Natural History of the pleasure of being tor- tured. It is a hook to be encouraged by time Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Ani- mals. The author is quaintly and resolutely supported in his moral lesson by the pencil of the new humorous designer, ERNEST GRISET. DIcKENs Christmas Stories closes our list in a full-paged volume of the Globe Edition (Ilurd & Houghton) capacious enough to hold also the Pictures from Italy and The American Notes. We do not know that there is any thing especially attractive in this con- nection except the cheapness of the whole. This well-printed volume presents also the portrait of the author, as he will soon he seen by tens of thousands of our amusement-seek- ing citizens, a view of his residence at Gads- bill, and two striking designs by Mr. Darley. FINE ARTS. WE propose 1in this department of the Magazine, to give every month a brief summa- ry of the progress of American Art; or, per- haps, it would be more correct to say, of Art in America, as we shall include notices of foreign works, paintings, exhihited in this country. It will he our aim to present just amd thorough criticisms, recognizing merit wherever it appears, and when it becomes our duty to speak of faults, to do so in a kindly spirit. Artists frequently complain, and sometimes with justice, that their works are condemned, either by critics ignorant of the first principles of art, and capable only to mislead the public, or by prejudiced advo- cates of some particular school, who can see no merit in pictures that are not painted on their theories. In either case, artists and public suffer alike, the artist in the sale of his pictures, and the public in the perver- sion of their taste. We shall endeavor, in these pag~es, to serve artist and public with strict impartiality, as the friend of both, be- stowing censure where censure is due, but always more ready to praise, than to condemn. These prefatory remarks are not intended to convey the impression that American artists want to be coddled, or that they are afraid or unwilling to have the truth spoken of their works. In almost all respects, American ar- tists stand upon an equality with those of Eu- rope, and require no mans courtesy. But the feeling is very prevalent among them that most art-critics, knowing less of pictures than they ought to, seek to hide their ignorance under a mask of severity; and we wish mere- ly to indicate the spirit which we intend shall animate our own criticism. Tnz most striking Art feature of the Fall and Winter, is the great interest suddenly manifested by the New York public in water- colors. Heretofore this beautiful art has been under a cloud in America, and those who have attempted to make it popular have met with nothing but discouragement. Until this Fall the number of artists who had seemingly given themselves to water-color, might be told on the fingers of one hand. In this city there were hut two or three menthe Hills, father and son, and Charles ParsonswImo could with justice he called water-colorists, and neither of them received, until very lately, the recog- nition due him. True, in the case of the Hills this was partly owing to the peculiari- ties of their style ; but the subjects chosen by Mr. Parsons were not as are always popu- lar in oil-paintings. His treatment was broad and natural, and entirely free from the idio- syncrasies that offended people in the work of the Hills ; yet his finest efforts remained on his hands, and indeed were scarcely noticed when exhibited. To the Artists Fnnd Society of this city belongs the credit of bringing wa- ter-colors, for the first time, In an attractive and striking light before the public. Many of our readers will remember the impressions made by the fine collection in the East Room of the National Academy Building, last Winter, the first large collection of water-colors ever formed in this country. Out of the whole num- ber of works on exhibition in that mom, not 1868.] 181

MONTHLY CHRONICLE. the special classifications. Thus the Church Collects have an appropriate place by them- selves. The children are of course entitled to a place at the Christmas board, and Messrs. Routledge have made provision for them in a charming illustrated edition of those old favorites of the nursery by Jane and C. Tay- lor, of Ongar, the Original Poems. Some of these poems for little people are better known in England than America. One, how- ever, is in the recollection of every hodythe verses with the reply to so many reminders of maternal kindness My Mother. The rest deserve to be as familiar among our house- hold words, and are likely to be, in the attract- ive dress of the present edition. For a similar class of readers MARY Howrrr, discoursing of Our Four-footed Friends far- nishes a vehicle for the spirited designs of Harrison Weir, whose animal painting is worthy of Landseer himself; while for the lovers of something more quaint and humor- ous James Greenwood narrates The Purgatory of Peter the Crue4 who for his evil acts in torturing men and animals was condemned, after a sudden death, the conseqi~ience of his atrocities, to the life of a beetle, when he learns something from his new acquaintances hi Natural History of the pleasure of being tor- tured. It is a hook to be encouraged by time Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Ani- mals. The author is quaintly and resolutely supported in his moral lesson by the pencil of the new humorous designer, ERNEST GRISET. DIcKENs Christmas Stories closes our list in a full-paged volume of the Globe Edition (Ilurd & Houghton) capacious enough to hold also the Pictures from Italy and The American Notes. We do not know that there is any thing especially attractive in this con- nection except the cheapness of the whole. This well-printed volume presents also the portrait of the author, as he will soon he seen by tens of thousands of our amusement-seek- ing citizens, a view of his residence at Gads- bill, and two striking designs by Mr. Darley. FINE ARTS. WE propose 1in this department of the Magazine, to give every month a brief summa- ry of the progress of American Art; or, per- haps, it would be more correct to say, of Art in America, as we shall include notices of foreign works, paintings, exhihited in this country. It will he our aim to present just amd thorough criticisms, recognizing merit wherever it appears, and when it becomes our duty to speak of faults, to do so in a kindly spirit. Artists frequently complain, and sometimes with justice, that their works are condemned, either by critics ignorant of the first principles of art, and capable only to mislead the public, or by prejudiced advo- cates of some particular school, who can see no merit in pictures that are not painted on their theories. In either case, artists and public suffer alike, the artist in the sale of his pictures, and the public in the perver- sion of their taste. We shall endeavor, in these pag~es, to serve artist and public with strict impartiality, as the friend of both, be- stowing censure where censure is due, but always more ready to praise, than to condemn. These prefatory remarks are not intended to convey the impression that American artists want to be coddled, or that they are afraid or unwilling to have the truth spoken of their works. In almost all respects, American ar- tists stand upon an equality with those of Eu- rope, and require no mans courtesy. But the feeling is very prevalent among them that most art-critics, knowing less of pictures than they ought to, seek to hide their ignorance under a mask of severity; and we wish mere- ly to indicate the spirit which we intend shall animate our own criticism. Tnz most striking Art feature of the Fall and Winter, is the great interest suddenly manifested by the New York public in water- colors. Heretofore this beautiful art has been under a cloud in America, and those who have attempted to make it popular have met with nothing but discouragement. Until this Fall the number of artists who had seemingly given themselves to water-color, might be told on the fingers of one hand. In this city there were hut two or three menthe Hills, father and son, and Charles ParsonswImo could with justice he called water-colorists, and neither of them received, until very lately, the recog- nition due him. True, in the case of the Hills this was partly owing to the peculiari- ties of their style ; but the subjects chosen by Mr. Parsons were not as are always popu- lar in oil-paintings. His treatment was broad and natural, and entirely free from the idio- syncrasies that offended people in the work of the Hills ; yet his finest efforts remained on his hands, and indeed were scarcely noticed when exhibited. To the Artists Fnnd Society of this city belongs the credit of bringing wa- ter-colors, for the first time, In an attractive and striking light before the public. Many of our readers will remember the impressions made by the fine collection in the East Room of the National Academy Building, last Winter, the first large collection of water-colors ever formed in this country. Out of the whole num- ber of works on exhibition in that mom, not 1868.] 181 132 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Jan. more that. a dozen could be classed even as second rate; yet their qualities of tone and color were so admirable and attractive, that the oil-paintings in the exhibition were qnite neg- lected in their favor. From this beginning, grew the first concert- ed efforts of our Artists, to found a Water- color school in America. Seeing the great in- terest excited by really good work, and famil- iar with the capabilities of the art, a few of them met together last Spring, and formed the American Society of Paiaters in Water (Piers. The list of members included some of our best-known painters in oil,Samnel Colman, William Hart, R. S. Gifford, F. M. H. De Haas, J. F. Cooper, J. G. Brown, E. Leutze and others. At present, the number of memhers is not far from fifty. The Society resolved, at the time of its formation to bold an exhibition in December, and to spend the Snmmer in making preparations for it. The necessity of going to press early, compels us to defer to our next number a full description of this exhibition; but we have had the pleas- ure of seeing, in the studios of several of the members, the fruits of their Summer studies. much as we had expected from the skill and genius of such men as Colman, Williams, lhtrt, De liass, the Farrars, H. H. Newman and others, we were not prepared for the mag- nificence of their success. Colman, who is President of the Society, has thrown himself heart and soul into the work, and has produc- ed a large number of water.colors, which for all that is admirable in the art, will bear comparison with the best ofEnglish work. The success of William Hart is no less pronounc- ed. This artist spent the whole Summer and Fall among the Maine Mountains, working al- together in water-color, most of the time out of doors, and has brou~ht back to the city a series of sketches and finished drawings of astonishing variety and excellence. Many of them surpass any thing he has everdone in oil, especially in the expression of sunligbt and atmosphere. One of these, a large coast scene, the time sunset, is, we think, one of the finest water-colors ever painted in this or ny other country. But we must defer particular criticism until our next number. A very erroneous impression prevails in this country in regard to the durability of water- colors. The truth is, they are not more liable to change than oil-paintings. They may fade a trifle, after long exposure to light, just as oil paintings darken; but in most cases, the change is hardly perceptible. Another erro- neous impression affects artists only. It is that working in water-colors injures the eye for working in oil. We have the testimony of the greatest men in English Art to show that this is not the case. The most celebrated wa- ter-colorists have been equally celebrated in oil-painting. Tax FationaZ Academy of Asign have wisely inaugurated Fall and Winter Exhibi- tions; one of the advantages of this arrange- ment will be an opportunity for the artists to sell their pictures without recourse to brokers, as is the case in Europe, where the best paint- ings are bought directly from the walls of the annual exhibitions. The opening reception evening of the season was Nov. 14th, which was perhaps a little too early to ensure a full exhibition of new paIntings. Many of the artists were still in the country, and the few who had returned had scarcely begun to get their studios in order for Fall and Winter work. The Academy were therefore compel- led to suspend for the winter season their rule in regard to pictures that have been exhibited, and to fill the vacant spaces on their walls with works long familiar to the public. Between two hundred and fifty and three hundred pic- tures were exhibited on the opening night. As a whole, the exhibition was inferior to what we are accustomed to find in the rooms of the National Academy; a defect which may be avoided in the future, by postponing the opening until the first or the middle of December. Tax Artists Fund Society opened their Annual Exhibition Nov 11th, at Putnams gallery, 661 Broadway. Disappointed of ob- taining a large gallery this year, the National Academy building hem closed against them on account of the new arrangement for Winter ex- hibitions, they were compelled to move into pretty close quarters, and limit their exhibi- tion to works contributed by the members of the Society. Paintings by Gifford, Darley, Hennessy, Beard, Hicks, Lang, and other well-known artists, gave character to the ex- hibition. Giffords New Jersey Coast a long stretch of sandy beach with a dreamy summer sky and still dreamier summer sea drew every body to it by the charm of its loveliness. Darleys water-color sketches were interesting in themselves, and as showing the power of the artist over material which he has just begun to work in. Beards contribution was a painting of bearish humor, which hard- ly did him justice, either as to wit, or execu- tion. Hubbard had two exquisite bits of mountain scenery, beautiful in sentiment and execution. One of the most vigorous paintings in the exhibition was Heanessys Fire in the City at Night, the strongest and most man- ly piece of work we have ever seen from his hands in a long time. Boughtons two contri- butions Forget Me Not, and A Little Quiet Practice attracted much attention, as did also Warrens hotel Sirens, and Women of Central America. The progress exhibited by this artist is very marked. His pictures this year show a decided advance over those of the lastycar, in respect to feeling MONTHLY CHRoNIcLE. and execution. Among the other noticeable pictures in the collection, may be mentioned the Lovers Letter Box, by A. Jones; Feeding the Chickens, by Thomas Hicks; New Hampshire Scenery, by David John- son; Meditation, by Louis Lang, and The Haunted House (a misnomer, by the way), by W. S. Sontagg. THE BrooJcZyn Art Association held its sev- enth Annual reception Nov. 20th, at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. The exhibition of paintings was large and unusually interest- ing. We understand that this flourishing Society intend the erection of a handsome Academy of Design, to contain a permanent free picture-gallery, where the artists of Brooklyn and other cities can exhibit their works on sale, free of all expense. WILLIAM PAGE opened an exhibition of his works early in November, in the large hall of the Tenth street Studio Building. Notwith- standing their many admirable qualities as paintings, Mr. Pages pictures are deservedly unpopular. He paints, as Lamb threatened to write, for antiquity. Cant he realize the fact that, as Titian lived and painted for his own age,it is the part of modern artists to live and paine for theirs? Why should he waste his genius and knowledge in the vain attempt to call up the ghost of Titians art to vivify his own? The age of Venuses is past, as a man of Mr. Pages ability ou~ht to know, and people demand something nearer to the interests and ideas of their own time. FAGNANI has painted a fine portrait of Gen. Sheridan, another of Sir Henry Buiwer, and is at work on another of Madame His- toris charming daughter, Bianca. These in- teresting portraits, with other line products of the artists talent, may be seen at his stu- dio, No. 43 East Twelfth street. Cauaca sailed for Europe in November, in- tending to pass the winter in Syria. He has painted two superb tropical landscapes during the summer. Bssras~c, the popular and skilfal animal Taz PahauAnasonlc Socszvv of New York has signalized the opening of its twenty- sixth season by the election of a new President, and that from the ranks nei- ther of professional musicians nor of artists but of amateurs. The former incumbents of the presidential chair have all been profession- al men musically, and this departure from a rule of twenty-five years observance has cre- ated some sensation in musical circles. The new president is Dr. B. 0. Doremus, the genial and popular Professor of Chemis- try at the New York College and Bellevue painter of Philadelphia, has removed to this city, and opened a studio at time corner of Tenth street and Broadway. Caorszv has removed his studio to the apartments adjoining Putnams gallery. LANes art school is reopened at his stu- dio, corner of Twenty-eighth street and Broad- way. It is deservedly popular. BEARD has finished a very clever and char- acteristic comic picture called The Old Woman who Lived in a Shoe. Lz CLEAR has made an excellent portrait of Mr. West, formerly Principal of the Rut- gers Institute. LAUNT Tao eson has finished the coloss~ l model of his bust of Bryant, for the Central Park. It is to be cast in bronze. GaEENoueas ideal bust of lIeloise has been offered for sale, owing to the straight- ened circumstances of the owner, for whom it was executed nearly twenty years ago. Ma. W. T. BLODGETT, of this city, has just received a fine crayon portrait of the poet Browning, drawn for him by Mr. Samuel Law- rence, of London. A 50N of Mr. Irving Van Wart has mod- elled a fine bust of his grandfather, who mar- ried a sister of Washington Irving, which is on exhibition at the picture store of Mr. Schaus. WxsczLzE has finished an elaborate land- scape, with a rare effect of light, the scene of which is at Bethel, Maine, where William hart made his magnificent studies in water color this summer. The work of these art- ists is very dissimilar, yet each is beautiful and admirable. CRANCH has made some fine studies of Hudson River scenery this summer, and is put- ting several of the best in water-color. SaA~rTucxs most important work this win- ter is a large and beautiful landscape called October in the White Mountains. Only, we are becoming a little tired of the everlasting repetition ot motives, color, and sentiment to be found in the works of this artist; these might be pardoned in a man of inferior pow- ers, but Shattuck cannot plead this excuse. M US IC. Medical College. The Doctor owes his elec- tion to his enviable social position and taste for music combined. The Society has never been in a very flourishing condition finan- cially, and has certainly suffered latterly from the increase of other excellent orchestral con- certs. It is to be hoped that increased interest may be awakened through the efforts of Doc- tor Doremus and his friends, and that the Society may now macst with the support it de- serves, although it is a little humiliating to see the stiff-necked adorers of classical music, 1868.] ia~

MONTHLY CHRoNIcLE. and execution. Among the other noticeable pictures in the collection, may be mentioned the Lovers Letter Box, by A. Jones; Feeding the Chickens, by Thomas Hicks; New Hampshire Scenery, by David John- son; Meditation, by Louis Lang, and The Haunted House (a misnomer, by the way), by W. S. Sontagg. THE BrooJcZyn Art Association held its sev- enth Annual reception Nov. 20th, at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. The exhibition of paintings was large and unusually interest- ing. We understand that this flourishing Society intend the erection of a handsome Academy of Design, to contain a permanent free picture-gallery, where the artists of Brooklyn and other cities can exhibit their works on sale, free of all expense. WILLIAM PAGE opened an exhibition of his works early in November, in the large hall of the Tenth street Studio Building. Notwith- standing their many admirable qualities as paintings, Mr. Pages pictures are deservedly unpopular. He paints, as Lamb threatened to write, for antiquity. Cant he realize the fact that, as Titian lived and painted for his own age,it is the part of modern artists to live and paine for theirs? Why should he waste his genius and knowledge in the vain attempt to call up the ghost of Titians art to vivify his own? The age of Venuses is past, as a man of Mr. Pages ability ou~ht to know, and people demand something nearer to the interests and ideas of their own time. FAGNANI has painted a fine portrait of Gen. Sheridan, another of Sir Henry Buiwer, and is at work on another of Madame His- toris charming daughter, Bianca. These in- teresting portraits, with other line products of the artists talent, may be seen at his stu- dio, No. 43 East Twelfth street. Cauaca sailed for Europe in November, in- tending to pass the winter in Syria. He has painted two superb tropical landscapes during the summer. Bssras~c, the popular and skilfal animal Taz PahauAnasonlc Socszvv of New York has signalized the opening of its twenty- sixth season by the election of a new President, and that from the ranks nei- ther of professional musicians nor of artists but of amateurs. The former incumbents of the presidential chair have all been profession- al men musically, and this departure from a rule of twenty-five years observance has cre- ated some sensation in musical circles. The new president is Dr. B. 0. Doremus, the genial and popular Professor of Chemis- try at the New York College and Bellevue painter of Philadelphia, has removed to this city, and opened a studio at time corner of Tenth street and Broadway. Caorszv has removed his studio to the apartments adjoining Putnams gallery. LANes art school is reopened at his stu- dio, corner of Twenty-eighth street and Broad- way. It is deservedly popular. BEARD has finished a very clever and char- acteristic comic picture called The Old Woman who Lived in a Shoe. Lz CLEAR has made an excellent portrait of Mr. West, formerly Principal of the Rut- gers Institute. LAUNT Tao eson has finished the coloss~ l model of his bust of Bryant, for the Central Park. It is to be cast in bronze. GaEENoueas ideal bust of lIeloise has been offered for sale, owing to the straight- ened circumstances of the owner, for whom it was executed nearly twenty years ago. Ma. W. T. BLODGETT, of this city, has just received a fine crayon portrait of the poet Browning, drawn for him by Mr. Samuel Law- rence, of London. A 50N of Mr. Irving Van Wart has mod- elled a fine bust of his grandfather, who mar- ried a sister of Washington Irving, which is on exhibition at the picture store of Mr. Schaus. WxsczLzE has finished an elaborate land- scape, with a rare effect of light, the scene of which is at Bethel, Maine, where William hart made his magnificent studies in water color this summer. The work of these art- ists is very dissimilar, yet each is beautiful and admirable. CRANCH has made some fine studies of Hudson River scenery this summer, and is put- ting several of the best in water-color. SaA~rTucxs most important work this win- ter is a large and beautiful landscape called October in the White Mountains. Only, we are becoming a little tired of the everlasting repetition ot motives, color, and sentiment to be found in the works of this artist; these might be pardoned in a man of inferior pow- ers, but Shattuck cannot plead this excuse. M US IC. Medical College. The Doctor owes his elec- tion to his enviable social position and taste for music combined. The Society has never been in a very flourishing condition finan- cially, and has certainly suffered latterly from the increase of other excellent orchestral con- certs. It is to be hoped that increased interest may be awakened through the efforts of Doc- tor Doremus and his friends, and that the Society may now macst with the support it de- serves, although it is a little humiliating to see the stiff-necked adorers of classical music, 1868.] ia~ PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. thus compelled to bow to the popular dictum for the sake of artistic bread and butter! The first condition upon which the new president insisted was that the orchestra of the Philharmonic should be increased to one hundred members. This at once places the performances of the Society beyond the possi- bility of a great deal of competition, as no pri- vate concert-manager could present such an array of instrumentalists more than a few tunes in one season, nor are even that few very probable. Tine to their promise, therefore, the one hundred members appeared in truly imposing array at the first rehearsal, at the Academy of Music on Friday afternoon, October 25, before a crowded audience of New Yorks fairest re- presentatives. It was delightful to witness such a splendid culmination of strength in artistic resources manifested by this time-honored Society, and to compare it with the brave but small number of instrumentalists who used to meet at the old Apollo Rooms below Canal street fifteen years ago. They used to give us good music in those sober old days, for the music was almost the same they now give us, but a Beethoven symphony is a different thing to our ears now from what it used to be, and the Pastorale, hy ~ne hundred performers (and they as fine as any performers in the world), Ah! who shall blame us for growing rhapsodical over it? The public rehearsals of the Society occur every two weeks as formerly, and the concerts every six weeks. The new terms for tickets nay not serve to popularize the Society, but we still agree with the directors in their opin- ion that good music ought to be paid for. The only question, with us, is, wil? the public pay for it? We hope they will. At~ the first concert of the Society, Novem- her 1~, the Pastorale Symphony of Beethoven, Schumanns Manfred Overture, and Liszts Poeme Sympiwnique Mazeppa, were the orchestral works. Mr. Richard Hoffman (pi- anist) and Madam Camille Urso (violinist) were the solo artists. Of course, from such interpreters nothing less than perfection was to be expected, nor were such expectations disappointed. Some critics may whine about a wrong conception of the composer in the per- formance of certain compositions, and that Madame Urso lacks the vigor of a Vicuxtemps is not to be denied. But her technique is so admirable and her self-possession and expres- sion so irreproachable, we can excuse the lack of the masculine element in consideration of the abundance and charm of the feminine, so rare but so touching among artists. Hoff- man was, of course, as splendid as ever, and just as cold, but some of the critics again would surely find fault if he had introduced sentiment into Mozarts concerto. Neverthe less, Mozart was not quite a block either of wood or stone. The concert was a brilliant and encouraging opening of the season. Carl Bergman con- ducted. THE PHaLnAineoNIc Socuny OF BaiooxuvN merits a few words, although so far behind its New York namesake, as a Society properly so considered. The N. Y. Society consists of the performers themselves, every man of whom takes a personal pride in the success of the concerts. In Brooklyn, on the contrary, the instrumentalists are hired by a coterie of men of wealth or position, who dictate the programmes, and whose egregious ignorance about things artistic and musical, has made them the butt of musical people for years. Their first concert took place at the Brook- ly Academy of Music on Nov. 9th, and on the programme we find the Benvennto Cdli- ni overture of Berlioz, put down as new, when it was one of the composers earliest suc- cesses years ago! Theodore Thomas conducted in his usual unimpassioned style, and was the recipient of a gold-mounted ebony Baton on the oc- casion, though for what particular reason (at a first concert) does not appear, unless as an excuse for some of the Directors to make a speech, a diversion which has become quite proverbial with them, as many as two or three having been known to occur at one concert. THE ITALIAN OPERA opened at the New York Academy on Sept. 23d. Both as to gen- eral excellence of performance, and extent of repertoire, the season has seldom beau equal- led and Maretzek has exerted himself to the utmost, but the public have not responded as expected. At present, Romeo i Ciuliettce, is the notable novelty, and creates a marked interesthut, is it true, on the whole, that New Yorkers have ceased to he greatly moved by Italian opera ~ and is the management wise in making it so expensive The principal Artists have been Mine. Pa- repa-Rosa, Miss ilauck, Signora Peralta, Mine. Testa, Signori Ronconi, Bellini, and Anastasi. Our little Hauck has gained greatly in volume of voice, and in style, since last season, and bids fair soon to tread closer upon the heels of Miss Kellogg, than is likely to be agreeable to this last-named tenacious cantcctrice. Ronconi and Bellini have well sustained their great reputations, the former especially, in Don Giovcnni and in Don Bucefalo. THE FRENCH OPERA, under the managerial direction of Mr. II. L. Bateman, has niade its first successful diiut in New York the present season. Offenbachs last chef-dcsuvre, Lc Duchesee de Gerolstein, has been the most pow- erful musical magnet which our city could boast for the past two months. 134 [Jan. ( 1888.] TABLE-TALK. 135 Mdlle. Tostee haa been the prima donna, and she seems to have made hosts of friends by her many really French and Frenchy fas- cinations. Msis. DE VERE gave an English Ballad con- cert on October 26 at Irving Hall, assisted by Messrs. Simpson (tenor), J. R? Thomas (bar- itone) and Pease the littlc piano-player, whose name is generally found on all the little concert- bills of little artists. There were ahout seventy-five persons in the audience. We have rarely listened to any thing which gave us more pleasure than the duet singing of the two gentlemen at this concert, and could not help regretting it was wasted on so many empty benches. Miea. DE Luss~m, the ever fresh and ever enthusiastic soprano, had a very handsome testimonial offered her at a concert at Irving Hall on November 6. She was aided by many noted artists, and the affair passed off with un- usual fclat. MR. JEROME HOPKINS, the well-known pi- anist, gave his first concert at Steinway Hall on November 4 for the fund wherewith to sup- port the popular and democratic Orpheon Free Choral and Choir-Boy Schools of New York and Newark, of which Mr. Hopkins is the founder. At this concert Mr. hopkins was unfortunate in his prima donna, Mdlle. De Bruno. She was so nervous that she failed to do herself justice at all. The other assistants were the great violincellist, Mr. F. Bergner, and the new English baritone, Mr. F. Gough, both of whom received long and hearty applause. The audience was conceded to be the most brilliant of the season, the large hall being filled in every part. Musical doings elsewhere will receive atten- tion hereafter, as our space may permit. 4+--- TABLE-TALK. IN order to gratify our readers with the whole of the remarkable story called THE CARPENTER, which has been written specially for this season and the present number by the author o~ The Ghost, several articles from valued contributors are necessarily deferred; even though we have added several pmmges in this number to the ordinary MagsEine dimen- sions. Probably few readers of The Carpen- ter will cavil at this single deviation from the rule limiting all contributions to a moderate length. The peculiar timeliness of this story, as well as its power and interest, warrant, we think, the unusual space it occupies. IT is a sad appendix to these pages to add the intelligence, received as the number is go- ing to press, of the death of the poet FrrE GREENE HALLEcK. He died at his residence at Guilford, Connecticut, the place of his birth, en the night of the 19th of November, at the ripe old age of seventy-two. Though his health had been somewhat precarious, his final illness was short. Within a few weeks of his death he was in New York, when he complained of being unwell, and left for home apparently suffering from a cold. He has passed from earth leaving, to be cherished by his friends, a rich treasure of memories of his wit, his kindness, his many amiable, social qualities; while his genius, whatever succes- sors he may have, will brighten the pages of American literature to the end. In our next number we shall speak of his life and literary career, and present a portrait hitherto unen- graved, after the original drawing of the poet by his friend, the eminent sculptor, Horatio Greenough. SINcE the article on a previous page, Dick- ens in America, was written, Mr. DIcKENs has landed safely in the country. The avidity with which the tickets for his first series of Readings in Boston have been taken up the eager admirers or speculators besieging the place of sale on an unusually cold November morning at daylightwould seem to indicate at least a partial renewal of the old BoE en- thusiasm. But, gentlemen, spare us the snob- bery. Any lingering hesitation in according the author a cordial receptionmust be dissipated af- ter reading the warm-hearted speech with which, on the eve of his departure for Amer- ica, he took leave of his English friends at a dinner presided over by the novelist Bulwer for so Americans will long prefer to call Lord Lytton. In this parting speech Dickens, af- ter allusions to the motives for his journey in the repeated invitations he had received, spoke of his desire to see for himself the astonishing change and progress of a quarter of a century over there, to grasp the hands of many faith- ful friends whom I left there, to see the faces of multitudes of new friends upon whom I have never looked, and last, not least, to use my best endeavor to lay down a third cable of intercommunication and alliance between the Old World and the New. Twelve years ago, (he continued,) when Heaven knows I little thought I should ever be bound upon the voy- age which now lies before me, T wrote, in that form of my writings which obtains by far the most extensive circulation, these words of the American nation: I know full well, what- ever little moths may beaming eyes may have descried in theirs, that they are a kind, large- hearted, generous and great people. Assur- edly the national vanity must be satisfied.

1888.] TABLE-TALK. 135 Mdlle. Tostee haa been the prima donna, and she seems to have made hosts of friends by her many really French and Frenchy fas- cinations. Msis. DE VERE gave an English Ballad con- cert on October 26 at Irving Hall, assisted by Messrs. Simpson (tenor), J. R? Thomas (bar- itone) and Pease the littlc piano-player, whose name is generally found on all the little concert- bills of little artists. There were ahout seventy-five persons in the audience. We have rarely listened to any thing which gave us more pleasure than the duet singing of the two gentlemen at this concert, and could not help regretting it was wasted on so many empty benches. Miea. DE Luss~m, the ever fresh and ever enthusiastic soprano, had a very handsome testimonial offered her at a concert at Irving Hall on November 6. She was aided by many noted artists, and the affair passed off with un- usual fclat. MR. JEROME HOPKINS, the well-known pi- anist, gave his first concert at Steinway Hall on November 4 for the fund wherewith to sup- port the popular and democratic Orpheon Free Choral and Choir-Boy Schools of New York and Newark, of which Mr. Hopkins is the founder. At this concert Mr. hopkins was unfortunate in his prima donna, Mdlle. De Bruno. She was so nervous that she failed to do herself justice at all. The other assistants were the great violincellist, Mr. F. Bergner, and the new English baritone, Mr. F. Gough, both of whom received long and hearty applause. The audience was conceded to be the most brilliant of the season, the large hall being filled in every part. Musical doings elsewhere will receive atten- tion hereafter, as our space may permit. 4+--- TABLE-TALK. IN order to gratify our readers with the whole of the remarkable story called THE CARPENTER, which has been written specially for this season and the present number by the author o~ The Ghost, several articles from valued contributors are necessarily deferred; even though we have added several pmmges in this number to the ordinary MagsEine dimen- sions. Probably few readers of The Carpen- ter will cavil at this single deviation from the rule limiting all contributions to a moderate length. The peculiar timeliness of this story, as well as its power and interest, warrant, we think, the unusual space it occupies. IT is a sad appendix to these pages to add the intelligence, received as the number is go- ing to press, of the death of the poet FrrE GREENE HALLEcK. He died at his residence at Guilford, Connecticut, the place of his birth, en the night of the 19th of November, at the ripe old age of seventy-two. Though his health had been somewhat precarious, his final illness was short. Within a few weeks of his death he was in New York, when he complained of being unwell, and left for home apparently suffering from a cold. He has passed from earth leaving, to be cherished by his friends, a rich treasure of memories of his wit, his kindness, his many amiable, social qualities; while his genius, whatever succes- sors he may have, will brighten the pages of American literature to the end. In our next number we shall speak of his life and literary career, and present a portrait hitherto unen- graved, after the original drawing of the poet by his friend, the eminent sculptor, Horatio Greenough. SINcE the article on a previous page, Dick- ens in America, was written, Mr. DIcKENs has landed safely in the country. The avidity with which the tickets for his first series of Readings in Boston have been taken up the eager admirers or speculators besieging the place of sale on an unusually cold November morning at daylightwould seem to indicate at least a partial renewal of the old BoE en- thusiasm. But, gentlemen, spare us the snob- bery. Any lingering hesitation in according the author a cordial receptionmust be dissipated af- ter reading the warm-hearted speech with which, on the eve of his departure for Amer- ica, he took leave of his English friends at a dinner presided over by the novelist Bulwer for so Americans will long prefer to call Lord Lytton. In this parting speech Dickens, af- ter allusions to the motives for his journey in the repeated invitations he had received, spoke of his desire to see for himself the astonishing change and progress of a quarter of a century over there, to grasp the hands of many faith- ful friends whom I left there, to see the faces of multitudes of new friends upon whom I have never looked, and last, not least, to use my best endeavor to lay down a third cable of intercommunication and alliance between the Old World and the New. Twelve years ago, (he continued,) when Heaven knows I little thought I should ever be bound upon the voy- age which now lies before me, T wrote, in that form of my writings which obtains by far the most extensive circulation, these words of the American nation: I know full well, what- ever little moths may beaming eyes may have descried in theirs, that they are a kind, large- hearted, generous and great people. Assur- edly the national vanity must be satisfied. PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. TO THE PUBLISHERS. A LETTER OF ADVICE. WE have received the following cominunica- tion from our old and valued friend, Sloboje. Who is Sloboje? Is it possible you have never beard of Sloboie? He is a grand mediceval genius, somehow or other postponed into the nineteenth century. The Sloboies entered England with William the Conqueror, and New York with Colonel Nicolls. This is what he saysor, rather, part of it. He observes, in his letter, that he does not give his county and State for fear all the publishers will be after him to scribble for them; and he declares, We Sloboies hate writing. But the ideas of authors and of publishers about length diP fer. We therefore give only extracts, asking him to excuse us. MANOR OF SLoBoIE, November 12, 1867. O MY PUTNAM, I understand you are about to resuscitate your Mag~ine. What madness possesses you? But, if you will be insane, let me give you some craxy advice. * * * Also, my dear P., I hope you will not suffer yourself to be infatuated with that absurd wordProgress. There is no such thing in reality. Tile world shuffles and deals anew, occasionally, to be sure, but the cards remain the same. People pretend to believe that things have changed in this country. Not so. That last line reminder of the chivalric (or what men without grandfathers persist in calling the Dark ) ages, is not dead. At all events, we, the Sloboics, dont see it. And what the Sloboles do not see is not worth seeing. * * * * * I think, in regard to Finance, it would be wise to confine your articles to a simple reitera- tion of the statement that, though a magazine may be started, it can not be kept up without m6ney, and that, though you look upon a sub- scription to your enterprise as a great compli- snent, the payment of the cash triples the obligation. You may have observed that the cointry newspapers (the true mirrors and ex- ponents of public sentiment), have already discovered the judiciousness of thus treating this vital subject. In fact, who can be sup- posed to give any competent advice about the finances of the nation that does not attend to his own? * * * * * About Poetic matter I do not know what to say to you. I think, on the whole, you had better avoid it, altogether. If, indeed, you could find an indigenous Proverbial Philoso- pher to thread together all the wit and wis- dom contained in Bartletts Dictionary of Americanisms, I think he would make a pro- digious hit. But two such geniuses in oue age would be too much to expect. * * * *~ * Eschew Politics. The only object of deal- ing in them is to secure what we old Norman French used to call a clientle. But things are, just now, in so peculiarly delicate a condition, and people are getting so in a way of thinking for themselves lately, that really you are only like to get yourself into a scrape and please nobody. Take my advice, and let them alone. The Sloboies have flourished mode- rately through many generations, by holding always to the simple but sufficient maxim, Things are very well as they are. * * * * * I would not have much Scientific discussion. It offends a large class of religious minds. * * * * * As to Fictionsave yourself something in this particular by republishing the quarterly reports of the great railroad companies to their stockholders, and the annual statements furnished to the comptroller of the Common- wealth of New York by various corporations. You might vary them once in a while with the worst cases of the Police Courts. * * * * * Above all, my dear P., avoid wit in your magazine. How many magazines have we seen swamped by too much wit! What the great public craves is humdrum. Thats the thing that goes. It always was so, even in the good old times. You want, as Captain Cuttle expresses it, solid chunks of wisdom, wheeled along in a good, steady-going style; and if you could rake up a contributing Buns- by or two, it would be a great thing for you. In default of such, Ill tell youwhen you get very hard up for an article, apply to me,* and I will write it. I think, at six months notice, I could furnish one, full of philosophical, aT- chseological, critical, and statistical interest. Remember, now. Only give me time. Yours ever, RAIMOND SLoBomE. P.5.I have many other things to say, which I defer to a future opportunity.t * We have done so. 1 We fear we shall have to repress R. S. I 188 [Jan. PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. TO CONTRIBUTORS. Tins Magazine will be conducted on the most liberal principles, in regard to the reception of articles. We enter upon the field with no limitations or predilections, aside from the love of country and of good literature. We shall be governed simply by the design to serve the public to the best advan- tage. To accomplish this, however, contributors and publishers must co- operate Itarmoniously with each other. It should be remembered that the publication of a magazine is a simple business enterprise. It must stand or fall, as it meets or fails to supply the popular demand. Hence, its articles must be on such topics, and prepared in such a manner that they will be ac- cepted and welcomed by the public. The majority of readers will, in all cases, prefer fact to mere speculation. Disquisition soon tires, unless it be supported by an array of well-chosen circumstances, or be relieved by anec- dote. Hence, subjects of the nature of the Essay, should not, at least in a popular magazine, be too abstractly treated. They should not be remote from the popular apprehension, and their philosophy should be illustrated by living examples. A good magazine article, indeed, on whatever subject, should be condensed, pithy, pointed; it should be handled in a certain practical way. The preference in choosing a topic, should be given to some uvixu INTEREST or TUE DAY; and when it is chosen, the writer should group together a sufficient number of details to engage the readers attention. This cannot be done without diligence and selection. Whatever the theme, let it be treated with a constant regard to completeness. Home topics must generally be preferredarticles on life and society in America; on the de- velopmcnt of tho national resources; industrial pursuits ; popular science; incidents of travel; descriptions of unfamiliar occurrences, etc. Novelty in the subjcct, or its hand- line, a vigorous independent treatment, are essential requisites to interest the readers of the present day. Thus much the publishers venture to suggest as to general principles. In rebard to practical details, and the acceptance or return of papers sent to the magazine, it is intended that each article received shall be carefully and promptly considered. Such papers as may not be deemed desirable for our special purpose will be carefully re- turned, when instructions are received. Articles will be liberally paid for when accepted. The return of MSS. to the author does not necessarily imply either per- sonal disrespect or want of appreci~ ation. Papers more or less excellent, of their kind, may sometimes be so overabundant in the l)ublisI~ers drawer, that they cannot all be used, with due regard to proportion, fitness, and variety, in each number of a mag- azine. 2 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. TO READERS. AIMING to make this Magazine sob idly useful, as a medium for positive and accurate information for intelligent readers, and, at the same time, to render it a live and entertaining visitor, it is V. FINANCE Political EconomySo. intended that every number, as a gener- cial Science. al rule, shall have one or more papers in ach of the following departments, viz.: VI. SKETcHEs or TRAvEL. 1. .-6BLIc PoLIcYNational Interests VII. FIcTION. Science of Government, phil- VIII. GENERAL LITERATURE. osophically discussed. II. RELIGION AND EDUcATIoNin the maintenance of Christian civiliza- tion. III. Scix~c~ AND ART theoretical and practicalin their latest as- pects and developments. 0-. P. PUTNAM IX. MONTITLY CHRONICLE 1. Occurrences at Home and Abroad. 2. LITERATUREBooks of the Month; Literary Intelligence ; Statistics. 8. FiNE ARTS. 4. Music. 5. TABLE-TALK. & SoN, Editors and Publishers. IV. INDUSTRIAL PuRSUITS Agricul- ture; Manufactures; Commerce; Domestic Economy; the Art of LIVING. WRITERSWHAT THEY SAY. THE publishers have received cordial responses from eminent writers, in reply to their invitation for suggestions and coOperation. From these the fol- lowing passages are quoted, as indicative of the general interest in the under- taking. The publishers have reason to expect valuable aid, also, frum other distinguished men, whose replies are not yet received, including Hon. J. L. Motley, late Minister to Austria; Hon. 0-co. P. Marsh, Minister to Italy; Hon. Geo. Bancroft, Minister to Prussia; Hon. Schuyler Colfax, Chief-Justice Chase, Parke Godwin, Horace Greeley, Rev. Dr. Hitchcock, S. G. Howe, Mrs. S. G. Howe, Prof. J. Lawrence Smith, Fitz Hugh Ludlow, Win. Swinton, Prof Youmans, and from several younger writers of brilliant promise. S. Austin Allilone, Lii. D. Most cordially do I wish success to the new Putnam! Cer- tainly you may quote my name as one of your probable contributors. Perhaps biography, literary history, and bibliography. Rev. W. 1?. Alger, author of Future Lefe, & c. I am very glad to see your prospectus, and shall look to the renewal of your Magazine with great hope. Rev. ,Toi~n S. C. Abbott. It will afford me pleasure to do what I can to contribute to the interest of its pages. Hon. Jo/in Bigelow, late Minister to France. Permit me to express the hope that you will find it convenient to discuss political, questions from a purely scientific, and not from a personal or partisan point of view. What is personal in political controversies is transient, while you ought to aim at producing permanent influences. There is no publication in the country in which political questions are treated scientifically. If you choose to occupy this ground, you will have nothing to compete with you. L. I. Bigelow. Putnams Monthly, to my mind, wa~ the most successful attempt to establish a truly national magazine. Ceo. H BoJ~er, Fsq., Pisiladeiphia. All judicious men regretted its loss, as the loss gf U PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. 3 something which, in its kind, was the best thing that this country had produced. I shall be proud to be numbered among your contributors. Hon. G. S. Boutwell, AL C. If I had time to write I should discuss historical and politi- cal subjects. I do not doubt your success. Win. Cullen Bryant. I hardly know what to say about being a probable contributor. Not that it would not be an honor to be so enrolled. * * ~ am glad to learn your Magazine is to be revived, and, as I trust, successfully. * * * So I leave the matter with you to say what you please. lIen. Horace Bushnell, D. D. What I want to see is a high-toned literary magazine, that is, just as high-toned in the sentiments it holds of religion, clear of orthodox lingo, and yet reverently and philosophically tempered by some visible adherence to supernaturalism. * * Miss Phoebe Cary. I shall feel honored to be announced as one of your contributors. Press5. P. A. Chadbourne, author of Natura? Theology. I shall be glad to do what I can as contributor just as soon as the extra work incident to my new position is disposed of. The subjects which I should naturally select would be those relating to science and education.~~ 11.. S. Chilton, Esq., Washington. I am rejoiced to know that the publication of the magazine is to be resumed, and I feel certain that the public will not willingly let it die. Hon. C. H Calvert, author of The Gentleman. I shall be happy to see my name on the list of your announced contributors. Afiss Caroline Cheseboro. * * I shall be happy to contribute to its columns. Clarence Cook, N. Y. I propose to send you an article now in preparation. P~-est. Henry Coppee, of Pa. You have chosen the time well, and I predict for you a great. succe~s. You may use my name in your list of contributors. 11ev. Howard Crosby, D. D. I am rejoiced to hear of a successor to the Monthly. The remembrance of its flavor whets the appetite for the Magazine. A monthly that will repre- sent all departments of literature boldly and variedly, without committing itself to special views on everything, open to all sorts of sentiment (observing only the restrictions of morality and courtesy), is a desideratum. The free thought of the age demands such a publication. I am very much honored by your request to become a contributor, and if arti. des from time to time on matters historical, archuological or biblical should prove acceptable, I should take pleasure in furnishing them. Miss A. A! Crane, author of Emily Chest . Your old Magazine was so incomparably the best that has ever been published in this country, that if you can even approximate to your previous standard, your success among the judges of literature is certain. Ceo. Win. Curtis. The announceme~it which you have kindly sent me aroused a throng of pleasant memories. They were very happy days in which we used to take counsel together, with Briggs and Godwinis that deserted room in Park Place gone forever? If my name as a probable contributor can be of any service to you, use it, I beg you. I am truly glad of the good promise of your enterprise. Judge Chas. P. Daly, N F. I will, however, try to do something, and at as early day as possible. Airs. B. H Davis, author of is/s in Iron Alills, etc. I was glad (as anybody who cares for the cause of good literature must be) to learn that Putnam was coming back again. * * It certainly filled a niche which has been vacant since its withdrawal. * * * If I have time to write anything worthy of your Magazine I will be glad to send it. J7. B. Denslow, late Editor Bepublican, Chicago. A magazine of the somewhat cyclo- pedic character [as sketched], would be unique, diversified and eminently popular. ion. Alexander Delmar, Chief of Bureau of Statistics, Treasury Department. Our pswi - odical literature has fallen into the European rut which is sure to engulf itself once every few years, and it sadly needs Americanizing again. I shall take pleasure in having my name announced as one of the contributors to Putnams. 4 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. Prof. Schele de Vere, author of Leaves from~ the Boo/c of Nature. I have the honor to send you herewith a MSS., which I hope you may find suitable for your magazine. LThe first of a series in popular Science.] Afre. 21/i F. Do4e, author of Irvington Stories. As one of the present generation of linickerbockers, I am heartily glad that New York is again to put forth a standard monthly worthy of representing American periodical literature in its best phase. Remembering well the former magazine, I shall feel proud to be numbered among the contributors to the new. Prof. John W. Draper, LL. D.My recollections of the. old Monthly are so agreeable that I am very glad to find there is a prospect of its resurrection. My name as one of your contributors is very much at your service. Benj. Ellershaw. The papers inform us that you are going to recommend the publication of the old favorite Putnams Magazine. I am glad of it. There is room for a magazine that shall be manly and hearty in thought, and simple, vigorous, and straightfor ard in style. Chas. W. Elliott. I propose to make a series of papers, etc. Dudley Field. I hope occasionally to offer contributions. Prqf. Geo. W. Greene. I am very glad to learn that you are about to establish a new montlAy, because I think there is both room for it and need of it. I shall be happy to be considered as a contributor. A. Oalcey Hall. I think I can safely promise articles under the title, & c. Rev. Edwd. Everett Hale. I have no doubt that I shall be glad to avail myself of your kind proposaL Bee. A. 7. Fullerton, Springfield, Ohio. I am very much gratified to see that you are about to revive Putnams Monthly. I hope that it will be the original magazinepea-green cover, corn-cane and all, on the outside; and high-toned, pure, and manly on the inside. Gen. C. C. Halpine (I/il Olleilly.) You are quite at liberty to use my name as one who will contribute, always provided, of course, that I have time to write. Dr. I. L Hayes, author of Open Polar Sea. If I can aid you in your enterprise, I shall be much gratified, as I have the most pleasant recollections of the old Putnams Monthly, and sincerely think thtre is a wide field for the publication which you propose. o~. ,John Hay, (hargi d.dffaires of U. S. in Austria. I hope its external appearance will be unchanged. It would go, in the green cover of old times, into thousands of homes where it was once so welcome. I shall be very glad to send you something occasionally. C. S. Henry, LL. D. I am heartily glad. The old Efaga had certain qualities of supe. riority over every other in the country then or since then. I shall feel honored in being mentioned as one of your contributors * * ~. Make it of the highest order, and hold on making it so, and & c., & c. ,J. C. Holland, author of Timothy Titcomb. I am glad to see that Putnam is to be revived. It was a delightful monthly in its life, and in death was tenderly lamented. I should be glad to contribute to it; but I feel under obligations to write for Mr. Scribuer, if I write for any periodical. Prof. Jas. A/i Hoppin, author of Old England. I remember Putnams Monthly with great pleasure, and have often thought that no magazine which has arisen since has quite filled its place. Its peculiar excellence, as it seemed to me, was its timeliness, or the singular apt ness of its articles to meet the wants of the times. ilfajor- Ge ral 0. 0. Howard, Freedmans Bureau. Had I sufficient time, I should be very glad to furnish an article occasionally. Perhaps some time in the future I may have more leisure, and be able to do so. I am very glad that you are commencing to publish your maga- zine again, for really I used to consider it one of the best in the country. Leonard Kvp, Albany. It will give me great pleasure to have my name used as you suggest. There were none who regretted more sincerely than myself the discontinuance ol the old Magazine. 5 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. H ry C. Lea, author of Superstition and Force I am glad to learii that you design to revive the glories of your former monthly. If the opportunity should offer itself to write anything that I think would be interesting to your readers, it will afford much pleasure to submit it to your consideration. With best wishes, & c. Dr. Dio Lewis, Promoter of Physical Education. I shall be most happy to be numbered among your contributors. Prof. Tayler Lewis, LL.D. Your previous success in this way offers a guarantee for the future, although the number of our periodicals is so greatly increased and increasing * ~. I hope to send you something occasionally. Francis Lieber, LL.D. It would be well to give in your notice, the names of several contributors to the former Putnams Monthly, which may be found again in Putnams Maga- zine, and among them you may mention my name. I heartily wish the fullest success to the Magazine. Henry W. Longfellow. You have my best wishes for success, and I have no doubt you will make a Magazine equal, if not superior, to your old one, which is saying a good deal. John Lord, LL.D., Author of Ancient Borne. I believe your Magazine will be a splendid success.~~ Benson 1. Lossing, Fsq., author of Field Book, ~ It will be gratifying to me to be numbered among the contributors to a publication which must be of a high order, while in the hands of one who made Putnams Monthly so deservedly popular and useful. He an 3lelville, Esq., author of Typee. I feel much complimented. * * * You may include me in the list of probable contributors. D~nald C. Mitclsell.( 1k. Marvel.) I need hardly say that I shall be rejoiced to hear of your success in your proposed literary undertaking. W. D. 0 Connor, author of The Ghost, & c. I am exceedingly glad that the Magazine is to start again. It was the best we ever had in this country, and will be, I doubt not, the best again. If my name is of any use to you, use it, and I will do my best to make the pledge good. George F. Noycs, Esq.I shall be glad to offer an occasional contribution. Hon. Bolt. Dale Owen, late Minister to Naples. I propose a paper on Naples. Bev. Saml Osgood, D. D. I shall be happy to have my name counted among the friends of your Magazine, as I had the honor of a place in Putnams Monthly years ago. F. Parkman, Esq., author of Pontiac, & c. There is certainly room for such a magazine as you propose * ~. Every such publication tends to widen the circle of readers for which it is adaptedthat is, to advance the cause of good literature. If I am not mistaken there is a great and unsatisfied demand for such a one. I shall be glad to furnish an occasional contri- bution. James Parton. Your invitation I regard as a great honor. Edward G. Parker, Esq., N Y. I should like to be counted as one of the occasional contributors to Putnams. F. B. Perkins. The business side of publishing trains better judgments, in the long run, for choosing what to print, than literary experience. Josiah P. Quincy. You make your re-entry at a happy time. Our best national activities are ready for a fresh start, and only wait good direction to sweep us on to great results Geo. Bijoley, Esq., Literary Editor of the Tribune. I shall take a sincere interest in the publication of Putnams Magazine, and shall be happy to do everything in my power * * * * * It will give me pleasure to contribute occasionally to its content~ as I did to those of the former series. Henry Sedley. Efforts of mine shall not be wanting. 6 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. Bee. F. W. Shelton. Literary men throughout our country will be much gratified tc learn that Putnams Magazine is to be revived. It is needed in the present condition of literature. It was always able and acceptable. When it disappeared formerly it did not seem to me that it was prepared to die. It is now manifest that it has not been dead all this time, but in a trance, Rip Van Winkle like, and is at last wide awake. Having in days gone by contributed something to it, I shall be happy to do so again as occasion may warrant. Hon. Edwin .M Stanton, late Secretary of War. I would gladly use your obliging offer of your Magazine for the discussion of any topic of public interest, aud am willing to be re- garded as one of its occasional contributors. * * It will gratify me to present two or three subjects through your magazine on some future occasion.~~ Hon. P. P. Stanton. The subject I should be likely to write about would be political (not partisan) and philosophical. Ed und tJ. Stedman. I have felt the greatest interest in seeing a truly first-class maga- zine established in New York. B. H Stoddard, lbs. B. H StoddardCordially tender their good wishes and practical aid. .A~fred B. Street. I am sincerely and deeply gratified at your project, and have both hope and faith that it will succeed. It was a national literary misfortune that the old Magazine was discontinued. It was unquestionably one of the very best periodicals that ever appeared in our country, and took rank with the best in Europe. It will afford me great pleasure to be enrolled among the contributors. Henry E. Sweetser. It seems clear that its proper sphere is the bold, intelligent discus- sion of topics of public interest. * * * ~ want to see Putnams Monthly so wide-awake that each issue will be awaited with intense curiosity. * * * Bev. ,1os. P. lihosnpson, D. D. I am glad to learn that Putnams Magazine is to be revived, and I am sure that it will find a cordial welcome. I shall esteem it an honor to be numbered among your contributors. Bayard Taylor. You may depend that I will do as much for the new Putnam as I can now and after my return. * * * J am inclined to join in the cheer and the God-speed. Boiert Tomes, IL D. I shall deem myself honored by having my name inscribed upon your list of probable contributors. Ceorge .21!. Towle, U. S. Consul, Nantes. It would be gratifying to me to write either on European politics, on matters of history, French manners, prisons, schools, & c., or lighter pieces of a historical-gossip character, description of places here, character sketches, or lively storiesall of which I have practised. Henry T. Tuckermanpromises contributio~is. Prof. A/loses (bit Tyler, University of Michigan. Having already heard, with real de- .;ght, of your purpose to revive the ffonthly, to which you g.ave such excellence and renown, I should feel it to be an honor to be included among your contributors. * * I was a college-boy when your old Monthly first appeared, and some of the pleasantest hours I ever had were given to me by its genial pages. The thought of seeing dear old Putnam risen from its long slumber seems like bringing back bodily, the days and the joys of ones youth. All success attend the happy enterprise! 0. ,J. Victor. I greatly rejoice at the revival of Putnams Magazine of good memory, every volume of which I have. Let me suggest that you retain the original color and cover; alap that the new issue be called New Series. Bee. Francis Vinton, D. D., of Trinity Church. I feel flattered by your request to offer contributions to your new Magazine. It will give me pleasure to do so when leisure shall permit. Hon. D. A. Wells, Special Commissioner of Bevenue. It will give me the greatest pleas ure to do all I can to further your new enterprise, and you can use my name as one of youx ontributors. PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. 7 Gen J. C. Wilson~ Shall feel honored by having my name included as one of the con- tributors. Rev. John Weiss. Please make use of my name. Richard Grant White, Editor of Sha1a~peare, & c. I learn with great pleasure that Put- nams Ma,azine is to be resuscitated. Its disappearance was a public loss. The publishers have also been favored with the promise of valuable practical aid from other contributors of cultivated taste and literary ability, including: Evert A. Duyckinck, Esq., author of Cycloptedia of American Literature; Charles Nordhoff, John Jay, R. B. Kimball, author of St. Leger; Miss Lily Nelson, Miss Lucy Fountain, Miss Luyster, Miss Kate Field, Prof. J. G. Adler, Joseph Kirkland, Rev. J. A. Spencer, D. D., (historical, classical, etc.); E. L. Godkiu, editor of the Nation; J. S. Gibbons, (political economist;) J. Mil- ton Mackie, Dr. T. W. Parsons, W. Irving Pauldiug, Mrs. G. L. Prentiss, Julius Wilcox, W. Gilmore Simms, LL.D., G. C. Ferplanek, Rev. Robert Collyer, of Chicago, and others. One of the pleasautest announcements of late in the literary world is that to the effect that Putnams Magazine will be revived, on the first of January next, by its original founder, Mr. George P. Putnam. The old series presented to the country some of the best native literature ever printed, and its editor bad the virtue ofjustice combined with a catholic and generous dealing.Boston Commonwealth. Last, and by no means least, appears the forerunner of good things to come, in the shape of an announcement that Messrs. G. P. Putnam & Son will revive, on the first of January, that old and never-forgotten literary favorite, Putnams Monthly. Times and tastes have changed since that tnonthly feast of literary viands was spread before a choice coterie of readers, but not so much that there is not still room for the proposed revival, the promise of which will not fail to awaken the pleasantest anticipations.Home Journal. We predict that the new PUTNAM will have a much greater circulation than the found- ers of its predecessor ever dared to hope for. N Y. Citizen. PUTNAMS MAG-AZINE FOR 1868, Will be similar in general appearance to the former Series of PUTNAMs Mo THLY It will be a NATIONAL PUBLICATION, supported by the BEST wRITEnS, in each department, in every section of the country.See Prospect us. TERMS$4.00 per annum, in advance, or 35 cts. per number. PUTNAMS MAGAZINE and Riverside iUagarine f Young People (Price $2.50) ~ together, $5.50 - PUTNAXEs MAGAZINE and The Round TaUe (Weekly to one Literary Journal, Price $6.00) address, 8.00 CLUBSTwo copies to one address $7.00, in advcence. Three copies 10.00, Ten copies for 30.00, PREMIUMS. For 15 subscribers, with $60, the Publishers will send also the new PIIGTO SCULPTURE figure of GEN. GRANT, (Price $20) as a premium; or, the choice of $20 worth of G. P. Putnam & Sons publications. For 10 subscribers, with $40, a premium of $12 in G. P. Putnam & Sons publications; or, a PHOTO-SCULPTURE STATUETTE of GRANT or FARRAGUT. For 25 subscribers, with $100, a COMPLETE SET OF IRVINGS WORKS, PEOPLES EDITION, now publishing in Monthly Vols., delivered as published; or, for 40 subscribers, the KNIOXEEBOOKEE EDITION, 28 Vols., in Monthly Vols., as published. For 50 subscribers, a COMPLETE SET OF IRVINGS WORKS, SUNNYSIDE EDITIoN, 28 Fols.; or, $70 worth of any of G. P. Putnam & Sons publi- cations, delivered at once. 186 Mxssns. G. P. PUTNAM & SON, 661 BROADWAY. EIjE.A.S5J SII~W)D COPiES. l9ulnarn: afagazine, I year. _______ l2iyerside .2Wagazine. ______ Z?ound !Yae5Ze. fl~~SSIJ2~ Cozcrny, State, . Enclosed is Post.Office Order for $.-..- Yours, & c.,

PUTNAMS MAGAZINE OF LITERATURE, SCIENaE, ART, AND NATIONAL INTERESTS. VOL. J.FEBRUARY1868.No. II. TOO TRUEA STORY OF TO-DAY. CHAPTER III. THE STORY OF COUNT KONISBERO. Tins Camerons had forsaken the din- ing-room f~r the cool porch. The river was now as pink as the roses which hung on the trellis; a soft wind was rising, so that numberless little sails fluttered like doves over the water; a great steamer panted by, on its way down from Albany; a dark line of shadow lay under the Highlands; the green lawn grew more rich and velvety in the hori- zontal lightthe faces of the women more beautiful. Mr. Cameron sat on a rustic sofa, his wife by his side, and Milla in his lap, her face, unusually pale, drooping lan- guidly on his shoulder. Robbie was on the steps, whittling out a miniature yacht, taking for his pattern that of their neighbor Grizzle, which was now lying at a little dock, at the foot of the Grizzle lawn,or what would have been the foot, had not the unsparing iron-horse cut off its toes. The lovers were pacing slowly back and forth, Elizabeth still wearing her myrtle fillet. I should think Grizzle junior would be out with his yacht to-night. Perhaps hes afraid of her, since he got knocked overboard the other day, said Robbie. He knows as much about sailing as he does about playing the flute, laughed voL. i.1O Lissa. Hark! we are doomed to an- other serenade! Horrible! how can you laugh, Bet- tine? exclaimed Dassel. I wonder if that fellow is to annoy you all summer with that outrageous flute. There ought to be an asylum, where people who will insist upon learning to play the flute and bugle in the open air, could be shut up in an enclosed place, far from all other human habitation. The joke of it is, added Robbie, that he does it on purpose to interest Lissa. Its the way he has chosen to make his passion known. Nonsense I You neednt deny it, Lissa. You know it as well as I. Hes smittenbad ly. If youd break a hole in the hedge, youd see him sitting at this end of their veranda, rolling his eyes in this direc- tion, and redder than ever with blowing so much. If thats the case, its a wonder you dont encourage him, Bettine. Half a million is not to be won every day, and Dassels blue eyes looked into those of the girl to whom he was betrothed, to read the effect of his light remark. I have all I want in this world~~ Louis. Thank you, Bettine; but, for my part, I like money. Its extremely un- comfortable to have to do without it. 138 [Feb. PUTNAMS MAGAZiNE. Think of that fool over the fence,as incapable of receiving any polish as a boiled beet. Yet he will have influence. Already they run after him, because he has money, and spends it freely. That is the sort of people who rule in America. Blood, culture, ability, go for nothing. Sometimes I get tired of this country. You have no aristocracy,that is your boast. Why, my dear child, you have the most cruel, tyrannical aristocracy on earth! A hog-merchant, when he sells enough pork, can put his foot on the neck of a gentleman. Dont make us worse than we are, Louis, said Mr. Cameron, who had been listening. There is a class which is not made up of the suddenly rich, and which pays no homage to the moneykings.~~ Neither does it receive homage. I think you are mistaken in saying there is a class, Mr. Cameron. Isolated cases of people who preserve their self-respect, there may be. But, as a rule, the wealthiest are the most honored; and, unfortunately for the tone of society here, these usually are plebeians, with no traditions of what ladies and gentlemen should be. In Europe, if a man has blood, and education, he may be as poor as a church-mouse, but he will be treated as an equal by those whose fine instincts enable them to recognize his claims. You are too sensitive, Louis; some one has been wounding your pride. Im insulted every day, as far as that goes, Mr. Cameron. I am poor; I work for a living; and the men who employ me are too ignorant to appre- ciate my claims to consideration. I wish I had money,it is dull, getting along without it.. Why, then, marry Mr. Grizzles daughter, laughed Elizabeth, follow the advice you gave ~ Has he a daughter? Yes, interrupted Bobbie, but shes just eleven, so you will have to leave her to me, Mr. DasseL Otherwise, he added, sotto voce, Ill warrant hed be after her, notwithstanding hes caught our Lissa. Louis would marry no one who was not a lady, said Milla. Then Id recommend him to Camille Bulbous, and Bobbie chuckled ;--- shes large and white and waxy, like her father. She has a most imposing man- ner. But it dont impose on me; for, when she called on mamma, she talked of nothing but her servants, and what horrid creatures they were. You dont know what you escape in not keeping a butler and a footman, and a French dressing-maid, Mrs. Cameron, and the gloves they make way with is frightful. Weve dismissed three butlers in as many months, for obtaining false keys to papas wine-cellar, and giving parties to the neighbors servants every night when weve gone out. And Matilda wears my best dresses to em, I know; for I found an enormous wine-stain on my rose-colored satin, and had to take out a whole gore. Id have sent her kiteing that minute, for my temper was quite upset; but she makes these three loops in my hair exquisitely, and I felt that I could not spare her. Isnt it a trial, Mrs. Cameron I and then mam- ma answered very quietly, that, as she only kept three servants, and had changed none of them for the last ten years, she was hardly competent to judge. That took Miss Bulbous down a peg; for ten years ago her mother was doing her own work, and I could see that it put her in mind of it. She arose and said their span of black horses were 80 fiery they wouldnt stand over five minutes, and she sailed out like a three-master.RObbie was whittling out his yacht, and naturally gave a nautical turn to his figures of speech. You talk too much, said his mo- ther. I know it, and I beg your pardon, Lady Cameron. But, maynt I just tell what Susie Grizzle told me, over the hedge, that same afternoon, that Miss Bulbous said to her mamma? If it~ over the hedge, it cant be under the rose; but, you must not betray private conversation. It wont do a bit of harm, and I want to betray it, dreadfully. She said 1868.] Too TRUE. 13S she called on us, because we belonged to the first families; we werent very rich, but we were aristocratic; some of our relatives in Scotland were lords and ladies, and the law was a very genteel pTofession; it placed a person quite on an equality with a broker I Then Susies mother declared she was quite afraid of us,we had so many books and picters, and knew so much, it made her uncomfortable. But! she added, Sams dead struck with Miss Elizabeth, and I spose well have to be sociable on his account. Then Miss Bulbous hinted that she thought Sam could do better, as Miss Cameron was pretty enough, but had no style. Shed advise his mother not to encourage it. If Mr. Grizzles junior, wanted to reflect credit on his position, he ought to get him a stylish wife. He would have no trouble,for, if she did say it, Mister Sam was quite a favorite in society. And Susie told you all this? She must be a queer child. Shes a little imp, father. Smart, and full of mischief. I didnt want her to talk to me, but she would do it. She told me Sam had bought a flute because he had heard that Miss Cameron was fond of music. The dismal wailing of that dolorous instrument still floated over the hedge, at this instant rising into such an ab- surd climax of discord that the fam- ily groaned and laughed in concert. Wheres my hat? cried Dassel. I must get away from this. Better the citys hum than the divine silence of a place like this, intruded upon by the brayings of an ass. Does it irritate you, for others to admire your Lissa? asked Milla. And would you run away, leaving her to bear her afihictions alone? Dont be selfish, Louis. Thats asking me not to be human, Mrna. Seriously, though, I must get back to town early, to-night, which brings me to telling my bad news,at least, bad to myself. The lovers paused in their promenade, before the bench where the parents were seated, Dassel addressing himself to Mr. Cameron, and Lissa looking up anx- iously into his face. What is it, Louis? I have been here six hours, and have not yet mustered courage to tell Bettine that I must start for St. Louis, within a week, to be gone, it may pos- sibly be, for a month. To St. Louis? this hot summer wea- ther! Why, Louis, it will kill you. You are not accustomed to so hot a climate. She, who was so chary of her demon- strations of feeling, clung to his arm with a sudden close grasp, as if she would not let him go. Business, I suppose! Yes, sir. Borden & De Witt think they are on the track of those stolen goods. They believe them to be in St. Louis. I am to go, very quietly, to that city, obtain the aid of a detective there, and follow up the clue. They trust the matter to me, because they believe I can manage it better than most men. It will be a change to me. I do not dislike the idea of the journey; though Bettine, here, seems inclined to summon up perils. If only you were ready to go with me! he whispered to her, then my only objection would be removed. But we are not ready for that, Bettine. I should not fear the climate for the next few weeks. What reason has the firm to suppose the stolen goods are out there? said Mr. Cameron. You remember I have frequently mentioned a relative of mine who came from Germany, and established a silk- store in St. Louis? Hearing of the robbery perpetrated in our house, he wrote to me that some goods had been offered to him under suspicious circum- stances; and that, if the firm thought best, he would hold the negotiation pending until they could send on an agent to examine into the affair. From his description of the silks, the firm believe them to have been taken from their warehouse; the laces also are, probably, in the same place. If I suc- ceed in recovering them, I shall have the reward, which is a thousand dollars, to aid us in going to housekeeping, Bettine. The other two firms for whom 140 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Feb. I correspond, are at present enjoying their idle season, and have no objt~ctions to sparing me for a month; so, I have concluded to go. Elizabeth still clung to his arm; her mother gave her an affectionate glance; but no one heard the sigh which Milla smothered in her fathers breast. It is strange, mused Dassel, look- ing out dreamily on the darkening river, what mere spiders-webs will sometimes hang a man I It is no wonder ~that criminals never feel sate to enjoy the fruits of their guilt. They know not at what moment, through what unex- pected chance, they may hear the click of the prison-door shutting upon them, or feel the noose about their necks. Some trifle, which no cunning could have foreseen, will betray them. I have a morbid taste for tracing out extra- ordinary cases of crime, and learning what was the careless footprint left un- covered, or whose was the eye of fate glean~ng upon the unsuspected, which led finally to detection and exposure. You would be astonished to find how often, as I have said, a spiders-web will be strong enough to hang a man. Sit you down, Bettine, he added, giving her a chair, while he walked, restlessly, up and down the porch. Robbies eyes followed him. It was too dark now for him to continue his work upon the yacht. The moon was coming up through the purple twilight, large and full. A pillar of silver top- pled and fell across the river. The in- creasing white lustre of the moonlight took all the color out of the grouped faces, giving them, instead of bloom, a sort of weird radiance. You want to tell a story, said Rob- bie, his eyes still watching Dassels, youre as restless as the Ancient Ma- nner. What are you talking about, boy? the young man ceased his walk, speaking in a startled voice,then, laughing lightly, you have guessed right, Master Robbie. I was struggling against the desire to tell a tale brought vividly before me by the subject under discussion. Tell me which is the wed- ding-guest, and I will at once button- hole him, for I shall have no rest till the murder is out,premising, however, that,unliketheAncient Mariner,Tam not the hero of my own story, and drawing a chair beside Elizabeths, he added If I tarry to tell it, I shall miss the next train.~~ It is not yet nine oclock, said Lissa, and tell it! tell it I said all the others. Sam Grizzle had, apparently, choked himself on his own flute, and expired in a splutter of over-due notes, so that noth- ing disturbed the moonlit silence but the low lapse of the river, as Louis IDas- sel, in a musing tone, as if recalling the incidents, one by one, began his story: Do you remember my ever mention- ing my friend Count Konisberg? I presume not, for of late years I have dropped his name from my tongue, as I have his friendship from my heart. Yet, there was a time when Karl and I were like brothers. You know, in Germany, men are not ashamed to fall in love with each other. We have warm hearts; and our manners do not hold too stiff a rein upon them. So that the attach- ment between Karl and myself ~vas well understood by our acquaintances. He was of higher rank than I, and had more wealth, for, as I have told you, my struggles for the Republic impoverished me almost in my boy- hood; but, we sympathized politically, and once, when I was in great straits, he offered me a home and concealment in the most secluded of his numerous houses, a castle quite inaccessible to common travellers, but a most delight- ful spot in summer, from its high po- sition among the mountains. The Count always passed his summers at Baden-Baden, remaining as long as there were any visitors to keep him company in his nightly sittings at the gaming tables,for here was his fault. He had acquired a passion for that uni- versal stimulus to watering-place life. This did not disturb my liking for him, but, rather, excited my pity, and many 1868.1 Too TRUE. 141 were the plain expostulations he had to listen to from me. Karl had not his rival in the king- dom in handling the sword; nor in rid- ing a horse was any one his equal. He was an immense favorite with the ladies on account of his many accomplish- ments, as well as for the magnificent manner in which lie wasted his fortune. Women are terribly severe in their own morals, but it does seem to add greatly to a mans fascinations that he should be a little wicked. It is like children playing with fire; their mothers have told them it would burn them,but then, how bright, how irresistible it is! Dont pinch my arm, Fraulein,I dont mean you. It is the exception proves the rule! The Count Konisberg won a great deal at the gaming-tables; but, in the long run, he lost, also, much more than he gained. It began to be whispered that he was nearly ruined. I tried, at that time, to save him, and had the pain of realizing that my influence was inferior to that of his master-passion. Yet, with all these disastrous rumors flying about, the Count would not have found it difficult to repair his fortune with that of some lady of his own rank, for half the court-ladies were in love with him. How surprised, then, was the world, when, at the end of his third Baden sea- son, he suddenly married the daughter of a Dutch merchant, who had accom- panied her father on a tour for health, and had watched over him, dutifully, as he drank the waters, week by week. Her great wealth was supposed to be the inducement. The daughters of Ger- man kings and princes might have a slender setting-out, compared with that of this untitled frctulein. Her father, flattered by the alliance, decked her out with jewels until she shone like the tomb of Mahomet, and filled her pursc with guilders until it was ready to burst. That purse suffered many and sudden depletions, but always was pa- tiently refilled. The new-made Countess of Konisberg was a beautiful woman. She might easily have been loved for her own sake, and I, for one, gave Karl credit for hav- ing some real affection for his bride. Her flaxen hair, when brushed out, must have fallen to her knees in a thick mantle; her skin was like snow; and, in the absence of that self-possession which comes from long mingling with good society, she had a certain stateli- ness of carriage consequent upon a fulJ, tall figure. Add to this the richness of her attire, and ~he was a wife not to be ashamed of, although she quailed, with the natural timidity of her yielding tem- perament, before the cold regards of envious ladies of rank. I have heard that she always sum- moned the Count, before she appeared in full dress, to criticise her toilet, after haying been once hurt by some sharp reproof of his on her want of taste. Be that as it may, they appeared happy together. No one could find excuse for scandal in the gallant, devoted manner of the husband. As winter came on, the pair went to Paris, were received at court, and soon excited universal re- mark by the extravagance of their ex- penditures, and the increasing beauty of the Countess, whose mauvais honte wore rapidly away, and whose toilet grew to rival that of Eugenics, both in its costliness and the perfection of its adaptation to the wearer. There is no teacher like love. The daughter of the Dutch merchant loved her lord and master (the very word, Bettine!) much more than he deserved; and in studying to satisfy him, she delighted and pleas- ed all others. It was some time in the month of January that a strange thing occurred. You may have heard of it, through the newspapers, for the case was so remark- able as to arrest universal attention. Count Konisberg was called away to his estates for a few days, leaving his wife in Paris. Invitations were already out for a grand ball, to be given by the Princess Metternich, and the Count pro- posed to return, on the evening of the ball, if possible. He directed the Count- ess not to shut herself up, on account of his absence, and~ above all things, to 142 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Feb. order a new dress, and be ready for the fite, saying, that if he arrived in time, he would join her; if not, she could go under the protection of the elderly Countess Nold, who would call for her. The evening of the ball came, and at nine oclock, the carriage of the Countess Nold drove up before the apartments of the Countess Konisberg. The old lady was anxious to be early in the long line of carriages, as she kad not patience to sit over three hours, on a winter-night, awaiting her turn to alight at the im- perial residence. That early arrival, mind you, was one of the spiders-webs upon which hung the destinies of more than one. Ill warrant you, Count Ko- nisberg has cursed it, heartily, every day of his life, up to this, if it so be that he is still in the land of the living. Ask Madame, the Countess, to de- scend directly, said the arbitrary old creature, to the footmen who opened the carriage-door. Its cold, and I will not atight if your mistress is ready. She waited fifteentwentyminutes. These young coquettes are never willing to part from their mirrors, she grumbled. Just then Countess Konisbergs dress- ing-maid flew down the steps, over the pavement, thrusting her pale face in- side the carriage. Oh, Madame, what shall we do? We are greatly alarmed, and the Count being gone, we have no one to direct us. The door of the Countess room is locked upon the, in- side; we can procure no answer to our appeals, and Im afraidIm quite posi- tive, Madame, that I perceive the fumes of charcoal 1 Burst it open, you fools! cried the old lady, jumping to the ground as quickly as a girl ;she had taken an interest in the innocent, affectionate bride, from the first day she had met her ;her own old heart was so worldly, through and through, that this simple nature had a great attraction for her. She flew up the stairs, and applied her nose to the key-hole. Bring an axe, she cried, and say nothing outside. I dont want the po- lice here, unless its necessary. The terrified servants, obeying her resolute orders, soon had the door broken in; the room was indeed full of deadly fumes from a small brazier, standing on a foot-stove near the chair, upon which sat the beautiful Countess Konisberg, in full grand toilette,her head thrown back against the cushions, her jewelled hands folded in her lapdead. As sweetly as if sleeping, she reclin- ed ia the easy-chair, her splendid hair elaborately dressed, glittering with dia- mond-dust, and the full folds of her white velvet petticoat and overskirt of lace shining with gems, as if dew had been dashed over them. Im not a fashion-reporter, I hope, but I remember well all the details of this tragic affair, as they were, at that time, thoroughly discussed. It was shortly before I left for America,and Iwas then in Paris, endeavoring to raise money, to pay my passage. I thought you sailed from Brem en,~ Robbie. Well, sol did, mychild; butlwas in Paris earning money as a tutor, as I have said. Robbie, you are so brusque, some- times, you are almost rude. Go on, Louis,we are so much interested, said Mr. Cameron. Windows were thrown up, and the lights, which were expiring, blazed up again. The half-~tozen servants gazed stupidly at their young mistress. It was evident that she had deliberately prepared for and committed suicide. This is badbad! murmured the old Countess. I shall have to summon the Prefect. Poor child I I really be- lieved her happy. And to think I should have dressed her, with these very hands, not over an hour ago, sobbed her maid. She hurried me so, for she said, Madame, that you would be early, and she did not like to keep you waiting. She would have every thing just so, even to the 1ouquet de corsage, for she said, she expected the Count would be home, and she wished him to admire her. She was magnificent! I was so proud of her! with fresh sobs. 1868.] Too TEUE. 143 How came you to leave her? She bade me go, get my dinner. She would read until you came. When I returned, the door was fast. I thought nothing of it, until I came again, after your arrivaL Perhaps she is not dead, said the energetic old Countess. If she isnt, Ill shake this nonsense out of her, and she dashed an ewer of water over the white face and bosom, dragged the ap- parent corpse close to the window, fan- ning, clapping and blowing, untilyes! actuallythere was a struggle for breath the lids flew open and again closed. But, life was not entirely extinct, and those around her worked with vigor. In the meantime, the carriage had been despatcheCt for a physician, who soon arrived, and, under whose careful treat- ment, the nearly dead was called back to the existence she had seemed so anxious to quit. Just as she was laid upon her bed, pale, exh~msted, still scarcely breathing, her ball-dress drenched with water, her hair dishevelled, Count Konisberg burst into the room. He had heard from the servants what had occurred, and his face was nearly as white as hers, his eyes shot fire; it was impossible to tell whether he were most grieved or angry. Margaret! Margaret! he called, in a loud voice, how is this? do you then hate me, that you kill yourself? I cannot believe it! Doctor, I cannot understand it. If she did not love me,~ then I have deceived myself. Suicide! was it then because I refused her a necklace, which would have cost me a hundred thousand francs, when she has now three equally costly? She was crossbut I did not dream of this. Great Heaven! how pale she is. Do you think she will five, Doctor? She may, with extreme caution used in rallying her. But, she will be on the brink of the grave for some days. I~ myself, will not sleep nor leave her, until she is out of danger. Give me my directions. Oh, Margaret! bowing himself over the small hand, which lay motionless on the counterpane. The Countess N?old afterwards declar- ed that a shiver ran through the hand as he did so. She, with characteristic decision, called f5r a dressing-gown to put on over her finery, declaring her in- tention to remain, as long as she could endure the fatigue. The Count courte- ously begged of her not to attempt it; it would weary her, and there was not the least necessity; he had his orders from the Doctor, and should devote himself to their fulfilment. But she was in one of her obstinate moods,provi- dential, I believe, she afterwards esteem- ed it. The Doctor went away, the maid curled herself up on a sofa, to catch snatches of sleep between times; and the two watchers sat, hour after hour, at opposite sides of the bed, their eyes fixed on the patient, occasionally giving her a stimulating potion. One can do this, as well as two,~~ the Count had said, several times. At last the old lady began to nod; he arose, and going into the hall, gave orders to a servant stationed there. I have told them to bring out the carriage, to take you home. I cannot permit you to overtask yourself in this manner, my kindest friend, he said, as he came back, and she started out of an incipient snore. Well! well! I suppose it is so. But I love the child as a daughter, and Im coming back as soon as I have had my sleep out, to see how she progresses. Bye-bye, Margaret,and dont you do any thing so foolish again! She stooped to kiss the patient, who was now lying with wide-open, anxious eyes, moving her lips as if she wished to speak. Suddenly, as her visitor turn- ed from the bed, she sprang half up from her pillow, crying out Dont leave me! dont leave me alone with him! What is it she says? asked the astonished Countess Nold. She must be wandering in her mind. I believe it is a consequence which we are to expect, answered the Count, a little impatiently. You had better go at once. Nothing can be more beneficial to her than absolute quiet. 144 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Feb. The vi4tor glanced at the wifes face, which had grown thin and haggard in its intense look of entreaty,more pa- thetic in its helplessnbss than any appeal of words. I think I had better stay, since it seems to disturb her so, to have me go away. She is a little flighty, no doubt; but, tis best to humor her. She sat down again; profound silence reigned for about an hour. suddenly the wife spoke distinctly: Countess Nold, I pray you, do not leave me alone with that man. He has tried to murder me. If I am left in his power, he will succeed. She is mad, said the Count. It strikes me now that she confessed to me that there was insanity in her fam- ily. This explains all her conduct. I am perfectly in my right mind. Unless you wish to be accomplice in a murder, you must not desert me. I warn you. Yeu see for yourself how absurd are her words. She shuts herself up in her room for the purpose of smothering herselg when I am miles distant on the railway. Mad! mad 1 Countess Nold was bewildered. She stared at the restless husband, who was gnawing his lip with vexation, and at the wife, lying there half dead, but with beseeching eyes that kept themselves upon her face,thus till the early day- light paled the wax tapers; then she shook the sleepy maid, and whispered in her .ear strict injunctions not to leave her mistress alone, not even with the Count. Supposing this to relate to her fear that Countess Konisberg would again attempt suicide, the girl readily prom- ised. For four days the Count kept watch by his wifes bedside; on the fifth, over- come by sleep, he lay ona eouch near at hand, when she slipped softly from her room, was speedily dressed by her maid and the Countess Nold, drove to the ~office of the Prefect of Police, and en- tered an accusation against her husband, for an attempt upon her life. She stated that, on the evening of the ball, after being dressed, she sent her maid down to dinner, and was beguiling the time with a book, when the Count, quite to her surprise, suddenly appeared in her room. She had not expected him until a later hour. He threw off a large travelling cloak, and a cap, as he en- tered, turning the key in the door. She was glad to see him, as they had never been separated so many days since their marriage; he was in good spirits, com- plimented her on her toilet, and finally sat down on the arm of her chair, with his arm about her neck, and his hand- kerchief pressed to her face. Your handkerchief smells of chloro- form, she said. I had the toothache on those horrid cars, he made answer. Take it away, dear Karl,the odor overpowers me! She testified to a distinct conscious- ness, that he pressed it closer to her nostrils. She struggled a little; but after that she remembered nothing, until she was aroused from a death-like trance, to hear her attendants talking of her attempt at suicide. She declared that she had never attempted her own lifethat she knew nothing of the brazier of charcoal, nor of how it came to be lighted in her apartmentthat she had not locked her doorand that it was her belief that Count Konisberg had, in some manner, and for some pur- pose unknown, plotted the whole affair, so as to murder her in such a manner as to make it appear that she had com- mitted suicide. When she had thus made oath, she went away with the Countess Nold, who gave bail for her appearance as witness, when she should be called to trial. That evening Count Konisberg was in prison, and Paris wild with fly- ing rumors. The accused man soon had a hearing, in which he proved an alibi, having, at that hour, just alighted from a train, at a station in another part of the city, and the footman testified to having admitted him, after the physician had been sum- moned. His defence was, that his wifes mind had been affected by the fumes of 1868.] Too Tnun. 145 the charcoal, and that this disturbed vision, when passing into the comatose state, upon coming out of it, appeared to her like reality. It might even be that memory was so affected that she could not recall the motives which urged her to suicide, nor the prepara- tions made to effect it. These motives he attributed to pique, at his having refused her an extravagant gift, which she demanded. He spoke so reasonably, his demeanor towards his wife was so compassionate, his scorn at the idea of attributing such a crime to him, so noble, that not one person in one hun- dred believed him guilty, and he would have been dismissed without being re- manded for farther trial, had not an- other spiders-web reached out and caught him. A miserable charcoal-vender came forward and testified, that, on the night in question, at about eight oclock, a tall gentleman in a cloak, with his trav- elling cap Vulled over his eyes, stopped and bought of him a few sons worth of charcoal, which he wrapped in a fine cambric handkerchief, and stuffed in the pocket of his cloak. That when he came to pay, he had nothing less than a gold-piece, which he, the vender, could not change. The gentleman was in haste, and could not wait, but tossed the piece to him with an oath. He thought it so strange, that this sort of a person should be buying a little char- coal, that he resolved to follow him. It might only be a rich Englishman, who wanted a little fire in his apartments; or, the gentleman might have been crossed in love, or have failed in busi- ness. At least, he would see all he could of him. He ran after him, keep- ing a safe distance, through several pas- 8ages, until he emerged in a little alley- way, back of the Hotel Konisberg,he knew the spot well, and was entirely certain it was the Hotel Konisberg. The man in the cloak admitted himself, by a key, through the little gate of the court; and the vender was about to retire, vexed at his own indiscretion, in running st far from his business, when, looking up, he saw the gentleman on the narrow iron balcony, which ran below the windows on the second story. How he got there, unless he climbed the lightning-rod, he could not say, but there he was, and, after listening at one of the windows, about three min- utes, he threw it up, and crept in, softly shutting it after himself. The witness could swear to the time, for, at that instant, a bell in a church near by, struck eight. Apprehensive that a rob- ber had got access to the hotel, he wished to give the alarm; yet, thinking how ridiculous he should make himself if that were only an ordinary way for some of the inmates to enter the house (there might be steps to the balcony, for all he knew,the wall hid the lower story from his sight) he trotted back to his shop, well pleased with his gold- piece. He swore that in stature, and the color of his beard, this person re- sembled the prisoner, and that he fully believed the Count and this man, to be one and the same. This unexpected testimony, turned the tide of popular feeling against Count Konisberg. It was considered necessary to hold him for further trial, and he was returned to prison. That night, by some mysterious aid, he es- caped from the window of his cell ,and was never re-arrested, although the po- lice searched every corner of France, Germany, and England. His flight, of course, confirmed his guilt. An after- examination of the lock of the door of the Countess bed-chamber, made it evi- dent that it had been tampered with. The alili was not so powerful a point in his favor, since the railway-time, be- ing slightly in advance of the city clocks, by great haste, he might have accomplished the distance to this hotel by eight oclock. It was the settled theory, that he had obtained access to his own house through a rear window, watched for the descent of the servants to dinner, gained his wifes apartments, rendered her insensible with chloroform, kindled the charcoal, and retreating, fastened the lock by means of a nipper, left the house the way he came, hastened back towards the station by some obscure 146 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Feb. route, and was driven up to the front of his hotel, at the moment when he hoped her death was accomplished. The early arrival of Countess Nold had alone thwarted him. Afterwards, he had not dared consummate what he began, even when his wife was in his power, her assertions to her friend having laid him open to suspicion. What could have been his motive? queried Mr. Cameron, as the voice of the story-teller ceased, and the lapse of the river became audible. It is my belief; that he had coldly re- solved to get rid of her, before he took her, a trusting bride, to his breast. He wanted her vast possessions, to which he would have become heir at her death. He was not averse to please himself with her beauty, for a time; but, hers was not a family which he wished to ally with his own blood, and before any chil- dren should come to blend the races, he wc~Ad free himself from her. If you had not told us, Louis, we should not have given credit to so hor- rible a story. For my part, I think such wickedness is very rare in this world, and she slipped her hand into his, as if to reassure herself of the reality of her love and lover :how glad she was that she was only Lissa Cameron, with a poor German tutor for her future hus- band, and not that unfortunate Count- ess Konisbergl What became of the Countess? asked Milla, a tear dropping on her cheek. You remember that I left the old country that winter. I have never heard the particulars, but I believe she went home to her father. Thank goodness the hateful wretch got none of the money he married her for, muttered Robbie, his wide-dilated eye still fixed on the face of the narrator, which he alone could distinctly see, as the moonlight touched it with a pale finger. He got nothingnot even the rem- nants of his own fortune.. It was the most desperate game he ever played, and he lost itas he deserved I bringing his teeth together with a vi- cious snap, which would have taken off Count Konisbergs head, had it been between them. How could you ever have been so deceived in him? asked Mrs. Cameron. Dassel rose from his chair, drawing himself up with a disdainful gesture, which he sometimes made Do you suppose any one person ever knew another? was his counter-ques- tion. We should pass our days in a state of mutual amazement, if we all had windows in our bosoms.But I must go. I hear the distant thunder of the train. Bettine, I shall be here in the afternoon, to-morrow, to say good- bye for some days. Milla, take care of those jewels! There may be some wick- ed Counts around. Dont dream of the one Ive been telling you of. Mr. Came- ron, it is hardly safe to have so much property in a country-house like this, and you have not even a watch-dog. It will be all right to-night, since no one knows of our having it; and to- morrow, I propose, either to bring home a safe, or to deposit the jewels in the one I have. Oh, papa, Id like to sleep with them, under my pillow, one night I Well, Mills~, I think they would be in no danger there. Youll have to cut short those private adieus, my children, unless Louis will stay with us to-night. I ought not, this time, as I have business, early in the morning. Good- night. Good-night, all! God be with you! he cried, in his affectionate Ger- man way, as he waved his hand, dashed down the lawn, and ran to meet the fiery monster, which, spouting flame and smoke, came bellowing out of the hills, pausing, one moment, at the little sta- tion near by, before it dashed on again with renewed fury, filling the peaceful moonlight with its discordant clamor. Louis is whisked away. like some fallen spirit, in the grasp of old Nick! Sei him, Lissa! how he disappears in fire and brimstone! You make me shudder, Ilobbie. What a disagreeable fancy! I always like to watch the trains go whirling 1868.] Too Tnux. 147 away into darkness. See, Milla! how the vapor catches the moonlight. Beau- tiful! The vaporthat is a womans soul, and aspires to heaven, said Robbie. Let us call that Countess Margaret. But that hideous engine, panting for- ward, snorting fire from its nostrils, driven by flaming fiends,that is Count Konisberg,and I wish we had seen the last of him 1 CHAPTER IV. MRS. GRIZZLE. Tnx next morning, as Bobbie Cam- eron was walking up and down a shaded passage in the garden, Greek grammar in hand, thinking, not of his verbs, but of Count Konisberg and his sister Lissas German lover, he heard a voice not new to him, entreating him, through the hedge Robbi~! Bobbie Cameron! At first he affected not to hear, but the weakness of boy-nature when misled by feminine beguilement finally asserted itself, and with much outward digni- ty, and much inward curiosity, Robbie walked leisurely to that broken spot in the green wall which had witnessed such interviews before. A little lady was there, her short pique frock some- what limp from too early contact with dewy rose-bushes, her hair curled to a nicety and tied with blue ribbons, and her eager face thrust over the hedge full of the purpose to tell tales out of school. As he looked at her he re- flected that Susie Grizzle really would be .pretty if she did not freckle. With handsome hair, bright hazel eyes, and a cunning~~ mouth, the traces of plebeian parentage had been as it were painted over with French polish, by a Parisian dressing-maid, and lights and shades flung in by a French governess. She was a new-found rose grafted on hardy stock. Good-morning, Miss Susie. Were you calling me? You know Ive been calling you, Master Cameron, the last half hour. Not quite so long as that, Made- moiselle Grizzle. You neednt call me Grizzle,if you please. You know its not a pretty name like yours; and you mean to tease me. But, theres one comfort, Master Cameron ;I can change it when I get a little older! Ah! and how soon do you propose to change it? Well, I should say in about five years. Im eleven, now, you know; I shall be sixteen then, and pa ran away with ma when 8he was only seventeen. How old will you be then, Bobbie? Not quite twenty,altogether too young for one to marry. Oh, dear ! ~ with a little sigh, then you and I cant run away together. Itll be quite a disappointment to me, for you live so convenient, you see! We might have taken brother Sams yacht, and gone over to Paris, or somewhere. But, I wanted to tell you something! Mammas going to give af~te champe~tre, before we go to Newport. Is she? Yes. She promised Sam, last night. It will be 8uch fun! A band on the lawn, and a tent, and every thing. The best of it is you can come, Bobbie, as its in the day-time, and Im going to be around. I shall have mamma invite you. Dont trouble yourself Susie, said the boy, not at all averse to the pros- pect of dancing and feasting with his elders; and please dont tell me any thing about it, which you ought not. It will be time enough for us to know it when we get our invitations. I shant say a word, since youre so particular about listening ;only Sam coaxed mother into it. He said he didnt believe Miss Cameron cared much for the flute; he wasnt intimate enough to ask her to take a sail in his yacht, and if he had to go off to New- port without making any more head- way, he shonld feel like drowning him- self. Hush, Susie, remonstrated Bobbie, but without moving from the vicinity of such dangerous confidences. 148 PUTNAMs MAGAZINE. [Feb. Do you think the fite ehamp~tre will do any good? she asked, slily. How? 0, in catching your sister, you know. I hardly think it will. Sam dances the German real well. Hes good, too, Sam is. He brought me a box of bon-bons, and such a pretty cro- quet set yesterday. If youll, come over and play croquet this afternoon, I will give you what is left of the lxn%-lons. I wish Miss Lissa would take to Sam. Id be your sister-in-law, then, you see. I dont see it, said Robbie. Ma says shes going to be sure and invite all the nabobs. Perhaps shed better leave us out, then: we are not in that category. No, indeed. Pa says he shouldnt wonder if some of your rank relations in Scotland had died, and left you a big thing. Our what? Your rank relations lords, or something of that kind. Hes going to ask your papa, before the company, how many thousand pounds it was. Susie, your maid is coming after you. I wish shed stay away. Well, good-bye, Robbie. Come and play croquet. Mas coming over to ask your family, before she sends out her cardsfor its made a-purpose to please your sister. Dont tell her. Oh, dear, its so funny to see Sam look at the moon and groan. When he was howl- ing on his flute last evening, I came out and pretended I thought it was our watch-dog. That shut him up. He dont know much about music, and Madame Flambeau always stuffs cotton in her ears when he begins to play. Madame wants me, does she ?I was asking Master Cameron to come over and play croquet, and jumping down from the low stone wall which edged the hedge, Susies blue ribbons and embroidery disappeared at one flash. Mrs. Grizzle had indeed concluded to signalize the closing of her house for a tour of the watering-places by a fete champ~tre, which should rival every thing since the celebrated entertain ment given to the Prince of Great- Gundom by a lady of note not a thousand miles from that very vicini- ty. The neighborhood surrounding the little d~p6t of Evergreenwhere the Bulbouses, Grizzles, Camerons, etc., daily took and left the trainwas a distinguished one in its own opinion, boasting of more great men, within a radius of two miles than was com- mon to any one suburban settlement. On a conspicuous height, quite back from the river, gleamed the white mar- ble mansion of the Great-American- Mixed Co. So great were the profits on the Mixed,the result of an ingenious machine for turning genuine coffee-berries out of dough, as well as of a faithful cultivation of chiccory, and the employment of an Agent to keep a sharp look-out for cargoes of damaged stock,that the daughter of said Company drove a four-in-hand down to the train, every fair evening, the mountings of whose harness were believed to be of solid gold. The ebony coachman by her side, was set off with mother-of-pearl buttons to that extent that he looked like an inlaid Japanese tea- caddy on a large scale. The very carriage shone as if it had been japanned; and the delicate bas- ket-work on the door-panels, reminded one of the cool bamboo of the Orient in this western land degenerated into cool bamboozlement. A little to the right of the white marble mansion,on whose lawn, by- the-way, glittered a real Chinese pa- goda, bells and all, the model of which was copied from a blue earthen jar on the counter of the Great-American-Mit- ed Co .,stood a real granite castle whose stones had been laid, one by one, on a solid foundation of washing- machines, which may not have seemed adequate to so great a weight, but which were certainly not as baseless a~ the fabric of a ~1sion, and whose frowning battlements looked coldly down on such poor mortals as still were in the sud& of honest toiL 1868.] Too TRUE. 149 To the left was a spacious brick villa in the Italian style, the result not of the sweets but the sours of prosperity. Its owner had pickled cucumbers and other small vegetables, until he had succeeded in preserving rolls of green backs quaintly resembling huge pickles, and some most lovely little pots of eagles which were warranted to keep in any climate. A tomato, con- chant, with a red pepper, rampant, would have formed a suitable coat-of-arms for this founder of the American republican family of Perigrine Jones; but Jones was not a man of original ideas, and had gone to Ball & Black with a book of Heraldry, open at Jones, and they had arranged for him a very pretty device for his silver-ware, stolen from the most ancient of the App-Johns of Wales. His coachman was a smart Irishman in an olive-green suit, with walnut-brown bands, and a cockade on his hat resembling pickled cauliflower. In fact th*~ coachmans whole face look- ed like a pot of assorted. It was the one remaining anxiety of Mrs. Grizzles life, that, as yet, her fam- ily was not provided with its coat-of- arms. Her servants all were in livery, from the big-breasted butler down to the ebon page who held up her train when she walked out of a morning among the flowers, asking the garden- er their names, and blooming, herself~, like a beautiful, full-fleshed peony, as some Swinburne-mad poet hath it. Often and often she had besought her~ husband to have the thing done; she could not bear to be driving about with all those nabobs (a favorite word of hers, she using it in good faith, for the very impressiveness of the sound), and getting out at Stewarts with the clerks putting parcels in the carriage, and no coat-of-arms to distinguish them by them, meaning not the clerks, nor the parcels, but the Grizzles. Grizzle was not quite a fool, and was some- thing of a wag. In answer to his wifes importunities he had devised various original designs, drawn in his diary, with his pencil, which he offered for her inspection. We will give one of these as a specimen : Sheild ova4 feud ar- gent, a ph~tter; charge, a sucking-pig, dormant; an ear of corn in its mouth, gar1~ whom the gods love die young, motto. Mrs. Grizzle resented this re- minder of the shop with an asperity quite contrary to her usual good-nature. Mr. and Mrs. Grizzle never had quar- relled; if that unhappiness was yet in store for them it would be due, solely, to a difference of opinion upon coats- of-arms. So sensitive had Mrs. Grizzle grown on the subject of the shopas he persisted in calling itthat, had she read the last sentence of ours and seen used the expressions in store for them, and it would be due, she would have recoiled from them on account of their business-like flavor. Grizzle, though sufficiently purse-proud and vain of his rapidly-acquired splen- dors, had not her delicacy in ignoring the source from whence all their pros- perity had emanated. But, to return to thef4te champ~tre. Mr. Dassel had found that the firm were anxious to have him start the evening of that day for St. Louis, and he was in the midst of his adieus, just having kissed a tear from Lissas cheek, when the sound of the door-bell warned them to recall their company looks. Now do stay, cried Milla, as the pair began a retreat towards the libra- ry. Youve half-an-hour yet, Louis, and its only Mrs. Grizzle, our nearest neighbor. I saw her coming up the walk. Shell not stay over ten minutes, I presume, and I shall like you to meet and appreciate a genuine representative of our great and glorious Stay, children, said Mrs. Cameron; and with that wonderful instinct of self-preservation which enables us to draw in our hearts like snails in a shell when observers approach too near, the agitated lovers were as composedsit- ting demurely on opposite sides of the room, when the visitor enteredas if this were their first appearance together on any stage. My! aint it hot? panted the lady, who was as round and rosy as her husband, but on a larger scale. Im 150 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Feb so accustomed to be driven when I go anywhere, that, even this short walk has almost melted me. What pretty young ladies yours are, Mrs. Cameron. I de- clare I dont wonder Sams allers talk- ing of them. Hes quite taken with one of them,~~ she said, with a motherly smile at Elizabeth, who blushed slightly, although she looked very much amused. I wish my eldest was a girl instead of a boy; for then she could be some help to me in entertainin compny. Sams desperate fond of compny; he will have me invite lots of it to the house; but, he aint no more use in helpin git along with it than a chair. Girls would be different. Howsumever, as hes old enough to marry now, p raps Ill have a daughter-in-law some of these days. I trust you may, Madame, answer- ed Lissa, politely, as the remark seemed to be addressed to her. Hes all alive now about an out- door party,a sort of to-home pic-nic, I should call it. He wants me to have one, next week; but he said he shouldnt en- joy it one bit if your whole family, Mrs. Cameron, did not come. So Ive run over, without ceremony, to beg you to promise. Thank you, I know of nothing, now, which will prevent our accepting, an- swered Mrs. Cameron. Then well have out the cards to-mor- row, for Thursday of next week. Samll be delighted. Mrs. Grizzle was sitting on the same sofa with Milla, towards whom she now bent, whispering: Who is that distinguished looking gentleman? Is it any body I ought to invite, to come with your family? Oh, thats my brothers ,~7 said Mills, brimming with mischief. Ohah! thats what gives him a foreign look, I spose? Of course you wouldnt wish me to ask him? I dont think he would come, if you did. He does not have much re- spect for us Americans. He was a Baron in his own country, but when he fled from it for having offended the Austrian government, he dropped his title. He thinks titles out of place here. Why, madame, hes as familiar with the Emperor Napoleon and the Empress Eugenie, as we are with our neighbors 1 How you talk I stealing an awe- stricken lo6k across the room. I wish youd introduce me. I should feel 80 honored to have him at my shampeter. He would be compelled to decline, as he leaves for St. Louis this evening. I dare say youll meet him at some fu- ture time, as he is often at our house. But, Mrs. Grizzle was no~ going to be in the same room with a live Baron, and not have the pleasure of his ac- quaintance; she asked, aloud, for an introduction, and Mrs. Cameron per- formed that ceremon~y. Im so sorry not to have you at our shampeter. I know Sam would be dreadfully pleased, and Im sure I should, Mr. Dassel. Law! I think its a false delicacy on your part, to drop your title, sir, which Miss Milla says is that of a Baron. If you was to come to my shampeter, I should call you Baron whenever I spoke to you. Comes hard on you, teachin for a livin, dont it, after being accustomed to foreign courts ? the lady beamed all over with a tender benevolence as she smiled at iDassel, who was regard- ing her with a helpless surprise. Poor little Milla was frightened at the result of her mischievous communi- cation; she plucked the visitor by her sleeve, whispering Robbie is his only pupil, Mrs. Griz- zle. He instructs him, as a favor. His business is that of a foreign correspond- ent. Ah, yes, replied Mrs. Grizzle, shak- ing her head mysteriously, thats di- plomacy, I know. There was a friend of ours went to Siberia, or somewhere, as a diplomatic corpse. Quite an hon- or! then she added, again beaming upon the Baron I beg ten thou- sand pardons for mistaking your voca- tion, Baron. Miss Milla has just set me right. She informs me youre an em- bassador, which I am sure is no more than the country ought to do for dis- tinguished foreigners driven to our 1868.] Too TRUE. 151 arms, which are ever open, by the per- secutions of kings and such. Were all democrats here, Baron; every man and every woman may be a king and a queen if they like, and every boy a president. Thats what I call the real democratic principle; though what people run away from kings for, I never could make out. ive always had a curiosity to see one. Youll find we Americans ready to pay you proper respect, Baron. Its what our society wants. A little suffusion of the genu- ine nobility, just to give it an air, you know. Ah, madame, you are too modest! Your society is perfect, as it is. Could a title add to your position, for instance, Mrs. Grizzle i Mrs. Grizzle flushed still rosier with delight. Flattery, Baron, pure flat- tery! but, they say that courts are ad- dicted to it. How fortunate you are, to have such a tutor for Robbie, Mrs. Cameron! I wish Sam enjoyed such advantages. Sams young yet, and would bear improving. He haint no confidence in his own powers. If I wasnt afraid youd take it as an in- sult, Baron Dassel, Id make a proposi- tion for you to include our Sam with your other pupil. What terms would you propose, ma- dame? La, Id leave it entirely to you. We dont mind money, sir. Id give you a home in our house, with the best we had, and such a salary as you might fix,just to overlook his manners, you know, and his French, a little. I dont care about his worrying with any thing hard. He could teach him military science and civil engineering, boxing, fencing, drawing, music, including all manner of instruments, half-a-dozen languages, mathematics complete, yachting, a taste for the fine arts, belle-lettres, how to hold up his shoulders, and what to do with his hands, cried Milla, laughing, for the presence of Mrs. Grizzle had ex- cited all her wickedness, that is a part of a list of an European gentle- mans accomplishments. Gracious goodness! Samll never be equal to them, my dear! no, not half of them! But, Im sure I wish he could learn what to do with his hands, for they cause him a great deal of trouble , ,, in comp ny. Ill consider your proposition, dur- ing my absence, madame, and give you an answer upon my return, said Louis. Lissa looked up at him in surprise. Their wedding was to take place some time in September. She thought Louis must be carrying on Millas jest, but, as his eyes did not meet hers, she could not tell whether, or not, he had spoken in earnest. Sam would be quite set up, if he could learn to handle his yacht, con- tinued the fond mother, for he gets knocked down every time he tries her, with the boom, I think he calls it. He was knocked overboard, senseless, the last time, and dragged out by the hair of his head. He keeps a mate a-pur- pose to sail her, but hes a powerful ambition to manage her himself.Well, well, I must be goin. Id put my sham- peter ofi, Baron, if we hadnt got rooms engaged at Newport for the first of July. Now, recollect, Mrs. Cameron, I want you to bring the hull of your delightful family. Youve such sweet girls! Im sure theyll be the belles of the shampeter, and Susie charged me to be partikeler about Robbie. Shell pout and spoil every thing, if he dont come, for when the childs crossed, shell cut up all kinds o tricks. Mrs. Grizzle could not get away with- out shaking hands with the Baron. Good Lord! sighed Louis, when the door actually had closed upon her. And you really consented to visit her, my dear lady? How could I avoid it, Mr. Dassel? They are our neighbors, and it will be more comfortable to be decently civil to them. They cannot harm us; and, really, there will be a great many good people at that shampeter, I have no doubt. It is our way. I believe Ill emigrate to the Rocky Mountains. They are no longer out of the 152 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Feb. world, said Lissa. There ~re gold- diggers there, who have set up their carriages, no doubt. Alas, ladies, I must say farewell. What, Bettine, my darling; tears? I promise you a letter every other day. He turned to Mila, whose lip, also, was trembling, bestowing the kiss of a brother on her flower-like cheek. As he did so, he looked full into her eyes, down, down into her foolish heart, his own glance melting and dazzling, whis- pering too softly for any ears but her own to catch the tender modulation Does my sweet Milla, too, grieve for Louis going away? She sat thrilled and mute, until after he was gone; and when Lissa, who had followed him to the porch, and watched until the train took him up, came in and ran up-stairs to hide her tears, Milla did not follow to comfort her. Drooping down on the corner of the sofa, her mother thought her asleep, and stole away to dress for dinwr; but, when the young girl found herself alone, a strange change came over her. She lifted a face white and set, with a look upon it painfully dif- ferent from its usual infantile bright- ness. Crossing the room, she stood be- fore the tall mirror, and gathering up her veil of silken hair, gazed fiercely at the blemish which marred her other- wise exceeding loveliness. No oneno oneno one will ever love me! I wish I were dead! I be- lieve I will kill myself. Now jus listen to my purty chile! said a voice at the door. Milla let fall her glistening hair, turning hastily to confront old Sabrina, the black nurse who had taken care of her since her birth, and who, coming to look after her darling, being never easy about her unless she knew just where she was, stood rolling her great eyes in terror at the sad scene she had witnessed. You naughty, naughty chile! Why, bress you, Miss Milla, dar nebber was any body lubbed so much as you. Fad- der, mudder, ebery body, down to poor ole black Sabrina, lubs de berry yerth you trods on. They pit~, me, nursie. Chile! chile! Now, don go and be ungrateful. Why, nobody eber seed you, darlin, dat didnt love you de minit dey sot eyes on you. Oh, Sabrina! Im miserable, after all, said Milla, with a sob that was more like a gasp; and I know that, as I grow older, I shall grow more miserable. Dar, dar, dar, honey! does you want to break my heart? cried the old nurse, lifting Milla in her arms, as if she were a baby, and walking about the floor with her. For sixteen years she had carried this precious burden, which still seemed as light to her as in its childhood. Millas spine was weak, and whenever she was tired, Sabrina insisted upon carrying her up and down stairs, as staircases were the invalids dread. The child always had enjoyed being carried about in those strong, loving arms; but now, every thing of the kind seemed to vex and mortifyher. Set me down, nurse; you treat me as if I were a baby. I shant an I cant, till I take yer safe to yer own purty room. Yer white an tired, and you mus lay down an rest, or, whatll yer papa say? and she bore Milla away to her soft couch in a cool chamber,where she patted her hair and smoothed it as she said Now, if ever you feels bad, and dont want to tell nobody else, jes you talk to old Sabrina bout yer trou- bles, and shell keep em fast fer yer. It was well for Elizabeth that she had Mrs. Grizzlesf~te ehamp~tre with which to amuse herself during the first days of Louis absence. She missed him more than she would like to acknowledge. He had been so constant a visitor, that the whole family felt his loss; he al- ways was an entertaining guest, as wel- come at a dinner-table as the salad or the wine which gives rest to the whole repast; and nobody laughed at Lissa for a little gravity of demeanor, who told none but Milla, and her not with- out blushes, how lonely she was without Louis. You must busy yourself with youx 1868.1 Too Tnuz. 153 trousseau, sister. You have but a few weeks, really. See I I have hemmed a dozen yards of cobweb cambric, and sewed on this valenciennes lace, as one of my contributions. Thank you, Milla; but you must not sew. It is not good for you. Nothing is good for me; but I must pass away the time,yes, all the long hours, days, and years. How dreary! Why, darling, how sad you seem! whats the matter l Nothing, Lissa. Did mamma tell you she is to take you to Newport, for a few weeks of ocean-bathing? We all think you are so pale and languid; the hot weather does not agree with you. Papa says he has the money necessary, and it must be spent in that way. But, you will need all the money this season, Lissa. No, indeed, sis; Id rather be mar- ried in white muslin, without even a veil, than,to see you looking so white. But you shall be dressed splendidly. Ive set my heart on your wearing the diamonds. If I cannot give them to you, I can loan them, for you to wear until I am of age. Of what use are they, shut up in a safe I Louis is so proud. He would like, above all things, to have you appear well, Elizabeth. And when you are a wife, jewels will become you. Your skin is so creamy, and your hair so dark! Youve a state- ly turn of the neck, too, Lissa, that will enhance the beauty of a necklace. Quite a list of attractions! Youre a loving little creature, Milla, and quite too generous, throwing down her work to kiss her. Perhaps, at some grand reception, I may borrow your splendors for a night. You should honor the shampeter~ with them. Both girls laughed, as the ridiculous remembrance of Mrs. Grizzles visit re- curred to them. She had run over two or three times, to consult them about the tent for the collation, the temporary floor for dancing, the music, the banners, the lamps, the .flowers, and every other possible thing, until voL. r.11 Mrs. Cameron had almost regretted her promise to attend, which had afforded an opening for so sudden an intimacy. The discreet mother had employed Sam, also, to convey some of these messages, who had come over dressed to fits, no matter what the hour of the day, blushing and gnawing the ends of his gloves, so sun-struck by the full effulgence of Miss Camerons beauty, when brought near to it, as to be ren- dered almost insensible of what he was doing or what he had been sent to do. By hokey, mother, Id marry her, if she hadnt a red cent, if I could git her, he burst forth, after one of these occasions. Shes too nice for me, thats a fact, if feyther has got the biggest house. Im sorry you told me about that Baron. Girls always take to any thing of that kind. It makes me burst all out in a sweat when I think of it. I didnt half sleep last night. Pshaw, Sammy, I reckon you can have your own now, when you get a fair chance. Miss Cameron is not in- sensible to the advantages of wealth.. And if she should be, youd make more~ by taking Miss Bulbors; her dads full as rich Now, mother, dont say dad. Them fellers Im getting intimate with, laughed at me for it. I know I hadnt oughter, Sam, but its hard to teach old dogs new tricks. I sometimes wish we was back in our own little room, behind the grocery- store. I used to take downright com- fort in those days. My work was right to my hand; and if I wanted to speak to your dad Dad, again!,, I had only to open the door into the shop. When I seen ladies then, sweep- ing by in their coaches and horses, with a footman staudin on behind like a guard thrown out in time o war, I used to think how happy they must be. But, to tell you in confidence, Sam, I aint a bit happier than I was then. I some- times think, when we set down to our grand dinner with all them waiters watchin every motion, that Id fling~ them all into the fire for the privilege~ 154 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Feb. of settin down at our old table, witli folds of her moire-antique, lost in pleas- its brown cloth, and stickin my own ant reminiscences of past dishes of cold fork into the pickles. A good old- pork, with a herring for a relish, when fashioned dish o pork and beans would she was rudely recalled to her present quite give me an appetite,with your state of oppressive magnificence by the d father to help me, and not an bottle-green servant, who informed her impudent waiter to look on and count that the carpenter awaited her orders how many mouthfuls I took. as to the exact location of the floor for Mrs. Grizzle sighed and smoothed the dancing. LTo be continued.] BROADWAY. INTELLIGENT River of Lifeflowing current of spirits immortal I Whose banks are oerhanging with marble like vistas of snow-covered willows, And caverned with grottoes whose splendor flows over from every portal; Thy roar is the song of the syren to voyagers stemming thy billows. I love to launch forth on thy waves, where the foam of life bubbles and sparkles Like wine; and where wealth, fashion, beauty, and fame, to my spirit inhaling, Yield draughts never tasted in Eden. Look, quick! how you jetty lash darkles Those orbs of a sunnier sky; ah! if glances of love unavailing Mighf bloom into flowers in her path, she would walk upon billows of roses. Shes gone! What a princess-like gait has this blonde so accustomed to Broad- way I how calmly the burden of souls on that placid Divine now reposes: Aside! Let those over-dressed beaux arm-in-arm with their canes sweep the roadway; A merchant whose ships span the seas likQ the fleets of a maritime power; A beggar with only a fringe and a tear between living and dying; Gay butterflies busily flitting, with every window, a flower; And children whose faces are pain that has drank up the tears of their crying; The truculent drivers shrill tenor, the thoroughfares thundering basso; A miss to whom life hath some charm, since Don Giovanni is ours; A scholar absorbed in reviewing the latest translation of Tasso; A hearse with its sorrowful plumes, and a bride in her sweet orange flowers. Thus ever the tide sweeps along, without ebb in its sensuous flowing As this were the worlds throbbing heart, and a God were the soul of these throes! Was it so in the Babylon old, where the forests of palms are now growing I And when in the bed of this river old mosses and pines shall repose, Will its stream, like the vanishing vapor, that seems to non-entity fleeing, When only the suns burning passion its hold on the earthly has riven And, ravishing, borne into cloudland, where, robed by the God of its being In raiment of amber and silver, it glows with the hues he has given Or descends, like a visit of angels, in dew-fall and rain or the snow, To strengthen the weak and renew the bright green of the tender and blooming, Or hide in its chastening mantle, deformity, barrenness, woe, Perfuming the earth with its fragrance, the heavens with glory illuming; Is it so that these spirits immortal, drawn upward by Love to the skies, By the light of that country shall glow till their garments are silver and gold- Shall share in that heaven whose glory, though changing each hour, never dies, But renews with each closing the Story that never can fully be told? how broadly that loftier current of spirits celestial will flow Where the lovely of every age, as the drops in the billows unite And mingle in heavenly raptures that never may weariness know Until changed as from glory to glory and lost in the Infinite Light.

154 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Feb. of settin down at our old table, witli folds of her moire-antique, lost in pleas- its brown cloth, and stickin my own ant reminiscences of past dishes of cold fork into the pickles. A good old- pork, with a herring for a relish, when fashioned dish o pork and beans would she was rudely recalled to her present quite give me an appetite,with your state of oppressive magnificence by the d father to help me, and not an bottle-green servant, who informed her impudent waiter to look on and count that the carpenter awaited her orders how many mouthfuls I took. as to the exact location of the floor for Mrs. Grizzle sighed and smoothed the dancing. LTo be continued.] BROADWAY. INTELLIGENT River of Lifeflowing current of spirits immortal I Whose banks are oerhanging with marble like vistas of snow-covered willows, And caverned with grottoes whose splendor flows over from every portal; Thy roar is the song of the syren to voyagers stemming thy billows. I love to launch forth on thy waves, where the foam of life bubbles and sparkles Like wine; and where wealth, fashion, beauty, and fame, to my spirit inhaling, Yield draughts never tasted in Eden. Look, quick! how you jetty lash darkles Those orbs of a sunnier sky; ah! if glances of love unavailing Mighf bloom into flowers in her path, she would walk upon billows of roses. Shes gone! What a princess-like gait has this blonde so accustomed to Broad- way I how calmly the burden of souls on that placid Divine now reposes: Aside! Let those over-dressed beaux arm-in-arm with their canes sweep the roadway; A merchant whose ships span the seas likQ the fleets of a maritime power; A beggar with only a fringe and a tear between living and dying; Gay butterflies busily flitting, with every window, a flower; And children whose faces are pain that has drank up the tears of their crying; The truculent drivers shrill tenor, the thoroughfares thundering basso; A miss to whom life hath some charm, since Don Giovanni is ours; A scholar absorbed in reviewing the latest translation of Tasso; A hearse with its sorrowful plumes, and a bride in her sweet orange flowers. Thus ever the tide sweeps along, without ebb in its sensuous flowing As this were the worlds throbbing heart, and a God were the soul of these throes! Was it so in the Babylon old, where the forests of palms are now growing I And when in the bed of this river old mosses and pines shall repose, Will its stream, like the vanishing vapor, that seems to non-entity fleeing, When only the suns burning passion its hold on the earthly has riven And, ravishing, borne into cloudland, where, robed by the God of its being In raiment of amber and silver, it glows with the hues he has given Or descends, like a visit of angels, in dew-fall and rain or the snow, To strengthen the weak and renew the bright green of the tender and blooming, Or hide in its chastening mantle, deformity, barrenness, woe, Perfuming the earth with its fragrance, the heavens with glory illuming; Is it so that these spirits immortal, drawn upward by Love to the skies, By the light of that country shall glow till their garments are silver and gold- Shall share in that heaven whose glory, though changing each hour, never dies, But renews with each closing the Story that never can fully be told? how broadly that loftier current of spirits celestial will flow Where the lovely of every age, as the drops in the billows unite And mingle in heavenly raptures that never may weariness know Until changed as from glory to glory and lost in the Infinite Light. 1868.] DANTE Axn mu LATEST TRANsLATORs. 155 DANTE AND HIS LATEST TRANSLATORS. Gnosrs and witches are the best machinery for a modern Epic. So said Charles Fox, who fed his imagi- nation on verse of this aspiring class. Fox was no literary oracle, and his opinion is here cited only as evidence that the superearthly is an acknowl- edged element in the Epopee. The term machinery implies ignorance of the import of the superearthly in Epic poetry, an ignorance attendant on materialism and a virtual unbelief. No poet who should accept the term could write an Epic, with or without the machinery. Such acceptance would betoken that weakness of the poetic pinion which surely follows a want of faith in the invisible super- visive energ4es. A genuine Epic, of the first class, is a world-poem, a poem of depth, and height, and breadth, narrating long-pre- pared ruin or foundation of a race; and poetry, soaring beyond history, is bold to lay bare the method of the divine intervention in the momentous work. The epic poet, worthy of the lofty task, has such large sympathies, together with such consciousness of power, that he takes on him to in- terpret and incarnate the celestial co- operation. There are people, and some of them even poets, whose conscious- ness is so smothered behind the senses, that they come short of belief in spir- itual potency. They are what, with felicity of phrase, Mr. Matthew Arnold calls Light half-believers in our casual creods. Homer and Milton were believers: they believed in the visible active presence on the earth of the God, Mars, and the Archangel, Raphael. Had they not, there would have been no Iliad, no Paradise Lost. Dante, too, was a believer; and such warm, wide sympathies had he, and an imagination so daring, that he undertook to unfold the divine judg- ment on the multitudinous dead, rang- ing with inspired vision through Hell, and Purgatory, and Heaven. In his large, hot heart, he lodged the racy, crude beliefs of his age, and with poetic pen wrought them into im- mortal shapes. The then religious imaginations of Christendom, positive, and gross, and very vivid; the politics of Italy, then tumultuous and embit- tered; the theology and philosophy of his time, fantastic, unfashionedall this was his material. But all this, and were it ten times as much, is but the skeleton, the frame. The true material of a poem is the poets own nature and thoughts, his sentiment and his judgment, his opinions, aspi- rations, imaginations, his veriest self, the whole of him, especially the best of him. Than imaginary journeys through the realms beyond the grave, which were so much the vogue with the religious writers of the dayand lit- erature then was chiefly, almost ex- clusively, religiousno more broad or tempting canvas could be offered to a poet, beset, as all poets are apt to be, with the need of utterance, and pos- sessed, moreover, of a graphic genius that craved strong glowing themes for its play. The present teeming world to be transfigured into the world to come, and the solicitation and tempta- tion to do this brought to a manly, l)Owerful nature, passionate, creative, descriptive, to a stirring realist, into whose breast, as a chief actor on the Italian scene, ran, all warm from the wheels of their spinning, the threads of Italian politics at the culmination of the papal imperial conflict; and that breast throbbing with the fiery pas- sions of republican Italy, while behind the throb beat the measure of a poetic soul impelled to tune the wide vane-

1868.] DANTE Axn mu LATEST TRANsLATORs. 155 DANTE AND HIS LATEST TRANSLATORS. Gnosrs and witches are the best machinery for a modern Epic. So said Charles Fox, who fed his imagi- nation on verse of this aspiring class. Fox was no literary oracle, and his opinion is here cited only as evidence that the superearthly is an acknowl- edged element in the Epopee. The term machinery implies ignorance of the import of the superearthly in Epic poetry, an ignorance attendant on materialism and a virtual unbelief. No poet who should accept the term could write an Epic, with or without the machinery. Such acceptance would betoken that weakness of the poetic pinion which surely follows a want of faith in the invisible super- visive energ4es. A genuine Epic, of the first class, is a world-poem, a poem of depth, and height, and breadth, narrating long-pre- pared ruin or foundation of a race; and poetry, soaring beyond history, is bold to lay bare the method of the divine intervention in the momentous work. The epic poet, worthy of the lofty task, has such large sympathies, together with such consciousness of power, that he takes on him to in- terpret and incarnate the celestial co- operation. There are people, and some of them even poets, whose conscious- ness is so smothered behind the senses, that they come short of belief in spir- itual potency. They are what, with felicity of phrase, Mr. Matthew Arnold calls Light half-believers in our casual creods. Homer and Milton were believers: they believed in the visible active presence on the earth of the God, Mars, and the Archangel, Raphael. Had they not, there would have been no Iliad, no Paradise Lost. Dante, too, was a believer; and such warm, wide sympathies had he, and an imagination so daring, that he undertook to unfold the divine judg- ment on the multitudinous dead, rang- ing with inspired vision through Hell, and Purgatory, and Heaven. In his large, hot heart, he lodged the racy, crude beliefs of his age, and with poetic pen wrought them into im- mortal shapes. The then religious imaginations of Christendom, positive, and gross, and very vivid; the politics of Italy, then tumultuous and embit- tered; the theology and philosophy of his time, fantastic, unfashionedall this was his material. But all this, and were it ten times as much, is but the skeleton, the frame. The true material of a poem is the poets own nature and thoughts, his sentiment and his judgment, his opinions, aspi- rations, imaginations, his veriest self, the whole of him, especially the best of him. Than imaginary journeys through the realms beyond the grave, which were so much the vogue with the religious writers of the dayand lit- erature then was chiefly, almost ex- clusively, religiousno more broad or tempting canvas could be offered to a poet, beset, as all poets are apt to be, with the need of utterance, and pos- sessed, moreover, of a graphic genius that craved strong glowing themes for its play. The present teeming world to be transfigured into the world to come, and the solicitation and tempta- tion to do this brought to a manly, l)Owerful nature, passionate, creative, descriptive, to a stirring realist, into whose breast, as a chief actor on the Italian scene, ran, all warm from the wheels of their spinning, the threads of Italian politics at the culmination of the papal imperial conflict; and that breast throbbing with the fiery pas- sions of republican Italy, while behind the throb beat the measure of a poetic soul impelled to tune the wide vane- 156 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Feb. gated cacophany. Proud, passionate, and baffled, the man Dante deeply swayed the poet. Much of his verse is directly woven out of his indigna- tions, and burning personal griefs. At times, contemporaneous history tyran- nized over him. Dantes high and various gifts, his supreme poetic gift, the noble char- acter and warm individuality of the man, with the pathos of his personal story, the full, lively transcript he hands down, of the theology and philosophy of his age, his native lit- erary force as moulder of the Italian language, his being the bold, adven- turous initiator, the august father of modern poetryall this has combined to keep him and his verse fresh in the minds of men through six centuries. But even all this would not have made him one of the three or four world-poets, would not have won for him the wreath of universal European translation. What gave his rare quali- ties their most advantageous field, not merely for the display of their pecu- liar superiorities, but for keeping their fruit sound and sweet, was, that he is the historian of Hell, Purgatory, and Heavenof the world to come such as it was pictured in his day, and as it has been pictured more or less ever since,the word-painter of that vision- ary awful hereafter, the thought of which has ever been a spell. Those imaginations as to future be- ing,to the Middle Ages so vivid as to become soul-realities,Dante with his transcendent pictorial mastership, clothed in words fresh and weighty from the mine of popular speech, stamping them with his glittering imperial superscription. Imaginations I there are imaginations of the future, the reverse of poetical. Hunger will give you tormenting imaginations of breakfasts and dinners; avarice en- livens some minds with pictures of gains that are to be. But imagina- tions of the life beyond the grave, these we cannot entertain without spirituality. The having them with any urgence and persistence, implies strong spiritual prepossessions: men must be self-possessed with their higher self, with their spirit. The very attempt to figure your disem- bodied state, is an attempt poetical. To succeed with any distinctness, de- notes some power of creative projec- tion: without wings, this domain can- not be entered. In Dantes time these attempts were common. Through his pre~minent qualifications, crowned with the poetic faculty, the faculty of sym- pathy with ideal excellence, his attempt was a great, a unique success. To accompany Dante through his vast triple transterrestrial world, would seem to demand in the reader a sus- tained effort of imagination. But Dante is so graphic, and, we might add, corporeal in his pictures, puts such a pulse into his figures, that the artistic illusion wherewith we set out is exchanged for, or rather overborne by, an illusion of the reality of what is represented. Yet from the opening of the first Canto he is ever in the superearthly world and every line of the fourteen thousand has the benefit of a superearthly, that is, a poetic at- mosphere, which lightens it, trans- figures it, floats it. One reads with the poetic prestige of the knowledge that every scene is transterrestrial; and, at the same time, every scene is pre- sented with a physical realism, a visual and audible vividness, which captivates and holds the perceptive faculty; so that the reader finds himself grasped, as it were, in a vice, whose double handle is morticed on one side in the senses, and on the other in the spir- itual imagination. Dante had it in himthis Hell, Purgatory, and Heavenso full and warm and large was his nature. With- in his own breast he had felt with the keen intensity of the poetic tempera- ment, the loves and hates, the griefs and delights of life. Through his wealth of heart he had a fellow-feeling for all the joys and sorrows of his brother-men, and, added to this, an artists will and want to reproduce tbem, and to reproduce them a clear, 1868.] DANTE AND HIS LATEST TRANSLATORS. 15Z outwelling, intellectual vivacity. He need scarcely have told us that his Poem, though treating of spirits, re- lates to the passions and doings of men in the flesh. He chose a theme that at once seized the attention of his readers, and gave to himself a boundless scope. His field was all past history, around the altitudes of which are clustered biographical traits and sketches of famous sinners and famous saints, of heroes and lofty criminals; and, along with this, con- temporaneous Florentine and Italian history, with its tumults and vicissi- tudes, its biographies and personali- ties, its wraths and triumphs. Dante exhibits great fertility in situ- ations and conjunctions; but, besides that many of them were ready to his hand, this kind of inventiveness de- notes of itself no fine creative faculty. It is the necessary equipment of the voluminous novelist. In this facility and abundance Goldsmith could not have coped with James and Buiwer; and yet the Vicar of Wakefield (not to go so high as Tristram Shandy and Don Quixote) is worth all their hundred volumes of Tales put together. What insight, what weight, and faith- fulness, and refinement, and breadth, and truth, and elevation of character, and conception, does the framework of incident support and display,that is the ~sthetic question. The novels of every day bristle with this material in- ventiveness, this small, abounding, tan- gled underwood of event and sensation, which yields no timber and wherein birds will not build. The invention exhibited in the punishments and tor- tures and conditions of the Inferno and Pargatorio and Pai-adiso, is not admir- able for their mere exuberance and diversityfor that might have come from a comparatively prosaic mind, especially when fed, as all minds there were, with the passionate medileval beliefsbut for the heart there is in them, throbbing deeply in some, and for the human sympathy, and thence, in part, the photographic fidelity, and for the paramount gift poetically to portray. A consequence of the choice of sub- ject, and, as regards the epic quality of Dantes poem, an important conse- quence, is, that there is in it no unity of interest. The sympathies of the reader are not engrossed by one great group of characters, acting and react- ing on one another through the whole sweep of the invention. Instead of this, we have a long series of uncon- nected pictures, each one awakening a new interest. Hereby the mind is dis- tracted, the attention being transferred at every hundred lines to a fresh figure or group. We pass through a gallery of pictures and portraits, classed, to be sure, by subjects, but distinct one from the other, and separated by the projec- tion of as many different frames. We are on a weird, adventurous journey, and make but brief stops, however at- tractive the strangers or acquaintance we meet. We go from person to per- son, from scene to scene; so that, at the end of the journey, although the perception has been richly crowded, one impression has effaced the other. Not carrying the weight, not pulsating in its every limb with the power of a broad, deep, involved story, architec- turally reared on one foundation, whose parts are all subordinated to a great unity, the Divina Commedia, as an or- ganic, artistic whole, is inferior to the Iliad and Para.di8e Lost, and to the Grecian and Shakespearian tragedies. The exclusive superearthliness of his scenes and personages, and, with this, his delight in picture-drawing, keep Dante close to his pagefastened to it, we might say, by a twofold fascination. Among the many faculties that equip him for his extraordinary task, most active is that of form. Goethe says of him: The great intellectual and moral qualities of Dante being univer- sally acknowledged, we shall be further- ed in a right estimate of his works, if we keep in view that just in his life- timeGiotto being his cotemporary was the rebirth of plastic Art iii all its natural strength. By this sensuous, form-loving spirit of the age, working so widely and deeply, Dante, too, was 158 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Feb. largely swayed. With the eye of his imagination he seized objects so dis- tinctly, that he could reproduce them in sharp outline. Thence we see be- fore us the most abstruse and unusual, drawn, as it were, after nature. In recognition of the same characteristic, Coleridge says: In picturesqueness, Dante is beyond all other poets, an- cient or modern, and more in the stern style of Pindar than of any other. Mi- chael Angelo is said to have made a design for every page of the Divines tJommedia.~ Dante, eminent in poetic gifts, has many sides, but this is his strongest side: he is preilminently a poet of form. In his mind and in his work there is a southern, an Italian, sensu- ousness. He is a poet of thought, but more a poet of moulds; he is a poet of sentiment, but more a poet of pic- tures. Rising readily to generalization, still his intellect is more specific than generic. His subjectchosen by the concurrence of his testhetic, moral, and intellectual needsadmits of, nay, de- mands portraits, isolated sketches, un- connected delineations. The personages of his poem are independent one of the other, andare thence the more easily drawn. Nor does Dante abound in transferable passages, sentences of uni- versal application, from being saturated with the perfumed essence of humanity. We say it with diffidence, but to us it seems that there is a further poetic glance, more idealized fidelity, in Mil- ton, more significance and wisdom and profound hint in Goethe. In Milton the mental reverberation is wider: he rivets us through distant grand associa- tion, by great suggestion. Thus, de- scribing the darkened head of Satan, Milton says: As when the sun new risen Looks through the horizontal misty air, Shorn of his beams, or from behind the moon, In dim eclipse, disastrous twilight sheds On half ths nations. Setting aside the epithets horizontal and disastrous, which are poetically imaginative, the likening of Satan to the Sun seen through a mist, or in eclipse, is a direct, parallel comparison that aids us to see Satan; and it is in such, immediate, not mediatenot in- volving likeness between physical and mental qualities, but merely between physical, not between subtle, relations that Dante chiefly deals, showing im- aginative fertility, helpful, needful to the poet, but different from, and alto- gether inferior to, poetic imagination. The mind attains to the height of poetic imagination when the intellect, urged by the purer sensibilities in alli- ance with aspiration for the perfect, exerts its imaginative power to the utmost, and, as the result of this exer- tion, discovers a thought or image which, from its originality, fitness, and beauty, gives to the reader a new de- light. Of this, the lordliest mental ex- hibition, there is a sovereign example in the words wherewith Milton concludes: and with fear of change Perplexes monarchs. This fills the mind with the terror he wishes his Satan to inspire: this gives its greatness to the passage. Dante, by the distinctness of his out- line, addresses himself more to the readers senses and perception; Milton rouses his higher imaginative capacity. In the whole Inferno, is there a pas- sage so aglow as this line and a half of Paradise Lost? And the torrid clime Smote on him sore besides, vaulted with fire. Or is there in Dante any sound so loud and terrible as that shout of Miltons demon-host l That tore lolls concave, and beyond Frighted the reign of chaos and old Kight. here the unity of his theme stands Mil- ton in stead for grandeur and breadth. Dante is copious in similes. Such copiousness by no means proves poetic genius; and a superior poet may have less command of similes than one in- ferior to him. Wordsworth has much less of this command than Moore. But when a poet does use similes, he will be likely often to put of his best into them, for they are captivating instru- ments and facilities for poetic expan- sion. When a poet is in warm sym- pathy with the divine doings, there DANTE AND illS LATEST TRANSLATORS. will be at times a flashing fitness in his similitudes, which are then the sudden offspring of finest intuition. In citing some of the most prominent in the Divince Commedia, we at once give brief samples of Dante and of the craft of his three latest translators, us- ing the version of Dr. Parsons for ex- tracts froln the lisferno, that of Mr. Dayman for those from the Pargatorio, and that of Mr. Longfellow for those from the Paradiso. As well-filled sails which in the tempest swell, Drop, with folds flapping, if the mast be rent; So to the earth that cruel monster fell, And straightway down to Hells Fourth Pit he went. inferno: canto \TII Swept now amain those turbid waters oer A tumult of a dread portentous kind, Which rocked with sudden spasms each tremhling shore, Like the mad rushing of a rapid wind; As when, made furious hy opposing heats, Wild through the wood the unhridled tempest scours, Dusty and proud, the cringing forest beats, And scatt~s far the hroken limhs and flowers; Then fly the herds,the swains to shelter scud. Freeing mine eyes, thy sight, he said, direct Oer the long-standing scum of yonder flood, Where, most condense, its acrid streams collect. Inferno: Canto IX. When, lo I there met us, close beside our track, A troop of spirits. Each amid the hand Eyed us, as men at eve a passer-by Neath a new moon,as closely us they scanned, As an old tailor doth a needles eye. Inferno: Canto XV. And just as frogs that stand, with noses out On a pools margin, but beneath it hide Their feet and all their bodies but the snout, So stood the sinners there on every side. Inferno: Canto XXII. A coopers vessel that by chance bath been Either of middle-piece or cant-piece reft, Gapes not so wide as one that from his chin I noticed lengthwise through his carcass cleft. Inferno: Canto XXVIII. We tarried yet the oceans brink upon, Like unto people musing of their way, Whose body lingers when the heart bath gone; And lo! as near the dawning of the day, Down in the west, upon the watery floor, The vapor-fogs do Mars in red array, Even such appeared to me a li,,ht that oer The sea so quickly came, no wing could match Its moving. Be that vision mine once more. Purgelorie: Canto IL And thou, remembering well, with eye that sees The light, wilt know thee like the sickly one That on her bed of down can find no ease, But turns and turns again her ache to shun. Purgetsrio: Canto VI. Twas now the hour the longing heart that bends In voyagers, and meltingly doth swsy, Who bade farewell at morn to gentle friends; And wounds the pilgrim newly bound his way With poignant love, to hear some distant bell That seems to mourn the dying of the day; When I began to slight the sounds that fell Upon mine ear, one risen soul to view, Whose beckoning hand our audience would com Purgatoria: Canto VIII. There I the shades see hurrying up to kiss Each with his mate from every part, nor stay, Contenting them with momentary bliss. So one with other, all their swart array Along, do ants esseounter snout with snout, So baply probe their fortune and their way. Purgoterio: XXVI. Between two viands, equally removed And tempting, a free man would die of hunger Ere either he could bring unto his teeth. So would a lamb between the ravenings Of two fierce wolves stand fearing both alike; And so would stand a dog between two does. Hence, if I held my peace, myself I blame not, Impelled in equal measure by my doubts, Since it must be so, nor do I commend. Perediso: Canto IV. And as a lute and harp, accordant strung With many strings, a dulcet tinkling make To him by whom the notes are not distinguished, So from the lights that there to me appeared Upgathered through the cross a melody, Which rapt me, not distinguishing the hymn. Peredise: Canto XIV. As through the pure and tranquil evening air There shoots from time to time a sudden fire, Moving the eyes that steadfast were before, And seems to be a star that ebangeth place, Except that in the part where it is kindled Nothing is missed, and this endureth little; So from the horn that to the right extends Unto that crosss foot there ran a star Out of the constellation shining there. Perediso: Canto XV. Even as remaineth splendid and serene The hemisphere of air, when Boreas Is blowing from that cheek where he is mildest, Because is purified and resolved the rack That erst disturbed it, till the welkin laughs With all the beauties of its pageantry; Thus did I likewise, after that my lady Had me provided with a clear response, And like a star in Ileavess the truth was seen. Paradise: Canto XXVIII. The first question to ask in regard to a simile found in verse, is, Is it poetical? Is there, as effect of its in- troduction, any heightening of the read- ers mood, any cleansing of his vision,. any clarification of the medium through which he is looking? Is there a sud- den play of light that warms, and through this warmth, illuminates the object before him? Few of those just 1868.] 15~ 160 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Feb. quoted, put to such test, could be called more thau conventionally poeticalif this be not a solecism. To illustrate one sensuous object by another does not animate the mind enough to fulfil any one of the above conditions. Such similitudes issuing from intellectual liveliness, there is through them no steeping of intellectual perception in emotion. They may help to make the object ocularly more apparent, but they do not make the feeling a party to the movement. When this is doneas in the examples from Canto XV. of the In- ferno, and Canto VIII. of the Purgatorio what an instantaneous vivification of the picture! But in the best of them the poetic gleam is not so unlooked-for bright as in the best of Shakespeares. As one instance out of many: towards the end of the great soliloquy of Henry V., after enumerating the emblems and accompaniments of royalty, the King continues: No, not all these, thrice-gorgeous ceremony, Not all these, laid in bed majestical, Can sleep so soundly as the wretched slave; Who, with a body filled, and vacant mind, Gets him to Test, crammed with distressful bread; Never sees horrid night, the child of hell; But, like a lackey, from the rise to set, Sweats in the eye of Phccbus, and all night Sleeps in Elysium; next day, after dawn, Both rise end help Ilyperiea to his herse. What a sudden filling of the earth with light through that image, so fresh and unexpected, of the rising Sun, with its suggestion of beauty and healthfulness! Then the far-reaching transfiguring un- agination, that, in a twinkling, trans- mutes into the squire of Hyperion a stolid rustic, making him suddenly radiant with the glory of morning. It is by this union of unexpectedness with fitness, of solidity with brilliancy, of remoteness with instantaneous presence, in his figures, denoting overflow of re- sources, a divine plenitude, so that we feel after Shakespeare has said his best things, that he could go on saying more and better,it is especially by this lustrous ever-teeming fulness of life, this creative readiness, that Shakes- peare throws a farther and whiter and a broader light than Dante. Nor does Dantes p~ ge glisten, as Shakespeares so often does, with metaphor, or com- pressed similes, that at times with a word open the spiritual sphere; not superimposed as cold ornament, but intertissued with the web of thought, upfiashings from a deep sea of mind, to quiver on the surface, as on the calm level of the Atlantic you may see a circuit of shining ripple, caused by schools of fish that have come up from the wealth in the depths below to help the Sun to glisten,a sign of life, power, and abundance. Like his great compecr, Milton, Dante fails of universality from want of hu- mor. Neither had any fun in him. This was the only fault (liberally to interpret Cans conduct) that Dantes host, Can Grande of Verona, had to find with him. The subjects of both poets (unconsciously chosen perhaps from this very defect of humor) were predominantly religious, and their the- ology, which was that of their times, was crude and cruel. The deep sym- pathetic earnestness, which is the basis of the best humor, they had, but, to use an illustration of Richter, they could not turn sublimity upside down,a great feat, only possible through sense of the comic, which, in its highest manifestation of humor, pillows pain in the lap of absurdity, throws such rays upon affliction as to make a grin to glimmer through gloom, and, with the fool in Lear, forces you, like a child, to smile through warmest tears of sympathy. Humor imparts breadth and buoyancy to tolerance, enabling it to dandle lovingly the faults and follies of men: through humor the spiritual is calm and clear enough to sport with and toss the sensual: it is a compas- sionate tearful delight; in its finest mood, an angelic laughter. Of pathos Dante has given examples unsurpassed in literature. By the story of Ugolino the chords of the heart are so thrilled, that pity and awe possess us wholly; and by that of Francesca they are touched to tenderest sympathy. But Ugolino is to Lear what a single fire-freighted cloud that emits five or 1868.] DANTE AND HIS LATEST TRANSLATOIIS. 161 six terrific flashes is to a night-long tempest, wherein the thundering heav- ens gape with a hundred flashes. All the personages of Dantes poem (unless we regard himself as one) are spirits. Shakespeare throughout his many works, gives only a few glimpses into the world beyond the grave; but how grandly by these few is the im- agination expanded. Clarences dream, lengthened after life, in which he passes the melancholy flood, is al- most superdantesque, concentrating in a few ejaculative lines a fearful fore- taste of transearthly torment for a bad life on earth. And the great ghost in Hamlet, when you read of him, how shadowy real! Dantes representation of disembodied humanity is too pagan, too palpable, not ghostly enough, not spiritualized with hope and awe. Profound, awakening, far-stretching, much enfolding, thought-breeding thoughts, that can only grow in the soil of pur~ large sensibilities, and by them are cast up in the heave and glow of inward motion, to be wrought by intellect and shaped in the light of the beautiful,of these, which are the test of poetic greatness, Dante, if we may venture to say so, has not more or brighter examples than Milton, and not so many as Goethe; while of such passages, compactly embodying as they do the finer insights of a poetic mind, there are more in a single one of the greater tragedies of Shakespeare, than in all the three books of the Divinct Commedia. Juxtaposition beside Shakespeare, even if it bring out the superiorities of the English bard, is the highest honor paid to any other great poet. Glory enough is it if admiration can lift Dante so high as to take him into the same look that beholds Shakes- peare; what though the summit of the mighty Englishman shine alone in the sky, and the taller giant carry up to- wards heaven a larger bulk and more varied domains. The traveller, even if he come directly from wondering at Mont Blanc in its sublime presence, will yet stand with earnest delight be- fore the majesty of the Yungfrau and the Eigher. But it is time to speak of Dante in English. It were as wise to cast a violet into a crucible, that you might discover the formal principle of its color and odor, as to seek to transfuse from one lan- guage into another the creations of a poet. Thus writes a great poet, Shelley, in his beautiful Defence of Poetry. But have we not in modern tongues the creations of Homer, and of Plato, who Shelley, on the same page, says is essentially a poet? And can we estimate the loss the modern mind would suffer by deprivation of them in translated form? Popes Ho- mer,still Homer though so Popish, has been a not insignificant chapter in the culture of thousands, who without it would have known no more of Hector and Achilles and the golden glowing cloud of passion and action, through which they are seen superbly shining, than what a few of them would incidently have learnt from Lempriere. Lord Derbys Iliad has gone through many editions already. And Job and the Psalms: what should we have done without them in English? Trans- lations are the telegraphic conductors that bring us great messages from those in other lands and times, whose souls were so rich and deep that from their words their fellow-men, in all parts of ,the globe, draw truth and wisdom for- ever. The flash on which the message was first launched has lost some of its vividness by the way; but the purport of the message we have distinctly, and the joy or grief wherewith it is freight- ed, and even much of its beauty. Shall we not eat oranges, because on being translated from Cuba to our palates they have lost somewhat of their flavor? In reading a translated poeni we wish to have as much of the essence of the original, that is, as much of the poetry, as possible. A poem it is we sit down to read, not a relation of facts, or an historical or critical or philosophical or theological exposition,a poem, only in another dress. Thence a work in 162 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Feb. verse, that has poetic quality enough to be worth translating, must be made to lose by the process as little as may be of its worth; and its worth every poem owes entirely to its poetic quality and the degree of that. A prose trans- lation of a poem is an resthetic imper- tinence. Shakespeare was at first open- ed to the people of the Continent in prose, because there was not then cul- ture enough to reproduce him in verse. And in Shakespeare there is so much practical sense, so much telling com- ment on life, so much wit, such animal spirits, such touching stories so well told, that the great gain of having him even in prose concealed the loss sus- tained by the absence of rhythmic sound, and by the discoloration (impallidation, we should say were the word already there) of hundreds of liveliest tinted flowers, the defiowering of many deli- cate stems. Forty years ago Mr. Hay- ward translated the Faust of Goethe into .prose; but let any one compare the Hymn of the Archangels and other of the more highly-wrought passages, as rendered by him, with any of the better translations in verse,with that of Mr. Brooks for example,to perceive at once the insufficiency, the flatness and meagreness of even so verbally faithful a prose version. The effect on Faust, or on any high passionate poem, of attempting to put it into prose, is akin to what would be the effect on an exquisite bas-relief of reducing its pro- jection one half by a persevering ap- plication of pumice. In all genuine verse (that is, in all poetic verse) the substance is so inwrought into the form and sound, that if in translating you entirely disregard these, rejecting both rhyme and measure, you subject the verse to a second depletion right upon that which it has to suffer by the trans- planting of it into another soil. The translator of a poem has a much higher and subtler duty than just to take the words and through them attempt passively to render the page into his own language. He must brace himself into an active state, a creative mood, the most creative he can command; then transport himself into the mind and mental attitude of the poet he would translate, feeling and seeing as the poet saw and felt. To get into the mood out of which the words sprang, he should go behind the words, em- bracing them from within, not merely seizing them from without. Having imbued himself with the thought and sentiment of the original, let him, if he can, utter them in a still higher key. Such surpassing excellence would be the truest fidelity to the original, and any cordial poet would especially rejoice in such elevation of his verse; for the as- piring writer will often fall short of his ideal, and to see it more nearly approach- ed by a translator who has been kindled by himself, to find some delicate new flower revealed in a nook which he had opened, could not but give him a delight akin to that of his own first inspirations. A poem, a genuine poem, assumes its form by an inward necessity. Paradi8e Lo8t, conceived in Miltons brain, could not utter itself in any other mode than the unrhymed harmonies that have given to our language a new music. It could not have been written in the Spenserian stanza. What would the Fairy Queen be in blank verse? For his theme and mood Dante felt the need of the delicate bond of rhyme, which enlivens musical cadence with sweet reiteration. Rhyme was then a new element in verse, a modern testhetie creation; and it is a help and an add- ed beauty, if it be not obtrusive and too self-conscious, and if it be not a target at which the line aims; for then it becomes a clog to freedom of move- mQnt, and the pivot of factitious pauses, that are ~flensive both to sense and to ear. Like buds that lie half-hidden in leaves, rhymes should peep out, spark- ling but modest, from the cover of words, falling on the ear as though they were the irrepressible strokes of a melo-. dious pulse at the heart of the verse. The terra rima,already in use, Dante adopted as suitable to continu- ous narrative. With his feeling and testhetic want rhymed verse harmoniz- ed, the triple repetition offering no ob 1868.] DANTE ~m HIS LATEST TRANSLATORS. 163 stacle, Italian being copious in endings of like sound. His measure is iambic, free iambic, and every line consists, not of ten syllables, but of eleven, his native tongue having none other than feminine rhymes. And this weakness is so in- herent in Italian speech, that every line even of the blank verse in all the twenty-two Tragedies of Alfieri ends femininely, that is, with an unaccented eleventh syllable. In all Italian rhyme there is thus always a double rhyme, the final syllable, moreover, invariably ending with a vowel. This, besides being too much rhyme and too much vowel, is,in iambic lines, metrically a defect, the eleventh syllable being a superfluous syllable. In these two prominent features Eng- lish verse is different from Italian: it has feminine rhymes, but the larger part of its rhymes are masculine; and it has fewer than Italian. This second char- acteristic, the comparative fewness of rhymes, is likewise one of its sources of strength: it denotes musical richness and not poverty, as at first aspect it seems to do, the paucity of like-sound- ing s~dlables implying variety in its sounds. It has all the vocalic syllables and endings it needs for softness, and encloses them mostly in consonants for condensation, vigor, and emphasis. Primarily the translator has to cen- sider the resources and individualities of his own tGngue. In the case of Dante the rhythmical basis is the same in both languages; for the iambic mcas nrc is our chief poetic vehicle, wrought to perfection by Shakespeare and Mil- ton. There only remains then rhyme and the division into stanzas. Can the terra rrima, as used by Dante, bc called a stanza I The lines are not separated. into trios, but run into one another, clinging very properly to the rhymes, which, interlinking all the stauzas by carrying the echo still onward, bind each canto into one whole, just as our Spenserian form does each stanza int) a whole of nine lines. Whether stanzas, strictly speaking, or not, shall we say our mind frankly about the terra nina? To us it seems not deserving of admira tion for its awx .salee; and we surmise that had it not been consecrated by Dante, neither Byron nor Shelley would have used it for original poems. We are not aware that Dantes example has been followed by any poet of note in Italy. Terra nina keeps the attention suspended too long, keeps it ever on the stretch for something that is to come, and never does come, until at the end of the canto, namely, the last. rhyme. The rhymes cannot be held down, but are ever escaping and run- ning ahead. It looks somewhat like an artificial contrivance of the first rhymers of an uncultivated age. But Dante used it for his great Song; and there it stands forever, holding in its folds the Divina Commedia. Now, in rendering into English the poem of Dante, is it essential,in order to fulfil the conditions of successful po- etic translation,to preserve the triple rhyme? Not having in English a cor- responding number of rhymes, will not the translator have to resort to trans- positions, substitutions, forcings, mdi- rections, in order to compass the mean- ing and the poetry? Place the pas- sages already cited from Mr. Dayman beside the original, and the reader will be surprised to see how direct and lit- eral, how faithful at once to the Italian thought and to English idiom in ex- pressing it, Mr. Dayman is. His har- ness of triplets seems hardly to con- strain his movement, so skilfully does he wear it. If we confront him with the spirited version in quatrains of Dr. Parsons, in the passages cited from the Inferno, or with those from the Para- diso, in Mr. Longfellows less free un- rhymed version, the resources and flexi- bility of Mr. Dayman in handling the difficult measure will be again manifest. To enable our readers to compare the translations with the original and with one another, we will give the Italian, and then the three versions, of the lat- ter part of the Francesca story, from Canto V. of the Inferno: IPoi mi rivolsi a loro, e parlal io, B cominciai: Francesca, i tuoi martin A Ia imar mi fanno tristo, e pio. Ma dimmi: al tempo de clolci sospiri, [Feb. PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. A die, e come concedette Amere Ohs conosceste i dubbiosi desiri I Ed ella a me: nessun maggier dolore, Che ricordarsi dcl tempo felice Nella miseria, e old sa 1 tue dettere. Ma se a conescer la prima radice Del nostre amer tu hai cetante affette, Fard come colui die piange, e dice. Noi leggevamo un giorno per diletto Di Lancilotte, come Amor lo strinse. Soli eravamo, e scnza alcun sospetto. Per pin flate gli occhi ci sespinse Quella lettura, e scolorecci 1 vise: Ma solo un punto fu quel, die ci vinse. Qando leggemmo il disiate rise Eeser baciate da cotante amante, Questi, che mai da me non sia divise, La bocca mi bacid tutto tremante. Galeotto fu II libro, e chile scrisse: Quel giorno pid non vi leggemmo avante. Mentre die lune spirito quesle dices, Laltro piangeva si, che di pietade To venni meno come 5 10 morisse, E caddi, come corpe morto cads. Mr. iDayman: Then toward them turncd again: Thy racking woe, I said, Francesca, wrings from out mine eyes The pious drops that sadden as they flew. Bat tell me, in your hour of honeyed sighs, By whom and how love pitying broke the spell, And in5your doubtful longings made toe wise. And she to me: No keener pang hath hell, Than to recall, amid some deep distress, Our happier time: thy teacher knews it well. Yet if desire so strong thy soul possess To trace the root from whence our love was bred, His part he mine, who tells and weeps no lees. Twas on a day when we for pastime read Of Lancillot, how love snared bim to ruin: W were alone, nor knew suspicious dread. Oft on that reading paused our eyes, renewing Thoir ~lauce; aud from our cheeks the color started; But one sole moment wrought for our undoing: When that we read of lover so true-hearted Kissing the smile so coveted before, He that from me shall never mere be parted Kissed me with lip to lip, trembling all oer. The broker of our vows, it was the lay, And he who wrotethat day we read no mere. The other spirit, while the first did say These words, so moaudd, that with soft remorse As death had stricken me, I swooned away, And down I fell, heavily as dolls a corse. Mr. Longfellow: Then unto them I turned me, and I spake, And I began: Thine agonies, Francesca, Sad and compassionate to weeping make me. But tell me, at the time of those sweet sighs, By what and in what manner Love conceded That you should know your dubious desires? And she to me: There is no greater sorrow Than to he mindful of the happy time In misery, and that thy Teacher knows. But if to recognize the earliest root Of love in us thou hast so great desire, I will do even as he who weeps and speaks. One day we reading were for our delight Of Launcelot, hew Love did him enthrall. Alone we were and without any fear. Full many a time our eyes together drew That reading, and drove the color from our faces; But one point was it that oerceme us. Whenas we read of the much-longed-for smile Being by such a noble lever kissed, This one, who ncer from me shall be divided, Kissed me upon the mouth all palpitating. Galeotto was the book and he who wrote it. That day no farther did we read therein. And all the while one spirit uttered this, The ether one did weep so, that, for pity, I swooned away as if I had been dying, And fell even as a dead body falls. Dr. Parsons: Then, turning round to them, I thus began: Francesca! tears must overflow mine eyes: My pitying soul thy martyr-threes unman; But tell mein the time of happy sighs, Your vague desires how gave Love utterance first? And she to me: The mightiest of all woes Is, in the midst of misery, to be cursed With bliss remembered,this thy teacher knows. Yet, woulfist thou learn our passions root and head, As one may speak whose eyes with tears are dim, So will I speak. Together once we read The tale of Lancilot,how Love hound him. Alone we were wilbout suspecting aught: Oft in perusal paled our cheeks their hue, And oft our eyes each others glances caught; But one sole passage twas which both oerthrew. At readin,, of the lonbed-for smileto he By sueb a lovers kissing so much blest, This dearestnever shalt ihou part from me I His lips to mine, to mine, all trembling, pressed. The writer was our Galeot with his hook That day we read no further on. She stopped: Meanwhile he moaned so that compassion took My sense away, and like a corse I dropped. Observe that Dr. Parsons has put Dantes twenty-eight lines of eleven syllables into twenty-four lines of ten syllables; and this without losing a drop of the precious stream he under- takes to pour. But why does he make Francesca address her companion per- sonally, instead of saying, who shall never part from me? And why does Mr. Dayman say, pious drops, instead of piteous? Mr. Dayman and Mr. Long- fellow fill up the twenty-eight lines. In neither of the three is there any strain or wresting of the sense. But all three, and before them Lord Byron and Carey, mistranslate this passage: Per pin flats gil occhi ci sospinse Quella lettura. All these translators interpret it to mean, that while they read, their eyes often met; whereas Dante says, they read that passage over more than once; or, literally rendered, several times that reading or passage drew to it their eyes. 164 1868.] DANTE AND ins LATEST TRANSLATOnS. 105 To restore the meaning of the original adds to the refinement of the scene. Why does Mr. Longfellow use such long words as compassionate instead of pit ~ful or piteous, recognize for know, galpitating for trembling, conceded that you should know for gave you to know? By the resolution to translate line for line, Mr. Longfellow ties his poetic hands. The first effect of this self- binding is, to oblige him to use often long Latin-English instead of short Saxon-English words, that is, words that in most cases lend themselves less readily to poetic expression. Mr. Day- man, not translating line for line, is free from this prosaic encumbrance but as he makes it a rule to himself that every English canto shall contain the same number of lines as its original, he is obliged, much more often than Mr. Longfellow, to throw in epithets or words not in the Italian. And Dr. Parsons, who, happily freeing himself from either verbal or numerical bond, in several instances compresses a canto into two or three lines less than the Italian and the XXXI. into nine lines less, might with advantage have cur- tailed each canto ten or twelve lines. Do what we will, poetic translation is brought about more from without than from within, and hence there is apt to be a dryness of surface, a lack of that sheen, that spontaneous warm emana- tion, which, in good original work, comes from free inward impulsion. To counteract, in so far as may be, this proneness to a mechanical inflexibility, the translator should keep himself free to wield boldly and with full swing his own native speech. By his line-for-line allegiance, Mr. Longfellow forfeits much of this freedom. He is too intent, on the words: he sacrifices the spirit to the letter: he overlays the poetry with a verbal literalness: he deprives him- self of scope to give a billowy motion, a heightened color, a girded vigor, to choice passages. The rhythmical lan- guor consequent on this verbal con- formity, this lineal servility, is increas- ed by a frequent looseness in the end- ings of lines, some of which on every page, and many on some pages, have, contrary to all good usage,the superfluous eleventh syllable. Milton never allows himself this liberty, nor Mr. Tennyson in epic verse so little pretentious as Idyls of the King. Nor do good blank-verse translators give into it. Cowper does not in his Iliad, nor Lord Derby, nor Mr. Bryant in his version of the fifth book of the Odyssey, nor Mr. Carey in his Dante. Permis- sible at times in dramatic blank verse, it is in epic rejected by the best artists as a weakness. Can it be that Mr. Longfellow hereby aims to be more close to the form of Dante? Whatever the cause of its use, the effect is still farther to weaken his translation. These loose pages as poetic endings,and on most pages one third of the lines have eleven syllables and on some pages more than a third,do a part in causing Mr~ Longfellows Dante to lack the clean outline, the tonic ring, the chis- elled edge of the original, and in mak- ing his Cantos read as would sound a high passionate tune played on a harp whose strings are relaxed. Looking at the printed Italian Dante beside the English, in a volume where opposite each English page is the corresponding page of the original, as in Mr. Daymans, one cannot fail to be struck with the comparative nar- rowness of the Italian column. This comes of the comparative shortness of Italian syllables. For instance, as the strongest exemplification, the ever-re- curring and, and the, often-repeated is, are both expressed in Italian by a single letter, e. And this shortness comes of the numerousness of vowels. In lines of thirty letters Dante will have on an average sixteen consonants to fourteen vowels, nearly half and half; while his translators have about twenty conso- nants to ten vowels, or two to one. From this comparative rejection of consonants, Italian cannot, as English can, bind into one syllable words of seven or eight letters, like friends and straight, nor even words of six letters, like chimed, shoots, thwart, spring; nor does Italian abound as English does in monosyllables, and the few it has are 166 PuTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Feb. mostly of but two or three letters. In combination its syllables sometimes get to four letters, as in fronte and 1raccia. As a consequence hereof, Dantes lines, although always of eleven syllables, av- erage about twenty-nine letters, while those of the three translators about thir- ty-three. Hence, the Poem in tlieir ver- sions carries more weight than the origi- nal: its soul is more cumbered with body. In order to the faithful reproduction of Dante, to the giving the best tran- script, possible in English, of his thought and feeling, should not regard be had to the essential difference be- tween the syllabic constitutions of the two languages, what may be called the physical basis of the two mediums of utterance? Here is the Francesca story, translated in the spirit of this suggestion. I turned to them, and then I spake: Francesca! tears oerflhl mine eyes, Such pity thy keen pangs awake. But say: in th hour of sweetest cighe, By what and how found Love relief .Mjd broke thy doubtful longing~s spell l And she: There is no greater grief Than joy in sorrow to retell. But if so urgently one seeks To know our loves first root, I will Do as he does who weeps and speaks. One day of Lancelot we still Read oer, how love held him enchained. Without mistrust we were alone. Our cheeks oft were of color drained: One passage vanquished us, but one. When we read of lips longed for pressed By such a lover with a kiss, This one whom naught from me shall wrest, All trembling kissed my mouth. To this That book and writer brought us. We No farther read that day. While she Thus spake, the other spirit wept So bitterly, with pity I Fell motionless, my senses swept By swoon, as one about to die. In the very first line an Italian trig- syllable, rivolsi, and a dissyllable, par- lcci, are given in English with literal fidelity by two monosyllables, turned and spake. In the fourth observe how, in a word-for-word rendering, the elev- en Italian syllables become, without any forcing, eight English: Ma dimmi: al tempo dd dolci sospiri: But tell me: in th hour of sweet sighs. For the sake of a more musical cadence, this line is slightly modified. Again, in the line, Than joy In sorrow to retell, joy represents, and represents faithfully, three words containing six syllables, del tempo felice: retell stands for ricordarsi, and in sorrow for nella miseria, or, three syllables for six; ~o that, by means of eight syllables, is given a full and com- plete translation of what in Italian takes up seventeen. English the most simple, direct, idiomatic, is needed in order that a translation of Dante be faithful to his simplicity and naturalness; and this is the first fidelity his translator should feel himself bound to. Owing to the fundamental difference between the syllabic structures of the two lan- guages, we are enabled to put into English lines of eight syllables the whole meaning of Dantes lines of eleven. In the above experiment even more has been done. The twenty-eight lines of Dante are given in twenty-six lines of eight syllables each, and this without any sacrifice of the thought or feeling; for the this thy teacher knows, which is omitted, besides that the commentators cannot agree on its meaning, is parenthetical in sense, and, with reverence be it said, in so far a defect in such a relation. As to the form of Dante, what is essential in that has been preserved, namely, the iambic measure and the rhyme. Let us try if this curtailment of syl- lables will be successful when applied to the terrible words, written in blackest color, over the gate of Hell, at the be- ginning of the third Canto of the In- ferno: Through me the path to place of wail: Through me the path to endless sigh: Through me the path to souls in bale. Twas Justice moved my Maker high: Wisdom supreme, and Might divine, And primal Love established me. Created birth was none crc mine, And I endure eternally: Ye who pass in, all hope resign. Has any thing been lost in the transit from Italian words to English? Eng- lish speech being organically more concentrated than Italian, does not the reduction of eleven syllables to eight especially subserve what ought to be the two-fold aim of all poetic trans- lation, namely, alono with fidelity to the thought and spirit of the original, 1868.] DIARY OF JAMES FENIMORE COOPER. fidelity to the idiom, and east and play of the translators own tongue? Here is another short passa.ge in a different keythe opening of the last Canto of the Paradiso: Maid-mother, daughter of thy Son, Meek, yet ahove all things create, Fair aim of the Eternal one, Tis thou who so our human state Ennohledet, that its Maker deigned Himself his creatures son to be. This flower, in th endless peace, was gained Through kindling of Gods love in thee. In this passage nine Italian lines of eleven syllables are converted into eight lines of eight syllables each. We sub- mit it to the candid reader of Italian to say, whether aught of the original has been sacrificed to brevity. The rejection of all superfluity, the conciseness and simplicity to which the translator is obliged by octosyllabic verse, compensate for the partial loss of that breadth of sweep for which deca- syllabic verse gives more room, but of which the translator of Dante does not feel the want. One more short passage of four lines, the famous figure of the lark in the twentieth Canto of the Paradiso: Like lark that throu,,h the air careers, First singing, then, silent his heart, Feeds on the sweetness in his ears, Such joy to th image did impart Th eternal will. 167 This paper has exceeded the length we designed to give it; but, neverthe- less, we beg the readers indulgence for a few moments longer, while we con- clude with an octosyllabic version of the last thirty lines of the celebrated Ugolino story. It is unrhymed; for that terrible tale can dispense, in Eng- lish, with soft echoes at the end of lines. When locked I heard the nether door Of the dread tower, I without speech Into my childrens faces looked: Nor wept, so inly turned to stone. They wept: and my dear Anseim said, Thou lookst so, father, what hast thou! Still I nor wept nor answer made That whole day through, nor the next night, Till a new sun rose on the world. As in our doleful prison came A little glimmer, and I saw On faces four my own pale stare Both of my hands for grief I hit; And they, thinking it was from wish To eat, rose suddenly and said: Fathor, less shall we feel of pain If thou wilt eat of us: from thee Came this poor flesh: take it again. I calmed me then, not to grieve them. The next two days we spake no word. Oh! ohdurate earth, why didst not opel Whenwe had come to the fourth day Gaddo threw him stretched at my feet, Saying, Father, why dost not help me? There died he; and, as thou seest me, I saw the three fall one hy one The fifth and sixth day; then I groped, Now hlind, oer each; and two whole days I called them after they were dead: Then hunger did what grief could not. FRAGMENTS FROM A DIARY OF JAMES FENIMORE COOPER. SEVEItAL times, during his life, Mr. Cooper began a Diary, but after a few months gave up the idea. His pen was generally so active in other ways, that he soon grew weary of the regular daily jottings required to keep up the char- acter of a personal journal. A few frag- ments, however, have been preserved. The passages given to-day are takell from a diary which he began on his return to Paris, after passing two or three years in Italy and Germany. He was in Dresden when the Revolution of 1830 took place; and hastened imme- diately to Paris, eager to watch the course of great events then occurring daily. His fanlily joined him as soon as the city was safe and tranquil. It was while in lodgings in the Rue dAguesseau, that these notes were writ- ten. Mr. Cooper was at that timeas he had been since his arrival in Paris, four years earlier on intimate confi- dential terms with General La Fayette, for whose frank, upright, generous char- acter he had the highest respect, while he was warmly and gratefully attached to him. IAstts, AmeNo Dosectec 1830. September l9th.The first fine day in

1868.] DIARY OF JAMES FENIMORE COOPER. fidelity to the idiom, and east and play of the translators own tongue? Here is another short passa.ge in a different keythe opening of the last Canto of the Paradiso: Maid-mother, daughter of thy Son, Meek, yet ahove all things create, Fair aim of the Eternal one, Tis thou who so our human state Ennohledet, that its Maker deigned Himself his creatures son to be. This flower, in th endless peace, was gained Through kindling of Gods love in thee. In this passage nine Italian lines of eleven syllables are converted into eight lines of eight syllables each. We sub- mit it to the candid reader of Italian to say, whether aught of the original has been sacrificed to brevity. The rejection of all superfluity, the conciseness and simplicity to which the translator is obliged by octosyllabic verse, compensate for the partial loss of that breadth of sweep for which deca- syllabic verse gives more room, but of which the translator of Dante does not feel the want. One more short passage of four lines, the famous figure of the lark in the twentieth Canto of the Paradiso: Like lark that throu,,h the air careers, First singing, then, silent his heart, Feeds on the sweetness in his ears, Such joy to th image did impart Th eternal will. 167 This paper has exceeded the length we designed to give it; but, neverthe- less, we beg the readers indulgence for a few moments longer, while we con- clude with an octosyllabic version of the last thirty lines of the celebrated Ugolino story. It is unrhymed; for that terrible tale can dispense, in Eng- lish, with soft echoes at the end of lines. When locked I heard the nether door Of the dread tower, I without speech Into my childrens faces looked: Nor wept, so inly turned to stone. They wept: and my dear Anseim said, Thou lookst so, father, what hast thou! Still I nor wept nor answer made That whole day through, nor the next night, Till a new sun rose on the world. As in our doleful prison came A little glimmer, and I saw On faces four my own pale stare Both of my hands for grief I hit; And they, thinking it was from wish To eat, rose suddenly and said: Fathor, less shall we feel of pain If thou wilt eat of us: from thee Came this poor flesh: take it again. I calmed me then, not to grieve them. The next two days we spake no word. Oh! ohdurate earth, why didst not opel Whenwe had come to the fourth day Gaddo threw him stretched at my feet, Saying, Father, why dost not help me? There died he; and, as thou seest me, I saw the three fall one hy one The fifth and sixth day; then I groped, Now hlind, oer each; and two whole days I called them after they were dead: Then hunger did what grief could not. FRAGMENTS FROM A DIARY OF JAMES FENIMORE COOPER. SEVEItAL times, during his life, Mr. Cooper began a Diary, but after a few months gave up the idea. His pen was generally so active in other ways, that he soon grew weary of the regular daily jottings required to keep up the char- acter of a personal journal. A few frag- ments, however, have been preserved. The passages given to-day are takell from a diary which he began on his return to Paris, after passing two or three years in Italy and Germany. He was in Dresden when the Revolution of 1830 took place; and hastened imme- diately to Paris, eager to watch the course of great events then occurring daily. His fanlily joined him as soon as the city was safe and tranquil. It was while in lodgings in the Rue dAguesseau, that these notes were writ- ten. Mr. Cooper was at that timeas he had been since his arrival in Paris, four years earlier on intimate confi- dential terms with General La Fayette, for whose frank, upright, generous char- acter he had the highest respect, while he was warmly and gratefully attached to him. IAstts, AmeNo Dosectec 1830. September l9th.The first fine day in 168 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Feb. a fortnight. About 2 oclock General La Fayette came, and sat with me some time. He is fully aware of the wishes of the Doctrinaires, but is determined to give an effectual check to aristoc- racy. I think that Messieurs Guizot, De Brogue, & c., will be compelled to resign. In the evening, at ~ oclock, General La Fayette came for me, in his carriage. We drove to the Rue de Rivoli, and took up Mr. MeLane and Mr. Thorne. We then went to the Palais Royal to be presented. So little ceremony was used, that General La Fayette, who had previously made his arrangements with the other gentlemen, first proposed the presentation to me at 2 oclock. In consequence of a remark of mine, how- ever, he had written a note, directly to the King, to apprise him of our wish. We found the ante-chamber crowded, chiefly with officers, but no ladies. Fol- lowing La Fayette, we penetrated to an inner room, where most of the high dig- nitar~s were assembled. I observed Mar- shals Soult, and Maison, Cuvier, the Due de Bassano, & c., among them. When the door opened, the King was seen directly before them; and the Queen, Mademoiselle dOrleans, and the Prin- cesses, with the younger children, stood in a group on the left. The King was dressed in the uniform of the National Guards, the due dOrleans as a Hussar, and the ladies with great simplicity the Queen and Mademoiselle dOrleans in striped-silk dresses. We were introduced on entering, each receiving a few complimentary words. The ladies were polite, and, when we had passed them, they left their places to come and speak to us again. It struck me there was an evident desire to do honor to the American friends of the General. It was evident, however, that the presence of La Fayette gave uneasiness to a great many. The affec- tations and egotisms of rank are offend- ed by his principles, and there is a piti- ful desire manifested by the mere but- terflies of society to turn his ideas and habits into ridicule. I am amazed to find how very few men are able to look beyond the glare of things. After we had been presented, we would have retired, but our venerable friend insisted on our remaining. He retired with the King, and the room began to empty. An aid then came and requested us to approach a side- door. The King and La Fayette soon came out together, and we had a short conversation with the former. He spoke of his visit to America with pleasure, and used very courteous though unaf- fected language. We withdrew when he retired. In passing out of the room, a young officer said, Adieu, lAm6- rique! The fear of losing their but- terfly distinctions and their tinsel, gives great uneasiness to many of these sim- pletons. The apprehension is quite natu- ral to those who have no means of being known in any other manner, and it must be pardoned. SeptemI~er 2Oth.Another fine day. I met Lord H in the Tuileries this morning. As we had not met since April, when we used to talk politics together at Rome, we said a few words on the present state of things. I have always thought him a mild Tory, and no bad reflector of the hopes and fears of his caste. He is evidently uneasy, as every privileged Englishman must be, and expressed some apprehension about the turn things might take in France. I told him I was of opinion that there would be a struggle about the peerage. If the upper chamber should be made elective, I saw no fun- damental principle to quarrel about. The suffrage would be extended, as a matter of course, and the minor inter- ests would regulate themselves accord- ing to the necessities of the moment. I was struck with one of his remarks. If they have the substance, they had better have the form of a republic, he said. This is a thoroughly English idea. Whenever their radicals quote America, in Parliament or in the jour- nals, there is one answer always resorted to: America is a republic and Eng- land a monarchy. This accidental difference in the form, serves, with the majority, as a sufficient answer for all 1868.] DIAEY OF JAMES FENIMORE COOPER. 169 differences of substance I Now, if France remains a monarchy in form, with a greater degree of civil rights than those possessed by England, France will be- come an example that the opposition may cite without danger of the preg- nant reply. One is tempted to ask, why France has not the same right to conceal a republic under the mantle of a King, as England has to conceal an aristocracy beneath the same shallow disguise? The news from Belgium is getting more serious. L ~ is run- ning about with a silly story, that is all over,~ for the people have behaved so badly as to induce the better classes to accede to the Kings terms. Lord H had something of the same tale, but it smells too strongly of vulgar aris- tocratical cant to be believed. September 2lst.I went, this evening, to the reception of General La Fayette. The rooms were crowded with men, chiefly of the National Guards. As many privates were among them, some, of course, were not of the last degree of refinement. Mr. N said he did not see the evi deuce of the Generals power, and this in the presence of the youth, enterprise, and strength of France press- ing about him in a manner to smother him. In a revolution, that is good sup- port which is zealous and loyal support. At all times popular support, well di- rected, is the most potent of any. There were a good many Americans present, and I am sorry to say that some of them were so mistaken in their esti- mate of things, as to fancy the General would have been stronger if he had been genteeler. I have observed the absence of the ministers and dignitaries from these soirees, but I ascribe it to policy. Neglect him they do notthey dare not even if they were disposed to incur the hazard,rather than pay so cheap a price as a visit, now and then. But France is anxious to give pledges to Europe; and as La Fayette is the head of the Republicans, it may be well not * An American. VOL. x.12 to place him on too high a pinnacle, at this moment. I believe he has the con- fidence of the King. As to the minis- ters, it may be otherwise; I know they have not his confidence. September 22d.This morning I got an invitation to dine at the Palais Royal to-morrow. Lord H called, and sat with me half an hour. Still uneasy about Bel- gium and Germany. I observed, in on~ der to sound him, that I did not think England had sufficient reason to go to war with France about the frontier of the Rhine. He partly assented. But it was easy to see he had arri~lre-pens& s. In the evening I went to Mrs. Rives. The reception was very genteel, and just what it ought to be, with the exception of a livery or two. As things trifling in themselves are misrepresented in Eu- rope, they ought to be avoided. Welles came in, and was much elated with the rise of stocks. They left off at 98, having been at 92 three days ago. I offered to bet a hundred francs, they. would be at 95~ again, in ten days... These Frenchmen are so volatile, that it is impossible they should keep stocks quiet so long, in a revolution. He who makes bona fide purchases when they are low, will be almost sure to gain. All our ladies are full of a reception which the Queen means to give them. to-morrow night. La Fayette, who, in his day, has wrought greater marvels,~ has brought this about. * * * September 23d.The news from Bel-~ gium this morning still more serious. This contest will draw on the war~ which, in some shape or other, must grow out of the late revolution. The Dutchmen seem very obstinate, and the Belgians very spirited. The hatred ofL all elevations of the lower classes, among the European aristocracy, is so intense, that fight they must, to their own cer- tain destruction. At a little before 6, Thorne stopped for me, and we took up Mr. McLane, on our way to the Palais Royal. We had little ceremony in the reception. Our 170 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Feb. names were taken, and checked off, on tlie list of the company, when we were shown to an ante-chamber. The King soon opened the folding-doors himself, and we entered. Not half the guests had yet come. All the royal family, with a few attendants, were there. General La Fayette and family soon arrived. Dinner was soon announced. The King led Madame La Fayette, and La Fayette the Queen. Mademoi- selle dOrleans was seated on the right of the King, Madame La Fayette on his left; La Fayette on the right of the Queen, and M. Augustin P& ier on her left. Here was an oversight in French courtesy. This seat should have been assigned to MeLane. I am inclined to think the arrangement was not pre- meditated, for the French rarely fail in politeness. The dinner-service was plate, the table large, and the servants very nu- merous. Beyond this, with the dk a- twns ~f the guests, and the liveries, one might have fancied himself at a Wash- ington dinner. There was a little order in the entrances and exits of the cour- ses, hut no proclaiming of the 8ervice of the King, as before.* Both the King and Queen helped more than is com- mon at good French tables.t I saw no embarrassment, or pretension of any sort, during dinner. When the Queen rose, the ladies turned, and the finger- bowls were handed them by servants, the gentlemen using them at the side- tables. We then withdrew into the wing of the Palace, opposite the Th~tre Fran~ais. Here coffee was served. Mrs. and Miss T soon entered, and were presented by La Fayette. The Queen then went into an inner drawing-room, which was very large and magnificent, with a billiard-room communicating. Here the ladies seated themselves round a large table, a lady of the family work- * Under Louis XVIII. and Charles X. At a later day, when Louis Philippe was at the Tuileries, the royal tahie was furnished hy a res- tawrateur, and it was said that the young Princes and Princesses of the royal family had much fun over the repeated appearance of the same entries, several times in succession. Le r~c1~auff~ ne rout rien. ing, rather premeditatedly, at another. I presume this lady, who had the air of a governess, was so placed to give the reception an informal character. In a few minutes, Mrs. R entered, followed by Mrs. M and a dozen more of our ladies. They were met by the Queen, who advanced some lit- tle distance, and Mrs. ZR presented them all, in succession. Two or three more parties arrived, and were pre- sented in the same manner, the whole seating themselves, by invitation. In about twenty minutes, the Queen arose and made the tour of the circle; after- wards the ladies retired, followed by most of the gentlemen. Mr. Rives, Mr. Middleton, and eight or ten gentlemen, came in with the ladies. The whole passed off very well, and without the least gaucherie, and our women, though with two or three exceptions no longer in the bud, looked uncommonly well. I scarcely remember to have seen so many women in a set, that looked so uniformly genteel and pretty. I sus- pect but one of being rouged. Two or three were really beautiful. This little exhibition convinces me of what I have often thought, that we only want Pa- risian mantua-makers and milliners, to carry off the palm in female grace and beauty; for it will be remembered that the effect was produced in a strong theatrical light, without the aid of rouge. I was surprised to see the uniform grace of their courtesies, which were simple, easy, and dignified. I wish I could say as much for all the men; though the gentlemen be- haved, as such, with modesty, aplomb, and quiet. I thought the French looked a little surprised. All the children were present, the lit- tle Duo de Montpensier racing round the rooms, though not in a noisy man- ner, with great g t. The others were more tranquil, though thoroughly at their ease. It struck me there was a little too much affectation of simplicity for a reception that was necessarily short and formal; and on the part of our women, a little too much dress. After 1808.] DIARY OF JAMEs FENIMOIIE COOPER. 171 all, it is difficult to hit the true medium in a case of this sort. The court sacri- ficed a little too much to republicanism, and we, a little too much to royalty. If there was to be a mistake, both erred on the right side.* Fridcry, 24th.Passed the day in read- ing Jeffersons letters. I cannot say but the perusal of this book has elevated the man in my estimation. He discovers an equanimity of temper, and a philo- sophical tone of mind, that are admira- ble. Some of his remarks are of the first o.rder, and nothing can be better than his diplomatic language; frank, courteous, and reasoning. In his judg- ment of nature he is certainly often wrongin those he praises, as well as in those he censures. As respects the former, he has probably been influenced by political controversy. He has as- cribed to corruption, or rather to a concealed intention, what was due to prejudice ~ierely. Time is necessary to relieve the human mind from all the opinions which have been inculcated by those who have gone before, and, favored himself by position and cir- cumstances, he makes no allowance for those who were not. I have no doubt that Hamilton was, at heart, a mon- archist. This is no imputation on his talents, for all the theories of the day had that tendency. It is not probable that Hampden carried his ideas of liberty as far as a moderate Tory of our time is disposed to concede. Had Hamilton been sent to Europe, and had he taken a near view of those institu- tions, and that state of society, which he so much admired at a distance, his sagacity would at once have enabled him to separate the ore from the dross, and to have found how little there is of the former. But as a theory, his * On this occasion, Mr. cooper was heard to make a very courtly, and yet a very sincere, speech to the Queen. He was asked what countries, of those he had visited, he preferred? That in which Her Majesty was horn, for Its nature; and that in which she reigns, for its society. And such were always his preferences; he loved Italy, and he enjoyed ex- tremely the grace and elegance, the charming wit and talent, of really good Fronch society. creative mind only aided in lending it plausibility and force; whereas, had he been able to correct his premises by act- ual observation, the deductions would have been very different. Jefferson himself, though in a differ- eat way, betrays the same blindness to truth. He apprehends, for instance, the increasing power of the Executive, un- der the Constitution, because he has been accustomed to see strong execu- tives in Europe, when the true theory would have taught him that, in a gov- ernment like ours, the power must rest in the popular branch; and as power, like money, has a creative force, the in- crease of the prerogatives of Congress was far more to be apprehended than those of the President. In point of fact, the latter has neither lost nor gained a single privilege in forty-one years, while the former has often ex- ceeded its proper functions. The repre- sentatives of the people are not likely, it is true, to oppress the people, but Congress shows a constant tendency to encroach on the rights of the States. Mr. Jefferson began to see this at the close of his life, and all his jealousy of the President seems to have disap- pi~ared. Jefferson also makes another mistake. He ascribes the very natural influence of England, through our habits, and her literature, to wrong motives. The greater will always possess an influence over the less, and he who lives fifty years, will see the influence of America over England. As the former is strong- est in principle, it begins to show itself already, to the great uneasiness of those who are to lose by the change. Jeffer- son himself cultivated French litera- ture more than English, and we are all, when we break loose from old habits, a little addicted to running into the opposite extreme. He is unphilosophi- cal when he imputes the little parade of a few ancient soldiers, and particu- larly of men, vain and trifling, to be a settled design to introduce the forms of a monarchy. One of the chief merits of all our innovations, is, that they have been gradual, and that they have rather 172 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Feb. followed, than preceded opinion, while he appears to have expected that men were to abandon all their ancient ideas, to satisfy a theory that many deemed a little doubtful. He uses the title of Excellency himself, at one period of his letters, though, after he became im- pressed, by living in Europe, with th~ idea of resisting royalty by all the means in our power, he was disposed to prac- tise an austerity of manner and style, for which the majority of his country- men saw no sufficient reason. Most Americans who come to Europe now, get The same idea of the value of sim- pler forms as Jefferson entertained, be- cause they see the uses to which cere- mony is perverted in foreign nations. But we should remember that the most active poisons are, in certain cases, healthful remedies. Saturday and Sunday, 25th and 26th. The weather is getting better, after the mostdetestable September I have ever known. The news from Brussels is getting to be of the highest interest. Reports dif- fer, but I do not see how a civil war can be avoided. I am of opinion that an European war can scarcely be avoided. Unless the Governments give this direc- tion to their people, in an age like this, they will give themselves employment at home. The ultras have recourse to all sorts of devices to create dissensions in France, but they will hardly succeed. On Sunday, the King reviewed about six thousand men of the garrison, at the Champs-de-Mars. He was well re- ceived by the troops and people. Septemler 27th.The news is more favorable this morning, from Brussels. The Dutch defeated, with loss. I have finished Jefferson. His sus- picions of motives are not always as well founded as they should have been, in a man of his candor. It is unhappily but too manifest that towards the close of life, his memory failed him in a great measure. There is a singular and mel- ancholy concurrence of testimony against the weak, not to say wicked, practice of calling on veterans ia politics to give their opinions and recollections of the past, in the letter of Adams, concerning the authorship of the Declaration of In- dependence, and that of Jefferson to Mr. Giles, relating to the Eastern plot, in the war of 1812. It was, to the last degree, wilful to publish the latter of these let- ters. The French begin to speak of the possibility of war, as connected with their interests in Belgium. If they let the present occasion pass, they will so far cool the ardor of the Belgians, as to place half a century in the way of their future union. September 2Sth.News to the 25th, from Brussels. The people and the troops are fighting still, in the upper part of the town. Advantage with the former. Had a conversation with X about South Carolina. Amazed at his igno- rance of statistical facts. Spoke of Ver- mont as having one hundred thousand souls II And yet this description of men form the mass of the talkers in this world. If one did not know that the people were of use negatively, in governments, by preventing abuses, one might be tempted to distrust the ad- vantage of popular forms, from such specimens I * Wednesday, 29th. The news from Brussels, this morning, still more omi- nous. There is a strong desire in one party to confine this question to one of terri- torial separation; but the Bruxellois be- gin to denounce the dynasty. Germany very uneasy, and only to be appeased by the concession of civil rights. Sooner or later, this bitter pill must be swallowed by the selfish party of monopolists. The Belgians begin to talk of a con- federated republic. Too small for that, surrounded by enemies. * The person alluded to had reccived an import- ant appointment under our Government. . 1868.] A TALK WITH OUR NEXT PRESIDENT. 173 A TALK WITH OUR NEXT PRESIDENT. A WHOLE year intervenes between our words and the next presidential elec- lion. You, therefore, whom we ad- dress, our future President, are a dis- tant impersonal presence, to which we can give no name. You remain to us a mere nominis umbra. It may be that we are addressing our most distinguish- ed General, known and tried, a man whose modesty is only surpassed by his worth; or it may be that the responsi- bilities of the presidential office will devolve upon our present Chief Justice, who was a prominent candidate for nomination in the Chicago Convention of 1860, who, while the nation was distracted by an exhausting civil war, succeeded in establishing our credit upon a secure and permanent founda- tion,a work which, considering its peculiar difficulties, required for its accomplishment a high order of genius, a sublime faith in the honor as well as in the power of the Republic, and the most indomitable perseverance; and who is well qualified to become our leader, not only by reason of his ir- reproachable purity of character, but also by his experience as a statesman. But here, and for the purposes of this paper, we may not venture to speak with confidence as to any particular candidate; and, even if we might, we prefer that our argument should pro- ceed according to general principles, and independently of the success of any individual leader. Our destiny does not hang upon the fortunes of any single man. The most exalted popular idol is not exempt from mor- tal chance. Once already we have been cheated by death, and we may be again. Possiblyand it would not be a case without precedentthe peo- ple may be defrauded of their especial choice by that despotic party machin- ery upon which presidential nomina tions too frequently depend. Let us hope that we may be deluded neither by fate nor by partisanship: but, if we are, our faith still remains, the great argument still holds good. Your Ex- cellency, in any event, must in an im- portant sense represent the popular purpose. Shall we congratulate you? Your office and its opportunities certainly justify that. The honors which you assume are not empty ornaments, such as kings are crowned with, but posi- tive and substantial powers. You are elected by the whole people. Senators represent States, Congressmen represent districts; but you represent the whole, the unit. You are bound by no local interests; you owe not to these your elevation. No faction can claim you, for no faction could have elected you. Your fealty is to the Constitution, which you are sworn to defend; to the laws, which you are sworn to exe- cute; to the principles which controll- ed your election; to the interests of the whole peopleof those who oppos- ed as well as of those who supported you. This position is a commanding one, and in yourcase it is likely to be so in a special sense. For we may assume that your election, following upon the repudiation by the people of the extremists of both parties, will rep- resent the best sense of the nation. In the constitutional distribution of power among the three great departments of the government it has been wisely ar- ranged that your endowment is the largest so long as you retain the popu- lar support, while it is almost insignifi- cant when you lose that support. By the duty constitutionally imposed upon you of communicating to Congress your views on all important national ques- tions, you become, ex officio, a legis- lative leader. You suggest, if you can-

. 1868.] A TALK WITH OUR NEXT PRESIDENT. 173 A TALK WITH OUR NEXT PRESIDENT. A WHOLE year intervenes between our words and the next presidential elec- lion. You, therefore, whom we ad- dress, our future President, are a dis- tant impersonal presence, to which we can give no name. You remain to us a mere nominis umbra. It may be that we are addressing our most distinguish- ed General, known and tried, a man whose modesty is only surpassed by his worth; or it may be that the responsi- bilities of the presidential office will devolve upon our present Chief Justice, who was a prominent candidate for nomination in the Chicago Convention of 1860, who, while the nation was distracted by an exhausting civil war, succeeded in establishing our credit upon a secure and permanent founda- tion,a work which, considering its peculiar difficulties, required for its accomplishment a high order of genius, a sublime faith in the honor as well as in the power of the Republic, and the most indomitable perseverance; and who is well qualified to become our leader, not only by reason of his ir- reproachable purity of character, but also by his experience as a statesman. But here, and for the purposes of this paper, we may not venture to speak with confidence as to any particular candidate; and, even if we might, we prefer that our argument should pro- ceed according to general principles, and independently of the success of any individual leader. Our destiny does not hang upon the fortunes of any single man. The most exalted popular idol is not exempt from mor- tal chance. Once already we have been cheated by death, and we may be again. Possiblyand it would not be a case without precedentthe peo- ple may be defrauded of their especial choice by that despotic party machin- ery upon which presidential nomina tions too frequently depend. Let us hope that we may be deluded neither by fate nor by partisanship: but, if we are, our faith still remains, the great argument still holds good. Your Ex- cellency, in any event, must in an im- portant sense represent the popular purpose. Shall we congratulate you? Your office and its opportunities certainly justify that. The honors which you assume are not empty ornaments, such as kings are crowned with, but posi- tive and substantial powers. You are elected by the whole people. Senators represent States, Congressmen represent districts; but you represent the whole, the unit. You are bound by no local interests; you owe not to these your elevation. No faction can claim you, for no faction could have elected you. Your fealty is to the Constitution, which you are sworn to defend; to the laws, which you are sworn to exe- cute; to the principles which controll- ed your election; to the interests of the whole peopleof those who oppos- ed as well as of those who supported you. This position is a commanding one, and in yourcase it is likely to be so in a special sense. For we may assume that your election, following upon the repudiation by the people of the extremists of both parties, will rep- resent the best sense of the nation. In the constitutional distribution of power among the three great departments of the government it has been wisely ar- ranged that your endowment is the largest so long as you retain the popu- lar support, while it is almost insignifi- cant when you lose that support. By the duty constitutionally imposed upon you of communicating to Congress your views on all important national ques- tions, you become, ex officio, a legis- lative leader. You suggest, if you can- 174 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Feb. , not directly originate, laws; and your suggestions can only lack force through your own weakness or want of judg- ment. Your restrictive power over le- gislation is so large that it may defeat any congressional majority less than two thirds. In regard to our foreign policy, you mayas Lincoln did in the Franco-Mexican difficultydisregard the unanimous vote of the Lower House, and need only the co~5peration of the Senate. You originate all official ap- pointments, and here also depend upon the Senate alone for their confirmation. With the people at your back, you are more than half of the government. The issues which govern your election are so well defined, that your very ele- vation to office is of itself a guarantee of popular support. Difficulties there are in your path, but they are not insurmountable. The peculiar position which you occupy, by reason of the circumstances which have made you the popular choicea posi- tion occupied by no President since James Monroewill assist you in over- coming these obstacles and enable you to secure that triumphant success which the people anticipate. For you are permitted to enter upon a field of in- dependent action, untrammelled by any pledges save those which bind you to the principles which have hitherto gov- erned your public life. Neither of the two great parties which divide the nation can, by the prestige of its name alone, elect a President. The result of the election must, therefore, be decided by the candidates nominated rather than by the political organizations which nominate them. The party in- scribing your name upon its b~nners will succeed through you, and not you through the party. This is a rare case, and to you it affords the most impor- tant opportunities. We should have to go far back in our history to find a President who did not have occasion to refer his election to mere party strength, or who could forget his obli- gations to certain prominent politi- cians. But with you the case is differ- ent: you are not the debtor but the creditor, and are therefore independent, unfettered. The first great result of this inde- pendence is your opportunity to effect a complete and radical revolution in the system of official appointments. In- deed, it is possible for you to restore to this system, the purity which charac- terized it in the earliest years of the Republic, but which so long since van- ished that it has come almost to be looked back to as the golden crown of our golden age. But its return is one of the chief objects of the popular de- sire. The people are disgusted with the flagrant abuses of this system, which if they are continued must termi- nate in a carnival of corruption. These evils have grown out of our republican institutions. The frequent recurrence of change in our presidential adminis- trationsin itself an excellent feature of our governmentaffords an oppor- tunity for this abuse of official power. During more than thirty years the po- litical questions which have agitated the nation have been of such a nature as to give a fearful intensity to party strifean intensity sufficient to termi- nate finally in civil war; and this cir- cumstance has led each successful presi- dential candidate to the unscrupulous use of every means for the perpetuation of the power of his party. Thus the opportunity furnished by the rotation of Administrations became an irresisti- ble temptation. To the partialities of party was soon added personal favorit- ism; so that even where a President succeeded to one of his own party, his accession to power became the occasion for a general decapitation of subordi- nate officials, to give place for the en- dowment of personal adherents. The enormity of this evil, of course, reacted upon our politics, until the latter de- generated into a strife for the mere spoils of office. The significance which should belong to the political life of a great nation, and the larger motives which should govern our public men, were lost sight of and our best and purest statesmen retired from a field occupied by mercenary antagonists. In 1868.] A TALK WITH OUR NEXT PRESIDENT. 175 the midst of this corruption the war broke out, and awakened all the latent moral forces of the people. President Lincoln, movcd both by choice and by necessity, called about him the best men of the nation. It is a memorable fact, that every one of his party rivals for the presidential office received a seat in his Cabinet. Nor did he stop here, but went out of the limits of his own party for some of his most im- portant subordinate officers. He not only sought a prominent Democrat to manage the war-office, but the generals most prominent in the first stage of the war were also Democrats, and were only removed after a complete demon- stration of their incompetency, when their places were filled by others whose military ability rather than their po- litics recommended them for the suc- cession. This policy was carried out by Mr. Lincoln in every department of his administration, and ought to have becm~ continued by his successor. The close of the war was no reason for a return to the abuses of former years. On the contrary, all the, suggestions of the time were in favor of stringent re- form. The heat of party conflict had spent itself in battle. The whole peo- ple, North and South, stood upon the verge of an era of good feeling. Presi- dent Johnson had it in his power to introduce that era. Instead of doing this, he seemed deaf to every sugges- tion of the time. The open door to a bright future he shut and locked. Scarcely had he taken the reins of gov- ernment when he undertook to drive the national team backward. He re- vived the old shibboleth of party, and every subordinate official who would not support his policy of obstruction was removed. Past fidelity counted for nothing. Neither honesty, capacity, nor experience could save an officer whom the Procrustean test of my policy had found wanting. Dishonesty and incapacity stood in the way of no mans elevation who supported that policy. The last three years afford a record of official corruption unparalleled in the annals of our political history. Fol President Johnson found ready to his hand opportunities for corruption more extensive than were ever before offered to a President, and he has availed him- self of them without limit or scruple~ Our immense debt had created a vast and complicated system of internal revenue, and every cog and wheel of this intricate machinery has felt the touch of the Presidents hand, and been forced to respond to his wilL Let it be understood that we are not here making an attack upon Secretary MeCulloch or Commissioner Rollins. These officers seem powerless to resist the obstinate will of the President, and over their heads have flown his relent- less arrows, piercing our revenue system through and through. This abuse will not long be suffered by the people in silence. Sooner or later reform must come; and for you as we have saidthe inauguration of this reform will be comparatively easy. In this matter we shall do wisely if we study the English method. In Eng- land, as in this country, there is a com- plicated system of taxation; and there the experience of years has taught the important lesson that appointments to offices of trust must depend upon the capacity and integrity of the appointees rather than upon their politics. An in- coming Administration produces scarce- ly any change in subordinate offices. The consequence is seen both in the honesty and capacity of the officers employed. Similar results will follow in this country from a radical reform in our system of official appointments. If the abuses of former timeswhen the number and responsibility of our subordinate officers were comparatively insignificantresulted in the debase- ment of our politics, how much more ruinous must these abuses prove under our altered circumstances. We are not surprised that Senator Sumner, in view of these altered circumstances, recently recommended the institution of com- missioners, for the examination of can- didates as to their qualifications for civil office. 176 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Feb The political difficulties, as well as those to which we have adverted, have not necessarily grown out of the war, but are due to the unfortunate admin- istration which followed the assassina- tion of Lincoln. At the close of the war the harmonious adjustment of our national affairs was comparatively easy. The conquerors only asked of the con- quered such guarantees as seemed neces~. sary to permanent union and peace; and these would have been yielded without hesitation by the South. It is scarcely necessary to remind you of the far different course of events which followed. When the office of President devolved upon Andrew Johnson, whose nomination for Vice-President had been secured by Mr. Sewards friends in the Baltimore Convention, but who certain- ly could never have been nominated in view of the sad chance which so soon befell us, two plans for reconstruction had already been proposed: one was involved in President Lincolns Am- nesty Proclamation, and was repudiated by Congress; the other was the Wade and Davis Bill, which passed both Houses, but was virtually vetoed by the President. Both were conceived while the war was yet in progress, and before it had passed its doubtful period, and were therefore premature. Retroverting to the congressional plan, it is somewhat curious that both of its authorsWade and Davisdistinctly declared against the theory that rebel- lion could in any manner affect the rights of Statespronouncing it a dan- gerous heresy; and yet, among the objections raised by Lincoln against this plan, was the fact that Congress had therein usurped powers not be- longing to that body, by a declaration of universal emancipation! But when, in the presence of over- whelming victory, the people pondered the subject of reconstruction, the neces- sities of the problem grew more tangl- ble and definite. Long before the Con- stitutional Amendment of 1866 was proposed, every one of its provisions lad been adopted as an article in the popular creed. It seemed strange to the people that Congress should occupy eight months in deciding upon a policy, the necessity of which was as evident 4 the beginning as at the close of its long session. If they were impatient of this congressional delay, they were more than impatient withthey were indignant atthe attempt made by the President to thwart their purpose by insisting upon his narrower views. And the Cabinet, with two or three excep- tions, supported this attempt. Even Sec- retary Stanton, though somewhat non- committal, publicly expressed his dis- approbation of the congressional policy, before the latter had been fully matur- ed. The people alone grasped the great problem. Next stood Congress, cau- tiously investing it, and intrenching it- self about it, as in a sort of siege. And far, very far remote, stood the Presi- dent with his constitutional advisers. In the meantime a conflict had devel- oped between the executive and legis- lative departments of the government; bitter denunciations were hurled against the President by prominent and appar- ently leading members of Congress, and the President in return fulminated against these his retaliatory denuncia- tions, and spoke of Congress as a body hanging upon the verge of the gov- ernment; until where once the differ- ence could have been easily removed, there now yawned a chasm across which it was idle to halloo a recon- ciliation. It needed only the Presi- dents western tour to the tomb of Douglas to disclose the full extent of his folly; it needed only the New Or- leans riot to reveal the danger which lurked in the encouragement, which, without either congressional or popu- lar sanction, he had held out to men who had just been defeated on the battle-fields of their rebellion, to look upon the war as a myth and upon its results as vanishing shadows. These disclosures certainly did not diminish the popular vote in favor of the Con- stitutional Amendment. When the Fortieth Congress met it held a peculiar position. There was no prospect of a ratification of the 1868.1 A TALK WITH OUR NEXT PRESIDENT. l7T Amendment by the Southern States, in their present temper. Some means of speedy restoration must be adopted. Either Congress and the people must surrender every thing, or proceed one step farther. Under tliese circum- stances the Military Bill was passed. Its primary object was to effect re- storation through popular conventions in the Southern States. In order to accomplish this, all distinctions based upon race or color in the election of the conventions were ignored, and those only were excluded from a vote who had voluntarily participated in rebel- lion. As to the necessity. of the latter feature there was certainly room for doubt; as to the necessity of the former there could be no question. We have taken this retrospective glance, because the events of the pres- ent administration have enhanced the difficulties and responsibilities which you must meet as our next President. You cannot, even if you would, stand where Johnson stood in that ever-mem- orable month of April, 1865. The con- flict of two years between the President and Congress has had its results, which you must meet, for you cannot oblite- rate them. One of these results has been the Military Bill, the primary oh- ject of which will be accomplished. The Southern conventions will meet and will form constitutions, wliich will be ratified by the Southern people. We may assume that these constitutions, framed by delegates thus elected, will provide for universal or impartial suf- frage. The action of Congress respect- ing them will be attended with delay, if in no other way than by the Presi- dents vetoes; for it is far from prob- able that measures against which there appears to be so much opposition even in the Northern States, will receive the support of a two-thirds majority in both Houses. This question of the ex- tension of the suffrage must, then, in an important sense, be decided by your voice. In the election both of yourself and of the Forty-first Congress, the peo- ple will decide whether they will main- tain the position assumed by the pres ent Congress in the passage of the Mili- tary Bill. That they will not with- draw from that position seems to us as certain as any political, event can well be before it transpires. You will not therefore be permitted to shift the responsibility by asking, What can I do against the people? In this connection we do not wish to look upon you as the leader of any partythough we feel sure that you represent that purpose which carried the people on to triumph after four years of war, in spite of the Chicago Convention of 1864. We prefer to meet you upon the higher plane of principles, far above the dust and tur- moil of party antagonisms. From this higher ground we shall more clearly discern the popular purpose, for we shall not be whirled about in any particular eddy of the tide, or thrown back by every refinent wave, but shall see whither the great current tends through all these eddyings and partial repulses. We must not lose sight of this current, of the channels through which it may run, or of the impedi- ments which it must encounter in one course or another. We shall gain nothingfor nothing is ever thus gain- edby that sort of balloon-ascension into the region of abstract principles, so foolishly attempted by a certain class of our statesmen. It is idle to go forth to the people from the tem- ple of Absolute Justice, where we have caught a glimpse of the unveiled god- dess, and ask them to be translated into Utopia; for they will not and cannot thus be translated. If we fight in the air, we must be satisfied with phantom antagonists and phantom vic- tories; and upon descending to the common earth we find that we have to fight our battles all over again under far different conditions. We gain noth- ing by chafing at these conditions. History rather teaches us a lesson of patience and of faith. For, however slowly, the stream still moves on. Ob- stacles become only the test and meas- ure of the strength of the current. As they tower and cumulate, it also gathers 178 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Feb. up its forces in reserve until some com- ing storm, when with a convulsive ef- fort it breaks through its barriers; and, though its overflow brings momentary desolation to the fields along its banks, yet aftei*vard it subsides within regular and peaceful channels, and flows freely and slowly onward until again com- pelled to measure its strength against opposing mountains. These periods of convulsion, when, either by its own momentum or by the aid of storms, the progress of an idea triumphs over pre- judice, are the grand opportunities of history. It was such an opportunity that President Lincoln embraced when he issued the Emancipation Proclamation. The tendency of the national sentiment has been from the first toward universal freedom. An entire section of the coun- try arrayed itself in opposition, and in- terposed a check. Up rose the obstacle with menacing front; up rose also the people, and bore down upon the im- pediment. Then at length descended the storm of our civil war, invoked at first by the advocates of human slavery, who were confident of riding the whirl- wind and controlling the issue. But the magnitude of the conflict brought us face to face with the necessity of emancipation. There was, apparently, the strongest prejudice even in the North against this measure. Almost unanimously Congress had at the be- ginning of the war determined against interference with Southern institutions. But the necessity was imperative, and Lincoln, almost reluctantly, obeyed. That he was in advance of the people seemed clear from the autumn elections of 1862, which showed a falling off of the vote from the Administration. But this opposition had no depth and with- ered away; it was the last kick before death of Northern sympathy with slav- cry. The real sentiment of the people soon began to develop itself. Thus, un- der the pressure of necessity, the prin- ciples of justice and expediency had united, and slavery was abolished. The case of negro suffrage is likely to prove a parallel one to that of negro emancipation. If the Southern people had not, under the effect of Johnsons policy, refused to adopt the Constitu- tional Amendmentif the Military Bill had not become a necessitythis ques- tion would have been postponed until after restoration. The Fortieth Con- gress was no more in favor of giving a vote to the negro than the Thirty-sev- enth was in favor of giving him his freedom. Since the close of the war the subject had been mentioned only to be repudiated, not simply as an idle vagary, but as a dangerous innovation. But here again necessity confronted us. As permanent union could not be hop- ed for without emancipation, so also it was found that Johnsons policy and the defiant attitude of the South would not admit of restoration and permanent peace, unless the negro was given a voice in the preliminary stage of recon- struction. Congress obeyed a mandate which was just as obvious and impera- tive as that which compelled Lincoln, and it obeyed it with equal reluctance. Necessity again married Expediency to Justice. To carry out the parallel, the elections of 1867 are to be construed as were those which in 1862 followed the Emancipation Proclamation. The lat- ter, as we have said, were the last kick of slavery; and in the former the sym- pathy with class-domination is going through precisely similar ante-mortem convulsions. But you will perhaps say, Mr. Presi- dent, that we are assuming too much in declaring that the tendencies of the age are as plainly toward impartial suffrage as they have been toward uni- versal freedom. You are ready to ad- mit the necessity of the Military Bill, and that when the formerly dominant class of the South refused to sit down at the feast to which they were invited, we were obliged to go into the high- ways and h~dges to beat up guests of a different color; but you will not, per- haps, so readily perceive the applica- tion of this necessity beyond the pre- liminary stages of restoration. We are obliged to ask the negroes to help us in this inceptive act of reconstruction; 1868.] A TALK WITH OUR NEXT PRESIDENT. 179 but must we not stop there, and let the power in the States, once restored, re- vert back to the whites? If we do this, on the other hand, is it not clear that we go back to the point from which we started? If we refuse to accept constitutions because they give political power to those whom we have allowed a voice in their formation, we not only recoil from the result of our own action, but must go back again to the very beginning; and there the old alternative confronts us, of either a complete surrender to Mr. Johnsons policy, or of a resort to the extension of the suffrage in the South. So far as to the necessities of the case. But what is the popular tend- ency? You say the people are opposed to such an extension of the suffrage. Well, even admitting this to be the case, have they not as emphatically declared against the opposite alterna- tive? One swallow does not make a summer; sand a single election is not a perfect indication of popular pur- pose. We think, as we have already intimated, that the late elections rep- resent a refluent wave, which in its next movement will overleap the bar. Besides, the repudiation of negro suf- frage in a Northern State is not quite pertinent as an argument applicable to Southern affairs. When the people of Ohio voted upon this question, it was simply a conflict between a prejudice of race on the one side and an abstract principle on the other. Of course, the prejudice triumphed. If, however, one half of the population of Ohio had been colored, the conditions of the conflict would have been altered, and there would have been opposed to prejudice something more than an abstraction; the question would then have been a vital one for the State, involving con- siderations of expediency as well as of justice. We will not insult the intel- ligent white people of Ohio by the supposition that, in that case, they would have determined upon the ex- clusion of the entire black population on account of color. But to make our hypothesis applicable to the present situation in the South, we must sup. pose that Ohio extends over an entire section of the country; that one third of its population is colored, and has been emancipated during a war in which the whites of that section threatened to destroy the national government; that, after a complete national victory, the whites, encouraged by a recreant Presi- dent, have refused to assent to a con- stitutional amendment, the principal purpose of which was to prevent whites who had been rebels from having near- ly twice the power which would belong to those who had remained loyal; and that, upon this, the nation, compelled to choose between a surrender of this amendment or a resort to the negro- vote, has chosen the latter. This is ex- 4lctly the Southern situation. The ques- tion of negro suffrage is there not sim- ply a vital one to each of the Southern States for its own sake, but to the en- tire nation in the interests of peace. In New York or Connecticut, where no such important issues are depending, it is of comparatively little consequence. But, even if you admit that both the necessities of the momeiit and the popu- lar tendency decide in favor of an ex- tension of suffrage to negroes in the South, you may, perhaps, have your doubt as to the results of immediate and universal suffrage. The risk is undoubtedly great; but, after all, is it as great as was to be anticipated from sudden and universal emancipation? President Lincoln had many fears as to the results in the latter case, and even after his proclamation, he declar- ed to Congress his preference for a system of gradual emancipation. But Congress, wisely, as the event proved, took the risk. And here also, in this other matter, the risk must be taken. We are confident that the dangers feared are imaginary. Some sagacious politicians predicted, and many feared, that the proclamation of emancipation would be followed by a negro insur- rection; but not a single instance oc- curred to justify this fear. The ap- prehension which now exists in the minds of some, that negro suffrage will 180 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Feb. bring on a war of races, will prove in like manner to have been only a po- litical bugbear. The motive for such a war is far stronger if the blacks are ex- cluded from political rights; but give them these rights, break down the bar- rier of caste in the South, and the very occasion for such violent antagonism disappears. We shall find that the very means by which alone we are able to obtain a just basis of restoration, are those which will also secure internal harmony in those States which have the largest proportion of the colored popu- lation. There is another consideration from which we may gather hope. So soon as the nation is restored upon the large basis of equal rights for all men, the negro will cease to be an element of. political agitation. Not only so, but the very questions which are now so prominent, and which divide between the two races at the South, will be forever set at rest. As new problems arise, pertaining to finance, commerce, labor, and education, this inveterate prejudice of racenever so strong at the South as it has been at the North will be ignored as a political ele- ment. What opportunity for division can occur between whites and blacks (as such), upon the questions of Free Trade,of Taxation, of Currency, of Common Schools, or of Foreign Poli- cy It will not be a matter of sur- prise to us, if this measure of negro suffrage should become popular among the Southern whites, when the latter come to see that thereby their States secure a larger influence in our national councils than they could otherwise ex- pect, and that, in all their local inter- ests, they can depend upon the support of a race, the interests of which, by its admission to the body politic, have be- come identical with their own. The idea that the numerical superior- ity of the negro population in a few of the Southern States will lead to agra- rianism, or to the success of other wild schemes which haunt our too active imaginations, is simply absurd. Intel- ligence and the advantages of wealth are always more than a counterbalance against an ignorant majority, except in those cases where they are arrayed against the interests of that majority, and then they ought to be defeated. The imumerical majority of the blacks can effect nothing against the whites, except in so far as an attempt is made by the latter to oppress the former. Measures directed against the blacks will unite them in a solid phalanx of resistance. That is fortunate; we must in such a case pay our reverence to the power of numbers. But in every other case, this numerical majority will be divided, and, in proportion to the ig- norance of the negroes, the intelligence of the whites will command. That also is fortunate; in all such cases we pay our reverence to intelligence. As the blacks become educated, and as they advance in industry, they will partici- pate in this higher sovereignty. And ought they not? Thus, in being just, we accomplish also that which is ex- pedient. If we do right, if we build up the nation anew upon an equitable basis, if we make oppression in this Republic an impossibility, we may feel secure as to consequences, for these will take care of themselves. If we adopt any other course, we must fail, and our proper work will have to be done by those who come after us. Have we been talking too much of the negro? Well, we need scarcely to apologize for that. Has not the nation for thirty years been nader a black nightmare? And why? Simply be- cause there has been a black wrong, eating like a canker into the national conscience. We only did part of our work in emancipation. To complete it, we must insist upon political equal- ity. Social equality will take care of itself; we need not meddle with that~ But the hag which has ridden us for so many years refuses to depart and give us peace until we proclaim equal political rights to all men without dis- tinction of color. If we do that, we are free indeed; if we do less than that, we do nothing. Every page of human history proves 1868.] A TALK WITH OITE NEXT PRESIDENT. 181 the expediency of universal suffrage. The record is crowded with intestine commotions growing out of the exclu- sion of large classes from the political community. To-day Great Britain rocks to and fro with agitations which have no other cause than the exclusion of the masses from political power. Im- perial, monarchical, and aristocratic governments are all based upon this principle of exclusion; and they guard themselves against the dangers of their system only by fortifying intelligence, wealth, and power against the ignorant, the poor, and the weak. Shall we in- augurate this system of government in thur Republic? Have we abolished slav- ery if the principle upon which slavery rests still prevails? Must four millions of the human race, who are so unfortu- nate as to be born black, be unfettered by us, because it has been for our con- venience, and yet be deprived at once of the benefits of slavery and the privi- leges of fieemen? If so, then emanci- pation was an abortion. If so, then we still have among us a race of pariahs, not protected by the interest which might attach to them as chattcls, and yet having no means of self-protection. Such a system is no less prejudicial to us than the negro. We shall become selfish and tyrannical; he will become malignant and dangerous. A race sud- denly freed from slavery, naturally as- pires toward intelligence and dignity. Which is betterto repress these as- pirations and force them to creep in darkness toward their end, and by base means, or to give them place for development in the free air and in the fulness of light? In your administration, the great question of equal rights must be settled, or postponed to some indefinite future: now, it can be settled peaceably; then, it may reach its solution through a second upheaval of the Republic. If evils threaten in the event of your de- cision in one way, still greater dangers loom up on the other hand. Is it not better to do right now, when the op- portunity invites, than to hesitate, where procrastination seems even more peril- ous than prompt execution? The ques- tion is thrnst before you by fateit does not come at your bidding or at ours. Is it any safer, is it any wiser; for you to disregard the necessities of peace, in this connection, than it would have been for Lincoln to have disregarded those of war, in the matter of emancipation? There are two clearly defined careers which your administration may run, ac- cordingly as you respond to this impor- tant question. There is no room for compromise. You must choose one or the other. Only one is right and expe- dient, therefore the other must be wrong and inexpedient. You must either go back to the point from which Johnson. set out, and attempt to revive his policy, by rallying about it the forces of Con- gress and the people; or you must be- gin where Congress left off, and rally the people about a far different policy. The popular voice now seems to be doubtful; last year it murmured against Johnson, this year it appears to mur- mur against Congress. It is barely pos- sible that, by your superior tact, or by the greater weight of your influence, you may succeed in galvanizing into life a policy once strangled by the peo- ple, and thus the nation may be restored upon the principle of class-domination in the South. We do not believe that you will attempt that, or that you really will succeed if you do. But ig on the other hand, you throw the weight of your abilities, character, and influence in favor of equal rights for all men, and the readjustment, upon that basis, of the harmonies so violently disturbed by a great war, you will touch a deeper chord in the popular heart, and will surely meet with a response. No President, no Emperor, ever had an opportu- nity so significant and so important as yours; and if you do right, you will receive a support such as has never been accorded to any ruler in the his- tory of the world. You may possibly postpone the ultimate triumph of jus- tice, and take the consequences; the people may assist you in this, and also take the consequences, in whatever shape God may choose to thwart defiant men. 182 Puri~AMs MAGAZINE. [Feb. In any event, our faith is undisturbed in the ultimate triumph of right, whether it come soon and in this dawn of peace, or after whatsoevcr storms in the here- after. You must have faith in the people such faith as Lincoln hadand which, after Pauls definition, is the evidence of things not seen. This is only pos- sible, in so far as you are in sympathy with the great under-current of human progress, the profound pulsations of which do not always reach the surface; they are unseen, and if you would have faith in their might, you must feel them. Having this sympathy, you will always appear to be a little in advance of the people, when you are most in unity with their purpose. You will thus be, in the true sense, a leader. While others fluc- tuate this way and that way in the sur- face eddies of popular opinion, your hand will steadily guide to one sure end, and to the people such guidance is insj~iration. On the whole, the situation, both for you and for us, is full of hope. You hold the key to the citadel of Wrong. At your bidding, the forces will again be marshalled, and, under your guid- ance, will fight the one great battle which must consummate the victories of the past, by securing the results of the battles already fought. There are no foreign complications to be feared or avoided; you enter upon your ad- ministration at a time when the iRepub- lie is at peace with all the world. Do- mestic foes there may be, but they are already disarmed, and can only fret and chafe within their fixed bounds; they can neither check you by direct oppo- sition, nor harass your rear. In in- dulging this hope as to your future, we have in view no ideal or model Presi- dent, but one whom the necessities of the time have brought forth; one cho- sen with great national issues clearly in view; chosen by the people to do their work, and by God to do His. Our ex pectations are not of the Utopian sort; we doubt not but your administration will leave plenty of work and arduous responsibilities for your successors; but we may reasonably hope that it will es- tablisli a firm foundation for a healthy national development, undisturbed by agitation concerning matters which, as being primary, ought to be settled first of all. The same principles which will lead you to favor equal rights, will also lead you to oppose any financial policy that will violate the pledges upon which rests our national credit. Restoration based upon the principles of justice and expediency, will of itself largely con- tribute toward increased confidence in all our public pledges, while a vacil- lating administration will, to an equal degree, depreciate them. We have not discussed in detail many of the specific issues of your adminis- tration, but have confined ourselves al- most entirely to the more important problems which you are called upon to solve. We have not for a moment sup- posed that any thing which we might say would alter or in any way affect your convictions. But the voices of all the people go up to their President. You will listen to our plea as one of these many voices. Or you will listen, perhaps, as you would in your military camp, on the eve of battle to the re- port of a scout who brings in to you his quota of impressions as to the lay of the ground, or the disposition of the enemys forces. Possibly, if your scout impresses you with the conviction that an immense army in reserve is march- ing to the front, and will come to your support at the sound of your cannon, you may be inspired with fresh courage for the impending conflict, and enter upon it with larger hopes. Whether or no, you have our impressions. The scouts report is before you, General. Do you hear another voice, or is it your own, which commands: Summon the forces; we will fight the battle? 1868.] THE MYSTERY or THE GILDED CAMEO. 183 THE MYSTERY OF THE GILDED CAMEO. OF the few unto whom I have here- tofore confidentially narrated the cir- cumstances, some merely laughed, and seemed to give me credit for a most lively imagination. Others looked wise, and talked about undeveloped laws in electro-biology and magnetism. Two shook their heads, and quoted Ham- lets celebrated remark to Horatio. Three or four kept silence, appearing to be troubled about my sanity. And onea melancholy man with a sallow complexion, who bade me turn up the gas before I commencedgrew pale as I went on, and admitted that, after all, there might really be something in it. As for myself, I cannot tell what to think about it. I can only confess the whole matter to the public, in the hope that somewiser head than has yet been consulted, may furnish the true solution. It happened a year ago, in Florence, where I was detained for some weeks by a temporary failure of health. And having soon exhausted the usual won- ders of the place, I became rather like one of the settled citizensseldom any longer dropping in at the galleries and studios, but falling gradually into a uni- form routine of out-door life, sunning myself at cctf~ entrances, and, at fixed hours, starting out upon pleasant strolls. Of these, my favorite one was across the Ponte Yecchio, stopping for a few min- utes at the little shop of old Andrea Yaggione, to gossip with him about the events of the day. There may be some who recollect the old man. His place was nearly half-way across the bridge, on the right hand as you passed from the Lung Arno; and, like the rest, was filled with mosaics, photographs, alabas- ter leaning-towers, bronzes, medalsin fine, with a goodly assortment of all those curiosities which travellers most generally affect. Perhaps the greatest curiosity of all was the face of old An- drea himself, as it appeared looking out from the midst of his goodsa queer, semi-grotesque face, with no beard, flanked with bushy tufts of grayish hair, and ornamented with two little beads of glittering eyes which peered restlessly out from behind the long, overhanging eyebrows as through a veil. A benevolent, pleasing face, too and belonging to an expansive, finely- shaped head. Seeing this alone, you would have said that he was a large, well-proportioned man; but it was not so. From his waist downward, old Andrea was a cripple, withered and misshapen, with the limbs of a half- grown child; and he was daily carried down to the shop upon a mule, and lifted into his place by his two sons. Happening to stop almost daily at Andreas shop in preference to the others, I soon, by dint of good-natured chaffering over his goods, became pretty well acquainted with him; and so much so, indeed, that at last he began to look out for my coming as one of the small events of his life, and finally went so far as to invite me to step in behind his counter and rest myself. There I often sat, snugly ensconced out of sight amidst a forest of bronze candelabras decked with bright-colored silk scarfs, and watched with interest the little stream of loiterers crossing the bridge, and the occasional sharp bargainings of travellers over cameos and mosaics bargainings in which it is needless to say that An- drea, while surrendering his goods with a melancholy affectation of ruinous sac- rifice, always got the best of it. Gradu- ally it became one of my secret enjoy- ments to have chance acquaintances, at the Hotel dArno, guardedly exhibit to me the very articles that I had watch- ed them purchase at almost double the proper value, all the while vaunting their own acuteness in making the ac- quisition. At old Andreas,half-way along the bridge, they would say, has the best stock of goods in town. My courier

1868.] THE MYSTERY or THE GILDED CAMEO. 183 THE MYSTERY OF THE GILDED CAMEO. OF the few unto whom I have here- tofore confidentially narrated the cir- cumstances, some merely laughed, and seemed to give me credit for a most lively imagination. Others looked wise, and talked about undeveloped laws in electro-biology and magnetism. Two shook their heads, and quoted Ham- lets celebrated remark to Horatio. Three or four kept silence, appearing to be troubled about my sanity. And onea melancholy man with a sallow complexion, who bade me turn up the gas before I commencedgrew pale as I went on, and admitted that, after all, there might really be something in it. As for myself, I cannot tell what to think about it. I can only confess the whole matter to the public, in the hope that somewiser head than has yet been consulted, may furnish the true solution. It happened a year ago, in Florence, where I was detained for some weeks by a temporary failure of health. And having soon exhausted the usual won- ders of the place, I became rather like one of the settled citizensseldom any longer dropping in at the galleries and studios, but falling gradually into a uni- form routine of out-door life, sunning myself at cctf~ entrances, and, at fixed hours, starting out upon pleasant strolls. Of these, my favorite one was across the Ponte Yecchio, stopping for a few min- utes at the little shop of old Andrea Yaggione, to gossip with him about the events of the day. There may be some who recollect the old man. His place was nearly half-way across the bridge, on the right hand as you passed from the Lung Arno; and, like the rest, was filled with mosaics, photographs, alabas- ter leaning-towers, bronzes, medalsin fine, with a goodly assortment of all those curiosities which travellers most generally affect. Perhaps the greatest curiosity of all was the face of old An- drea himself, as it appeared looking out from the midst of his goodsa queer, semi-grotesque face, with no beard, flanked with bushy tufts of grayish hair, and ornamented with two little beads of glittering eyes which peered restlessly out from behind the long, overhanging eyebrows as through a veil. A benevolent, pleasing face, too and belonging to an expansive, finely- shaped head. Seeing this alone, you would have said that he was a large, well-proportioned man; but it was not so. From his waist downward, old Andrea was a cripple, withered and misshapen, with the limbs of a half- grown child; and he was daily carried down to the shop upon a mule, and lifted into his place by his two sons. Happening to stop almost daily at Andreas shop in preference to the others, I soon, by dint of good-natured chaffering over his goods, became pretty well acquainted with him; and so much so, indeed, that at last he began to look out for my coming as one of the small events of his life, and finally went so far as to invite me to step in behind his counter and rest myself. There I often sat, snugly ensconced out of sight amidst a forest of bronze candelabras decked with bright-colored silk scarfs, and watched with interest the little stream of loiterers crossing the bridge, and the occasional sharp bargainings of travellers over cameos and mosaics bargainings in which it is needless to say that An- drea, while surrendering his goods with a melancholy affectation of ruinous sac- rifice, always got the best of it. Gradu- ally it became one of my secret enjoy- ments to have chance acquaintances, at the Hotel dArno, guardedly exhibit to me the very articles that I had watch- ed them purchase at almost double the proper value, all the while vaunting their own acuteness in making the ac- quisition. At old Andreas,half-way along the bridge, they would say, has the best stock of goods in town. My courier 184 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Feb. directed me to him, or else I might never have found him out. A sharp old fellow, too, and would cheat you, if he could; but I was up to him there. I was not born yesterday, you see. And if you want something like this your- self, I will go with you, and help you through with it. One day, upon entering my nookery, I found Andrea poring over a trayful of goods and trumpery which he had just purchased in one lot from a peas- ant-woman. There were a rosary or two of cracked beads, joined with silver links, a few broken mosaics, valuable only for their settings, a string of cor- als, an old lock of no value as a protec- tion, but rather remarkable for its elabo- rately ornamented scutcheonin fine, a varied mass, of which some was of lit- tle value, and the rest entirely worth- less. Andrea carefully sorted these out into different boxes, putting some arti- cles by for the melting-pot, and some aside for future reburnishing. Then, picking up from the heap that remain- ed, a curious medallion-like ornament, he gazed at it for a moment inquiringly, and finally, without a word, placed it in my hands. Upon examining it, I saw that it was a cameo, of rather larger size than usual, being about three inches across the broadest extent of the oval. It had evidently been once of some value as a work of art, but was now battered and scratched, and was absolutely worth- less except as a relic of antiquity. The intaglio represented a female figure, which, a portion of the face having been cracked off at first baffled all identification, but which, from the sun- dial upon her lap, I finally recognized as Atropos, one of the three Fates. Around the edge was a coiled serpent not an independent piece of setting, but a part of the stone itself. Of actual setting there was none, nor was there any fixture at the back to show that it had ever been worn as a pin or buckle. There was simply a ring at the top, whence I conjectured that it must have been suspended from the neck, possibly as a sort of charm. The back of it was plain, and filled in with some kind of dark enamel, which was not scratched like the face, probably from being of a harder substance. Upon the edge of the border were carved the date and initials, C. M., 1565. What was most remarkable about the trinket was its style of embellishmentthe hair of the figure and the borderiiig serpent hav- ing evidently been once thickly gilded. Where could it have come from? I said to Andrea. Who knows? he answered. It may have been concealed for three cen- turies in a monastery, or may have been openly worn by a peasant-family down from one generation to another. Old trinkets are turning up all the while, and no one asks any questions about them. I have never yet seen any thing exactly like this, however. I remem- ber to have heard that nearly a hundred years ago there was such an ornament in existence in the cabinet of a cardinal. It is one of the traditions of our craft. There was said to be some charm or virtue about it, but no one could dis- cover the key to it. Then it disap- peared during a siege of the city. This may be the same one, or there mayhave been many of themwho can tell ? It is very curious, I said. What is the price of it ? Nothing, to yourself, answered An- drea. It has no value now as an orna- ment, being so defaced; and why, there- fore, should I try to make a profit out of it to you who may chance to fancy it? Therefore put it into your pocket. I did so willingly, and without scru- ple at accepting the gift, having so often hitherto made purchases to his profit. And thanking him, I told him that I would keep it to remember him by, being about to leave Florence be- fore many days. To return to your own country! said Andrea. To that happy land where all the people are rich, and all the streets are wide, and the houses new? Well, I cannot wonder that you pine for it. And he sighed, as though he, too, would like to depart and seek shelter 1868.1 Tnn MYSTERY OF TILE GILDED CAMEO. 185 in such a blessed place. How could I make him comprehend that I rather preferred the narrow streets and the little old shops of Florence? I could not, indeed, explain to myself why it was. Therefore I made no answer, ex- cept that I hoped in future years to re- turn to Florence and spend many more months there; and then, inaspiritof pleasantry, hanging the cameo around my neck, inside my vest, for a charm, I left him, promising to come back every day until my departure. My usual route, after crossing over the bridge, led through the tangled streets until I reached and passed out of the nearest gateway; after which I would make a semi-circular detour through the more open country, loitering along the walled fronts of picturesque villas, until finally I relintered the city at another gate, and so arrived again at my hotel. This route I now pursued, and strolled carelessly along, unburdened with seri- ous thought, until I came to that point where I w~as accustomed to commence my homeward progress. Here a sur- prise awaited me. A little back from the road there was a small vine-covered cottage, with a broken, untrimmed hedge in front, and flowers growing thickly around. I had often taken note of its pleasant aspect, more especially as it seemed unaccountably to stand empty and deserted, as though stricken with the plaguethe doors and windows be- ing closed, and the grass in front over- grown with weeds, and a large dusty cobweb stretching across the gate; and I had wondered how such a little nook of contentment could remain unsought for. Now, as I approached, I noticed that it was occupied, for the windows were open; and, leaning over the low gate, appeared a young but fully-grown girl, clad in a semi-antique costume, which added to the picturesque grace of her attitude as she stood listlessly twirl- ing a ring upon her finger in seeming un- consciousness that any one was nigh. As I approached, however, she lifted her eyes, and started, as though about to withdraw into the cottage. With the sudden motion, the ring slipped from VOL. i.13 her finger, and fell into the path before me. I could do no less than pick it up and return it to her, nor could she do less than thank me for the service. This led to a response upon my part; and so, little by little, a few muttered words changed into actual conversation, and I found myself leaning over the other side of the gate, listening to a voice which struck me as the most pleasantly modulated that I had ever heard, and stealthily gazing into eyes whose depth and softness I felt had never been sur- passed. How shall I describe her? Alas! the real essence of beauty cannot be described. Features and matters of mere outward expression may be ac- curately depicted; but what words can ever give a true conception of that in- ward beauty which seems to shine from the very depths of tile soul, making it- self felt in each shifting glance of the eye, or in the lightest curve of the lip, brightening with new loveliness, curving eyelash and rounded cheek and playful dimple, and every other more manifest charm of person, even as the sun showers down new embellishments upon a gentle landscape already believed to be perfect in its details? At the most, I could but faintly tell how, at the very first, she seemed to me; for though, in the be- ginning, I took some timid note of dreamy eyes, and dark clustering locks, and pearly teeth, and rich brown. com~ plexion, before many minutes had~ elapsed I had forgotten all these mere~ outward attractions, and became con- scious only of her winning grace of lan- guage, her softly-modulated tones, and her soul-lit, pensive glance. Until, suddenly, with a start, I came to myself. What were these tender tones and soul-lit glances to me? They had their attraction, to be sure, but what of~ that? I should probably never see her~ again. It was only a pleasant little ro- mance, lasting for one moment, and to~ be forgotten the next that wan all. And even now I had remained longer than propriety would allow. And, there- fore, muttering an apology for having detained her, I departed, unconscious. 186 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Feb. that I had been performing the first short act in a drama. And somehow, I began to lo~k with more distaste than ever upon my native land, where these little waifs of romance did not happen; and if old Andrea could then have ques- tioned me about it, I could have told him that it was not simply its broad streets and houses all new that excited my artistic aversion, but rather its ap- parent inability to furnish, amid its busi- ness excitements, sueh pleasant inter- ludes of vine-covered cottages adorned with lustrous-eyed maidens. And this, for the moment, was my hearts com- plaint, never varying, and always re- peating itself until I had ag in crossed the Arno, and stood in my own room at the hotel. Sidney Talfourd, my chum, was there, sorting out his effects into two portman- teaus, preparatory to our approaching departure. Sidney was not exactly my travelling companion, since he had been rang4ig all over Italy for weeks past, while I had remained quietly at Flor- ence. But he had now joined me, and it had been determined that we should go home together, first taking a tour to Venice and Vienna, and thence passing by way of Berlin and Dresden to Paris. He was good company; and, irrespective of personal liking, there was a strong bond of union between us, from the fact that be had a pretty sister at home, to whom I had bcen engaged for the past two years. Look here! be cried, as soon as I entered the room. While you have been loitering away your afternoon, loafing in at old Jew shops, and the like, I have picked up a treasure. See this, now 1, With that he held out to me a dingy- looking book, smoke-dried, atmosphere- dried, age-drieddried up in every way in which a book can dry. The pages were yellow, and in places somewhat obliterated. It was bound in that quaint gilded parchment which commonly goes by the name of Roman binding. The title-page recited that it was the Chro- nicles of one Bartolomeo IJberti an author of whom neither of us had ever heard. But that mattered nothing to Sidney. The date 1602 was what pleased him. He had for old books a mania, about which I had often laughed at him; and if the date was far enough back, he cared little for the contents. What is it all for I I said, hand- ling the book with an affectation of disgust, as though it had just come from a pest-house. Chronicles about what? About old philosophers and poets, and fellows of that ilk, who have lived in Florence a little before our day what we should call our most respected citizens, answered Sidney. Dip into it, and perhaps you may find something interesting that will stop your mock laughter. I dipped into it accordingly, turning over the leaves at random and occasion- ally stopping to read a few lines. I found it, as he had stated, a kind of biography of noted Florentines, some of them yet celebrated in history, but the greater number long gone down to oblivion. I was about to close the volume with weary disgust, when a word or two suddenly fixed my atten- tion; and as I read, the blood mounted into my face, so that, had it not been for the obscurity of evening, Sidney could not have failed to notice my agitation. It was in a sketch of the life of one Cianino Medicia grand- nephew of the famous Lorenzoand in the midst of a page so blurred and eaten away that but a few scattered sentences remained; so that it was with difficulty I deciphered even these few words: which gilded cameo having been given to lion s7eep~ng witl~ ~t upon his breast and whispering the name of whom- soever he sought, Cianino would, in his dreanss, see whatever might be happening to such person in any part of the world. But with this condi that he miserably perished. As I read, my knees almost smote together, and I could feel the perspira- tion gathering upon my forehead. For I could not doubt that the long-lost 1868.] THE MYSTERY OF THE GILDED CAMEO. 187 charm had passed into my possession, and with it the method of its applica- tion. The date, the initials, all con- curred to convince me beyond the pos- sibility of dispute. But, at the same time, came the conviction that there was some horrible diabolical spell con- nected with it which would too surely prevent my enjoyment of it. How pleasant,, indeed, to look upon the features and actions of those whom we most loved! But, oh! how could I ever dare to do it? To what pen- alty might I not subject myself? What was the meaning of that sad conclusion of all, that he miserably perished? And what a terrible de- privation it was that the very lines which should have explained every thing clearly, had been thus eaten or rusted away! I say, remarked Sidney, dont you wish you could look in upon them at home now? I think I can see them all. Its ahout five oclock there, I sup- pose, and they are just a bout sitting down to dinner. How they would relish a bottle of Orvietowould they not? And there is Bessie, too. She was ill when we last heard from her. Wouldnt it be a nice thing if we could find out just how she is? Bessie ill look in upon them? Why, so I could that very ni0ht. The proper instrument for the purpose was dangling around my neck. And, at the suggestion, the string seemed to cut into my flesh. And I would so like to know whether Bessie had recovered but I dared not make the attempt. No, even if it were life and death with Bessie, I could not venture to use the charm, and risk the possible conse- quences of the act. Sidney! I exclaimed, softening my voice as much as possible, so as to con- ceal its agitation, were there any more copies of this book in the shop where you bought it I Any more copies? he exclaimed, opening his eyes wide in astonishment. Do you think I would buy a book if I thought there was another copy of it in the world? And do you imagine that such treasures are to be picked up in shops? I bought that book of a dirty old monk; and it is my opini6n that he stole it out of the monastery library. Nevertheless, Sidney, I would give a great deal to see another copy of it, for my curiosity is excited. See here! There is something gone from this page, and I would dearly love to find out the missing links of the narrative. I see, responded Sidney, running his eye hastily down the page. About some old monkish charm, I suppose. And, of course, the devil had some- thing to do with it. He always has, in these old stories. Well, I suppose we will never know, now. Certainly, we cannot find out about it in Flor- ence. There may be other copies in some of the larger European libraries, though even that I doubt. But I am glad you are becoming interested in old books, at last. I have hopes of you, now. You havent, in some of your meanderings, come across the old cameo, have you I he added, with a careless laugh. Well, we will try to find the missing page, when we get to Paris. When will that bein three weeks? Let us say four weeks, for sure. And now, as I am rather sleepy, I will go off to my bed. He nodded, and retired, while I sat up half the night, gazing at the gilded cameo, longing to test its powers, but not daring to do so; and finally, fling- ing myself upon my bed, I gained a few hours of sleepa troubled and unrefresh- ing sleep, however, which did not rest me; and morning brought me no re- spite from care. I now thought of the day only as a season for work and re- search; and, after a hasty breakfast, sallied forth to look for another copy of Bartoliomeo Uberti. Bookstores and libraries all underwent my scrutiny. I even gained access to some monastic libraries, and pored greedily over the shelves; but all in vain. Until at length, when twilight came, I reso- lutely banished that care from my mind, and set out upon my usual rounda chat with old Andrea upon 188 the Ponte Vecchio, a stroll across the bridge to the city-gate, and so onward through the villa-lined suburbs. When I came to the little cottage, at the termination of my outward route, it was not unnatural, perhaps, that I should look to see whether the pretty maiden of the preceding evening was there again. That chance meeting. it had surely been too pleasant not to be repeated, if possible; and it would be no sin to gaze once more for a few minutes into those pensive eyes be- fore I went away forever; and, in fact, it would be rather a hard fate, perhaps, to find the cottage again deserted. Therefore it was with a peculiar pleas- ure that I now saw the young girl lean- ing over the little gate as before; the more so that she seemed as though an- ticipating my coming. And conse- quently it could hardly be expected that I should not again tarry for a little whilewhich I did; and found myself, once more bending over my side of the gate, looking dreamily down into her face, and thirstingly drinking in her soft, modulated tones, as she prattled on in her native tongue. And with less consideration than I had displayed upon the preceding evening, I there remained, watching her play of expression, until the stars peeped out one by one, and the distant Duomo be- gan to show less distinctly against the darkening sky, and I realized that it was indeed time for me to tear myself away. Would I be able to see her again? I then faltered forth. Were these two pleasant meetings to go for naught?~ She smiled, and, holding out her hand for farewell, whisperedoh! so tenderly, as though she could not help itthat she would be there upon the following evening. And I, taking cour- age, pressed the little hand, and, drop- ping a kiss upon it, departed, every few steps looking back to see if she was yet gazing after me, until a turn of the path hid the little cottage from my sight. Another eveningand yet another and still I contrived to see her. I have said that I could not adequately describe [Feb. her beauty. Let me now further say, that if it were possible to depict with graphic correctness every attribute of her marvellous loveliness, whether it shone upon the outward surface, or gleamed fitfully from some inward fount of fascination, it would not avail to do so, unless I could also give a proper con- ception of the singular bond of sym- pathy which now began to draw me towards her, as though by magnetic in- fluence. Never had I felt the like of it before; and I remember that, being at the first dimly conscious of it, and un- able to resist its power, I would vacantly speculate upon its nature, and even try to philosophize upon it. It was not loveso I took pains to assure myself. Might it be the forerunner of love? That, of course, was nonsense. I was merely her friend, and she minethat was all. And somehow, I began to feel as though I had known her years agoas though these meetings were the realization of plans that had been form- ing for ages, and that some great mis- take would be committed in the course of nature, were it all to end without re- sult of any kind. What more shall I say to express the inevitable result? I soon began to dis- cover that I was drifting onward in a dangerous current, but I no longer had the strength of mind to attempt resist- ing it. I knew that I could no longer deceive myself; that what I had so in- nocently imagined to be mere friend- ship, was becoming love yes, had already become so; and yet, infirm and weak of purpose, I constantly grew more yielding. I began each day more willingly to give myself up to the spell. Thoughts of my home grew faint; mem- ories of its loved ones became unfre- quent. I even forgot, for the time, my golden cameo, and my search after the little book of Bartolomeo Uberti; all my usual cares and pursuits seemed to pall upon me; I no more visited old Andrea, or loitered upon the Ponte Yecchio; my only task was to count the minutes until the twilight hour came, and then hurriedly pass over to the little cottage where Lella waited for PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. 1808.] THE MYSTERY OF THE GILDED CAMEO. 189 me at the gate; my only desire was to linger a few weeks longer in Florence. I cannot go yet, I said at length to Sidney. I do not feel my health as fully restored as I could wish, and I would prefer to linger here. I do not care for Venice or Vienna. I will let you make that tour alone, and next month I will meet you in Paris, and we will thence go home together. Sidney was disappointed at the change of programme, butgood, honest fellow that he wassuspected nothing. Well, if it must be so, it must, he mournfully ejaculated. And, Sidney, I cried, suddenly recol- lecting the topic of mylate anxiety, look into some of the large libraries of Vienna or Paris, or wherever there is a large pub- lie library, in fact, and see if you can find another copy of Bartolomeo Uberti. I am more anxious than you can think, to know the whole of that faded page. You have Bartolomeo on the brain, I believe,~ he responded with a laugh; but I will try to gratify your whim. And remember, next month, on the 15th, I shall expect you at the Hotel Louvre. The next day he departed; and I, feel- ing relieved from the presence of one who, at times, had unwittingly fettered my moments, now gave myself up more unresistingly than ever to my passion, going earlier to the trysting-place and remaining there longer. Soon, growing more bold, I would slip into the gate and stand at the same side with Lella, beading forward so as to gaze into her eyes with the same ease as before; then grew accustomed to place myself upon a bench inside the hedge, where, well screened from the road,I could gaze at her as she sat beside me. And, after a little while, it was no more than to be suspected that my arm should wander around the slender waist, and that the fair head should rest upon my sheulder. In all this I had no thought of wrong, nor did I ever dream that there could be any serious issue to the affair. Deeply entranced and carried away as I was, there were certain waking moments, as it were, in my existence, when I felt forced to look upon the situation soberly, face to face. And, though feeling well assured that she loved me in return, I could not but be conscious, at times, that my faith had been plight- ed to another, whom I had in times past believed I loved. There could be no sundering of that tie nor, were it broken, would it avail me any thing. For how could I ever think to bring this untutored Florentine girl to my own home, and there present her to my friends? Nay, what did I know about her, except that I had met her by chance, and now loved her? Who were her kindred? I had never thought to inquire, nor had she ever asked about my own. We were simply all in all to each other, in a blind, unrefiecting, pas- sionate way; and the outer world and its ties were a myth, which ought not now to trouble us. We had no plans for the future how could we have? It was all a tender romance which should be enjoyed for the present, and must some day be rudely broken. We were as Paul and Virginia in our talk and actions; but the world is not a desert island; and when I longed, as I often did, that I might have her al- ways with me, there would come the terrible conviction that in New York there could be found no Paul and Vir- ginia society. No, the rupture must some day come, and surely, too; for each day the time of my final departure drew nearer, and could no longer be procrastinated. And meanwhile, as I lingered, a new act of the drama com- menced. You must not come tomorrow,~~ Lella said to me one evening, as I was taking my leave of her. Why not? I inquired, astounded, for such a deprivation had not yet hap- pened to me. I dare not tell, but so it must be, she responded, hesitatingly. There were candor and regret in her tones; but somehow there seeme~d to be an insin- cere gleam in her dark eyes, and I felt a momentary suspicion of her. Never- theless, at the end, her persuasive tones 199 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Feb. lulled me again; and though I could not induce her to explain the reason for the self-denial to which she com- pelled me, I bade her good-by with a tolerable degree of truthfulness, and, for the moment, my only emotions were re- gret for the necessity and despair of being able to exist for the next forty- eight hours away from her. But when I reached my own room, and was away from the influence of her enticing tones and tender glances, the vision of that single glimpse of insin- cerity came back to me, and made me uncomfortable. Why could she not have told me her reason for not seeing me? If it were a sufficient and proper one, would any person sooner than my- self admit it? And was it not a proof of something wrong, that she would not confide in me? Thus I could not help arguing with myself, as the twin ser- pents, suspicion and jealousy, gnawed at my heart. And not reflecting that, as I hadeformed no settled views for Lellas future, I had no right to be jealous, I began to put together ckcumstances which I had before disregarded. Once, when I had been leaning with her over the gate, a strange young man had ap- peared, and made as though he would stop, but, at an almost imperceptible sign from her, had passed on. At an- other time, I had seen a male figure crouching behind the corner of the cottage, watching us, and had started up in pursuit, when it had vanished, and she had laughed, and said that it was only my shadow. These trivial incidents now seemed to form confirma- tion of some wrong; and little by little I remembered other matters of like char- acter, and miserably brooded over them during the day, until, when evening came, I was almost ill with mental agony. If I could only see her, myself remaining unseen, and thus be satisfied of her truth or falsity, what a relief it might be to me! And at one time, ia my despera- tion, I would have sallied forth and played the spy upon her, had it not been that there was no place about the cottage where I could stand without risking detection. Suddenly I felt a burning, as it were, at my left side, where the gilded cameo reposed. I had not thought much about the trinket of late, being fearful of using it, and half doubtful, moreover, whether the magical powers ascribed to it were not entirely a fable of the Middle Ages. But now I drew it forth, and there came over me an irresistible longing to gaze at Lella, if it were possible, and watch her present occupation. I could but try; and,if it failed,no harm would be done. But if it succeeded, and the penalty, whatever it might be, should be exacted? Pshaw! what penalty could there be? I had not sold my- self to the devil, had I? Nor were these the days in which devils could have power over the human race. Thus, little by little, I reassured myself, per- suading myself to do, for an unknown girl, that which I had not dared to at- tempt for my own distant kindred. Hitherto, more from habit than any thing else, I had continued to wear the cameo about my neck during the day, though I had always laid it aside upon retiring, finding it too cumbrous a trinket for the night. But now, de- termining to try the charm, whatever might be the result, I left it upon my breast, laid down upon my bed, whis- pered the word Lella, and, closing my eyes, awaited the result. At first, nothing; for, in my agitation of mind, I could not sleep, and heard hour after hour strike. But at last I fell into an uneasy slumber; and, almost immedi- ately, in my dreams saw Lella pictured before me. She seemed to be sitting in front of her cottage, upon the rustic level behind the hedge, just where she had been accustomed to sit with me. But now there was another person be- side her, whose youthful beauty I could not fail to admire, even at that bitter moment; and her hand was in his,and her head rested upon his shoulder, even as it had been wont to rest upon my own. And I could see that her eyes gazed up into his with the same lus~j trous glance of sympathetic affection which she had lavished upon me. What more proof of her perfidy could I de 1868j THE MYSTERY OF THE GILDED CAMEO. 191 sire? So, for a moment, stood the life- like picture, and then seemed to roll away, and I saw her no longer. But though the miserable scene was with- drawn from my eyes, I was not left in peace. All night as I tossed about wear- ily, a dark, undefined cloud as of black mist scemed to close in about me, roll- ing back and forth, now receding and again approaching, and gathering up its folds so closely that it appeared as though I could have touched it. It was simply nightmare, I reasoned, pro- duced by excess of mental agitation. But though I strove to shake it off, I could not; and even in my occasional waking moments it still gathered about me as distinctly as before. And in the morning I arose pale and haggard, my own reflection in the glass startling me with its wan, stricken aspect. What could I think of it all? Was it but a mere dream, a trick of my imaginatio~n, or had I actually seen Lella herself? If the latter, was there real magic in it, connecting itself with the Gilded Cameo? Or, on the con- trary, was it a chance coincidence, my high-wrought fancy producing some singular and accidental manifestation of second sight? But whatever it might be, I could not but feel borne into my soul the conviction that Lella was false to me, and I determined that I would not longer visit her.. I would depart fi-om Florence at once, and tear her image from my mind. It must be done before long; therefore, why not now? And when she found that I did not come, she would understand that her treachery had been discovered. There could surely be no explanation needed. So I passed the morning forming desperate resolutions, which were all destined to come to nothing. For of what use is it to resolve, when we are in the hands of fate? And, by the afternoon, new ideas came and changed my programme. I determined that I would see her once again, but that it should be for the simple pur- pose of charging her with her falsity, and throwing back her pretended affec- tion into her face. And so, when the usual hour arrived, I saw her, leaning over the gate, and watching impatiently for me, with the pleasant smile upon her lips, and the love-light in her eyes. And then, as even in my fiercest pas- sion I had dimly conjectured would be the case, I almost forgave her upon the spot, making my complaints in a mild, undecided tone of remonstrance, rather than reproach, and accepting her ex- cuses ere she had fully time to utter them. It was some story she told about a brother who had lately returned from Palermo, and who would be angry it he saw her with another person. And she had therefore denied herself my society, for the sole purpose of keeping us apart. What could be more plau- sible, to be sure? It is true, the story did not satisfy my reason, but it did appease the raging of my heart. And again I yielded myself bodily to the fascination which she threw about me, and was happy as before. Until, after three more stolen inter- views with her, I was again directed to abstain from her presence for a single evening; and again tormented by the pangs of jealousy, I yielded to the temp- tation, and, by the aid of the Gilded Cameo, watched her in my dream. And I saw that she was at the opera, seated in the back of a secluded box, with the same person at her side whom I had previously seen with her. His arm was about her, and her head upon his shoulder, as in the garden. What further doubt could I have? Her story had been false, of course, for this could be no brother. Brothers might chance to be affectionately inclined for a few moments after a long absence; but were these continual manifestations the or- dinary evidences of fraternal regard? Once more I resolved to leave her once more rushed to charge her with her perfidy; and again, beguiled with a ready excuse and a few tender glances, I tried to believe, and then forgave her. And not twice only, but oftener. For now the drama began tQ advance apace, and each week there was a renewal of the old scene. The whispered direction to remain away for 192 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Feb. only one evening, the jealousy, the ap- plication to the magic charm, the cruel discovery of her falsehood, the open charge of perfidy, the eyes softly beam- ing upon me with love, the halPbeliev- ed story, and the perfect forgiveness all were there in their due sequence, to complete her triumph and my self-deg- radation. And soon I began to discover too truly the penalty that attached to the use of the Gilded Cameo. The dark misty cloud, which had invested me upon the night of my first recourse to it, was not merely an unsubstantial nightmare, but rather an actual dis- play of some demoniac influence. This I could no longer doubt; for when I essayed a second time to satisfy the whisperings of my jealousy, that night the cloud was there again, still rolling about me, but thicker, blacker, and nearer than before. There was even something supernaturally terrible and oppre~sive in ita strange kind of vitality, as it were, which seemed eager to press upon me and crush me in its cumbrous folds. Upon my third attempt it was there once more; and now it began to assume shape and ro- tundity, as of a foul spirit. I could even fancy that I saw, stretched from the yet somewhat cc~nfused body, a taloned hand, upraised to smite me, and I cried out with fear and agony. Again, another night, there was a fur- ther change; for the form grew more defined in outline, and a bright, glitter- ing eye begun to be developed, giving it a cruel and fiendish aspect, which struck terror into my inmost soul. And now, instead of coming and going at chance moments, as it had at first done, the appearance began to remain with me constantly throughout all the hours of the night. And while I knew that its horrible aspect, and perhaps its ~corporeal power over me, were increased with each application to the charmed cameo, I daily found less strength to resist the temptation, so grievously did my jealousy now torment me, encourag- ing me in a reckless daring. It was a fateand who could struggle success- fully against it? Let me only go on to the end, and die. At last, overcome by this constant mental agony, I began to lose all my former strength and elasticity, and my flesh fell away from my bones, until I was a ghost of my original self. I felt that now, indeed, the end was drawing near, but I scarcely cared. What was life when subjected to this constant terror? And what hope was there that I could ever be relieved from it? And once more I lay down with the Gilded Cameo upon my breast, waiting for the dreams that it might bring. Six times already had I availed myself of its powers, and was now about to yield for the seventh time; for again the spell of love and jealousy was upon me. But as I~ prepared to close my eyes, they fell upon a letter which lay on my table. It had remained there unopened for three days, so completely had my misery and misplaced passion driven from my mind all interest in matters at home. But now, influenced by some good impulse, I lifted the let- ter, and carefully examined the seal. This night may be my last, I mut- tered to myself; I feel it so, and I have no strength left to resist my doom. Be that as it will. But let me first give one thought to those who now, from a distance, are praying for me. Let me not go out of the world with selfish neglect of their kind words and longings. This, at least, I owe them. I broke the seal and opened the let- ter. It was from Bessie,she whom I had so much loved, and had of late so grievously neglected. With affectionate word she told me the family and social newsall those little trivial matters which so greatly interest the wanderer from home. The new picket-fence at the farm was being repaintedgreen, to correspond with the hedge. The old maid Molly was about to be married, and was getting a white veil, as though she was only sixteen. The peaches had failed, and a smoking-cap was being embroidered for me. Billy, the dog, had been sick, having rashly under- taken, after the example of the cat, to 1868.] Tnz MYSTERY or THE GILDED CAMEO. 198 eat a mouse; but lie was better. And they were all daily expecting to hear that we had taken our homeward pas- sage. And would I bring her a Roman lamp, and a lace shawl, and a leaning- tower, and some Genoese filagree-work, and some of the The letter fell from my hand. How all at once the familiar scenes thronged about mescenes that were dear, even in their trials and vexations! How vividly, for the instant, I could picture each of those loved ones I My father reading his papermy mother knitting and Bessie, my own Bessie, running in with her worsted hood to bring them the letters which she had received from Sidney, and to learn whether they had any word from me! The tears came into my eyes. It was a moment when my better nature was touched. Scales seemed to have fallen from my understanding. Could it be that I was neglecting all these home-treasures for an idle flincy? And should not the momentary impulse to do better be al- lowed to have sway at the last? I felt instinctively that it depended upon my- self alone, and that, if I did not reso- lutely seize the propitious moment, I would be lost forever. What better time than now to emancipate myself from the fatal spell? Would I have the same strength upon the morrow? For a moment I paused; and then, tearing the trinket from my neck, I hurled it far out through the open window. It dropped into the Arno, and there sank. I watched its fall, half expecting to see a puff of smoke arise where it struck; but it went down without any unnatural demonstration, like an ordi- nary stone. But with it sank my evil destiny. I gazed upon the circles ex- panding where it touched the water, and then all was calm again. Calm, not only on the bosom of the river, but also in my heart. A wonderful peace and repose seemed to have come to me there; a terrible weight was all at once lifted from my spirits. Impulsively I knelt down by my bed, and for the first time in many nights said my pray- ers; and thenthen fell into a gentle slumber, and slept the sleep of inno- cence. INo phantom cloud w,ith glitter- ing eyes and threatening hand disturb- ed me, but, through all the night, bright dreams of home gladdened my thoughts, and brought to me content- ment, and a thirsty longing to be with my loved ones again. And when I awoke, I felt refreshed and regenerated. Even my glass show- ed an improvement; for my hollowed cheeks seemed again filling out with health, and a pleasant lightthe old light of cheerfulnesswas gleaming in my eyes. I threw open the window. It was a sparkling, bright day, and the streets were all gay with life and mo- tion. Flower-girls passed by, holding up with winning gestures their bunches of camelias. Image-vendors strolled along, with elastic tread, in spite of the weight of their overloaded trays. Minstrels leaned against the stone cop- ing of the river embankment, and cheerily piped up at the hotel windows. Open carriages filled with happy excur- sionists rolled along. In every direc- tion was a jovial throng, passing to and fro along the Arno and across the Vec- ehio and Trinita bridges. An irresist- ible impulse seized mean impulse such as I had not felt for many days commanding me to sally forth and be- come a part of that active scene; and, springing down-stairs, I hurried out, elastic with alert and cheerful spirits, and instinctively took the route of my old familiar stroll. And first to the Ponte Vecchio, where old Andrea Yaggione was at his post selling a mosaic to a long-whiskered Englishman, who stood searching Mur- ray in vain to ascertain how much he ought to pay. A good-morning to you, shouted Andrea. And you have not gone, yet, back to that happy land where there are no laws? You have been absent many days. I shall go to-morrow, I said, not slackening my pace, and resisting his invitation to come behind his counter. For how, on such a bright, beautiful, 194 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Feb, elastic day, could I keep from active motion? Therefore I hurried on, across to the opposite bank, through the gate, and along the road of villas, until I found myself approaching the cottage, Lellas cottage. Should I return? Dare I pass that place again? Might not the old influence entrap me? Nay, why fear? Had not my strength of purpose come back to me? Had not some scales fallen from my eyes? Was the sight of a mere country beauty to dazzle my understanding and destroythe balance of my equanimity? Therefore I pressed resolutely forward; and soon the little cottage rose upon my sight. But, to my utter astonishment, it was closed, and apparently deserted as I had first seen it, and the gate was shut, and even the old dusty cobweb was stretch- ed from post to post. What is the meaning of this? I inquired of a peasant-woman who just then emerged from a hovel near by. Whcre is the person who lives here? Signor, there is no one living in that place, she answered, opening wide her eyes. There has no one been found to live there for years past; for they say, and she crossed herself; that there is a demon in the house. I started with wonderment, and, for the moment, had thought of further in- quiries; then, in my confusion, gave it up, and walked hastily onward. What mystery was all this? Did the peasant- woman speak the truth? Had I been under the influence of some unholy hal- lucination? Was I actually, at that moment,sane? I pressed my hands to my eyes, looked up at the bright sky as though seeking to reassure myself; glanced once back towards the deserted cottage with its cobwebbed gate, and then passed on, as in a misty whirl, until I reached the hotel. There, as I entered, the porter met me, and handed me a letter which had just arrived. It was from Sidney, and bore the Paris postmark. I have engaged our passages in the Arago, which sails on the 22d, he wrote. Therefore you will have to hurry on at once; and as I expect to see you so soon, I will say nothing now about my journey through Austria and the Rhine country. But I want to show you a beautiful shawl I have purchased for Bessie for a wedding-present, and I have picked up some lovely old books so old, that nobody can read them at all. Speaking of which, reminds me of my promise to hunt up the missing words in Bartolomeo Uberti. I search- ed the Imperial library in Vienna, and the Royal library at Berlin, but could not find another copy than mine; nor did I have better luck at the library in Paris. But the librarian put me on the track of an old Academician living in the Rue dEnfer, who has more old books than you can well imagine; and going to him I found that he also had a Bartolomeo Uberti, and in capital pre- servation. And this is the whole of the page about which you were so curious that you made me also a little curious; and, now that we have it, I do not see that it amounts to any thing after all. Which gilded cameo, having been given to him b~y the fiend, was also a charm; for, sleeping with it upon his breast and whisp - ing the name of whomsoever he sought, Gia- nino would, in his dreams, see whatever might be happening to such person in any part of the world. But with the condition, that if he should apply to it as many as seven times, he should be altogether in the power of the fiend. The which cameo Cianino joyfully received, not believing but that he could so far control himself as to use it sparingly, and only upon great occasions, and not oftener than might be safe for him so to do. But the fiend, tak- ing upon himself the appearance of a beau- teous virgin, did throw himself into the way of Cianino; a d did surround him with such artful fascinations, and did, moreover, so vio- lentl~ work upon his jealousy of her, that Cianino, having no more power of resistance, did heedlessly apply himself once too often to the gilded cameo, for the purpose of spying out her conduct. Whereupon the fiend did cast himself upon (Jianino, tearing him limb from limb, so that he miserably perished. lE~6& J ILiUM FUIT. 195 ILIUM FElT. Oxx by one they died Last of all their race; Nothing left but pride, Lace, and buckled hose. Their quietus made, On their dwelling-place Ruthless hands are laid: Down the old house goes! See the ancient manse Meet its fate at last! Time, in his advance, Age nor honor knows; Axe and broadaxe fall, Lopping off the Past: Hit with bar and maul Down the old house goes! Sevenscore years it stood: Yes, they built it well, Though they built of wood, When that house arose. For its cross-beams square, Oak and walnut fell; Little worse for wear, Down the old house goes! Rending board and plank, Men with crowbars ply, Opening fissures dank, Striking deadly blows. From the gabled roof How the shingles fly! Keep you here aloof Down the old house goes! Holding still its place, There the chimney stands, Stanch from top to base, Frowning on its foes. Heave apart the stones Burst its iron bands! How it shakes and groans! Down the old house goes! Round the mantel-piece Glisten Scripture-tiles; Henceforth they shall cease Painting Egypts woes, Painting Davids fight, Fair Bathshebas smiles, Blinded Samsons might Down the old house goes!

lE~6& J ILiUM FUIT. 195 ILIUM FElT. Oxx by one they died Last of all their race; Nothing left but pride, Lace, and buckled hose. Their quietus made, On their dwelling-place Ruthless hands are laid: Down the old house goes! See the ancient manse Meet its fate at last! Time, in his advance, Age nor honor knows; Axe and broadaxe fall, Lopping off the Past: Hit with bar and maul Down the old house goes! Sevenscore years it stood: Yes, they built it well, Though they built of wood, When that house arose. For its cross-beams square, Oak and walnut fell; Little worse for wear, Down the old house goes! Rending board and plank, Men with crowbars ply, Opening fissures dank, Striking deadly blows. From the gabled roof How the shingles fly! Keep you here aloof Down the old house goes! Holding still its place, There the chimney stands, Stanch from top to base, Frowning on its foes. Heave apart the stones Burst its iron bands! How it shakes and groans! Down the old house goes! Round the mantel-piece Glisten Scripture-tiles; Henceforth they shall cease Painting Egypts woes, Painting Davids fight, Fair Bathshebas smiles, Blinded Samsons might Down the old house goes! 188 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [1kb. On these oaken floors High-shoed ladies trod; Through those panelled doors Trailed their furbelows; Long their day has ceased, Now, beneath the sod, With the worms they feast Down the old house goes! Many a bride has stood Jn yon spacious room; Here her hand was wooed Underneath the rose; Oer that sill the dead Reached the family-tomb: All, that were, have fled Down the old house goes! Once, in yonder hall, Washington, they say, Led the New-Years ball, Stateliest of beaux. O that minuet, Maids and matrons gay! Are there such sights yet I Down the old house goes! British troopers came Ere another year, With their coats a-flame, Mincing on their toes Daughters of the house Gave them haughty cheer, Laughed to scorn their vows Down the old house goes! Doorway high, the box In the grass-plot spreads; It has borne its locks Through a thousand snows; In an evil day, From l~hose garden-beds Now tis hacked away Down the old house goes! Lo! the sycamores, Scathed and scrawny mates, At the mansion-doors Shiver, full of woes; With its life they grew, Guarded well its gates; Now their task is through Down the old house goes! On this honored site Modern trade will build What unseemly fright Heaven only knows! Something peaked and high, Smacking of the guild: Let us heave a sigh Down the old house goes! 1868.] THE COMING REvoLuTION IN ENGLAND. 19~I THE COMING REVOLUTION IN ENGLAND. IT scems always to be the fate of supporters of declining institutions, to hasten their decay by acts which are intended to delay it. History is our successive commentary on the foolish- ness of those who, refusing to bend~ must be broken. Yet it does not seem that this nineteenth century, with all its boasted triumphs of civilization, is much wiser in this respect than preceding eras. The retrogradists, both of Europe and America, appear to be blind to all experience, and to shut their ears to all the warnings which arise on every hand about them; they are bent on adopting a course which has always heretofore been fatal to those who have embraced it. There are some who are more to be pitied thail detested. There are still European countries at whose borders civilization seems to have paused Rome anZl Austria and Spain, for in- stance; and it is not, perhaps, wonder- ful, that the rulers of these nations should, in their misconceptions of the age in which they live, have mistaken the path of self-preservation. That weak old man, the Pope, trusts more, for his temporal power, to rhodomon- tade on foolscap, than to a reconcilia- tion with rising Italy. The King of Hanover (blind, alas, in more than one respect) hopes to reascend his throne by relating interviews which he has, held with messengers of God. The half-civilized and haughty Queen of Spain trusts rather to chronic massacre than to a constitution. Even Sadowa fails to sweep away the mist before the eyes of the Hapsburg. These have been the most active allies of their own ene- mies in hastening their ruin. Of all possible steps, they seem to take that which leads quickest to destruction. But, in a manner secluded from that Protestant civilization which is fast en- croaching upon their dominion, there is at least for them a semblance of excuse. Let us turn our thoughts northward, and contemplate that self-styled pioneer of modern letters, invention, and states- m~nshipGreat Britain. During the summer and autumn, our attention has been absorbed by events in Central Eu- rope; meanwhile something worth not- ing has been occurring among our cous~ ins. In that land of boasted freedom and progress, at least, we might hope to find an universal spirit of political as of material enterprise, a spirit of concession to the age, a joyful accept- ance of ideas born of the latest enlight- ~nment. We might there expect to see history teaching its proper lessonwis- dom by experience. Above all, might we look to the statesmen and the schol- ars of England, the most refined types of this pioneer race, for a just apprecia- tion bf historical example, a clear in- sight into past mistakes, a calm judg- ment of present evils, a frank recogni- tion of present needs, and a wise resolve alike to avoid errors which have de- stroyed, and to adopt the truths which would regenerate. And especially might we anticipate these things from the statesmen of our own generation, be- cause within its periodnay, within the year just passedevents have spoken sternly, and history has once more strik- ingly repeated itself. One would think that the example of Spain, of Rome, and of Austria, would not be lost upon those who read and reason well I But what is the political phase which presents itself in England at this mo- ment? What has been going on there for the past half-year? The seed of revolution has been sown, it has broken the earth, it has budded, it promises, ere long, to bloom. Who planted the seed? Undoubtedly, the aristocracy, they who have the most to fear from its maturing. Revolutions have always a cause. In nearly every instance, in modern times, the cause has arisen from dogged resistance to a pro- gressive people by those to whom prog- ress offers annihilation. An obstacle is put in the way of the attainment of a

1868.] THE COMING REvoLuTION IN ENGLAND. 19~I THE COMING REVOLUTION IN ENGLAND. IT scems always to be the fate of supporters of declining institutions, to hasten their decay by acts which are intended to delay it. History is our successive commentary on the foolish- ness of those who, refusing to bend~ must be broken. Yet it does not seem that this nineteenth century, with all its boasted triumphs of civilization, is much wiser in this respect than preceding eras. The retrogradists, both of Europe and America, appear to be blind to all experience, and to shut their ears to all the warnings which arise on every hand about them; they are bent on adopting a course which has always heretofore been fatal to those who have embraced it. There are some who are more to be pitied thail detested. There are still European countries at whose borders civilization seems to have paused Rome anZl Austria and Spain, for in- stance; and it is not, perhaps, wonder- ful, that the rulers of these nations should, in their misconceptions of the age in which they live, have mistaken the path of self-preservation. That weak old man, the Pope, trusts more, for his temporal power, to rhodomon- tade on foolscap, than to a reconcilia- tion with rising Italy. The King of Hanover (blind, alas, in more than one respect) hopes to reascend his throne by relating interviews which he has, held with messengers of God. The half-civilized and haughty Queen of Spain trusts rather to chronic massacre than to a constitution. Even Sadowa fails to sweep away the mist before the eyes of the Hapsburg. These have been the most active allies of their own ene- mies in hastening their ruin. Of all possible steps, they seem to take that which leads quickest to destruction. But, in a manner secluded from that Protestant civilization which is fast en- croaching upon their dominion, there is at least for them a semblance of excuse. Let us turn our thoughts northward, and contemplate that self-styled pioneer of modern letters, invention, and states- m~nshipGreat Britain. During the summer and autumn, our attention has been absorbed by events in Central Eu- rope; meanwhile something worth not- ing has been occurring among our cous~ ins. In that land of boasted freedom and progress, at least, we might hope to find an universal spirit of political as of material enterprise, a spirit of concession to the age, a joyful accept- ance of ideas born of the latest enlight- ~nment. We might there expect to see history teaching its proper lessonwis- dom by experience. Above all, might we look to the statesmen and the schol- ars of England, the most refined types of this pioneer race, for a just apprecia- tion bf historical example, a clear in- sight into past mistakes, a calm judg- ment of present evils, a frank recogni- tion of present needs, and a wise resolve alike to avoid errors which have de- stroyed, and to adopt the truths which would regenerate. And especially might we anticipate these things from the statesmen of our own generation, be- cause within its periodnay, within the year just passedevents have spoken sternly, and history has once more strik- ingly repeated itself. One would think that the example of Spain, of Rome, and of Austria, would not be lost upon those who read and reason well I But what is the political phase which presents itself in England at this mo- ment? What has been going on there for the past half-year? The seed of revolution has been sown, it has broken the earth, it has budded, it promises, ere long, to bloom. Who planted the seed? Undoubtedly, the aristocracy, they who have the most to fear from its maturing. Revolutions have always a cause. In nearly every instance, in modern times, the cause has arisen from dogged resistance to a pro- gressive people by those to whom prog- ress offers annihilation. An obstacle is put in the way of the attainment of a 198 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Feb~ just endit must be removed or swept away. A community advances ;some- thing becomes necessary to further prog- ress; a change in the old order of things. But the old order of things has put power and wealth into certain handsa reform would transfer them to other hands. There must, then, either be a concession, or a vital strug- gle between the old powers and the progressive element. By removing the obstacle, and by joining in the accom- plishment of the end necessary to prog- ress, the old powers may save some- thing, at least, of their former prestige. This has sometimes happened. It was the case in 1088, when the English nobles yielded to the deposition of James, to the Declaration of Rights, and to William the Third. So it was in 1832, when the same class suffered Reform to pass over their heads unre- sisted. The nobility was thus twice saved, hereditary right took a further lease, and hereditary legislation was permirted to continue; solely by reason of an acquiescence in the will of the nation. Had another course been pur- sued, the Book of Peerage would long since have been out of print. The same demand which was made by the English people of the nobility of 1832, has been made of the nobility of 1806an extension of the popular suffrage. But the example of the ear- lier generation has not been followed; the nobility of 1866 and their parti- sans have refused to concede further to the popular demand. Henc3 comes the revolution. Let us look at the facts. The first important measure which the Whig ministersrid of the virtual To ryism of Palmerstonproposed to Par- liament, was a Reform Bill, moderate, honest, and satisfactory to the masses: its intention was to strike a balance to reconcile the popular demand with the continued influence of the aristoc- racy. It did not propose so wide a change as the Radicals under Bright desired, and yet was so far a Reform that these acquiesced in its support. Had that Bill become a law, it would have, for a while at least, disarmed the extreme popular leadersand yet there would have been no danger incurred to the stability of the upper class. It was, therefore, a rare chance for that class to make a generous and yet not a serious concession; to silence the charge of big- 6try and intolerance; to shut the mouths of demagogues; and to make themselves so popular, that it is doubtful whether any further reform would have succeed- ed for many years. But the wicked flee when no man pursueth: those who find themselves being outstripped have a morbid terror of even imaginary dangers. The alarm was sounded in Parliament and out, that this Bill was a secret blow dealt at aristocracyand that it would gather such strength to the Destructive Party that they would be able to complete their purpose. The struggle was long and fierce ; the par- liamentary eloquence of last spring and summer was hardly surpassed in the days of Burke and the Hastings trial. As the crisis approached, pretended Liberals, Liberals who were Liberals for the name and for power, who were Liberals as long as Liberalism did nothing, were seen to pass over to the Conservatives, belying all records and all professions. Thus it came about that the true friends of Reform found themselves distinctly divided off on one side, while the real retrogradists hud- dled together on the other. The line was drawn between Reform and anti- Reform, between the advocates of aris- tocratic rule and those of popular rule, between the element of stagnation and that of progress. The Whig ministry, at the beginning of the session, had counted sixty majority on papersixty majority of profe8sed Liberals. When the last division was taken, a division on a merely technical question (but every division was a test), the retrograde Opposition carried the House of Com- mons by five majority, and thus voted away their last chance of reconcilia- tion with the people. The Reform Ministry resigned, the Retrogradists came into office, and called themselves Her Majestys Servants,~ not the Na- tions Servants. How hollow was this 18138.1 THE COMING REVOLUTION IN ENGLAND. 199 semblance of power, how self-destruc- tive this victory! Esau bartering his birthright for a mess of pottage did a wiser thing than the aristocracy of Eng- land when they sold a last chance of popular esteem for the paltry spoils of a brief and thankless dominion. Had the moderate Reforms been adopted, they might still have hoped to continue for years undisturbed in the possession of hereditary power and authority. By ranging themselves in a solid phalanx against it, they put the most destructive of all weapons into the hands of their opponentsthe indignation of a whole people. They struck, as they thought, the genius of Reform to the earth when lo! multiplying, like the giant of mythology, its strength by the abase- ment, it rose again, tenfold more vigor- ous than before. Gladstone was right, when he nobly said that in the midst of defeat he had the presentiment of victory. The Retrogradists said, There is no popi~dar demand for electoral Re- form: this Bill is gotten np, first, by Ministers who need a policy, then by demagogues seeking power. Mr. Lowe, a professed Liberal, de- clared that the venality and drunken- ness of the country was confined to the lower classes. Lord Cranbourne (who was wont to countenance so many stu- pid falsehoods about America during the rebellion) was transported with rage when Mr. Gladstone declared the work- ing-men to be our own flesh and blood, and declared that there is wide enough suffrage already. The Bill was defeated by trickery, Lord Russell resigned, Lord Derby took his place, Parliament was prorogued. The rise of the Legislature was a signal for the beginning of a new phase in the con- dition of things. From that moment we may date the beginning of that revo-~ lution which has since swept through the land, and which cannot but soon culminate. To prove the utter falsity of the plea that the people were indif- ferent to their own just rights, there took place in all directions a series of demonstrations, which included hun- dreds of thousands, all eager and deter- mined for Reform. The campaign open- ed with that famou~s Hyde Park meet- ing, wherein the Reactionists inflicted another cruel blow upon themselves by refusing to the inhabitants of London the right to assemble on their own do- minion. This was succeeded by the monster gatherings at Birmingham, at Liverpool, at Leeds, at Manchester, at Glasgow, at Dublin, in some of which crowds of more than an hundred thou- sand left their daily work and stood for hours in a pelting rain to listen to the leaders of Reform. And in the speeches made to these gathered thousands, many remarkable things were said. John Bright, a champion of liberty so fearless, so able, so earnest, so eloquent, that he has made every aristocrat from one end of England to the other trem- ble, and has brought down upon him- self the thunders of an almost united press, did not hesitate to distinctly dc- dare the issueto proclaim that it was now too late to adopt a moderate Re- formthat the people would demand a wholesale Reform, entire justicethat the abuses of property, of privilege, of hereditary legislation, of Church hierar- chy, of unequal and oppressive laws, of injustice to the poor, had become too enormous to be longer borne, and that there must be a change either by reason or by force. His harangues sound Omi- nously, like those of John Hampden and of James Otis: t1 cy certainly went straight to the hearts of the multit de to whom they were addressed. The ap- proach of England toward democracy, before gradual, now became accelerated in a wonderful degree. Associations branches of the Reform Leaguesprung up on every side. Trades Unions were formed. In the workshops, in the streets of the cities, on the estates of great gen- tlemen, there were discussions, eager reading of papers and appeals, sturdy resolutions being made. Bright, elated and more confident by his success, by the furor which he saw rising everywhere around him, talked still more plainly. If, said he, your rights are not accorded to you, let me advise you to go up to London in your 200 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Feb. thousands and your tens of thousands, and demand them in person of Parlia- ment assembled. Can any one doubt the import of these words? Where a m~in talks like that to immense multi- tudes who excitedly applaud it, is not revolution among them? Truly, Eng- land has felt something, at least, of the progressive and wide-awake spirit which has sprung up in America of late. Think of a proposal to overawe the Imperial Parliament of Great Britain by the force of numbers, in the year 1866 I And think that the man who made it, is not only not shouted down or thrown into prison, but has gone on becoming more and more popular ever since, and daily counts numbers of new recruits to his grand army of Reform! The English people have become used to such senti- mentsand the tide has notably set straight in the direction whither John Bright leads. The Reactionists again and again charged that Bright had no folloi~ers except in the very lowest class, in fact, that his party was a party of ruffians, ignorant operatives, and dissat- isfied tenants. It now transpires that a great change of sentiment has taken place in that middle class, which is wrongly said to hold the preponderance of influ- ence in English politics. More than that: when we find a superior nobleman like Lord Houghton (better known as R. Monckton Milnes) sitting upon the same platform with John Bright, and listen- ing to his words with applause, it is pos- sible to believe that the more clear-sight- ed of the aristocracy foresee the issue and hasten to move with the nation. The simple facts regarding this ques- tion of Reform are these. Out of every one hundred men in England who are liable to the taxes and responsible to the laws, eighty-four are excluded from the suffragesixteen admitted to it. England, therefore, in spite of the great measure of Reform in 1832, which did so much good, is governed by less than one sixth of its male population who are capable of political judgment, and who have a political stake. There is a yet more serious fact: that three men out of every hundred send an abso lute majority to Parliament, and there- fore, by the rule of majorities, virtually govern. Then the system of privileged boroughs, again, exhibits the gross in- justice of the present status~ There are two hundred and fifty-four boroughs. Of these, one hundred and nine contain over twer~ty thousand inhabitants, and one hundred and forty-five under that number. But the boroughs under twen- tythousand send two hundred and fifteen members to Parliament, whilst those over twenty thousand send but one hundred and eighty-one. The inequality is am parent and glaringhence, so is the in- justice. Not only cannot Great Britain, under these circumstances, be said to be a really popular government, but it can- not even be regarded as a government of the middle classes; it is a government of aristocrats; royalty is not worth a straw in influence; and nothing more clearly proves where the true power lies, than in that struggle of last summer, in which we saw the aristocratic influence ranged on one side of the House, the popular influence on the other, and the palm of ignoble victory pass to the former party. It was proposed then simply to admit between two and three hundred thousand more of Englands millions to the suffrage; that was de- nied to them by the then controlling power of aristocracy; and now the de- mand will be tenfold greater, and will be sustained by the full force of a revo- lution. By the action of the Retrogra- dists, this result has followed: to throw the leadership of the popular cause out of moderate hands like those of Earl Russell, Sir Roundell Palmer, and Mil- ncr Gibsonwho, with a successful Bill, would have stopped for a long time, at least, all agitation of Reforminto the hands of extremists, of men who will not budge or stop short of a great sweeping of the Augean stables men of the calibre of John Bright, John Stu- art Mill, Thomas Hughes, and Edmund Beales; men who are not disposed to yield to compromise of any kind. We find, thus, a clear issue made be- tween extremesbetween pure aristoc. rncy and pure democracy. 1868.1 THE COMING REvo~vTlox IN ENGLAND. 201 It is scarcely probable that the party which, by reason of the hardly fair-play tactics used last summer, at present styles itself Her Majestys Servants, will be inclined to go far toward meet- ing the demands of the agitators. The history alike of the party and of the individuals who lead and compose it, argues that obstinate, blind resistance will be their r6le to the endthinking foolishly that if they fall, they will fall with the highest honor and ~clat, hav- ing to the last maintained the principle of hereditary rank and of contempt for the vulgar. The Earl of Derby, who sits at the head of the present Cabinet, is a man of rare scholastic culture, of an eloquence unsurpassed within the cen- tury in the Upper House, of a kindly heart, of a refined grace of manner, and an energy of spirit such as befits one so high in honor. But to these great natural and acquired accomplishments Lord Derby adds some less amiable characteris1~ics,a stubborn and un- yielding disposition, a deeply-rooted belief not only in the policy but in the sanctity of conservatism, and a haugh- ty feeling of contempt for the lower classes. Lord Stanley, his son, occupy- ing the high place of Foreign Secretary, although heretofore regarded as liberal in politics, unhappily gave too much evidence, in the debates of last year, that he is following in the footsteps of his father. Of Mr. Disraelis anteced- ents it is scarcely necessary to speak suffice it to say that he is the most cun- ning sophist, the most fair-speaking but really determined Tory of the age. It is his aim to reach and retain authority by craft, to become powerful by chican- ery. Lord Cranbourne, the heir of the noble House of Salisbury, is one of the blindest and most violent, one of the most imprudently honest, members of the Derby Cabinet. From General Peels name we might hope for a concession; from his character, none. It is equally to be said of the other leading members of the CabinetSir John Pakington, the Duke of Buckiugham, the Earl of Malmesbury, and Mr. Gathorne Hardy that both their records and their voL. i-14 latest professions have nothing in them to warrant an expectation that the de- mand for Reform will be yielded to at Whitehall. The Earl of Derby was a member of Sir Robert Peels Cabinet when that statesman took the determi- nation to abolish the odious Corn Laws, and seceded from it as soon as he learn. ed the change of policy; his political obstinacy may be judged from that. The same was the case with the father of the Duke of Buckingham, who can hardly be thought an improvement upon his predecessor in the title. Following the advent of the Tories to power, far from there having been a reaction in their favor, just the contrary has occurred; yet -they are sustained by the aristocracy, the Church, a large pro- portion of the agricultural population high and low, and generally by the so-called rotten boroughs. Arrayed against them, under Bright, are the operatives throughout England, a vast preponderance of the shopkeepers and lower middle classes, probably a major- ity of the middle class, including the commercial city of London, many small farmers, and a large majority of the considerable cities and towns; a sprink- ling of ultra-liberal aristocrats, many dissenters, and, worth thousands in them- selves, the great political philosophers of whom John Stuart Mill is the shin- ing star. Between the Ministerial party and what must be called the Revolu- tionary party, there is a large body who hesitate between the two, who see the need of Reform, yet are not by any means yet brought to see the benefits of virtual democracy. These are the Whig Liberals of whom Earl Russell and Mr. Milner Gibson are representa- tives, and the bulk of that coterie who supported the last Ministry of the for- mer. The Bright party has but compar- atively few members of thesitting Par- liament; the mass on the Liberal side of the House of Commons are of various shades of Liberalism, the preponderance being of those who desire a moderate, not a wholesale Reform. The probabili- ty is, so rapid has been the rise of that revolutionary spirit of which I have 202 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. rreb. spoken, that the attack will be led by the Radicals, and that these, backed by the multitude whose political rights are denied, will insist upon a wholesale Re- form. On which side will, then, this me- dium party of moderate Liberals range themselves? Undoubtedly there will be a wide split among them. Those who on the whole prefer to go with the tide than against it; those who really believe in the right of respon- sible men to the suffrage, and are manly enough to stand to their opinions; those who will not have much to lose by join- ing in the popular demand, and will gain by so doing, will take their stand with Bright and his coadjutors. Those, on the contrary, to -whom their preju- dices, hereditary privileges, family vani- ty, a conscientious conviction in oppo- sition to popular government, cleave in the midst of dangers the most grave and imminent, will find their place among the supporters of Lord Derby, battling for caste against the oppressed of caste. It is hardly possible, in a word, that the line will not be dis- tinctly drawn, or that the revolution will not go on to achieve its end by one means or another. It may stop short of its present demandrevolutions usually either fail somewhat or get somewhat beyond their purpose, and in England the later revolutions have always com- promised; in France, on the contrary, they have shot far beyond their first intended goal. But whatever the re- sults of revolutions in different coun- tries, the causes of them have almost uniformly a semblance among races, no matter how great is the contrast of national character. A people which is taught and does not vote is always on the brink of revolution. When any class, however humble, is found to be sufficiently intelligent to vote, it is usually unsafe to debar them from it. No constitutional system is secure while the great majority of its population is excluded from the suffrage. Such was the case with the Orleanist government of France between 1840 and 1848; such is now the case in England. And the same causes which led to the last French revolution, as well as the same symptoms which foreboded it, appear in the situation of England at this mo- ment. There was a conservative, retro- gradist, aristocratic party under Guizot; a reformist dynastic opposition under Thiers and Barrot; a revolutionary radi- cal element under Lamartine and Louis Blanc. A moderate reform was rejected by the resuscitated noblesse, of which Louis Philippe was the headfor that prince was nothing more nor less than the principal nobleman in France; a Conservative Cabinet followed; ban- quets (corresponding to the Bright demonstrations ) were held by the revolutionists, in which dethrone- ment~~ and a republic ominous wordsalmost used to-day by the Eng- lish agitatorswere spoken of; then came a crisis; King Louis Philippe yield- ed, and called Barrot with his proposi- tions of dynastic reform to the Cabinet, but too late; revolution swept over the heads alike of reformers and of re- trogradists, and founded the second re- public. Is there not something in this recent example worthy of the attention of Lord Derby and his associates? If we substitute his name for Guizots, the names of Russell, Gladstone, and other moderate reformers, for those of Barrot and Thiers, and the name of John Bright for that of Lamartine, have we not nearly the same state of things in England which was witnessed in France less than twenty years ago? This very separation of classes which we see now in England; this putting into direct an- tagonism the lower classes, which repre- sent that last resort of all peoples and political conditionsphysical force with the upper classes, whfch represent existing and exclusive political author- ity, is just what has thrice occurred in France, and brought that country through the exhausting processes of three revolutions. It manifestly will not do for the aristocracy to defy and resist those. in whose hands rests the physical force of Englandwho are vastly more powerful, too, than previous revolution- ists, in that they add to the weight of the strong arm a much improved intelli 1868.] Tins COMING REVOLUTION IN ENGLAND. 203 gence, and a clear capability of appre- ciating the distinction between political wrong and right. The constant effort of the aristocracy should certainly be, if possible, to unite their interests with those of the nationnot to withdraw sullenly, with a blind adherence to those old maxims of prescription and ancient customs which are every day held in less and less respect, and seek to stand on foundations which have long been in a crumbling and decaying state. They do not appear to compre- hend that the public mind advances with rapid stpps; they have always felt and expressed a holy horror of any thin0 approaching to revolution, and they have also seen the nation expressing horror equally great; and they cannot see that the popular sense is getting used to revolutionary ideas, and now hears sentiments pronounced with applause which would have been unanimously hooted years ago. What has occurred within a f~w years in America, has also, within a shorter period, taken place in England. A dozen years ago, the no- tion of giving the negro civil rights equal to those of the white citizen, nnd much more the notion of giving him political privileges, was hissed down throughout the Union; if a man gave out such an opinion, he was not heard~ he was derided, and attacked violently by an almost unanimous press as a traitor and a fanatic. Now those same ideas have prevailed throughout the length and breadth of the North; peo- ple have gradually become used to those doctrines, and, becoming used to them, have at last come to consider them calmly and justly; the result is that con9iction has followed indigna- tion. So it is with the English people; they have got accustomed, within the past year, to hear ideas of revolution; they have had those ideas fixed in their minds; the notion even of armed re- bellion has ceased to shock them; they hear of an approaching revolution, of the overturning of hereditary caste, of a possible republic, with calmness; they have listened to the bold ha- rangues of Bright and Beales, until they no longer hiss and stamp their feet nay, until hundreds of thousands as- sembled applaud every stirring sen- tence; and the mass has now arrived at that point where they look forward even with strong desire for a thorough, if necessary a forcible, renovation of the British Constitution. There may be, say they to themselves, something good even in revolution, which will greatly overbalance its evils; we must have our rights; if they are not granted, we must take them. And where people can calmly think thus, the hostile, ex- clusive caste may have a care. If, on the other hand we rec9ard the existing b perils from the aristocratic point of view, we may easily discern how difficult it must be for the Tory Ministers either to bring themselves, or their followers, to adopt any concession adequate to the demand. It is no easy~ matter for a proud man to be forced to concession no light thing for one who was born, brought up, and has always lived in a narrow, extremely refined, and morbidly sensitive circle of society, to act upon sudden call in direct opposition to every idea of his life, to yield up the privileges of his own caste to those whom he has always looked upon con- temptuously as the commune vulgus. Besides, apart from their position as leading representatives of wealth and ancient descent, and as the dictators of the highest society, some account is to be taken of their feelings as public men. A nobleman of high rank, wealth, and more than common ability, has de- voted himself from his earliest manhood to the political service of the kingdom; has adopted certain political principles, which, whether received by prejudice or contemplation, are doubtless sincere, and has acted in accordance with them through a long and stirring public life. He finds himself suddenly in possession of powerand hardly does his hand touch the prize, when that part of the community which has seemed most loathsome, most contemptible, most to be kept down, and if possible forgot- ten, suddenly confronts him, backed by all the power of a united will and a 204 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Feb. compact physical force. When such a man, in power, finds himself face to face with such an element, and is sum- moned in no mincing or even respectful words to surrender, what can be more difficult than for him to obey and ca- pitulate? To desert his caste, to belie the professions of a quarter of a century, to accept terms of a mob, to endanger wealth, and open hereditary rank and power to attack, all this is necessary and it is a bitter cure for the proud heart whose sense of honor is quickly stung. There seems to be no doubt that Lord Derby and his colleagues have but the choice of two thingseither to fight all Reform with a previous certainty of ig- nominious defeat, or to grant a broader measure of Rcform than that which the late Ministry proposed in 1866, and which the present Ministry caused to be rejected as too extensive. And in the latter case, their position will be hardly safer than direst defeat. The Duke of Wellington. could not hold out against the charge of stealing the thunder of the Whigs in 1829, and was forced to give way, the next year, to his antagonists. Sir Robert Peels Ministry survived but a year, also, after his adoption of the Whig policy of Free Trade in 1845. Should Lord Der- by swallow his record of thirty years, and propose a larger Reform than that which his followers rejected last sum- mer, he will be open to the same stigma he will have stolen the thunder of the Whigs and unquestionably the latter would soon supersede him and complete the work. So that the ques- tion with the aristocratic partyper- haps it would be more correct to say, the aristocratic classseems to be mere- ly between defeat and battle, delayed and more final, and immediate defeat not so ruinous. Before we may be able to appreciate the elements at work, we may behold the decline and fall of the late aristocracy which still holds a rem- nant of political power in western Eu- rope. Great events are often near, which seem afar off to those who do not nar- rowly watch the apparently faint symp toms of their approach. There may be no violent convulsionno seizing of palacesno guillotines at work in Tm- falgar Square or in the Palace Yard no emigrants crowding across the Channel; the English have too much phlegm, they are at least too conserva- tive for that. It may not be quite that good-natured revolution which some English journals complacently predict; it will be serious; and it will deal stur- dily with the long-borne wrongs, the gross inequalities, the foolish tinsel ex- travagances, the creaky and lumbering machinery of the old Constitution. The decline of the royal family in popular estimation since the death of the Prince Consort, indicates that no respect for the House of Brunswick would stay the hand of revolution. The Queen of Eng- land, once so dearly beloved for domes- tic and public virtues, who received every day tokens of the affection of her subjects, and claimed the admiration of the whole world, has been not only spo- ken of with coldness and distrust, but even openly censured by the press. She has, it is said, by the monomania of ex- cessive grief; become quite incapable of performing even her slight share in the administration of affairs. We have seen in English print intimations that the most popular act she could perform would be to abdicate. If we turn from her to the heir-apparent, who as usual is on ill terms with his sovereign parent, there is nothii~g to be found in his career, tastes, and character, reassur- ing to the cause of monarchy in Eng- land. He is, it is widely asserted in the discontented gossip of the time, dissi- pated, dull, obstinate, the companion of graceless rakes, a thorough Tory in political prejudicea union of the un- toward qualities of George the Third and of those of George the Fourth. England has progressed so rapidly in education and political sagacity since the reign of the last-named King, that a repetition of his career would never be submitted to much less in these days when Reform is demanded by the loud voice of the millions, and is sustain- ed by a clear threat of armed rebellion. 1868.] MAKING TIlE MOST OF ONESELF. 205 It is surely to be hoped, even by those most bitterly opposed to England, that the retrograde element in that country will not be so foolhardy as to resist the inevitable course of events. Still, should the issue be directly made, should the aristocracy, the Church, and the monarchy strive to hold out against the popular demand, we cannot doubt that good would, in the end, proceed from the collision. In that case, we may look forward to the complete tri- umph of the principle of democracy to the creation of a republicto the utter annihilation of aristocratic caste and to the beginning of a new and notable era for England, in which she will show that she has seen and has, casting aside a false pride and an un- worthy jealousy, bravely determined to follow the example of the descendants of her children on the Western Continent. 4+*-- MAKING THE MOST OF ONESELF. I. HUMAN existence, always a struggle with life, is more essentially so under the modern forms of civilization. With the progress of democracy, clearing away the political and social barriers which kept out the masses from the contest, and guarded the course for a few privileged competitors, a free field has been opened, where all are invited to show their mettle. The people have not been slow to accept the invitation, and have rushed into the arena with an eagerness for the prizes, rendered more intense by the long duration of their constraint and the novelty of the con- test. Hence the helter-skelter race, the jost- ling of the precipitate throng, the fling- ing aside of the one and the tripping up of the other, and the assertion by all ~of the force they may have, whether of strength or cunning, which especially distinguish modem life. Though all civilized nations are more or less stirred by this popular compe- titionfor the democratic ferment has begua to work everywhereit is in the United States where the people, fully emancipated, are exhibiting the intens- est struggle. The results of this eager strife of man with man, and of the consequent effort of each one to make the most of him- self, are apparent in what is termed the material prosperity of our country. All that constitutes national wealth is being rapidly heaped up by the aggregate en- deavor of these eager contestants, whose individual greed, by an inevitable law of economy, becomes, in spite of them- selves, a general benefit. There is another question to be con- sidered, however, and that is, as to the effect upon the character of the nation and the individual, and upon his phys- ical and intellectual health, of a contest, in which the competitors engage with their eyes only fixed on the prizes, while they remain heedless of the wounds they may inflict upon themselves or their rivals in the course of the struggle. That the national character has suf- fered, and justly, from the eager desire of the people of the United States for wealth, can not be doubted. It was not to be expected that a rude democracy should, when for the first time free to choose, do otherwise than prefer the material prizes of gold and silver, to the unsubstantial rewards of conscience or of a grudging respect. The people, kept for ages on the spare diet of pov- erty, and clad in the rags of misery, no sooner saw the opportunity, than they clutched at the means of satisfying their hunger and clothing their nakedness. Money is naturally the desire of an emancipated race, when permitted for

1868.] MAKING TIlE MOST OF ONESELF. 205 It is surely to be hoped, even by those most bitterly opposed to England, that the retrograde element in that country will not be so foolhardy as to resist the inevitable course of events. Still, should the issue be directly made, should the aristocracy, the Church, and the monarchy strive to hold out against the popular demand, we cannot doubt that good would, in the end, proceed from the collision. In that case, we may look forward to the complete tri- umph of the principle of democracy to the creation of a republicto the utter annihilation of aristocratic caste and to the beginning of a new and notable era for England, in which she will show that she has seen and has, casting aside a false pride and an un- worthy jealousy, bravely determined to follow the example of the descendants of her children on the Western Continent. 4+*-- MAKING THE MOST OF ONESELF. I. HUMAN existence, always a struggle with life, is more essentially so under the modern forms of civilization. With the progress of democracy, clearing away the political and social barriers which kept out the masses from the contest, and guarded the course for a few privileged competitors, a free field has been opened, where all are invited to show their mettle. The people have not been slow to accept the invitation, and have rushed into the arena with an eagerness for the prizes, rendered more intense by the long duration of their constraint and the novelty of the con- test. Hence the helter-skelter race, the jost- ling of the precipitate throng, the fling- ing aside of the one and the tripping up of the other, and the assertion by all ~of the force they may have, whether of strength or cunning, which especially distinguish modem life. Though all civilized nations are more or less stirred by this popular compe- titionfor the democratic ferment has begua to work everywhereit is in the United States where the people, fully emancipated, are exhibiting the intens- est struggle. The results of this eager strife of man with man, and of the consequent effort of each one to make the most of him- self, are apparent in what is termed the material prosperity of our country. All that constitutes national wealth is being rapidly heaped up by the aggregate en- deavor of these eager contestants, whose individual greed, by an inevitable law of economy, becomes, in spite of them- selves, a general benefit. There is another question to be con- sidered, however, and that is, as to the effect upon the character of the nation and the individual, and upon his phys- ical and intellectual health, of a contest, in which the competitors engage with their eyes only fixed on the prizes, while they remain heedless of the wounds they may inflict upon themselves or their rivals in the course of the struggle. That the national character has suf- fered, and justly, from the eager desire of the people of the United States for wealth, can not be doubted. It was not to be expected that a rude democracy should, when for the first time free to choose, do otherwise than prefer the material prizes of gold and silver, to the unsubstantial rewards of conscience or of a grudging respect. The people, kept for ages on the spare diet of pov- erty, and clad in the rags of misery, no sooner saw the opportunity, than they clutched at the means of satisfying their hunger and clothing their nakedness. Money is naturally the desire of an emancipated race, when permitted for 206 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Feb. the first time to mingle with the class whose exclusive privilege it had been hitherto to possess it. With the odor of rich banquets rising suddenly to its nostrils, and fine apparel and all the gilded appurtenances of lux- ury glistening in its eyes, it was natural for a democracy long kept in a forced indigence, to be stimulated by an eager ambition for a possible wealth. Thus everywhere with the emancipation of the people, the passion for riches has increased, as well as their appreciation and power. As money afforded the only means of satisfying what were exclusively the de- sires of a commonalty yet under the do - minion of its coarser instincts of phys- ical appetite, it became naturally the general aim of life. Thus democratic Americans are essentially a money-get- ting people. We are, as Mill wrote in his Political Economy, a nation of dollar-makers. Th~ idolatry of money is a not un- natural consequence in a country where all are permitted to earn and spend it, and enjoy its benefits. It is the source of that material prosperity which a peo- ple, not yet elevated to a full apprecia- tion of the higher interests of humanity, value in proportion to their capacity of enjoyment, hitherto limited to the indulgence of their grosser~ instincts. Money, thus associated with the com- plete gratification of the restricted wants of a rude people, is esteemed as the chief source of happiness; and to get and heap it up, the only security for the continuance of their felicity. The excessive appreciation of wealth thus perv~des the whole country. Deem- ed everywhere as the sole test of success, it is applied as the measure of human capacity: and the man who has not amassed a fortvine, is dropped from the list as a failure in the public estimate. Money is so far the prevailing idea of our community, that it is the universal topic of talk; and all are more curious to investigate a mans income than his character. It is the chief element of social relation. Friendship, marriage, sociality, and alliances of all kinds, have seldom any other bond of union than a chain of dollars. Literature and criti- cism feel the all-pervading influence, and the one commends itself by the sum of money which may have been paid for it, and the other gives its ver- dict in an exhibition of the sum-total received. how can a people, so alive as our own to the value of money, refuse the effort to read a novel which cost $30,000? We all know with what eager- ness we strain our eyes to catch a sight of the rich man, though he may be an- other Scrooge with his ugly and un- amiable face. We admire him withal, for his gold glitters in our eyes, from every furrow ploughed deep by care, and each feature distorted by selfish passion. Are we likely to be more dis- criminating in our admiration of a nov- el or an autobiography, in each line of which a dollar is glistening, and thus keeping wide-awake our eyes, which otherwise might have closed upon the dull page? The preacher even, from the sacred pulpit, holds up the dollar as a shining example of the true aim of life. He tells uswe quote from a newspaper re- port of the sermon of a popular clergy- manthat: It was as much the right of all to amass money, as it was for a person to prepare for the world to come. There are texts in the Bible from which, as our memory goes back to the humbler days of our republic in its early poverty, we recollect to have heard a different lesson deduced by the preacher. Are these words: It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven, and Sell all that thou hast and give to the poor, ruled out of the Holy Book by the modern interpreters? Public teachers seem to have nothing better to teach the millions of their apt, scholars than: How they made their ftr8t tem dollars. Do the experience of a long life, the study of the Holy Book, and the daily witness of the trials, the vic- tories and defeast of humanity, afford no better lesson for the instruction of the people? The American mind is 1868.1 MAKING TIlE MOST OF ONESELF. 207 sufficiently intent upon dollar-getting, and wants neither pulpit eloquence nor the popular preachment of the self- termed men of success to teach and goad it on the way. There is no coun- try in the world where the now ancient and almost forgotten homily on con- teatmeat might be revived with more advantage than in this. The ardent and exclusive pursuit of wealth with us requires a check, and the profound teachers of religion and morals are those whom we should have expected to apply it. The national taste, manners, and mor- als, reflect in a thousand ways the pre- vailing love of money. The superficial and showy are preferred to the substan- tial and good. The public structures and houses we build are covered with obtrusive ornament, large to the eye but hollow to the touch. Our decorations, whether of art or upholstery, arc made as demonstrative as possible, without regard to refinement or Litility. Every one announces his presence by the jin- gle of the dollars in his pocket, and obtrudes a claim upon public notice in proportion to the value of his fortune, and not the worth of his character. Society is thus composed solely of the rich, or would-be rich, and made the occasion, by ostentation or pretence, for the mere vulgar display of wealth or its symbols. Expense is its characteristic, and it is made up of nothing but costly upholstery, rich banquets, and resplend- ent dress, where the human element is of no account at all, or at most supplies so many showmen or lay-figures to an- nounce the cost of, or display, the sur- rounding magnificence. With the acceptation of wealth as the universal standard of social importance, not only does every one who has it dis- play it, but those who have it not pre- tend to be possessed of it. Thus comes the general prodigality of our people, all of whom, if they are not rich, would appear so. This leads to inordinate ef- fort at money-getting, and a consequent audacity of speculation, which makes a lottery of business. There are, of course, but few prizes and an overwhelming number of lanks, which fall to the chance of the many, with all the de- moralizing effects of ruin and its tempt- ations to fraud. The worship of wealth in America naturally directs its adorers to trade, in whose dark and intricate ways it is supposed to be chiefly enshrined, and whence it diffuses most abundantly its rays of gold. We deserve more than England ever did the scornful reproach of Napoleon. We are emphatically a natio?1 of shopkeepers. It is notorious that the various occupations of trade are in such repute with us that they absorb the chief human material of the country. Not only do the best of the nation become tradesmen, but they re- main so exclusively devoted to their shops and warehouses, that they will not spare a moment of time for the perform- ance of the least of their public duties. Thus municipal, State, and federal gov- ernnients are left for the most part to the guidance of men in every respect, but political intrigue, the inferiors of the leading tradesmen of the country. Thus even in those questions of finance and commerce which especially concern the trading community, there is seldom one of its members ready to utter in our legislative assemblies the voice of his experience. Hence the strange anomaly of a country, among the foremost of the world for its commercial capacity and enterprise, lingering ages in the rear of other nations in its public policy of trade and finance. Trade being pre~iminently the pursuit of our people, it is in its various occu- pations that American effort manifests itself in its greatest intensit~y. Here is the chief arena of our competitors for the prizes of life. Here, in the headlong race for wealth, we can see every move- ment and judge of the points of each engaged in it. We are amazed at the precipitancy of the rush, the rude jost- ling of the throng, and the intense ea- gerness of the competition. We single out the foremost, and do not fail to notice the fallen and the laggards. We investigate the causes which have given~ the prize to one, struck down the other, 208 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Feb and checked the speed o~ the third. We estimate the qualities of each, and analyze the combination of physical, moral, and intellectual properties which have resulted here in success, there in failure, and everywhere in an impas- sioned eagerness for the strife. Lady Wortley Montagu, in one of her letters, says that impudence will do a great deal, but impudence backed by capacity will do every thing. The value of self-assertion in promoting success is being fully tested in these modern days. The people, in this democratic age, have become the arbiters of each mans des- tiny, and they are not yet sufficiently advanced to exercise with discretion the judicial capacity with which they have been so lately invested. They are still incapable of forming opinions for them- selves, but they hold no less tenaciously to those vigorously thrust upon them. Most of the food they eat, the clothes they put on, the literature they read, and even the physic they take, are bought and consumed not on their own judgment of their usefulness, but on the assertion of those who vend them. The success of a tradesman, whatever he has to offer, whether it be a pound of tea, or a box of pills, may be pre- dicated as sure, provided he asserts suf- ficiently long and loud that his bohea is the purest, and his physic the most effective. It is often said that this self- assertion, however intense, persistent, and expanded, will have but a slight and not a permanent effect upon public opinion, unless the object presented to it has an intrinsic merit of its own. This, however, is a mistake. Char- latans are daily amassing immense for- tunes by nostrums which are positively hurtful, and have nothing to commend them but the impudent and false as- sertion of the vendors, of their effica- cy. A glance at the daily newspaper will show the audacity of assertion of the various candidates for public favor. Whole columns of advertisements, for which thousands of dollars are daily paid, are merely repetitions, line after line, in emphatic capitals, set off with platoons of marks of admiration, of the most swelling adjectives and intensest superlatives of excellence applied by ad- vertisers to themselves and their wares. The fact of the daily persistence in this costly publicity is proof enough that it pays. The shrewdest tradesmen in the world would not throw their thousands of dollars into the popular newspaper current, unless sure of the return of a hundredfold in the enrichment of their peculiar fields of enterprise. A more positive evidence is given ia the solid structures of business and the colossal fortunes which have arisea from no more solid basis than puffs of self-asser- tion and praise, persistently blown out in the public papers. Our people evi- dently take the caterers to their neces- sities or pleasures at their own valua- tion, and yield unresistingly their favor to those who speak for themselves in the loudest and most emphatic words of praise. Nor is it only the dealer in tea, sugar, broadcloth, and other articles of mate- rial necessity, who speculate upon the public readiness to agree with each man who is bold enough to publish his self-praise. Those who pretend to be teachers of the people proclaim them- selves what they are not, and are taken by the credulous public at their word. One man, by the mere device of con- stantly publishing his name with the prefix of the word professor, to which he is indeed entitled ia one sense, as a pretender, though not in its technical meaning, succeeds in passing with the public for a prodigy of learning. An- other has so much more confidence in what the public can do for him than what with his unquestionable ability he could do for himself, that instead of cultivating his powers, he passes most of his time in asserting them in the face of the public. A shrewd observer of life, he knows the value of publicity, and loses no occasion of keeping his name before the popular eye. If a nat- ural opportunity fails to offer, he in- geniously contrives an artificial one, so that the public journals are never long without a paragraph or an extract from a letter with his name attached in full. 1868.] MAKING THE MOST OF ONESELF. 209 So far from minding a scandal or a libel, he is suspected of publishing them occasionally himself that he may have an opportunity of defence in the news- papers. He speculates in martyrdom, but takes care that the self-sacrifice shall be so small as to be largely com- pensated by the public sympathy. He is known to have provoked expulsion from office for opinions sake, when he had in his pocket the appointment to a place of more dignity and better salary. He likes the public glory of a victim, but is still more fond of the private comfort of the favorite. He contrives to secure both, and while his head glows with the halo of the martyr, his stomach expands with the fulness of the good liver. There are many men, whose names are familiar to all, and who, without any claim whatever on the popular es- teem, have reached a distinction that is due entirely to publicity. How many in our large cities are accepted by the populace as great personages, merely from the frequency With which their names appear in the public prints, at- tached to calls for meetings, committees of charitable balls, and invitations of distinguished persons to dinner I A man need but be diligent in signing his name, to secure his admission to the temple of civic fame. The impudence backed by capacity of which Lady Wortley Montagu spoke, is no less illustrated by modem life than the mere self-assertion of pretence. The former is, moreover, nothing but the ex- hibjtion by man of the genuine strength he may have; and this is essential not only to success, but almost to existence, in the present artificial state of society. The race is to the swift and the battle to the strong, and the competitors are so numerous, and the struggle so rude, that it behooves every one to join in the rush and make sure of his footing, or he will be knocked over or left uncared for in the rear. The various pursuits of life, with the universal passion, and we may say ne- cessity, for wealth, as those wants of man satisfied only by purchasable commod ities have so greatly increased, are now followed with .an eagerness and an ex- clusiveness of devotion unexampled in the history of civilized nations. The modern man of businessand who is not, in these days, a man of business ? whatever may be his craft, is that, and nothing else. To his particular voca- tion he gives himself up unreservedly. His whole time, all his faculties of body sad mind, his sympathies and affections, are entirely absorbed by the one object of his lifethe squeezing out of his particular pursuit the most money it can be made to yield. The very type of his organization has been modified by the excess and one-sided- ness of his activity. His head has be- come disproportionately large for his body, as the former does all the work, and has a superfluity of the exercise needed for development, while the lat- ter shrivels from want of it, or collapses from a deficiency of the juices of nutri- tion in consequence of a weakened di- gestion. The forehead nearly blots out, with its great blank, all the rest of the face, which is contracted to a concen- trated expression of eagerness. The skin is pinched, complexionless, or tinged yellow with bile. The expan- siveness of the features, the fulness and succulence of the flesh, and the clear ruddiness of the complexion, whici were once supposed to be character- istic of our race, no longer exist. Our mental -and moral features have undergone a corresponding change. The national mind has become sharp, narrow, and wedge-like, having lost its breadth and expansiveness. Each detail of life is pursued so exclusively throughout its thin length, that every mans career bears to the general space of existence the proportion only of a mathematical line. The wants of man have so in- creased in number and degree, that it has been necessary to separate labor into minute subdivisions to supply them. Thus has been created an in- finity of specialties, each one of which demands the utmost and exclusive effort of a whole life. The result is, that the field is being deeply and laboriously 240 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Feb. ploughed, but each man is hidden from his neighbor by the furr0w he makes. Men thus become isolated, and are so greatly and exclusively absorbed by their special occupations, that they have neither the time nor the disposition for a common sympathy. The man of busi- ness becomes exclusively a man of busi- ness; the merchant is nothing but a merchant, and the lawyer but a lawyer. Society, thus necessarily composed of heterogeneous elements, is only kept together by that single but universal bond of unionmoney. Hence those graces of life which intellectual culture and a refined taste give, are wanting, for they are only to be fostered by hu- man communion and a common devo- tion, for which our isolated men of busi- ness have neither the inclination nor the time. Modern business makes such a cease- less and excessive demand upon the at- tention, that there is nothing to spare for th~ small requirements of health and the amenities of existence. In fact, the springs of life, so long and intensely bent in one direction, either resist or break on attempting to relax them. Retire- ment from business, which was once the aim of every one engaged in it, is now no longer a cherished object. The for-~ tune is never, but ever to be, made. There are none who are so busy in making money, as those who have al- ready made it, and the hardest at work are those who are supposed to have no need of it. They have, however, need og and cannot live without, it. They may build mansions in the country, and delude themselves with the prospect of enjoying the purity and beauty of na- ture. They may try it, but will soon turn back to the dingy store or count- ing-house, or, if they remain, will sink into an apoplectic apathy, or be driven to madness; for the odor of the flower, and its brilliancy, seem to have the stupefying and infuriating effects of sweet smells and bright colors upon certain brute animals. The man of business must remain the man of busi- ness, and bear his burthen until it sinks him into the grave. He cannot, when his back has become stiffened into a permanent arch, beneath the load of years, stand upright and look into the face of nature, or make the effort with- out disjointing the structure. The strain on the physical vigor of man is so great, that the successful com- petitor in the struggle of modern life must needs have a constitution of iron. The nerves of all are stretched to the last point of tension, and give way at the least unexpected shock. Most are disabled in the course of the race, and the few who reach the goal are so ex- hausted as to be incapable of enjoying the prizes. It would seem that success in life,ac- cording to its common acceptation, im- plies audacity laudctce, toujours lau- dace, as Mirabeau said; the direction of individual efforts into a narrow but impetuous and ceaseless current; the sacrifice of social refinement and enjoy- ment, the shrivelling of mans nature, from which all its succulence and joy- ousness are squeezed out in the course of its passage through the modern mechanism for getting the most work out of each human being, and a de- mand for a physical strength that all attempt, but few are able to supply. It seems the destiny of the present race of Americans not to enjoy life, but to prepare it for the enjoyment of those who are to come after them. All be- lieversand who are not Iin the ~n- tinued progress of their race, can, how- ever, discern the promised land of hap- piness in the future. With the fulfil- ment of the hope of democracy, we have a right to expect such a diffusion of culture and refinement among the people, that they who now are and must henceforward remain the judges, will demand something more than a mere obedience to the laws of wealth. 1888.1 LuTE IN GREAT CITIES. 211 LIFE IN GREAT CITIES. II. ROME. INDUSTRY, FRUGALITYTHEN PROSPERITY, WEALTHTHEN ALT, POWERTHEN LuxuRy, OORRUPTION THEN RUIN! JULES FAYRE said,* in the Legislative Chamber of Paris, that France had torn up the Popes encyclical to make car~idges for the Chassepot rifles: the Bishop of Paris said the Catholic na- tions of the earth would never allow the patrimony Qf St. Peter to pass, after fourteen centuries, into the hands of any sovereign, be that sovereign who he may: and Moustier, Minister of Foreign Affairs, said, It must be admitted that on the part of the Holy See there were very good reasons for distrusting Italy. Here it~ is: the three leading minds of France are violently at variance about the city ~f Rome, with swords drawn and visors down. Thus it is in France, so it is in England, so in Ger- many, so here: no two leading minds do or can agree about it. Meantime the actual fight has begun under the walls of the Holy City itselfthe city where St. Peter and St. Paul suffered martyr- dom, the city where the Church of Christ has its centre and head now these four- teen centuries. Let us look into this most curious question. Garibaldi has struck his blow; the battle of Montana t has been fought: and with what result? The Chassepot rifles worked to a charm I t Some fif- teen thousand Papal and French troops have beaten the six thousand enthusi- astic, half-armed followers of the red- shirted hero, out of the field; six hun- dred wounded and dead lie upon the soil of Rome, already fertile with human blood; and their leader himself is a prisoner in the hands of the King of Italy. * London Times, Dec. 2 1867. Kovember 3, 1867. Gen! do Faillys report. But a short while ago,* and Rome was in a state of siege. Suspense, doubt hung about all hearts: all were anxious, all waiting. The streets were deserted, the shops dull; the Pincian Hill was not gay with crowds of pleas- ftre-seekers, listening to martial music discoursing festal strains; nor did the Roman noble whisper languid coin- pliment into the ears of the expectant beauty. All was hushed, waiting, ex- pectant. The Pope himself, now old and venerable, tottering toward that bourne to which all go, came forth into the streets, from his ecclesinstical soli- tude, to bless the soldiers of France, sent to protect him from the assault of the Italians of his own border. It was a strange sight, this white-haired, placid old man, vicegerent on earth of Jesus of Nazareth, who said, My kingdom is not of this world,to see this head of the Holy Catholic Church, whose num- bers exceed all other Christian sects, thus standing in the midst of armed soldiers of a strange nation, and blessing them, asking God to help them to kill the Italians, who were marching on Rome. And for what were they marching on Rome? Was this a religious warhad these men any hatred of Pius IX. or he of them? None, none. And why were the men of France, with arms in their hands, marching on Rome? had they any quarrel with these people? None, none. It was certainly a strange spec- tacle. Mazzini cries to the Italian people To arms! Whatever be your answer,it is final. To be or not to be, the present hour decides your fate. t This, then, is * October, 1867. October 29, 1867.

1888.1 LuTE IN GREAT CITIES. 211 LIFE IN GREAT CITIES. II. ROME. INDUSTRY, FRUGALITYTHEN PROSPERITY, WEALTHTHEN ALT, POWERTHEN LuxuRy, OORRUPTION THEN RUIN! JULES FAYRE said,* in the Legislative Chamber of Paris, that France had torn up the Popes encyclical to make car~idges for the Chassepot rifles: the Bishop of Paris said the Catholic na- tions of the earth would never allow the patrimony Qf St. Peter to pass, after fourteen centuries, into the hands of any sovereign, be that sovereign who he may: and Moustier, Minister of Foreign Affairs, said, It must be admitted that on the part of the Holy See there were very good reasons for distrusting Italy. Here it~ is: the three leading minds of France are violently at variance about the city ~f Rome, with swords drawn and visors down. Thus it is in France, so it is in England, so in Ger- many, so here: no two leading minds do or can agree about it. Meantime the actual fight has begun under the walls of the Holy City itselfthe city where St. Peter and St. Paul suffered martyr- dom, the city where the Church of Christ has its centre and head now these four- teen centuries. Let us look into this most curious question. Garibaldi has struck his blow; the battle of Montana t has been fought: and with what result? The Chassepot rifles worked to a charm I t Some fif- teen thousand Papal and French troops have beaten the six thousand enthusi- astic, half-armed followers of the red- shirted hero, out of the field; six hun- dred wounded and dead lie upon the soil of Rome, already fertile with human blood; and their leader himself is a prisoner in the hands of the King of Italy. * London Times, Dec. 2 1867. Kovember 3, 1867. Gen! do Faillys report. But a short while ago,* and Rome was in a state of siege. Suspense, doubt hung about all hearts: all were anxious, all waiting. The streets were deserted, the shops dull; the Pincian Hill was not gay with crowds of pleas- ftre-seekers, listening to martial music discoursing festal strains; nor did the Roman noble whisper languid coin- pliment into the ears of the expectant beauty. All was hushed, waiting, ex- pectant. The Pope himself, now old and venerable, tottering toward that bourne to which all go, came forth into the streets, from his ecclesinstical soli- tude, to bless the soldiers of France, sent to protect him from the assault of the Italians of his own border. It was a strange sight, this white-haired, placid old man, vicegerent on earth of Jesus of Nazareth, who said, My kingdom is not of this world,to see this head of the Holy Catholic Church, whose num- bers exceed all other Christian sects, thus standing in the midst of armed soldiers of a strange nation, and blessing them, asking God to help them to kill the Italians, who were marching on Rome. And for what were they marching on Rome? Was this a religious warhad these men any hatred of Pius IX. or he of them? None, none. And why were the men of France, with arms in their hands, marching on Rome? had they any quarrel with these people? None, none. It was certainly a strange spec- tacle. Mazzini cries to the Italian people To arms! Whatever be your answer,it is final. To be or not to be, the present hour decides your fate. t This, then, is * October, 1867. October 29, 1867. 212 PUTNAMS ~fAGAZINE. [Feb. the end? It is the end of the first act of one of those tragedies which man- kind has been performing on this world- stage now these thousands of years: but it is the end of the first act only. Rome breathes freer; the Pope sits at ease again in the chair of St. Peter, and the seventy cardinals, all dressed in scar- let, ride forth to welcome a procession which enters the gate of the Holy City. Are these pilgrims, worshippers, devout followers of Jesus, come to see and bow before the first Bishop of the world? They are ragged, barefoot, wounded prisoners; young men who have follow- ed and fought with Garibaldi, march- ing between files of Papalini to their prison in the Castle of St. Angelo. Italians fighting and killing Italians French Catholics brought from France to fight and kill Italian Catholics on their own soilthe Pope of Rome bless- Pig one set of Catholics, cursing an- other,if any good Christians can get comfort from this state of things, and can see in it si~,ns of universal brother- hood, let us rejoice. Is this the end, then, of the Roman question? Who can tell? The Roman question is not a relig- ious question at all: men do not fight now for religion. It is a question of temporal powerof the right and power to govern and tax three millions of peo- ple. Who is to do it? Shall it be the Pope, or shall it be Victor Emmanuel? To understand this matter, let us take a swift review of some things in the past centuries. Imperial Rome ended when Alaric the Goth swept with his wild hordes down from the northern moun- tains (A. D. 410) and demanded en- trance into the Imperial City. Where were the Gods that they did not strike the invader dead? Where were they? They did not strike him dead, and the effete but astonished nobles of the proud old city were in despair. They sent Ba- silius to him, to treat for termswho took high ground, and declared the peo- ple would fight with the energy of de- spair. Alaric laughed a.t his threats, and set about the reduction of the city. Within the walls was danger and with- out the walls was danger. Thousands of slaves of all nations hated their mas- ters as slaves may, and welcomed Alaric or any conqueror who promised deliver- ance. They opened the Salarian gate in the darkness of night, and the wild tribes of Germany and Scythia flowed in like a wave. They put the torch to the city to light them to prey and to show them plunder, and for three days and three nights the flame swept all before itpillared palace, marble bath, statue, column, temple. But fire was not the worst; a wild soldiery and a brutal populace glutted their vengeance, nd rioted in the ruin of the noble, the rich, and the great. Thousands fled, and the shores of Africa to the very gates of Constantinople were crowded with de- spairing fugitives. The downfall of Rome had come, and men thought it was the beginning of the final catas- trophe. Augustus boasted that he found the city of brick and left it of marble. From the days of Alaric, Rome has been a ruin mighty and fearful, lit is a ruin to-day. But since that day another Empire has sprung up amidst this ruin, not less mighty or less wonderful than the Em- pire of the sword. Nineteen centuries ago, appeared on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, Jesus of Nazareth, the car- penters son. He taught that God was the Father of men, not their tyrant; that men were brothers, and should love one another,but all know what Jesus taught and few follow it. The poor and the suffering were the first disciples of the new religion, and they carried it to Rome. It was welcomed there only by the poor and the suffering, but it gained strength and increased, so that it became dangerous and intolerable to the noble and the great. The first per- secution under Nero (A. D. 64) was in- tended to extirpate the Christians, and in it St. Peter and St. Paul were put to death. Then came the second persecu- tion by Domitian, and the third by Tra- jan, and the fourth by Adrian, and the fifth by Septimus Severus, and the sixth by Maximin, and the seventh by Deems, 1868.1 LIFE Ix GREAT CITIES. .218 and the eighth by Valerian, and the ninth by Aurelian, and the tenth by Dioclesian, and then the Emperor Constantine be- came a Christian, and decreed this despis- ed religion to be the religion of Imperial Rome (A. D. 325). Thea the Christians gained in strength and power, and in the year 606 Phocas, Emperor of the East, acknowledged Boniface, Bishop of Rosne, to be supreme Papa or Pope, and the papal theory became a fact. The next step is to the temporal power; which did not attach to the Popedom until the year 756. These centuries were periods of rapine and bloodshed, and Italy was mostly in a state of an- archy. In this year, 756, King Pepin of France donated Rome, Ravenna, and the Exarchate to the See of St. Peter, and founded the temporal power of the Popes, which has existed to this day. It is the temporal power which now con- vulses all Italy, all Europe, and fixes the eyes of millions in America. And yet what ~s this coveted temporal pow- er? It consists in governing a little domain, some two hundred and eighty miles long, and a bundled and forty broad, extending from the river Po to Monte Circello, from Ancona to Civita- Vecchia. The whole of this ecclesias- tical empire is as large as the State of Indiana, but about it all Europe is in a turmoil; about it the whole Christian world is in excitement between fear and hope. Its capital is the gray and grim old ruin called The City of Rome, with its churches, its palaces, its mu- seums, and its paralyzed people of some two hundred thousand Italian souls.* Among them, however, is a striking class, called religious persons, as fol- lows t 1 Pope; 9 Archbishops; 52 Bishops; 16,905 Secular Clergy; 21,415 men of various religious orders; 8,000 women of various religious orders: amounting in all to nigh 50,000 adult persons in a population of about 3,000,000 (the Pa- pal States); that is, one able-bodied man or woman in every fifty or sixty is * In 1867, 215,575. I In 1860. (Appleton.) a religious person, and is to be sup- ported by the labors of the rest who are not religious in this sense. To this fifty thousand, the command of the tern- poralities and the right to tax is im- portant. It must be borne in mind that this fifty thousand described as re- ligions persons, does not imply that the rest of the people of Rome are irre- ligious, but only that those make relig- ion their sole business. Now, doth not the ox low for his fodder, and the ass know his masters crib? It is sure- ly reasonable that they should be most solicitous for the means by which they live,and let no other religious persons condemn them; they are no worse and no better than the rest of mankind. The whole amount of the taxes * drawn from the Papal States amounts to 14,- 453,325 scudit and out of these taxes the devotees of the Church, with some few exceptions, obtain but a frugal sub- sistence. These taxes are but $4.27 t to each inhabitant, while those of France are over $tO, those of England over $11, and those of New York city over $25. The hardship of the case, if it be considered a hardship, consists in the working and productive population be- ing obliged to support this non-working and unproductive class. But I doubt if the body of the working people do consider it a hardship, though, politic- ally and economically, it is a fatal mis- take which steadily and surely under- mines vigor and paralyzes industry. Poor old man, Pio Nino, Pope of Rome, Gods vicegerent on earth, one of the most benignant and weakest of men, it was a fatal day which made thee from a simple holy priest into an insig- nificant temporal prince, to be hence- forth an instrument in the hands of some astute Antonelli or some grasping Napoleon I Pious Catholics blame thee, scoffing heretics hate thee, because thy little kingdom is eaten up by an army of lazy ecclesiastics and useless mem- bers of society; and they forget that * In 1800. The London News says, in 1864 it was but about $5,000,000. I A scudi is about $1.05. 7 Appletons Cyclopwdia. 214 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Feb thou hast neither the heart, nor the head, nor the hand, to reform an abuse which exists in the very blood and nerves of the body politic. As we ask for tolerance, let us be tolerant; as we pray for forgiveness, let us forgive; as we are weak, let us consider anothers weakness. Let us remember that these fifty thousand priests, monks, and nuns have beea educated in this faith and life, have devoted their years to the religious profession, that they are many of them old, and incapable of other duty, that they are utterly poor except for the help of the Pope, and that they have through a thousand years come to be a part of the blood and nerves of the Roman State; and then remembering that the Pope loves many of these men and women, that many are old friends and relations, that all belong to his sacred classremembering these things, shall we wonder that he holds by his temporalities, that he cannot relinquish them? aad that he allows Cardinal An- toneUi to fight for them with carnal men and to ask the aid of Napoleons Chassepot rifles? It is not easy to reform a State, it is not a simple thing to change a Socie- ty which has been growing a thousand years: you cannot multiply your sec- ond and third terms together and divide by the first, and get your answer. There is nothing more complex, more incom- prehensible, more unmanageable, more obdurate, than an old, fixed, hardened society, with its customs, its beliefs, its vices, and its indifferences. It is safe to say, that this day nine of ten of pious Catholics the world through, would submit, if not rejoice, to see the tegiporal power ended; they know that the Church would be tenfold stronger in the hearts of the faithful if this miser- able business of governing Rome was obliterated; they would pour out of their wealth and of their poverty to sustain the Holy Father in his usual splendor and to continue St. Peter~s in its impressive magnificence. It is safe, too, to say that even Louis Napoleon would be glad to drop the vexed busi- ness of keeping the Head of the Church in his chair, if he knew kow to do it without perilling his own seat; but nei- th er he, nor pious Catholics, nor Pio Kino himself, can see how it is to be done. That it will be done, there is not a doubt; but when and howwho knows? The money-question will settle this temporal business, as It does most things, if the world can have patience. It appears that the expenditures of the Papal States are yearly greater than the receipts to the extent of half a million to a million of dollars. It appears that the debt already is about $100,000,000,* and that the Pope is in the market for a loan which nobody will lend. It ap- pears that the givings of the poor and faithful, in the shape of Peters-pence, amount to about $1,500,000 a year t amply adequate, one can see, for the ex- penses of the Holy Father as spiritual Head of the Church, but totally inade- quate to his wants as a temporal prince. In fact, the Pope is a bankrupt; and the serious question is, how he can get relief? This last attack upon him has added to his heavy load, and who will lighten it? Between the years when Pope Gre- gory sent the keys of the Holy Sepul- chre to Charles Martel, and asked pro- tection against the Longobards, and the day when Pope Pius bowed his head to a man he despised,and asked protection against that fanatic Garibaldi, what a strange history! It is not to be told here; but a figure or two rises in that shadowy past and demands our atten- tion. Let me first make a statement: It is the universal theory of Christen- dom that the spiritual is the superior of the temporal; it is the universal practice of Christendom to make the tem- poral lord of the spiritual: that is the difference between theory and practice. Everywhere the Church is servant and subordinate to the Stateeverywhere except in Rome; everywhere the Pre- late is less than the Prince. It was not always so. The time was when the * In 1864, 460,000,000 francs. t For 5 years, 1,480,000. LIFE IN GREAT CITIES. 01 Pope of Rome was King of kings and Lord of lords. From the fifth century to the eleventh the Church grew in power and gained in influence. Men love to. call those dark ages; but they were ages of Faith, times when men believed that a Church was God- founded, and that IT in some mys- terious and incomprehensible way knew the mind of God and the secrets of des- tiny. Then they believed that the Church spoke the voice of God, and that the Pope had the power to bless or curse as God might were lie on earth: Var dci var clerici might have been the ecclesias- tical motto then, in contrast to the vex dei ye pepuli of to-day. But in the year 1073 arose a man who made the vague theory of the Church a hard fact. This man was Hildebrand, the carpenters son of Soano, known as Gregory YII. This great man was not only a man of ideas, but a man of force to put those ideas into life. Before his day, the Church in various ways had asserted her right to appoint Bishops and to rule the consciences and the ac- tions of kings. But kings held the sword in their hands, and they appoint- ed Bishops and sold benefices right and left, when they wanted money. Cor- ruption in the Church then kept pace with corruption in the Court, and bishop and priest alike were a scandal to men. Gregory determined that these things should be reformed. He grap- pled the gigantic evils in the person of the corrupt and licentious Henry JY, Emperor of Germany. He declared the Spiritual to be master of the Temporal. The struggle was fierce. Henry called his bishops and priests together at Worms (A. D. 1076) and deposed Greg- ory. Gregory called a council at Rome and excommunicated Henry, declared his crown forfeit, and commanded his subjec~ts to abandon him. The disaf- fected did abandon him. The Emperor saw himself deserted and in danger: he crossed the Alps in the dead of winter to bow his head at the feet of the Pope. For three days he stood at the gates of the Popes castle, with bare head and bare feet, supplicating admission. The temporal had gone down before the spiritual, and the theory of the su- premacy of the Church was at last a fact. Of course it did not remain so. The contest was for power. Gregory was a Statesman as well as a Churchman, and aspired to rule the world: which the temporal princes of the Empire were ready to resist, and did resist. We can- not follow out this most interesting strugglehow the rival Masters carried on the contest and indulged in mutual excommunications, until at last the Em- peror got possession of the Holy City and put his own Pope upon the throne. The Spiritual then went down before the Temporal; but the Spiritual had made and established a fact and a pre- cedent, which has never yet been aban- doned. And why should it be? If the Church is the voice of God on earth, and if the Pope is Gods vicegerent, why do not men obey him? It is cer- tain that they do not. There have existed-so devout Catho- lics saytwo hundred and fifty-eight successors of St. Peter; but just how so many can be counted it were idle to inquire. Among them have been some of the best and some of the worst of men, some of the wisest and some of the weakest. Peter was a poor fisherman of Galilee, who lived by the labor of his hands, who wore sackcloth, and proba- bly could neither read nor write; but he had the royal heart and the divine soul to feel and know the divine truths of Christ Jesus and to preach them in the ears of men. Think what has grown out of the simple teachings of Jesus and the sun- ple life of Peter I The most stupendous, the most complex, the most mysterious machine which has ever been devised to dominate the souls and bodies of men. Logically it may be shown that a priest or a bishop or a pope is no wiser than other men, and that a whole council of them know no more of the mystery of God than a council of other men though this has been done a thousand times, yet it does not shake the stu- pendous edifice. Steadily, persistently1 1868.] 216 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Feb indefatigably, it works on and on, and its missionaries and agents occupy ev- ery vantage-ground and maintain their right to rule the souls of men. The present successor of Peter is now seventy-five years old, and is as much a part of this stupendous machine as the poorest brother of all. But contrast him with the poor fisherman of Galilee. He is the Head of the Church, pontiff for two hundred millions of souls. His palace of the Vatican is a vast museum of literature and artis said to be the largest in the world, and to contain some twelve thousand different apart- ments. His palace on the Quirinal is also superb, and here this lonely old man liveslonely in a crowd. He is sur- rounded with men; he has men-maids, men-cooks, men-sweepers; no woman penetrates the sacred mystery of his chamber; he is forbidden the charms of womans love, he has no child to love or to hope for, none to love him. He has coachmen, cuphearers, jesters, es- quires, chamberlains, guards, and he has a confessor! What sins has the Head of the Church to confess? What money would we not pay for a transcript of those confessions? He is mysteriously guarded, he eats alone; through all these centuries there has been danger of death by poison: he tastes not until some less sacred mouth has tasted first, not even the holy wafer of the sacra- ment. He is not sure of the love of his own people, indeed he fears that ex- cept with French bayonets he would be toppled from his throne; his treasury is empty, his States are slipping away, his own bosom friends cannot be trust- ed; and there are hungry aspirants waiting Iinxiously for him to drop into the grave. And then there is Cardinal Antonelli. If the Pope is not the most miserable man in Rome, it is because his serene soul rests firmly upon the mercy of God, and because he believes that whatever is, is right. Yet the Pope is a power in the world, the Church is a unit, and is mysterious and mighty. He wields, or rather he represents, that power. At the very time (June, 1867) when Louis Napoleon was calling together his kings and dukes, to sustain his glory and to fill the pockets of the Parisian shopkeepers~ Pio Nino was gathering from all the ends of the earth his bishops and priests to commemorate the death of St. Peter and St. Paul, to sustain his glory, and to fill his empty purse. What proces- sions they had! What displays of sol- diers and priestswhat cardinal priests and cardinal deacons and cardinal bish- ops in mitres and copes! What Con- servators of Rome, and prince assist- ants! What gorgeous plushes, and pur- ple velvets, what gold and jewels and waxhights and fanfaronade, who can tell! When the Pope goes in State to the vast Church of St. Peters on Easter Sunday, fifty different kinds of officials, arrayed in raiment of purple and gold, march with him, and thousands of sol- diers carrying swords and guns march with them, and for what? To call to mind the entrance of Jesus of Nazareth into Jerusalem riding on an ass! That the festival was not without good and pecuniary results, let us read from the reports of the day: The foreign bishops have brought the Pope some munificent presents. Their donations in money alone amount to 1,500,000 crowns, or 7,500,000 francs, and their other gifts are of great value. Cardinal Mnthieu, Archbishop of Besan- eon, has presented him with an osten- soir several feet high, and having its massive gold disc enriched with dia- monds and rubies of rare brilliancy. The bishops of Canada have brought a work of art in the shape of a silver ship, with every detail beautifully executed. The ballast of this costly toy is com- posed of gold nuggets, and each of the cabins contains a heap of gold-money from a different country. The masts and cordage are gaily dressed with bank-notes of every color, and from every country in the world. A very old Bishop sought an audience of the Holy Father, leaning on a large thick staff. Monsignor Pacca, master of the ceremonies, told him that he must first lays his staff aside, as the etiquette of the Court did not permit of his carry- ing it into the Popes presence. The Bishop claimed exemption from the rule, and the Pope hearing what was 1868.] LIFE IN GEEAT CITIES. 217 going on, ordered him to be admitted. Accordingly he appeared before the Holy Father, and, rendering his hom- age, stated that his diocese was so poor, he had nothing to bring him but his stick. This the Pope took in his hand and found very heavy, on which he looked at it more closely, and perceived that it was formed of solid gold. The Archbishop of Mexico has sent the Holy Father 80,000 crowns, and an Eng- lish Bishop has presented him with the large sum of 100,000 sterling. The American Bishops are said to be bring- ing an enormous tribute. * The Popes army is a strange fact. It consists of twenty-five thousand t men, who must be paid and fed from the poor Exchequer of the Head of the Church. What is it for I to walk in these processions and to guard the Holy Father, against whom I It seems certain that the command given to Pe- ter, not to fight with his sword, has not come down to his successor. This farce or is it ,a tragedy Iof an army is only a part of the complex and organ- ized machinery which has through all these centuries grown up about the Head of the Church: it is useless to protect him against the Italians, it is too large for pageantry, and it cannot be got rid of, so long as the political machine is intertwined with the spirit- ual. Possibly it may be sustained, for we learn from a French journal, that in one town of France are seven old maids, poor but devout, who have combined their savings for the keep of one Pon- tifical Zouave for a year. There has been an Imperial Rome, there has been an Ecclesiastical Rome, and there isa Ruin. But it is a ruin upon whose time-eaten walls are written two amazing histories. Of Imperial Rome nothing need be written here. Ecclesiastical Rome grew up out of the ruins of Imperial Rome, and for centu- ries was a marvel. The lowest point of population of the City was at the close of the 8th century, when it is sup- posed there were in it but 13,000 inhab- itants. It revived under the power of * Pall Mall Gazette. In 1860, 24,279. (Appletons cyc1op~dia.) voL. ~.15 the Popes until, in the 16th or 17th cen- turies, it reached its second glory. Let us look at this. The influence of Chris- tianity, or the power of the Church, be- came such as to bring the Emperor of Germany across the snowy Alps, an ab- ject suppliant to the feet of the Pope. Then the frantic fanaticism of the Crusades for a century and a half mov- ed all Europe, complicated its politics, and changed its modes of thought and work. But it gave more and more power and influence to the Church, for it was a fanaticism to redeem the Holy Sepulchre from the hands of the Mus- lim. Thousands upon thousands of lives were lost, millions upon millions of money spent, and yet the Holy Sep- ulchre is in the hands of the Muslim still! During all the period of the Crusades, while the Church gained in influence and the system was more and more perfecting itself, Rome did not gain in wealth or splendorrather she went toward decay. Then a happy thought came into the mind of the good Pope Boniface VIII. He conceiv- ed the idea of a great Festival which should attract the piety and themon- ey of the Faithful to Rome. Why not? Has not a holy city always done this? is it not done now in Japan and in INleccah and in Thibet Iwhenever peo- ple have a holy city, do not they love to visit it? He proclaimed abroad to all the world, that a great and holy Festival should be had at the end of the century, to which all good people were invited to come, and that all Who did come should have such indulgences as are granted to the good in a holy time. They came in crowds, by thousands and thousands, so that it was computed that on the first day of January, 1800, a mil- lion strangers crowded the streets of the Ecclesiastical City. It was a lucky thought: they came; they saw the Father; they worshipped on the sacred ground where Peter and Paul had died; they brought money in their hand and laid it at the foot of the Altar; so that priests in sacred garments with holy rakes in their hands, were forced to stand day and night, to rake in these 218 Pu~AMs MAGAZINE. [Feb. free-will offerings, poured like a flowing river into the treasury of the Church. It was a success, it was a holy time, it was an hour of generous sacrifice and outspoken love; men forgot their feuds, their selfishnesses, their narrow cares, and believed they were doing God serv- ice. It was a time of giving and bless- ing; the Church loved her children; she forgave them their sinsfor how could she help it? It was a time of corn and wine and oil; her valleys dropped fatness. It was a feast of fat things, of wine upon the lees, of wine well refined. But the Festival of Pope Boniface ended, as all things end, and the good people went home with their sins for- given; the Church was rich with mon- ey, and all was well. It is an unfortu- nate truth, that about no treasury, not even that of the Holy See, is there any thing of that perennial virtue which made the old widows oll-cruse so de- siral~le. Treasuries do become exhaust- ed, and that of the Holy See is no ex- ception. What was to be done? It was not in human nature to wait an- other hundred years to reap another rich harvestnot if it could be reaped sooner. It must be tried, and it was decreed that every twenty-fifth year such a free interchange of the carnal and the spiritual should take place. It did take place, and the treasury was again and again filled, and thankful hearts were lightened as the Church forgave those sins which had seemed such a heavy burden. But, alas for poor human nature! moderation is no more certainly found in the bosom of a Car- dinal or a Pontiff than in the heart of a stock-broker. They could not be con- tent with the Festivals: there seemed no reason why there should be times and periods for this divine forgiveness. If it was right to sell Indulgences at all, and if the Church needed money all the time, why not sell them all the time perpetually, freely? So it was decreed. But nothing in this world goes smooth- ly. Up started in Germany (about 1517) a monk, one Martin Luther, who cried out that this thing was a scandal and an indignity and a corruption, and that it ought to cease, and that it should cease. He was one of those violent and daring reformers who would not be quiet, would not let things go, would not rest in his bed; he did not stay his voice or his hand, and he got princes and dukes on his side, for there was a political question in it and a pecuniary one; and at last the power of the Church was successfully resisted, so that from that day she has been somewhat shorn of strength. Since that day the Pope has been subject to some indignities, and Rome has not escaped. During the great French Revolution she was declared a part of France, to be called D~partement du Ti?~re, and the audacious Corsican carried off the Pope, compel- ling him to crown him Emperor in Paris. Still the Church lives on, in spite of corruption, in spite of argu- ment, in spite Gf obloquy, in spite of Corsican, and in spite of revolutionists; and to-day devoted men and devoted women go forth from her bosom to Christianize the world, to heal the sick, to bury the dead, to care for the wound- ed, as they did a thousand years ago. The holy spark never dies, and this stupendous machine~loes not quench it. To this palmy, this Festival period belong the churches, the palaces, the pictures of Rome. Out of the money poured into Rome by these pious pil- grims, sprang the churches, the palaces, and the pictures which all, Protestants and Catholics alike, so long to see. Three hundred and sixty churches open their doors for the people of Rome to enter and w6rship God; among them St. Peters, St. Pauls, Sta. Maria in Cos- medin, Santa Croce, Santa Maria Mag- giore, and St. John Lateran are most conspicuous. St. Peters is a MIGHTY DOME. Externally it is a failure and a disappointment. And it is only when standing lost in the vastness of the great arch that one can begin to feel the ma- jesty of the work or can appreciate the daring of Michael Angelo. Yet few ever enter this or any of these churches to worship God. They are never filled except at some great spec- 1868.] LIFE Iv GREAT CITIES. 219 tacle. Then, however, when vast crowds throng its recesses and gas flames along its great dome, and the swelling sounds of music come upon the ear, the most obdurate skeptic cannot resist the mys- terious influences of the place and the hour. But St. Peters was not built in a day. Commenced by Nicholas V. in the year 1450, it was not completed until the year 1780; and it is believed to have cost more than forty-seven mil- lions of dollars, the contributions of pious Catholics from all quarters of the earth. The art of Rome is distinctly due to the money of these pilgrims, as well as to th~ piety of the age. Without their contributions we should have had no Raffaelle, no Correggio, no Domenichino, no Guido; or if they had lived and painted, their genius would not have had such ample room, could not have attempted such wonderful flights. The Vatican is rich with the splendor of genius, andThe palaces Barberini, Pam- phili, Farn~se, Rospigliosi, are only mu- seums where their works are collected and shown. To this period belong also the many palaces which distinguish the city. The popes appear to have had nephews, who were very dear to them, and there are people who say that nephew~~ is euphu- istic for son. It is not for us to de- cide. That thepopes loved theirnephews, and were most desirous for their world- ly as well as their spiritual welfare, we cannot doubt. It seems too that they, who could hardly have had that ambi- tion which other princes had, did long to found and endow a family. Ur- ban VIII. founded the Barberini; In- nocent X. the Pamphill; Clement IX. the Rospigliosi; Clement X. the Altieri, and so on. Not only were these mag- nificent palaces erected, but they were endowed with princely revenues, and an inalienable capital, which keeps them alive to-day. It was a singular diver- sion of the gifts of the pious and the generosity of a people, but it is not an uncommon one. Many of the ancient families have, however, become poor and extinct, and some new ones have taken their places. But all such new princes are distinctly the production of money. The Grazioli were bankers; a tobacco- nist founded the Terraiuoli; a banker, the rich Torlonia; a peasant and stew- ard, the Antonellis. It may be curious to know what these princely houses have to live on :the Corsini have 350,000 francs; the Borghesi, 450,000; the Gra- zioli, 350,000; the Orsini, 100,000; the Strozzi, 100,000, and so on. The decadence of Ecclesiastical Rome has been something fearful. Only three centuries ago, there were three hundred and eighty spacious streets; forty-six thousand three hundred houses; seven- teen thousand and ninety-seven palaces; thirteen thousand and fifty-two foun- tains; thirty-one theatres; eleven am- phitheatres; two capitals; nine thou- sand and twenty-five baths; four thou- sand common sewers; two thousand and ninety-one prisons; eight gilded statues; sixty-six ivory statues; three thousand seven hundred and eighty-five statues of bronze; and eighty-two eques- trian statues.* Now all is changedRome is vile. Houses have fallen into ruin, streets have disappeared; those that remain are almost never cleaned, goats infest them and make them rank with foul odors; everywhere are soldiers and priests; there are little manufactures, no commerce, no literature, no patriot- ism, no art. All is indifference, medi- ocrity, stupidity. There is no present, no future (I). Rome is in the Past. Is this, then, the condition of the Holy City of Christendom, where the first Bishop of the Church has held supreme sway for a thousand years? If so, then what are we to think of the system and the men at its head? Let us now look at the people; for a city is not its brick and mortar, nor its pavements, nor its churches, nor its pic- tures. A great people will dignify the meanest city, and a virtuous race make a holy land. There are distinct classes which rare- ly leave their ranks: 1st. Plebeians or * cardinal May, in Abouts Eome. 220 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Feb. lower class; 2d. Middle class; 3d. No- bles; 4th. Religious persons. Besides these there are in Rome, Jews 5,000 ; * and beggarsany number you will. Neither beggars nor Jews are counted as people, nor have they any direct influence upon the destinies of the city. They are festering masses whose squalor infects the air. But among them are men who grow rich, and among them, especially the beggars, is a certain kind of damnable hilarity which keeps them alive. Let us look at the plebeians through the shrewd eye of Edmund About: Behind this curtain of mendicity, are hidden a hundred thousand persons, almost indigent, but not idle, and hard- ly earning their bread. The gardeners and vine-dressers,who cultivate a part of the suburbs of Rome, the mechanics, the laborers, the domestics, the coach- men, the models, the itinerant mer- chants, the clever vagabonds, who look for their supper to a miracle of provi- denoe or a lucky number of the lottery, compose the majority of the population. They almost subsist during the winter, when strangers sow manna over the land; in summer they draw in their waistlands. Many are too proud to ask five sons of you, none are rich enough to refuse them if offered. Ignorant and curious, simple and sub- tle, excessiveiy sensitive, without much dignity, ordinarily more than prudent but capable of the most glaring impru- dences; extreme in friendship and ha- tred, easily moved, with difficulty con- vinced; more open to feeling ,than ideas; habitually sober, terrible ii~ in- toxication; sincere in the practice of au excessive devotion, but falling out with the saints as readily as with men; persuaded that they have little to hope for on this earth, but comforted at times by the hope of a better, they live in a somewhat murmuring resignation, un- (ler a paternal government which gives them bread when there is any. The ir- regularity of conditions, more apparent in Rome than in Paris, does not drive them to hatred. They comprehend their unpretending lot, and congratulate them- selves that there are rich people, so that the poor may have benefactors. No people is less capable of self-direction, and the first comer easily leads them. * 1867, 4,650. They have played the part of supernu- merary in all the Roman revolutions, and more than one has fought well without comprehending the piece which was performed. They have so little faith in the republic, that in the absence of all the authorities, when the Holy Father and the Sacred College had taken refuge at Gaeta, thirty plebeian families encamped in the palace of Car- dinal Antonelli, without breaking a glass. The reestablishment of the Pope under the protection of a foreign army did not astonish them; they looked for it as a happy event and the return of pub- lic tranquillity. They live in peace when our (French) soldiers do not interfere with their households, and the French occupation disturbs them only when they are personally incommoded. They are not afraid to plant the knife under the uniform of a conqueror, but I will answer for it they will never celebrate the Sicilian vespers. They plume themselves upon their direct descent from the Romans of Great Rome, and this innocent boast appears to me well founded. In fine, they are great bread-eaters, and very fond of shows. They treat their women as the female animal merely, leaving not a mill at their disposal, but spending every thing themselves; every one is the de- pendant of the dependant o~ a patrician. They are well built, robust, and capable of giving a blow from the shoulder that would astonish a buffalo, but there is not one who is not looking for a way to live without work. Excellent laborers when they have not a cent, impossible to get hold of while there is a crown in their pocket; honest, unpretending, simple-hearted people, but convinced of their superiority over the rest of man- kind; economical to the last point; chewers of dry pease, till they come upon a glorious chance to spend their earnings in a single day; they hoard son by sou, ten crowns in the year, with which to hire a princes box at the car- nival or a coach to show themselves at the ffite of the Divine Passion. It is thus that the Roman populace forgets the past and the future in the Saturna- ha. Their hereditary want of foresight is explained by the irregularity of their resources, their periodical holidays, and the impossibility of attaining without a miracle a better condition. They are wanting in several virtues and among others in delicacy; that was not in their heritage from their ances 1868.1 LIFE IN GREAT CITIES. 221 tors. They are not deficient in steadi- ness and self-respect. They drag them- selves into no vulgar jests or low de- bauch. You will not find them gratui- tously insulting a gentleman who is passing, or using an indecent expression before women. That class of degraded men called the canaille is absolutely unknown herethe ignoble is not a Roman commodity. Thus at large about this large class known as the common people, because upon them hopeful men build the future of Rome. The class is strong; it is a great material, capable; in wise and good hands, of making a great state. The misery of the thing lies in that the machine is not run by them nor for their good. They know nothing of po- litics, they care less; few know how to read, and they learn what they do know through their fingers and eyes; the Church, too, does not fail to give such teaching as she thinks best. A& sassincetion is a habit here. They look upon i1~ as gentlemen once look- ed upon duellinga way of righting wrongs which cannot be righted in any other way. In two years (18501852) two hundred and fifty-eight assassina- tions were done in the city; and in these cases they universally refuse to bear witness against one anotherit would be dishonorable. Illustrating this habit of personal violence is the fact, that in the year 1853 the tribunals punished but six hundred and nine crimes against property, to one thou- sand three hundred and fifty-four against the person.* The Lottery is their great and peren- nial source against misery aud adverse fortune. At midday on Saturdays it is presided over by the Minister of State, and crowds of all classes and both ages and sexes throng the drawings. For a week they have sought for signs and charms, have dreamed of lucky num- bers, and have prayed the Virgin and all the saints for help. These confer few fortunes, and unlucky devotees curse them; but they try again and again and again. The possibility forbids despair. * Abouts Rome. As to the middle class, honest ob- servers may and do differ. Are they brave, capable, virtuous, and do they only bide their time I Will they yet make Rome good and great? Imperial Rome grew great upon the plunder of mankind, upon the spoils of war; Ec- clesiastical Rome upon the tribute of the millions of faithful. What now shall restore this fallen greatnesswhat can make her goodForce or Faith? This middle class containsthe of- ficers of the Army and State, all law- yers, doctors, shopkeepers, artists, board- ing-house keepers, country merchants, & c., & c. Most are poor, all live care- fully. They love a carriage and a coat- of-arms; they love a public display; they know a little, not much, of the outside world. When young, the men deck their persons with some care; past forty, they understand the value of work, and settle down as fathers of families who smoke tobacco and abandon gloves. The young women have fine hair, mag- nificent eyes, superb shoulders, and thick waists. Their chief occupation is to watch for husbands behind, their win- dows, and they are easily enough won by him who means marriage, not at all by him who means mischief. Once mar- ried, they do not lack sense or refuse to accept their share of the burdens of life. Scandal may tarnish them after mar- riage, but it is rarely fatal; and before marriage they are watched and are safe. If they lack delicacy they do not lack reverence, and the Church finds among them devoted friends. Fortunes at the bar or in any profes- sion are rarely got. A physician gets twenty or thirty cents for a visit, and is thankful therefor. Shopkeepers are not enterprising, and goods are dear. Room- renting is a great business in Rome, and the foreignerhe can pay. The coun- try merchants are they who hire great landed estates and raise great crops. They are the most enterprising, most courageous, most money-making people of the city. But after all, half the cam- pagna is not cultivated, and the deadly miasmas poison Rome. There is a gangrene which eats intc 222 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Feb. this middle classall want a place, and the government is thronged. Twen- ty-five dollars a month is greatly desir- ed, fifty dollars is ample, and the judges of the civil courts get but forty. They are not likely to bite the hand that feeds them. The No6les. The Roman directory counts one hundred and eleven patri- cian families, among which twenty are princely and eleven ducalsome of whom fancy they have the blood of the brutal old conquerors in their veins. It is of no moment. The Prince is expect- ed and required to make a princely ap- pearance commensurate with his rank. In public he must seem princely, at home he may starve, and some of them do. The men are all educated by priests to be religious, submissive, and polite. They do nothing and attempt nothing. The women are elegant and Mudthey do what people of the world always do: dress, ride, go to the opera and the Chutch, and talk with their front teeth. It would not be permitted to laugh aloud or to raise the arms above the head. Their lives are narrow and form- al, and when the time comes, it is their lot to be married, if they have beauty or fortuneor they may become re- ligious persons convents are always open. The Hierarchy is vast and it is vari- ous. Rome is the centre and head of the wide and powerful organization known as the Roman Catholic Church. Here sits the Pope himself, successor o C St. Peter, who the Church claims found- ed it upon a rock. No other religion is known or permitted. About the sacred Head gather bishops, dignitaries, priests, monks, nuns, holy brothers, and lay brothers of the Order of St. Ig- natius. Thirty cardinals and thirty-five bishops swell his train and wait his nod and yet he is a puppet in the hands of Cardinal Antonelliand a poor old man. Antonelli is really Master of the peo- ple, and King of Rome. Descended from tke peasant-family, he has, what prince- ly families rarely have, talent, energy, courage; and he grasps the reins with a strong hand. No emeute will over- throw the Hierarchy while he livesif then. All the business of the StateAd- ministration, Diplomacy, Justiceis in the hands of cardinals and priests, and they govern all things, temporal as well as spiritual. The road to wealth or fame or power is through the Church, and through it only in Rome. The pay of a cardinal is but four thousand dollars it will pay for his stable: but this modest income is supplemented by some richer benefice; for a cardinal must live, and he cannot live on four thousand dol- lars. No cardinal walks the streetshe is a Prince of the Church. Devout Catho- lics believe or hope that the cloak of a cardinal, the frock of a priest, cover ho- ly men; the undevout doubt. They say human nature is stronger than any cloak or any frock, and that under these, walk men just like other men, with the same hopes, fears, weaknesses, strengths, vir- tues, vices, loves, hates. It may well be so, and we shall do well to bear it in mind. The destiny of Rome will not be settled by any thing we can do or s~y in America. Old ways, beliefs, and organ- izations are powerful there: the people do not respond to the Mazzinis and Garibaldis; they do not demand a re- public, nor do they hunger for a new religion. Can we, can any, give them these? Would they accept them if of- fered? What the future of Rome is to be, depends upon who is to lead the people. Have they a Moseshave they a Washington? The man who shall lead the Italian people, who shall unite them into one nation, the heart of which shall beat in Rome, must be Hero, Statesman, Priest. Not Garibaldi, not Mazzini, not Ratazzi, not Antonellinone of these. Who is he, and where is he to be sought for? Let the future tell! NoTE.The last paper Life in ~ew York has led to many inquiries: what is your theory? what is your remedy? & o., & c. By and hy a theory and a remedy may he propounded; at presentwhat are the factswhat the position? 1868.1 THE REPUBLIc or ELSEWHERE. 223 THE REPUBLIC OF ELSEWHERE. I DO not pretend to have discovered the Republic of Elsewhere. My father visited it, many years ago. Others have been there since. Where is it? Of course, anywhere .but here. What is it? A most remarkable land. How to get there? Do you think I am going to tell you! No, gentlemen. There are, to be sure, a thousand-and-one ways, more or less. Which of these methods that I have not specified it was that I pursued, I decline to state. In fact, how I made my tran- sit thither is not worth telling. What really is of interest is the odd state of things I encountered on my arrival. For, as a blustering Rocky-Mountain guide once propounded it No query; Ive ben thar! It is only necessary for me to premise that the Elsewhereian language differs somewhat from ours, but rather by way of exception than in the general run. Thus they have a public assembly there which the people call the Concurse of the country. It is a body that in a measure per- forms the functions of our Congress. I went to their capital the other day. I have just come from there. But, how did I go? I should, myself, have no objection to state the exact route, dis- tance, and rate of fare, for my only am- bition is to be useful to my fellow-be- ings in my day and generation: but it is disagreeable to be accused of partial- ity; and I suppose that charge would be brought against me, if I should state by which line of balloons I did go. Be- sides, to be serious :my dear friends, dont you perceive that all this is going to be a mere fancy-sketch? Well, the first thing I did, after arriv- ing at the capital of Elsewhere and booking myself at a species of hotel or roosting-place they have there, was to visit the Concurse, then in session. I was much disappointed in this as- sembly. It was almost entirely com- posed of little boys. The exceptions were a few old women, armed with birch rods, who bullied the small fry a good deal, and every now and then brought them to what they called a division. But I cannot stop to ex- plain, for I have more important mat- ter to attend to. As I was hurrying away in disgust, I was suddenly arrested by an official cor- responding to our sergeant-at-arms, and violently dragged into a dungeon in the building. Here I found what is called with us a committee of old women; and soon ascertained that these were not real school-marms, as I had up to this time supposed, but only dressed up so to frighten the boy& this being, besides, considered the garb of honor. One of them, cts Ithought, seemed rather ashamed of his eostume. They explained to me that they were the committee on the Infernal Reve- nue. We call it Internal in my country, said I. 0 well, its all the same, says they. I think it likely, says L But why am I thus arbitrarily seized? You come from the Ud St-s of Aa? says they. I tore open my vest and shirt, and exhibited the American fowl (done in India ink and vermilion) upon my breast. Said I, sublimely: gentle- men, could you look into my heart, you would find its counterpart there. Enough! said they. We are convinced. Now then, says they, we want to consult you about the Infernal Revenue System of our Republic. I protested : But, gentlemen, that is a business in which I has~e had no experience. I have not studied the systems of other countriesI have never turned my attention, even tein

1868.1 THE REPUBLIc or ELSEWHERE. 223 THE REPUBLIC OF ELSEWHERE. I DO not pretend to have discovered the Republic of Elsewhere. My father visited it, many years ago. Others have been there since. Where is it? Of course, anywhere .but here. What is it? A most remarkable land. How to get there? Do you think I am going to tell you! No, gentlemen. There are, to be sure, a thousand-and-one ways, more or less. Which of these methods that I have not specified it was that I pursued, I decline to state. In fact, how I made my tran- sit thither is not worth telling. What really is of interest is the odd state of things I encountered on my arrival. For, as a blustering Rocky-Mountain guide once propounded it No query; Ive ben thar! It is only necessary for me to premise that the Elsewhereian language differs somewhat from ours, but rather by way of exception than in the general run. Thus they have a public assembly there which the people call the Concurse of the country. It is a body that in a measure per- forms the functions of our Congress. I went to their capital the other day. I have just come from there. But, how did I go? I should, myself, have no objection to state the exact route, dis- tance, and rate of fare, for my only am- bition is to be useful to my fellow-be- ings in my day and generation: but it is disagreeable to be accused of partial- ity; and I suppose that charge would be brought against me, if I should state by which line of balloons I did go. Be- sides, to be serious :my dear friends, dont you perceive that all this is going to be a mere fancy-sketch? Well, the first thing I did, after arriv- ing at the capital of Elsewhere and booking myself at a species of hotel or roosting-place they have there, was to visit the Concurse, then in session. I was much disappointed in this as- sembly. It was almost entirely com- posed of little boys. The exceptions were a few old women, armed with birch rods, who bullied the small fry a good deal, and every now and then brought them to what they called a division. But I cannot stop to ex- plain, for I have more important mat- ter to attend to. As I was hurrying away in disgust, I was suddenly arrested by an official cor- responding to our sergeant-at-arms, and violently dragged into a dungeon in the building. Here I found what is called with us a committee of old women; and soon ascertained that these were not real school-marms, as I had up to this time supposed, but only dressed up so to frighten the boy& this being, besides, considered the garb of honor. One of them, cts Ithought, seemed rather ashamed of his eostume. They explained to me that they were the committee on the Infernal Reve- nue. We call it Internal in my country, said I. 0 well, its all the same, says they. I think it likely, says L But why am I thus arbitrarily seized? You come from the Ud St-s of Aa? says they. I tore open my vest and shirt, and exhibited the American fowl (done in India ink and vermilion) upon my breast. Said I, sublimely: gentle- men, could you look into my heart, you would find its counterpart there. Enough! said they. We are convinced. Now then, says they, we want to consult you about the Infernal Revenue System of our Republic. I protested : But, gentlemen, that is a business in which I has~e had no experience. I have not studied the systems of other countriesI have never turned my attention, even tein 224 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. porarily, to the subject. My views are immature; and, even at that, of the vaguest kind. I wish you could have seen the old women (as they seemed) brighten up as I spoke. Scarce could they contain themselves till I had done, when they allas I thoughtcried with one ac- cord: The very man of all the world we need! Well, said I, if it must be so, so be it. I dare say we shall get up some- thing between us that will do the busi- ness of the people. Doubt it not, said they. And now, what do you propose? I was taken all abackI was, really. Not one definite idea had I on the sub- ject; and~, strange as it may seem under the circumstances I felt some lit- tle delicacy about putting forward an entire system. Watching me as I pon- dered the matter, the old women (as they seemed) at first paid strict heed, expecting me to play Sir Oracle; but, as I remained silent for at least five minutes, one after another began to nod, nod, nod, and soon they one and all were fast and sound asleep. Yet did I suspect that one of them was only making believe. I looked anxiously towards the door. But there stood the vigilant sergeant- at-arms. I became depressed. Suddenly, a brilliant idea occurred to me, audI said Fiz! And, at that word, they all awaked. gentlemen, said I, I have no ideas of my own, but I can tell you what they do in my countrythe land of the gre at striped peacock, in which reside the most intelligent and saga- cious people in the known or unknown world. They shouted, joyfully 0, let us hear. gentlemen, said I, on what do you suppose we found our Revenue Sys- tem? On Expenditure, said one. On Production, said another. On Faith, said a third. On the Weather, said a fourth. [Feb. On Tin, said a fifth. Here was a terrible o~itcry, and various charges were made as to what was meant. But the old gentlemen members of the Committee, refused to explain. Wrong, all, said I. We found it on VIRTUE. Wonderful ! said they, in chorus. VIRTUE, in our opinion, is the only solid foundation for a state. True, said they, eagerlyand yet not so eagerly, but that it appeared to me that one or two of them had their doubts. One of them, in particular, the one I had noticed several times 6efore, looked keenly at me. But be said nothing. I began to fancy that he seas a real man. But that can scarcely be called Vir- tue that has not been tempted and risen superior to temptation. We ice it, said they. Accordin~,ly, we have so arranged our Revenue System as to tempt every body. Beautiful! they exclaimed. [I think we all took a drink upon it all lut one. They have liquor in that countryof which, more anon.] I told them that in pursuance of this notion of ours about encouraging disin- terestedness, we had what we called an Income Tax; and that we had printed briefs of it, which no one could possibly understand: so that every bodys virtue prompted him to pay the utmost that he could imagine in it. But, if a man hasnt much imagina- tion l said they. Then, there again, we save the souls of many from the sin of peijury. I told them how we had published a large volume of directions, instructions, constructions, deductions, and warnings, which had already reduced some thou- sands of small tradesmen to a condition of idiocy. Indeed, said I, we have made this also absolutely unintelligible, with the same charitable purpose of saving the consciences of those who might otherwise have stretched them a little. Wonderful !Exquisite! said the old gentlemen, as they plied their 1868.] THE REPUBLIC OF ELSEWHERE. 225 pencils, and took their notes: We must have something of the same sort. I told them things that it would take too long to enumerate here. I con- tinned: I think we have made some mis- takes, however. For example, we tax the productive labor of a base-ball club in this way: License to playas an exhibitionon the ball, and on all its materials, 8 iatimon the baton the catchad valarernper foot runon the canvas shoeson the bloody noses and the black eyes (having stamps for these)on the amount of the score. How can they manufacture any enthusi- asm under such drawbacks IAgain, we have just had a serious controversy on the pickle and boot-top question. And I foresee great trouble about the exportation tax on peanuts. You should have seen the old gen- tlemen write! What! Do you tax peanuts I said they. That is a source of revenue that has heretofore escaped us. And they took a note of it. 0, yes, said I :(if I made an in- correct statement I beg to beset right:) peanuts, jujube paste, okra seeds, curraut jelly, goose-yokes, pennyroyal, popped corn, popguns, ginger-pop, po- tato-mills, balloons, dolls-heads, as- cotches, dirt-pies, partridge-berries, win- tergreen, yarbs in general, the skins of that animal that is never mentioned to ears polite, puns, poke-juice, thimble- riggers-peas, essence of fudge and all other essences, skimmerton-pans, corn- cobs when used as corks, shades of trees when more than forty feet high, pigs- tails, cobwebs, pin-wheels, water (when red hot), blushes (the fancy article), matches (when not made in heaven), broken china, wind-bags (clerical ex- cepted), aches and ails, toe-nails and finger-nails, megrims, fossil remains, bell-pulls, laggers, loafers, and fillibusters (when not in Congress), mosquito-bills, bricks (when in the hat), brass (on the face), brooms (when they sweep clean), bullion (when youve got it, but bears are exempt), threads (of a story), um- brellas (but the umbrella of Paul Pry is excepted), snuff-boxes (but that of Rob- ert Macaire goes free on account of the squeak, and all others that can be made to squeak exactly like it will be admit- ted to the same privilege), boot-jacks, tattle, double-distilled nonsense, candy- horses, hair-snippings, Flaxmans de- signs, beverages (except au naturel), ci- gar stumps, hollow-ware (exclusive of politicians), darkness-that-can-be felt, the pills of Pillicoddy, the poor mans plate of raisins at so much a pound, the rich mans plate of silver at three cents an ounce (but five dollars and thirty- four cents worth goes free), the circula- tion of the blood, the gastric juice, bon- nets (will you believcme, gentlemen!), hoop-skirts, hoop-skirt steel, hoop- skirt hoops, hoop-skirt bindings, hoop- skirt cotton, hoop-skirts in the abstract hoop-skirts in the concrete, hoop-skirts in their inception, progress, and com- pletion (but cut tapes and small wares used in the manufacture of hoop-skirts are excepted), hoop, whoop, and hur- rah! The old gentlemen gasped for breath. So did I. There was a momentary pause, and then a mighty cheer burst forth. Hurrah! hurrah! hurrah! Three more, and a tiger! cried they. And then we had a regular break-down,I mean, an impromptu jig. Only, the one that I suspected to be a real man sat still. It may seem strange to my country- men that these things took place in the midst of what one would suppose to have been a most serious discussion. But The Republic of Elsewhere is a very queer land. The old gentlemen sat down, ex- hausted. But they were still much ex- cited, and gave me another round of ap- plause. Encore / Encore! they cried. In their language that meansmore of it! more of it! Beware, gentlemen! said I. That is but one section of the Law. There are one hundred and eighty-two sec- tions, and nineteen more to the Amend- atory Act. I should, perhaps, detain you too long, were I to go into the items of every one? 226 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Feb. This staggered them, as well it might. However, one of them thought to dodge the difficulty, and asked: Can you not then state in brief what articles mainly you tax? Gentlemen, said I, will you be so kind as to send for a dictionary of your language? They looked surprised, but did so. The sergeant-at-arms, with the assistance of a porter, brought it in. It was about quadruple the size of Worcesters. They told me it contained four hundred and sixteen thousand and some hundred words. Now, said I, gentlemen, if one of you will take a pencil, begin at the beginning and go through to the last page, putting a check against all the nouns substantive, you will have our system, exactly. We hired a man to do it for us. It took him sixteen days, at ten hours a dayhard work. How simple I said they. Pejfection, said I. [We now took a recess. I think some of the old gentlemen visited the bar-room, which in their language they style refectory. I was kept in cus- todydry. When they returned they were in fine spirits; but I felt a little mad at the unjust discrimination. Per- haps this was the reason that just here a little unpleasantness occurred. In- deed, they were uncommonly jolly. It looked as if they had put a little lacing in their tea. For my part, I am con- fident that that African fellow-citizen who has the monopoly of malt liquors for the benefit of the Concurse of Else- where introduces~ surreptitiously and not seldom, bladders of other liquid. But I do not wish to have much said about it, for I dare say he is a worthy man, and the temptation (it must be confessed) is excessive.] I say, young man, remarked one of the old gentlemen in rather a boisterous way, cant you give us some more of that tax-list? It was almost as good as the Negro Minstrelsan enter- tainment which just suits us. No, said I, curtly. My time is not worth much, but it is worth too much to be expended in that way. I was a little miffed at being set a de- gree below Negro Minstrels. Sergeant-at-arms! shouted the old gentleman. I stepped up to him promptly, and extended my thumb and forefinger. Call him again, says I, and therell be a nose pulled. He didnt. I didnt. But a difficulty was immi- nent. These recreations, in the shape of scratching-matches, are common among the old gentlemen, mem- bers of the Concurse. Luckily for me for I should no doubt have been awfully disfigured the offended individual suggested a compromise. They are good at that sort of thing, especially when their own interests are involved. Give us then, says the creature, a specific example of the ivorking of your system. It is not necessary to go into details, unless you please. Encore! Encore! Some more! shouted the rest. The African fellow- citizen had heated their blood. I have observed that he is very apt to have this effect. The direct examination was resumed. How about wool ? was the ques- tion proposed to me. Gentlemen, replied I, with sever- ity, I am a consistent Democrat, and I wonder that you outrage me by ask- ing such a question. I suppose my aspect must have been very alarming, for the inquiry was not repeated. They could not look me in the eye. I heard them whisper something about fleec- ing, but they didnt dare speak out. I think it probable, also, that they were a good deal mystified by the expres- sion, consistent Democrat. No won- der. And cigars? said another. I wish the public could have seen the look of virtuous indignation I put on. If I ever swore, I should have done so then. But I simply answered: Old gentlemen I Do you mean to insult me? Bless us, no! said they, in a ner- vous way; for my previous demonstra 1868.] THE REPUBLIc OF ELSEWHEIIE. 227 tion had evidently impressed them not a little. Well, said I, in my country, now- adays, when you say cigars to a man, it is the same thing as calling him a smuggler. The taxes are high on tobacco, then? Rather. Very much rather? Very much rather. Excessively much rather? Execrably much rather, said I. At least, so smokers say. There must be a large revenue raised from tobacco? The People pay enormously, re- plied I. We suppose so, said one: and then the old gentlemen all winked at each other; which I thought very peculiar, not to say undignified. But, dont your Revenue people seize cigars, sometimes? asked one. Says 1: They seize em, habitually. How, then, does the prosecution end ?I suppose there is a prosecu- tion ? In smoke, of course,~~ says I. How else can a cigar end? But excuse me, continued I; this is a painful sub- ject. I have a cousin in the Revenue Business. He has blossomed lately. He has paid me fifty dollars I never ex- pected to see again. Let us change it. But one of the old gentlemen, who now actually seemed to be waking up, persisted: Do you ever squeeze oranges in the Revenue Business? Yes, says I (but I didnt want to say it), it is one of the principal busi- nesses of the Revenue Business to do that thing. Orange-squcezers at present, in my happy, free, and glorious country, are as thick as black flies in August, and what we call masters of the situa- tion. We have been led to suspect that there is sometimes collusion in our coun- try between collectors and manufactu- rers. How is it with you? In the city of New York and other large places, where the morals of people have been corrupted by indiscriminate society, perhapsthough rarely, even there. In the Rural Districts, certainly not. Are there not oddities in some dis- tricts, in the accounts? That depends upon what you call odd, says I. Catch me committing myself. Ah I said they. You mentioned stamps awhile ago, said one. You use Revenue stamps in your country? Said I: I must ask you a question, in return. Have you, in your country, fences on which it is vainly prescribed, PosT ~o BILLs? If so, you may form some idea of the appearance which a man, in any moderate business in my land, would present at the end of twelve months, if all the stamps he had dirtied his fingers with had been applied to his own person. There is a stamp, sir, for the privilege of being born; the child is brought up on stamped biscotine; and a man thenceforth goes through life accumulating stamps, much faster than gray hairs, and much more numerous. Were they feathers, sir, he might fly ofl~ at the end of his mortal course, without the assistance of the angels. [I think we here took another drink. Then all looked very solemn. I felt that a vital question was coming. It came.] How do you mana~e about Stamp- juice? Stamp-juice? said I, meditatively: Dont know the article. Dont know ! they looked at each other in horror. Why, how can peo- ple live in your country? Unhappy man! But (and they brightened up as they looked around, first at sundry drinking utensils scattered about among blue-books and Concursial Documents, and then waggishly at each other, and then in a patronizing manner at me) Why, you have just tasted some! I sniffed the dungeon-air. It must be admitted, there was a slightly spirituous aroma about. Oh! said I, I catch your mean- ing now. You refer to what we call Wiusi~uv. 228 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Feb. Probably, said they. Ali I said I, proudly, there is the pinnacle, the crown, the glory, the aure- ola, the nimbus of our system. We tax the manufacture of it in such a way that no honest man can possibly remain in the business. And, the consequence? asked they, breathlessly. Of course, every man goes out of the business. Then, there is no Stamp-juice made in your country? .1 thank goodness, said I, ~ that our Government derives no revenue of any account from that detestable traffic. You have but to look at our returns. Some scattering distilleries, indeed, work along with a few hundred gal- lons a month, but the whole business is evidently dying out. I think another year will finish it. Behold the triumph of Virtue i But the old gentlemen looked at me in dismay and pertur- bation. . What a terrible country! groaned they. And they made notes. And they conversed apart. And, pres- ently, one said: Look here, my friend, we think very well of your system, in general; but, as to Stamp-juice, I, for one, cant go it. If I were to deprive my constituents,Theres no use talking they wouldnt stand that. And they all got togetherall but oneand muttered apart, again. And the burden of their muttering was What a deplorable condition of things! I thought it a good time to make my escape, and had nearly reached the door. At this moment the member of the Committee who had uttered no word before but the one guttural humph spoke up. Sergeant-at-arms! said he. That official entered with suspicious prompti- tude. Will you please be so kind as to leave the room, but keep the door I I began to feel uncomfortable, I know not why. The old gentleman walked slowly up to me, and said, in an im- pressive stage-whisper: Young man, you have detectives in your system? I felt that it was best for me to make a clean breast of things. I felt that all my motley was about to be stripped from me. II said I: and there I stopped. Palter not,2 said he. Look at me, and listen. I looked and listened. And; as I looked, gradually the unworthy gar- ments dropped away from him ~nd soon he stood revealed, arrayed from head to foot in the grand old blue and buff. I recognized a MAN. Do you not proceed, said he, on the theory that every man is a cheat? Are not honest men made rogues, and rogues made doubly villanous, by your stool-pigeons, your eaves-droppers, your creepers and your crawlers, and what not? Does not your whole incompre- hensible farrago foster an ever-increas- ing tendency to make every business, pursuit, occupation, a mere contest of wits, not between the man and his gov- ernment, but between the man and the scoundrels who misrepresent his gov- ernment? Is it not a stench in the nos- trils of every upright and higl~minded man? Is it not, from beginning to end, a mockery and a shamea mine for dishonest officialsa pitfall for the hon- est trader? Answer me. I was obliged to answer Yes. Is not your whole country, said he, filled with repinings and discontent because of these things? I was obliged to answer, again Yes. Is not the breath of every business drawn short because of these impalpable cobwebs in the air? Are not the ener- gies of every man impaired by this mi- asmatic influence which no man knows how to provide against? Under your complicated formulas and obscure re- scripts, is it possible for any, the clear- est-headed, man to know whether he is fulfilling the requirements of the law, or not? Is there any law that a man can venture to trust himself npon? I fear not, said I. Is it not the whispered belief of all, that reputable men pay disreputable and pretended informers for the privi 1868.] A SEA-VIEW. 229 lege of carrying on their legitimate busi- ness undisturbed, rather than have that business stopped, and their names pa- raded before the public, as fraudulent dealers, in newspapers whose editors or understrappers are perhaps themselves in the ring? It is, said I. And where have they recourse, if they resist? Have they a trial by jury? Have they investigation before any competent and disinterested tribunal? At the best, have they any thing but the throwing of dice before one, two, three, four, five, six, twenty irresponsible cadis, here, there, and everywhere ~ They have not, said I. Is there any wrong so monstrous as not to have been perpetrated under color of Revenue Law? Does not your whole land reek with the infamy of your pre- tended seizures and real collusions? Do not your informers lose your government millions, that they may divide hundreds of thousands among themselves? That is the talk, said I; and I believe it. Is not your country being inclosed in one immense network of Black Mail, terrible to every body but those who manage the casts? Are not collector- ships and the like becoming the big things, as your people call them, of po- litical life, with more money in them than even seats in your Congress or stalls in your municipal stables ? I cannot deny it, said I. In a word, is not this awful incubus of yours demoralizing every body? President, Senators, Congressmen, public officers of every grade, whether appoint- ers or appointees? and, worst of all, THE PEOPLn themselves? It is, said I. And how dare you,then, little vil- lain that you are, come here and make gibberish and farce out of the destruc- tion of your country and the degrada- tion of your people? How dare you Stop! exclaimed Ifor I, too, was fired by the energy of the speaker Stop! You wrong me, sir. I yield to no man in the disgust I feel for these things. If I laughed, twas but in the bitterness of my souland is not such laughter stronger than tears? Is not the tinkle of the jesters bell more po- tent than the lamentations of Jeremiah? But, if you will have it, Woe to my country, Woe! I know it, because her People will forever be led unresisting by the meanest in the land; because, their grand prerogative of a Vote they yield up to the dictation of the all-but- criminal classes; because they really seem incapable of that about which ~hey are always pratingSelf-Govern- meat. Forgive me the grotesque, and believe that I have a heart for my na- tive land, as well as you. Blue and Buff gave me his hand. Each fell on the others breast. The old gentlemen slunk silently away. The sergeant-at-arms was nowhere. * * * * * * TmI MILLENNIUM. A SEA-VIEW. IN foamy curves along the amber sands Plash constant at my feet the unresting tides, And where stern headlands bulging creas~d sides Skirt leagues of desolate shore in sombre bands They clutch the dripping weed with futile hands. Far on her salty gale a mad gull rides, Firm on her glittering road a schooner glides, And stalwart from this cape the light-house stands Rock-rooted, and the same weird story charms, The same voice tells it, lonely ages through, Now raised in passion, sinking now to calm, And what it utters, no man ever knew, More than yon cedar dangling out of reach, Or dark-blue mussel twinkling on the beach.

1868.] A SEA-VIEW. 229 lege of carrying on their legitimate busi- ness undisturbed, rather than have that business stopped, and their names pa- raded before the public, as fraudulent dealers, in newspapers whose editors or understrappers are perhaps themselves in the ring? It is, said I. And where have they recourse, if they resist? Have they a trial by jury? Have they investigation before any competent and disinterested tribunal? At the best, have they any thing but the throwing of dice before one, two, three, four, five, six, twenty irresponsible cadis, here, there, and everywhere ~ They have not, said I. Is there any wrong so monstrous as not to have been perpetrated under color of Revenue Law? Does not your whole land reek with the infamy of your pre- tended seizures and real collusions? Do not your informers lose your government millions, that they may divide hundreds of thousands among themselves? That is the talk, said I; and I believe it. Is not your country being inclosed in one immense network of Black Mail, terrible to every body but those who manage the casts? Are not collector- ships and the like becoming the big things, as your people call them, of po- litical life, with more money in them than even seats in your Congress or stalls in your municipal stables ? I cannot deny it, said I. In a word, is not this awful incubus of yours demoralizing every body? President, Senators, Congressmen, public officers of every grade, whether appoint- ers or appointees? and, worst of all, THE PEOPLn themselves? It is, said I. And how dare you,then, little vil- lain that you are, come here and make gibberish and farce out of the destruc- tion of your country and the degrada- tion of your people? How dare you Stop! exclaimed Ifor I, too, was fired by the energy of the speaker Stop! You wrong me, sir. I yield to no man in the disgust I feel for these things. If I laughed, twas but in the bitterness of my souland is not such laughter stronger than tears? Is not the tinkle of the jesters bell more po- tent than the lamentations of Jeremiah? But, if you will have it, Woe to my country, Woe! I know it, because her People will forever be led unresisting by the meanest in the land; because, their grand prerogative of a Vote they yield up to the dictation of the all-but- criminal classes; because they really seem incapable of that about which ~hey are always pratingSelf-Govern- meat. Forgive me the grotesque, and believe that I have a heart for my na- tive land, as well as you. Blue and Buff gave me his hand. Each fell on the others breast. The old gentlemen slunk silently away. The sergeant-at-arms was nowhere. * * * * * * TmI MILLENNIUM. A SEA-VIEW. IN foamy curves along the amber sands Plash constant at my feet the unresting tides, And where stern headlands bulging creas~d sides Skirt leagues of desolate shore in sombre bands They clutch the dripping weed with futile hands. Far on her salty gale a mad gull rides, Firm on her glittering road a schooner glides, And stalwart from this cape the light-house stands Rock-rooted, and the same weird story charms, The same voice tells it, lonely ages through, Now raised in passion, sinking now to calm, And what it utters, no man ever knew, More than yon cedar dangling out of reach, Or dark-blue mussel twinkling on the beach. 230 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Feb. THE VENUS OF MILO. (vENus VICTRIX.) When I entered tor the last time that magnificent hail of the Louvre, where stands on her peddstal the ever-blessed goddess of beauty, our beloved Lady of Milo, the diva looked down on me with a face of mournful and tender eompassion.lIaxNascn ELaINE. GODDESS of dreams, mother of love and sorrow, Such sorrow as from loves fair promise flows, Such love as from loves martyrdom doth borrow That conquering calm which only sorrow knows. Venus, Madonna! so serene and tender, In thy calm after-bloom of life and love, More fair than when of old thy sea-born splendor Surprised the senses of Olympian Jove. Not these the lips that with empassioned plaining Poured subtle heats through Adons languid frame, Till, over cheek and brow, their kisses raining, Thrilled to his heart and turned its frost to flame. Thy soul transcending passions wild illusion, Its fantasy and fever and unrest, Broods tenderly in thoughts devout seclusion, Oer some lost love-dream lingering in thy breast. Thy face seems touched with pity for the anguish Of earths disconsolate and lonely hearts; For all the bra and loveless lives that languish In solitary homes and sordid marts: With pity for the faithlessness and feigning, The vain repentance and the long regret, The perfumed lamps in lonely chambers waning, The untouched fruits on golden salvers set: With pity for the patient watchers yearning Through lonely casements over midnight moors, Thrilled by the echo of far feet returning Through the blank darkness of the empty doors. With sorrow for the coy, sweet buds that cherish In virgin pride loves luxury of gloom, And in their fair unfolded beauty perish, Fading like flowers that knew not how to bloom: With sorrow for the over-blown pale roses That waste their perfumes on the wandering air: For all the penalties that life imposes On passions dream, on loves divine despair.

230 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Feb. THE VENUS OF MILO. (vENus VICTRIX.) When I entered tor the last time that magnificent hail of the Louvre, where stands on her peddstal the ever-blessed goddess of beauty, our beloved Lady of Milo, the diva looked down on me with a face of mournful and tender eompassion.lIaxNascn ELaINE. GODDESS of dreams, mother of love and sorrow, Such sorrow as from loves fair promise flows, Such love as from loves martyrdom doth borrow That conquering calm which only sorrow knows. Venus, Madonna! so serene and tender, In thy calm after-bloom of life and love, More fair than when of old thy sea-born splendor Surprised the senses of Olympian Jove. Not these the lips that with empassioned plaining Poured subtle heats through Adons languid frame, Till, over cheek and brow, their kisses raining, Thrilled to his heart and turned its frost to flame. Thy soul transcending passions wild illusion, Its fantasy and fever and unrest, Broods tenderly in thoughts devout seclusion, Oer some lost love-dream lingering in thy breast. Thy face seems touched with pity for the anguish Of earths disconsolate and lonely hearts; For all the bra and loveless lives that languish In solitary homes and sordid marts: With pity for the faithlessness and feigning, The vain repentance and the long regret, The perfumed lamps in lonely chambers waning, The untouched fruits on golden salvers set: With pity for the patient watchers yearning Through lonely casements over midnight moors, Thrilled by the echo of far feet returning Through the blank darkness of the empty doors. With sorrow for the coy, sweet buds that cherish In virgin pride loves luxury of gloom, And in their fair unfolded beauty perish, Fading like flowers that knew not how to bloom: With sorrow for the over-blown pale roses That waste their perfumes on the wandering air: For all the penalties that life imposes On passions dream, on loves divine despair. 2 691(cj Z~ 77~j1T 2U~7az yE~-~z7i& 6ree7z~l176 7~7S~ 77~ p 49 (7719 231 1808.] FITZ-GI~sENn HALLECK. 0 FITZ-GREENE HALLECK. WITH A PORTRAIT. HALLECK has gone, and with him how much of grace and tenderness and gentle courtesy, the attributes of his life, but tinged with a more expressive beauty as he approached the end of earth. In common with all of this generation, we have been familiar with his writings from our boyhood; but it was only of comparatively late years that we became acquainted with the man. Though ever attracted to him by the manly sentiment of his poetry, we were not aware, till we knew him personally, of the winning manner which he displayed in intercourse with his companions, and how ncquaintaiweship ripened into the warmest allegiance of friendship. In this, though unlike to him in many respects, he resembled Washington Irving, in a certain im- pressive force of character, a shrinking from all noisy pretences, a candid open- ness of disposition, blended with dig- nity of thought and feeling, a trustful leaning on others, in simple confidence, the most charming and pathetic quality of age. With these graces were united the delights of his ready conversation, pouring forth the rich treasures of ob- servation and reflection in anecdote and jest, and the rare refinements of a rest- less, forgetive intellect. Halleck, gladly as he welcomed the attention paid to his writings, would, we are confident, at any time have preferred the tribute of affection to admiration of his genius, ig indeed, the two could fairly be sepa- rated. As we stand by his grave, we think, as he would wish us to think, of the man before the author. We would endeavor, in this paper, to present some of these genial character- istics of his life and writings, with pas- sages from his letters, and such notices of his conversation as our memory and the assistance of several of his friends may enable us to recalL The career of Halleck, like that of most authors, though he was indeed hardly an author by profession, was a very simple one, with few remarkable incidents and ad- ventures. Intellectual pursuits are quiet and engrossing; they have their history, copious and fertile enough, if one has the vision to read the motive in the mind of the writer; but it is unobtrusive, sheltered in concealment and obscurity, and its study belongs to the critic and philosopher. The life of an author, in- deed, is generally best recorded in his writings. His acquisitions are in the world of ideas, and his adventures, for the most part, are his experiments in his various books, upon the taste of the public. A criticism of his productions, an analysis of the powers of his mind, is, therefore, his best biography. It happens, rarely, however, in America, that the few persons whom, in the higher sense of the word, she is privi- leged to call her authors, have not pur- sued some other occupation than that of literature. It is only in recent years that authorship has afforded a profit- able means of support, and the depend- ence is still inadequate and precarious. A few writers may live by the proceeds of their books, but they are the lucky exceptions to a general rule. Irving, in the better literature of the country, is, perhaps, the most favorable example of an author profiting by his writings; but he was a merchant, though an unsuccess- ful one, in his youth, and his resources in age were materially aided by his govern- ment employments. ?rescott is to be regarded as a man of wealth, independ- ently of his profitable books. The same may be said of Longfellow and of Ban- croft, who has besides held high official stations; while the historian, Motley, has probably been as well rewarded by the nation as by the booksellers. The poet Halleck was no exception to the rule. No American author, prob- ably, has been more sedulously devoted

231 1808.] FITZ-GI~sENn HALLECK. 0 FITZ-GREENE HALLECK. WITH A PORTRAIT. HALLECK has gone, and with him how much of grace and tenderness and gentle courtesy, the attributes of his life, but tinged with a more expressive beauty as he approached the end of earth. In common with all of this generation, we have been familiar with his writings from our boyhood; but it was only of comparatively late years that we became acquainted with the man. Though ever attracted to him by the manly sentiment of his poetry, we were not aware, till we knew him personally, of the winning manner which he displayed in intercourse with his companions, and how ncquaintaiweship ripened into the warmest allegiance of friendship. In this, though unlike to him in many respects, he resembled Washington Irving, in a certain im- pressive force of character, a shrinking from all noisy pretences, a candid open- ness of disposition, blended with dig- nity of thought and feeling, a trustful leaning on others, in simple confidence, the most charming and pathetic quality of age. With these graces were united the delights of his ready conversation, pouring forth the rich treasures of ob- servation and reflection in anecdote and jest, and the rare refinements of a rest- less, forgetive intellect. Halleck, gladly as he welcomed the attention paid to his writings, would, we are confident, at any time have preferred the tribute of affection to admiration of his genius, ig indeed, the two could fairly be sepa- rated. As we stand by his grave, we think, as he would wish us to think, of the man before the author. We would endeavor, in this paper, to present some of these genial character- istics of his life and writings, with pas- sages from his letters, and such notices of his conversation as our memory and the assistance of several of his friends may enable us to recalL The career of Halleck, like that of most authors, though he was indeed hardly an author by profession, was a very simple one, with few remarkable incidents and ad- ventures. Intellectual pursuits are quiet and engrossing; they have their history, copious and fertile enough, if one has the vision to read the motive in the mind of the writer; but it is unobtrusive, sheltered in concealment and obscurity, and its study belongs to the critic and philosopher. The life of an author, in- deed, is generally best recorded in his writings. His acquisitions are in the world of ideas, and his adventures, for the most part, are his experiments in his various books, upon the taste of the public. A criticism of his productions, an analysis of the powers of his mind, is, therefore, his best biography. It happens, rarely, however, in America, that the few persons whom, in the higher sense of the word, she is privi- leged to call her authors, have not pur- sued some other occupation than that of literature. It is only in recent years that authorship has afforded a profit- able means of support, and the depend- ence is still inadequate and precarious. A few writers may live by the proceeds of their books, but they are the lucky exceptions to a general rule. Irving, in the better literature of the country, is, perhaps, the most favorable example of an author profiting by his writings; but he was a merchant, though an unsuccess- ful one, in his youth, and his resources in age were materially aided by his govern- ment employments. ?rescott is to be regarded as a man of wealth, independ- ently of his profitable books. The same may be said of Longfellow and of Ban- croft, who has besides held high official stations; while the historian, Motley, has probably been as well rewarded by the nation as by the booksellers. The poet Halleck was no exception to the rule. No American author, prob- ably, has been more sedulously devoted 232 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Feb. to the pursuit of mental cultivation, or with better results to the public in the quality of his writings; yet he pur- chased the leisure of authorship by the surrender of a great portion of life to the uncongenial occupation of a bankers clerk; summing up the enormous wealth of others, contenting himself with airy poetic numbers. My works, said Charles Lamb, are certain ledgers in the India House: but a few essays which he wrote, when the drudgery of the day was over, will be bright in re- peated editions, long after the volumi- nous account-books have crumbled into dust. So Halleck might have referred the inquirer for his writings to a collection of manuscript folios, record- ing the business operations of the great- est landed estate in New York, while his compact volume of verses was cherished in the homes of taste and beauty wher- ever wit and music were appreciated. Fitz-Greene Halleck was born at Guil- ford, Cc~inecticut, July 8th, 1790. His father, Israel Halleck, who followed the calling of a tailor, was an emigrant from Dutchess County, New York. He died at Guilford in 1839, at the age of eighty-four; and is remembered in the village as a man fond of books, a great reader, of extraordinary memory, full of wit and anecdote, and of most cour- teous manners. The poets mother, Mary, daughter of Nathaniel Eliot, of Guilford, a lady of irreproachable worth, was a descendant of the Rev. John Eliot, the venerable Apostle of the Indians. She was married in her thirtieth year, and died in 1819, at the age of fifty-seven. So Halleck, by virtue of his parentage, was well entitled to the twofold citi- zenship which he afterwards enjoyed in New York and Connecticut. His child- hood, as may be supposed, was marked by his good conduct and intelligence; and the familiar incident is recalled, common to many of the New England pupils of his day, of the boy being sum- moned by the village schoolmaster to recite to visitors, in proof of proficiency, the famous little poetical speech, then something of a novelty, written by the versatile David Everett, beginning: Youd scarce expect one of my age To speak in public on the stage. Armed with this common school ~du- cation, and having already displayed an aptitude for verse, after a tempora- ry employment in a store in his native place, he came to the city of New York, about the age of eighteen; became there a clerk in the banking-house of the mem- orable financier, Jacob Barker; was, af- ter a few years, engaged for a short time, on his own account, in a general commis- sion business in the city; visited Great Britain and the Continent of Europe in 1822; and, after his return, was for more than twenty years occupied as an account- ant in the private real-estate office of John Jacob Astor; till, at the age of fifty-nine, he retired to pass the remain- ing eighteen years of his life in retire- ment at his birthplace. Thus, with the excepiion of the few dates of his poetical publications, may be recorded, in a sin- gle paragraph, the prominent events of Hallecks career. Hallecks first appearance in print as a poet, was as the author of some verses, written at the age of sixteen or seven- teen, which a friend at Guilford obtain- ed in manuscript and sent to Holt8 Go- lumbian, a newspaper in New York, in which they appeared with an editorial comment, to the effect: Many masters of the art would be proud of being the author of this production of a young apprentice,a compliment, which, as we have heard Mr. Halleck humorously remark, would have given him more lasting satisfaction had he not seen it repeated in the same stereotype phrase shortly after by the journalist, on the receipt of another copy of verses from another new contributor. We have met with no copy of this poem; but another,the second,~hich appeared in print, was revived a few years ago, though it has not been in- cluded, we believe, in any edition of the authors poems. It is entitled The Iron Grays; a martial effusion, a spir- ited camp-song, in honor of Swart- wouts gallant corps, celebrated in Fanny; a troop of volunteers, who, in 1814, came forward in defence of the 1808.1 FITZ-GREENE HALLEOX. 238 city in case it were attacked, which it was not; and among whose hundred and odd, rank and file, the author, as he tells us, had the honor of being mustered; the pay of each soldier during a three-months campaign being eight dollars per month, out of which he paid a little less than eight dollars per day for his share of the usess-table expenses. The sentiment of the verses, The Iron Grays, as in all of Hallecks po- etry, is sound; and, as usual with him, i1 is relieved from any suspicion of in- sipidity, by a playful touch of humor, as in the reference to the fame of its dar- ing chieftain: We twine the wreath of honor Around the warriors brow, Who, at his countrys altar, breathes The ife-devoting vow. And shall we to the Iron Grays The mood of praise deny, Who freely swore, in d. ugers day, For their n live land to die? For oer our bleeding country Neer towered a darker storm, Than base them round their gallant chief The iron phalanx forni. When first their banner waved in air, Invasions hands were nigh, And the battle-drum beat ton~ and loud, And the torch of war blazed high! Though stilt bright gleam their bayonets, Unstained with hostile 5ore, Far distant yet is Englands host, Unheard her cannons roar, Yet not in vain they hew to arms; It made the feeman know That. many a galtant tseart must bleed Ere freedoms star be tow. Guards of a nations destiny! high is that nations claim, For not unknown your spirit proud, Nor your daring chieftains name. Tis yours to shietd the dearest ties That bind to life the heart, That miuble with the earliest breath, And with our last depart. The angel-smite of beauty, What heart hut bounds to feel? Her fingers huckled on the belt That sheathes your gteami g steel; And if the soldiers honored death In battle be our doom, flier tears shalt bid the flowers be green That blossom round your tomb. Tread on the path of duty, Band of the patriot brave, rrepared to rush, at honors call, To glory or the grave. Nor hid your flag again be furled Tilt proud its eagles soar, Tilt the battle-drum has ceased to beat, And the war-torch burns no more I VOL. i.16 The next poem in order of date of which we have any notice, the earliest admitted into the poets collected writ- ings, Twilight, appeared in the Eve- ning Post in 1818. It is in a thoughtful vein of feeling befitting the theme. It was, however, in another walk of poetry that Halleck was to make his reputation. His mercantile or rather clerkly, life, was one of routine, without anxiety or hazardous responsibility. It afforded him a sufficient support, and left him free at all times to gratify leis passion for reading, and to cultivate the best society of the city, in which he was always welcomed. Coming at an early ane to New York, he at once identified himself with its interests and niental habits. It afforded themes for his verse; was the main region of his song; he loved its streets, its people, and its metrspolitan liberty, though he did not forget the scene of his birth ;for his lyre was never struck with a more cuatting hand, or gave forth sweeter strains, than in his poem, Connecticut. It was with civic top- ics, ltowever that his muse was first eno~aoed The incidents of city life no diverted him from the overpowering influence of the English poets, then in the ascendant, antI furnished fresh original themes for his peculiar vein. After he left the city, Ilalleck loved to return to it, when lie would wander throu0h its main thoroughfares, visit its places of ~amusement, and dwell upon its historic memt)ries. The gal- lery of the Historical Society was one of his haunts, where he saw on its walls, in the portraits of its early Inem- bers, long- departed personages whom he had embalmed in his playful ver- ses. Of the late President of the So- ciety, Mr. Bradish, he was a warm friend. An intimacy of more than forty years with that accomplished scholar an I gentleman, says lie, in one of his letters, has rendered his memory particularly dear to me. Ia these visits to New York, lie never for- got the cAd holiday of his youth, tha Fourth of July! When every citi- zen who could escape had fled from tho 234 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Feb. noise and tumult of that boisterous cele- bration, Halleck might be seen making his way in the throng, regardless of the tumult and the explosions. He liked, he said, the life of the scene. It was something in the spirit of the retired tallow-chandler, who came to town on melting days. In the spring of 1819, in conjunction with his friend, Joseph Rodman Drake,* a youth of exquisite poetic sensibility, and keenly alive to the humorous, he commenced and continued through the season the series of poems contributed to the Eveein9 Pchlt, known from the sig- nature attached to them, The Croak- ers. The thirty-five poems which ap- peared that year are pretty nearly di- vided between the poets. Two were their joint compositions: the verses To Mrs. Barnes, and the capital satiric po- em To Mr. Simpson, the manager of the Park Theatre, recommending an enlistment of the politicians in his corn- pans, and pointing out their parts: how nicely now would Spencer fit For Overreach and Bajazet; Van Buren, tricky, sly, and thin, Would make a noble Harlequin; Clinton would play King nick, the surly, The lcarned Pan0loss and grave Lord Bur- leigh; Woodworlh (whose name the muse shall hallow), Is quite at home in Justice Shallow; And efppery, smooth-faced Talimadge stands A Joseph Surface to your hands. Drakes lines have an easy flow, and are never pointless; but Hallecks are more concentrated in expression. To Drake we owe The American Fla~~in a glowing burst of inspiration; but Hal- leck gave it the four concluding lines * An anecdote, often related, assigns the first acquaintance of Halleck with Drake to an acci- dental encounter en the Battery; when, on a summer-afternoon, after a shower, Halleck, in the course of eonversntion with a friendon the delights of another world, fancifially exclaimed, it would be heaven to him to lounge upon the rainbow, which then spanned Ihe sky, and read the poet Campbell. Drake, who was standing by, caubht the expression with eharacteristic glee, and from that moment teok hlalleek to his heart. The scene did occur pretty much as usually related; but this was not the first meeting of the poets. They knew each other before. Dr. Dc Kay, the naturalist, the third per- son in this conference, having previously visited Guilford, brought a letter of introduction to hlalleck from his sister, and this led to the acquaintance with Drake, who was the brother-in-law of Dc Kay. Forever float that standard sheet! Where breathes the foe but falls before us? With Freedoms soil beneath our feet, And Freedoms banner streamin,, oer us! a splendid improvement on the pre- vious somewhat prosaic ending: And fixed as yonder orb divine, That saw thy bannered blaze unfurled, Shall thy proud stars resplendent shine, The guard and glory of the world. The Croakers, of course, made a sensation. Since the days of Salma- gundi tlsere had been nothing so witty to disturb the routine of com- mercial and political life. The game, too, was worth the candle, when the players had for their puppets such ce- lebrities as Andrew Jackson, Dc Witt Clinton, the omniscient Mitchill, Hosack, and Francis, of social fame, the stock actors of Silupson, Minshull, unsurpass- able in bathos, and immortal Lang- Statesman! Sage! and editor Of the New York Gazette. We might linger over these sparkling pages, and reproduce from tlseir mirth- ful chronicle the quaint life of New York half a century agono queerer, perhaps, than our own in these days of Wood and Hoffman. But we must hasten on, for we have yet much to say of the poet. A like inspiration which produced The Croakers, gave birth, before the end of the year, to Fanny, a serio- comic poem, with more of the satiric than the sentimental, written in a style which Lord Byron, following Frere (in Whistlecraft ), and Berni, the father of the race, had made fashionable in Beppo. Halleck caught the trick. He had already sketched his dramcstis per- 8Ofl~ in The Croakers; he now brought them on the scene in a body, revolving in the brilliant circle of fashionable life. Shoddy had not then a name in Webster; but the thing existed, and the poet, in the most delightful verse, show- ed how flimsy it all was. The poem meets the Horatian standard. It will charm on a tenth perusal. To the separate poems, which long composed the only acknowledged vol. nine of Mr. Hallecks writings, Ala 1868.] FITZ-GREENII HALLECK. 235 wick Castle, Marco Bozzaris, and the rest, it is hardly necessary to allude. They are familiar to every school-boy and school-girl in the land. They were so well received that Halleck, like Camp- bell, for a time afraid of the shadow of his reputation, refused to add oth- crs to the number, lest he should fall short of his own standard. After a long silence, however, in 1864 he ven- tured before the public with a poem, or rather group of poems, entitled Young America; which, if it did not increase, certainly did not diminish, his fame. It was his last appearance in print. Halleeks collected writings are, we believe, not much known in England, though particular poems are popularly current. When the poet visited Edin- burgh, he called at a bookstore for one of Scotts volumes, which the book- seller had not then at hand; but com- mended to his visitor, instead, a capi- tal Poem which had just been pub- lished at ~Greenock. It was a reprint of Hallecks Fanny. There were one or two translations of his verses with which he was pleased. Marco Boz- zaris was translated into modern Greek (in prose), by George D. Canale, a na- tive of Greece, and published at Boston in 1859, with a dedication to Washing- ton Irving. A French. author, M. De Chatelaine, translated, in verse, one or two of the poems, including, we think, Aluwick Castle, and forwarded them to the author by Mr. Bigelow, late Mm-, ister at Paris. While on his tour in Great Britain, ilalleck read in an English paper a poetical address To the Critics of England, which he had left behind him in manuscript, and which had found its way, in his absence, to a N~v York journal. Judging by a single stanza which the poet the last year recalled from memory, it must have been a sufficiently spirited reply to the Quarterly Reviewers of those days: Ye have dared us to battle, and twice h ye we met And beat you alike on tbe field and tbe main; And if your proud hearts are not satisfied yet, Sound your bugles, fire first, and well beat you again. We have alluded to the poem Con- necticut. The additional stanzas which the author published in 1852turning chiefly upon Cotton Mather, whom he makes the agent in an exhibition of the old and the new, the good and evil of the Puritan dispensationhave not, per- haps, coming as a sequel to a poem; the reputation of which was already estab- lished, attracted the attention which they deserved. They are thoroughly impressed with the peculiar character of the poet. No finer study of Mather has appeared; and certainly, alongside of the bitterest denunciation of evil doing, no more genial praise of the virtues of New England. How Hal- leck, with~all his city habits, loved the rural scenes of his birthplace, these and other verses witness. By the kind- ness of a friend of the poet,* we have the opportunity of presenting to our readers the following early, and hither- to unpublished, poem, by Halleck, on this theme: A FAREWELL TO CONNECTICUT. I turned a last look to my dear, native mountain, As the dim blush of sunset grew pale in the sky; All was still, save the music that leapt from the fountain, And the wave of the woods to the summer-winds sigh. Far around, the gray mist of the twilight was stealing, And the tints of the landscape had faded in blue, Ere my pale lip could murmur the accents of feeling, As it bade the fond scenes of my childhood adieu. Oh! mock not that pang, for my heart was retracing Past visions of happiness, sparkling and clear: My heart was still warm with a mothers embracing, My cheek was still wet with a fond sister1s tear. * Mr. C. Graham Tillon. 286 PuTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Feb. Like an infants first sleep on the lap of its niother, Were the days of my childhood -those days are no more; And my sorrows deep throb I had struggled to smother Was that infants wild cry, when its first sleep was oer. Years have gone by, and remembrance now covers, With the tinge of the moonbeam, the thoughts of that hour; Yet still in his day-dream the wanderer hovers Round the cottage he left, and its green woven bower. And Hope lingers near him, her wildest song breathing, And points to a future day, distant and dim, When the finger of sunset, its eglantine weaving, Shall brighten the home of his childhood for him. Happily for the bard. the vision of the closing lines was realized; and long years of retirement, friend to lifes de- cline, supported by the love and solici- tude of the fond sister to whom so beautiful an allusion is made, were in store to cheer in age the gentle heart of the poet. An interesting episode in the biblio- graphy of Mr. Ilalleeks poems, was the separate issue of a luxurious privately- printed edition of The Croakers, by the Bradford Club, in 1860; and of a similar costly edition of Fanny in 1866, projected and carried out by Mr. William L. Andrews, a merchant of New York, and admirer of the author. Halleck was much gratified with the attention of the Bradford Club; for no one was more sensible to, or valued high- er, the courtesies of life. A letter before us, addressed to Mr. C. C. Morean, one of the Club, whose admiration of the Ilalleck Poems had led him to prepare a costly illustrated copy of the work, by the insertion of engravings of portraits, and the scenery of the volume, has a humorous acknowledgment of the at- tention. I hasten (he. writes, May 24, 1853), to Leg you to accept my most grateful acknowledgments of the high compliment you have paid me in your collection of illustrations, proving, as it does, in a manner so flattering to me, a devotedness of your time an(l taste and treasure, that has given a real life-like existence to subjects of which my all- unworthy verses only dreamed. Hence forth I shall scorn the simplicity of print, and refer to your splendid volume in the pride of Priors chameleon, who, after borrowing beauty from the plumes of the peacock, strutted As if the rainbow were in tail Settled on him and his heirs male. The manuscript letters of Mr. Halleck to Mr. Andrews, from Guilford, relating to the preparation of the notes and the publication of Fanny, exhibit the strong interest which~ from his pecuni- ary necessities, as well as from that de- sire which governed him through life to appear to the best advantage with the public, the poet always displayed in all matters affecting the reception of his writings. The proposition made to him was to publish a limited edi- tion of the poemseventy copiesin a style of rare typographical excel- lenee; the copies to be disposed of to subscribers at a handsome price, and the entire profits to be given to the author. As no risk was assumed by Mr. Halleck, and this private edition in no way interfered with the regular sale of his Poems, while he was to have the free use, for other editions, of any notes he might furnish, it was cer- tainly a very pleasing and satisfactory method of at once gratifying a hobby, complimenting the author, and contrib- uting a welcome addition to his small annual income, it was so regarded by Mr. Halleck; and when the anticipated proceeds were sent to him in advance, and without regard to the subscription, he expressed his gratitude in the warm- est terms for the attention which had been paid him. At the outset, however, he seems to have looked upon the affair as simply a business transaction; and with a reasonable solicitude, directed 1868.] FLTZ-GIiEENE IIALLEcu. 23Z his attention to its prospects. Allow me, he writes, to address you a few lines, exclusively with an eye to busi- ness. When an Irish beggar in the streets of Dublin was told that the person from whom he was seen asking charity was Sir Walter Scott, the Great Poet, he said, the divil a bit of a poet is he, but a real gentleman, for he gave me half a crown. In order, therefore, that I who rank among the small poets may be allowed to pass now and then for a real gentleman, by having a half crown in my pocket, I should much like to know our prospects of making money by the work we have in hand, and when and to what amount I am to give a receipt for my share in the premises. It was a grateful relief doubtless, to he freed from all further agitation, by anecdote or otherwise, of the perplex- ing arithmetic of a publishers account. He had to look only to the correction of the press and the adjustment of the notes, which the additional years which had passed over the head of Fanny, who in 1821 was younger once than she is now, rendered neces- sary. He stickled for the old title-page, which he thought a great felicity. It must, as heretofore, read thus, without other addition: FANNY. A fairy vision Of some g~y creatures of the element, That ii the colors of Ihe rainbow live, And play iii the pli8hted couds. MiiToN, For, he writes, I esteem these lines, in their application to the heroes (if the poem, as the gem of the work. The wit to the authors eye, was in the non seq?.~itar, the glorious contrast of Mil- tons angels, and the rag, tag, and bob- tail of Tammany, and the other dra- matis personce of the book. The notes which were added to the poem were piquant and hricf; for Halieck reconnized in prose as well as verse the saving trllth brevity, the sotil of wit. An epithet, the mm of a phrase, or the felicity of a poetical quo- tationfew quoted like Haileckbe- trays the lurking jest. Thus, of Dr. Mitchill, whose open-hearted simplicity furnished a constant theme for his play- ful satire, he says, after a word of com- pliment in connection with 1-losack and Francis, he moreover had won the name of a philosopher by his frequent discoveries, more or less important, in geology and other conjectural sciences. Apropos to an early engraving of I)r. Mitchill, after Weavers drawing, he re- marked o~ e day, it had his simplicity, and recalled a perfect imitation of the man by Mathews, the actor, so that yon seemed to have the very Doctor before you, though the natural features of the two inca were in every way un- like. Lord Byron, he remarked, said of Mathexvs mimicries of this kicil, they were not imitations lint continu- ations. Halleck, at the same time, re- called an old story of Mitchill, whc.zh somehow escaped the pen of Dr. Fran- cis, in his inimitable sketch of the worthy Doctor. Meeting a gentleman of his acquaintance one day in the street, Mitchill was informed of a sin gular circumstance which had just hap- pened: a child had been born half black. Questioning his informer as to the fact, and dwelling on its remarkable nature, he went off with the declaration he must look into that, and a day or two after, called upon his friend for fur- ther particulars. What, he asked, was the color of the other half of the child? As black as the devil, was the reply. Of Bristed, whom he had quizzed rather unmercifully in the poem, he speaks handsomely. At first he had set him down as a lawyer; but doubt- ing or repenting oC this, he wrote to A udrews, correcting the note: I ant not sure that he ever was a lawyer, and do not wish to give an innocent man a bad name. Pauldiug was a third who had suf- fered from the vagaries of this sportive muse. lie is justly pronounced in the notes one of the best and most popu- tar of early American authors, who, after the publication of The Back- woodsman, rose or fell from literature to politics. The satire of Ilalleck ou 238 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Feb. the unequal verses of Paulding was severe; and Paulding was a very sensi- tive man, but he had too much respect for himself and the genius of his critic to let his brother-poets verses, at his expense, interfere with his appreciation of the man. Paulding, we have reason to know, entertained a cordial regard for Halleck, and lialleck spoke hon- estly when he commended Paulding, whose mental vigor and candor of op- position were after his own heart. So, when an opportunity offered in the ap- pearanceit is but a few months ago. of the memoir of Paulding by his son, he freely expressed his admiration in his private correspondence. In a letter to the present writer, lie says: I saw Mr. Paulding for the first time, I think, in 1813. He was then one of the literary lions of my admiration. In his after- life he honored me with his acquaint- ance and hospitality. I am very glad to learn that his collected writings are soon to~ appear. He had great powers as a writer, and great merit as a man. He thought clearly and bravely, and spoke as he thought. His two lines alluding to onr old Revolutionary sol- diers, wherein he says they Saved this good land, and hen the tug was oer Begged their way home at every scoundrels door, are a specimen of his manner of ex- pression when indignantly battling for the right against the wrong. To Mr. Paulding he wrote, acknowledging a copy of the Biography, A glance over its pages gladdens me with the view of many of my earliest literary favorites, especially of the one entitled The Idea of a True Patriot, which I remember admiring exceedingly on a first perusal, and now find well worthy of my continued admiration. It is, in thought and expression, peculiarly char- acteristic of its authors writings and conversation, lnaking, as it so pleas- antly does, the sportive playthings of irony and raillery powerful in the bat- tle of honest and honorahle indir~nation against dishonesty and dishonor. Another agreeable feature of this en- terp~riseof the private publication of Fanny was the engraving of an early miniature-portrait of the poet taken by the meritorious artist and citizen of iNew York, Nathaniel Rogers. At first, Mr. Halleck hesitated grasiting the use of the picture for the purpose. With reference to the miniature you men- tion, he wrote on the 9th of March, 1866, allow me to say that none of the graven imagery, heretofore made of me, have flattered my vanity by causing me or any one else to violate the second commandment; and that I am very deirous of not appearing in proprid jpersend in any manner in the volume, unless that, by doing so, I can render you a very essential service, which does not seem likely. Of course, the application was pressed; and the post immediately brought a favorable reply: . I forward, he wrote a few days after his previous note, the miniature to you to-day by express. You will find it but an unfinished sketch, interesting only with reference to the poem and the author, being a contemporary of the one (painted in 1820 or 1821), and, strange as it may seem to you now, reseml)liflg the other at the time it was painted. I hope that your artist will make his engraving the better picture and more flattering like- ness of the two, and thereby prove the superiority of his department of genius over that of the painter. The minia- ture was now entrusted to Mr. Charles Burt, the eminent bank-note engraver, who, pleased with the subject and with the opportunity of serving the poet, though pressed by other engagements, promptly gave his best powers to the work. The result was an etching of rare delicacy and beauty, preserving all the characteristic elegance of the origi- nalthe bright, happy expression, the air of hulnor and enjoymentwhich, spite of Mr. Hahlecks disclaimer~, have lent their attractions to his best por- trait representations in engraving after the paintings of Inman, Elliott, and, we may add, the pencil-drawing by Horatio Greenough, an engraving from which accompanies the present article. Hahleck, ever fastidious in such things, and candid in the expression of his 1868.1 FITZ-GREENE HALLECK. 23~ enjoyment, admired Burts engraving; but he was quite put out by the se- lection of a sowewhat faltering signa- ture which was inscribed on the print. If there was one thing more than an- other that he was particular about, it was his penmanship. He had a clerkly appreciation of a fair-hand writing; and always took especial pains, when he was applied to by the collectorswhich was very oftenfor his autograph, to pre- pare his manuscript with the greatest care. Even in age the light traces of his pen fine as the frosted tracery on the window-pane, or the track of the delicate-footed bird on the sandpre- served a certain characteristic elegance. It is not to be wondered at, then, that he pounced upon the unlucky, disjoint- ed signature a representation of his chirography to the publicin a piquant remonstrance in a letter acknowledging the receipt of the engraving. The only regret., he writes, I feel (there is, as has often & een said, no rose without a thorn ), is, that your engraver had not procured a better specimen of my auto- graph than that which so disfigures the plate. Where he could have found such a caricature, I cannot imagine. It gives, to my eye, a vulgar look to the picture, from which Its absence would have saved me. Should he wish his workmanship to appear to better advanta~,e, I shall be delighted to aid him by sending a better-looking signature for so good a purpose.~~ Halleek was sensitive in these ap- pearances. When the edition of The Croakers, by the Bradford Club, was issued with the engravings of himself and Drake at different periods of life, he sighed at the diversity. Here, says he, they have Drake, my contem- porary, in this work at twenty-four, and myself at fifty! This business, by the way, of the ap- peals of the autograph-seekers, while it did not displease him, was something of a pecuniary tax upon his limited resources. He liked the attention, and would always, we believe, endeavor to gratify a request of the kind. It was a voice to him in his solitude from the outer world, showing that he was not forgotten; for your autograph-collector is a keen hunter of celebritiesa mos- quito he has been called, but he de- lights to feed on good blood. Then, too, the application often came from the fair sex, and with Shakespeares Hermione, he held A ladys verily is As potent as a lords. So he was indulgent to the race, sent no churlish replies, nor shut his doer to the postman. But, said he one day, this thing is expensive. One must, besides the endeavor to say some- thing pretty, have good pens and good paper (he wouli have preferred gilt- ed~e), for your note is submitted to close inspection; elegance must be look- ed after, and then there is the return postage to pay. These outlays are trifling, but, often repeated, tlley come to quite a sum in the course of the year. Alas, that the purse of ilalleck, the p9et-accountant of this bank-note world, who had spent the best years of his life in reoistering millions, and had drawn for others such regal drafts upon the grand exchequer, Fancy, should be compelled to sigh at the cost of gratifying the whims of his admirers! The original miniature by Rogers, of wllich we have spoken, was pre- sented to Mr. Andrews by Mr. Hal- leek in a complimentary and touching epistle: for no one could confer or re- ceive a favor more gracefully. By the high compliment, lie writes, you have paid the miniature in deeming it worthy of being engraved at your own expcnse, you have anticipated the wish which I now hasten to expressthat you will add to the many obligations I have so long been grateful for, by accepting it as a small present from me, to be so placed as to recall me now and then to your remembrance. A kind-hearted bride, you know, always assures her husband that, for his dear sake, she prefers his simple bridal-ring to the expensive trousseau that other friends have presented her. Let me hope that you will be toward me equally civil and more sincere. I have the consohi 240 PttTNAM5 MAGAZINE. [Feb tion of knowing that, as relics of anti- quity, the miniature, the Poems, and their author, are becoming more and more valuable as they row older; and of trusting that they will long continue to find favor in your sight accordingly. Could this he more beautifully said? Not content with honoring the poet with the counterfeit presentment to accompany his verses, the friend to whom the poet entrusted them was de- sirous, after time-honored precedents, of giving also a view of his country- seat. A very respectable muster of this species of edifice, inhabited by the genius of our countrymen, was made, it will be remembered, a few years ago in Mr. Putnams Homes of American Authors; hut Hallecks did not then figure in the number. The new attempt to repair the omission was by no means successfdI; for, in truth, the plain vil- lage-abode of the poet was hardly pre- sentable among the in~posing, or at least picturesque, habitations of his more fortunate brethren. Ilalleck, with a keen eye to the incongruity, had no idea. of this glorification of poverty, and with his usual fancy, perhaps grimly sanilin~ as he wrote, penned this reply to the suggestion 1 am gratefully sensible of the compliment your propo- sition, as to the sketch, pays me; but you must partlon me for begging that it may not be carried into effect: for al- though born here in Connecticut, where, as Lord Byron says of England, men are proud to be, I shall never cease to hail, as the sailors say, from your good city of Pew York, of which a residence of more than forty years made me a citi- zen. There I always considered myself at home, and elsewhere but a visitor. If, therefore, you wish to embellish my poem with a view of my country-seat (it wa~ literally mine for every summer Sund~ y for years), let it he taken from the top of Weebawk lull, overlooking New York, to whose scenes and associ- ations the poem is almost exclusively devoted. If you would recall the real and ima- ginative interest of that resplendent scene. turn to the stanzas on Weehawken in the poem, and you will find pictured to the eye the wondrous combination, of which few great cities can boast, of the wildness and beauty of nature over- looking the sail-flown bay of New York and its long-extended vista of wealth and commerce. If you have looked forth in youth from those sylvan heights, hap- pily not yet a prey to the devouring metropolis, you may acknowledge with the poet, when life is 01(1, And many a scene forgot, the heart will hold Its memory of this. Halleek was at home at various points of the Weehawken Heights, from the southern aspect of that wonder of nature of our boyhood, The Devils Pulpit, looking down upon fields whilom not unaptly named Elysian, along the woods and glens of Bulls Ferry, the hos- pitable homes of the naturalists, Cooper and De Kay, frequented by the poet, over the road celebrated by Andre in the Cow Chase, to the revolutionary site of Fort Lee, where you fairly meet the Palisades of the Hudson. Halleck, with Sands, and Bryant, and Durand, and all the nature-loving tribe, knew every step of the way. If you would, however, in those past days be sure of finfling him, on any partThular sum- mer Sunday, you must look for him at a certain cottage at Bulls Ferry, where one might take ones case at ones 7, inn with assurance of the good cheer which not even a poet can dispense with. And thereby hangs a tale, which may be best narrated in the words of a friends memoranda lying before us. Many years ago, writes Mr. Richard B. Mount, an occasional companion of the poet in his hours of leisure, (in the corner of Thsmes and Temple streets, in the city of New York, stood an an- cient wooden ale-housethe ale is yet there, hut not the old housekept by one Reynolds, an oddity in character and manners. He had been a grave~ digger in the old Trinity yard opposite, and had married the daughter of the former proprietor, who was the Church sexton. This ale-house was in a se~ eluded, quiet spot, and may have been 1868.1 FITZ-GREENE HALLECK. 211 like the Mitre of Ben Jonson and Herrick. Halleck never forgot his land- lord in his retirement, but on every summers Sunday went to see his Mug on the Weehawken Hills, taking the steamboat at the foot of Spring-street. Many a time have I met him on the boat, full of smiles and glee, joking and chattering and enjoying. While on this savory theme of the poets haunts, when yet a citizen of Manhattan, we may draw upon Mr. Mounts pleasant memoranda for another glimpse of the social bard. About fif- teen years ago, an eccentric but learned and estimable physician from London, Doctor Eanks, who had roamed the world with more heart than pwhe, set- tled in this city, lived a few years, and (lied. him Halleck knew and loved to mcet. He imported directly from the London docks wine, in his estimation not to he bought here also various edible dainties. His sherry was a favor- ite with o~ar poet, and often have we three met at the old Doctors office to sip and talkthere were no coarse bac- chanalian bumpers there. This same old Banks was also a peripatetic, and I recollect his discovery of an ale-house at Brooklyn, where the English mistress was superior in her choice ot barn-yar(ls and their cooking. Halleck appreciated this, and told me that he often went there. Turning my steps thither one day, I met Halleck returning from the spot, redolent of its cheer. Anticipating my movement, he hailed me with some rollicking intimation of the crisping duck. I often endeavored to get him to dine with a few friends at the Uiion Club and elsewhere; but he invariably declined. This, however, was in U te years. I fincied that he was afraid of being called out for of this American propensity he had a horroror that ex- pectation would be aroused, a~ d the company disappointed. On occasion Il-lalleck, thou~h very rarely, succumbed to the entreaties of his friends. He yielded a point in honor of Burns, accepting the hospital- ity of the anniversary dinners given by the Scotchmen in commemoration of the hirthday of their great poet,his manly, feeling poem To a rose brought from near Alloway Kirk, justly enti- tling him to be free of time guild. His friend, Mr. Gulian C. Verplanek, also re- calls a special entertainment given to him at the Century Club, when Bryant presided, and the retiring Halleek, beg- ging to be excused from speaking on his legs, for then the brains ran to his heels, spo e very wittily and to the purpose, sitting in his chair. At the very time of his death a similar dinner was projected to come off at one of the his- tone inns of the city, in memory of the poets old haunts, where he would find himself at home, in which his friend Hackett, the Shakespearian actor, his keen appreciator, Frederick S. Cozzens, and Mr. Verplanek, were to participate. Halleck was not present at the Bryant Festival at the Century Club given in 1364, on the completion Qf the poets sev- entieth year; for he was confined to his house at Guilford by a temporary ill- ness; but he sent a cordial letter to the gathering, to assure Mr. Bryant that, nlthou~h far off in body, I shall be this cveninn near him in spirit, repeating the homage which with heart and voice and pen I have, during more than forty years of his threescore and ten, been delighted to pay him. We do not know that Halleck, more than most men, loved good cheer; but he was too genuine a poet in his anacre- onties to despise the generous vintage. There is a very pleasant letter which lie wrote to his friend. Barry Gray, on receipt of a presentation-copy of a coin- memoration volume by that writer and John Savage, in - raise of the great Tay- lor brewatre at Albany. The epistle is to be Ibund at length in that cheerful volume, Cakes amid Ale. We must be content with a characteristic paragraph. I have hitherto, playfully writes Hahleck, believed that Shakespeare, in the two lines from the experienced lips of tWit good jn1~c of time article, Chris- topher Sly, on his imaginary marriage- eve, namel i3rmn~ our lady hither to our smght, And, once a~ain, a pot of the smallest Ale, 242 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Feb. had anticipated all future eulogies upon the subject of your volume. How well he expresses the affinity between beer and beauty; between matrimony and mild ale, and the luxury enjoyed by the bride and bridegroom, when, as Corio- lanus says, their wedding-day is done and tapers burn to bedward, in blend- ing their hopes of happiness with a mug or two of XX, half and half, in one har- monious whole. It is well to link the memory of Hal- leck with these simple festive associa- tions. His province in life was by his verses to promote the cheerfulness of society, and divert the attention of a careworn race from over-devotion to the anxieties of a busy city. He had doubtless, like other men, his sorrows and his grievances ; but he digested them manfully at home, and gave his friends his best and krightest words. It may not be ~asy to convey to those who did not know him the impression of hi~ sparkling, animated look, the zest of his discourse, as his bright eye kindled and the expressive lines of his face wrinkled in unison as the mirthful jest came from his lips. As a wit, he would say sharp thingshis manliness found vent in this waybut he would sheathe a sarcasm in the most refined of compliments. He did not go about inflicting misery by lying in wait to utter bitter reproaches of his fellows; but if assumption came in his way, his rapier was out and the bladder pricl~ed on the instant. No sane man, I think, would have ventured the attempt to smoke or quiz him. As in his poet- ry, there was frequently a sharp anti- thesis in his conversation. It was safe not to trust too much to the flow of his compliments, but to look out for the sly parentheses and qualifications. He was lauding on one occasion the people of his native town. There are some three thousand of them, all well to do and industrious, not a pauper among them, and all can read and writenot that they ever do either. On another occasion, in- quiring concerning a young American author, he writes: I find myself fast becoming as ignorant of books and their writers as the President of a College or the Regent of a University. * This was the discriminating character of Hallecks humorinfusing a dash of sarcasm into the sentiment to keep it from spoiling. A man of sensibility and not ashamed to display it, he had none of the weakness of a sentimentalist. His jud~ments of the world and its ac- tions were sound and manly. He was an honest and an honorable man. It was true, he would play with a subject, and was given to paradox in conversa- tion: but this was mere intellectual sport, as in the maintenance of his mo- narchical theory in republica.n A merica and of the authority of the Roman Catholic Church. These were conve- nient pegs to hang his discourse upon, and promoted a certain healthy antag~ onism to the tyranny of majorities in the prevalent democracy and Protestan~- ism. Had he lived nnder a despotism or simply an aristocracy, he would, we think, have been the last to endure qui etly any cold shade repressing or ob- structing his individual freedom. He detested vulgarity in office. At the breaking out of the late war for the Union we met him in Broadway. The civilians, it was evident, were giving way to the men of the sword. Thank God! said he, we shall now be ruled by gentlemen ! But this argued in him no love of military despotism; and his talk of Romanism was doubtless quite as tricksy an indication of his real opinions. A word or two on this latter topic may not be out of place, since it has been confidently asserted in an obituary notice in a leading journal, that Mr. Hahleck entercd the communion of the * A genial costie of the poet, his friend Ms. James Lswson, long since noted this trait of Hal- leeks conveisatiots in an arltcle. lie delights to take that mde of a qLestien which is either unpop- ular, or bss the few mt supporters; and advecates it goner~1iy with eaaoet~, often with ingenuity, and always with eec1 tern ser. Yet if he meet en os- tentatious fool, he wPl sometimes leid him into a lahyrinth, and there leave him, bewildered in i~- sioranec; and sometimes Iso will hninor or defeap the quaint conceits of a man of genius, oredulons and sincere, and inwardly smile at his easy, unso- phisticated nature. 1868.] Flu-GREENE HALLECK. 248 Iloman Catholic Church. The facts in relation to his attendance on Church worship will be found set P)rth in an- other page of this Magazine, in a com- munication from the Rev. Dr. Bennett, the Rector of the Protestant Episcopal Church at Guilford. From this it ap- pears he was a parishioner of that Church and an attendant of no other; and that its Book of Common Prayer habitually engaged his attention in his private hours. But the evidence of his conversation on the Church of Rome we have heard that he at one time zeal- ously advocated the devotion paid to the Virgin Maryis still important; for it proves, if proof were needed on this point, that the gay versifler, the mirthfnl social satirist, was also a man capable of entertaining profound reli- gious emotions. If he became attached to any part of the worship of Rome, we may be sure it was solely to the poetic and spiritual influences to which that Church of 4he Ages, with all its materi- alism, never has beca insensible. It is a pleasing reminiscence of his friend, Gen. Wilson, that in his last visit to New York, a fortnight before his death, Halleck asked him to repeat to him Lady Nairnes pathetic poem, The Land o the Leal, when its recital brought tears to the eyes of the poet, who perhaps felt already his own near ness to the spiritual world. In one instance, and that rather an important one, fer his future comfort, it is said that Hallecks maintenance of a social paradox was somewhat at his own expense. In that playful spirit of humorous extravagance which at times characterized his conversation, he rallied his friend, John Jacob Astor, on his su- perfluous millions; and for the moment, carried away by a poets consciousness of the wealth of the imagination, as- serted that for himself two hundred dol- lars a-year was a sum sufficient for all the needs of life. Astor, so the story goes, remembered this, and, as a prac- tical joke, i0rt the poet by his will an annuity of precisely this amount! Hallecks conversational powers were of the first order, not in debate, but in sparkling suggestions, and, in his later years, with the privilege of age and in- fluenced by a partial deafness, a species of monologue. There was nothing te- dious, however, in his long-sustained talks. In rapid succession he huddled jest upon jest, linking anecdote to anec- dote, crossing by side avenues from topic to topicthe whole impressed with originality. He playfully ranked himself with President Lincoln in his acquaintance with Joe Miller, a copy of whose venerable jest-book, alluding to the antiquity of the best jokes, he said Noah undoubtedly had with him in the ark! But, if he had Joe Miller~ in his collection, it was to steer clear of him; there was nothing of that musty flavor in the good things of Halleck. His champagne-talk was fresh and sparkling, bubbling from the fount of his generous nature. For,indeed, whatever he spoke of, he had maturely considered; it was his own reading, his own observation, his own way of thinking. We never heard a talker who embroidered his discourse with more apposite stories or telling quotations. The passa~es we have given of his letters show his apt- ness in the latter; his language in con- versation was equally pointed and re- fined. Alternating solitude with society, his mind was refreshed with ideas and animated by repose. In these days of reminiscences, he should have written his recollections. We would then have had another poet to add to the list of eminent prose-writers. As we listened to him, we sighed that so many felicities should die away on the empty air. He would talk, among other topics, of the Napoleon era, of Junius (con- cerning whom he had his own theory), of Scott, of Moore, of Byron, of Words- worth, whom he had visited, of John Randolph, of Irvingall in an aneedot- ical way; and above all, of the elements and conditions of poetry. He was a rare critic, his welltrained perception catching, by an artists instinct, the nicest felicities of verse. No one had a finer ear for the harmonies of language. When his favorite authors were the subject of conversation ,he was thorough- 244 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Feb. ly at home, and might say of them with Wordsworth of his books: There find I personal themes, a plenteous store, Matter wherein right voluble Ii am. Voluble was indeed the word for his discourse; but the volubility was not, as is the ease with most fluent talkers pouring out their wordy paragraphs, a prolix dissertation; but the stream bore along the varied products of reading and reflection, a rare freight of interest- ing illustrations of life and character. We recall his enthusiasm as he recently recited, without faltering, the entire ode of Campbell on the retirement of John Kemble Pride of the British stage, A long and last adieu. On our pointing out to hiln the au- thors variations front the first edition, he said Campbell always altered 5for the better, Wordsworth often for the worse; instancing the change which the latter had made in the concluding stanza of Rob Roy. This reads in the early copies And, far and near, through vale and hill, Are faces that attest the same; And kindle, like afire new stirred, At sound of Rob Roys name. In the late editions the third line is changed to the proud heart flashing through the eyes. ilalleck then recit- ed pa sages of Campbells Hallowed Ground, which he justly considered one of his best poems. It was one of his latest, too. Burns last, also (he added), was his best. Talking of the new attempts in the revival of the hexameter measure by the translators of the day, he would repeat with feeling Southeys fine description of the scene from his cottage at Derwent- water, at the beginning of the Vision of Judgment Twas at lh. t sober hour when the light of day is reccdnm And from surrounding thngs the hues wherewith day has adoriid them Fade, like the hopes of youth, till the beauty of earth is departed. The conversation turning on Pope, we remember he spoke of his art of genius in surrounding himself by the best men of his times and using their faculties, getting learning from Arbuthnot, wit from Swift, and philosophy, such as it teas, from Bolingbroke. In corrobo- ration of this he cited the fine lines from the Epistle to Arbuthnot, dwell- ing upon the refined compliment to Swift in the word endured. Granville the polite, And knowing Walsh, would tell me I could write; Well-natured Garth inflamd svith early praise, And Gougreve lovd and Swift endured my lays; The courtly Talbot, Somers, Sheffield read, Een mitred Rochester would no(l the head, And St. Johns self (great J)rydens friend before), With open arms received one poet more. He then spoke of the strong head of Swift x ithout the wig, in Lord Orrerys book. Then the conversation somehow drifted to Shakespeare. What do you think, said he, of his Sonnets ? I dont think he wrote them. They are quite out of his straightforward charac- ter. Every thing that he wrote is direct- ly intelligible. We have heard of his maintaining with ellergy in his para- doxical way, supporting his position by a volley of citations of the eloquent passages of tlle poet, that Laertes was, after all, the character in Hamlet. If he were an actor, he would prefer him to Hamlet himself. He was a close student of Shakespeare, as, indeed, of what6ver he took in hand and had many curious remarks on the fertile tileme of his felicities of expression. Out, out, bricf candle, he would say; substitute any other word for that if you can. For an instance of ilnilgination in poetry, he cited tlle concluding line of the following passage from Goldsmiths Traveller, in the picture of Italy: When commerce proudly tlourishd thro the state, At her command the palace learnt to lie, Ag& n the lonufalln column sou~ht the skiss The canvas glowd, beyond ecu Nature warm, The ~regnent quarry teemed with h mess form. lie was fond of illustrating by examples from the classic Enulish poets this fus- ing power of the imagination in blend- illg act~.on with the thought, particular- ly citing the energy of Wordsworth in a celebrated passage of the Song at the Feast of Brouwham Castle, when Lord Clifford bursts front his retirement pro- 1868.] FITZ-GIIEENE HALLEOK. 245 vious to his restoration to his estates by the issue of war: Armor rustior in his halls 0 the blood of Clifford calls Quel the Scot, exclaims the Lance Bear me to the heart of France Is the lon1ring ef Ute shield. Talking once of the criterion of po- etry, he gave this familiar illustration of the subject. Draw your swords, said he, that is prose. Draw your seilling swords that is poetry. For his contemporaries in the field of literature in America he had always a generous regard. The tributes in his poems to Cooper, to Hillhouse, to ~y- ant, are among the best remembered passages of his muse. Of the historian, Prescott, he wrote to me in his witty fashion in 1864: I saw a good deal of Mr. Prescott when he was in New York in my time, and, I need not add, was deli0htecl with his acquaintance. The charm of his manner consisted in the absence of dignity, that owl- ike attri- bute which makes all our political great men, from a constable down to a member of Gongress, look so sublimely ridiculous. In conversation he talked readily an(l rapidly, almost always smiling and often laughing, and in his bright cheerfulness of look there was the playful simplicity of a child of nine years old. The Earl of Carlisle (then Lord Morpeth) used to speak of him here as of one of the best-mannered men he had ever known, and his Lordship by birth and breed- ing ought to he, and is, an excellent judge as well as exalnple of the char- acter. I find warm mention of Per- cmval in a letter which I received from him. in November, 1866: have you read the Life of Percival? It has a(lded greatly to my previous high opinion of his genius and acquirements. Had his career been run in Europe, especially on the Continent of Europe, he would have ranked among the ablest of 11cr learned and lettered men. Even here in America, where a geologist is the embodied won- der and wis4om of the hour, the man whom Sir Charles Lyell pronounced to be one of the most remarkable men he had ever seen, ought to be known and esteemed wherever Sir Charles himself 15. Regarding Percival, Mr. Halleck told an anecdote, which he subsequently com- municated in a letter to Professor Pow- icr, to be incorporated in that authors excellent biography of the poet recently published. After mentioning PercivaPs visit to New York, his acquaintance with him, which then sprung up, and his project of a volume of poems, 1-lal- leek continues: On Percivals return to New Haven, Mr. William L. Stone, then the editor of the Commercial Ad- vertiser, opened a correspondence with him referring to the desired volume, and offering his services in obtaining a pub- lisher, carrying the work through the press, & c., and for a time had reason to hope that his request would be granted; but after a delay of some weeks, Per- cival wrote him that circumstances had put it out of his power to devote him- self to poetry, and had compelled him to accept employment in that most de- grading and disgraceful of all occupa- tionsthe editorship of a party news- paper. As Mr. Stone had long and honorably held that position, and cher- ished it dearly as a source, not only of power and profit, but of social pleasure, the mat apropos ingenuousness ol the sensitive poet ainuseti us all exceedincr- ly, and no one more so than Mr. Stone himself. For Washington Irving, Ilalleck enter- tained aparticularregard. Ills Knick- erbocker he pronounced his best work, lie one day related to me, in his usual t~hrong. of anecdotes, an amus- ing one of Geoffrey Crayon. lie was, he said, once in company with Irving, John Jacob Astor, Gouverneur Kemnbie, Paulding, and other friends, at the hotel at West Point. An old gentleman, a Mr. Bradhury, of Boston, with whom Mr. Astor some time previously had dealings, was there with two daughters. In conversation with him at this renew- al of their intercourse, Mr. Astor said to him: You have the advantage of me in years? It is the only advantage, whispered Irving to lIalleck, the old gentleman would ever allow him. Mr. 24G PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Feb Astor then, asked after Mrs. Bradbury. Ab, she has been dead some time, was the reply, but I can introduce you to my two daughters. That reminds me,~ said Irving to Halleck in an aside, of a man who had invented a new mode of sweeping chimneys, which consisted in tying a string to the leg of a wild goose and drawing it up and down the chimney. When a lady objected to it on the ground of its cruelty, the inventor replied, If, madam, you have a fellow- feeling for the goose, a pair of ducks will do as well! * Irving, too, appreciated Halleck, and at the Booksellers Dinner at the City Hall, in New York, in 1837, when Geof- frey Crayon was somehow marvellously induced to be present with a wondrous array of authors, he toasted Hahleck, and produced from his pocket a letter, high- ly complimentary to the poet, which he had received the day before from the veteran author of The Pleasures of Menfory, to whom he had sent a copy of Alawick Castle and its fellow poems. t With some of the eminent foreign authors of the day he had not the full- est sympathy. He hardly appreciated Tennyson as warmly as might have been expected from his own skill in the melodies of verse. Tennyson, he said, was too feminine, Mrs. Brown- ing too masculine, which, with just enough of truth to point the saying, * living improved this story, which, subsequently to Mr. Hallecks narration of it, we found in one of the volumes of the interesting traveller, Dr. John Moore. There the reply of the projector to the I dy is given: If you think my method cruel to the goose, a couple of ducks will do. Thd happy snhstitution of a fellow-feeling for the goose ap- pears to be Irvings, or Hallecks. With Mr. [lallecks Poems, wrote Rogers, I was already acquaintedparticularly with the two first in the volume; and I cannot say bow much I admired them always. They are better than any thing we can do just now on our side of the Atlantic. I hope he will not be idle, but con- tinue long to delight us. When he comes here again, he must not content himself with looking on the outside of my house, as I am told he did once, but knock and ring and ask for me, as for an old ac- quaintance. I should say, indeed, if I am here to he found; for if he -or you, my dear friend, delay your coming much longer, I shall have no hope of seeing either of you on this side of the grave. was doing injustice to both. Browning we suppose he never read. If he had attacked Sordello, we pre- sume he would have found himself in the position of Douglas Jerrold when the work fell into his hands in his cossvales- cence after a fit of sickness. Take that book, said he to his wife, when he had made an ineffectual attempt at its coul- prehension, see what you can make of it. When she brought it back, with the declaration that she couldnt understand a word of it, Thank God, exclaimed Jerrold, Im not insane. I thought my mind was gone. Halleck, we may yen- tube to say, had. 110 regard for the unin- telligible.* Less perplexing writers thall Browning mystified him. To the lady- authors he was considerate. He spoke heartily of Mrs. Jamesons conversational powers on her visit to this country, and the excellence of her Shakespeare Char- acters and early booksin fact, all are goodin an independent and free- and-easy manner. Lockhart he thought the strongest of the Edinburg set of inagazinists and reviewers; and would tell with glee how Ilogg was quizzed by him on go- ing to London. The Ettrick Shepherd asked Lockhart which was tlle best inn in the great metropolis. Why, Fur- nivalls Inn, to be sure. So Hogg went on a fools errand to knock up tile old Benchers with his portmanteau. He was much taken with Hoggs getting over certain unfriendly criticisms which he had written qf Miss Landon, in his introduction to the gentle poetess, gaz- ing at her and breaking out with the exclamation, I did not think you were sae bonny. This, Halleck said he had made good use of, in turning it over to various ladies of his acquaintance. ~ With the proof-sheets of this article before us, we have received the number of Frank Leslies 11- lusfratcd Newspaper for January 4, containing Some Itemiuscences of Iitz-Greene Halieck by Joel lienton. The notices of this poets conversa- tions are of interest, and confirm our own recol- lections. Mr. nenton note. Ilallecks admiration of Prior, whom he tbou,,ht greatly neglected. It seems from this paper that Halleck did, upon so- licitation, what we only imagined in our article, attempt Sordello; and the result was what we supposed it would have been. 1868.] FITZ-GREENE HALLEOK. 24? Ilalleck had a number of anecdotes of the ruling passion and of professional egotism; among others, Wilson, the English landscape-artist, saying of Lord Lyudhurst, whom he knew as a boy in the studio of his father Copley, on be- ing told of his elevation as Lord Chan- cellor, Ah! I never thought he had taleut to be a painter! This he cou- pled with a story of Catalanis visit to Germany, and her question, in reply to a proposed introduction to Goethe, What instrument does he play upon I As an ardent lover of the literature of his mother-tongue, Halleck was a jealous guardian of the purity of the language, with the gentlemanly con- tempt of a scholar and man of taste for certain odious corruptions of expression which were creeping in through the newspapers, not without aid from the negligence of established authors. When he learnt, some time last year, of the in- tention of his friend, Mr. Edward S. Gould, to bppose this tide of innovation by the publication of his work devoted to the subject entitled Good English, he wrote, in reply to a suggestion in the matter, I should be happy to aid Mr. G. in his task of keeping the well of English undefiled, and will recall some of my old antipathies. I beg him to doom, as Sir Walter Scotts favorite seven-years old girl used to say, to unquestionable fire, the follow- ing: in our midst, in this connection, going to Europe on a steamboat, writ- ing a letter on Chambers street and de- livering it on Fifth avenue, heing men- tioned on the Ti~he3 newspaper, our Father who art on Heaven, omitting the the before the name of the Reverend Mr. Spurgeon, & c., & c. Years before, I received another letter from Mr. Hal- leek, commenting on some of these very points, the denial to the Honorable John Smith of the benefit of the definite article, the admission of that vile new- born and ill-bred phrase, in our midst, and that newer and still more ill-bred pl~rase, in this connection. Like Shy- lock (he added), I have but few anti- pathies; but like Tony Lumpkins com panion the Barnum of his time who kept a dancing bear I cannot bear any thing thats low. Poetical immortality, he once de- fined to a friend, having every body quote you in some particular line. If this be the test, his reputation is well secured by such verses, familiar in our mouths as household words, as the ap- peal of Bozzaris: Striketill the last armed foe expires; Strikefor your altars and your fires; Strikefor the green graves of your sires God and your native land. Or that picture of death in the same poem: The tear, The oan, the knell, the pall, the hier. Or its closing lines, in which a friendly critic detected two palpable absurdities, but whiell have the knack of living on: One of the few, the immortal names, That were not horn to die. Or,in another vein, their opposite: Thy name is written on The roll of common men. Or in that eulogy of Burns: And his that music to whose tone The common pulse of man keeps time. Or that battle in a stanza, fought by Stark of Bennington: We must heat them hoys, ere set of sun, Or Mary Starks a widow. It was done. Or that incoalparable deathless dirge at the grave of his friend Drake, inscribed on so many hearts since, and to be in- scribed on so many in days to come: Green he the turf above thee, Friend of my hatter days l None knew thee hut to love thee, Nor named thee bet to praise. Verily, if Halleck had written but the last two lines, his muse would have met his requisition for immortality. Let them be also written on his own tomb, his best and truest epitaph. 248 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Feb. THE OUTCAST. HER sympathies are yours and mine, Her heart is full of human love, Her tastes, in spite of tinsel shine, Do nought against her nature prove; Not less her pity is than ours, Nor are her joys an idle jest; Sharp are the thorns beneath the flowers She clasps unto her womans breast. She came into her life of blame, Like us, in helplessness of grace; Unconsciously received her name, Unconsciously assumed her place; Blessed with maternal care or cursed With povertys neglect, she rose Through years gradation, and rehearsed 11cr future of allotted woes. It was not if she could or would; She took her fate, like us, on trust; Her follies are no natural mood, Nor does she choose for jewels, dust; For had she chosen, well we know Her life had l)een our counte part, With more perhaps than we bestow In sympathies of mind and heart. The glances of her evil eyes On us pass judgment none the less Than we, who walk in saintly guise, Condemning what we only guess. Where we discern a gulf between, She sees a simple line of chance, And holds that we like her had been, But for the chain of circumstance. The stars that guard the lovers talk Are not more chaste with holy light, Than when they guide h~r wayward walk Through the waste places of the night; And she and we beneath their rays Reason the same, or reason not, And misinterpret others ways To make our own the happier lot. And which of us the saints shall say Shes wholly wrong nor partly right; Or who, beneath that painted clay, Pronounce there is no blamele~s white? Then cast not at her stones of pride, Low-stooping from our height above; But, moving humbly at her side, Lift up her life with saving love.

248 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Feb. THE OUTCAST. HER sympathies are yours and mine, Her heart is full of human love, Her tastes, in spite of tinsel shine, Do nought against her nature prove; Not less her pity is than ours, Nor are her joys an idle jest; Sharp are the thorns beneath the flowers She clasps unto her womans breast. She came into her life of blame, Like us, in helplessness of grace; Unconsciously received her name, Unconsciously assumed her place; Blessed with maternal care or cursed With povertys neglect, she rose Through years gradation, and rehearsed 11cr future of allotted woes. It was not if she could or would; She took her fate, like us, on trust; Her follies are no natural mood, Nor does she choose for jewels, dust; For had she chosen, well we know Her life had l)een our counte part, With more perhaps than we bestow In sympathies of mind and heart. The glances of her evil eyes On us pass judgment none the less Than we, who walk in saintly guise, Condemning what we only guess. Where we discern a gulf between, She sees a simple line of chance, And holds that we like her had been, But for the chain of circumstance. The stars that guard the lovers talk Are not more chaste with holy light, Than when they guide h~r wayward walk Through the waste places of the night; And she and we beneath their rays Reason the same, or reason not, And misinterpret others ways To make our own the happier lot. And which of us the saints shall say Shes wholly wrong nor partly right; Or who, beneath that painted clay, Pronounce there is no blamele~s white? Then cast not at her stones of pride, Low-stooping from our height above; But, moving humbly at her side, Lift up her life with saving love. 1868.1 MONTHLY Cnnoi~icr~. 249 MONTHLY CHRONICLE. CURRENT EVENTS. UNITED STATES. THE Adjourned Session of Congress, which met on Nov. 21st, was principally remarkable for the report of the majority of the Judi- ciary Committee in favor of the impeachment of President Johnson for high crimes and misdemeanors. The majority report is signed by five members, Boutwell, Williams, Thom- as, Lawrence, and Churchill, and concurred in by Marshall and Eldridge, and the minor- ity report is signed by two, Wilson and Wood- bridge. The change of several members who during the July session opposed impeach- ment, and the consequent report of a major- ity in its favor, caused a temporary flutter of excitement in Congress, but it was soon well understood that this change did not reflect the sense of the House, and that the project would be killed on a vote. The report of the majority chaiged the President mainly with usurpation of the powers of Congress in his efforts to reconstruct the Southern States. The testimony published by them went to prove other charges, viz.: improperly allow- ing his pardons and official patronage to be sold by Mrs. Cobb and other women of doubt- ful character; insulting language toward Con- gress in public speeches; intoxication; cor- ruptly pardoning 192 convicted deserters from the U. S. army, who had forfeited their pay and right to vote, in order that they might vote at an election in Pennsylvania within a few days after the pardon. Very much of the testimony was taken up with evidence of the return of property to South- ern rebels, and contained no implication of culpability. On the whole, the evidence pre- sented was a disappointment, inasmuch as the real offences of the President were his public acts, known to all men, and not any secret matters which needed testimony to throw new light upon. What he had done, however unpopular at the time, had grown stale by long keeping, and appeared even. frivolous when subjected to the tests of a ju- dicial examination. Among the first business of the subsequent session was the close of the impeachment question on December 8th, 67, by the vote of the House rejecting the resolutions of impeachment proposed by the Committee, by the decisive vote of 105 to VOL. i.17 57, a majority of the Republican members, and all the Democrats, voting against im- peachment. President Johnsons Annual Message, at the opening of the present session of Congress, was devoted to four topics, Reconstruction, the Tenure of Civil Office Bill, our National Finances, and Foreign Affairs. About half the message was occupied with Reconstruc- tion. He argued that the main obHacle to reconstruction is the Reconstruction law passed by Congress; that the lately rebel communities are profoundly desirous to re- enter the Union; and that the 6nly party who is now violating the Constitution, by keep- ing them out, is Congress itself. He in- veighed with intense bitterness against the acts of Congress extending the right of suf- frage to the black race, claiming that they are unconstitutional, nnd tend to throw the political power of the South and of the Union into the hands of the blacks. He did not designate what clause of the Constitution in his judgment restrained Congress from allow- ing black men to vote; nor did he show by what clause of that document he was himself permitted to declare, as he had done, by proc- lamation, who should or should not vote, to the exclusion of any power in the legislative branch of the Government to do the same thing by law. In commenting on the Civil Tenure Bill, he argued that it prevented him from making those removals which are neces- sary to preserve honesty among officials. In his comments on the Finances, he adopted gen- erally the views of Mr. MeCulloch. In treat- ing of Foreign Affairs, he recommended the sanction of the treaty for the purchase of the island of St. Thomas, and s& me settlement of the conflict between our own laws of natu- ralization and the laws of foreign powers holding their citizens under perpetual alle- giance despite Their naturi~lization in the United States. The Report of the Secretary of the Treas- ury was looked to with much interest, as none of the questions before Congress wonld be regarded with so much anxiety as the great financial problems, how to lessen and equalizs taxation, how to fund the debt at the lowest rate of interest, how to return to specie pay-

1868.1 MONTHLY Cnnoi~icr~. 249 MONTHLY CHRONICLE. CURRENT EVENTS. UNITED STATES. THE Adjourned Session of Congress, which met on Nov. 21st, was principally remarkable for the report of the majority of the Judi- ciary Committee in favor of the impeachment of President Johnson for high crimes and misdemeanors. The majority report is signed by five members, Boutwell, Williams, Thom- as, Lawrence, and Churchill, and concurred in by Marshall and Eldridge, and the minor- ity report is signed by two, Wilson and Wood- bridge. The change of several members who during the July session opposed impeach- ment, and the consequent report of a major- ity in its favor, caused a temporary flutter of excitement in Congress, but it was soon well understood that this change did not reflect the sense of the House, and that the project would be killed on a vote. The report of the majority chaiged the President mainly with usurpation of the powers of Congress in his efforts to reconstruct the Southern States. The testimony published by them went to prove other charges, viz.: improperly allow- ing his pardons and official patronage to be sold by Mrs. Cobb and other women of doubt- ful character; insulting language toward Con- gress in public speeches; intoxication; cor- ruptly pardoning 192 convicted deserters from the U. S. army, who had forfeited their pay and right to vote, in order that they might vote at an election in Pennsylvania within a few days after the pardon. Very much of the testimony was taken up with evidence of the return of property to South- ern rebels, and contained no implication of culpability. On the whole, the evidence pre- sented was a disappointment, inasmuch as the real offences of the President were his public acts, known to all men, and not any secret matters which needed testimony to throw new light upon. What he had done, however unpopular at the time, had grown stale by long keeping, and appeared even. frivolous when subjected to the tests of a ju- dicial examination. Among the first business of the subsequent session was the close of the impeachment question on December 8th, 67, by the vote of the House rejecting the resolutions of impeachment proposed by the Committee, by the decisive vote of 105 to VOL. i.17 57, a majority of the Republican members, and all the Democrats, voting against im- peachment. President Johnsons Annual Message, at the opening of the present session of Congress, was devoted to four topics, Reconstruction, the Tenure of Civil Office Bill, our National Finances, and Foreign Affairs. About half the message was occupied with Reconstruc- tion. He argued that the main obHacle to reconstruction is the Reconstruction law passed by Congress; that the lately rebel communities are profoundly desirous to re- enter the Union; and that the 6nly party who is now violating the Constitution, by keep- ing them out, is Congress itself. He in- veighed with intense bitterness against the acts of Congress extending the right of suf- frage to the black race, claiming that they are unconstitutional, nnd tend to throw the political power of the South and of the Union into the hands of the blacks. He did not designate what clause of the Constitution in his judgment restrained Congress from allow- ing black men to vote; nor did he show by what clause of that document he was himself permitted to declare, as he had done, by proc- lamation, who should or should not vote, to the exclusion of any power in the legislative branch of the Government to do the same thing by law. In commenting on the Civil Tenure Bill, he argued that it prevented him from making those removals which are neces- sary to preserve honesty among officials. In his comments on the Finances, he adopted gen- erally the views of Mr. MeCulloch. In treat- ing of Foreign Affairs, he recommended the sanction of the treaty for the purchase of the island of St. Thomas, and s& me settlement of the conflict between our own laws of natu- ralization and the laws of foreign powers holding their citizens under perpetual alle- giance despite Their naturi~lization in the United States. The Report of the Secretary of the Treas- ury was looked to with much interest, as none of the questions before Congress wonld be regarded with so much anxiety as the great financial problems, how to lessen and equalizs taxation, how to fund the debt at the lowest rate of interest, how to return to specie pay- 250 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Feb ments and secure the most stable currency, and how to recover the prostrated condition of our general industry, and especially of manufactures, mining, and occupations em- ploying a great deal of labor. The Secretary states that the debt reached its highest point on 31st August, 1865, when it amounted to $2,757,689,57 1.43, of which $684,138,959 were legal tenders, mostly circulating as cur- rency. Since the first day of September, 1865, the temporary loans, the certificates of indebtedness, and the five per cent. notes have all been paid (with the exception of small amounts of each not presented for pay. ment) ; the compound-interest notes have been reduced from $217,024,160 to $71,875,040 ($11,560,000 having been taken up with three per cent. certificates); the seven and three- tenth notes from $830,000,000 to $337,978,- 800; the United States notes, including frac- tional currency, from $459,505,311.51 to $387,871,477.39; while the cash in the Treas- ury has been increased from $88,218,055.13 to $133,998,398.02, and the funded debt has been increased $686,584,800. While this has been accomplished there has been no comnercial crisis, and (outside of the South- ern States, which are still greatly suffering from the effects of the war and the unsettled state of their industrial interests and political affairs) no considerable financial embarrass- ment. The Secretary estimates the receipts for the next fiscal year, ending June 30, 1869, at $381,000,000 and the expenditures at 372,000,000 leaving a surplus of only 9,000,000 The Secretarys estimates of receipts have usually been lower and of expenditures high- er than the result. The remainder of the Secretarys very long report is entirely devo- ted to the advocacy of the policy of funding the interest-bearing notes, contracting the paper currency, paying the principal of the public debt in gold, and speedy reconstruc- tion. He contended that the legal-tender notes are an obstacle to the resumption of specie payments; that the National Banking System could ~not be at present dispensed with; that we need a high tariff for revenue; that the present tariff has not proved protec- five to manufactures, but has yielded far more revenue than was expected, and favors spe- cific to ad valorem duties. Our ship-building interests are prostrate, and the Secretary rec- ommends the removal of all restrictions on the registration of foreign-built vessels, so that, since we cannot afford to build vessels, we may buy them as cheaply as possible. To avoid the objection extensively made to the exemption of the National Bonds from taxa- tion by local authorities, the Secretary recom- mends the consolidation of the debt into a six per cent. loan, one sixth part of the inter- est, or one per cent., to be reserved by the Government and divided among the States according to population. As the State taxes now average somewhat more than one per cent., this would net nearly the same pecuniary result to the States as if they were allowed to tax the bonds. The Report of the Secretary of the Navy states that during the year the navy has been reduced 40 vessels and 482 guns. Our total number of vessels is 238, carrying 1,869 guns and employing 11,900 men. The appropria- tions for the current fiscal year, 1868, were $103,465,754, of which $65,000,000 were not expended, but were carried to the surplus fund of the treasury, leaving available for the year, $38,465,754. The estimated expense for the next year is $47,317,183. There are 2,478 pensioners, receiving pensions amount- ing to 319,828. The experiments for using petroleum as a fuel in the navy have resulted unfavorably. The Report of the Secretary of the Inte- rior relates principally to pensions, patents, Indian affairs, the Pacific Railroad, and public buildings of the United States. The last sol- dier of the Revolution died since the last Re- port. There are still 997 widows of such soldiers on the rolls. There are 1,310 pen- sioners of wars subsequent to the Revolution and prior to the Rebellion. The total army- pensions from the Rebellion are 153,093, costing annually $16,142,079. During the year ending Sept. 30,1867, there were 16,547 applications for patents; 11,665 patents were issued. The Government has accepted 490 miles of the Union Pacific Railway. The total cost of construction to Oct. 1st was $21,757,488. Its receipts were $1,015,195 expenses $658,880, leaving net profits of run- ning, $350,314. The net profit of the Central Pacific (California) branch of the road was $1,550,696. The Report of the Secretary of War, ad interim, states a gratifying progress in re- trenchment. The total strength of the army is 56,500; recruits 34,000; desertions 13,- 000. There are no volunteers remaining in ser- vice except about 200 commissioned officers. Eleven thousand accounts, amounting to $400,000,000, have been settled, leaving claims amounting to $47,000,000 unsettled. 1868.] MONTHLY CHRONICLE. 251 Three hundred cemeteries have been opened, of which 80 are nationaL In these, 300,000 soldiers have been buried. About 76,000 bodies still remain to be removed and in- terred. Fifty thousand stand of arms have been changed into breech-loaders. The esti- mates for the coming year amount to $77,- 000,000. Gen. Sherman recommends the employment of Indians in the military ser- vice. The Report of the Comptroller of the Currency showed 1,673 National Banks, of which 34 had closed and 1,639 were still in operation. Total capital paid in, $424,394,- 861. Total bonds on deposit, $340,675,000. Total circulation, $299,103,996. The circu- lation of the Banks which have failed will be paid in full, and the bonds deposited will still leave a considerable surplus~ The Comp- troller recommends a provision for redeeming the notes of National Banks. At present there is no demand for their redemption, but it would be healthier if there were. He thinks the excessive taxes levied on the capi- tal invested in National Banking are collected from the people in the form of usury, and should th& efore be remitted. The Comp- troller then shows that the Banks pay the Federal and State Governments, in various ways, $5,500,000 per annum more than the Government pays the Banks, end that to abolish them and substitute greenbacks for their notes, would be a direct loss to the peo- ple of that amount. The Report states the total paper currency of the United States at $665,000,000, and estimates the gold now in the country at $300,000,000. The Commissioner of the Land Office re- ports that the aggregate of public lands, exclusive of the Russian purchase, is 1,465,-, 468,800 acres, of which 7,041,115 were dis- posed of by sale, land-warrants under the homestead law, etc., during the past year. The quantity of public lands already granted to the Railroads exceeds by more than five millions of acres the entire areas of New Eng- land, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia. The completion of the Pacific Railroad will place New York within twenty-six days travel of Japan, bringing New York nearer to the Asiatic ports than London, even with the Suez canal. Within the time prescribed by the Ten- ure of Civil Office Bill the President sent into Congress a special message explaining the reasons for the suspension of Secretary Stan- ton; namely, first, that Mr. Stanton had re fused to resign when requested to do so, and justified his claim to retain his office until Congress should meet by considerations of public necessity, thereby implying that the country was in danger from the President; that Mr. Stanton while in the Cabinet had taken strong grounds against the constitu- tionality of the Act under which he after- ward claimed to retain his office. lie also stated that Mr. Stanton had failed to for- ward to him a telegram from Gen. Baird relative to the New Orleans riot. He made no allusion to the political reasons for which some had supposed Mr. Stanton was re- moved. The purchase of Alaska, alies Walrussia, from Russia by the United States, for $7,000,- 000 in gold, negotiated by Mr. Seward and confirmed by the Senate, still awaits the ac- tion of the House of Representatives, without whose appropriations the price cannot be paid. Although the President and Senate form exclusively the treaty-making power, it does not yet appear that, if by treaty they make purchases involving heavy appropria- tions, the House is bound to ratify their ac- tion. The Presidents treaty and recom- mendation for the purchase of St. Thomas, for $7,200,000, still awaits ratification by the Senate. Mr. Seward will urge it with great persistence, but the pressure for retrench- ment has already raised a formidable oppos- tion to these acquisitions in both Houses. The city election held in New York on December 3d, resulted as follows: Total registry, 134,444. Total vote for Mayor, 104,325. Darling (Rep.), 18,465; Hoffman (Tammany Dem.), 63,030; Wood (Mozart Dem.), 22,830. Gen. Hancocks order of Dec. 5, re.vok- ing Gen. Sheridans order issued in August last, requiring jurors to be drawn from the whole number of registered voters, including blacks, was made the occasion of a message by the President to Congress on the 18th day of December commending Gen. Hancock as the first district commander who has sought to subordinate the military to the civil au- thority. The reception of the message in Congress was not complimentary to the Pres- ident. The Alabama Convention has closed by adopting a Constitution, of which the only peculiarities were an exclusively elective ju- diciary and a suffrage clause, which, in addi- tion to those excluded from voting by the Reconstruction Acts of Congress, excludes all who refused to recognize all men as entitled 252 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Feb. to equal political rights without distinction of color or former condition. The Conven- tion of Louisiana, during the first twenty-six days session, has adopted but two sections of the new Constitution. The Georgia Conven- tion is still in session. General Grant was nominated for the Presidency on the platform of his merits as a general and his official record, on December 4th, nit., by a very large meeting of the rich men of New York, headed by A. T. Stewart, Win. B. Astor, Hamilton Fish, Moses Taylor, Cornelius Vanderbilt, F. B. Cutting, Jacob A. Westervelt, Peter Cooper, James Brown, and Moses H. Grinnell. The principal speech was made by Gen. Daniel E. Sickles, who declared the universal suffrage policy of Congress ir- reversible. The late election in the New York Cen- tral Railroad Company resulted in the choice of Cornelius Vanderbilt as President, and the virtual identification of the interests of the Central with the Hudson River and Harlem. The peculiarity of Mr. Vanderbilts railroad management, and the secret of his great suc- cess in the Harlem, is that, instead of seeking to make money out of the road in contracts and side-speculations, he invests largely in the stock, and then endeavors to make the road pay the stockholders. The past month has been distinguished for meteoric showers, earthquakes in the West Indies, and at Syracuse and other points in the United States, railroad accidents, tene- ment horrors, shipwrecks, and other casual- ties. Edward Payson Weston started from Portland, Me., on October 29th, to walk to Chicago, Ill., 1,237~ miles, on a wager of $102000 that he would perform the distance in 30 days (resting and excluding Sundays), but that he should receive but a portion of the amount (variously stated at from $4,000 to $7,500) unless, within some pericd of 24 hours, he should walk 100 miles. He sue- ceeded in the main feat, walking the 1,237~ niilcs in about 29 days and three hours. He made five efforts without success to walk the 100 miles in 24 hours, his highest effort being 91 miles in 16 hours and 53 minutesbe- tween Silver Creek and Conneaut, Ohio. He professed himself able to complete the remaining 9 miles in the three hours 7 min- utes remaining to him, but his friends pre- vented it. By command of General Grant, an order was issued on Dec. 28th. Gen. Ord was commanded to turn over the command of the Fourth Military District (Mississippi and Arkansas) to Gen. Gillem, and proceed to San Francisco to take command of the Depart- ment of California. Gen. McDowell was ordered to relieve Gen. Gillem, and take com- mand of the Fourth Military District. Gen. Meade was assigned to the Third Military Dis- trict in place of Gen. Pope, removed. N~ reasons are assigned, but the only reasons un- derstood to have actuated the President, are the zeal of these officers in carrying into op- eratien the reconstruction laws of Congress, under which they were appointed. Gen. ONeil was elected, on January 1st, 1868, President of the Fenian Brotherhood, in place of President Roberts, resigned. EUROPE. THE first execution of Fenians, not as rebels, %ut as murderers, occurred on Nov. 23d, when Allen, Larkin, and OBrien were hung at Manchester. Great influence was brought to bear to secure a commutation of the sentence, but in vain. On Dec. 13th the Fe- nians made an attempt to blow up the Clerk- enwell prison, to secure the release of CoL Burke, Casey,and other Fenians. Three per- sons were gilled, and forty badly injured, by the crime, but no prisoners were released. The British force of 10,000 men under Gen. Sir Robert Napier, now moving against Abyssinia, designs to effect the rescue of Mr. Cameron, British Consul, Mr. Rassan, a merchant, two missionaries, and others, who were seized by the Abyssinian King Theodore, in consequence of the failure of Lord Palmer- ston to reply satisfactorily to certain corre- spondence from the Abyssinian Government, which is said to have included proposals of marriage to Queen Victoria. The two mis- sionaries are confined at Debra Tabor, seventy miles south of Gondar, the capital, while Rassan and Cameron are confined at Magdala, still farther south. The points named are nearer the Gulf of Aden on the southern fron- tier, but the intervening deserts render ap- proach from that point impossible. The army has landed at Massowah on the Red Sea, from whence the route to Abyssiia is familiar to English travellers. The British troops, at last advices, were approaching the frontier. Sir Robert Napier has served largely in China and India. 1888.1 2~3 MONTHLY CHRONICLE. LITERATURE. THE first volume of the long-expected Life of Nathaniel Greene, Major- General in the Army of the Revolution, by his grandson GEORGE WASHINGTON GREENE (Putnam & Son), has just been published, in style uni- form with the best editions of the standard octavo series of the American histories and biographies by Irving, Bancroft, Adams, and the rest. In the treatment of its subject- matter the work will take rank with the fore- most of them. A scholar, and a ripe and good one, well trained in the arts of compo- sition, the author has brought to his task all that a cultivated intellect and the resources of much reading can add to a narrative, the abundant details of which he has thoroughly mastered, in a sympathetic spirit, and witb the labor of years of unwearied application. The story of Greenes life will always be of interest, from the important part which he bore in military affairs, as the trusted friend of Washington, for his early and long devo- tion to his countrys service, for his memora- ble Southern campaign; while the animating spirit, the force of individual character, which conducted him to these great results, affords a most profitable biographical study. Nothing of real value which can throw light upon the man or his times, so far as they affect the man, is likely to be omitted in this narrative. The opening chapters of this volume, which brings Greene to his appointment as Quarter- master-General, in l7~8, are particularly pleasing in the picture of the simple rural life of the Quaker family in Rhode Island, as yet unvexed by any of the evils which may attend trade and manufactures; a repose, to be so suddenly broken up by the coarse but manly, and, in the end, refining energies of war. All this is naturally unfolded in a style so generally agreeable as to impart a fresh in- terest to those portions of the narrative which can no longer claim the charm of novelty. Happily for his biographer, Greene, early im- bued with a taste for literature, was a copious letter-writer; and his letters bear the impress of his straightforward, vigorous nature. The author of the Life has these and other original family papers to draw upon. He is also well versed in the study, in its facts and philosophy, of the revolutionary period which he must traverse. Of his special his- toric judgments, and of his skill in describing the greater events of the war, it will be time to speak when the memoir is concluded The work is gracefully dedicated by the author to his friend the poet Longfellow. SEVERAL new books of travel have appeared this month. Of these, the one which offers the greatest novelty is Mr. F. HAssAunints Four Years Among Spanish Americans. (Ilurd & Houghton.) The author is the late Minister of the United States to the Repub- lic of Ecuador; and his studies, observation, and experience of that country are incorpo- rated in the present volume. The book is an example of how much may be accomplished by diligence and sagacity in the pursuit of a topic of real interest, where the writer speaks from personal knowledge and intimate ac- quaintance with the subject; and is content with giving the result to the public in a direct, straightforward manner. In former days, half of the force and much of the information of Mr. Hassaureks book would have been sacrificed in a vain attempt at literary ele- gance. Many of the truth-telling statements of facts and incidents would have been re- jected as wanting in refinement; and the in- terest of others lost in diffuse and polished periods. Readers of travels of the last cen- tury must often have been wearied with the platitudes of expression covering the simplest facts; must have been surprised that the traveller should have gone so far and brou,ht back so little. In an earlier period it was different. Travellers of the seventeenth cen- tury recorded their observations with point and freshness, and, fully impressed with their theme, regarded matter before manner. In our own day a rage for philosophic specu- lation has diminished the attractiveness of many a volume which, if the writer had been content with the exhibition of what he saw, would have proved of lasting value. There are writers so spoilt by fancied refinements and the ambition of playing the philosopher, that, with the best opportunities in the world for knowledge, they will publish large vol- nines which tell us absolutely nothin~,. Mr. Hassaurek is of quite another school. His subject is everywhere predominant, lie uses his eyes and ears in a country by no means very remote, and of which numerous books have been published; and the conse

1888.1 2~3 MONTHLY CHRONICLE. LITERATURE. THE first volume of the long-expected Life of Nathaniel Greene, Major- General in the Army of the Revolution, by his grandson GEORGE WASHINGTON GREENE (Putnam & Son), has just been published, in style uni- form with the best editions of the standard octavo series of the American histories and biographies by Irving, Bancroft, Adams, and the rest. In the treatment of its subject- matter the work will take rank with the fore- most of them. A scholar, and a ripe and good one, well trained in the arts of compo- sition, the author has brought to his task all that a cultivated intellect and the resources of much reading can add to a narrative, the abundant details of which he has thoroughly mastered, in a sympathetic spirit, and witb the labor of years of unwearied application. The story of Greenes life will always be of interest, from the important part which he bore in military affairs, as the trusted friend of Washington, for his early and long devo- tion to his countrys service, for his memora- ble Southern campaign; while the animating spirit, the force of individual character, which conducted him to these great results, affords a most profitable biographical study. Nothing of real value which can throw light upon the man or his times, so far as they affect the man, is likely to be omitted in this narrative. The opening chapters of this volume, which brings Greene to his appointment as Quarter- master-General, in l7~8, are particularly pleasing in the picture of the simple rural life of the Quaker family in Rhode Island, as yet unvexed by any of the evils which may attend trade and manufactures; a repose, to be so suddenly broken up by the coarse but manly, and, in the end, refining energies of war. All this is naturally unfolded in a style so generally agreeable as to impart a fresh in- terest to those portions of the narrative which can no longer claim the charm of novelty. Happily for his biographer, Greene, early im- bued with a taste for literature, was a copious letter-writer; and his letters bear the impress of his straightforward, vigorous nature. The author of the Life has these and other original family papers to draw upon. He is also well versed in the study, in its facts and philosophy, of the revolutionary period which he must traverse. Of his special his- toric judgments, and of his skill in describing the greater events of the war, it will be time to speak when the memoir is concluded The work is gracefully dedicated by the author to his friend the poet Longfellow. SEVERAL new books of travel have appeared this month. Of these, the one which offers the greatest novelty is Mr. F. HAssAunints Four Years Among Spanish Americans. (Ilurd & Houghton.) The author is the late Minister of the United States to the Repub- lic of Ecuador; and his studies, observation, and experience of that country are incorpo- rated in the present volume. The book is an example of how much may be accomplished by diligence and sagacity in the pursuit of a topic of real interest, where the writer speaks from personal knowledge and intimate ac- quaintance with the subject; and is content with giving the result to the public in a direct, straightforward manner. In former days, half of the force and much of the information of Mr. Hassaureks book would have been sacrificed in a vain attempt at literary ele- gance. Many of the truth-telling statements of facts and incidents would have been re- jected as wanting in refinement; and the in- terest of others lost in diffuse and polished periods. Readers of travels of the last cen- tury must often have been wearied with the platitudes of expression covering the simplest facts; must have been surprised that the traveller should have gone so far and brou,ht back so little. In an earlier period it was different. Travellers of the seventeenth cen- tury recorded their observations with point and freshness, and, fully impressed with their theme, regarded matter before manner. In our own day a rage for philosophic specu- lation has diminished the attractiveness of many a volume which, if the writer had been content with the exhibition of what he saw, would have proved of lasting value. There are writers so spoilt by fancied refinements and the ambition of playing the philosopher, that, with the best opportunities in the world for knowledge, they will publish large vol- nines which tell us absolutely nothin~,. Mr. Hassaurek is of quite another school. His subject is everywhere predominant, lie uses his eyes and ears in a country by no means very remote, and of which numerous books have been published; and the conse

1888.1 2~3 MONTHLY CHRONICLE. LITERATURE. THE first volume of the long-expected Life of Nathaniel Greene, Major- General in the Army of the Revolution, by his grandson GEORGE WASHINGTON GREENE (Putnam & Son), has just been published, in style uni- form with the best editions of the standard octavo series of the American histories and biographies by Irving, Bancroft, Adams, and the rest. In the treatment of its subject- matter the work will take rank with the fore- most of them. A scholar, and a ripe and good one, well trained in the arts of compo- sition, the author has brought to his task all that a cultivated intellect and the resources of much reading can add to a narrative, the abundant details of which he has thoroughly mastered, in a sympathetic spirit, and witb the labor of years of unwearied application. The story of Greenes life will always be of interest, from the important part which he bore in military affairs, as the trusted friend of Washington, for his early and long devo- tion to his countrys service, for his memora- ble Southern campaign; while the animating spirit, the force of individual character, which conducted him to these great results, affords a most profitable biographical study. Nothing of real value which can throw light upon the man or his times, so far as they affect the man, is likely to be omitted in this narrative. The opening chapters of this volume, which brings Greene to his appointment as Quarter- master-General, in l7~8, are particularly pleasing in the picture of the simple rural life of the Quaker family in Rhode Island, as yet unvexed by any of the evils which may attend trade and manufactures; a repose, to be so suddenly broken up by the coarse but manly, and, in the end, refining energies of war. All this is naturally unfolded in a style so generally agreeable as to impart a fresh in- terest to those portions of the narrative which can no longer claim the charm of novelty. Happily for his biographer, Greene, early im- bued with a taste for literature, was a copious letter-writer; and his letters bear the impress of his straightforward, vigorous nature. The author of the Life has these and other original family papers to draw upon. He is also well versed in the study, in its facts and philosophy, of the revolutionary period which he must traverse. Of his special his- toric judgments, and of his skill in describing the greater events of the war, it will be time to speak when the memoir is concluded The work is gracefully dedicated by the author to his friend the poet Longfellow. SEVERAL new books of travel have appeared this month. Of these, the one which offers the greatest novelty is Mr. F. HAssAunints Four Years Among Spanish Americans. (Ilurd & Houghton.) The author is the late Minister of the United States to the Repub- lic of Ecuador; and his studies, observation, and experience of that country are incorpo- rated in the present volume. The book is an example of how much may be accomplished by diligence and sagacity in the pursuit of a topic of real interest, where the writer speaks from personal knowledge and intimate ac- quaintance with the subject; and is content with giving the result to the public in a direct, straightforward manner. In former days, half of the force and much of the information of Mr. Hassaureks book would have been sacrificed in a vain attempt at literary ele- gance. Many of the truth-telling statements of facts and incidents would have been re- jected as wanting in refinement; and the in- terest of others lost in diffuse and polished periods. Readers of travels of the last cen- tury must often have been wearied with the platitudes of expression covering the simplest facts; must have been surprised that the traveller should have gone so far and brou,ht back so little. In an earlier period it was different. Travellers of the seventeenth cen- tury recorded their observations with point and freshness, and, fully impressed with their theme, regarded matter before manner. In our own day a rage for philosophic specu- lation has diminished the attractiveness of many a volume which, if the writer had been content with the exhibition of what he saw, would have proved of lasting value. There are writers so spoilt by fancied refinements and the ambition of playing the philosopher, that, with the best opportunities in the world for knowledge, they will publish large vol- nines which tell us absolutely nothin~,. Mr. Hassaurek is of quite another school. His subject is everywhere predominant, lie uses his eyes and ears in a country by no means very remote, and of which numerous books have been published; and the conse 254 PUTNAM8 MAGAZINE. quence is, there is hardly one of the four hundred pages of his compact volume which does not present to us, and with an air of novelty, some striking fact, some real impres- sion of the scene; while, from the whole, we may form a just and comprehensive idea of the national life and prospects. The obser- vations, also, are very recent, the four years of the author~s mission including the period between 1861 and 1865. We have first the landing at Guayaquil, with a description of the city; then a tour over the mountain passes, taking Chimborazo by the way, to Quito, the capital of the country. The habits of the people of that city, their industry (or want of it), their business ( such as it is ), their social characteristics, their politics (or oppression), their religion (or priesteraft), have probably never before heen so faithfully described. After exhausting the capital Mr. Hassaurek visits the northern province of Imbabura, which opens before us the country- life aud more of the magnificent scenery of this elevated eqtuitorial region. In perusing the work, we have marked va- rious passages relating to the men and women of the country, which might be presented to the reader ; but two must suffice, and the gentler sex shall have the preference. One exhibits the author a listener at a curious church spectacle in the city of Quito: A few squares west of Santa Clara is the parish church of San Roque, in which flagel- lation is practised by the women almost every Tuesday and Friday evening. These perform- ances are exceedingly interesting, although they take place in the dark. Males are not admitted. Through the kindness of the curate, however, I was allowed to enter the church unobserved, and to listen to the proceedings. Towards sundown, the curate preaches a short sermon or reads a moral lesson, and then leaves the church in utter darkness. The organist then plays a Miserere, the women bare their backs and lash them with cowhides, to which sometimes small pieces of iron or other hard substances are attached. When this discipline is over they depart in silence. The blood sprinkled over the stone floor and on the walls, betokens the eager earnestness of their devotion. I should en- deavor in vain to describe my sensations while, lost in impenetrable darkness, I stood in the old church a silent listener. The sol- emn tune played by the organist, who chanted the accompaniment in a subdued key of voice, was interrupted only by the dreadful seunds which the lashes produced on the bare b~cks, and which were reverberated from the high walls of the building, while now and then a sigh would mournfully steal through the darkness. It might be thought from this serious in fiction that the ladies of Quito had much to answer for beyond their sisters in other lands where no such performances take place; but our author speedily relieves them of any such suspicion of demerit. They are no worse than their neighbors, he says, and their neigh- bors have been sadly misrepresented. A great many things have been said about the conduct of South American women, which I have found to be grossly exaggerated or en- tirely false. I cannot say whether they deserve their reputation in Lima; in Quito and Guay- aquil they certainly do not. I am convinced there is less immorality in Quito than in any other capital. I do not believe that the women are very sensual or passionate. They seem to be incapable of both great vices and of great virtues. Their hearts are like the atmosphere they live in, of a mean tempera- ture. It will be remembered that Quito is nearer the regions of perpetual snow than of tropical heat. The violent changes of winter and summer, and their exciting influence on the human system, are unknown there. The temperature is nearly the same all the year round. The disposition of the women, whether the result of the climate or not, seems to be lazy and indolent. They pass the day cowering on their window-seats, gos- siping. They generally sit with their legs crossed like Turks. In some of their private rooms there are low benches, like tailors benches, for them to squat on. Iii this posi- tion they seem to be more at their ease than on chairs or sofas. Even in church, when they get tired of kneeling, they will drop down and sit on their legs. It would be a good thing if all our Minis- ters-Resident~~ in out of-the-way parts of the world would, on their return, give us as pleas- ant and instructive a volume as Mr. Hassaurek has written of his residence in Ecuador. Tnzaz is a kindly vein of philosophy, characteristic of the well-disciplined physi- cian, in Dr. WILLIAM SwEzTszas Human Life: considered in its present condition and future deseloprnents, especially with reference to its duration. (Putnam & Son.) The au- thor is something of an optimist. If he does not, with Master Pangloss, believe that this is the best of all possible worlds, he is disposed to think well of it upon the whole, amid certain- ly to make the most of it. This he exhibits in his discussion of various topics of physical and moral welfare with professional knowl- edge and without professional formality. The book, indeed, is not only instructive but very entertaining; it abounds in anecdote, and fre- quently draws upon the best stores of English reading, as in the complaints of human life,

254 PUTNAM8 MAGAZINE. quence is, there is hardly one of the four hundred pages of his compact volume which does not present to us, and with an air of novelty, some striking fact, some real impres- sion of the scene; while, from the whole, we may form a just and comprehensive idea of the national life and prospects. The obser- vations, also, are very recent, the four years of the author~s mission including the period between 1861 and 1865. We have first the landing at Guayaquil, with a description of the city; then a tour over the mountain passes, taking Chimborazo by the way, to Quito, the capital of the country. The habits of the people of that city, their industry (or want of it), their business ( such as it is ), their social characteristics, their politics (or oppression), their religion (or priesteraft), have probably never before heen so faithfully described. After exhausting the capital Mr. Hassaurek visits the northern province of Imbabura, which opens before us the country- life aud more of the magnificent scenery of this elevated eqtuitorial region. In perusing the work, we have marked va- rious passages relating to the men and women of the country, which might be presented to the reader ; but two must suffice, and the gentler sex shall have the preference. One exhibits the author a listener at a curious church spectacle in the city of Quito: A few squares west of Santa Clara is the parish church of San Roque, in which flagel- lation is practised by the women almost every Tuesday and Friday evening. These perform- ances are exceedingly interesting, although they take place in the dark. Males are not admitted. Through the kindness of the curate, however, I was allowed to enter the church unobserved, and to listen to the proceedings. Towards sundown, the curate preaches a short sermon or reads a moral lesson, and then leaves the church in utter darkness. The organist then plays a Miserere, the women bare their backs and lash them with cowhides, to which sometimes small pieces of iron or other hard substances are attached. When this discipline is over they depart in silence. The blood sprinkled over the stone floor and on the walls, betokens the eager earnestness of their devotion. I should en- deavor in vain to describe my sensations while, lost in impenetrable darkness, I stood in the old church a silent listener. The sol- emn tune played by the organist, who chanted the accompaniment in a subdued key of voice, was interrupted only by the dreadful seunds which the lashes produced on the bare b~cks, and which were reverberated from the high walls of the building, while now and then a sigh would mournfully steal through the darkness. It might be thought from this serious in fiction that the ladies of Quito had much to answer for beyond their sisters in other lands where no such performances take place; but our author speedily relieves them of any such suspicion of demerit. They are no worse than their neighbors, he says, and their neigh- bors have been sadly misrepresented. A great many things have been said about the conduct of South American women, which I have found to be grossly exaggerated or en- tirely false. I cannot say whether they deserve their reputation in Lima; in Quito and Guay- aquil they certainly do not. I am convinced there is less immorality in Quito than in any other capital. I do not believe that the women are very sensual or passionate. They seem to be incapable of both great vices and of great virtues. Their hearts are like the atmosphere they live in, of a mean tempera- ture. It will be remembered that Quito is nearer the regions of perpetual snow than of tropical heat. The violent changes of winter and summer, and their exciting influence on the human system, are unknown there. The temperature is nearly the same all the year round. The disposition of the women, whether the result of the climate or not, seems to be lazy and indolent. They pass the day cowering on their window-seats, gos- siping. They generally sit with their legs crossed like Turks. In some of their private rooms there are low benches, like tailors benches, for them to squat on. Iii this posi- tion they seem to be more at their ease than on chairs or sofas. Even in church, when they get tired of kneeling, they will drop down and sit on their legs. It would be a good thing if all our Minis- ters-Resident~~ in out of-the-way parts of the world would, on their return, give us as pleas- ant and instructive a volume as Mr. Hassaurek has written of his residence in Ecuador. Tnzaz is a kindly vein of philosophy, characteristic of the well-disciplined physi- cian, in Dr. WILLIAM SwEzTszas Human Life: considered in its present condition and future deseloprnents, especially with reference to its duration. (Putnam & Son.) The au- thor is something of an optimist. If he does not, with Master Pangloss, believe that this is the best of all possible worlds, he is disposed to think well of it upon the whole, amid certain- ly to make the most of it. This he exhibits in his discussion of various topics of physical and moral welfare with professional knowl- edge and without professional formality. The book, indeed, is not only instructive but very entertaining; it abounds in anecdote, and fre- quently draws upon the best stores of English reading, as in the complaints of human life, 1808.1 M0~THLY CEnONICLE. 25~ for its illustrations. On this theme the au- thor is at war with the poets. His remarks on the fear of death should tend to allay anx- iety in the minds of persons less familiar with the physical conditions of the exit of man from the world. What he says on this subject i~ supported by general experience, and is wor- thy of being noted by certain sensation preach- ers. Although, says he, I have witnessed many death-bed scenes, seldom, indeed, have I seen them fraught with terror. Sir Benjamin Brodie, who, from his professional eminence, must have been witness to many deaths, and in many shapes, tells us that he has himself never known but two instances ia which in the act of dying there were manifest indications of the fear of death. Another remark in this chapter is also striking: It is a curious paradox in our nature, and yet not rare, that those whose existence has been the most barren of enjoyment, who have tasted little besides the bitterness of life, are the most anxious to live, the most apprehen- sive of death. Buoyed up by the anticipations of change, by the hope that their turn may yet come, and magnifying the value of joys they have never tried, they will still cling with an un1~elaxing grasp to the very shreds of a ttered existence. Like the traveller at his inn, they are unwilling to go to rest until they have had their meal. And on the other band, they who have been blessed with pros- perity, who have feasted bountifully at lifes table, satisfied that they have had their turn, sated with the worlds pleasures, are fre- quently the most ready to take their de- parture. Temple House. A noveL By ELIZABETH STODDARD. New York: Carleton. Readers who have been demoralized by Miss Braddons romances, or accustomed to the limpid stream of Anthony Trollopes novels, will be very likely to find the solemn sententiousness of Mrs. Stoddards style rather difficult of mas- tery. Temple House is not a novel with- out a story. The author has a story to tell, and she tells it in her own way. She is no- bodys imitator, but she belongs to a very dis- tinct school, and her three novels may be placed upon the same shelf with Withering Heights, Adam Bede, Enoch Arden, and The Blythedale Romance works varying in literary merit, but all of them com- posed in the minor key, and telling stories of common Puritan life as serious and as solemn as the Book of Ruth. What is most remark- able in the novels of Mrs. Stoddard, is their sincerity, and the singleness of purpose with which she narrates the homely incidents of common life peculiar to the sea-coast of Mas sachusetts. We know of nothing in literature more remarkable than the strange accuracy, for a woman, with which she gives the tech- nical talk of sailoi, fishermen, stevedores, and retired sea-captains, as she describes with wonderful skill the characteristics of one of those dilapidated and weather-beaten towns, with their big houses, telling of former grandeur, which Hawthorne has so happily selected in his Scarlet Letter. In her Mat Sutcliffe, in the novel before us, she has given the portrait of a sea-monster, altogether better than Coopers Long Tom Coffin, be- cause it is a true character, without any of the sentimentalism which renders Long Tom unreal to those who know the original. 11cr characters are all strongly marked and vigor- ously drawn, like a charcoal cartoon; too roughly, perhaps, for popular appreciation, but without distorture, yet indicating by the firm lines and the absence of niggling the power of an artist. What she writes is from her own observation and thought; there is no borrowed plumage in her creations; nobodys pilfered metal passes through the crucible of her imagination when she casts her images. Whatever merits or defects they may have, they are, at least, her own. Her novels be- long as much to the soil in which she has placed her characters as the granite from its quarries. But these qualities, which are among the first requisites to a lasting reputa- tion, are, unfortunately, detrimental to imme- diate success; because the description of provincial manners, where there is nothing in their novelty, fails to create an interest in readers who are foreign to them. But we would not advise Mrs. Stoddard to abandon the ground where she shows herself so per- fectly at home. She evinces first-rate ability in her descriptions of sea-coast scenery, and gives indication of great power in the delin- eation of character, both of men and women. The wrathy, respectable, sanctimonious, and unhappy Brande, who would willingly murder his neuralgic wife to be rid of such an incum- brance, if he could be sure of escaping de- tection, is a most excellently drawn character, and all his points are developed with great skill and freedom of touch. The story is not one of those absorbing narratives, like the Bride of Lammermoor, which holds the reader spell-bound from the first ehaptes~ to the last, but it is sufficient to keep alive the curiosity of the reader, and he wrn be only likely to complain of its too compact strnctnre, and too sudden conclusion. We are confi- dent that she will do much better next tims~.

1808.1 M0~THLY CEnONICLE. 25~ for its illustrations. On this theme the au- thor is at war with the poets. His remarks on the fear of death should tend to allay anx- iety in the minds of persons less familiar with the physical conditions of the exit of man from the world. What he says on this subject i~ supported by general experience, and is wor- thy of being noted by certain sensation preach- ers. Although, says he, I have witnessed many death-bed scenes, seldom, indeed, have I seen them fraught with terror. Sir Benjamin Brodie, who, from his professional eminence, must have been witness to many deaths, and in many shapes, tells us that he has himself never known but two instances ia which in the act of dying there were manifest indications of the fear of death. Another remark in this chapter is also striking: It is a curious paradox in our nature, and yet not rare, that those whose existence has been the most barren of enjoyment, who have tasted little besides the bitterness of life, are the most anxious to live, the most apprehen- sive of death. Buoyed up by the anticipations of change, by the hope that their turn may yet come, and magnifying the value of joys they have never tried, they will still cling with an un1~elaxing grasp to the very shreds of a ttered existence. Like the traveller at his inn, they are unwilling to go to rest until they have had their meal. And on the other band, they who have been blessed with pros- perity, who have feasted bountifully at lifes table, satisfied that they have had their turn, sated with the worlds pleasures, are fre- quently the most ready to take their de- parture. Temple House. A noveL By ELIZABETH STODDARD. New York: Carleton. Readers who have been demoralized by Miss Braddons romances, or accustomed to the limpid stream of Anthony Trollopes novels, will be very likely to find the solemn sententiousness of Mrs. Stoddards style rather difficult of mas- tery. Temple House is not a novel with- out a story. The author has a story to tell, and she tells it in her own way. She is no- bodys imitator, but she belongs to a very dis- tinct school, and her three novels may be placed upon the same shelf with Withering Heights, Adam Bede, Enoch Arden, and The Blythedale Romance works varying in literary merit, but all of them com- posed in the minor key, and telling stories of common Puritan life as serious and as solemn as the Book of Ruth. What is most remark- able in the novels of Mrs. Stoddard, is their sincerity, and the singleness of purpose with which she narrates the homely incidents of common life peculiar to the sea-coast of Mas sachusetts. We know of nothing in literature more remarkable than the strange accuracy, for a woman, with which she gives the tech- nical talk of sailoi, fishermen, stevedores, and retired sea-captains, as she describes with wonderful skill the characteristics of one of those dilapidated and weather-beaten towns, with their big houses, telling of former grandeur, which Hawthorne has so happily selected in his Scarlet Letter. In her Mat Sutcliffe, in the novel before us, she has given the portrait of a sea-monster, altogether better than Coopers Long Tom Coffin, be- cause it is a true character, without any of the sentimentalism which renders Long Tom unreal to those who know the original. 11cr characters are all strongly marked and vigor- ously drawn, like a charcoal cartoon; too roughly, perhaps, for popular appreciation, but without distorture, yet indicating by the firm lines and the absence of niggling the power of an artist. What she writes is from her own observation and thought; there is no borrowed plumage in her creations; nobodys pilfered metal passes through the crucible of her imagination when she casts her images. Whatever merits or defects they may have, they are, at least, her own. Her novels be- long as much to the soil in which she has placed her characters as the granite from its quarries. But these qualities, which are among the first requisites to a lasting reputa- tion, are, unfortunately, detrimental to imme- diate success; because the description of provincial manners, where there is nothing in their novelty, fails to create an interest in readers who are foreign to them. But we would not advise Mrs. Stoddard to abandon the ground where she shows herself so per- fectly at home. She evinces first-rate ability in her descriptions of sea-coast scenery, and gives indication of great power in the delin- eation of character, both of men and women. The wrathy, respectable, sanctimonious, and unhappy Brande, who would willingly murder his neuralgic wife to be rid of such an incum- brance, if he could be sure of escaping de- tection, is a most excellently drawn character, and all his points are developed with great skill and freedom of touch. The story is not one of those absorbing narratives, like the Bride of Lammermoor, which holds the reader spell-bound from the first ehaptes~ to the last, but it is sufficient to keep alive the curiosity of the reader, and he wrn be only likely to complain of its too compact strnctnre, and too sudden conclusion. We are confi- dent that she will do much better next tims~. 258 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Feb. Opportunity, by the author of Emily Chester. l2mo. (Ticknor.) The reputation which this author has obtained must be due to the fact that her ~ relate chiefly to questions interesting to a large portion of feminine novel-readers. There is very little strength or dramatic power in her delinea- tions of character, and the works are painfully deficient in movement and activity of plot. She permits, in this tale, one of her heroes, who is supposed to possess an unusually ener- getic and henlthy manliness, to spend hislife ab- sorbed in bunting and trivial amusements, with a faint hope of meeting and recognizing his ideal woman, instead of influencing and being influenced by the currents of the world. This is notAmerican; and all things American are not desirable; still, such an essentially national characteristic as activity, should not be entirely overlooked in a story of American life. The feminine mind of the author shows itself in the way in which every thought and action revolve around the one question of love. Marriage may be one of the most important events which form and develope character, but it is byno means the only formative power. To limit the interest to this one theme is un- true and narrow, and renders books tire- some, as real life would be if there were the same paucity of thought and purpose. Love may be the oil which enables the world to revolve smoothly on its axis, but it is not the axis itself. Neither the speech nor actions of Miss Cranes heroes and heroines would give the reader the slightest clue to their different characters if he were not told beforehand what to ex- pect from each individual. Grahame, for instance, is represented as the most brilliant and fascinating of men. His attractions, in- deed, are so great and universal, that no woman can come within reach of his influ- ence without being entirely overcome. But it would be impossible for the reader, unaided, to discover wherein this dangerous power lies, as there is neither brilliancy nor wit in the conversation which the reader shares. There are slight traces in the minor characters of the influence of other novelists upon the author, although the principal ones are suffi- ciently original. The book, as a novel, has considerable merit, and deserves to be ranked above hosts of others which are cast before the public. Fage Mar, by Miss PRITCHARD (Wynkoop & Co.), contains considerable crude material, which by a more skilled and accustomed hand might be worked into a very fair novel. As it is, there is too much exaggeration, and the characters, which have many good points, need pruning to be natural and human. The story, however, is interesting, and the little touch of hospital life very prettily intro- duced. Cvcaop~nixs, Summaries, Digests, Selec- tions,aadthewholeclassofabbreviationsof knowledge, must be more and more in demand as the stock of required information increases with time. Books of reference, indeed, are getting to form quite a library by themselves. One of the best approved of these, in its comprehensive way, is HAyDNs Dictionary of Dates Relating to al Ages end Nations, for Universal Reference (Putnam & Son) an invaluable companion to club men and conversationists in general; in fact, of use to every body who would speak with accuracy on a great variety of toI)ics curious or in- structive which it is impossible to escape. To render this work of especial value in this new edition a Supplements has been added, bringing it down to the present year, occupied chiefly with American topics, and with the further addition of a valuable Biographical Index of about five thousand names of celeb- rities of all kinds, living and dead, whose nation, birth, and (if departed) year of de- cease are given in a single line. The supple- ment and index have been prepared with great diligence by the senior publisher of the work; and are the result of many years~ familiarity with this species of unobtrusive, but not the less exacting, literary labor. A Ilandboolc of English Literature, by W. G. LARKINs, and A Tho and and One Gems of English Poetry, selected by CHARLES. MACKAy (Routledge & Sons), are also, in a different way, specimens of the literary labor- saving process to which we have just alluded. The Handbook~~ gives us brief notices of English authors in prose and dramatic com- position. Poetry is the subject of a similar abstractfrom the monkish historians and the reign of Alfred, all the way along to th~ days of Victoria. The space being limited, is worthily confined, for the most part, to the presentation of facts. Dr. Mackays poetic Selections~~ are admirable, as might be ex- pected from his thorough practical acquaint- ance with English poetry, and the taste which he has shown in other compilations of the kind. His compactly-printedvolume has the best of the old, not only in brief poems, but

258 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Feb. Opportunity, by the author of Emily Chester. l2mo. (Ticknor.) The reputation which this author has obtained must be due to the fact that her ~ relate chiefly to questions interesting to a large portion of feminine novel-readers. There is very little strength or dramatic power in her delinea- tions of character, and the works are painfully deficient in movement and activity of plot. She permits, in this tale, one of her heroes, who is supposed to possess an unusually ener- getic and henlthy manliness, to spend hislife ab- sorbed in bunting and trivial amusements, with a faint hope of meeting and recognizing his ideal woman, instead of influencing and being influenced by the currents of the world. This is notAmerican; and all things American are not desirable; still, such an essentially national characteristic as activity, should not be entirely overlooked in a story of American life. The feminine mind of the author shows itself in the way in which every thought and action revolve around the one question of love. Marriage may be one of the most important events which form and develope character, but it is byno means the only formative power. To limit the interest to this one theme is un- true and narrow, and renders books tire- some, as real life would be if there were the same paucity of thought and purpose. Love may be the oil which enables the world to revolve smoothly on its axis, but it is not the axis itself. Neither the speech nor actions of Miss Cranes heroes and heroines would give the reader the slightest clue to their different characters if he were not told beforehand what to ex- pect from each individual. Grahame, for instance, is represented as the most brilliant and fascinating of men. His attractions, in- deed, are so great and universal, that no woman can come within reach of his influ- ence without being entirely overcome. But it would be impossible for the reader, unaided, to discover wherein this dangerous power lies, as there is neither brilliancy nor wit in the conversation which the reader shares. There are slight traces in the minor characters of the influence of other novelists upon the author, although the principal ones are suffi- ciently original. The book, as a novel, has considerable merit, and deserves to be ranked above hosts of others which are cast before the public. Fage Mar, by Miss PRITCHARD (Wynkoop & Co.), contains considerable crude material, which by a more skilled and accustomed hand might be worked into a very fair novel. As it is, there is too much exaggeration, and the characters, which have many good points, need pruning to be natural and human. The story, however, is interesting, and the little touch of hospital life very prettily intro- duced. Cvcaop~nixs, Summaries, Digests, Selec- tions,aadthewholeclassofabbreviationsof knowledge, must be more and more in demand as the stock of required information increases with time. Books of reference, indeed, are getting to form quite a library by themselves. One of the best approved of these, in its comprehensive way, is HAyDNs Dictionary of Dates Relating to al Ages end Nations, for Universal Reference (Putnam & Son) an invaluable companion to club men and conversationists in general; in fact, of use to every body who would speak with accuracy on a great variety of toI)ics curious or in- structive which it is impossible to escape. To render this work of especial value in this new edition a Supplements has been added, bringing it down to the present year, occupied chiefly with American topics, and with the further addition of a valuable Biographical Index of about five thousand names of celeb- rities of all kinds, living and dead, whose nation, birth, and (if departed) year of de- cease are given in a single line. The supple- ment and index have been prepared with great diligence by the senior publisher of the work; and are the result of many years~ familiarity with this species of unobtrusive, but not the less exacting, literary labor. A Ilandboolc of English Literature, by W. G. LARKINs, and A Tho and and One Gems of English Poetry, selected by CHARLES. MACKAy (Routledge & Sons), are also, in a different way, specimens of the literary labor- saving process to which we have just alluded. The Handbook~~ gives us brief notices of English authors in prose and dramatic com- position. Poetry is the subject of a similar abstractfrom the monkish historians and the reign of Alfred, all the way along to th~ days of Victoria. The space being limited, is worthily confined, for the most part, to the presentation of facts. Dr. Mackays poetic Selections~~ are admirable, as might be ex- pected from his thorough practical acquaint- ance with English poetry, and the taste which he has shown in other compilations of the kind. His compactly-printedvolume has the best of the old, not only in brief poems, but

258 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Feb. Opportunity, by the author of Emily Chester. l2mo. (Ticknor.) The reputation which this author has obtained must be due to the fact that her ~ relate chiefly to questions interesting to a large portion of feminine novel-readers. There is very little strength or dramatic power in her delinea- tions of character, and the works are painfully deficient in movement and activity of plot. She permits, in this tale, one of her heroes, who is supposed to possess an unusually ener- getic and henlthy manliness, to spend hislife ab- sorbed in bunting and trivial amusements, with a faint hope of meeting and recognizing his ideal woman, instead of influencing and being influenced by the currents of the world. This is notAmerican; and all things American are not desirable; still, such an essentially national characteristic as activity, should not be entirely overlooked in a story of American life. The feminine mind of the author shows itself in the way in which every thought and action revolve around the one question of love. Marriage may be one of the most important events which form and develope character, but it is byno means the only formative power. To limit the interest to this one theme is un- true and narrow, and renders books tire- some, as real life would be if there were the same paucity of thought and purpose. Love may be the oil which enables the world to revolve smoothly on its axis, but it is not the axis itself. Neither the speech nor actions of Miss Cranes heroes and heroines would give the reader the slightest clue to their different characters if he were not told beforehand what to ex- pect from each individual. Grahame, for instance, is represented as the most brilliant and fascinating of men. His attractions, in- deed, are so great and universal, that no woman can come within reach of his influ- ence without being entirely overcome. But it would be impossible for the reader, unaided, to discover wherein this dangerous power lies, as there is neither brilliancy nor wit in the conversation which the reader shares. There are slight traces in the minor characters of the influence of other novelists upon the author, although the principal ones are suffi- ciently original. The book, as a novel, has considerable merit, and deserves to be ranked above hosts of others which are cast before the public. Fage Mar, by Miss PRITCHARD (Wynkoop & Co.), contains considerable crude material, which by a more skilled and accustomed hand might be worked into a very fair novel. As it is, there is too much exaggeration, and the characters, which have many good points, need pruning to be natural and human. The story, however, is interesting, and the little touch of hospital life very prettily intro- duced. Cvcaop~nixs, Summaries, Digests, Selec- tions,aadthewholeclassofabbreviationsof knowledge, must be more and more in demand as the stock of required information increases with time. Books of reference, indeed, are getting to form quite a library by themselves. One of the best approved of these, in its comprehensive way, is HAyDNs Dictionary of Dates Relating to al Ages end Nations, for Universal Reference (Putnam & Son) an invaluable companion to club men and conversationists in general; in fact, of use to every body who would speak with accuracy on a great variety of toI)ics curious or in- structive which it is impossible to escape. To render this work of especial value in this new edition a Supplements has been added, bringing it down to the present year, occupied chiefly with American topics, and with the further addition of a valuable Biographical Index of about five thousand names of celeb- rities of all kinds, living and dead, whose nation, birth, and (if departed) year of de- cease are given in a single line. The supple- ment and index have been prepared with great diligence by the senior publisher of the work; and are the result of many years~ familiarity with this species of unobtrusive, but not the less exacting, literary labor. A Ilandboolc of English Literature, by W. G. LARKINs, and A Tho and and One Gems of English Poetry, selected by CHARLES. MACKAy (Routledge & Sons), are also, in a different way, specimens of the literary labor- saving process to which we have just alluded. The Handbook~~ gives us brief notices of English authors in prose and dramatic com- position. Poetry is the subject of a similar abstractfrom the monkish historians and the reign of Alfred, all the way along to th~ days of Victoria. The space being limited, is worthily confined, for the most part, to the presentation of facts. Dr. Mackays poetic Selections~~ are admirable, as might be ex- pected from his thorough practical acquaint- ance with English poetry, and the taste which he has shown in other compilations of the kind. His compactly-printedvolume has the best of the old, not only in brief poems, but

258 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Feb. Opportunity, by the author of Emily Chester. l2mo. (Ticknor.) The reputation which this author has obtained must be due to the fact that her ~ relate chiefly to questions interesting to a large portion of feminine novel-readers. There is very little strength or dramatic power in her delinea- tions of character, and the works are painfully deficient in movement and activity of plot. She permits, in this tale, one of her heroes, who is supposed to possess an unusually ener- getic and henlthy manliness, to spend hislife ab- sorbed in bunting and trivial amusements, with a faint hope of meeting and recognizing his ideal woman, instead of influencing and being influenced by the currents of the world. This is notAmerican; and all things American are not desirable; still, such an essentially national characteristic as activity, should not be entirely overlooked in a story of American life. The feminine mind of the author shows itself in the way in which every thought and action revolve around the one question of love. Marriage may be one of the most important events which form and develope character, but it is byno means the only formative power. To limit the interest to this one theme is un- true and narrow, and renders books tire- some, as real life would be if there were the same paucity of thought and purpose. Love may be the oil which enables the world to revolve smoothly on its axis, but it is not the axis itself. Neither the speech nor actions of Miss Cranes heroes and heroines would give the reader the slightest clue to their different characters if he were not told beforehand what to ex- pect from each individual. Grahame, for instance, is represented as the most brilliant and fascinating of men. His attractions, in- deed, are so great and universal, that no woman can come within reach of his influ- ence without being entirely overcome. But it would be impossible for the reader, unaided, to discover wherein this dangerous power lies, as there is neither brilliancy nor wit in the conversation which the reader shares. There are slight traces in the minor characters of the influence of other novelists upon the author, although the principal ones are suffi- ciently original. The book, as a novel, has considerable merit, and deserves to be ranked above hosts of others which are cast before the public. Fage Mar, by Miss PRITCHARD (Wynkoop & Co.), contains considerable crude material, which by a more skilled and accustomed hand might be worked into a very fair novel. As it is, there is too much exaggeration, and the characters, which have many good points, need pruning to be natural and human. The story, however, is interesting, and the little touch of hospital life very prettily intro- duced. Cvcaop~nixs, Summaries, Digests, Selec- tions,aadthewholeclassofabbreviationsof knowledge, must be more and more in demand as the stock of required information increases with time. Books of reference, indeed, are getting to form quite a library by themselves. One of the best approved of these, in its comprehensive way, is HAyDNs Dictionary of Dates Relating to al Ages end Nations, for Universal Reference (Putnam & Son) an invaluable companion to club men and conversationists in general; in fact, of use to every body who would speak with accuracy on a great variety of toI)ics curious or in- structive which it is impossible to escape. To render this work of especial value in this new edition a Supplements has been added, bringing it down to the present year, occupied chiefly with American topics, and with the further addition of a valuable Biographical Index of about five thousand names of celeb- rities of all kinds, living and dead, whose nation, birth, and (if departed) year of de- cease are given in a single line. The supple- ment and index have been prepared with great diligence by the senior publisher of the work; and are the result of many years~ familiarity with this species of unobtrusive, but not the less exacting, literary labor. A Ilandboolc of English Literature, by W. G. LARKINs, and A Tho and and One Gems of English Poetry, selected by CHARLES. MACKAy (Routledge & Sons), are also, in a different way, specimens of the literary labor- saving process to which we have just alluded. The Handbook~~ gives us brief notices of English authors in prose and dramatic com- position. Poetry is the subject of a similar abstractfrom the monkish historians and the reign of Alfred, all the way along to th~ days of Victoria. The space being limited, is worthily confined, for the most part, to the presentation of facts. Dr. Mackays poetic Selections~~ are admirable, as might be ex- pected from his thorough practical acquaint- ance with English poetry, and the taste which he has shown in other compilations of the kind. His compactly-printedvolume has the best of the old, not only in brief poems, but 1868.] MONTHLY CURONIcLIt. 257 in passages of larger ones, with a liberal in- fusion of the new. The Ballad Book, by WILLIAM ALLIEGHAM (Sever & Francis), presents in attractive form some score or more of those old ballads, which, for several centuries living on the lips of the people of England and Scotland, were, it is now about a hundred years agofirst brought into general literary notice as a class by the collection of Bishop Percy. Since then editors and critics of every grade of percep- tion and diligence have been busy with them, adding to the number and overlaying the simple outline with burdensome notes and commentaries. Mr. Alliugham, with more candor than is usually to be found in such labors, pronounces much of this erudition to be utterly worthless, in a prefacea bright and invigorating essaythe prelude to a feast, pure and simple, of the old wonder- working minstrelsy. THE Cambridge publishers of the Ballad Look have also issued another reprint of an elegant En,lish illustrated edition of Crays Poems, whic4 in neatness of typography and general excellence of the engravings, fairly reproduces the beauty of the oriainal. These and other publications of the same refined class, certainly maintain the high position claimed for the Cambridge University Press. A N1~W and revised edition of THOREAUS Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (Ticknor & Fields), recalls the time of its first appearance, the earliest of the authors books, about twenty years ago. He had then up-hill work with the public; but his merits were the same then as after his death they were so willingly recognized. The reader will find the same learned reading, individual reflection, and microscopic pursuit of nature in this as in the other books, which are better known. Without commending all Mr. Tho- reaus opinions, we may say that his writings have the excellent qualities of provoking thought and observation. The Atlantic Almanac (Ticknor & Fields) enters vigorously upon existence under the certainly capable literary joint editorship of OLIVER WENDELL HoLMEs and DONALD G. Mivcu LL, whose literary paper it would be quite safe to endorse to a larger amount than they have here drawn upon the public. Their own portion is appropriately occupied with the study of rural life in America, in which both are adepts. The other literary matter is well chosen, and the whole, with the artistic aid involved, well presented. FINE ARTS. THE first annual exhibition of the Society of American Painters in Water-Colors, which opened at the National Academy of Design on the 20th of December, is a most gratifying success. In respect to the number and merit of the pictures placed on exhibition, the ex- pectations of the most sanguine friends of the new movement were more than realized. Only those who had been vouchsafed a glimpse beforehand of the magnificent studies of. Colman, William Hart, and one or two other artists who had devoted the whole summer to the practice of water-color, were at all prepared for the display of works at the Academy of Design; but a single look was sufficient, as the visitor reached the head of the grand stairway, to set at rest forever the question so often asked and evasively answered, whether the art of painting in water-color would flourish in America. Had there been in the exhibition no other water- colors than those three of William Harts, and that one of Colmans that made up the magnificent quartette in the Corridor, to the left of the door of the North Room, these alone would have answered the question in a very conclusive and satisfactory manner. We must commend the good taste and judg- ment of the Hanging Committee in placing these fine pietures so that they strike the eye and enchain the attention of every visitor at the very entrance of the gallery, and thus prepare one in the pleasantest manner to enjoy a ramble through the exhibition. Though nearly all the members of the new Society have done well this year, the palm of superiority must be adjudged to Mr. Samuel Colman, the President,with a little hesita- tion, however, in favor of William Hart, whose productions rival those of the former in almost every quality of excellence, lacking, indeed, but little in the breadth and depth of tone and simplicity of treatment, that place Colmans works at the head of American water-colors. Let us examine some of these in detail, and see wherein their charm consists. In the first place, we cannot fail to remark

1868.] MONTHLY CURONIcLIt. 257 in passages of larger ones, with a liberal in- fusion of the new. The Ballad Book, by WILLIAM ALLIEGHAM (Sever & Francis), presents in attractive form some score or more of those old ballads, which, for several centuries living on the lips of the people of England and Scotland, were, it is now about a hundred years agofirst brought into general literary notice as a class by the collection of Bishop Percy. Since then editors and critics of every grade of percep- tion and diligence have been busy with them, adding to the number and overlaying the simple outline with burdensome notes and commentaries. Mr. Alliugham, with more candor than is usually to be found in such labors, pronounces much of this erudition to be utterly worthless, in a prefacea bright and invigorating essaythe prelude to a feast, pure and simple, of the old wonder- working minstrelsy. THE Cambridge publishers of the Ballad Look have also issued another reprint of an elegant En,lish illustrated edition of Crays Poems, whic4 in neatness of typography and general excellence of the engravings, fairly reproduces the beauty of the oriainal. These and other publications of the same refined class, certainly maintain the high position claimed for the Cambridge University Press. A N1~W and revised edition of THOREAUS Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (Ticknor & Fields), recalls the time of its first appearance, the earliest of the authors books, about twenty years ago. He had then up-hill work with the public; but his merits were the same then as after his death they were so willingly recognized. The reader will find the same learned reading, individual reflection, and microscopic pursuit of nature in this as in the other books, which are better known. Without commending all Mr. Tho- reaus opinions, we may say that his writings have the excellent qualities of provoking thought and observation. The Atlantic Almanac (Ticknor & Fields) enters vigorously upon existence under the certainly capable literary joint editorship of OLIVER WENDELL HoLMEs and DONALD G. Mivcu LL, whose literary paper it would be quite safe to endorse to a larger amount than they have here drawn upon the public. Their own portion is appropriately occupied with the study of rural life in America, in which both are adepts. The other literary matter is well chosen, and the whole, with the artistic aid involved, well presented. FINE ARTS. THE first annual exhibition of the Society of American Painters in Water-Colors, which opened at the National Academy of Design on the 20th of December, is a most gratifying success. In respect to the number and merit of the pictures placed on exhibition, the ex- pectations of the most sanguine friends of the new movement were more than realized. Only those who had been vouchsafed a glimpse beforehand of the magnificent studies of. Colman, William Hart, and one or two other artists who had devoted the whole summer to the practice of water-color, were at all prepared for the display of works at the Academy of Design; but a single look was sufficient, as the visitor reached the head of the grand stairway, to set at rest forever the question so often asked and evasively answered, whether the art of painting in water-color would flourish in America. Had there been in the exhibition no other water- colors than those three of William Harts, and that one of Colmans that made up the magnificent quartette in the Corridor, to the left of the door of the North Room, these alone would have answered the question in a very conclusive and satisfactory manner. We must commend the good taste and judg- ment of the Hanging Committee in placing these fine pietures so that they strike the eye and enchain the attention of every visitor at the very entrance of the gallery, and thus prepare one in the pleasantest manner to enjoy a ramble through the exhibition. Though nearly all the members of the new Society have done well this year, the palm of superiority must be adjudged to Mr. Samuel Colman, the President,with a little hesita- tion, however, in favor of William Hart, whose productions rival those of the former in almost every quality of excellence, lacking, indeed, but little in the breadth and depth of tone and simplicity of treatment, that place Colmans works at the head of American water-colors. Let us examine some of these in detail, and see wherein their charm consists. In the first place, we cannot fail to remark

1868.] MONTHLY CURONIcLIt. 257 in passages of larger ones, with a liberal in- fusion of the new. The Ballad Book, by WILLIAM ALLIEGHAM (Sever & Francis), presents in attractive form some score or more of those old ballads, which, for several centuries living on the lips of the people of England and Scotland, were, it is now about a hundred years agofirst brought into general literary notice as a class by the collection of Bishop Percy. Since then editors and critics of every grade of percep- tion and diligence have been busy with them, adding to the number and overlaying the simple outline with burdensome notes and commentaries. Mr. Alliugham, with more candor than is usually to be found in such labors, pronounces much of this erudition to be utterly worthless, in a prefacea bright and invigorating essaythe prelude to a feast, pure and simple, of the old wonder- working minstrelsy. THE Cambridge publishers of the Ballad Look have also issued another reprint of an elegant En,lish illustrated edition of Crays Poems, whic4 in neatness of typography and general excellence of the engravings, fairly reproduces the beauty of the oriainal. These and other publications of the same refined class, certainly maintain the high position claimed for the Cambridge University Press. A N1~W and revised edition of THOREAUS Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (Ticknor & Fields), recalls the time of its first appearance, the earliest of the authors books, about twenty years ago. He had then up-hill work with the public; but his merits were the same then as after his death they were so willingly recognized. The reader will find the same learned reading, individual reflection, and microscopic pursuit of nature in this as in the other books, which are better known. Without commending all Mr. Tho- reaus opinions, we may say that his writings have the excellent qualities of provoking thought and observation. The Atlantic Almanac (Ticknor & Fields) enters vigorously upon existence under the certainly capable literary joint editorship of OLIVER WENDELL HoLMEs and DONALD G. Mivcu LL, whose literary paper it would be quite safe to endorse to a larger amount than they have here drawn upon the public. Their own portion is appropriately occupied with the study of rural life in America, in which both are adepts. The other literary matter is well chosen, and the whole, with the artistic aid involved, well presented. FINE ARTS. THE first annual exhibition of the Society of American Painters in Water-Colors, which opened at the National Academy of Design on the 20th of December, is a most gratifying success. In respect to the number and merit of the pictures placed on exhibition, the ex- pectations of the most sanguine friends of the new movement were more than realized. Only those who had been vouchsafed a glimpse beforehand of the magnificent studies of. Colman, William Hart, and one or two other artists who had devoted the whole summer to the practice of water-color, were at all prepared for the display of works at the Academy of Design; but a single look was sufficient, as the visitor reached the head of the grand stairway, to set at rest forever the question so often asked and evasively answered, whether the art of painting in water-color would flourish in America. Had there been in the exhibition no other water- colors than those three of William Harts, and that one of Colmans that made up the magnificent quartette in the Corridor, to the left of the door of the North Room, these alone would have answered the question in a very conclusive and satisfactory manner. We must commend the good taste and judg- ment of the Hanging Committee in placing these fine pietures so that they strike the eye and enchain the attention of every visitor at the very entrance of the gallery, and thus prepare one in the pleasantest manner to enjoy a ramble through the exhibition. Though nearly all the members of the new Society have done well this year, the palm of superiority must be adjudged to Mr. Samuel Colman, the President,with a little hesita- tion, however, in favor of William Hart, whose productions rival those of the former in almost every quality of excellence, lacking, indeed, but little in the breadth and depth of tone and simplicity of treatment, that place Colmans works at the head of American water-colors. Let us examine some of these in detail, and see wherein their charm consists. In the first place, we cannot fail to remark

1868.] MONTHLY CURONIcLIt. 257 in passages of larger ones, with a liberal in- fusion of the new. The Ballad Book, by WILLIAM ALLIEGHAM (Sever & Francis), presents in attractive form some score or more of those old ballads, which, for several centuries living on the lips of the people of England and Scotland, were, it is now about a hundred years agofirst brought into general literary notice as a class by the collection of Bishop Percy. Since then editors and critics of every grade of percep- tion and diligence have been busy with them, adding to the number and overlaying the simple outline with burdensome notes and commentaries. Mr. Alliugham, with more candor than is usually to be found in such labors, pronounces much of this erudition to be utterly worthless, in a prefacea bright and invigorating essaythe prelude to a feast, pure and simple, of the old wonder- working minstrelsy. THE Cambridge publishers of the Ballad Look have also issued another reprint of an elegant En,lish illustrated edition of Crays Poems, whic4 in neatness of typography and general excellence of the engravings, fairly reproduces the beauty of the oriainal. These and other publications of the same refined class, certainly maintain the high position claimed for the Cambridge University Press. A N1~W and revised edition of THOREAUS Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (Ticknor & Fields), recalls the time of its first appearance, the earliest of the authors books, about twenty years ago. He had then up-hill work with the public; but his merits were the same then as after his death they were so willingly recognized. The reader will find the same learned reading, individual reflection, and microscopic pursuit of nature in this as in the other books, which are better known. Without commending all Mr. Tho- reaus opinions, we may say that his writings have the excellent qualities of provoking thought and observation. The Atlantic Almanac (Ticknor & Fields) enters vigorously upon existence under the certainly capable literary joint editorship of OLIVER WENDELL HoLMEs and DONALD G. Mivcu LL, whose literary paper it would be quite safe to endorse to a larger amount than they have here drawn upon the public. Their own portion is appropriately occupied with the study of rural life in America, in which both are adepts. The other literary matter is well chosen, and the whole, with the artistic aid involved, well presented. FINE ARTS. THE first annual exhibition of the Society of American Painters in Water-Colors, which opened at the National Academy of Design on the 20th of December, is a most gratifying success. In respect to the number and merit of the pictures placed on exhibition, the ex- pectations of the most sanguine friends of the new movement were more than realized. Only those who had been vouchsafed a glimpse beforehand of the magnificent studies of. Colman, William Hart, and one or two other artists who had devoted the whole summer to the practice of water-color, were at all prepared for the display of works at the Academy of Design; but a single look was sufficient, as the visitor reached the head of the grand stairway, to set at rest forever the question so often asked and evasively answered, whether the art of painting in water-color would flourish in America. Had there been in the exhibition no other water- colors than those three of William Harts, and that one of Colmans that made up the magnificent quartette in the Corridor, to the left of the door of the North Room, these alone would have answered the question in a very conclusive and satisfactory manner. We must commend the good taste and judg- ment of the Hanging Committee in placing these fine pietures so that they strike the eye and enchain the attention of every visitor at the very entrance of the gallery, and thus prepare one in the pleasantest manner to enjoy a ramble through the exhibition. Though nearly all the members of the new Society have done well this year, the palm of superiority must be adjudged to Mr. Samuel Colman, the President,with a little hesita- tion, however, in favor of William Hart, whose productions rival those of the former in almost every quality of excellence, lacking, indeed, but little in the breadth and depth of tone and simplicity of treatment, that place Colmans works at the head of American water-colors. Let us examine some of these in detail, and see wherein their charm consists. In the first place, we cannot fail to remark

1868.] MONTHLY CURONIcLIt. 257 in passages of larger ones, with a liberal in- fusion of the new. The Ballad Book, by WILLIAM ALLIEGHAM (Sever & Francis), presents in attractive form some score or more of those old ballads, which, for several centuries living on the lips of the people of England and Scotland, were, it is now about a hundred years agofirst brought into general literary notice as a class by the collection of Bishop Percy. Since then editors and critics of every grade of percep- tion and diligence have been busy with them, adding to the number and overlaying the simple outline with burdensome notes and commentaries. Mr. Alliugham, with more candor than is usually to be found in such labors, pronounces much of this erudition to be utterly worthless, in a prefacea bright and invigorating essaythe prelude to a feast, pure and simple, of the old wonder- working minstrelsy. THE Cambridge publishers of the Ballad Look have also issued another reprint of an elegant En,lish illustrated edition of Crays Poems, whic4 in neatness of typography and general excellence of the engravings, fairly reproduces the beauty of the oriainal. These and other publications of the same refined class, certainly maintain the high position claimed for the Cambridge University Press. A N1~W and revised edition of THOREAUS Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (Ticknor & Fields), recalls the time of its first appearance, the earliest of the authors books, about twenty years ago. He had then up-hill work with the public; but his merits were the same then as after his death they were so willingly recognized. The reader will find the same learned reading, individual reflection, and microscopic pursuit of nature in this as in the other books, which are better known. Without commending all Mr. Tho- reaus opinions, we may say that his writings have the excellent qualities of provoking thought and observation. The Atlantic Almanac (Ticknor & Fields) enters vigorously upon existence under the certainly capable literary joint editorship of OLIVER WENDELL HoLMEs and DONALD G. Mivcu LL, whose literary paper it would be quite safe to endorse to a larger amount than they have here drawn upon the public. Their own portion is appropriately occupied with the study of rural life in America, in which both are adepts. The other literary matter is well chosen, and the whole, with the artistic aid involved, well presented. FINE ARTS. THE first annual exhibition of the Society of American Painters in Water-Colors, which opened at the National Academy of Design on the 20th of December, is a most gratifying success. In respect to the number and merit of the pictures placed on exhibition, the ex- pectations of the most sanguine friends of the new movement were more than realized. Only those who had been vouchsafed a glimpse beforehand of the magnificent studies of. Colman, William Hart, and one or two other artists who had devoted the whole summer to the practice of water-color, were at all prepared for the display of works at the Academy of Design; but a single look was sufficient, as the visitor reached the head of the grand stairway, to set at rest forever the question so often asked and evasively answered, whether the art of painting in water-color would flourish in America. Had there been in the exhibition no other water- colors than those three of William Harts, and that one of Colmans that made up the magnificent quartette in the Corridor, to the left of the door of the North Room, these alone would have answered the question in a very conclusive and satisfactory manner. We must commend the good taste and judg- ment of the Hanging Committee in placing these fine pietures so that they strike the eye and enchain the attention of every visitor at the very entrance of the gallery, and thus prepare one in the pleasantest manner to enjoy a ramble through the exhibition. Though nearly all the members of the new Society have done well this year, the palm of superiority must be adjudged to Mr. Samuel Colman, the President,with a little hesita- tion, however, in favor of William Hart, whose productions rival those of the former in almost every quality of excellence, lacking, indeed, but little in the breadth and depth of tone and simplicity of treatment, that place Colmans works at the head of American water-colors. Let us examine some of these in detail, and see wherein their charm consists. In the first place, we cannot fail to remark 258 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Feb. the surprising strength and power of Colmans water-colors. He has never done any thing in oil equal to them in force of color and depth and purity of tone. If the New York public understand their own interests, they will never permit Mr. Colman to paint in oils again. His own inclination is to work in water-colors, and his remarkable success shows this to be his true sphere. No. 490, which hangs in the Corridor in company with three water-colors of William Harts, is a fine specimen of his style. It is a study from nature near the artists Hudson residence. On the right of the picture slopes a hill-side, carefully drawn and painted; in the centre lies a sparkling sheet of water, rippled by the light wind that brings those heavy masses of cloud over the brow of the hilL Other hills rise in the middle distance, and, with their lovely shapes and delicately varied hues, at- tract the spectators eye far into the picture. Nothing is slighted or slurred over; the pic- ture is carefully and conscientiously painted in every part, yet without sacrificing depth and breadth to detail. A more striking, but in some respects less exquisite, work, is the view 6n the Lake of Luzerne, No. 516. The picturesque old town is very beautifully painted, and the rippled water and the ship- ping are rendered with great skill and feeling. The distant hill on the left, cappedwe might say clothedwith the heavy gray cloud, is the least successful part of the picture, being hard in outline and color. From this the eye turns to rest on the beautifully painted water, or to explore the quaint and picturesque old town, whose towers and gables, irregularly grouped, cast broken reflections in the water that ripples against its feet. By far the strongest of Colmans water-colors, the most powerful in depth and breadth of tone, and the deepest in feeling, is No. 457, Twilight near Giliad, Maine. It is a picture that has this quality of nature in it, that itgrows upon the eye and heart. Many pictures can be taken in and estimated at a glance. Their beauty is all on the surface, and they do not improve upon nearer acquaintance. But one may find perpetual delight in this picture of Colmans,in its lovely lines of composition, its breadth and purity of tone, and the feel- ing of pensive tranquillity that pervades the whole. There are several other beautiful water-colors by this accomplished artist in the exhibition, but the three we have named are his best. They are in the Corridor, and are well hung. William Hart is likewise an artist who should never he allowed to return to oil- painting. In precision of touch and general facility of handling, he is superior even tc Colman, whom he does not equal, however, in feeling or imagination, lie is a close but not servile student of nature, occupying middle ground between the precise and hard man- nered Pre-Raphaclites and the Blotters, whose works, like the earth in chaos, are without form and void. His touch is firm, guided by knowledge and long practice, his eye for composition good, and his feeling for color at once exquisite and deep. Of his eight pictures in the exhibition, the most im- portant is No. 490, On Grand Nanan, New Brunswick. It is a work of wonderful power in the expression of light. The luminous qualities of the sky are such as few artists can produce. In the same group with this picture hang two smaller ones, quite dif- ferent from it and each other in composition and feeling. One (No. 492) is an autumn forest-scene, a piece of most brilliant coloring. Nothing could be more lovely than the paint- ing of the rocks in the foreground, knee-deep in autumn-tinted ferns, or than the passage of light just beyond the first group of trees. Underneath this picture hands one totally different in feeling and treatment,No. 491. A lovely group of trees, whose roots are hidden by a luxuriant growth of fern, occu- pies the foreground. Through an open space between the gracefully drawn trunks, we catch a glimpse of a calmly flowing stream, and in the distance, relieved against the deep blue of a softly rounded hill, gleams the white spire of a village-church. The execu- tion of this drawing is refined and delicate. Very beautiful is the play of light and shadow in the foreground, a~id the foliage is treated with masterly freedom. Hart has, indeed, a wonderful mastery of touch in the treatment of foliage, combining precision, firmness, and delicacy of drawing, with a freedom equal to that of the late English artist, J. H. Harding. These qualities are displayed to best advan- tage, we think, in the large drawing, No. ~ called Autumn in the Maine Woods. Here we have magnificent tree-drawing, and the most brilliant effects of autumn-coloring. The clump of brambles in the lower right- hand corner is painted with great delicacy, and there is a wonderful variety of colors in the beautifully composed groups of fern in the centre. We must mention one other gem, No. .348, The First Snow on the Mountains. The forest is still clad in brilliant foliaoe for the snow has fallen early, before the sharp 1868.] MONTHLY OHBONICL~. 259 October winds have stripped off the leaves, and we look across a belt of scarlet and crim- son and gold, to the distant crags that show dark and grim between the patches of white. A dull, leaden sky hangs over all; a cold, bluish mist creeps along the water-course in the valley, and a feeling cf chilliness and desolation pervades the picture. Much was expected of the Hills, who, for many years, were almost alone in this country in their devotion to water-colors; but nei- ther father nor son has done himself much credit in his contributions to the present ex- hibition. John W. Hill sends his usual branch of cherries, very truthfully and exquisitely painted,the color and texture of the wood, the droop of the fading leaves, and the tempt- ing ripeness of the fruit, beingrendered with a care, skill, and fidelity which can only come of long and conscientious study; but we are a little tired of these bits of fruit-painting, with their background of blue sky, always of the same deep tint, lightened with suggestions of white cloud. The landscapes contributed to the exhibition by the Hills are not pleas- ant to the eye, either in subject or treatmeat. Like Farrer, l~ewman, and many other artists who aim at servile imitation of nature, the Hills have a fatal facility at choosing bad or uninteresting subjects; and if they happen upon a good one, the chances are ten to one in favor of its being spoiled in their hands. Yet they are artists of great knowledge, and possess unusual skill in the use of water- colors; and it must be owing to some strange mental freak that they so seldom produce beautiful landscapes. Their studies of fruits are exquisitely finished. T. C. Farrer has a number of drawings in the exhibition, which are not likely to add to his reputation. Every one contains evidence that the artist has studied nature, and means to paint what he sees; but for one who means well he has very hard luck. Take, as an example, No. 506, in the Corridor. From a distance the effect is not unpiessing, and one is attracted to take a nearer view. Alas, the illusion is at once dispelled, the moment one approaches close enough to observe the hard, streaky touches, inartistic reminders of the brush, that produce the sky, mountain, and lake. The drawing on the opposite side of the Corridor, No. 463, Twilight on the Hudson River, is still worse, in color, llnes of composition, and style of execution. Mr. Farrer attempts too mueb. He should con- fine his ambition to subjects within the reach of his powers,peaches, plums, bits of grass, a leaf or two, a single strip of bark with a little moss clinging to it. Such things he can paint with exquisite delicacy of drawing and color; but he cannot, as yet, paint a landscape; no, nor even a single tree. He tries, we have no doubt, to paint exactly what he sees; but to say that he succeeds in doing so would be a gross libel upon nature, or a very poor compliment to his eyes. The Spanish drawings, or rather sketches, of Mrs. Murray, are very striking at first sight, but soon offend by their incompleteness and tricky effects. The appearance of force and strength in the coloring of the figures is soon discovered to be an illusion, produced by the sketchy and flimsy treatment of the sur- rounding objects. She is too fond, also, of introducing repulsive types of humanity in her compositions, such as the hideous old hag in The Cheat Detected, No. 337. We have lingered so long over the pictures of ~Iolman and Hart, that we can refer to other exhibitors in general terms only. Har- ry Fenn contributes several fine drawings; his Toilers of the Sea, No. 378, is remark- able for breadth of effect and transparent shadow. R. S. Giffords Deserted Whaler, No. 368, is a strong and manly piece of work, rich in imaginative suggestion. J. Smiies two drawings exhibit great excellence of ex- ecution and feeling for color; those of Bel- lows are noticeable for attention to detail and their finished handling,his study of an old water-wheel, No. 432, is the best of his con- tributions. Then there are many spirited sketches by Marny; coast-scenes by Thwaites and De Hans; several finished drawings by W. L. Thomas, an English artist rising into celebrity; tenderly painted landscapes by Alexander Dunn; a fine specimen of Turners work; an exquisite study of fruit by W. Hunt; very delicate studies of wood-growth and mosses by Paul Rieman; and but we are rapidly exhausting the catalogue, and must stop with only a reference to Boughtons picture called Pride and Humility, and to the large pictures by Darley. We must not, however, forget the many exquisite spe- cimens of flower and leaf painting contributed to the exhibition by lady-artists. Those by Miss Nina Moore are very beautiful in color, drawing, and composition. A bunch of water- lilies, No. 534, by Miss E. Andrews; Sweet Peas, No. 500, by Miss Carrie A. Griswold; Sumac Leaves, No. 499, by Mrs. E. M. Norton; and the flower-pictures of Miss Ellen Robbins, are painted with a tenderness and skill worthy of high admiration. 260 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Feb. TABLE-TALK. PUTNAMS MAGAZINE certainly owes a word of acknowledgment to the many kind friends of the Press and in other relations who have given so cordial a welcome to the first num- ber. It is gratifying to know that whatever reception may await our efforts in the future, we are assured of this generous encourage- ment at the beginning. The Magazine, under all circumstances, will endeavor to justify the expectation and confidence it has already ex- cited and received. Of our own performances we will say nothingof these our readers must be the judges; but of our motives and intentions we would say every thing. Here we desire to practise no concealment; but to be fully un- derstood. We mayfall short of our standard but the public has a right to know what t~at standard is. Without entering into any pro- longed review of what may be required from a magazine, it may be sufficient to speak, in a word, of two points on which sensitiveness will always be manifested: Politics and Re- ligion. With regard to the former, we desire to state once for all, as a guide to our contrib- utors and for the information of our readers, that we would, in every case, rise above the merely partisan warfare of the day. To carry on public affairs there must be parties; and parties, as a general rule, represent principles. But a party is always in danger of falling short of or exceeding its proper motives or conditions, which must in their turn be mod- ified by varying necessities. So the field is open for a wide discussion of duties and obligations. In pursuance of these ideas, we shall endeavor to find out, by the ef- forts of various mindschoosing for our contributors writers of worth, ability, and stationwhat is most for the public good; and, in striving for this, we may safely let Party take care of itself. We shall first ask what is desirable to be done; what the party, whichever it may be, intends to do, may come afterward. In the words of the Hon. John Bigelow, our recent minister to France, cited in an appendix to our first num- ber, we would desire to discuss political ques- tions from a purely scientific, and not from a personal or partisan, point of view, remem- bering that what is personal in political controversies is transient, while the aim should be to produce permanent impressions.~~ With regard to Religion: here again we desire not to be misunderstood. Nothing derogatory to the claims of Christianity as a Divine Revelation, nothing justly offensive to the Christian world on the score of infidelity or immorality, will knowingly be suffered in these pages. We would not undermine the faith, or attack the cherished convictions, of any body of Christians. As regards Infidel- ity and Christianity, we are on the side of Christianity. We desire to make no unseem- ly professions on this subject; but we do de- sire to have it understood that we consider an implicit assured Christian Literature, in no paltry materialism, but in its acknowledged spiritual strength, the glory, as at this period of the world it is the necessity, of a great commonwealth. If this Magazine shall pro- mote that end by that means, it will, in the judgment of its present conductors, gain its best and most honorable title to public sup- port. It may happen that, in the presentation of articles on various subjects, from various writers, at different times, in the Magazine, there may be some passages which may jar upon the feelings, or be at variance with the sentiments, of readers whose judgments and emotions are to be held in the greatest re- spect. But for this, if it happen, there should be a generous allowance. Some latitude must be given to cmtributors. There would be more lost than gained in subjecting their writings to alterations or curtailment in coin- plinnce with too rigid a standard. It would require a degree of editorial labor which it would be almost impossible to undertake; and what is more, few writers of character, who are worth calling upon for articles, would submit to the annoyance or impertinence. With these few remarks at the outset, we have only to add furtherlet the Magazine be judged, and judged charitably, by its fruits. Wz paid two dollars and fifty cents for a Dickens ticketa premium of twenty-five per cent. on the original costand consoled our- selves with the hope that the profit went into the pocket of that poor boy who sat out the length of a frosty December night, on the stone steps of Steinway Hall, patiently await- ing the dawn of day for a chance of specu- lating in the popularity of Dickens Readings.

260 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Feb. TABLE-TALK. PUTNAMS MAGAZINE certainly owes a word of acknowledgment to the many kind friends of the Press and in other relations who have given so cordial a welcome to the first num- ber. It is gratifying to know that whatever reception may await our efforts in the future, we are assured of this generous encourage- ment at the beginning. The Magazine, under all circumstances, will endeavor to justify the expectation and confidence it has already ex- cited and received. Of our own performances we will say nothingof these our readers must be the judges; but of our motives and intentions we would say every thing. Here we desire to practise no concealment; but to be fully un- derstood. We mayfall short of our standard but the public has a right to know what t~at standard is. Without entering into any pro- longed review of what may be required from a magazine, it may be sufficient to speak, in a word, of two points on which sensitiveness will always be manifested: Politics and Re- ligion. With regard to the former, we desire to state once for all, as a guide to our contrib- utors and for the information of our readers, that we would, in every case, rise above the merely partisan warfare of the day. To carry on public affairs there must be parties; and parties, as a general rule, represent principles. But a party is always in danger of falling short of or exceeding its proper motives or conditions, which must in their turn be mod- ified by varying necessities. So the field is open for a wide discussion of duties and obligations. In pursuance of these ideas, we shall endeavor to find out, by the ef- forts of various mindschoosing for our contributors writers of worth, ability, and stationwhat is most for the public good; and, in striving for this, we may safely let Party take care of itself. We shall first ask what is desirable to be done; what the party, whichever it may be, intends to do, may come afterward. In the words of the Hon. John Bigelow, our recent minister to France, cited in an appendix to our first num- ber, we would desire to discuss political ques- tions from a purely scientific, and not from a personal or partisan, point of view, remem- bering that what is personal in political controversies is transient, while the aim should be to produce permanent impressions.~~ With regard to Religion: here again we desire not to be misunderstood. Nothing derogatory to the claims of Christianity as a Divine Revelation, nothing justly offensive to the Christian world on the score of infidelity or immorality, will knowingly be suffered in these pages. We would not undermine the faith, or attack the cherished convictions, of any body of Christians. As regards Infidel- ity and Christianity, we are on the side of Christianity. We desire to make no unseem- ly professions on this subject; but we do de- sire to have it understood that we consider an implicit assured Christian Literature, in no paltry materialism, but in its acknowledged spiritual strength, the glory, as at this period of the world it is the necessity, of a great commonwealth. If this Magazine shall pro- mote that end by that means, it will, in the judgment of its present conductors, gain its best and most honorable title to public sup- port. It may happen that, in the presentation of articles on various subjects, from various writers, at different times, in the Magazine, there may be some passages which may jar upon the feelings, or be at variance with the sentiments, of readers whose judgments and emotions are to be held in the greatest re- spect. But for this, if it happen, there should be a generous allowance. Some latitude must be given to cmtributors. There would be more lost than gained in subjecting their writings to alterations or curtailment in coin- plinnce with too rigid a standard. It would require a degree of editorial labor which it would be almost impossible to undertake; and what is more, few writers of character, who are worth calling upon for articles, would submit to the annoyance or impertinence. With these few remarks at the outset, we have only to add furtherlet the Magazine be judged, and judged charitably, by its fruits. Wz paid two dollars and fifty cents for a Dickens ticketa premium of twenty-five per cent. on the original costand consoled our- selves with the hope that the profit went into the pocket of that poor boy who sat out the length of a frosty December night, on the stone steps of Steinway Hall, patiently await- ing the dawn of day for a chance of specu- lating in the popularity of Dickens Readings. 1868.1 TABLE-TALK. 261 Arriving at the tail-end of an immense throng of carriages and people which gath- ered from Broadway and all the adjacent streets, we entered the hail, and mounted to our allotted seat, in the supremest loft, digni- fied with the name of the Second Balcony. The audience, in number two thousand at least, was already seated, showing a ready obedience to the command of punctuality so emphatically urged in the Dickens advertise- meiit. We cannot but record our admira- tion of such a mass of good-looking and well- conducted spectators. The whole two thou- sand sat with the quietude and expectancy of one man, intent upon the coming event. Each person clung to his seat as if he valued it in proportion to the difficulty he had in getting it, and there was hardly a stir in the whole great audience, during the performance, beyond what was inevitable in turning over the librettos, with which each one seemed pro- vided, and in yielding to the emotions appro- priate to the occasion. These, however, seemed by no means very intense, and we observed nothing that indicated any approach to the convulsions of laughter and melt- ing into tear~ which we read of in the morning paper, but looked upon a remarkably unimpassioned audience, for New York, evi- dently subdued by the occasion. Curiosity was undoubtedly the impelling motive of the great majority of the spectators, and to satisfy this there was the concentrated attention of the eye and ear, to see and hear all that was to be seen and heard. Large as was the audience, there were but few among it who belonged to that class of muttitudinous read- ers of the works of Dickens. So at least we inferred from the constant and close reference to the little books so generaliy diffused, and the frequent indications of a want of sympa- thy with the most telling points of the per- formance. The audience was apparently composed for the most part of those people of practical respectability who are not ordi- narily moved by any literary or other septi- ment, cherished for its own sake, but who, having the money, never fail to spend it for a sight of the popular curiosity of the hour, whether man or monster. The Reading of Dickens is no doubt about as good as such an entertainment can be made, which without the usual accessories of the stage, the multiplicity of actors, the deeo- rations of the scene, the variety of costume, and the interludes of music, is at best a dull thing. We are quite sure that most of those who have once given two hours to a reading do not care to make a further draft upon their patience. The obviously humorous parts, which were in fact the best rendered, seemed to tell most with the audience, such as, for example, the trial in Pickwick, where the characters and scene are drawn with the breadth and easily- perceptible grotesqueness of caricature. The pathetic portions were much less effective, and some of them seemed overdone. The howl with which Dickens strives to express the horror of poor Smikes friendlessness, struck upon the ear so intensely as to over- reach the end proposed, and -instead of awakening compassion, stirred a gentle ripple of smiles upon the face of many, who would have burst into laughter had not the per- former, by one of his quick transitions, passed to the simple narrative, which revealed to the audience the fact that tears were the appro- priate expression of sympathy with the scene. We do not doubt that there are many pro- fessional actors, supposing that it were possi- ble for them to give as thorough a study to the parts as their author, who could make these Readings as effective as Dickens him- self. He, however, by the compass and flexi- bility of his voice, which fills the great bali without any apparent strain, and changes from character to character with wonderful facility of transition, shows that he is possessed of no mean natural capacity for an actor. The whole country seems so thoroughly to have caught the prevailing epidemic of curi- osity to see and hear the great Dickens, that it is now probable that his receipts will reach the sum of two hundred thousand dollars. This will be a generous compensation for all the distinguished English autLior may have lost by the non-existence of an international copyright, the very want of which, in the case of Dickens, has been no doubt the cause of his present immense pecuniary success. His name, though his genius would have been undoubtedly widely appreciated in this country by the sympathetic, never could have become so universally known if it had not been for the free trade which has made his books cheap articles of common consumption. We must not, however, be suspected of opposition to an international copyright, of which, on the contrary, we are, and ever have been, ad- vocates. Whatever incidental advantage to certain interests may be claimed at present, we are confident they would be far outweighed, even to the same parties, by the full recogni- tion of literary as of other property. 262 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Feb. Wz willingly afford place to the following authoritative communication respecting the religious opinions of the poet Halleck, con- cerning which there has apparently been much misunderstanding. Ma. EnIToa: In obituary notices of this distinguished poet, in journals entitled to re- spect, it has been stated that, during the latter part of his life, Mr. Halleck entered the communion of the Roman Catholic Church. I confidently affirm that this statement is erroneous. Mr. Halleck returned to this, his native town, in 1849, quite enfeebled in health. Having been baptized and confirmed in the Protestant Episcopal Church, he became at once a constant and apparently a devout attendant on my ministrations, and I regarded him as an exemplary parishioner. Soon rumors reached my ears that Mr. H. was a Romanist. I felt authorized to repel the im- putation. Rumors, however, have continued from that time to the present period, but viewing them as without foundation, I have always endeavored to deprive them of credi- bility; for, among other, the following rea- sons. ~ H. uniformly expressed himself as much interested in the ministrations of the Protestant Episcopal Church, which he here attended; and no intimation that he dis- sented from any sentiment in her Prayer Book, or as preached from her pulpit, ever came to my knowledge. Affected, at length, with deafness, he abstained from public wor- ship. It is not necessary to mention in detail the arguments I used in private interviews, in reference to his becoming a Communicant, and to his continued attendance on the Lords day services. Though I did not prevail, he thanked me warmly for regarding him asa pa- rishioner. While he lived, Icontinued my vis- its in that relationship. On one occasion, he, referring to the former constancy of his attend- ance on the services of the Church, and to his conscientiously abstaining from attendance on certain other ministrations, thus decidedly ex- pressed his convictions Mr. B., I regard yours as the only true Church. This was about the time when a biographical article was published in a periodical, wherein he was represented as a Romanist. At another interview, when visiting him, ac- companied by a brother clergyman (the Rev. Francis T. Russell, Rector of St. Stephens Church, Ridgefield, Conn.), who Was desirous of an introduction, Mr. H. was, as usual, very affable, and free in the expression of his views of the Christian Faith and the Christian Church. After we retired, I remarked to my brother that the rumor that Mr. H. was a Romanist could have no foundation, for his views, just now expressed, were utterly irreconcilable with that position. My Rev. brother entirely concurred. The circum- stances of the interview were made the subject of continued conversation between us; and before parting, I requested him to bear in memory what had transpired, as, not improb- ably, a reference thereto might be important towards biographical correctness. A letter received from the Rev. Mr. Russell assures me of his distinct remembran.e of the inter- view and of our conversation thereto follow- ing. Had Mr. H. been a Communicant in the Episcopal Church, I am confident that, not- withstanding his reasons for general absence from public worship, he would have been present on Communion days. Romish ser- vices are celebrated here at stated periods the chapel being but a few rods from Mr. H.s late residence. Yet he never attended those services. Had he been in communion with the Church of Rome, even did he not attend on her general ministrations, yet her Altar service would not have been utterly forsaken. The fact that he never attended on any of the ministrations of that 4Thurch, though cele- brated near his very door, is by itself, to my mind, conclusive that he was not a Romanist. That his attachment and devotion to the Protestant Episcopal Church continued un- shaken to the close of his life, will further ap- pear from the fact, that, on every Lords day, he not only made the HolyBible the companion of his retirement, but also, habitually and reg- ularly as each Sunday caine, made the Church Prayer Book the guide of his devotional exer- cisesobserving the full liturgical arrange- ment. This was his course to the closing period of his days, the very last Sunday of his life witnessing his use of his Prayer Books cherished services. Mr. Hallecks sister, who enjoyed his ut- most confidence, with whom he resided the last eighteen years of his life, and to whom I am indebted for the information given in the last paragraph, avers that her brother was not a Romanist, but that he died in the faith of Christ, and in the bosom of the Protestant Episcopal Church. She is very desirous that I, as his Pastor, make this effort to counter- act erroneous statements, and to rescue his memory from perhaps prevalent misappre- hension. What is above written, has been 1868.] TABLE-TALK. 263 submitted to her, and has her entire ap- proval. Until facts are communicated which will more than counterbalance the arguments I have advanced, historical verity requires the record, that our departed friend lived and died in the true Catholic faith. The funeral services were attended at the Protestant Episcopal Church, and her office for the Burial of the Dead was uttered over his grave. LoaaNzo T. BENNETT, Rector of Christ Church. Guilford, Coun., Nov. 27, 1867. THE article on The Talmud in the last Q arterly Review, which is attributed to the pen of Mr. Emmanuel Deutsch, of the British Museum, has attracted much attention from scholars and the literary world generally, the number in which it is published having reached an unprecedented sixth edition, as a fresh and animated handling, a pictorial criti- cism of a difficult and obscure subject, known heretofore, and that apparently imperfectly, only to the learned. It is evidence of the interest which is now being awakened in oriental studies in relation to what may be termed the antecedent history of Christianity that, as Mr. Deutsch tells us, about a dozen editions of The Talmuds are at this moment in press in different parts of Europe. The working of this field, a wilderness of the knowledge and speculations, the jurisprudence and religion, the science and social economy, the wisdom and poetry of a thousand years of Jewish life, at a most important period of its development, he predicts, will for a long time to come engage the attention of critical inquirers in well-nigh every department of arebteological study. The specimens of the work which he presents, drawn from his original investigations, promise the most curious revelations for the instruction and delight of the public, when it shall be fully numasked and treated, as he treats it in his sketch, with rare powers of analysis, in a style as far as possible removed from pedantry; in fact, for the first time rendered available to the modern world of thought. Much is evi- dently to be learned from it of the working of positive institutions and of Jewish society; but more of morality and spiritual life in man- ifestations approaching the Gospel light of the New Testament. Some of the exhibitions of the latter brought forward in ethical pre- cepts are among the finest products of the oriental mind, the fountain-light of all our day, the master-light of all our seeing. Humanity and spirituality are their most observable traits. The writers protest against the vulgar notion of the Jewish Sabbath~ being a thing of grim austerity, will strike many with surprise. If Puritanism is driven from that stronghold, it will have to sustain alone the odium or applause of its proceedings. The truth is, that the later his- tory of Judaism has been very imperfectly known, at least to the Christian world; and consequently, in the prevailing ignorance of the national character in its progress and re- finement, great injustice has been done in violently contrasting the Old and New Dis- pensations. IfMr. Deutschs article is to be taken as an earnest of what may be elicited in a fuller exhibition of the subject, it is not too much to say that many a page of the sermons of Christendom, even of to-day, will be ob- literated: Without, however, venturing into the theological arena, we may certainly anti- cipate from these promised new editions of the Talmud a great deal that is profitable and entertaining; that it is pleasing to know and wise to practise. Here is a humane gloss on the old Jewish enactments: There is an almost modern liberality of view regarding the fulfilment of the Law itself, expressed by such frequent adages as the Scripture says: he shall live by them, that means, he shall not die through them. They shall not be made pitfalls or burdens to him, that shall make him hate life. In the chapter of pro- verbs which the reviewer has culled from this neglected wilderness, there are many very striking and beautiful. A spirit of kindness runs through them alL For example, No man is to be made responsible for words that he utters in his grief. The regard for woman anticipates the ages of chivalry. The maxim, Descend a step in choosing a wife; mount a step in choosing a friend, is curious. PHILADELPHIA is likely to gain an import- ant accession to its periodical literature, in ippincotts Magazine, the first number of which has just made its appearance. It is, every way, a credit to the city where it is published. We naturally look, in such a work, for something of a local flavor, and find it in the opening number of a series of articles entitled The Old Slate House, commemorative of a recently perished build- ing, occupied in turn by several of the most distinguished historic families of the State, commencing with that of William Penn. The writer is Mr. John Meredith Read, Jr., who has family opportunities of no slight 264 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Feb, importance for the successful pursuit of this antiquarian studyfor it assumes this character in his hands; while in a kindred work; his Memoir of Henry Hudson, he has already proved his capacity for acute and diligent research. MR. THOMAS KASTs exhibition on Broad. way, The Grand Caricaturama, as he entitles it, is, whatever may he thought of its artistic meritsand in a free, dashing way, they are certainly considerablea decided novelty in the mixed style of literature and art common to these performances. He gives the public a series of thirty-three historical caricature paintings, which are unrolled before the spectators with an occasional musical accom- paniment and a steady stream of letter- press and explanations, in good set phrase and elocutionary emphasis, by an accom- plished rhetorician on the stage. The sub- jects are various, mostly caricatures of Amer- ican public characters of the day, figuring in scenes of the war, and in the political at- titude since: as if the cartoons of Punch, with more liberal accessories, were painted in coler, and put upon the stage. Mr. Nast, however, takes a broader and sometimes more questionable license of caricature than Punch. He would be an invaluable artist in get- ting up a Christmas pantomime, or as an artistic skirmisher in an electioneering cam- paign. He has made a good introduction of his humorous art in New York, where he has just now many competitors in entertaining the public. As he proceeds, however, he will find it necessary to remove old scenes, and substitute new, to keep pace with the altered phases of political life. To be effect- ive, such an exhibition must occasionally hit hard; but there are bounds even to the license of caricature, and it should be re- membered that it is the quality of genuine humor to amuse without offence. A LADY correspondent furnishes us from memory with the following verses of a Christ- mas Carol once printed by the Rev. Dr. HAwKs for distribution to the children of his Sunday School, of St. Thomas, in this city. The authorship is not known. Can any of our readers supply it, or refer us to any ap- pearance of the entire poem in print? There were other poems, written by Dr. Hawks for the Christmas celebrations of the young people of his flock, which we may hereafter revive for our readers. Hark! hark! how the old church bell Throws its cheerful notes on the cold, clear air, Sending its summons oer hill and through deli, Calling young and old to the house of prayer. Crisply the snow crackles under our feet; Yonder old tower in wreaths is dresl, And the frozen diamonds, spread like a sheet, Form a queenly mantle for earths old breast. And why to the house of prayer to-day? Is it not better without, in the light Of the glorious sun, whose golden ray Is making the beautiful landscape so bright? Ah, no, theres a warmer sun within, The frozen to sheer, and the blinded to bless; A li ht for the penitent laden with sin, - And it comes from the Sun of Righteousness. Shepherds of old upon Bethlehems plain Heard angel minstralsy singing above, Glory to God.twas thus rang the strain Good-will te man: the message is Love. To the house of prayer, then; tis there to-day The Church bids as all, on beaded knee, Ilumbly to bow and fervently say, Thanks be for Christ, Holy rather, to Thee. Her Thanks be for Christ, let our children cry, Thanks be for Christ from their parents fall, Thanks he for Christ shall the aged reply, Thanks be for Christis the watchword of alL While speaking of Dr. Hawks, we may add that in the notice of his literary labors in our last number, the name of the Rev. Dr. C. S. Henry should have been associated with that of Dr. Hawks in the conduct of the Yew Yi~rk Review. We understand, indeed, that the work was originally projected, and mainly edit-. ed by Dr. Henry, Dr. Hawks lending it the aid of several vigorous articles add his influence in the city and country. A LETTER from the wife of BAYARD TAYLOR, dated Florence, informs us of the serious ill- ness of her husband at that place, of a fever produced by malaria, from which he is now happily recovering. Mr. Taylor will shortly commence his contributions to PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. We are pleased, also, to learn from the Hon. GEORGE P. MARSH and the Hon. J. Lo- THROP MOTLEY, in letters from the same city, that we may enroll their names in our list of contributors. THE next number of the Magazine will contain the promised article by the Rev. Dr. Horace Bushnell, Science and Religion; to be followed, in the succeeding number, by a paper on History and its Philosophy, by the Rev. Dr. C. S. Henry. The second number of the series of papers, Jewels of the Deep, by Professor Schele de Vere, will also appear in the March num- ber.

PUTNAMS MAGAZINE OF LITERATURE, SOIENaE, ART, AND NATIONAL INTERESTS. VOL. I.IMIAIRCH186$.No. ITT. SCIENCE ANT) RELIGION. To one who can set himself far enough aside from the troublesome disagree- ments of science and religion, to medi- tate propealy the grand relationship of fact and history in which they stand to each other, an almost new sense will sometimes appear to be opened, of the unity and composite wholeness of truth, which it is even a kind of sublimity to feel. It will first of all occur to him, that the oldest state of mind is not the scientific, but the religious, and that re- ligion, wholly unscientific in its own habit, is yet the necessary precursor and pilot of science. Only as the worship- ping instinct goes clear of deistic plu- ralities, and phantom powers that divide up the world, to embrace a one God reigning in a strictly one system, and by laws that represent both intelligence and the everlasting unity of intelligence never until then is proper science pos- sible. It supposes for its indispensable condition a monotheistic type of mind; for though it is a matter wholly of the understanding, yet no time of proper scientific understanding can ever come, till some fit impression is gotten, or at least begins to be, of the world as a whole, related to the understanding in terms of order and law. Polytheism, or god.s in cabal under groundandabove, managing then several intrigues, and voL. i.1S parcelling the world in the name of government, is forever incompatible with science. The sciences of number and figure, of arithmetic and geometry, have just as good advantage in polythe- ism as anywhere, because the data are all on hand in the consciousness of the operators own mind; and therefore it was that these sciences were so largely developed long ages ago; even thou- sands of years in advance of the sci- ences, properly called modern, which have it for their object to explore, by experiment and observation, the actual substances and law-systems of the world. Here the intellectual unity of the world is presupposed; for no law can be sought, or even thought, by a mind which has not beheld the intellectual unity of things, and caught, in some way, the sense of a transcendent affinity with mind in the general universe. Hence there is no key to nature, that can ever unlock her secrets, save the key that is given by a monotheistic religion. It may occur to some, that the Jewish people had a distinctively monotheistic religion for long ages, and yet were never a scientific people, or a people scientifically exercised. But the suffi- cient answer is, that they only half had their religion, being thoroughly infected with the polytheistic notions and wild 266 [Mar. PUmAMs IIAGAZINE. superstitions of their age, and holding even their Jehovah, almost universally, as if he were but a god among gods, only better and higher to them, because he was the God of their particular na- tion. Their religion never got deep enough hold of them, as a people, to regulate and shape their conceptions of the worlds order. Aristotle came even nearer to a true monotheistic conception of God, as for the understanding, than they, putting himself to an argument from design, that reads very much like a chapter of Paley; and yet he could not so far exclude the plural conceptions of Deity, as to lay the necessary basis for science. This was reserved to be the special honor of Christianity, and that partly for the reason commonly charged against it; viz., the intensely, humanly personal figure in which the divine na- ture is there revealed. For if we ad- journ the matter of Gods personality, and think only of nature outspread above and belowthere in skies and stars, and here in land, sea, clime, and kingdomit is doubtful whether mind would ever catch the hint of unity and law in it sufficiently to start a scientific era. But the forthcoming of God as love, in the Christian story, takes our feeling first of all, and settles the ques- tion of his intellectual and personal uni- ty beforehand; preparing us to look for every sort of unity, material, constitu- tional, providential, historical, in the works that are issued from his hand. The result will not come in a day; a certain lapse of time will be necessary, to work the supposed mental configura- tion. It will ei~en take whole centuries to get the new sense of divinity opened wide enough, to bring the understanding out, orlet it pass up through, into the be- held unity of the creation. For a whole thousand years, bad gods, demons, and false powers, will be thought in such relation to the true, that it will be a reasonable question, whether Christ did not die to be a ransom to the deyil? This great, half-Manichean superstition, opposite to Gods sole magistracy, was inally conquered by Anselso, when it really seemed that a complete intellec tual monotheism was now born. And yet, so tightly does the old polytheistic and demonic machinery hold fast on the brain it has peopled with its powers, that even Luther could not see unity enough in the forces of the creation, to exclude the fear of thunder as a work of the devil. Descending now another stage lower, we find the great, strange Kepler at work among the stars, to reduce them under laws of mind, that is, of figure and number, and so to build a true sci- ence of astronomyin which we see how near up he is getting to the notion of a supreme, all-present mind insouling law in the world. And yet we hear him talking strangelyto the gibbous moon, and scolding the refractory stars, that refuse to accept his formulas, or let their secret be discovered, and we really do not know whether the man is conjuring the heavens, or exploring them. But we recollect that hitherto he has been an astrologer, and that astrology has been nothing but a dealing with hidden pow- ers that are not Godwhich powers are now just about to be dismissed everlast- ingly from the heavens, making room for mental unity and reason to occupy the world. Just here, therefore, opens the real first chapter of modern science, which we call astronomy. Another chapter scarcely less import- ant is to follow, in due time, or as soon as may be, in the new-born science of chemistry. As before astrology had peopled the sky with powers to conjure by, and as conjuring and divining had kept back the discoveries of astronomy, we know not for how long a time, so have the strange weird processes and spells of alchemy packed the world un- der ground with demons and dark, bad powers more difficult to be dislodged, because they have got their dominion fastened upon matter itself, more close at hand than the stars. And what shall turn men off from these incanta- tions, conjurations, leagues with wizard powers, when they are going shortly to be shown how dirt is transmuted into gold, and phosphorus fumes into the elixir of life; also by what wondrous 1868.] SCIENCE AND RELIGION. 267 potion reluctant love may be surely captivated, and by what magic for- mulas, recited in the dark at dead of night, almost any spell may be com- pounded. The very thing wanted here, to prepare the interpretation of matter, is a thoroughgoing, absolute conception of Gods unity, and his universal reign by universal law. And if that point of advance had not first been very nearly carried by astronomy, as respects the masses of the sky, it is doubtful whether it ever could have becn here, in the mineral, half mystic affinities of the ground. Now these two sciencesastronomy and chemistryare the fruitful begin- nings of our new scientific era. Given these two, all the sciences called modern must needs follow, because the seminal ideas of law are, by them, verified and set in working order. So far then we discover a most conspicuous connection between religion and science; a proph- ecy and alsd pledge that the connection will be found even more signally aus- picious, when their mutual working is fully consummated. As the science of nature goes on towards completion, re- ligion, having all the while been watch- ing for it in close company, will have gotten immense breadth and solidity, from the ideas and facts unfolded in its discoveries, and will be as much enlarg- ed in its confidence and the sentiment of its worship, as beholding Gods dcep system in the world signifies more than looking on its surfaces. And so also science itself, having learned to look after mind in things and above them, thus to inspect the goings on of nature, not as a mill operated by fate, but as a chariot wheeled by Gods supreme lib- erty, will itself grow warm and free, as it gets more conversant, through nature, with the Supernatural Mind, and will make its highest reaches of discovery in the poetic and religious impulses, by which it will then finally be lifted. Such presentiments are permitted, and do, in fact, belong to both science and religion, and to one as truly as to the other. And yet, by the natural fault of both, they too often are not allowed. On the contrary, we find them largely oc- cupied, just now, with their collisions, as they probably will be for a consider- able time to come. The scripture reve- lations were not made to science, or by it, or in the moulds of it, but only to minds that know the facts and ob~jects of nature superficially, as they affect the senses. Religious impressions are the real matter of the revelations, and it is a matter of no consequence, if only these are sufficiently produced, what impres- sions of nature are allowed to pass un- corrected. As they are beforehand stamped on the forms of language, they can be corrected only by scientific ex- positions, after the day of science ar- lives. And here it is, when science begins to arrive, that so many religious people begin to be more disturbed than they should be. They are frightened lest these scientific expositions, correcting so many popular impressions of the un- scientific language, are going to sweep away the very matter of revelation in. self. They fly into panic, because this or that discbvery does not keep the cus- tomary jingle of opinions they suppose to coincide with Bible impressions; and they fall into a nervous dread, in this manner, of science itself; as if it were the natural enemy of religion. It passes for nothing that God is in the book of science, quite as certainly as in the book of religion, and that, being the same God in both, no truth can ever be discovered in one, that contradicts, or at all impinges on, the truth from the other. This over-sensitive concern for religion may be taken, perhaps, as the indication of a certain sincerity, but it has the very sad fault of being exercised just as it should be, if religion had no truth at all to help it, and all the lia- bilities of error to keep it in jeopardy; and by such weak, unregulated jealousy inflicts the worst dishonor and wrong that can befal it. If it be the truth, it has no attribute of mortality, and can no more be shaken by science, than sci- ence by the facts of nature; and if it be not the truth, as these over-timid souls [Mar. 268 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. appear to very nearly concede, why should we be tormented by so great concern for it? All the worse if this concern turns easily to animosity; for then how much can we say for the piety of it? There is also displayed, not seldom, on the side of science, a fault which makes these collisions more uncomfort- able aud lower still in dignity. The point opposite to religion is how often made in a way of eagerness, that bears a flashy, partisan look, and very poorly representstheimpartiality of science. The new-discovered fact, or law, is not sim- ply announced, but appears to be de- livered with aim, as a point-blank shot, that is going to bring down this or that high article of religion. It belongs to proper science, being just that highest honor which many are slow to appreci- ate, to simply make discovery, and cease; for when a thing is discovered, no mat- ter ~yhat it will do or not do, or what will or will not come of itthat is no concern of science. Enough that, be- ing once discovered as a truth, it will take care of itself and bring its own con- sequences. All deeply grounded, prop- erly scientific minds are in this key, counting this to be the just nobility of their profession; but the upstart, forward promulgators, who are more concerned to make a sensation than they were to make their discovery, must needs mag- nify it, by showing what it will demol- ish. And it is only a matter of course, that all these freebooters of science, who go after it, not for what it is, but chiefly for the game there is in it, should be always imagining that religion is just ready to go under and finally cease, from this or that staggering blow now pre- pared for it. So far the collisions of science and religion are blamable in their causes, and the debates, by which their adjust- ments are to be liquidated, are both aggravated in their temper and hinder- ed in their result, by the unnecessary dis- turbances thus contributed. Still the debate must go on, and the liquidation must be accomplished. And there is really nothing to fear from it. The temple that science is building will not be stopped by the protests of religion, and the old superstructure of religion will not be toppled to the ground, as many sad-faced people are beginning to prophesy, by the assaults of science. As many as twelve or fifteen issues of capital significance have already been started, since the arrival of our modern scientific era, and it may help us to some better courage, if we very briefly glance at the inventory, and see what is in it, or, as far as may be, is to come of it. At any rate, we must not be afraid of evidence. The weakest thing possi- ble is to make outcry against conces- sions to evidence; as if it were a dan- gerous power that we must somehow, anyhow, master, whether by noise or strategy. In the inventory to be looked over will be comprehended, as we shall see, several varieties of cases. And first of all we will notice the cases where discoveries of science that appeared to be against religion, have already been established and have carried the general assent of religion. Thus our Copernican system of astronomy is directly against all the Ptolemaic, flat-world notions of the Scripture, and even requires us to take another centre for the creation. No other collision with Scripture has ever been made by science, that was at all comparable, for extent and square disagreement, with this. At first, the whole compact of religion was supposed to be endangered by it, and it was necessary, for a time, to do a good deal of persecution to keep religion safe. But, after four centuries of experience, we have become naturalized intellectu- ally ia the scheme; so that we pray, and preach, and live Copernically, in the Ptolemaic language of Scripture it- selg apprehending no contradiction, and scarcely aware of any accommodation made. Now and then we hear of some solitary, strange person quoting Scrip- ture against the rotations of the sphere; much as we hear of some ancient crone, the last of her race, talking Celtic, and waiting to die with it; but most of us very 1868.] SOIENOE AND RELIGION. 269 seldom even think of any disagreement between our astronomy and our religion, and we speak habitually, with pity, of the jealous protestations once arrayed against it by the zealots of revelation. In all which we see, as by experiment, just what will be the result, in respect to all other discoveries of science that seem to impinge on religion; it will only hold the old terminologies of Scripture in new senses, but with none the less confidence and respect. As the time goes on, too, the con- formity wrought will be more easy and rapid. Thus we have geology, for ex- ample, a science born within the recol- lection of many, insisting, and by most convincing arguments showing, that the world was not created six thousand years ago, or then within six days, as we had been understanding Moses to teach, but in long bras of geologic transformation, or progressive history, more or less closely corresponding with the creativ~ week of Genesis. And with this we are almost universally satisfied already, counting it truth enough, since there was nobody living to see the crea- tion, that Gods high Authorship and Up- holdership are so impressively presented, as a practical truth for religion. The six days calendar is only a frame to set the record in, and give us the vast, unmeas- ured, scarcely imaginable stretch of the story, by noting it as in stages of prog- ress. We are learning, in the same way, to submit the story of the flood to qualifi- cations which the ~ritcr plainly does not make, or suppose to be necessary. That any such universal cataclysm ever befel the world the geologists think they find reason to deny; and partly for the very conclusive reason, that there is not water enough on the planet to make such a flood. Hence it has more and more generally been conceded, since the exposition by Dr. John Pye Smith, a quarter of a century ago, that the flood was local only, not universal. If the historian supposed it to be univer- sal, as he probably did, he plainly did not understand the configuration of the world sufficiently to be sure what he should mean by it; and it matters little, we perceive, the main fact being given, whether, on some outer margin of the fiat he conceived, there was a rim, or in vast central midlands wide spread regions, of dry land. Perhaps, too, we may take the fact reported, that the fountains of the great deep were broken up, as indicating an impression of some local subsidence, or disturbance. In this first class of cases, the posi- tions held by religion have been modi- fied by new constructions, without any sense of loss, or diminished respect for revelation. Great concern has been felt, sad outcries of danger have been heard, and even hot battle has been waged, but religion has taken her new configura- tions, and every thing is safe as before; with an immense advantage gained, in tbe new sense of solidity added, by the crises of investigation passed. We have a second class of cases, where the conclusions of science are also estab- lished, but the effects are to come more slowly, because there is no so apparent contrariety, but only a new phase of opinion produced, that must finally work important changes of interpreta- tion, where at first they are not expect- ed. Thus, by our investigations in chemistry and physiology, we are com- ing to look on the body in a different manner, and so on the resurrection of the body. Our constancy of type, or per- sonal envisagement, is not maintained, as we discover, by the matter of the body, but by the formative power of the life, taking up and giving out, running in and ofl and causing the matter to flow as a river into the more permanent, pre- siding form of the personality. This in fact is the body, the peculiunr, the abid- ing type of the man; the matter is only transitionaL It is here, it is there, it is pretty much everywhere. It has belong- ed, in single particles, to many thousand bodies, dead and alive, and will to many thousand more. The resurrection we look for must finally come to be,in this view, the anastasis, or emergence of the formative nature which is the real body. The gathering up of the old matter, the returning of member to member, and 270 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Mar. bone to bone, will no longer be thought of, but dismissed as mere chimera. No discredit will thus be thrown upon the Christian fact of a resurrection of the body; it will only be asserted less fan- tastically, and just as much more credi- bly. Many persons have believed, and many still believe, that when a certain contin- gency called a second coming, what- ever it be, arrives, a stupendous world- catastrophe is to be expected; that the heavens and earth shall literally pass away, be dissolved, burned up, and a new astronomic system set in their place. But against any such impression science is steadily and surely pressing, by the suggestion that the matter of the world is largely incombustible; that there prob- ably is not oxygen enough in the solar system to burn it up; that no single body can be struck out of it, or by an ounce diminished, without the gravest consequences of disorder, in all remotest worlds; and, what is more, that the sta- bility of the creation, demonstrated by La Place, is becoming a truth more and more deeply felt, as science advances. The result will inevitably be, that the Scripture language referred to will be taken as being only an easternism in speech, to describe a time of great woe and commotion; just as we do, in fact, understand the same kind of language, when Isaiah denounces a day of judg- ment on Idumea, and when Christ him- self denounces the fall of Jerusalem. In a third class of cases, the conclu- sions of science, or the points of discov- ery maintained, are not themselves per- fectly established, and we can only guess what results will follow, if they should be. Mr. Agassiz, for example, holds the opinion that what we call the human race is made up of several distinct races, all original. If the point could be es- tablished, more certainly than it appears to be, it need cost us no very great con- cern for the Scripture authority. We have then to ask who that people were that Cain was afraid of and among whom afterwards he found his wife? and who the giants of the first age were? and who the daughters of men~~ that stole away the Sons of God, per- haps of Adam, from their integrity? adding, that a merely local flood might leave on hand descendants of them all. And when the Apostle declares that God hath made of one blood all the nations of men, to dwell on all the face of the earth, it must be enough to per- ceive, that all alike are men, separated, as such, by a chasm wider than the universe,from all the animal races; that truth is truth to all, right the same principle and law to all, goodness the same divine quality, God the common Father, and they themselves a close high brotherhood, in terms of love and duty, having all inmost circulations of sentiment and feeling running blood- like through themthus to run when flesh and blood are no more. Compact- ed as one stock, in this manner, by the everlasting congeners of morality, mere oneness of blood, or derivation, is but a feeble type of their unity. Still it is a type our feeling clings to, and we prob- ably shall not give it up, till it is fairly taken from us. The geologists again are beginning, of late, to report discoveries of human remains, that must have belonged, they insist, to some pre-Adamic race, or races, existing in a different, less ad- vanced type, before the present habita- ble order. Such announcements are as- toundingly opposite to our previous im- pressions, and perhaps it will be shown, by fuller investigations, that the remains discovered belong to our present era. We cannot volunteer a faith in such dis- coveries in advance of the proofs. It will take us a little time to settle our heads and know where we are, but we can well afford to wait on the evidence; perceiving distinctly beforehand that there is ample room in the first few lines of Scripture, for unnumbered cycles of history anterior to the present. God existed long enough ago to create them and take care of them, and that mint suffice. Some of the late experimenters, again, affirm that, under certain conjunctions arranged for the maintenance of galvanic action, they are able to beget, or create, 1868.] SCIENCE AND RELIGION. 271 new forms of insect-life, without any previously existing eggs or germs. And so they account for the new families of organized life appearing, at successive stages, in the geologic progress of the earth, without any creative or miracu- lous intervention of God; for the world itselg they say, has a creative function, as they have experimentally discovered. Now, that any such new generation of insect-life is possible, apart from hidden germs undiscovered, we may rightly be slow to believe; for it is antecedently improbable, nay incredible. Mind only can think the species, and adjust the sub- tle articulations of suchinsect-life; acids and mineral substances and galvanic forcesall unintelligentnever did, or can do, any such thing. Indeed, if it were established, as it certainly is not, that in the given conjunctions of causes, such creations do really take place, it would be infinitely more rational to be- lieve that God allows his Creatorship to appear ty fixed law, so to speak, in such physical conjunctions, just as he allows his Spirit-power to be drawn forth by right personal conjunctions made for him in prayer. The supposed discovery, therefore, does not shake at all the faith of Gods creations. Again, we have another fourth class of cases, where the proposed point of discovery is not made out, and there is no reason to fear that it ever will be. I only cite a single example, in the Dar- winian theory of the transmutation of species. What is science, anyhow, but the knowledge of species I And if species do not keep their places, but go a mask- ing or really becoming one another, in strange transmutations, what is there to know, and where is the possibility of science? If some original germ-cell atom may travel up through mollusc, and frog, and bug, and buzzard, and mam- mal, into a man, what forbids that stones may break species in the same way, to become wood and water, and wind, and cloud, and thunder? If there is no stability or fixity in species, then, for aught that appears, even s~cience it- self may be transmuted into successions of music, and moonshine, and auroral fires. If a single kind is all kinds, then all are one, and, since that is the same as none, there is knowledge no longer. The theory may be true, but it never can be proved, for that reason if no other. And when it is proved, if that must be the fact, we may well enough agree to live without religion. There is still a fifth class of cases, where conclusions against religion are drawn from no particular disagreement, but are made to have a look of truth, from the new mental positions obtained. Thus groping his way backward through so many and vast cycles of geologic his- tory, and yet arriving apparently no whit nearcr to Gods act of creation, the ex- plorer faints, so to speak, in the stretch of his almanac, and drops into the con- clusion, that it is better to make short work, and say, that the world itself is from eternity. Be it so: nothing is therein concluded against either Gods existence or Creatorship; for since the world so evidently bears the stamp of mind in every part, we can only judge that it is from eternity, as being from eternity created. Which again is but saying that God is from eternity Cre- atora conclusion far more consonant to reason, than that he some day began to be Creator. Was he God before he was Creator? or was he rather, in the simple fact of existence, both God and Creator? The world, in this view, is just as truly made out of nothingthat is, nothing exterior to Godand is just as truly miracle, just as fit home for a supernatural religion, as if it was made yesterday. And the first chapter of Genesis suffers no trace of damage. Another conclusion, that is even fatal every way to religion, is suggested, and gets a color of evidence, from the fact discovered and rediscovered continually in nature, that all events take place un- der fixed laws. They certainly do, we must agree to this; but it does not follow that such fixed laws are only laws of natural causation. This article is not written by any laws of natural causa- tion. The writer never did any thing by natural causation, unless in some hour of delirium, or sleep-walking. All 2Z2 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. ~far. minds have laws in their ends, and a perfect mind, like the mind of God, hav- ing perfect ends, will do all things ac- cording to fixed laws by and for its ends. And imperfect minds, imperfectly co~r- dinated in right ends, are none the less superior to causation. They have pow- er, every one, to act supernaturally, com- ing down upon nature to put her forces into new conjunctions, and make her very causes vary their product. They do not act as being simply acted on, as a projectile is thrown, or a hammer swung, but through and from them- selves, out of their inherent, everlasting, supernatural liberty. And the world is put under them to be thus acted on ridden by them even as they ride their horses. And so, acting downward into it, they are doing always their small miracles upon it. Is it credible that God is himself withholden from putting his will into nature, when he gives us just this power, to be our most common equipihent? It is very true that God cannot be expected, in miracle, to overturn or suspend the fixed laws of nature. Such a definition of miracle makes it impos- sible. The man who lifts a weight masters gravity, but he does not sus- pend the law. He only puts the fiat of his will on his muscles, and, by the contracting and counter-pull of these, the weight rises. So Gods supernatural fiat acting into, or interacting with, the laws and causes of nature, may produce all miracle without disruption of order. There is no difficulty here, save in get- ting our own conceptions of nature and the supernatural so adjusted, as to allow their co-ordinated and regularly system- atized action. And there is no difficulty in this, greater than there is in perceiv- ing, every moment, that we have ac- tions of our own, entering freely into causes, being themselves nncaused,in which we so far do the supernatural ourselves, without having even a doubt or question raised. As regards the adjustment now of these many collisions recounted by our inventory, in the happiest and speediest way possible, two things plainly are re- quired, both of religion and of science; viz., that they both consent to be com- plemented in each other; and both as- sume to hold their ground firmly and with courage, as the truth requires. Thus religion must consent to be con- figured to all true points of science; just as it has learned already, without damage and even with the greatest ad- vantage, to hold the Bible itself in a Copernican sense. Having it on hand to convert the world, it must, in a dif- ferent sense, be converted to the world. And it can never stop being thus con- verted, till science stops discovery. It must seek to put itself in harmony with every sort of truth, else it cannot be true itself. Not that the truths of na- ture and natural science are superior and standard as respects the truths of relig- ion; for scientific ideas and opinions must be willingly configured, under the same law, to the verities of religion. Truth is onea complete, universal sys- tem, based in Gods all-comprehensive intelligence. And the moment either science or religion refuses to acknowl- edge and draw itself towards this whole of truth, it becomes ipso facto schismatic. Of course, it is not for religion to run after every newly-advertised discovery of science, and offer it obeisance, before it has had time to make due proof of its truth. And yet, when such due proof is made, and the discovery fully estab- lished, religion should greet it none the less heartily, that it sees apparent con- tradiction in it, but should rather begin to inquire, by what modifications the apparent disagreement can be removed, and God be set in harmony; knowing that, when the seeming disagreement is cleared, it has even gained the discovery to itself. In the same way, as already intimated, science also is requireda requirement which does not appear to have been much thought of as yetto allow itself to be configured as punctually to the verities of religion; doing honor always to the maxim, that the first fact of knowledge is the organic unity of all knowledge. It is not supposable, of 1868.] ScIENcE AND RELIGION. 2?3 course, that any real fact of science is to suppress, or any way disguise itself, for the benefit of religion. Only no dis- coverer is at liberty, in making up his discovery, to disrespect, or volunteer a disconnection of it with any kind of truth. It is one of the particular perils, for example, of science, that the sensu- ous mental habit it engenders, tends to a general disrespect and quiet ignoring of all supersensuous and supernatural factso of religion itself. Becoming in- telligent is the same thing, in this man- ner, as becoming atheistic, and the reality of spirit, and miracle, and im- mortality, and the supernatural remedial causes that compose the staple of a gos- pelyes, and sometimes even the second sense and true poetic life of things, that which is the flame and principal mean- ing of the creationall these are ignor- ed, and the scientific plodder is left to spend his life in toiling at the shell of knowledge, as if it were the substance and totality. His science becomes, in this manner, a science of mere things, installed as a complete world-empire; and refusing to know the super-mechan- ical forces, and vastly broader concern- ments of spirit, it consen4e to be either a stupendous lie, or a very cheap form of idolatry. He discovers new races ap- pearing in the rocks, for example, and refers them not to God, but wilfully to spontaneous generation;~ whereas, for God there is some presumption of evi- dence, and for spontaneous generation none at all. Making up his physiolog- ical account of man, he does not stop at the conclusion given him by his facts, that man is an animal, but he draws it a little wider, warping in a fact or two, it may be, to cover it, and concludes that he is only an animalbolting pur- posely, as entitled to no consideration, the grand superanimal faith of immor- tality, never so much as conceived or conceivable by animals, but dear and natural to man and natural as dear also the much wider distinction of im- mutable ideas, such as truth, and right, and good, where man leaves all animals below and takes his place with God. So, more generally, going after causes in his field, and finding them working under their laws, he puts down his con- clusion that all thingshuman actions evenare done by causes working un- der laws. Deep-thoughted men of all ages have thought farther, and seen more; but he is restrained by no defer- ences, giving out his pronouncement, that responsibility and all supernatural facts are but fictions which philosophy will disregard. Science has no right to put itself at war, thus lightly, with old original ideas, that belong to the vast, supereminent domain of spirit, and com- pose a complete other-where of knowl- edge. It consents in this manner to be no more a builder, but a devastator. And then it follows, that as the bigots of religion do not know what religion is, when they refuse to allow any con- figuration of its word to the teachings of science, so these guerillas of science miss the very conception of nature, when they cease to look upon it as made for the uses of spirit, and by its very laws submitted to the uses of spirit. Self-active power it has none, and no man knows what it is, who does not see it open, every way,set open more and more by science itselfto the uses of such power, and congener, in that manner, to the properties of the supernatural. The true comprehensive wisdom here is to say, let the truth come boldly in from all quartersout of consciousness and revelation, out of the sky, out of the ground; and let every truth know beforehand, that it is going to meet, and embrace, and be everlast- ingly one with all other truth, even as truth itself is inherently one. A second lesson, as already suggest- ed, still remains; that both parties are to hold their ground together, maintain- ing just that courage that belongs to men who belong to the truth. We suffer a certain feeling of regret when we remember that Galileo is not able to stand by his discovery, but is even coin- pelled, by the tyrannical seventies of religion, to make a scarcely honorable defection from it. And if now a man of science dares not publish or publicly affirm a fact he has discovered, because 274 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Mar. it runs counter to some standard, or scruple of his religion, how great a fall is there from the true dignity of science. The more common fault of our time is audacity. Science wants no cowards, but real courage dares to be considerate. Let us have discovered all that is best, and all that is worst, but never any thing which is not exactly true. But the more difficult thing, in this matter of courage, is to settle the true position for it, on the side of religion. The demonstrations of religion, as re- lated to science, bear a look, just now, that is not inspiring, or is even a little humiliating; a look of demoralization, or chronic weakness, that is turning one way or another for help, and seemingly cannot find it. As if there were no power left in religion, to withstand the inroads of scientific naturalism, and every thing were verging towards a final precipitation of faith and authority! Nothing could be more unworthy, or in fact more false. We have indeed been called to revise a good many of our supposed knowledges, and some that we derived, as we thought, from the Scripture; but there is not any one of them which damages either us or it. The concessions we are yielding to sci- ence make no breach on the subject- matter of revelation; they only touch certain incidentals of form and lan- guage, where the Scriptures are on a par, as to their conceptions of nature, with all other modes of opinion. Every thing they were written for stands unshaken still, and is even the more firmly settled, that it has been able to survive the perils of so broad a reconstruction. See what changes have been sweeping by. The flat world that was laid on pil- lars, rounding into a sphere, has broken loose, in swift motion, rushing strong and far. The heaven that was decked with spangles has become a vast world- empire, stable as geometry itself. Mat- ter has become incombustible, ha~g its very atoms yoked in the count of arithmetic. The counsel that turns about the clouds has been discovered, and clouds themselves trod under by human feet. The waters have been measured, and the seas explored and well-nigh bridged. Even our bodies are seen to have their constancy no more in their matter, but wholly in the shape- element under which they are ever being recomposed. A thousand misconcep.. tions are corrected, and a thousand short-conceptions enlarged. And yet every thing in religion stands even the more securely; as we see it yoke itself with science, in a manner, at once so pliant, and so visibly superior. Our true part, then, is to be as little concerned for the safety of religion as we have reason to be. The future out- breaks of discovery are not likely to bring us a single peril more. And since we have ample space left us as ever, for all most supernatural giftsrevelations, prayers, anointings, discernings, and even miraclesand no possible discov- ery can rob us of these liberties of the spirit, or more than help us to maintain them systematically, as having found their intelligible unity with science it- self, what shall we do but pledge our right hand to it and to all its explora- tions? We are to say, Go on, gentle- men, for there is a much larger field to be possessed. As yet you have but scratched the worlds surfaces, in what you call your sciences. Go deep; for the deeper you go, and the more un- sparing your search, the better it will be for us. Wrench every subtlest and most secret thing from natures bosom, and let us have it. We shall appropri- ate every true thing you bring us, and thank God for it. Only bring us no conceit, as if nature were the all, and science the all-expounder. What you call nature is but a very small affair, compared with Gods high spirit-em- pire, and the vast immortal quantities, and powers, and passions, and truths, that build the eternal system it com- poses. Do not imagine that you are in a commission large enough to include and give you jurisdiction of things su- pernatural, when your only jurisdiction is of the shell. Be not in haste to put your sentence on the faiths of religion. The nursery-sparrow that boasts I kill- ed Cock Robin, could as well be sure 1868.] Tun Tmiuz Wnnxs. WT5 of transfixing mountains with his bow tions of mind. Whether you know it and arrow, as you of doing death upon or not, here is a good deal more of religion, if you would, by your sciences. rock than there is in all your under- It is a very great thing to undertake worlds of geology. It is older also the extirpation of those eternal faiths, than your most primitive formations, and facts, and ideas, by which God im- and will stay firm under you some ages plants himself in the everlasting percep- longer. THE THREE WRENS. MR. WREN and his dear began early one year, They were married, of course, on St. Valentines day, To build such a nest as was safest and best, And to get it all finished and ready by May. Their house, snug and fine, they set up in a vine, That sheltered a cottage from sunshine and heat: Mrs. Wren said: Im sure, this is nice and secure; And besides, I can see in the house, or the street. Mr. Wren, who began, like a wise married man, To check his mates weak inclination to roam, Shook his little brown head, and reprovingly said: My dear, you had better be Looking at home. Youll be trying the street pretty soon with your feet, And neglecting your house and my comfort, no doubt, And youll find a pretext for a call on them next, If you watch to see what other folks are about. Theres your own home to see, and besides there is me, And this visiting neighbors is nonsense and stuff! You would like to know why? well, youd better not try ;- I dont choose to have you, and that is enough 1 Mrs. Wren did not say she would have her own way, In fact, she seemed wonderfully meek and serene; But she thought, I am sure, though she looked so demure, Well I I dont care; I think youre most awfully mean I Mr. Wren soon flew off, thinking, likely enough, I could manage a dozen such creatures with ease ; She began to reflect, I see what you expect, But if I know myseli I shall look where I please! However, at night, when he came from his flight, Both acted as if there was nothing amiss: Put a wing oer their head, and went chirping to bed, To dream of a summer of sunshine and bliss. I need scarcely remark, they were up with the lark, And by noon they were tired of work without play; And thought it was best for the present to rest, And then finish their task in the cool of the day. So, concealed by the leaves that grew thick to the eaves, He shut himself in, and he shut the world out; Now, said she, hes asleep, I will just take a peep In the cottage, and see what the folks are about.

1868.] Tun Tmiuz Wnnxs. WT5 of transfixing mountains with his bow tions of mind. Whether you know it and arrow, as you of doing death upon or not, here is a good deal more of religion, if you would, by your sciences. rock than there is in all your under- It is a very great thing to undertake worlds of geology. It is older also the extirpation of those eternal faiths, than your most primitive formations, and facts, and ideas, by which God im- and will stay firm under you some ages plants himself in the everlasting percep- longer. THE THREE WRENS. MR. WREN and his dear began early one year, They were married, of course, on St. Valentines day, To build such a nest as was safest and best, And to get it all finished and ready by May. Their house, snug and fine, they set up in a vine, That sheltered a cottage from sunshine and heat: Mrs. Wren said: Im sure, this is nice and secure; And besides, I can see in the house, or the street. Mr. Wren, who began, like a wise married man, To check his mates weak inclination to roam, Shook his little brown head, and reprovingly said: My dear, you had better be Looking at home. Youll be trying the street pretty soon with your feet, And neglecting your house and my comfort, no doubt, And youll find a pretext for a call on them next, If you watch to see what other folks are about. Theres your own home to see, and besides there is me, And this visiting neighbors is nonsense and stuff! You would like to know why? well, youd better not try ;- I dont choose to have you, and that is enough 1 Mrs. Wren did not say she would have her own way, In fact, she seemed wonderfully meek and serene; But she thought, I am sure, though she looked so demure, Well I I dont care; I think youre most awfully mean I Mr. Wren soon flew off, thinking, likely enough, I could manage a dozen such creatures with ease ; She began to reflect, I see what you expect, But if I know myseli I shall look where I please! However, at night, when he came from his flight, Both acted as if there was nothing amiss: Put a wing oer their head, and went chirping to bed, To dream of a summer of sunshine and bliss. I need scarcely remark, they were up with the lark, And by noon they were tired of work without play; And thought it was best for the present to rest, And then finish their task in the cool of the day. So, concealed by the leaves that grew thick to the eaves, He shut himself in, and he shut the world out; Now, said she, hes asleep, I will just take a peep In the cottage, and see what the folks are about. 2t6 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Mar. Then she looked very sly, from her perch safe and high, Through the great open window, left wide for the sun; And she said: I cant see what the danger can be, I am sure here is nothing to fear or to shun I Theres an old stupid cat, half asleep on the mat, But I think shes too lazy to stir or to walk ; Oh, you just want to show your importance, I know, But you cant frighten me, Mr. Wren, with your talk! Now to have my own will, Ill step down on that sill; Im not an inquisitive personoh, no: I dont want to see whats improper for me, But I like to find out for myself that its so. Then this rash little wren hopped on further again And, grown bolder, flew in, and sat perched on a chair; Saying, What there is here that is dreadful or queer, I havent beea able to find, I declare. Well, I wish for your sake, Mr. Wren, you would wake, And see what effect all your warning has had; Ah! Ill call up that cat, and well have a nice chat, And rouse him with talk~g,oh, wont he be mad!~~ So she cried, loud and clear, Good-day, Tabby, my dear! I think neighbors a neighborly feeling should show. How your friendliness charms, said Puss; come to my arms, I have had my eye on you some time, do you know! Something like a sharp snap broke that moment his nap, Andi Mr. Wren said, with a stretch and a wink: I suppose, dear, your sleep has been tranquil and deep; I just lost myself for a moment, I think. Why! shes gone, I declare! well, Id like to know where? And his head up and down peering round him he dips; All he saw in the gloom of the shadowy room, Was an innocent cat meekly licking her lips! Tis too bad shes away; for, of course, I cant stay, Said the great Mr. Wren, shut in this little space; We must come and must go, but these females, you know, Never need any changes of work or of place. And then he began, like a badly-used man, To twitter and chirp with an impatient cry; But soon pausing, sang out, Shes gone off in a pout, But if she prefers being alone, so do I! Yet the place is quite still, so Ill whistle until She returns to her home full of shame and remorse; Im not lonesome at all, but its no harm to call; Shell come back fast enough when she hears me, of course! So he started. his tune, but broke off very soon, As if hed been wasting his time, like a dunce; For he suddenly caught at a very wise thought, And he altered his whole plan of action at once. Now, that cat, he exclaimed, may be wrongfully blamed; And since its a delicate matter to broach, I dont say of her, that she is not 8~tfl8 peur, Rut Im sure in this matter shes not sans reproche! 1888.] Tint THREE WRENS. 277 Ali! I cant love a wren, as I loved her, again, But Ill try to be manly and act as I ought; And the birds in the trees, like the fish in the seas, May be just as good ones as ever were caught. And if one in the hand, as all men understand, Is worth two in the bush, Mr. Wren gravely said, Then it seems to me plain, by that same rule again, That a bird in the bush is worth two that are dead. So he dropped his sad note, and he smoothed down his coat, Till his late-ruffled plumage shone glossy and bright; And light as a breeze, through the fields and the trees, He tloated and carolled till lost to the sight. And in no longer time than it takes for my rhyme, Now, would you believe it? and isnt it strange I He returned all elate, bringing home a new mate: But birds are but birds, and are given to change. Of course larger folks are quite crushed by such strokes, And never are guilty of like fickle freaks ; AhI a birds woe is brief, but our great human grief Will sometimes affect us for days and for weeks! But this does not belong of good right to my song, For I started to tell about birds and their kind; So Ill say Mr. Wren, when he married again, Took a wife who had not an inquiring mind. For he said what was true: Mrs. Wren, number two, You would not have had such good fortune, my dear, If the first, who is dead, had believed what I said, And contented herself in her own proper sphere. Now, to some it might seem like the very extreme Of folly to ask what you know very well; But this Mrs. Wren did, and behaved as he bid, Never asking the wherefore, and he didnt telL Yes, this meek little bird never thought, never stirred, Without craving leave in the properest way: She said, with the rest, Shall I sit on my nest For three weeks or thirteen? Ill do just as you say I Now I think, in the main, it is best to explain The right and the reason of what we command; But he wouldnt, not he; a poor female was she, And he was a male bird as large as your hand I And one more thing, I find, is borne in on my mind: Mr. Wren may be right, but it seems to me strange, That while both his grief and his love were so brief He should claim such devotion and trust in exchange! And yet Ive been told, that with birds young and old, All the males should direct, all the females obey; Though, to speak for a bird, so at least I have heard, You must be one :as I never was, I cant say! 2~8 PUTNAMS MAGAZiNE. [Mar. JEWELS OF THE DEEP. IL rEARLs. The chief place among all precious things belongs to the pearl.rwrr. A DUSKY fisherman in the far-off seas of India once found a pearl in an oyster. He had heard of such costly gems, and sold it to an Arab for a gold coin which maintained him for a whole year in lux- ury and idleness. The Arab exchanged it for powder and shot furnished him by a Russian merchant on board a trad- ing vessel, who even yet did not recog- nize the dirty, dust-covered little ball as a precious jewel. He brought it home as a present for his children on the banks of the Keva, where a brother merchant saw it and bought it for a trifle. The pearl had at last found one who could appreciate its priceless value. The great manfor it was a merchant of the first class, the owner of a great fortunerejoiced at the silent fraud by which he had obtained the one pearl of great price, without selling all and buy- ing it fairly, and cherished it as the pride of his heart. Visitors came from all parts of the world to see the wonder. He received them, in his merchants costume, in a palace plain without but resplendent inside, with all that human art can do to embellish a dwelling, and led them silently throngh room after room, filled with rare collections and dazzling by the splendor of their orna- ments. At last he opened with his own key the carved folding-doors of an inner room, which surprised the visitor by its apparent simplicity. The floor, to be sure, was inlaid with malachite and costly marble, the ceiling carved in rare woods, and the walls hung with silk tapestry; but there was no furniture, no gilding, nothing but a round table of dark Egyp- tian marble in the centre. Under it stood a strong box of apparently won- derful ingenuity, for even the cautious owner had to go through various read- ings of alphabets, and to unlock one door after another, before he reached an inner cavity, in which a plain square box of Russia leather was standing alone. With an air akin to reverence, the happy merchant would take the box and press it for a moment to his bosom, then, devoutly crossing himself and murmuring an invocation to some saint, he would draw a tiny gold key, which he wore next to his person, from his bosom, unlock the casket, and hold up to the light, that fell from a large grated window above, his precious pet. It was a glorious sight for the lover of such things. A pearl as large as a small egg, of unsurpassed beauty and marvellous lustre. The sphere was per- feet, the play of colors, as he would let it reluctantly roll from his hands over his long white fingers down on the dark table, was only equalled by the flaming opal, and yet there was a soft, subdued light about the lifeless thing which en- dowed it with an almost irresistible charm. It was not only the pleasure it# perfect form and matchless beauty gave to the eye, nor the overwhelming thought of the fact that the little ball was worth any thing an emperor or a millionaire might choose to give for it there was a magic in its playful ever- changing sheen as it rolled to and fro a contagion in the rapt fervor with which the grim old merchant watched its every flash and flare, which left few hearts cold as they saw the marvel of St. Petersburg. For such it was, and the Emperor himselt who loved pearls dearly, had in vain offered rank and titles and honors for the priceless gem. A few years afterwards a conspiracy was discovered, and several great men were arrested. Among the suspected

2~8 PUTNAMS MAGAZiNE. [Mar. JEWELS OF THE DEEP. IL rEARLs. The chief place among all precious things belongs to the pearl.rwrr. A DUSKY fisherman in the far-off seas of India once found a pearl in an oyster. He had heard of such costly gems, and sold it to an Arab for a gold coin which maintained him for a whole year in lux- ury and idleness. The Arab exchanged it for powder and shot furnished him by a Russian merchant on board a trad- ing vessel, who even yet did not recog- nize the dirty, dust-covered little ball as a precious jewel. He brought it home as a present for his children on the banks of the Keva, where a brother merchant saw it and bought it for a trifle. The pearl had at last found one who could appreciate its priceless value. The great manfor it was a merchant of the first class, the owner of a great fortunerejoiced at the silent fraud by which he had obtained the one pearl of great price, without selling all and buy- ing it fairly, and cherished it as the pride of his heart. Visitors came from all parts of the world to see the wonder. He received them, in his merchants costume, in a palace plain without but resplendent inside, with all that human art can do to embellish a dwelling, and led them silently throngh room after room, filled with rare collections and dazzling by the splendor of their orna- ments. At last he opened with his own key the carved folding-doors of an inner room, which surprised the visitor by its apparent simplicity. The floor, to be sure, was inlaid with malachite and costly marble, the ceiling carved in rare woods, and the walls hung with silk tapestry; but there was no furniture, no gilding, nothing but a round table of dark Egyp- tian marble in the centre. Under it stood a strong box of apparently won- derful ingenuity, for even the cautious owner had to go through various read- ings of alphabets, and to unlock one door after another, before he reached an inner cavity, in which a plain square box of Russia leather was standing alone. With an air akin to reverence, the happy merchant would take the box and press it for a moment to his bosom, then, devoutly crossing himself and murmuring an invocation to some saint, he would draw a tiny gold key, which he wore next to his person, from his bosom, unlock the casket, and hold up to the light, that fell from a large grated window above, his precious pet. It was a glorious sight for the lover of such things. A pearl as large as a small egg, of unsurpassed beauty and marvellous lustre. The sphere was per- feet, the play of colors, as he would let it reluctantly roll from his hands over his long white fingers down on the dark table, was only equalled by the flaming opal, and yet there was a soft, subdued light about the lifeless thing which en- dowed it with an almost irresistible charm. It was not only the pleasure it# perfect form and matchless beauty gave to the eye, nor the overwhelming thought of the fact that the little ball was worth any thing an emperor or a millionaire might choose to give for it there was a magic in its playful ever- changing sheen as it rolled to and fro a contagion in the rapt fervor with which the grim old merchant watched its every flash and flare, which left few hearts cold as they saw the marvel of St. Petersburg. For such it was, and the Emperor himselt who loved pearls dearly, had in vain offered rank and titles and honors for the priceless gem. A few years afterwards a conspiracy was discovered, and several great men were arrested. Among the suspected 1868.] JEWELS or THE DEEPPEAlILS. 2Z9 was the merchant. Taking his one great treasure with him he fled to Paris. Jewellers and amateurs, Frenchmen and foreigners, flocked around him, for the fame of his jewel had long since reached France. He refused to show it for a time. At last he appointed a day, when his great rival in pearls, the famous Dutch banker, the Duke of Brunswick, and other men well known for their love of precious stones and pearls, were to behold the wonder. He drew forth the golden key, he opened the casket, but his face turned deadly pale, his eyes started from their sockets,. his whole frame began to tremble, and his palsied hand let the casket drop. The pearl was discolored! A sickly blue color had spread over it, and dimmed its matchless lustre. His gem was diseased; in a short time it would turn into a white powder, and the rich merchant of St. Petersburg, the owner of the finest pearl known to the world, was a pauper! The pearl had avenged the poor Indian of the East, the Arab, and the poor trav- eller, and administered silent justice to the wrongful owner. There is injustice, grievous wrong and fearful cruelty in the early history of almost all oriental pearls, for, as Barry Cornwall sings so well Within the ,nidnlght of her hair, Half hidden in its deepest deeps, A single peerless, priceless pearl (All filmy-eyed) forever sleeps. Without the diamonds sparkling eyes, The rubys blushesthere it lies, Modest as the tender dawn, When her purple veils withdrawn The flower of gems, a lily cold and pale. Yet, what doth all avail? All its beauty, all its grace? All the honors of its place? He who plucked it from its bed, In the far blue Indian Ocean, Lieth, without life or motion, In his early dwellingdead I All his children, one by one, When they look up to the sun, Curse the toil by which he drew The treasure from its bed of blue. For sad is the life and fearful are the dangers through which the unfortunate pearl-diver passes before his few years are ended, and he enters into eternal rest. How strange is the providence of God, which places the precious diamond in the hand of the poor Brazilian slave, and grants the precious pearl to the half-starved Indian! Far out, off the coast of Ceylon and on Bahrein Island, in the Persian Gulf are the great de- posits, from whence come to us most of the gems we value so highly. It is a strange sight to see in the season, in the months of February and March, those desert and barren spots suddenly bloom forth in gorgeous colors, as the sands and coral rocks are covered with tents of richly-dyed materials, and a motley crowd assembles on the forsaken spot. There are divers and merchant~, fish- sellers and butchers, boat-caulkers and sail-makers, jewellers and idle talkers, men from Asia and Africa, all talking loudly, jostling each other, eager to be- come rich by some lucky venture. There are priests also, who levy tribute on the superstitious fishermen, imposing offer- ings and prescribing holidays, so that the poor fishermans earnings are half- spent in advance, and his actual work- days amount to little more than thirty in the season. When all is prepared, a Hindoo or Parsee blesses the water to drive away the sharksfor a consideration; magi- cians and sorcerers sell amulets and ut- ter blessingsfor a consideration; and when the boats are ready for a start, there is seen in the chief boat a jolly old cheat, a conjuror and binder of sharks, who waves about his skinny hands and jumps and howls, till the poor fishermen are as much afraid of his incantations as of the sharks them- selves. They must fast rigidly, while he performs his wicked rites, nor will he allow them to start, till he has de- clared the moment propitious. At last he lifts up his voice in a hideous way, the divers join in the chorus, a kind of toddy is made and liberally distributed among the excited crowd, and the work begins in earnest. The boats generally assemble at a late hour of the night, and when all are together, a signal-gun is fired, where- upon they set sail for the banks, which are not far from the west side of the Persian Gulf. The purpose i~ to reach e 280 PuTNAMs MAGAzIxu. [Mar. there before daybreak, so that the divers may be able to begin the moment the sun rises above the dark waters. In each boat there are, besides the pilot, ten rowers and ten divers. The latter, perfectly naked, but with their skin well rubbed with fragrant oil, work five at a time, leaving the other five to re- cover and to recruit in the meanwhile. Before they jump in, they compress the nostrils tightly with a small piece of horn, which keeps the water out, stuff their ears with beeswax for the same purpose, fasten a network bag, which is to hold the oysters, by a string to their waist, and aid their own descent by a large stone of red granite, which they catch hold of with their foot. Then they go quickly down to the bottom. Here they dart about as swiftly as they can, picking up with their fingers and with their toes, which they use with wonderful agility, fill their bag, and shake the rope that is held above in the b~at, in order to be drawn up at once. In favorable weather the divers may go down from twelve to fifteen times a day; if the weather is less propitious, they dive at most five times. They remain on an average not over a minute under water; to stay there a minute and a half or two minutes is possible only for a few expert divers, and can only be reached by extraordinary efforts. A few who have endured four or five minutes are spoken of as we speak of the men of genius that adorn a nations annals; and the greatest of divers is a half-fabulous Indian, who remained full six. minutes under water. The exertion is extremely violent, and generally when the poor men return to the surface, blood flows from nose, ears, and eyes. Hence divers are generally unhealthy, and without exception short-lived. They suffer of heart-diseases and sores, and are easily recognized among the mixed population of those regions, by their bloodshot eyes, staggering limbs, and bent backs. These are part of their wages. Sometin~es they die suddenly, on reaching the surface, as if struck by a shot, and are seen no more. The stories of some of their number being regularly slain, in order to throw their limbs to the sharks for the sake of sav- ing the lives of the others, or of eyeballs starting out of their sockets, and the tympanum of the ear breaking under the pressure of the water, are of course fables; but the pains, perils, and penal- ties of the poor pearl-divers, are,in all conscience, sad enough to surround the fruit of their labor, the beauteous pearl, with a melancholy interest unknown to other jewels. They have, however, their companions of suffering in higher re- gions also, for Drydens words, He who would search for pearls must dive below, apply to gems more precious even than the costliest of oriental pearls. The coast of Ceylon, however, is by no means the only place where pearls are found and fished. In the Persian Gulf more than thirty thousand men are employed in three thousand boats, and the produce of their industry constitutes the chief source of income of the Imaum of Muscat. The Red Sea also furnishes a large supply, and these three localities were the sources from which the Romans and the Greeks obtained their pearls. Inferior specimens are found in the Pa- cific and the West India waters, though certain fisheries on the California coast have occasionally produced very valua- ble pearls. It may be assumed, however, that all the mountain-streams of Europe and America furnish a limited number of shellfish, which contain at times valua- ble pearls. In many small rivers of our mountain regions small pearls have been found, and one of considerable size was a few years ago picked up on the banks of the James river, near Richmond. Certain streams in England have been fished for pearls, in ancient times. Al- ready Pomponius Mela, one of the oldest Latin writers, states that the seas of Britain generated gems and pearls, and Suetonius preserves the tradition that Julius Ca~sar was tempted to invade the distant island mainly by the hope that he would enrich himself with its pearls I It seems to be a well-established fact, that the great conqueror brought home from 1868.1 281 JEWELS OF THE DEEPPEAEL5. there a breastplate studded with pearls, which he dedicated to Venus Genitrix in her temple at Rome, and on which there was an inscription, stating dis- tinctly that these pearls were British, as C~esar wished it to be understood that the offering was formed of spoil obtained in Britain. Pliny mentions these pearls as small and ill-colored, but does not doubt their origin. Scotland has to this day its successful pearl-fisheries, especially in the river Tay, where they extend from the town of Perth to Loch Tay, and where the mussels are collected by the peasantry before harvest-time, when they enjoy comparative leisure. The pearls, how- ever, are generally small, or, when they are of larger size, rather deformed. It is constantly affirmed by tradition, on the other hand, that the superb pearl in front of the Scottish crown was ob- tained in the river Ythan. Pennant tells us that English rivers also were ixted for having several kinds of mussels, which produced quantities of pearls, and that there are regular fisheries in many, as in the Esk. In North Wales, the river Conway had, and still has, quite a reputation for its treasures. Camden gives an account of some very valuable pearls found in his time, which he calls as large and as well colored as any we find in England and Ireland, and adds, that they have been fished for there ever since the Roman Conquest. Gibson, who trans- lated Camden, says he knew a Mr. Wynn, who had a valuable collection of pearls, found in the Conway, among which was a stool-pearl, of the form and size of a button-mould, and weigh- ing seventeen grains. One of these gems, a Conway pearl, is to this day preserved in the royal crown of Eng- land; it was presented to Catharine, the Queen of Charles H., by her chamber- lain, Sir Richard Wynn, of Giordir. Even in our day these fisheries are not quite neglected, but they represent the very prose of the pursuit, as the dangers and difficulties which have to be en- countered in the Far EasL, constitute its poetry. As soon as the tide is out, these vot. simple fishermen go in several boats to the mouth of the river, and there gather into their sacks as many mussels as they can obtain before the tide returns. These are thrown into huge kettles over a fire, to be opened, and then they are taken out, one by one, with the hand, and thrown into tubs. One of the men steps barefooted into these, and stamps upon them until they are re- duced to a pulp. Next they pour water upon the mass, to separate the fishy substance from the heavier parts, which contain sand, small pebbles, and the pearls that may have been obtained. After numerous washings, the sediment is put out to dry, and the pearls are carefully laid on large wooden platters, one at a time, with a feather. When a sufficient quantity is gathered, they arc taken to an overseer, who pays the fish- ermen a few shillings an ounce for them. The pearls are generally of a dirty white, and sometimes blue. What makes this fishery singular is the mystery which hangs upon the next step in the pro- ceedings. No one knows what becomes of the pearls. The fishery is a monop- oly, and there is but one person who buys them up, and as he keeps his coun- sel most jealously, this has led to very fanciful surmises. One curious inquirer was gravely told that all the pearls here found were sent abroad to be manufac- tured into seed-pearls, and another learn- ed that they were exported to India, in order to be dissolved in the sherbet of nabobs. Ireland also has its miniature fisher- ies; the mussels are found set up in the sand of the river-beds, with their open side turned from the torrent, and con- tain occasionally fine pearls. In Ba- varia the poor shellfish arc treated sci- entifically: they are put back into cer- tain localities, fed with a peculiar food, which frivolous critics say is scientific- ally prepared by the great Liebig, and subjected to a careful treatment. The success of this curious project has, how- ever, not yet become public. The question how the pearls were originally made, led, in olden times, to many absurd fables, and even the Mid- 282 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Mar. die Ages were not free from the wildest theories. Pliny gravely asserts that the oyster feeds upon the heavenly dew, and that this produces pearls. Boethius hai the same notion, and speaking of the pearl-mussel in Scottish rivers, he says: These mussels, early in the morn- ing, when the sky is clear and temper- ate, open their month a little above the - water, and most greedily swallow the dew of heaven; and after the quantity and measure of dew which they swal- low, they conceive and breed the pearl. Even Harrison still claims that the pearls are only sought for in the latter part of August, because a little before that time the sweetness of the dew is most convenient for the kind of fish which doth engender and conceive them. The common belief in the East is, to this day, that these precious gems are rain from the sky, Which turns into pearls as it falls in the sea; and ~1iis is about as true an account of their origin as the pretty conceit of Robert Herrick: Some asked me where the rubies grew, And nothing I did say, But with my fingers pointed to The lips of Julia. Some asked how pearls did grow, and where? Then spoke I to my girl, To part her lips, and showed them there The quarelets of pearl. Alas for poetry and romance! The same terrible science of chemistry which has with its sledge-hammer of matter- oPfaet converted the glorious diamond into vnlgar charcoal, has also pro- nounced the precious pearl to be noth- ing but ~i few layers of membrane and common carbonate of lime. And yet, here, as everywhere in Gods beautiful nature, the poetical element is not wanting, if our eyes are but opened by wisdom from on high, to see the daily wonders by which we are surrounded. The pearls, aside from their beauty and their value, are superb illustrations of that beneficent law of Nature, by which injuries are con~verted into blessings, and Death is changed into Life. The mol- lusks are all made after the same model, and the common naked snail, a~wellas the mussel, the cockle, and the oyster, the awkward garden-snail crawling slowly on the moist ground, and the graceful nautilus sailing lightly over the blue waves, the elegant and the rough, the rare and the common, all show the same wisdom and marvellous adaptation of form to their purpose in life. The body is invariably of soft consistence, and enclosed in an elastic skin. From this skin exudes continual- ly a calcareous matter, which resembles common lime. This protects the ani- mal, and serves to form its shell. Where the waves are rough and rocksabound, there this house also is rough, hard, and stony, fit to weather the tempest, and to roll among rocks; where the waters are smooth and only halcyon days to be looked for, there Nature, which never works in vain, provides only paper sides, and an egg-shell boat, such as the little nautilus navigates during his happy life. This same calcareous matter which the animal gives out without pain and with- out labor, also fills the little house in- side with supernatural beauty. It forms that beautiful substance, so smooth and so highly polished, dyed with all the colors of the rainbow, and resplendent with a glorious opalescence, which still charms the eye in spite of its having become so common in all our houses. This is the lining of the shell, the nacre, or, in its poetical name, the mother-of- pearl. The iaside of the shell, said old Dampier, the stern sailor with the poets mind, resembling himself the rug- ged oyster-shell with the beautiful lin- ing within, the inside of the shell is more glorious than the pearl itself. No wonder that with such a beautiful house to live in, the oyster should seem to derive its share of pleasure, which is given by the great Maker to all his creatures on earth, from an effort to render its bed always soft and cosy, to lie warm, packed in close and comfort- ably. No wonder that with such~a dis- position, the animal should become a sybarite, and fret at a crumpled rose- leaf on its ivory couch. Hence, as soon as a foreign substance intrudes by some JEWELS OF THE DEEPPEARLS. 288 1868.1 means or other, the mussel begins to make desperate efforts to remove the irritation. It has no means to resist the intruder; it must do as we have to do when our evils are beyond our powers of resistance; it must submit, and en- deavor, by the means placed in its pow- er by a beneficent Creator, to convert the pain into a pleasure, the grief into glory. Hence, whatever the cause of irritation may be, the process is invari- ably the same. Sometimes a tiny grain of sand or some similar foreign substance slips, in a moment of carelessness, through the opening, and gets between the mantle of the animal and the shell, proving soon a great annoyance. At other times some enemy of the poor, helpless shell- fish, goes deliberately to work to de- stroy it: he fastens himself to the out- side, and perforates the shell until he gets within reach of his prey. In such cases, the animal begins immediately to cover the intruding grain with a smooth coat of membrane and a layer of nacre, or to plug the opening in like manner with the same substance, in order to shut out the intruder, and to balk him in his murderous design. These accu- mulations grow from year to year, and finally form pearls adhering to the inner surface of the shell. These are, however, not the valuable pearls of commerce, which are always found loose in the interior or imbedded in the soft parts of the animals sub- stance. This arises from the fact that here the source of irritation has not come from without, but originated in the interior of the shell itself. The cause is this: the animal produces an- nually a number of eggs, contained each in a tiny capsule of almost microscopic size. As these eggs germinate and be- come diminutive animals, they are thrown out by the mother, to become mussels in their turn. Every now and then, however, an egg proves abortive, and is not thrown out with the others, but remains behind in the little capsule, in which it was originally contained. This capsule, forming part of the ani- mal, and furnished with blood and sup- plies of every kind by the latter, is gradually covered, like the whole in- terior of the shell, with nacre, and thus forms the future gem. This is the way they are made, these wondrous beauties! Well may, therefore, Sir Everard Home exclaim: If I can prove that this, the richest jewel in a monarchs crown, which cannot be imitated by any art of man either in beauty of form or bril- liancy of lustre, is the abortive egg of an oyster enveloped in its own nacre, who will not be struck with wonder and astonishment I All pearls, therefore, have in the cen- tre some small foreign substance, or a tiny cell, which is surprising by its ex- treme brightness and polish, although but just of sufficient size to hold the original egg. If a pearl be split and then set in a ring with the divided sur- face outwards, as is often done, a mag- nifying glass will reveal to us this cen- tral cell quite conspicuously, in the form of a round hole, very minute it may be, but well defined, and showing beyond any doubt where the ovum has been deposited. Around this cell an addi- tional coat of nacre is laid evenly and smoothly every year, and thus the beau- tiful round pearl is gradually built up. Occasionally one may be found that is pear-shaped, and these, when perfect, are considered the most valuable, as they are in great demand for eardrops. This shape arises from the little foot or pedicle to which the egg is attached, being covered with nacre as well a~ the egg itself. The great beauty of pearls consists in their perfection of form, and their pe- culiar lustre, which man has not yet been able to give to artificial pearls, except in rare instances. This lustre arises from two features which charac- terize these precious jewels of the deep: their transparency and the peculiar struc- ture of their surface. For pearls are transparent, as can easily be ascertained by holding a splitpearl~ a candle, where, by interposing a colored sub- stance or light, the color will be seen transmitted through the pearl. Now, as the central cell is lined with a highly 284 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Mar. polished coat of nacre, and the sub- stance of the pearl itself is transparent, the rays of light easily pervade it, and cause that peculiar lustre which char- acterizes a valuable pearl. This lustre, however, is heightened into true and superb opalescence by the delicately grooved surface of the pearl, which, Sir David Brewster says, resembles closely the fine texture of the skin at the top of an infants finger, or the minute corrugations which are often seen on surfaces covered with varnish or oil-paint. In other words, there are, be- neath the immediate polish of the pearl, certain tiny wavelets and dimples, from which the light is reflected in subdued and undulating splendor. From the fiat surface of the lining of the shell, the mo- ther-of-pearl, these rays of light diverge in all directions, and hence shine in rainbow colors; in the pearl, on the contr~ry, on account of its spherical form, the varied hues are all blended into a white, uniform light, which gives to this gem its unrivalled beauty and high value as an ornament. These lustrous and beautiful spheres are the coveted ornament of all men, and immense prices are paid for those of perfect form and largest size. Hence mans cupidity and ingenuity have been at work, from time immemorial, to imi- tate Natures handiwork, and to produce artificial pearls. In the harems of the East, and in the ball-rooms of Europe, in Chinese homes and at American par- ties, pearls have ere now dazzled the fashion, that never lay in an oyster-bed, as bits of California rock-crystal have more than once eclipsed the treasures of Golconda. The result of such labors has rarely been satisfactory; with the exception of certain French imitations, seen at last years Exposition, no pearls have ever yet been produced that could not readily be distinguished from the genuine product of shellfish. It is not a little curious that the near- est cognate substance is bezoar, a con- cretion of deep olive-green color, found in the stomach of goats, dogs, cows, and especially camels. The ilindoos gener- ally grind it into yellow paint, but when harder parts are found, they fall speedily into the hands of jewellers, who polish and thread them, and then sell them as jewels. Thus it is from the secretion of a shellfish, and from the stomach of lower animals, that man gets the ornaments he most values for her he loves best and for him he wishes to honor most! Already in the days of the Roman Empire stories were afloat in the great city, of Arab tribes living near the sandy shoals of the Red Sea, who prac- tised the art of making artificial pearls. They had evidently no inkling yet of modern ingenuity, for, if we are to be- lieve the Roman writers of the time, these innocent children of the desert went yet to Nature herself for aid in their enterprise, and made the oysters themselves their agents in fabricating artificial pearls. Apollonius tells us how they allured the credulous shell- fish from their cosy bed in the warm waters below to the surface, by pouring oil on the waters, to make them smooth and calm, and seizing them at the me- inent when they appeared on the sur- face to imbibe the genial air, thrust a sharp instrument through the gaping valves into the soft body of the animal. Then they threw them into a colander connected with a pan or trough, into which the exuding juices slowly trickled in the form of round pearly drops. The story is, of course, fabulous, but tends to show how familiar the idea of mak- ing artificial pearls had already become to the mind of the ancients. The Chi- nesethat wonderful people, so wise as children, so ignorant in their old age have likewise for centuries already car- ried on a well-organized system of man- ufacturing pearls on the same principle of forced mussel-labor. They claim that this invention was made as early as the thirteenth century, by an individual whose memory they still honor annual- ly by certain ceremonial acts pel!formed in a temple specially dedicated to his name. The large manufactories of artificial pearls, which now exist near Canton and at Hutchefo, near Ningpo, employ 1868.] JEWELS OF TEE DEEPPBABL5. 285 several thousand laborers in tliis ex- traordinary business, and produce every year a perfectly enormous quantity of pearls. The process is briefly this: in the months of April and May the full- grown mussels of that year are removed, one by one, from their beds, and have small moulds or forms pushed inside, which are to serve as nuclei for new pearls. A piece of wire or a few metal beads are carefully inserted between the mantle of the animal and the shell, and there these foreign bodies are left em- bedded in the soft, muscular substance of the living shellfish, till they become completely inerusted with a thin coat- ing of nacre. A year generally suffices to cover them with a thin but complete coat of mother-of-pearl; but at times they are left much longer undisturbed, in order to obtain a thicker incrustation of greater beauty. There is in the British Museum a pearl-mussel which has inside the shell a number~of little josses made of bell- metal and completely covered and coat- ed with nacre. The beads so procured have a very handsome appearance and considerable lustre, but they are almost always mis- shapen, following the rough outline of the artificial kernel, and hence they can be sold only for opaque settings or for cmbroidery, when the imperfect side is concealed. The principal object of these factories is to produce the small idols with which the Chinese adorn their caps. These are produced by lit- tle tin moulds of stereotyped shape, which are inserted into the mollusk, and soon becoming covered with an extremely thin layer of nacre, appear entirely formed of the lustrous sub- stance of which pearls are made. The deception is all the greater as the nacre, though infinitely thin, still forms a com- plete and unbroken coat of exquisite smoothness, which cannot easily be re- moved by force, and hence is very du- rable. In Europe, it was Linna~us, the great botanist, who first broached the idea of producing genuine pearls by a similar method, and offered, in 1761, to sell the secret to the Swedish Government for a modest sum. The country was, how- ever, too poor to purchase the discov- ery, which thereupon fell into the hands of a wealthy merchant of Gottenburg. When his heirs a few years later offered the secret, carefully sealed up in the original paper, for sale, it had already become known through the publications of the great savant himself and all the world was aware that the pearl was the result of an injury inflicted on the body or the shell of a mollusk. Linureus had, himself, in his collection, several genuine pearls, the forced production of fresh-water pearl-mussels. The Venetians had long before made pearls in their famous glass-factories. They took hollow glass~beads and in- jected them with various tinted var- nishes, into the composition of which certain mercurial preparations entered largely. This manufacture was soon brought to a high degree of perfection, and led to a remarkable evidence of the honesty of the Great Republic: a law was passed by the Senate, towards the end of the fifteenth century, forbidding the sale of these admirable imitations, on the ground that it was fraudulent to make or sell beads which could not be distinguished from genuine oriental pearls! The island of Murano, which was the original seat of this manufac- ture, has continued until now the prin- cipal locality for the production of these artificial or seed-pearls, and their sale is no longer hampered by republican regu- lations. The city of Rome boasts of equal suc- cess, but achieves it by very different means. Here glass is not so easily ob- tained, and hence beads of alabaster are carefully turned to a perfect sphere, and then covered with a cement, which con- sists chiefly of finely-ground mother-of- pearL They do not pretend to com- pete with genuine pearls, but are an ex- ceedingly pretty ornament, and prove their popularity by never going out of fashion. The French, whose brass jewels now defy detection, have in the imitation of pearls also proved themselves infinitely 286 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. rMar. superior to all competitors. A few spe- cimens of tlieir artificial productions, exhibited at the Exposition of 1867, could neither in lustre nor in water and color be distinguished from oriental pearls, even when the genuine and the sham were laid side by side. There is but one way by which they may be dis- covered: this is their specific weight they are much lighter than the real pearls. The invention of their composition was, like so many inventions of this kind, due to what is termed an accident. A rosary-maker, in the days of Louis XIV., was walking in the garden of his country-house, near Paris, when his at- tention was attracted by the silvery lustre on a basin of water. He inquired the cause, and found that a number of bleaksa small white fish of that region had been crushed in the water; fQr- ther examination convinced him that the lustrous sheen was produced by countless scales of the little animals. This suggested to his inventive mind the idea of using the scales for the manufacture of artificial pearls; but at first they decayed too quickly to be of any use. Long reflection led him at last to the happy thought of throwing the scales into a strong alkaline solu- tion, and, lo, the danger was removed! Now there exist large factories where this substance is made. Enormous quan- tities of the fish, which fortunately abounds in the small tributaries of the Seine and the Name, are caught, and the scales scraped off, well washed in water, and then compressed between folds of fine linen. The fluid which trickles from them is repeatedly filtered until it acquires the necessary degree of purity, and then mixed with some al- kaline solution, to prevent the animal- matter that remains from decaying. This is the famous Essence dOrient, and it takes from seventeen to eighteen thousand fish to make one pound of the pure essence. At the same time glass-beads are blown with special care so as to pro- duce perfect spheres, and into these the costly essence, mixed with some isin glass, is gently blown by means of a blow-pipe. As if by a magic touch, the glass-bead is instantly changed into a lustrous pearL They are then steeped in alcohol, dried over a hot plate, fill- ed with wax or cement to give them weight, and finally exposed to various fumes, which constitute the secret of the manufacture. With all this labor and ingenuity a pearl is produceda sham. We prefer the workmanship of Nature in the wing- shelled pearl-bearer, the avic?ila marga- rit~fera, a mussel as remarkable for its beauty and eccentricity of shape as for the pearls which it contains. It is now almost exclusively confined to the trop- ics, though in ancient times it seems to have been found in northern seas also. Its rivals are a mya, which abounds on the shores of almost all seas, and a unie, the British pearl-bearing mussel, found in rivers and small sheets of water. These modest mollusks, unpretending in appearance, but full of precious gems within, produce the pearl which from time immemorial man has valued among the most precious gems; for there are few things so immortal as good taste. Even the inferior pearls have their mysterious value in the eyes of many. The imperfect or discolored pearls are ground up, or dissolved and used as medicine in Eastern lands. They call the powder Najoon; it is an electuary, and myriads of small seed-pearls are ground to impalpable powder in order to make the costly dose. This is, of course, a mere matter of taste, for the simple lime from the inside of the shell would be in every respect as white and as good, and common magnesia would have precisely the same effect. But if some old Emir or rich Bouse is desirous to pay an enormous price for something which he hopes will do his poor old body goodwhy should he not be al- lowed it to do so? Have not his bet- ters swallowed every thing from pure gold to toads brains, from tarwater to the filings of a murderers irons? The finer pearls, which are not sold on the spot to agents from abroad, are sent to Europe, and of these the most 287 JEWELS o~ TIlE DEEPPEARLS. valuable find their way, in the course of trade, very quickly, to London and Paris, where enormous prices are paid for fine specimens. This mania is, how- ever, by no meaus of recent date, for antiquity has its lessons in this respect also. We all know how Julius Osesar, when he was in love with the mother of Marcus Brutus, gave her a pearl worth nearly a quarter of a million of our money; and how Marc Antony drank one, dissolved in vinegar, which cost nearly four hundred thousand dollazs; whilst Clodius, the glutton, swallowed one worth forty thousand. The exam- ple of Cleopatra found an imitator even in sober England. Sir Thomas Gres- ham, not otherwise famous for acts of folly, still so mistook the meaning of loyalty that he ground a pearl, which had cost him fifteen thousand pounds, into a cup of wine, in order thus fitly to drink the health of his great Queen! This plagiarist again had many rivals in the r~ad courtiers of Louis XIV., who, in their insane extravagance, were wont to pulverize their diamonds, and occasionally used the powder to dry the ink of letters which they sent to their beloved ones. Is diamond-powder in the hair much worse? The largest pearl on record is prob- ably one bought by that most romantic of all travellers and dealers in precious gems, Tavernier, at Catifa, in Arabia, where a pearl-fishery existed already in the days of Pliny. It is saidfor the pearl is unknown to our dayto have been pear-shaped, perfect in all respects, and nearly three inches long; he ob- tained from the Shah of Persia the enormous sum of a hundred and eleven thousand pounds for the gem. Mr. Hopes pearl, which is looked upon as the finest now known, is two inches long and four inches round; it weighs eighteen hundred grains, and, like all such rarities, is of such enor- mous and uncertain value, that no one would buy it at a market price. The most beautiful collection of pearls be- longs, however, to the Dowager Em- press of Russia. Her husband was ex- ceedingly fond of her, and as he shared, with other fancies, also that for fine pearls with her, he sought for them all over the world. They had to fulfil two conditions rarely to be met with: they must be perfect spheres, and they must be virgin pearls; for he would buy none that had been worn by others. After twenty-five years search, he at last succeeded in presenting his Em- press with a necklace such as the world has never seen before. As this admiration for fine pearls has been the common weakness of man in all ages and in all countries, we need not wonder at their playing a prominent part in religious writings. The Talmud has a pretty story, teaching us that those who believed in it,esteemed but one object in nature of higher value than pearls. When Abraham approach- ed Egypt, the book tells us, he locked Sara in a chest that none might behold her dangerous beauty. But when he was come to the place of paying custom, the officer said: Pay custom 1 And he said: I will pay the custom. They said to him: Thou earnest clothes. And he said: I will pay for clothes. Then they said to him: Thou earnest gold. And he answered them: I will pay for gold. On this they further said: Surely thou bearest the fine silk. He replied: I will pay custom for the finest silk. Then they said: Surely it must be pearls that thou takest with thee. And he only an- swered: I will pay for pearls. See- ing that they could name nothing of value for which the patriarch was not willing to pay custom, they said: It cannot be but thou open the box and let us see what is within I So they opened the box, and the whole land of Egypt was illumined by the lustre of Saras beauty far exceeding even that of pearls! Hence pearls are repeatedly used in Holy Writ also for the most solemn com-- parisons, and to denote the highest de- gree of perfection. In the Old Testa- ment wisdom is praised as above pearls, and in the New Testament the kingdom of heaven is compared to a pearl of great price, which, when a merchant 1888.] 288 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Mar. had found it, he went and sold all that he had, and bought it. Even the New Jerusalem was revealed to St. John under the figure of an edifice with twelve doors, each of which was a single pearL And this precious gem, fit to adorn an emperors crown, and to heighten the beauty of the fairest of maidens, this pearl of great price, perfect in form and beauteous in lustre, this jewel of the deep, sought for at the peril of human life, and paid for with the bread of ten thousandsit sickens and dies and vanishes in a day. Every now and then we hear of a noble family, which prided itself on the possession of mag- nificent ancestral pearls, panic-stricken by finding some of their precious gems turning of a sickly color, and crumbling into dust. It is but a few years since the crown-jeweller of France solemnly applied to the Academy of Sciences for a remedy against this disease, caused probably by the decomposition of the membranes which form part of the pearl, and are after all liable to decay and corruption, like all animal-matter, by contact with the air. There was no answer given, but the advice to preserve the precious gems, as much as possible, from the influences of light and air; and the Crown of France has since lost some of its most highly-prized jewels. Be- hold, all is vanity and vexation of spirit! MY LOVE AND I. Mv Love sailed over the summer seas, Sing heigho, the wind is weary ! My Love sailed over the summer seas, And his sails swelled white in the favoring breeze; Ah me! but my days are dreary! Swift fled the ship through the dancing foam, Sing heigho, the wind is weary ! Swift fled the ship through the dancing foam, And Sorrow and I were left at home; Ah me! but my days are dreary! A little brown bird came flying fast, Sing heigho, the wind is weary I A little brown bird came flying fast, And perched on the top of the tall foremast; Ah me! but my days are dreary! My Love shot the little brown bird through the heart, Sing heigho, the wind is weary ! My Love shot the little brown bird through the heart, (The surer the death, the shorter the smart;) Ah me! but my days are dreary! How should he know twas this Heart of mine, Sing heigho, the wind is weary ! How should he know twas this Heart of mine, That had followed him over the fierce, sharp brine? Ah me! but my days are dreary! Dear my Love, it was better so, Sing heigho, the wind is weary ! For you had the pleasure and I the woe, And I only pray you may never know That all my days are dreary! So dreary!

288 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Mar. had found it, he went and sold all that he had, and bought it. Even the New Jerusalem was revealed to St. John under the figure of an edifice with twelve doors, each of which was a single pearL And this precious gem, fit to adorn an emperors crown, and to heighten the beauty of the fairest of maidens, this pearl of great price, perfect in form and beauteous in lustre, this jewel of the deep, sought for at the peril of human life, and paid for with the bread of ten thousandsit sickens and dies and vanishes in a day. Every now and then we hear of a noble family, which prided itself on the possession of mag- nificent ancestral pearls, panic-stricken by finding some of their precious gems turning of a sickly color, and crumbling into dust. It is but a few years since the crown-jeweller of France solemnly applied to the Academy of Sciences for a remedy against this disease, caused probably by the decomposition of the membranes which form part of the pearl, and are after all liable to decay and corruption, like all animal-matter, by contact with the air. There was no answer given, but the advice to preserve the precious gems, as much as possible, from the influences of light and air; and the Crown of France has since lost some of its most highly-prized jewels. Be- hold, all is vanity and vexation of spirit! MY LOVE AND I. Mv Love sailed over the summer seas, Sing heigho, the wind is weary ! My Love sailed over the summer seas, And his sails swelled white in the favoring breeze; Ah me! but my days are dreary! Swift fled the ship through the dancing foam, Sing heigho, the wind is weary ! Swift fled the ship through the dancing foam, And Sorrow and I were left at home; Ah me! but my days are dreary! A little brown bird came flying fast, Sing heigho, the wind is weary I A little brown bird came flying fast, And perched on the top of the tall foremast; Ah me! but my days are dreary! My Love shot the little brown bird through the heart, Sing heigho, the wind is weary ! My Love shot the little brown bird through the heart, (The surer the death, the shorter the smart;) Ah me! but my days are dreary! How should he know twas this Heart of mine, Sing heigho, the wind is weary ! How should he know twas this Heart of mine, That had followed him over the fierce, sharp brine? Ah me! but my days are dreary! Dear my Love, it was better so, Sing heigho, the wind is weary ! For you had the pleasure and I the woe, And I only pray you may never know That all my days are dreary! So dreary! 1868.] AMERICAN TRAITS AS SEEN FROM ABROAD. 289 AMERICAN TRAITS AS SEEN FROM ABROAD. THERE, I thought, in America, lies nature sleeping, over-growing, almost conscious, too much by half for man in the picture, and so giving a certain tristesse, like the rank ve~etation of swamps and forests seen at ni,,ht, steeped in dews and rains, which it loves; and on it man seems not able to make much impression. There, in that great sloven continent, in high Alleghany pastures, in the sea-wide, sky-skirted prairie, still sleeps and murmurs and hides the great mother, long since driven away from the trim hedge-rows and over-cultivated garden of England. The power of machinery in Great Britain, in mills, has been computed to be equal to six hundred million men, one man being able, by the aid of steam, to do the work which required two hundred and fifty men to accomplish fifty years ago. EMERsON. OF all this wealth of nature the Americans are the possessors; of all the powers of steam, and of all their applications, the Americans are also the masters. Now, just at the moment when the race has arrived at such perfect man- agement of mechanical forces that every thing can be accomplished almost with- out human labor, it falls heir to a hid- den hoard of boundless treasures, a con- tinent full of gold and silver, food and clothing, fuel and useful metals! Hay- ing such a wonderful supply of the raw materials of existence, you could have been very comfortable without machin- ery; and, on the other hand, with such machinery, you could have made your- sclves happy and respected in a desert. Behold! you find yourselves starting with two outfits, each of a value not dreamed of hitherto; the gifts of nature and of science, the real and the personal estate of mankind. The bridegroom and the bride, heirs of all the earth, meet in the new world and are married. The woi~ds romance culminates in your ph~ce and your time. * * * * * No one will deny the existence of this golden glow in the West, but as to how much of the splendor is enjoyable now, and how much is only the looming of something still below the horizon, opin- ions must differ, even among Americans at home: much more among observers from abroad. Are the Yankees versatile, or are they volatile? Is their prevailing trait of insouciance a foolish carelessness, or a happy freedom from care? Are their ways impudent, or only indepen- dent? Each takes care of himself, and does it, as a rule, successfully and pleas- antly: is this enlightened freedom, or is it rude barbarism? Each is, usually, richer every year than he was the year before: is this thrift, or is it greed? He has always, luckily, a home; the only misfortune is that he always has several homes in his lifetime. Socially America seems to me the gayest and happiest community the sun shines on; to you, perhaps, it is a dreadful mud- dle of incongruous elements all levelled downward. How will the America of 1868 look to the observer of 1968? We may get some idea by noting how it looks now, to outside observers. The distance of space supplies in some degree the cool- ness and cleamess that distance of tune will give to the future historian. It is only with English fellow-travel- lers that the American tourist can have much intelligent intercourse on national topics. The true foreigner (not count- ing any English speakers as such) is very polite and assiduous in showing any thing admirable in his own country, but very deficient in any intelligent cu- riosity respecting ours. In fact, he is apt to labor under an unlucky confusion of ideas as to any material distinction between North America and South America. An Italian innkeeper said to me that he had heard that New York was a very fine place,whereupon my opinion of his intelligence rose rapidly, New York, and also Rio Janeiro, he added,whereupon my admiration

1868.] AMERICAN TRAITS AS SEEN FROM ABROAD. 289 AMERICAN TRAITS AS SEEN FROM ABROAD. THERE, I thought, in America, lies nature sleeping, over-growing, almost conscious, too much by half for man in the picture, and so giving a certain tristesse, like the rank ve~etation of swamps and forests seen at ni,,ht, steeped in dews and rains, which it loves; and on it man seems not able to make much impression. There, in that great sloven continent, in high Alleghany pastures, in the sea-wide, sky-skirted prairie, still sleeps and murmurs and hides the great mother, long since driven away from the trim hedge-rows and over-cultivated garden of England. The power of machinery in Great Britain, in mills, has been computed to be equal to six hundred million men, one man being able, by the aid of steam, to do the work which required two hundred and fifty men to accomplish fifty years ago. EMERsON. OF all this wealth of nature the Americans are the possessors; of all the powers of steam, and of all their applications, the Americans are also the masters. Now, just at the moment when the race has arrived at such perfect man- agement of mechanical forces that every thing can be accomplished almost with- out human labor, it falls heir to a hid- den hoard of boundless treasures, a con- tinent full of gold and silver, food and clothing, fuel and useful metals! Hay- ing such a wonderful supply of the raw materials of existence, you could have been very comfortable without machin- ery; and, on the other hand, with such machinery, you could have made your- sclves happy and respected in a desert. Behold! you find yourselves starting with two outfits, each of a value not dreamed of hitherto; the gifts of nature and of science, the real and the personal estate of mankind. The bridegroom and the bride, heirs of all the earth, meet in the new world and are married. The woi~ds romance culminates in your ph~ce and your time. * * * * * No one will deny the existence of this golden glow in the West, but as to how much of the splendor is enjoyable now, and how much is only the looming of something still below the horizon, opin- ions must differ, even among Americans at home: much more among observers from abroad. Are the Yankees versatile, or are they volatile? Is their prevailing trait of insouciance a foolish carelessness, or a happy freedom from care? Are their ways impudent, or only indepen- dent? Each takes care of himself, and does it, as a rule, successfully and pleas- antly: is this enlightened freedom, or is it rude barbarism? Each is, usually, richer every year than he was the year before: is this thrift, or is it greed? He has always, luckily, a home; the only misfortune is that he always has several homes in his lifetime. Socially America seems to me the gayest and happiest community the sun shines on; to you, perhaps, it is a dreadful mud- dle of incongruous elements all levelled downward. How will the America of 1868 look to the observer of 1968? We may get some idea by noting how it looks now, to outside observers. The distance of space supplies in some degree the cool- ness and cleamess that distance of tune will give to the future historian. It is only with English fellow-travel- lers that the American tourist can have much intelligent intercourse on national topics. The true foreigner (not count- ing any English speakers as such) is very polite and assiduous in showing any thing admirable in his own country, but very deficient in any intelligent cu- riosity respecting ours. In fact, he is apt to labor under an unlucky confusion of ideas as to any material distinction between North America and South America. An Italian innkeeper said to me that he had heard that New York was a very fine place,whereupon my opinion of his intelligence rose rapidly, New York, and also Rio Janeiro, he added,whereupon my admiration 290 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Mar. dropped to zero again.* Even with the more intelligent classes of foreigners, probably by reason of the toil of trans- lations, or of the fact that such has had the barrier of a translation between him and all knowledge of the others affairs, we talk as an effort, and listen as to an essayappear as an exhibition and ob- serve as a spectator. The mass of con- tinental Europeans seem to regard America as a distant land to which many of their countrymen have gone, and whence they never come back ex- cept as visitors; for it is, strictly speak- ing, an American trait, that every adopt- ed citizen strongly disclaims the idea of living in any other country after hay- kg once fairly made the acquaintance of ours. A bourne from whence no traveller returns, cannot be a very cheer- ful aspect to present. But the English are not foreigners. We Anglo-Saxons are all English, though not all Americans. We own England in common; all the immaterial and im- mortal part, by right of inheritance and possession. It is only the poor material portion from which we Americans can be excluded. All things England has done, unless within a short century or so, were done by our ancestors as well as by those of this generation of Eng- lishmen. And all things she has said, written, and invented up to this day, are ours, whet her honestly come by or not. The English one meets abroad recognize this close internationality. The tra- ditional stiff and surly Briton wouldbe a curiosity now on the continent. We know that he still exists, for we occa- sionally hear growls, in his very voice, from Carlyle and the like, who continue to regard ours as the Reuben among the nations; unstable as water, thou shalt not exceLs They represent the England by which our republic was borne and weanedalways grievous operations. That England was our mother-country; and it is noticeable that while human children come into the world sure of affection and even partiality from one if not two persons o~ their kind, young * There is some Italian emigration to Rio. nations (though they must have infancy and childhood) have no natural friends and protectors, no apologists for the inevitable failures and follies of imma- turity. The family of nations cannot be classed among the mammals. Each member is brought forth alive, but is at once disowneda foundling, never a fondlingthrust forth to make its own way, earning jibes and jeers in place of encouragement, and only beginning tp be respected when it learns to return injuries in kind. Well! the United States must have graduated in this hard school, for, since our war, we American travellers experi- ence only the most complimentary greet- ing, from all we meet; and it looks more as if our enemies were trying to spoil us by flattery, since they have failed to in- jure us by abuse. It is like the fabled rivalry of the Wind and the Sun, in trying to deprive the traveller of his cloak. English travellers are the most cordial of all those we encounter. They wait for no introduction before entering into conversation with Americans, whatever may be their practice regarding their brother Britons. They approve of nearly every thing American. They praise our railway system. Their roads are bank- rupt, or drifting that way, principally by reason of incredible extravagance in first cost. If our roads had been built in such a fashion, they would scarcely have reached west of the seaboard States by this time. Cheap construction in America has spread railroads wherever they were needed. Few trains, well loaded, run at low speed and good prices, show a result which contrasts finely with that of the English system of roads in the eyes of their unhappy shareholders. They praise our long, wide, and light passenger-cars, wherein, though all are in one compartment, each can have really more privacy than in the divided foreign cars, unless in the latter he secures a whole compartment to him- self and his party. In publicity there is protection for each, and it is easy to see that this difference in the style of carriages partly explains the fact that it 1868.] AMERICAN TRAITS AS SEEN FROM ABROATD. 291 Is easier for a lady to travel alone and unprotected in America than in Europe. In England, even gentlemen have found to their cost that it is at the peril of their money and their reputation if they al- low themselves to be shut into carriages with unknown females, without any witness to disprove unfounded charges. And, a few years ago, London was shock- ed by a cold-blooded murder and rob- bery committed by a villain who found his victim alone with him in one of these separate compartments.* They praise our coupon tickets for passengers and our checks for bag- gage. They praise our steamboats with their spacious deck-cabins. The highest re- commendation they can bestow on a couple of new steamers just put on the Rhine between Mayence and Cologne is, They are quite like American boats. They especially ridicule the English backwardness in the little matter of engine-signalsthe word being passed, in all their small steamers, by the voice, the captain shouting to a boy, who shouts to the engineer. They praise our fighting on land and on sea, and our quick disarmament when the war was done. They praise our finances and our financial principles and prospects. They may have a sly laugh among themselves at our selecting the non-interest-bearing debt as the first to pay off; but it is a vagary which puts money in their purses, as it is the gold-in- terest bonds they hold and wish to keep. They praise our yachts, our monitors, our sewing and reaping machines, our school system, our hotels, where one unvaried charge covers a days enter- tainment, and there is no question of each item of lodging, board, light, ser- vice, & c.,a great saving of temper and clerk-hire. * The fundamental difference between the Ameri- can and foreign styles of car-building is, that onr car-bodies rest on two separate and independent centre-bearing trucks, of four, six, or eight wheels each, while the foreign cacs are set directly on their four wheels, like a wagon. Our ears would float un- shaken over their fine smooth roads, while theirs wouli soon jolt to pieces on our rough cheap struc- tures. The most characteristic thing about all this is, that our friends the English select as topics the points wherein they can praise us, and quite slur over or ignore those wherein they could not. They are never tired of asking us all we can tell about our native land, and some- times put us quite to the blush by in- quiring concerning things we ought to know of, but do not. And then they pay us the highest compliment in their power by confounding us with them- selves. A cheery John Bull voice asked, at a chance meeting in Switzerland, More English? Americans, we answered. All the same, was the strangers pleasant rejoinder. These same English are conspicuously deprecatory in speaking of the present aspects and prospects of their own coun- try. One has to imagine who are the supporters of the Reform Bill, for one rarely or never meets them. As it is middle-class people with whom we nat- urally fall in, not members of the no- bility nor of the working classes, we are led to suspect that the movement (in- stituted as it was by a Tory govern- ment) is at the expense and to the dis- advantage of the middle class. Rough- ly stated, it may be somewhat thus: the House of Commons is the real govern- ing power in England; the middle classes are the source of the House of Commons; to add to the number of electors tends to dilute or dissipate the overweening power thus resting in the hands of a few. And whether the new voters vote conservatively or not, the conservative majority is secured by cre- ating a division in the ranks which were becoming too strongly liberaL A more probable supposition, how- ever, is, that we are looking too deep to penetrate motives really very shallow nothing more than a successful effort on the part of the minority to take the wind out of the sails of the liberal party. We are no more a monarchy, you know, than you are, except in name, the English are fond of saying. But whether it is said more in pride or in regret, it is difficult always to decide. 292 Pur~AMs MAGAZIKE. ~ar. The Fenian troubles, the Hyde Park riots, the Sheffield outrages, are classed with the diminution of British influence abroad as symptoms of decay, and ad- duced with no little bitterness as illus- trations of the painful though flattering suggestion that America is the waxing and England the waning power of the world. In vain do you urge that there is great glory to their free institutions, in the fact that when the people think they have a right to go into the parks, the Queen, Lords, and Commons com- bined dare not try to keep them o.ut; and further try to show that the other irregularities are mere crimes, fully put down, and therefore signs of strength rather than weakness; and, further, ar- gue that, as to foreigu influence, the peo- ple are happiest under that government that has least of it. They shake their headspoint to the fact that the fran- chise is extended to some of the very men responsible for the violent demon- strationsmourn the good old days when England dictated the honorable and unselfish arrangements that follow- ed Waterloo, and point with regret to the absorption of German States and Free Cities, the almost ruin of poor lit- tle Denmark, their ally, and the huge growth of France and Prussia; finding only comfort in the thought that the two latter balance eaeh other, and so form, each against the other, a safe- guard for Great Britain. Let those mourn that will, and let those laugh that win. The love of martial glory and national prestige have never been American failings, and long may it remain an American trait to view them with distrust. Mountain-peaks are good for castle-builders, and heroic eras are rich fields for historians. But happy are the common people in lands that lie level and in times wherein the historian and romance-writer are at a loss to find material for their work. The absence of news from America more than enough to make the shortest of paragraphs in the Times and Galignani, is a continual disappointment to the traveller in these days. But no news is good news~ for us. Let us hope to continue to be a newsless land. We have been furnishing quite too many thrilling paragraphs of late years. There is a question which strangers are fond of asking, which suggests a fear that these moderate hopes are not well- founded. It is, What are you going to do with Mexico? There will be only too much of interest from our side of the water if we are to become the inheritors of the debts and disorders, the home and foreign quarrels, of that wretched tropical climate and people. Heaven grant that this new complica- tion is not so imminent as from this (Eu- ropean) side it seems to be! Paris is a kind of large, exagge- rated, inferior New York. So said to me an Englishman in Paris during the summer of 1867. He is a man of wit, sense, and taste, who had lived in both cities, and who knew what he was talking about, and meant what he said. My only disagreement with his es- timate would be that he did too much honor to Paris. For comfort and hap- piness of old and young, rich and poor, male and female, no continental city can compare with New York or several of her sister-cities on your side of the water. Where young girls are treated as they are in America, the innocent gayety they naturally make is character- istic of society. The absence of inno- cent gayety may almost be said to be characteristic of Paris. It does not lessen the gayety of a city or country that its gentlemen should be men of affairs. No wise housewife likes an establishment where the men-kind are too much at home. Absence is wholesome, and variety is the spice of domestic life. Idleness means ennui, and that is incompatible with enjoy- ment. Business, when made a subject, not a master, is the happiest as well as the most respectable position for all men. (Even study must be made a business.) The ideal American is he who is full of business in business hours and places, and full of pleasure at home or abroad with his family. New York is the busicst and gayest city in the 1868.1 AMERICAN TRAITS AS SEEN FROM ABROAD. 293 world. Wall-street is the gayest street in New York, and Fifth avenue the next. Hence it arises that the Americans are the sunniest of travellers here in Eu- rope. The English enjoy enough in their way. 118 8amusaient tristement, solon 1& coutume do leur pays, chronicles old Froissart, and so they do to this day. That is, they are sufficiently happy with- out smiles or laughter. The Frenchman does not travel nowadays unless it be to a watering-place, and then he seems to be always regretting his Paris. The German, too, as a rule is not a pleasure- traveller, though a very sensible and charming fellow when you do meet him, having always some art or other near his heart and at his finger-ends. (They say the German can travel when he pleases at half the sum it costs us Eng- lish-speaking tourists.) But our coun- trymen, with their handsome trains of women and children, carry their own sunshine, and care not in the least that it illumin~s other people and things fortunate enough to be near by. A lit- tle vociferous, perhaps, sometimes, but that is easily remedied, for they are quick to learn. And a little too much freedom is better than a stiff and prig- gish attention to appearances. This is our holiday, and as, at home, we make a pleasure of our business, and thus do it well and joyfully, so we here make a business of our pleasure, and do it in the same style. An Englishman of the best class sup- plies the need for employment by hunt- ing, racing, yachting, farming, legislat- ing, travelling, or something else. But the Frenchman does not take naturally to these manly occupations. The Paris- ian society-man unfortunately has no Wall-street, so he has late rising and ennui. He has no money-making, so he has gambling. He has no exercise, so he has indigestion. He has no simple tastes, so he has absinthe, chartreuse, cura~ao, or hell-and-honey under some other name. He has no politics, so he has a glorious~~ empire and a perfect system of gendarmeriein fact, a pa- ternal government, under which he is libre, mais re~glement~. He has no travel, so he has egotism. Fin~l1y, he has no young lady-friends, so he haswoman enemies, young or old. Who would be a Parisian? As the use of stimulants drives out the taste for more wholesome and nat- ural food, so does the living in Paris incapacitate for living elsewhere or ap- preciating things not Parisian. The mysteries of Paris, the wonders of Paris, the joys and pains of Paris, the loves and hates of Paris, the nights and days of Paris, the glories of Paris, form the theme toward which are turned the eyes of allParis! A witty Frenchman has lately published an article in which he threatens the Parisians with lunacy or idiocy if they do not turn their atten- tion away from themselves. He reminds them of the days renowned in history when Frenchmen shared with the rest of Christendom the victories, material and moral, gained by civilization over barbarism. And he urges them to go away from home, as do the English and Americans, to see the rest of the earth, and so form a just estimate of their own little world of Paris. VainT. It is no use to struggle against fate. Latin supremacy is a thing of the past. Do- minion is to belong, hereafter, tosome- body else. The Frenchman of 1867 prefers to sit at home and bring the rest of the worid to see him and his Great Exposition, while he smokes the opium-pipe of self- complacency. For us, on the contrary, regarding this as well as other shows, we prefer the r6le of spectator to that of showman. The true place of America in the Exposition is in the Visitor De- partmentmuch obliged for all the trouble taken to get up the affairglad to buy whatever is new and valuable nothing to advertise for sale, and there- fore nothing (comparatively speaking) to exhibit. There are our pianos, our locomotives, our reaping-machines and our sewing machines; but we offer none like them for sale, as no foreigner could afford to buy them at such prices as we can ourselves afford to give. Seriously speaking, we have nothing to learn from any other nation in the 294 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Mar. way of new, quick, simple, and beautiful applications of mechanical forces. The dearness of manual labor has forced us to a degree of ingenuity in the methods of dispensing with it such as is unequal- led elsewhere, however it may be des- tined to be surpassed hereafter. In per- fecting manufactures they are beyond us; in cheapening them we are, prob- ably, in advance. Take the use of coal, for example. The French set thousands of women, girls, and boys, to breaking, picking, and sorting, the rough coal and separating all impurities. We, on the other hand, burn the rough coal, unas- sorted, with perfect success. So our women can be where they belong, in the household, and the girls and boys at schooL In France they earn a franc or so a day each. In our country they earn a good deal more, in the long run, let us hope. A minute and well-defined division of labor into classes and of society into castes,, is the marked trait of the old countries; the absence of such divisions and castes the marked trait in ours. This of course causes, in Europe, a mar- vellous perfection of the products, at the expense of. all growth in the producers. The portentous ignorance of the general run of continental Europeans, in any department other than their own spe- cialty, would seem incredible to us quite as much so as their marvellous at- tainments in their own allotted direc- tion. I travelled with a Jewish Rabbi; a man of respectable age and appearance and much intelligence in his way. As his residence or pastorate had included Vichy, he had seen many of the mag- nates who go there to drink the waters among others the Emperor and Em- press and Minister Fould; with all of whom he had talked by the hour, to use his own expression. I learned from him many things I was glad to know.* And he probably * Among other items of information I got from him was this, that he received the same stipend from the French Government as would a catholic priest having charge of the same number of parish- ioners, or a Protestant minister. learned some things from me, for he asked where our locomotive got hot water! I pointed out the roadside water-stations. But, said he, isthat water boiling? I explained that it was cold when they received it, and they boiled it by their own fire. Ah! oui- oni-oui-oui~a--~a! said he, quite edified. But of course they must have some hot water at the very first, to be- gin with, before they started. I dont know what he meantI can only give his words. It is very difficult, when talking with fellow-travellers of other nations, to avoid talking at a mark, so to speak. The American, having an object in view, a national fault to extenuate or a point of national doctrine to propagate,is tempted, quite unconsciously, to repre- sent things as he wishes them to appear to the hearer, rather than as they do appear to the speaker. A talent for silence is what we lack; that perfectly good-natured observation of other peo- ples idiosyncrasies in preference to the exploitation of our own, which marks the true cosmopolitan, the beau-ideal of travellers. As we take more pains to form our opinions about others, we care less for others opinions about us. For- eign approval is not a bad thing, quite the contrary; but the more desirable it is, the less it should be sought after. It is a growth that thrives best by a judi- cious neglecta boon which is lost by being demanded. Another failing, which may almost be called a national trait, is the tendency to imitate, more or less successfully, the personal peculiarities of those we meet and admire abroad, more especially the English, as they seem to occupy, indi- vidually, the most respected position in nations foreign to their own. So far as this leads us to speak in the style of the best Englishmen, slowly and carefully, weighing and selecting words so that we can, when they are chosen, stick to them forever,* it is a good thing. It is this moderation and exactness of state- ment that makes the style so respectable * Quotntion from a lecture by henry Milburn. 1868.] AMELtICAN TRAITS AS BEEN FROM ABROAD. 295 as to attract imitation. But when we go beyond the matter and copy the manner, put on a supercilious pre-occu- pation we do not feel, clip our final syl- lables, and connect the words with a a it is the mere weakness of imitation the imitation of weakness. Oh for a little more of Mr. Lincolns good-humored superiority to appear- ances! His forgetfulness of his dignity was true natural dignity, and sure to be recognized as such, even in the most arti- ficial atmosphere in the world. Fancy his being taken for an Englishman! Still more, fancy his wishing to be so mis- taken! I can picture to myself the good old humorist laughing at the idea, and saying something like this. That re- minds me of a little story Ive heard somewhere, of a turkey that was a very good turkey until he undertook to be a peacock; and after that neither turkeys nor peacocks would have any thing to do with him. Dont know as hed have ben any better if he had ben a peacock, neither! The gentle, genuine, unaffected sim- plicity of Mr. Lincolns bearing, ought to be the key-note of our efforts to im- prove our manners, so far as they can properly be made the subject of effort. While un-American eyes regard us thus and so, the question naturally arises, How do our own traits appear from this new point of view, to our- selves? Our eyes become, to a certain extent, Europeanized, and to the same degree things in the western world appear un- stable, evanescent, unreal, unrespectable. We see that ours is the land of bubble speculations and collapses; of great gains and great losses; of uncertain collection of debts; of appalling ac- cidents; of wooden cities built in a day and burnt in a night; of gigantic frauds and defalcations; of unpunished crimes and outrages; of bowie-knives and revolvers; of vigilance committees and Lynch-law mobs; of exaggerated and caricatured popularity and unpop- ularity, and storms of praise at one time and blame at another lavished on per- sons who deserved neither the first nor the last,in short, the very Empire of Immoderation. We see, of course, that, compared with the worlds standards, we pay high wages for poor services and high prices for poor goods; that while Europeans are enjoying the accumulations of gen- erations of surplus labor, we are toiling to create those accumulations. We see from this other side,what at home we had nearly forgotten,that if Americans were the victors in our war, Americans were also the vanquished; so that, alas! we have no banners to hang up in our memorial halls except the tat- tered standards we ourselves carried; that all the wounds we inflicted and all we may hereafter inffict are on American health and wealth; and even in our greatest and noblest achievement, the abolition of slavery, we destroyed an industry which hitherto, at least, has not been rebuilt. We see that the horrible partisan doc- trine, to the victors in elections belong the spoils of office, prevails in the United States alone of all the nations on earth; that this principle has given us the worst set of office-holders it is possible to imagine; and that the doc- trine has survived the advent to power of all parties in succession, the one to which we belong not having shown any more virtue in the matter than did that of our opponents. And we know that among our politicians of all parties, the thought as to what will advance or re- tard them with their party is the equiv- alent, or rather the substitute, for the estimate of what is right or wrong. We see that in the United States the illogical and artificial system of trade- unions, with all its interference with the freedom of competition between supply and demand, and all its tyranny of work- men over fellow-workmen and over em- ployer, is assuming proportions threat- ening to be as overshadowing there as they have become in England, where the unions~~ are the tools of every dema- gogue and the greatest peril of every branch of industry. Indeed, the evil threatens to be more destructive with us in proportion as the class composing 296 PuirxAMs MAGAZINJ~. ~far. the combinations is more politically powerful. We see that the purchase of our bonds abroad, however gratifying as an evi- dence of foreign confidence, is simply the creation of a load of foreign debt; for every bond we now sell abroad for seven hundred and fifty dollars, will cost us, principal and interest, two thou- sand dollars before we get it back again. Nevertheless, our surplus of four million dollars a month is being applied to re- duce the quiet and costless debt held at home, while the foreign debt is piling up at such a frightful discount and with such a frightful rapidity. Even in con- gratulating ourselves on our splendid crops, we tremble to think what would have been the result of a failure in the harvest, and so come to hesitate about putting too much confidence in a finan- cial prosperity which is at the mercy of a bad season. We are an extravagant people. The subjeeP of money, as we all know, is tabooed among Americans of the first class, except in private or business con- versations. There is not ever that exact balance between income and expenses which prevails among people of other nations. A foreigner of second-rate means goes to a second-rate hotel. An American of third-rate resources goes to the best he can hear of. The best, with- out regard to cost, is what he aims at. We are not all speculators nor stock- brokersstill less are we all million- aires; but we act, or rather talk, as our money came without toil and could be expended without thought. All our extravagances we make publicly, and our economies privately or even secretly. Yet no thinking American, of all the host now travelling abroad, can have quite escaped the occasional feeling that he was revelling in a fools paradise; that his gayety was out of place; that he was giving away hard-earned and much- needed American funds to grasping for- eigners, for service~~ he did not need, and bougies he did not burn. Po8t equitem sedet atra cura and even in our lightest moments we think with a pang of the price of gold in New York. Look- ed at from abroad, it seems as if we had before us a very severe ordeal. Our times look harder from without than they do from within. Our depreciated currency seems like a deceitful sod over a quaking morass; the premium on gold like a premium on extravagance instead of a warning toward economy. Our debt looms up great and threatening, while the resources are unseen. From within, we see that the debtsnational, state, municipal, and personalthough almost immeasurable, bear only the re- lation to our resources that icebergs do to the supporting ocean. But to Eu- ropean eyes the icebergs seem to over- top and chill the sea. We may as well make a clean breast of it, and confess that the sight of the stability of the governments abroad, the mainly just and humane public institu- tions, the general contentment of the people, even in those classes we have been accustomed to pity as oppressed, the sure and quiet protection to person and property of rich and poor, give a perceptible shock to our previously ram- pant republican democracy. No Ameri- can is probably ever changed to a mon- archist, but he may be so unsettled in his convictions as to allow that there are, possibly, two sides to the question, and that the anti-republican may hon- estly think himself in the right; and even this is, to most of us, a stupendous mental revolution! Assailed by such influences, and per- haps exposed to a fire in the rear in the shape of some mortifying or disgraceful paragraph copied from American news- papers, he is liable to certain puzzling thoughts,doubts as to how much of our political strength and success is due to our financial prosperity, and how much to the inherent righteousness of republican principles and the innate virtue of the masses; in other words, whether universal suffrage would com- fort as well with universal scarcity as it does with universal abundance. When the road from poverty to wealth is no longer so open as now, will the equality of voting-privileges and superiority of numbers tempt the poor to vote for 1868.1 AMERICAN TRAITS AS SEEN FROM ABROAD. 297 equality of the other goods of this world? Vote yourself a farm does very well so long as there are public farms to be voted. How when the un- claimed farms are all gone,will it be vote yourself somebody elses farm? Thus far it is easier to get a fortune out of the great stores of bounteous nature than to take it away from other people. When this is changed, and it becomes harder to get wealth from the earth, shall we have to make stronger barriers against the temptation to take it away from those who have it already? On the open common, where all have room, the members of the animal kingdom get on pretty well without quarrelling; but shut the ferie naturre in an inclosure, and the result is difibrent: it takes long training under strict discipline to insti- tute a Happy Family. Such are the captious and skeptical thoughts that come into the mind of a travelling Yankee during his re-ac- tionary .low-spirited cowardly mo- ments. They do not indicate a decrease in his love of home; on the contrary, lie is perhaps most subject to them when he is a little ho1 esick and tired of his exile. Possibly these megrims assail him most rudely at localities where the cooking is bad, for dyspepsia is the parent of mania. During the darkness of absence we are stampeded by chi- meras which are exposed and dissolved by the dawn of a return homeward. XAThen we recover our true sanity, we see that our wretched unfaith was but a temporary h llucination, only possible when we ~are out of sight of America both as to our bodily and our mental vision. With returning intelligence comes anew, welcome and beautiful, the perception that the Great Republic is the land of activity, variety, abundance, and gay and happy enterprise and in- dustry. Let older nations enjoy the fruit of by-gone harvests, we prefer to plant and reap our own crop, and to eat our bread while it is fresh. And what- ever is best among their treasures we can buy for our own use with the sur- plus of ours. It is pleasanter to earn than to inheritto build than to in- voL. i.20 habit. Give us the lot to create a great country rather than to sordidly enjoy one already created to our hand. We have the materials to work on, and the tools to work with. What pleasure greater than to perfect the fabric! Our advantages are permanent; it is only our drawbacks that are temporary. The solid foundation for all possible future greatness and goodness is laid firmly alike in the heart of the land and the hearts of the people. Our prairies will raise food and clothing for th world, and our mines and machines will prepare and transport it to its destina- tion. The products of the earth, from above and below the surface, are not imaginary ;incrcdible, inconceivable to the mind, but still well proventruth stranger than fiction; and her countless flocks, though unstabled, are not un- stable. They would pay all our debts, if shuply let alone, by their natural in- crease. Our voters may not be individu- ally the wisest of statesmen, but collect- ively how sure they are to settle down on the right side! They may not know what to do, but they do know what not to do; and the very moment that amateur political theorists go too far in some fair-seeming but unsound path, they suddenly find themselves without a party! That government is the best which governs least. Heaven save us from a parental government! The ungloved hand grows strong, brown, and hardy, the gloved one delicate and fair. The guiding and protecting power in a well- ordered empire, keeps its subjects sym- metrically helpless. The self-aid of a sturdy freeman makes him ungracefully strong and sound. Railway crossings are characteristic things. On the Continent, on coming to a railway, you are as likely as not to find the gates down, and yourself de- tained until the coming train has gone by. In England, you find that the un- lucky railway builders have been com- pelled to make an excellent permanent way over or under the track. In Ameri- ca, you simply encounter a great sign- board, Railroad Crossing. Look out 298 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Mar. for the cars! Your feeling at the Con- tinental railway would probably be, I wish they had forgotten to shut the gate. At the English railway you may very probably consider how much cheap- er and more satisfactory it would have been if the money spent on the crossing had been invested for the benefit of the crossers, each getting a sum that would have insured his life against railway accidents for all his days. In America, you know that if you get hurt it is your own fault. The locomotive has a cow- catcher (foreign locomotives are without them), which will protect its train against you, and you are expected to have an equally efficient protection against it, in your eyes and your dis- cretion. The prevalence of debts is diminished by the inefficiency of the arrangements for their collection. We in America look to a mans property or his probity for the security of our claims against him; ~ut abroad, in most countries he must pay or go to prison. Therefore credits here are freely given, and hence arises the prevalence of those loads of personal debt, so common among all classes, from the poor student to the greatest lights of literature and art from the princes of the blood-royal to the pawnbrokers customers. There is a whole strain of humor in English lit- erature which puzzles the uninitiated the bewailing of debt as a misfor- tune, like sickness or accident; and the stigmatizing of duns as a separate class of public enemies to private peace, like organ-grinders, beggars, swindlers, and pickpockets. In America, your cred- itor is a man who has entrusted you with something, and his dun is his representative asking you for the prom- ised equivalent. In England, the first is your enemy, and the last a bore. There the expedients for getting other peoples goods, and then avoiding resti- tution, have furnished some of the fun- niest bits of history and fiction. The creditor, whom they regard as the of- fender, we should sympathize with, while the debtor, whom they pity, we should call a thief. With years, our faults diminish, while our vices increase. This cruelly cynical maxim is true of nations, wheth- er it be universal among individuals i~r not. Heaven be praised that we have the youth of a nation for our own, even if it be one of the last that can ever be young before the earth shall be finally and once for all full of its troublesome human children. Better the faults of youth than the vices of age. Better national failings than national crinies. Tobacco-chewing and spitting are less objectionable than bigotry and super- stition. The custom of keeping stand- ing armies is more dangerous to human life than the custom of carrying deadly weapons. We talk through our noses, doubtless, but our speech is, in other respects, free; we prefer an unlicensed public press to one that is licensed; give us the liberty of private censure, and we gladly do without a public cen- sor. Tis a good thing to see law well dispensedstill better to see it well dispensed with. Great and beautiful realities may cast shadows most monstrous and hideous; and before condemning such a principle as that of universal suffrage for the sake of something repulsive we see in its outline, we should be very sure that the ugliness is not a contortion of its shad- ow or some imperfection of vision in the critic. Perhaps we cannot trust the masses. Perhaps the masses cannot trust us. Perhaps it is a matter we can safely leave to arrange itself avoiding the absurdly common error of thinking it necessary to arrange every thing be- forehand for fear it should go wrong. To quote Mr. Lincoln again (and this time authentically), if we jest keep a-peggin away, itll all turn out right. In America, each man must build his own house. But he finds room to put it, and materials to build it oftwo essentials which are not to be had in Europe by the majority of mankind. No living in flats satisfies an Anglo- Saxonhis neighbors must be by his side on the same level. From the nadir to the zenith he must have clear do- 1868.] AMERICAN TRAITS AS SEEN FROM ABROAD. 299 minion.* And he is right, too; it is one of his most sturdy and manly traits. Perhaps sometimes lie remembers what a vast deal of earth he holds, measured perpendicularly; and also, starting with nothing at the centre of the world and spreading to a few acres at the surface, what a glorious tract of the spacious firmament belongs to his farm! A good fixed standard to judge of the happiness of the people is the way in which they regard army-life, the lat- ter being pretty much the same in all times and countries-certainly it is never more tolerable than it is made to the American soldier. Yet nothing but a severe sense of duty could retain our men in service, while in other countries the profession of arms is the favorite calling, and how to disband an army has been among the most puzzling prob- lems for great rulers and conquerors. During our war, an eminent English writer asked me, How ari you going to get rid of this great force when you are done with them Muster them out at once. Youll find that more easily said than done. History teaches that such masses of men are more easily collected than disbanded. When they feel their power, they will want to make the most of it. You dont know them, said I. All they want is to be allowed to go home. They would give up any thing, to-day, except their lives and their cause, to be permitted to lay down their arms and go, each to his own home. Suppose your General (naming my own commander) should use his pop- ularity among the soldiers to give him- self supreme power. I would be the first to oppose him, and every man in his command would do the same! Oh, my dear young friend! I hope it may turn out so, but I fear you will find that your army is like other armies, tenacious of the power it has acquired, * I want my land doom to the eccentric, said an illiterate Illinoisan to me, objecting to the reserva- tion of the mining right under his purchase. and disposed to make the best terms it can before surrendering it. He had history, experience, Sagacity, to back him. I had nothing on my side but common sense, knowledge of Ameri- can character, and correctnes8, as proved by the result. What is to be the upshot of this great union of all kinds of riches? Will it lead to huge individual possessions such as marked the Decline and Fall of Rome? Or to great feudal estates like those of the Dark Ages? Or to prince- ly splendor of certain families, repeat- ing the magnificence of the Medici and the Foscari in old Europe and the heav- ier though less showy fortunes of the Rothschilds and Hopes of the present Europe? Or more like the hosts of overgrown fortunes in England? Probably there will be men as rich as any of these millionaires. As to the means of personal enjoyment, we may even hope that the generality of men will equal the richest of them. The hoarding and spending of great sums was the fatal vice of the Decadence; but no satrap of them all could afford to travel thousands of miles for amusement or change of air. The Medici filled Flor- ence with palaces, pictures, and statues. The Medici Chapel alone cost twen- ty-two million francs, all paid for out of the Medici private purse. We mod- ern tourists are much obliged to the generous spendthrifts; but it must have been rather a pleasureless way of getting rid of money. When you ask after the present status of the family, you are told the name exists still, but only the name. No wonder ~ Angelo Medici drove our carriage over the Alps this summerpossibly a happier man and certainly a better driver than he would have been if all the wealth of his great- est ancestor had descended to him. At any rate, he can afford a spring-carriage, a photograph, and a daily newspaper, which Loreuzo the Magnificent could not have done. Even the absolute sum of coined gold- en income will probably be as great in many a single purse as ever has fallen to any men in any age. But there will 800 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Mar. probably be no massive, overshadowing edifices of wealth, looming up the greater on account of the general poverty about them. Probably also there will be no towering piles of learninb like Oxford ~nd Cambridge, and no contrasting prisons of vicious ignorance. An everlasting redistribution of knowledge and of property will raise the general level, so that even the aver- age will be higher than the summit- levels of other times and countries. It will be a broad, elevated plateau of in- telligence andprosperityunpicturesque according to the old ideas of the pictur- esque; but probably there is a new and truer standard of beauty to grow up for the new and perfect conditions of hap- piness about to arise. The foreign common people surprise us Americans by their generally con- tented aspect; but our people look more than contented. They look san- guine and hopeful, and with reason. With what absolute glee does the American traveller return to his home and business I Nothing to regret, either in his absence or in his return. As soon as I return to Massachusetts, I shall lapse at once into the feeling, which the gee aphy of Asnerica inevitably insp es, that we play the game with immense advantage; that there, and not here, is the set nod centre of the British race; and t~t no skill or activity can long compete with the prodi- gious natural advantages of that country, in the hands of the same race; and that England, an old and exhausted isl~ ud, must one day he contented, like other parents, to he strong only in her children. EMeRsoN. HEREAFTER. NOT from the flowers of earth, Not from the stars, Not from the voicing sea May we The secret wrest which bars Our knowledge here Of all we hope and all that we may fear Hereafter. We watch beside our graves, Yet meet no sign Of where our dear ones dwell. Ah I well, Even now, your dead and mine May long to speak Of raptures it were wiser we should seek Hereafter. Oh, hearts we fondly love! Oh, pallid lips That bore our farewell kiss From this To yonder worlds eclipse! Do ye, safe home, Smile at your earthly doubts of what would come Hereafter? Grand birthright of the soul, Naught may despoil I Oh, precious, healing balm, To calm Our lives in pain and toil I Gods boon, that we Or soon or late shall know what is to be Hereafter!

800 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Mar. probably be no massive, overshadowing edifices of wealth, looming up the greater on account of the general poverty about them. Probably also there will be no towering piles of learninb like Oxford ~nd Cambridge, and no contrasting prisons of vicious ignorance. An everlasting redistribution of knowledge and of property will raise the general level, so that even the aver- age will be higher than the summit- levels of other times and countries. It will be a broad, elevated plateau of in- telligence andprosperityunpicturesque according to the old ideas of the pictur- esque; but probably there is a new and truer standard of beauty to grow up for the new and perfect conditions of hap- piness about to arise. The foreign common people surprise us Americans by their generally con- tented aspect; but our people look more than contented. They look san- guine and hopeful, and with reason. With what absolute glee does the American traveller return to his home and business I Nothing to regret, either in his absence or in his return. As soon as I return to Massachusetts, I shall lapse at once into the feeling, which the gee aphy of Asnerica inevitably insp es, that we play the game with immense advantage; that there, and not here, is the set nod centre of the British race; and t~t no skill or activity can long compete with the prodi- gious natural advantages of that country, in the hands of the same race; and that England, an old and exhausted isl~ ud, must one day he contented, like other parents, to he strong only in her children. EMeRsoN. HEREAFTER. NOT from the flowers of earth, Not from the stars, Not from the voicing sea May we The secret wrest which bars Our knowledge here Of all we hope and all that we may fear Hereafter. We watch beside our graves, Yet meet no sign Of where our dear ones dwell. Ah I well, Even now, your dead and mine May long to speak Of raptures it were wiser we should seek Hereafter. Oh, hearts we fondly love! Oh, pallid lips That bore our farewell kiss From this To yonder worlds eclipse! Do ye, safe home, Smile at your earthly doubts of what would come Hereafter? Grand birthright of the soul, Naught may despoil I Oh, precious, healing balm, To calm Our lives in pain and toil I Gods boon, that we Or soon or late shall know what is to be Hereafter! 1868.] IMAGINATION AND LANGUAGE. 301 IMAGINATION AND LANGUAGE. Do not suppose, most courteous reader, that I am about to borrow a chapter from Blairs Rhetoric, or Kames Criticism, or any other of the worthy volumes that, in the painful period o.f your school-days, endeavored in vain to open your eyes to the beauties of Shakespeare and Milton. The r6le of ihe imagination in literature is generally acknowledged, and I have no wish to contradict, and no new observation to confirm, the popular opinion upon its value in this department. We talk little with the people with whom we agree. But, by the side of this unexceptionably correct apprecia- tion, often exist. an idea that the sphere of the imagination is exclusively limited to literary expression; and the precau- tions so frequently adopted for retain- ing individuals in their respective ~pheres, are attempted in the case of imagination also. So far as regards practical life, this is held to be a sort of supernumerary faculty, useful at pic- nics and Fourth-of-July orations, but elsewhere sadly out of place. Its laws, as revealed in Longfellow and Tenny- son, are expounded in girls boarding- schools; but only during the finish- ing year, when the solid work of arithmetic and geography, of French ~nd the twelve C~esars, is well com- pleted, and nothing is wanting, but to iay on a veneering of taste that shall polish up the graduates to shine like japanned tea-trays in society. When evidences of this faculty appear in chil- dren, their parents, however secretly delighted, profess great anxiety con- cerning its dangerous influence upon the characters of their offspring, and often lament that Heaven has not been pleased to bestow on them the easier task of moulding mediocrity, rather than that of training these wild and irre0nlar little geniuses. Moralists urge the reduction and starving out of the imagination, as the prime business of those who undertake the direction of youth. Professors, even scientific men, warn the neophyte to divest himself of his imagination at the very threshold of austere science, if he would seek to advance towards her inner temple. The power of this faculty to distract the mind from the calm and lofty pur- suit of truth, is depicted in much the same colors as were used by the recluses of old to portray the influence of other carnal temptations. I propose, however, to show, not only that the dangers of the imagination h~ ye been exaggerated, but her actua~l services greatly underrated by this vieW of her functions; that, on the ~one hand, she often enters into th~ very places from which, by theory,;t she is most jealously excluded, and, on the other, that her absence is often the cause of the very evils ascribed to her perturbing influence; that when her ac- tion is injurious and excitable, it is often due to the efforts that have been made to weaken her strengthas the pulse is made more rapid by bleeding. I shall endeavor to establish these propositions by an analysis of succes- sive phenomena of human activity, in which the influence of the imagination is neither denied or dreaded; and I believe it possible to prove that t e denial results from oversight, and the dread from misunderstanding. Let us, as usual, commence by a defi- nition. What is the imagination? It i~ unnecessary to discuss the various half. felt theories that lie at the bottom of many confused popular notions on the subject, since the following definition is really accepted by every one who stops to reflect upon it. The imagination is that faculty of the intellect which frames images or conceptions of things. Psychology, which furnishes this defi- nition, endeavors also to describe the origin of these conceptions, and the pro-

1868.] IMAGINATION AND LANGUAGE. 301 IMAGINATION AND LANGUAGE. Do not suppose, most courteous reader, that I am about to borrow a chapter from Blairs Rhetoric, or Kames Criticism, or any other of the worthy volumes that, in the painful period o.f your school-days, endeavored in vain to open your eyes to the beauties of Shakespeare and Milton. The r6le of ihe imagination in literature is generally acknowledged, and I have no wish to contradict, and no new observation to confirm, the popular opinion upon its value in this department. We talk little with the people with whom we agree. But, by the side of this unexceptionably correct apprecia- tion, often exist. an idea that the sphere of the imagination is exclusively limited to literary expression; and the precau- tions so frequently adopted for retain- ing individuals in their respective ~pheres, are attempted in the case of imagination also. So far as regards practical life, this is held to be a sort of supernumerary faculty, useful at pic- nics and Fourth-of-July orations, but elsewhere sadly out of place. Its laws, as revealed in Longfellow and Tenny- son, are expounded in girls boarding- schools; but only during the finish- ing year, when the solid work of arithmetic and geography, of French ~nd the twelve C~esars, is well com- pleted, and nothing is wanting, but to iay on a veneering of taste that shall polish up the graduates to shine like japanned tea-trays in society. When evidences of this faculty appear in chil- dren, their parents, however secretly delighted, profess great anxiety con- cerning its dangerous influence upon the characters of their offspring, and often lament that Heaven has not been pleased to bestow on them the easier task of moulding mediocrity, rather than that of training these wild and irre0nlar little geniuses. Moralists urge the reduction and starving out of the imagination, as the prime business of those who undertake the direction of youth. Professors, even scientific men, warn the neophyte to divest himself of his imagination at the very threshold of austere science, if he would seek to advance towards her inner temple. The power of this faculty to distract the mind from the calm and lofty pur- suit of truth, is depicted in much the same colors as were used by the recluses of old to portray the influence of other carnal temptations. I propose, however, to show, not only that the dangers of the imagination h~ ye been exaggerated, but her actua~l services greatly underrated by this vieW of her functions; that, on the ~one hand, she often enters into th~ very places from which, by theory,;t she is most jealously excluded, and, on the other, that her absence is often the cause of the very evils ascribed to her perturbing influence; that when her ac- tion is injurious and excitable, it is often due to the efforts that have been made to weaken her strengthas the pulse is made more rapid by bleeding. I shall endeavor to establish these propositions by an analysis of succes- sive phenomena of human activity, in which the influence of the imagination is neither denied or dreaded; and I believe it possible to prove that t e denial results from oversight, and the dread from misunderstanding. Let us, as usual, commence by a defi- nition. What is the imagination? It i~ unnecessary to discuss the various half. felt theories that lie at the bottom of many confused popular notions on the subject, since the following definition is really accepted by every one who stops to reflect upon it. The imagination is that faculty of the intellect which frames images or conceptions of things. Psychology, which furnishes this defi- nition, endeavors also to describe the origin of these conceptions, and the pro- 802 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Mar. cess by which impressions of external things are converted into ideas of the mind. But in reality this science can add little to the information furnished by physiologists, whose researches into the connections between the organs of sense and those of intelligence are alone able to detect the path described by the im- pression, and the links of the chain which unites the inner with the outer world. The various senses, impressed by appropriate agents, transmit the im- pression along the respective nerves to the sensorium commune, at the base of the brain, where it is supposed to be appreciated by the organism in a crude or brute form, but not distinctly per- ceived by the consciousness. From this halting-place, in the pons variolii, or thalami optici, or both, the impression is irradiated along the white fibres of the cerebrum, to the gray matter of the external surface of the convolutions, wher~ it combines with other impres- sions similarly conveyed, and becomes a distinct idea. Without entering into the numerous controverted details of this theory, which in its general outlines is usually, I may say inevitably, admitted, we may be permitted, in passing, to notice two points, whose interest, though subordi- nate, is still very great. The first is, that the above-mentioned physiological or anatomical facts seem to imply that the difference between a brute impression and one distinctly per- ceived or risen into consciousness, de- pends precisely upon the different de- gree of their combination with other impressions. The actions of a single nerve, even though, as in the case of the retinal expansion of the optic, they may seem most capable of independent function, are unperceived in any shape if the connection with the central gan- glia be intercepted. In these ganglia the impression meets with others syn- chronously perceived, and combination, to a certain extent, may be effected. But in the gray convolutions, the registering tables or storehouses of the brain, the impression may be combined with those previously perceived; the multiplication is infinitely more com- plex, and the perception so much clear- er in consequence, that it rises into, or produces, consciousness. The main ground for this theory is the fact that every perception, however simple, in- volves a comparison with another, oc- curring previously, or simultaneously. The organs of sense of an infant, al- though in perfect working order, excite in him no perceptions or consciousness, simply because his blank brain contains no previous impressions with which the new can be compared. A person who, in a moment of abstraction, fixes the eyes intently upon any object, really does not see, i. e., perceive it any more than if he looks at a large surface through a powerful objective. I-Ic sees the substance, but not the form, and as the individuality of the object depends upon that, he does not see it when he fails to see its outline. So to an in- fant or a person just couched for cata- ract, nothing is perceived but a chaos of lights and shadows, indeterminate masses, that are only gradually reduced to distinct images, corresponding to dis- tinct ideas, as the mind grows accus- tomed to compare them with one an- other; and the finer and more accurate the comparison, the more distinct and accurate the outline, and also the idea. By considering consciousness as the result, not the cause, of this combina- tion of impressions, we seriously modify the usual conception of cerebral action. Instead of looking at the brain as an elective pile, incessantly generating vital currents, which, sent to the different parts of the nervous system, enable the nerves to perceive; we represent it as a vortex, to which all impression, imping- ing on the periphery, are ultimately di- rected, in which they are absorbed and transmuted, by combination with one another, into hi~her powers, and, as such, become new foci, able to react on the system, whence they were originally derived. All centripetal impressions produce sensations, images, or ideas~ all centrifugal, movement. The difference does not lie in the structure of the 1868.] IMAGINATION AND LANGUAGE. 308 nerves, which is the same whether these be motory or sensory. The primitive action is the same in both cases, only in the one, movements of infinite compli- cation and delicacy are excited among the cells of the gray matter of the brain; in the other, movements of a large and perceptible scale take place in the muscles. For ascertainment or confirmation of this hypothesis, whose full discussion would lead us immeas- urably away from the subject in hand, I will only refer to the fact established by Tiedemaun and Serres, that the nerv- ous system develops from the periphery to the centre, and that the ner~es origi- nating in the organs are already well defined, when the brain and spinal cord are as yet imperceptible. Bnt what especially concerns our pur- pose to notice, is the discovery of the imagination, so intimately engaged in the very genesis of all mental action. Consciousness does not dawn until un- pressions have been able to produce ima~,es, compounded of two or three perceptions. Whether the institual movements of the registering cells have not yet been started, as in infancy, or whether their functions have been destroyed, as in disease, consciousness does not exist, although perception may. The second point we wished to no- tice, relates to a theory recently ad- vanced by Luys,* concerning the exact localization of the faculty of imagina- tion. According to him, the outer lay- ers of the gray matter of the convolfl- tions are composed of small cells, great- ly resembling those that he has observed in the posterior horns of gray matter in the spinal cord, which are connected with the sensory nerves. The lower or interior layers contain large multipolar cells, like those in the anterior horns. He infers that these last are especially connected with the direction of volun- tary movements, while the first are ap- propriated to the reception of sensations or impressions, which, in their midst, are transformed into images or conceptions. Reehercites sur le syst~ne cerebro-spinat. 1865. Here, therefore, at the crowning point of the entire nervous system, should be located the imagination. Luys views, although professedly based on exact anatomical observation, have not as yet been confirmed by the researches of other anatomists. But the following fact lends them, at least, the color of probability. In general paral- ysis (paralysie ginirale des ali~nis) the initial stage is nearly always character- ized by an extraordinary development of the imagination. The victim of ap- proaching dementia finds his intellect- ual life upheaved into a sphere far more glorious than he had ever before known. His ideas expand indefinitely, his hopes become extrava~antly sanguine, he dreams, he talks of nothing but mil- lions, and diamonds, and schemes of magnificent scope and intention. A marvellous gloom illumines the sunset of his intellect, and, on the very brink of a wretched night, the heavens open, and piled glories of amber and crimson and purple and gold enrich the last moments of his waning day. In this awful disease, the lesion com- mences by a congestion and consequent over-excitement of this layer of cells, to which Lnys ascribes the function of the imagination. So much for the statical conditions of our faculty, as far, at least, as we can at present conveniently trace them. We are now prepared to pass over to the dynamical, and to examine, in its vari- ous phases, the actual process by which images of external tImings, refined by repeated combinations, are stored up in the imagination as ideas. The type of this process is to be found in the formation of language. Speech represents, sketched as it were in outline, the entire route of communication be- tween nature and man. A perception an imagea wordsuch are the three chief halting-places on the road, that soon may be worn so deeply by the thronging feet of countless pleasant travellers. Hence the study of the whole body of transactions between man and nature, or, in other words, the entire range of intellectual activity, may 304 be most fitly commenced by an inquiry into the principal features of the growth and structure of language. Now, at first sight, it seems not only surprising, but contradictory, that lan- guage, destined to be the vehicle of thought, should be acquired and exer- cised previously to and independently of any deliberate exertion of the think- ing powers. Herein, however, we have only one of the innumerable instances of the exquisite forethought of nature, who always takes care to have the tools laid ready to hand before the moment arrives for the work to begin. If the lungs had to be set in order after the child were born, he would die before they were re~dy to breathe for him; and if thought, at its birth, did not find speech all prepared to do its bidding, it would be stifled in the dumb attempt to summon a servitor. Independent of this final reason, we may surmise, that dunn5, infancy and childhood the lax and untutored brain is unable to retain an impression in silence, but quickly returns it in the shape of a movement or gesture, a word, or, at least, a smile. An infants face is dimpled by the reactioa of every per- ception or passing influence, as a small pond by breezes. Among adults, the strength and maturity of the intellect may be most surely tested by its capaci- ty for reticence. Every one knows there are two classes of fools, those who cant speak, and those who cant hold their tongues. The infirmity of the first is due to a lack of vitality, whereby they are so little susceptible to the effect of impressions, that they are not moved to give them an utterance. But the weak- ness of the second class is due to a per- sistence of the infantile condition in which impressions, instead of being stored up in the small cells of the brain, which are not sufficiently developed to retain them, tend to pass at once by a sort of automatism to those connected with the motor apparatus of speech. Thus language, though in one respect the vehicle and assistant of thought, in another may be called its antagonist, precisely because its construction do- [Mar. mands the same materials and pro- cesses; for if these be entirely absorbed in the expression, nothing is left for the idea. Eloquence is generally powerful in an inverse ratio to feeling, and people who tell all they know, or loudly demand sympathy for il they suffer, are not likely to be overburdened with learning or e. hausted by grief. This same difficulty of expression in proportion to the intensity and intimacy of the feeling, persists throughout life. Only persons of considerable intellectual cultivation are capable of expressing feelinas that are at all complex or pow- erful. And if the normal proportions between feelings and expressions con- tinue to be preserved throughout all degrees of development of the character, the most trained eloquence will often find itself in the presence of sentiments that are entirely unutterable. This seems to be in accordance with the general emancipation of organic life from vol- untary control. A man who could per- fectly describe every sentiment that he experienced, would seem as unnatural as one who could regulate his breath- ing by his will. And in the approaches to such feats that are not unfrequentl~ exhibited, we feel infinitely less respect for the power of the expression, than distrust of the reality and depth of the sentiment. All of which tends to confirm our theorem, that the origin of speech does not consist in an effort of the mind to express its thoughts, but to reflect the impressions made upon it by nature. The action is first reflex, the instinct- ive, and only becomes voluntary after long cultivation. And here appears a capital re~ son for the advantages offered by the study of language, as a model for the study of all intellectual action. The processes being performed spontaneously, are evolved in necessary accordance with the laws of the organization, and are almost unspoilt by wilful accidents. Here we have observation without care- lessness, comparison without inaccura- cy, reasoning without fallacy, deduction PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. 1868.] IMAGINATION AND LANGUAGE. 305 without emptiness. The intellect acts like a child, or a woman, or like nature herselfreveals its structure and be- trays its likings and antipathies, with ex- quisite artlessness, uncontrolled by delib- erate purpose or preconceived theory. It is entirely unnecessary to under- take the proof of the doctrine so gener- ally acknowledged, that all language is originally metaphorical, and that the foundation ~ caning of the most ab- stract words refers to the physical at- tribute of some definite things. But, curiously enough, what is generally con- ceded in regard to the secondary growth of such language as belongs to the more refined thought of philosophy or science, where every one sees at once that the most abstract terms are figures of speech derived from physical objects, is often overlooked in regard to the primitive formation of words. Yet it is perfectly evident that since words were from the beginning used s equivalents of things, precisely ~s coin in the place of actual barter, each must have been selected in virtue of some special fitness or appro- priateness, that enabled it, better than any others, to recall the image of the thing signified. It is certain also, since language is always spontaneously de- veloped, that the principle of selection must have been obtained by pure in- stinct, and that deliberate, much less arbitrary choice, had nothing to do with the process. Words were not in- vented, but discovered, and people found the words necessa for their speech, exactly as they found the arti- cles necessary for their food. Bnt what is this principle of selee- tioul and what standard exists, and has always existed, for determining the apt- ness of any word to symbolize to the imagination any given thing l Evi- dently, the famous onomatopoetic theory is inadequate to explain the origin of more than a comparatively small num- ber of words, and those the most ob- vious. It is easy to think of represent- ing by imitation a natural sound: the difficulty occurs with the problem of representing by sounds, things that are not sounds, as appearances, qualities, actions, and the like. Now this problem is solved, exactly as the more general problem of perception in which it is contained. All things are perceived in virtue of the affection they induce in the percipient, and distinguished from each other quantitatively and qualita- tively by the degree and kind of exer- tion of which the perceiving agent is made conscious in the effort to appre- hend them. The existence of a color is perceived in virtue of some change ef- fected in the retina; the distance and degree of the color are measured by the amount of muscular effort required to adjust the crystalline lens at the mo- ment of distinct perception. So a sound is heard because the fibres of the audi- tory nerve are agitated by the vibrations of the fluid in which they are bathed; its intensity is measured by the mus- cular effort required to bring the tym- panum to the necessary degree of ten- sion, (if we may trust the ingenious hypothesis of Dr. Draper,) by the di- rection imparted to the fluid-vibrations by the shape of the various routes they are obliged to traverse in the cochlea and semicircular canals. ~ ost curious, perhaps, of all, from the immensity of its application, weight is appreciated, and hence gravity conceived og entirely by the ~egree of resistance that a body offers to the muscular energies. All perception, therefore, is affected by the mediation of the conscious ac- tivity of the percipient, as we have be- fore observed, and images of the outside world may be repeatedly suggested by the mere repetition of the exertion origi- nally expended to obtain them. Thus the acts of a man, although they do not imitate, become the just equivalent for the objects of nature, in virtue of the intimate correlation that exists between the two. On this aceonilt, language becomes possible, since men are enabled, instead of copying things of which they speak, to produce a certain effect that can stand as the equivalent for the thing. Theoretically, we can conceive of ex- pression effected in many other ways than by the aid of the voice. But it is 306 PuTNAMs MAGAZINE. [Mar. no more difficult now to understand that a certain sound may, naturally, not merely from force of custom, suggest a certain form, (although form and sound be radically distinct from each other, and mutually incontrovertible,) than that the su~,gcstion of lifting a heavy body should suggest the force residing in it, which attracts it to the earth, and which certainly is radically dis- tinct from muscular force, and cannot be converted into it. Accordingly, all sounds divide themselves into three great classes, corresponding to the prin- cipal divisions of the organs of speech. Those pronounced by the throat, which require the most effort, and are conse- quently associated with ideas that are most profound, important, and vital; those pronounced by the lips, which being much more easily and rapidly ef- fected, associate themselves with things more superficial, at the same time more lively, mobile, and fluent; finally those pron@unccd by the teeth and hard pal- ate, where the effort of speech encoun- ters a certain inorganic resistance, which suggests inanimation and death. It does not concern our purpose to enter upon the discussion of the sub- divisions of these great classes, or of the collateral or exceptional sounds, as the aspirates. Every one is familiar with them, if not before, at least since the attractive popularization of the subject by Max Mfiller. I have referred to these laws of classification only for the purpose of exhibiting the method whereby the imagination performs her first and difficult task of creating im- ages of objects out of materials entirely heterogeneous to the objects imagined. For it is evident that the faculty which directs selection of such vocal efforts as shall be naturally apt to recall objects previously perceived, is the imagination, which alone is capable of seizing so subtle an analogy as that existing be- tween a thing and its word. Nor (as we have before observed) is it the place to refute the monstrous, and now antiquated supposition, that these analogies that we now perceive are only felt in virtue of long habit and association, but that originally they were decided by arbitrary convention. Such a theory can never answer the in- quiry: on what grounds was that ar- bitrary decision reached? The method would greatly resemble that said to have been employed by Adam, in nam- ing the animals. Every thing went on swimmingly till he arrived at the toad, and then he was completely puzzled; at last Eve came to his relief with a bright feminine intuition, Why, Adam, it looks like a toad, and hops like a toad; why should we not call it a toad?~~ But if the evolution of language de- pends upon a natural correlation be- tween the organs of human speech and the world of things, words become amenable to criticism according as they are not adjusted to the exigencies of this correlation. Judgment is to be passed, not in view of the customs or names which have clothed words with authority, but solely to the degree to which these have fulfilled their natural function, of so exercising the organs of speech that an image shall be suggested exactly equivalent to the idea. This standard, whose adoption is eloquently urged in a valuable and neglected book, Kraitsirs Glossology, should serve as a guide in all study of language or languages. It alone is able to explain the compli- cated effects produced by words, and ex- tracts from bewilderment the student, who, having acknowledged the truth of the general principle of the formation of language by special and appropriate action of the organs of speech, is puz- zled by numerous instances where words seem to bear no relation whatever to this principle. He learns that these words are usurpershave obtained their place by accident or circumstance: he judges them, and is not judged by them. A type is created, as in the study of comparative anatomy, and the diversi- ties are understood to prove nothing against the validity of the law; and in the study of language, a double evolu- tion must be taken into account, which 1868.1 IMAGINATION AND LANGUAGE. 80Z may be called, on the one hand, the organic, and on the other, historical development. The organic formation of language alone enters into the prim- itive action of the imagination, which concerns itself with nature. Words, connected with circumstances, suggest images by the power of tlie imagination to reproduce events, which is secondary to that it possesses to reproduce objects. But from all this follows an extremely important corollary. If words primi- tively and naturally represent things, their meaning is to be learned only by a profound study of the things from which they are derived. A person who undertakes to learn to use language merely by the study of written litera- ture, acts as irrationally as an artist who should spend all his days in a pic- ture-gallery, and hope thereby to learn how to paint from nature. It is true, this method is very extensively pursued. The young student is surrounded by the works.of classic literature, with the hope that, as deliberately expressed the other day, in the commencement ad- dress at the Paris Normal School, his mind shall become gradually and in- sensibly satnrated with their style, and his own formed thereby. This same saturation theory forms the basis of the Olleudorif systems for the study of mod- ern languages, which with great ap- plause have so frequently replaced the tough old grammars of former times. It must be confessed, if the intellects submitted to these methods are not really sponges at the outset, they stand a great chance of becoming so before the training is completed. The theory is based on a confused perception of the truth, that education should be con- ducted by impressions made upon the imagination, rather than didactic for- mulas delivered to the memory or ad- dressed to the reason. But the percep- tion of what is necessary is so confused, that there is no wonder the efforts made to attain it should be perfectly blunder- ing. If by other methods, language has sometimes been given to pupils like dry husks, it may be said now to be distributed in a state of hasty-pudding. It is not hard, it is true, but, has the present generation had the misfortune to lose all its teeth, that such pains must be taken to chew its food before it can be swallowed? Thorough training by this method mobilizes the intellect, and puts it in trim to use language intelligently and effectively; for, of course, continual practice must accompany the scientific or rational instruction, otherwise the pupil studies language as an anatomist the insertions of muscles, simply in the interest of science. Whereas, since lan- guage is an art, the student should pro- ceed as the artist who studies anatomy for the purpose of representing muscles in all positions required to express his meaning. However, the necessity for practice is everywhere acknowledged, and, as we have before noticed, made prominent even to the extent of exclud- ing science, which theory is as unrea- sonable as an assertion, that because men walked with their legs, and not with their eyes, it was easier and better for them to walk blindfold! It would, of course, be too much to assert that no one can use words justly, who cannot frame to himself the images they intend. Natural capacity and in- stinct are often so great (fortunately), that they succeed in spite of the most vicious education, which is none the less vicious on that account. Mephitic gases are poisonous, even if people have passed through them and escaped asphyxia. The bad tendency is to be studied in its effects on persons who have fallen victims. The slightest ob- servation shows that an immense num- ber of people, even among those who esteem themselves educated, use words without the least picturesque concep- tion of their meaning. Consequently, their language, though conventionally correct, is completely poverty-stricken. For such words present no intrinsic difference, but are distinguished from each other merely by labels. If, for a moment, the label happens to be con- cealed or lost, the speaker is all abroad. He is like an ignorant apprentice in an apothecarys shop, unable to distinguish 808 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Mar. substances by their color or odor. Such people are given to vain repetitions of the same phrase, which is as torturing to the sensitive ear as the grinding of the Anvil Chorus on a hand-organ. For the same reason, because the con- ceptions of the meanings of words are so loose and ill-defined that they run into each other confusedly, is speech some- times covered with a false show of abundance at the entire expense of ac- curacy. Every one laughs at school- girls for their indiscriminate use of glit- tering adjectives, as beautiful, splen- did, glorious, superb, and the like. This rapid ma.~ nificence of diction is often ascribed to the exuberant imagi- nation of the gushing young creatures, and its remedy anticipated in the cool- ing influence of time and ripening judg- ment. But in reality it is the imagina- tion itself which is at fault, since it has never taken the trouble to firmly grasp and contemplate the object in question, and l~nee, in ignorance of its real out- lines, carelessly assumes any accidental shape that may suggest itself. Ideas instead of being carefully dressed like the children of a family by the minute care of a mother~ are sent out like girls or boys in an orphan asylum, clad in the first suit that comes to hand in the wardrobe. But so tender and delicate are the relations between Nature and the mind that honestly approaches her, that to such an one she always reveals some in- Jix ideal trait and characteristic, where- by it becomes, henceforth, impossibl6 to confound two things together. It is on this account, among others, that the im- mediate view of natural objects is nearly always so much more suggestive than the most eloquent description of them by even a superior observer. Nature is shy, and will take each man apart, and whisper in his ear; if he prefers to sit in the lecture-room, and hear her words thundered from the rostrum, she is mischievously to dull his senses, so that he hears without understanding. On this accountto return to a former ob- servationthe study of itten literature alone is impotent to cultivate the gift of expression. The second remove from nature is always sterile. The word of a distinguished intellect is often deli- cious for its own sake, and useful to di- rect the attention to immediate study of the subject in question. But unless the attention is so directed, and the reader placed at the standpoint of the writer, so that he can compare the feeble image obtained by his own imagi- nation, with the powerful conception of the superior mind, he is really unable to appreciate the latter, and his own intelligence is left in idleness. To enlarge and facilit to this habit of observation the study of languages is peculiarly fitted, and it should occupy a prominent place in all early ed~ca- tion; for if words represent things, and therefore must be learned by study of the things, different Lu- guages represent different aspects of those things, and consequently different mental attitudes that various peoples have assumed towards them. Hence study of languages reveals two things; first, a great variety of aspects of objects contemplated, and secondly, a great va- riety of mental character among the peoples who have been so differently affected by the contemplation of the same object. For the adult, not merely in years, but intelligence, this second information is the one principally de- sired; he studies languages as a table of contents to the intellectual life of the nations. But for the person as yet un- accustomed to nature, the study of lan- guages is invaluable on the first account. By moving from one tongue to another he is able to get a pnrallax, from which to make many calculations otherwise im- possible. Of course, this advantage in- creases with the extent of the study. But for the practical purpose of people who do not intend making a specialty of language, it would be sufficient to master the principal European tongues, Latin and Greek, English and German, French and Italian. By our present systems of education, the knowledge of these six languages is regarded as a very unusual accomplishment; yet it would be perfectly practicable, as Dr. I{raitsir has asserted, to put every child, 1868.] IMAGINATION AND LANGUAGE. 809 by the age of fourteen or fifteen, in p05- session of them all. With us, children generally begin to go to school at seven or eight years old, or even younger, and they waste an enormous amount of time ia peeking at a variety of things that are of no use then or afterwards. It is considered by many a great advance to banish grammars and spelling-books, and the dry study of mere words, from the sehool-room, and substitute Conversations on Chemistry, Easy Lessons on Natural Philosophy, First Steps in Botany, Manuals of Object- Teaching, ~nd the like. But Nature herself indicates to us that childhood is precisely the period for the study of words, by the enormous facility which children possess for their acqyiisition, and which they lose with every year of advancing life; also, that natural educa- tion is commenced by learning to speak. The value of the acquisition of these languages cannot be over-estimated, even for their technical advantages. Es- pecially is it necessary for us Americans, who, as regards intellectual affairs, still constitute an isolated colony, to be able to enter freely into communication with every meniber of the great European family that sustains, and almost consti- tutes, the intellectual life of the world. Popular science never c a amount to much, for the facts of science are worth- less without its method, and that is purposely avoided. But the intellectual training required to qualify a person for the pursuit of science, is obtained quite as well by observation and comparison of faniili r objects as thore more rare. If such exercise should be continually connected with the study of words; if the name of every new thing perceived by the child were taught him in six different languages, (which he could learn quite as easily as one,) and the fact pointed out to him, that, while some of these names crc identical, others took hold of different circum- stances of the object; if he should be taught to compare the descriptions im- plied in these names with the results of his own observation, ~nd invited to se- lect such as seemed to him the most ap propriate; if he should be encouraged, in speaking and writing, to use words indiscriminately from nfl languages, ac- cording as they struck his imagination as most expressiveby these and many other devices into the details of which we need not now enter, the child would ea- sily acquire, by fourteen, a fair acquaint- ance with these six voc~ bularies, an ac- curate knowledge of multitudes of ob- jects, trained habits of imagination and observation, and consequently a large and eloquent command of his mother- tongue. To accomplish all this, the first six school-years should be entirely de- voted, and all other study, except such as was touched npon incidentally, in the ac uisition of words and idioms postponed. But, at fourteen, the child would be in possession of something, at least~ while now he hardly knows any thing. And the intellect, without any more effort than was natural and healthy, would be so well trained and prepared, that in a single year it could easily, much more than master all the information in ariths etic or algebra or history or geography, whose acquisition is at present dawdled through six. There would, of course, be much to learn in the languages of which a speak- ing acquaintance had been acquired, especially Latin and Greek; for since the child had been taught nothian but what he could himself put into use by the exercise of his own imagination for his own purposes, of course, an immense amount of literature must have been left untouched. But there should be no more difficulty in pursuing reading in one language than another, and the child who was already familiar with Homer, would be as well prepared to read Plato, as one whose researches had not extended beyond Robinson Crusoe, is able to read the language of Shakes- peare, as soon as his mind is sufficiently developed to appreciate the ideas. The advantage of gaining command over expression, in the native lan~,uage, is often underrated, at least for those who are not to become professional writers. That is to say, by an odd paradox, the gift of speech is consid 310 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Mar. ered to be of small account to those whose expression will be confined en- tirely to it. But language, so far from being the esoteric privilege of a few, is an indispensable function of all. It is as universal as light, as necessary as food; it enters into every combination of social action as intimately as air into every chink and cranny of the material world! Therewith bless we God even the Father, and therewith curse we men, that are made after the similitude of God. We move about among our fel- lows like ghosts, until our lips have opened and revealed the life that is in us. Even when the pure and eloquent bleed Spoke in the cheek, and so distinctly wrought, That one could almost say the hody thought, the articulate word is generally needed to interpret the visible expression. After that has been spoken, the visible form becomes indeed eloquent, the remem- bered speech confirms the meaning that had been surmised in mouth and fore- head, and henceforth these seem to speak entirely for themselves. Words clothed in the passion of tones some- times ring a truth in our ears till we die. If silence be golden, it is because its value has been bought by silver speech. For business and pleasure, for love and hate, for all activity among men, what have we for our instruments but only words l Of a truth it may be said, A word fitly spoken, how good is it. But not merely is language necessary for all transactions of social existence, but it may be cultivated as an accom- plishment, and the most exquisite ac- complishment of a refined education. The language that is not merely correct but accurate, not only grammatical but forcible, not only pure but picturesque, that is plastic to the molten thought, changeful, various, vivid, such language is as lovely as music and more bewitch- ing. For it implies that the imagina- tion realizes every word uttered by the tongue, and that before the mind of the speaker, his own speech is unrolled as a panorama of living hieroglyphs. He sees what he tells, and his descriptions, because drawn from actual images, are invested with all the charming delicacy and individuality of truth. Such an one will never lack willing and grateful listeners, into whose torpid minds his lips breathe life, as the mouth of Elijah into the body of the dead boy. They lift their bowed heads, and look out for a moment froln their closed casements upon the world that lies so near the speaker, and find to their astonishment that it is beautiful. ---The discussion of this topic will be concluded in another article. MINE. Mv heart has wandered in the chilly air, Circling around my Ladys gentle flame, Which ever sweetly glowed, yea, glowed the same When I was near, and when, in dumb despair, I turned away to ease the pain wrought there; Alas, poor heart! twould struggle hard to tame The wildered love it bore my Lady fair. How fearful thrilled the sound of her dear name! But I have felt a happiness to-day As sweet as all was bitter, and a balm Has soothed my cruel wounds; a gentle play Of thought is mine, a dear, delicious calm; For I have seen the lo~re~light sweetly shine While her bright eyes were trembling into mine.

310 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Mar. ered to be of small account to those whose expression will be confined en- tirely to it. But language, so far from being the esoteric privilege of a few, is an indispensable function of all. It is as universal as light, as necessary as food; it enters into every combination of social action as intimately as air into every chink and cranny of the material world! Therewith bless we God even the Father, and therewith curse we men, that are made after the similitude of God. We move about among our fel- lows like ghosts, until our lips have opened and revealed the life that is in us. Even when the pure and eloquent bleed Spoke in the cheek, and so distinctly wrought, That one could almost say the hody thought, the articulate word is generally needed to interpret the visible expression. After that has been spoken, the visible form becomes indeed eloquent, the remem- bered speech confirms the meaning that had been surmised in mouth and fore- head, and henceforth these seem to speak entirely for themselves. Words clothed in the passion of tones some- times ring a truth in our ears till we die. If silence be golden, it is because its value has been bought by silver speech. For business and pleasure, for love and hate, for all activity among men, what have we for our instruments but only words l Of a truth it may be said, A word fitly spoken, how good is it. But not merely is language necessary for all transactions of social existence, but it may be cultivated as an accom- plishment, and the most exquisite ac- complishment of a refined education. The language that is not merely correct but accurate, not only grammatical but forcible, not only pure but picturesque, that is plastic to the molten thought, changeful, various, vivid, such language is as lovely as music and more bewitch- ing. For it implies that the imagina- tion realizes every word uttered by the tongue, and that before the mind of the speaker, his own speech is unrolled as a panorama of living hieroglyphs. He sees what he tells, and his descriptions, because drawn from actual images, are invested with all the charming delicacy and individuality of truth. Such an one will never lack willing and grateful listeners, into whose torpid minds his lips breathe life, as the mouth of Elijah into the body of the dead boy. They lift their bowed heads, and look out for a moment froln their closed casements upon the world that lies so near the speaker, and find to their astonishment that it is beautiful. ---The discussion of this topic will be concluded in another article. MINE. Mv heart has wandered in the chilly air, Circling around my Ladys gentle flame, Which ever sweetly glowed, yea, glowed the same When I was near, and when, in dumb despair, I turned away to ease the pain wrought there; Alas, poor heart! twould struggle hard to tame The wildered love it bore my Lady fair. How fearful thrilled the sound of her dear name! But I have felt a happiness to-day As sweet as all was bitter, and a balm Has soothed my cruel wounds; a gentle play Of thought is mine, a dear, delicious calm; For I have seen the lo~re~light sweetly shine While her bright eyes were trembling into mine. 1868.] Too TRUE. 811 TOO TRUEA STORY OF TO-DAY. CHAPTER V. MRS. GRIZZLES F~TE CRAMPJ~TRE. THERE were a good many people anxious about the weather for a day or two preceding the Thursdayyoung folks, fond of dancing in the open air, and old folks curious to criticise their neighbors and burning to know what Mrs. Grizzle had in store for them. On Wednesday the wind blew in gusts, whirling the dust everywhere; it rain- ed, bailed, thundered, lightened, and cleared off. I~ ature, impressed with a realizing sense of the importance of behaving it- self at Mrs. Grizzles fate charnptre, was the first to arrive, in her most smiling mood, and h~ her best dress, which she had washed and done up the previous day. All blue and green and gold, and wreathed with roses, she was perfectly bewitching. The very day insured success. Think not, cold critic, that all the guests were of the Grizzle pattern. Had you been there you would have surrendered, at once, a willing prisoner to the charms of fifty pretty girls, as delicate, as lady- like, and more beautiful than any old- world court could show. American women are graceful and piquant by nature, with that superior beauty which springs from a communicative intelli- gence with freedom of action and sym- pathy. Our girls are not lay-figures. They know what they are about; and they generally are about~ some- thing spirited and sensible. To the delicate grace peculiar even to many of the uneducated, one generation of cul- ture insures a refinement quite surprising. It is not, therefore, to be doubted, that the two handsome creatures, who came down from the heights of the blue- stone castle, already ignored, in their manners and minds, the washing-ma- chines. They were lovable girls, with whom Elizabeth Cameron had a friendly acquaintance. Miss Jones was a little fast, but not fatally so; and, as she was sharp as capsicum, making pick- alilly of the whole company by cutting them all up with the trenchant chop- ping-knife of her wit, she was a great favorite with all who enjoyed seeing their aequaintances thus served. She was a dashing young lady, quite in con- trast to the waxen Miss Bulbous, whose forte was style, of the majestic kind; like maccaroni, she was fair without, hollow within. There was the Doctors family, very agreeable people; the Ministers ditto; with a greatalas! a great many young men, worthless for all purposes but to dance with the girls and drinkshall we call it lemonade? There was lem- onade, but that was not what tlie young gentlemen drank between the pauses of the music. The music was the very best which Dodworth could furnish. It was a pleasure to Mrs. Cameron, to sit quietly under a tree listening to that delicious flow of melody which seemed to melt into the river and float on with the clouds; and to watch the brilliant groups lighting up the lawn with color- ings richer than those of the flowers. And Milla! She sat by her mothers side chatting cheerfully, and making believe to enjoy herself. But, that gay music had entered into her soul, with the message which it brings to youth. Her feet tingled, her restless fingers beat the swift measure; there were hot tears under her eyelids which she would not permit her mother to see. Robbie and Susie were having a gay time to themselves; but Robbie never forgot to come, every little while, to kiss Milla, and to ask her how she was getting along? and if she wouldnt have an ice? How beautiful the dancers looked!

1868.] Too TRUE. 811 TOO TRUEA STORY OF TO-DAY. CHAPTER V. MRS. GRIZZLES F~TE CRAMPJ~TRE. THERE were a good many people anxious about the weather for a day or two preceding the Thursdayyoung folks, fond of dancing in the open air, and old folks curious to criticise their neighbors and burning to know what Mrs. Grizzle had in store for them. On Wednesday the wind blew in gusts, whirling the dust everywhere; it rain- ed, bailed, thundered, lightened, and cleared off. I~ ature, impressed with a realizing sense of the importance of behaving it- self at Mrs. Grizzles fate charnptre, was the first to arrive, in her most smiling mood, and h~ her best dress, which she had washed and done up the previous day. All blue and green and gold, and wreathed with roses, she was perfectly bewitching. The very day insured success. Think not, cold critic, that all the guests were of the Grizzle pattern. Had you been there you would have surrendered, at once, a willing prisoner to the charms of fifty pretty girls, as delicate, as lady- like, and more beautiful than any old- world court could show. American women are graceful and piquant by nature, with that superior beauty which springs from a communicative intelli- gence with freedom of action and sym- pathy. Our girls are not lay-figures. They know what they are about; and they generally are about~ some- thing spirited and sensible. To the delicate grace peculiar even to many of the uneducated, one generation of cul- ture insures a refinement quite surprising. It is not, therefore, to be doubted, that the two handsome creatures, who came down from the heights of the blue- stone castle, already ignored, in their manners and minds, the washing-ma- chines. They were lovable girls, with whom Elizabeth Cameron had a friendly acquaintance. Miss Jones was a little fast, but not fatally so; and, as she was sharp as capsicum, making pick- alilly of the whole company by cutting them all up with the trenchant chop- ping-knife of her wit, she was a great favorite with all who enjoyed seeing their aequaintances thus served. She was a dashing young lady, quite in con- trast to the waxen Miss Bulbous, whose forte was style, of the majestic kind; like maccaroni, she was fair without, hollow within. There was the Doctors family, very agreeable people; the Ministers ditto; with a greatalas! a great many young men, worthless for all purposes but to dance with the girls and drinkshall we call it lemonade? There was lem- onade, but that was not what tlie young gentlemen drank between the pauses of the music. The music was the very best which Dodworth could furnish. It was a pleasure to Mrs. Cameron, to sit quietly under a tree listening to that delicious flow of melody which seemed to melt into the river and float on with the clouds; and to watch the brilliant groups lighting up the lawn with color- ings richer than those of the flowers. And Milla! She sat by her mothers side chatting cheerfully, and making believe to enjoy herself. But, that gay music had entered into her soul, with the message which it brings to youth. Her feet tingled, her restless fingers beat the swift measure; there were hot tears under her eyelids which she would not permit her mother to see. Robbie and Susie were having a gay time to themselves; but Robbie never forgot to come, every little while, to kiss Milla, and to ask her how she was getting along? and if she wouldnt have an ice? How beautiful the dancers looked! 812 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Mar. how happy they must be! But, I shall never dance, cried Milla, xxith inward woe. She had grown very tired and silent, when suddenly her face flamed up in a roseate blush of pleasure. Theres Louis, mamma! Would you believe it? He came up and shook hands with them. I have been unsuccessful in my ex- pedition, he said. I convinced my- self, in two days, that my cousin was entirely on the wrong track, and as there was nothing to be made by stay- ing, I came back post-baste. I recalled Mrs. Grizzle in time to change my dress before coming out, and here I am. I have paid my respects to her, and laid an injunction upon her using the word Baron, but I can see that she is whis- pering it about the place. I feel it in the air. Wheres Bettine, Madame l Dancing with young Mr. Grizzle, I hears answered the mother. I will go seek her out, as I do not care to have her betray surprise before others. She walked away towards the dancers, and iDassel took her vacant place near Milla. I was watching you from a dis- tance, he said, in that tone of mingled protection and affection so powerful with girls of Mums age. It grieved me to see you looking so sad. Have you missed me l I was thinking how cruel it was to be deprived of the pleasure of dancing, she answered, her eyes upon the grotind. It is cruel, Milla, I admit; that is, if you are fond of it. Its tiresome play, however, for me. So, with your per- mission, I shall devote myself entirely to you. I shall like nothing so well as to sit here. But Lissa? She will excuse me, as I was riding all night in the carsconstantly, in fact, for eight-and-forty hours. Bettine must not be selfish. Somebody must take it upon himself to amuse Made- moiselle Milla. Oh, they all do that, Louis. Lissa comes every little while to chat with me, and tell me all she sees and hears. They are all too good to me. Who would not be good to au angel? Dont say thats stereotyped, Mum. You are unlike any woman that ever was made, in your fairy-like loveli- ness, and sweet, clinging appeals for constant tenderness. When I get to be your brother, child, I shall want nothing to do but tend you. There are already too many at that work, said she, shaking her head, but her eyes looked into his with a happy smile: for the present, she was content. With Louis by her side, devoting him- self to her, she was at peace; the music no lon~er made her restless, but crept into her consciousness like the odors of the flowers. Elizabeth, deep in the complications of the German, could not run way from her partner, when her mother warned her of Louis arrival; but the knowl- edge of his speedy and safe return nave her a joyful expression which Sam Griz- zle interpreted to mean pleasure in his society, and the numberless compliments he paid her, all delicate as full-blown cabbage-roses, or as the yellow dahlia he begged of her to w ar, in her hair, for him. Pray, bestow the dahlia on liss Bn]bous; she will appreciate it, and it will become her, laughed Elizabeth, softening the blow of her own refusal by insinuating that other fair ones were eager for the favor. And, in truth, many nice girls present would have worn dahlias in their hair if it had improved their looks in the eyes of the heir to all this wealth whose evidences they saw about them. The dahlia some time might be con- verted into diamonds and pearls, if judiciously worn; but Lissa was lack- ing in this kind of wisdonm. In the meantime the tender summer- twilight darkened down, and out of it there glimmered a new and peculiar daya fairy day, such as we imagine hovers about the midnight banqueting of sprites. Three hundred and sixty-five lamps, according to the bill which Grizzle 1868.] Too Tnux. 813 afterwards paidone for each day of the yearshone like planets, glowed like globes of fire, beamed like silver moons, turning the Grizzle lawn, garden, and grove into a fairy-like scene, and casting such a halo of enchantment through the soft twilight as utterly to frighten away every rude atmosphere which should seek to remind of the source from which these magical tri- umphs sprung. Under this tender illumination even Grizzle himself produced a subdued effect, his face losing three shades of color, and his voice not being up to its usual capabilities,it being one of those voices which invariably made people jump when it addressed them too sud- denly, like the sudden opening of the organ-valve. In his white vest and black coat he hopped about from bush to bush, like a doc~, his head on one side, in the intensity of his admira- tion, about half the time; and the other halt; nodding in tune to the merry mu- sic, constantly calling on his guests to share in his appreciation of the grand toot assemble. Id no idee it would be so hand- some, to Mr. and Mrs. Cameron, who were walking about, arm in arm; its a reglar Fourth o July. Very charming, Mr. Grizzle; Mrs. Cameron and myself were just saying how pretty it was. I never spare no expense, when I once go into a thing. I heard Jones, last year, had three hundred to his party, so I ordered sixty-five more. Aint the band beautiful l Makes me feel like leading off with Mrs. Grizzle, as we did in our younger days; but the fact is, Melvin a is getting so fat it shakes her up too much. She eats too much pork, I tell her; and speakin of eating, have you tried the new-fangled salad of Professor Blots? No? Well, you mustnt forget to try it. Ive eat three plates of it already,tip-top! Lord I aint it enough to make a horse laugh to hear him call himself, Professor? I guess Ill set up for a title, tooPro- fessor of Pork-Packing. If Mrs. Grizzle heard me say that, shed pinch me till I vot. z.21 was black and blue; she dont like the business, you see. But, as I tell her, you cant make a silk purse out of a sows ear.Ah, ho! here comes our respective representatives, my Sam and your girl. Look well together, dont they? Both prime and about the right weight; a handsome couple, to my notion. Has the German come to an end, Elizabeth I Yes, mamma, looking relieved to get again under the paternal wing. Wheres Milla? I left her with Mr. Dassel. He said he was so fatigued with railroad trav- elling he preferred keeping quiet. Lets go and git some ice-cream, said Sam, loth to resign his partner. Thats right, Sammy; take good care of your girl, said Grizzle rare, with a wink at Cameron pire. That wink was more than his guests could tolerate; Mr. Cameron colored a little, and said to Sam that he thought he had seen Miss Bulbous wandering about in a dejected manner; he had better see to it that she had an ice. Miss Bulbors has got plenty of beaux that stick to her like wax, was Sams reply. She isnt my style of girltoo much like a tallow candle. There! thats the second pair of gloves Ive split open to-night. Dont you feel sorry for my misfortunes, Miss Came- ron l holding up a hand which show- ed through the rent of his huge lemon- kids like the inside of a watermelon through the split rind. You should select a higher number, she said, inwardly shuddering. Sho! I took the biggest they had. Come, now, lets go to the tent and get something good. The German gives a fellow an appetite. I must have a peep at my sister, positively declining the arm which Sam presented to her with a crook meant to be irresistible. Lissa was longing for an opportunity to see and speak with Louis. The very thought of his being so near thrilled her with a joy which made the music the sweetest, the scene the brightest of 814 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Mar. all sweet and brilliant sounds and sights. There was no blemish upon its perfection, in her eyes. Not even Sam, the great overgrown animated beet, could disturb her. Loves enchanted essence had anointed her eyelids, work- ing over again that wonderful spell, under which young hearts must fall. And oh, Lissa had a heart in which he could try, to the full, his magic powers! Slow to love, chary to bestow the rich- ness of her maiden affections, when once given there was no reserve. The thought that Louis Dassel had asked her to be his wife was one of those sweet wonders too incredible to be believed without moments of doubt. Their engagement still was so new a thing, she had not become accustomed to accepting it as a matter of fact. He, the noblest, as well as the wisest of men! and she, only a little, loving maiden, quite unworthy of so great an alliance. Such is the feminine mood towards the lords of creation; and Elizabeth was not wiser than her great namesake, the queen of women-poets, who sat at the feet of her Robert, and made believe she ought to do him homage. No man will find fault with our her- oine for this: why disturb the serene dignity of his acquiescence by any ques- tioning comment of ours l In the meantime Mr. Dassel had wrapped a shawl about Milla, and hav- ing possessed himself of her little, nest- ling hand, was quoting Goethe to her in a tone whose rhythm blended well with the other melodies which throbbed about the listening child. She had for- gotten her deformity, her discontent of the past two weeks, the dancing,every thing except Mr. Dassel. There comes Lissa; you have not yet spoken to her. He finished the three remaining lines of his quotation, kissed her hand, light- ly, before dropping it, and rose to meet his betrothed. As soon as she was free from the Grizzles, Elizabeth had come forward eagerly to greet Louis, but something undefinable in his manner blew over her like the air from a snow-cloud, and brought her to a pause, with the color fluctuating on her face. For the life of her she could not have said dear Louis! as a moment before she meant to say it. Yet, why should she feel so l He shook hands with her, and called her sweet Bettine; it must be that the fear of observation constrained his eye and voice. She was foolish not to know that people in the world must conform to the worlds ways, even in the glance of an eye. If they had been on their own rose-scented porch, the smile would have been deep down in the eyes which now had a light, glint- ing-like frost, in their blueness. While still struggling with her con- flicting emotions, Sam Grizzle came again, to beg of them to make two of a party of ten that were going down to the river, for a little trip on the water, to see how the g~unds looked from that point of view. There was no pos- sible danger, as they were going out in a row-boat. I should like it, Mr. Dassel, if you will go with me, said Lissa. Heres papa coming to take Milla to the danc- lag. Perhaps Milla would like to go in the boat. No, no, Louis, indeed, I am too timid. You need be afraid of nothing where I am; have I not olien so as- sured you, my child l I could dive to the bottom of the Hudson, and fish you up like a pearl, if ill-luck should send you there. Come, little one. He folded her shawl closer about her, tied her hat, gave her his arm, and left Sam to the pleasing task of escorting Miss Elizabeth, who was delighted to have Milla go, under such good protec- tion as that of Mr. Dassel. The elder sister never thought of being sorry to lose her lovers exclusive companion- ship when Milla was to gain a pleasure. With the usual tittering and scream- ing among the young ladies, the lovely cargo was at last safely stowed and trimmed, though not until her escort had to put his arms around Miss Jones to steady her, and Miss Smith had near- 1868.1 Too Tuuz. 815 ly upset the whole party by stepping on the gunwales, and then falling into a chaos of three young gentlemen, from whom she was finally extricated, and the equilibrium restored. The rowing was to be done by volun- teers. Dassel was as expert at this as he generally was thorough in his ac- complishments; he always kept his muscles in good training, and could have pulled the boat uaassisted, more successfully than with such aid as he received. Your oar is as bad as a sextons story, he said presently, as Grizzle, ju- n.ior, sent a shower over the ladies by a wonderful back-stroke which acted on the forward progress of the boat very much as a brake. Indeed, if Sam had served an ap- prenticeship as brakesman on a railway, he could not have worked more heroic- ally to save the whole party from going where they wanted to; whenever he did any thing b~ut dash water on the ladies, it was to reverse the engine, figurative- ly speaking. What under the sun and earth is there alike between my rowin and a sextons story? asked he, throwing another shower over the delicate dress- es. They both cast a damper over ~ suggested Milla. Do tell? I shouldnt wonder if that was it! I made a pun once myselg Miss Cameron ,twas considered very good; would you like to hear it? By all means, Mr. Grizzle. Whys my hair like a small speci- men of an early spring vegetable? Be- cause it cant be beet 7 Now,, Miss Jones, you shut up; because you re so uncommon smart, you wont give none of the rest a fair chance. I declare, now, Ive forgot the answer, after all. Becauseits a little Green pease? queried a bright youth, at the stern. No,that aint it. I cant recall it now, but they laughed at the time.O, golly, ladies, theres the fireworks going off, and we aint there to see the per- formance! Never mind, Mr. Grizzle. They show very prettily from here. But, in his excitement, the junior host, having thus disappointed some of his guests from beholding the most ex- pensive part of the show, dropped his oar in the water, and making a sudden lurch to save it, he went over after it down, down, down to the cold embraces of the North-river mermaids. Hell becoms.accustomed to it after a season,~~ remarked the youth at the stern. This is the third time Ive seen him perform that feat, this sum- mer. Hush! hush, girls! pray, dont shriek so. Its no joke, after all, said Dassel. Can he swim? Not a stroke. They gazed, in breathless silence, waiting for him to reappear; the tide was running out and the current strong. When he came up, he was fifteen feet away from the boat, and splashing his arms about wildly. Shall I rescue the booby? asked Dassel, in a low voice, of Elizabeth. Think of his mother, Louis. The next moment Dassel was in the river swimming boldly after the drown- ing man; passing beyond the spot where he last came up, then turning, ready to grasp and uphold him when he should again appear, he performed that difficult feat with great self-posses- sion. No, no! Im not going to spoil the ladies dresses, he said, as they wished to take him up; I will hold him with one hand and on to the boat with the other. Ill soon land my prize. The other gentlemen rowed slowly back, he clinging to the stern; but he had a difficult armful in Sam, who was not so drowned, but that he made a splashing like the stern-wheel of an Ohio-river steamboat. If you expect to see the conclusion of the fireworks, you will have to give up working your paddles, remonstrated his preserver. He is probably striking out for Jer- sey, said some one. No, not Jersey, pleaded Sam, his 316 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Mar. mouth full of water, take me home to ma. They took him home to his ma, the beautiful curls of Barker all waslied out of his hair, and only a faint reminis- cence of night-blooming cereus clinging to his limp waistcoat and the handker- chief with which he wiped his face, out of which some of its usual crimson had been frightened. Ho! dont be scared, ma; Ijust did it a-purpose to see what the girls would say, he laughed, as his mother rushed up to him and flung her arms about his neck; but,Sam looked rather blue in the expiring gleam of the fire- works, and when his father asked what he could do for him, he suggested a hot sling. Dassels just as wet as I be, said the son; he jumped in after me, though Im sure he neednt have taken the trouble. I w~s just in fun. Then Im sorry I disturbed you, said the urbane Louis. Oh, goodness gracious me! that ever you should have got yourself in such a fix from coming to my skarn}9e- ter, cried the hostess, for the first time perceiving that her nobleher only no- ble guest, was dripping like a common water-cart. I shall never forgive my- self;nor Sam, neither, the awkward fellow,and Ill never forget that his life was saved by a Baron. Its an hon- or that we didnt hope for; and I as- sure you, we shall appreciate it to the utmost, and I trust, Sammy, youll learn a lesson and take pattern after this distinguished predecessor. Dont fret about your clothes, Baron; they shall be replaced. They shall. I will give you, to- morrow, an order on my tailor, ex- claimed Grizzle, senior. In the mean- time, would it be possible for you to wear a suit of mine? my best U Really, I should say it would not be possible, replied Dassel, looking down upon his roly-poly host, with a queer smile. We can provide for his necessities, said Mr. Cameron; and, as it is now late, and Mr. Dassel is chilly, we will bid you an immediate good-night. We have had a charming evening. But were going to have another supper and some more fireworks. You are very kind; we will steal away, and shall not be missed. Good- night. Cid! murmured Louis between his chattering teeth as he accompanied the Camerons home; that will be supper the third, with the refreshment marqu6e thrown in. Is it, then, your custom I Nay, but there be those who in the plenitude of their affluence and the poverty of their experience, have an ambition to provide liberally. The cost of this fite will be something to boast of. It would set us up, nicely, wouldnt it, Bettine ?if we had the sum ex- pended on thiswhat is it, Mrs. Griz- zle calls it I And oh, Lordy, to think that ele- gant Baron should a got as wet as a drowned rat, moaned Mrs. Grizzle, when all was over, and she was locking up the silver, with Grizzle yawning on the dining-room sofa. Our Sams so careless. Hell be brought home a corpse some day, I know, when we aint expectin it. But, things did go off beautiful, excepting the accident, and accidents will happen in the best regu- lated families. Im proud of our sham- peter, husband; and I shouldnt wonder if that author the Smiths brought with ~em would report it in the mornin papers. I hinted as much to him, and he said he would if I eared enough about it to pay for the trouble; so I took the hint, and give him a twenty- dollar greenback; and itll be out, to- morrow, sure. Well wake up and find ourselves famous, as Mr. Shakespeare did. And with this pleasant reflection, they turned down the last light, and went to bed with a blissful conscious. ness of the glory of giving 8hampeters. 1868.] Too TRUE. 317 CHAPTER VI. LOVES YOUNG DREAM. Tnx circumstances under which Louis Dassel, poor and a foreigner, made the acquaintance and won the friendship of the Camerons, were these: One bitter winter-day, some eighteen months before the commencement of our story, a person dressed in fine cloth, a good deal worn and not at all suitable to the season, came into Mr. Camerons office and asked if he had any work to give himcopying, writing letters in foreign languages, accounts, any thing by which he could earn a little money. If you have nothing better for me, let me put in the coal which I see is being delivered before your door, con- cluded the stranger, with a melancholy smile. That smile, so sad and yet so proud, pierced straight through the husk in which the h~wyer encased his heart dur- ing business hours. Although speaking English with great fluency, his features as well as his accent betrayed the na- tionality of the visitor; he was a Ger- man, and Mr. Cameron had a liking for the race. That he was a gentleman, and no common man, was~ evident at a glance; he had the air of one accustom- ed to command, and that self-restraint and self-respect which nothing could discompose. He was not embarrassed, in thus asking for employment, and this innate dignity also won upon the good opinion of his hearer. Mr. Cameron had no work, just at that time, but, by a generous fiction, he made it appear that he had, setting him to copy some old briefs until he could arrange something more useful. He dared not offer charity, and he could not turn the shivering gentleman out into the winter-air; it was the lunch- hour, and he asked him out to lunch. This was the beginning of his friend- ly offices towards Louis Dassel, which never had ceased since that day. He furnished him with copying for two or three weeks. Dassel made a page like copper-plate. Although very curious to know the history of his new clerk, the lawyer asked no questions; but he could not deny himself the treat of fre- quent conversations with one who show- ed himself familiar with every topic of the day. In their mutual enthusiasm in the cause of human liberty, the history of the young refugee came out, in pieces, until, finally, Mr. Cameron felt justified, through his increasing friendship, in asking him in regard to his past life. Then Dassel, under the seal of confi- dence, told him that he was a Baron in the little state of Baden; that, when a boy of seventeen, he had been sent for a year to the Carlsruhe Institute, to re- ceive military instruction, where he had met such fiery revolutionary spirits as Freilegrath, who indoctrinated him with a love of equal rights, and an ardor for noble achievement which drove from his mind a hereditary preju- dice in favor of rank. In three months he was as red a republican as Sigel him- self, joining his comrades in the Revo- lution of 1848, before his year was out. After the sad defeat which followed, he escaped arrest only by flight. The minions of royalty were sharply on his track, but, aided by sympathizers among the people, he made his way over the frontier and buried himself in the solitariness of society in Paris, re- ceiving from his father, from time to time, such means as his wants required. He was a good student, profiting by the treasures of art and the appliances of science around him: yet never while he studied did he forget the cause of the peoples, but, during all his banishment, maintained close correspondence with the secret organizations which no per- secution could smother. At length the old Baron died, leaving to his son all the family estates. The long time which had elapsed since the uprising and failure of 48 led him to hope that the German rulers had buried in oblivion all past offenees; and, eager to see his old home, as well as to re- claim his estates, the young man has- tened from Paris to his native place. But, the memory of princes covetous of good estates was long; and hardly 318 PuTNAMs MAGAZINE. [Mar. had he set foot in his own domain when the officers were on his track, to obtain the reward still upon his head. By the aid of a faithful retainer and the con- nivance of the people, he escaped, sav- ing nothing, for, informed that the old Baron had willed all to the outlawed son, the government at once confiscated the property, and the young Baron was penniless. Like many another penni- less man, he then came to America. I am expatriated and my estates seized by the Dukedom. America is my home. I have taken her for my adopted mother. Here there is no order of nobility. I wish to drop my title, and to have my past history remain un- known, except to my personal friends. I suppose, here, if a man proves himself worthy of respect, he has it, without regard to the manner in which he earns it. As I understand it, a wood-chopper, if he be a gentleman, is the equal of any man. ~2hat is the theory, Mr. Dassel; the praetice ~ Precisely, said the foreigner, with a dry smile, that is, human nature in America is not essentially different from human nature in France, or Germany, or Mr. Cameron spoke so frequently, at home, of the friendless and poverty- stricken refugee, that his wife desired him to be invited to dinner; and, hav- ing been equally as pleased as her hus- band with the new guest, she offered him the hospitalities of her house; bid- ding him, whenever homesick, or when he had nothing better to do with him- self, to visit them. The sympathy and appreciation which she evidently offered along with her other good gifts en- hanced their value in the eyes of the homeless foreigner. He accepted them as gracefully and cordially as they were offered, becoming a frequent visitor at the house. All the members of the family felt the charm of his varied discourse, from Elizabeth who questioned about the color of Eugenies eyes to Robbie who hung breathless on his descriptions of battle-fields. Some new acquirement came, every day, to light. With Mr. Cameron he played chess; but he had a game of his own which he played solitaire, at which his employer once found him so engaged, that he was un- conscious of a witness. He had employed his leisure n~oments for weeks in cutting little pieces of wood into soldiers, half-an-inch high, and with thousands of these he had laid out a battle-field, and was in the midst of a desperate engagement, in which the red-tops were overthrowing the green-tops, very much to their gene- rals satisfaction, when, conscious of an observer, he swept his conflicting armies into a box, turning, with a laugh I can still fight wooden battles, Mr. Cameron. The lawyer often felt surprise that one of Dassels peculiar talents and cir- cumstances could remain quiet in Amer- ica, when so many of his German friends were engaged in the war which at that time was upon us. Why do you not join Sigel ? he once asked of him. You might win honor; and it would be better than this drudgery, to one of your temperament. Dassel answered him quietly: I have grown skeptical, my friend. I solemnly believe that it matters not to the majorities of mankind what sort of tyranny rules them. If there is no master on a throne, to flourish the whip over them, they will set up something to bow down to,a bag of money, per- haps. Mark the corruption already creeping into your politics. See the misrule of your cities; the expensive machineries of your elections, which, after all, are so managed as to make your voters mere instruments in the hands of politicians. Bah I I am done with politics! When Mr. Dassel first visited at Mr. Camerons, Elizabeth had been home from school but a few months. Her mother desired her to continue the study of music, and, while considering what professor to engage, Dassel offered his services. I have never taught, he said, but it would be a pleasure to teach your 1868.] Too Tnu~. 319 children, if you have confidence in my abilities. His ma~ificent playing and singing had been a great source of enjoyment to them; they were delighted to secure his services; and it was not long until Robbie, also, was placed under his tutor- ship in the languages and mathematics. Through Mr. Camerons recommenda- tion Mr. Dassel secured the situation of foreign correspondent in two wholesale houses. This duty was very light, con- sisting only in reading and answering the foreign letters on steamer-days; so that he was now in the enjoyment of a moderate income, and yet his own mas- ter the greater part of his time. He gave to Robbie three mornings a week, attending to his two music-pupils after lunch of the same days. Mr. and Mrs. Cameron did not reflect upon the almost inevitable consequence of throwing an inexperienced girl like Elizabeth so much into the society of an accomlllished man of the world. All the girls slumbering emotional na- ture sprang into play beneath the light of his eye; her fancies took the color which he willed; she reverenced him ~ahero,admiredhimasagentleman; wondered at his patience with her when she did not equal his requirements at the piano; pitied him for his misfor- tunes. Before this ideal of perfection the young men of her acquaintance were boys or boobies. What did she care for their idle chattering, when Mr. Dassel always had something worth lis- tening to? Companionship like this was fitted to deepen the womanliness of her charac- ter;. the young girl of the dreamy brow and pretty fancies soon passed into the realms of real life. The i~other was surprised at the sud4len expansion of thought and feeling which worked the secret blooming of the Rose of Love. Elizabeth always had been attractive; now she grew beautiful. There, too, was the music-lesson; most witchingly dangerous medium for the interchange of sentiment. She was a true lover of music; Dassel h~d a voice whose lightest vibration was both passion and melody. The charm of those hours was inexpressible. Milla, in those days, was a child, ver- ily, with a childs heart. She loved Mr. Dassel because he was so kind and amusing, and praised her singing; for Milla had a voice which soared out of her body straight up with the lark, and floated in the blue vaults of heaven. To hear the singer, unseen, one could not realize that so dainty a little crea- ture could so flood the air with song. She had genius. She would have been as devoted to the piano as Lissa, but her weak spine prevented severe appli- cation. Sometimes she would forget herself in musical vagaries; thea the sharp pain would come, and she would cry out for Sabrina to come and carry her to the sofa. Insensibly the family had come to adopt Louis Dassel as a member, and to feel that it had gained in doing so. Robbie did finely under his guidance; but the boy was not so devoted to hero- worship as were his sisters. He was often interested and absorbed in his tutor; he thought him a remarkable man, and entertained not the slightest hope of ever rivalling his acquirements; but, as a friend, Robbie did not love Mr. Dassel. He was sometimes re- proved unjustly; and, not being blind, he had seen a fire leap from his teachers eye, when the responses did not suit, which he knew never was allowed to blaze upon others. If you should see a devil looking out of the front windows of a handsome house, some day,you would not be apt to forget your surprise; and whatever angels you might commonly find at the casement, you would always be expect- ing a return of the horns. This was the case with Robbie. He thought he had seen the old fellow, one day, unmistakably; and, after that, he was always on the watch. He kept this watch very covertly; but, its influence was perceived, and an atmosphere grew up between the two, invisible, but not unfelt. According to modern parlance, they were not harmonious.~~ Mr. Dassel certainly was rather iras 320 Pum~is MAGAZIxE. [Mar. cible at times; he could be as bitter as wormwood and as biting as pepper; but this was chiefly to the world at large, when discussing social problems; his sharpness then only enhanced the value of his smoothness and courtesy to his friends. Its a wonder hes not more of a ladies man, thought Mrs. Cameron. He knows just how to soothe us and flatter us and charm us with ourselves and himself. His flattery is not of the common order. He does justice to our intellects,and that quite conquers us. And thinking so well of his powers, the mother forgot that her daughter was no longer a little girl. As for the foreign tutor, it certainly was a palliative to the hardships of his situation to have the friendship of such a family; and, since he must have pu- pils, to have them like these two sweet girls, truly, was fortunate. The brother was only the necessary sour to be found in alr pleasant thingseven in sugar. Elizabeth already had a fine taste in literature formed nuder the careful guidance of her father; now her love for poetry sprung anew. During the long, delicious hours of the summer afternoons many were the times when the blue eyes of the teacher and the dark ones of the young girl followed the same page, until at least one heart was brimmed with the crystal welling of song. There could be but one result, to a companionship like this. There came a day when Mr. Cameron was sought, in his office, by Louis, to solicit permission to make his daughter an offer of mar- riage. This permission was asked with a curious mingling of pride and humility which the father could but admire. I know that I owe every thing to you, Mr. Cameron, even the bread which I eat. But, I am no longer afraid but that I shall be able to earn a living; and if Miss Cameron prefers me to some wealthier suitor, it accords with the sentiments which I have heard you ex- press that you should allow her freedom of choice. For some moments Mr. Cameron was silent. He was enduring the inevitable penance for bringing up a lovely daugh- terto be asked to give her up to another; a wound, which, though some- times soon healed, is always very pain- ful at the first. Then, as we have said, it wa~ an objection to him that Mr. Das- sel was a foreigner. He was much olde; too, than Elizabeth. He was poor. Like small prickings after the first stab, these thoughts struck him. On the other hand, Louis, if a for- cigner, was a republican. If older in years, he had that inexhai~tible vitality of temperament and constitution which is ever young. If poor, he was educated and a gentleman. He always had liked and respected him; and if Lissa had gone farther, and loved him, the father alone was to blame, for, had he not given her every opportunity? Mr. Dassel sat quietly awaiting his answer. That immense self-control of his must have been learned in a varied school. Louis, was the long-withheld re- ply, if Elizabeth loves you, I have not a word to say; and, now I reflect upon it, it is altogether probable she does both smiling at the implied compliment to one. I will speak to her mother this evening; and to-morrow you will have our answer. It is enough,more than enough. Thanks! thanks! How open, warm, and childlike was this German heart and manner! Per- haps, after all, it was not to be regretted as a foreign thing. So the father went home that even- ing, with his message; and the mother, herself still girlish and beautiful, was made also to feel the sharp pain of re- signation: Monas mother falleth mourning: 0, tis hard, so hard, to see rrattling child to woman turning, As to grander company! Little heart she lulled with hushes, Beating, burning up with blushes, All with meditative dreaming Of the dear, delicious gleaming Of the bridal veil and ring; Finding In the sweet ovations Of its new, untried relations Better joys than she can bring. 1868.] Too Tnuu. 321 Lissa is only a little girl, cried Mrs. Cameron, and Louis is to her like an elder brother. Reckon it up, wife! Is not Lissa a year older than you were when I first made love to you? Is that so, Robert? Yes, my sweet wife. We cannot say the girl nay, however cruel the shock seems to us. As for the elder brother, Louis is thirty-six, but he looks twenty-six, and he will be young when he is sixty-six. Those blue eyes and golden beards seem to be dipped in the Fountain of Immortality. I think, wife, we shall be proud of him, though it may go hard with you, who are but two years his senior, to call him son! Is it there the shoe pinches, my dear? Nonsense, Robert. But, to give up my childeven to Louis 1 And thea and there were mur- murings of distress; tears, which the husband laughed at, while he felt like adding his own to them; then submis- sion and cheerfulness; the consent given; the suit pressed,and Elizabeth walk- ing on air, breathing rose-sweet atmos- pheres, exhaling light in an aureole about her. In April the couple were betrothed, and in September they expected to be married. Robbie was then to go away to College; the young married pair to remaia at home the first wiater, at the earnest request of the parents, who laughingly declared that, as Louis al- ready spent half his time in the family, it would make no material change when he came to spend all of it there. Thus affairs stood during that pleas- ant summer. Elizabeth, with all her natural gift for building castles-ia-air, had not dreamed that life could be so full of happiness. Every sun rose ia purple and set in gold. Only little Milla, the dailing, had not been so nawell for several seasons. Her paleness and languor, with a growing irritability not usual with her, attracted the anxieties of her parents and caused Mr. Cameron to propose the trip to Newport of which Lissa had informed her sister. The morning after theftte, Mr. Came~ ron and Louis rode down to the city in the same car with Grizzle, senior, who wrote an order on his tailor for a new suit of the best cloth for Mr. Dassel, who refused it, with great good-nature. Mrs. Grizzle wont have no peace of mind, if she finds you refuse to let us make up, as far as possible, for the care- lessness of our boy. Sam catched cold last night, and has such a swelled face that he wasnt willin to show himself to the ladies this mornin, or hed a called with the order before you left the house. I think I can make it all right with Mrs. Grizzle, sir. I expect to do myself the pleasure of calling upon her this evening, when I shall endeavor to lessen her sense of obligation. Shes took a great fancy to you, wife has, continued Grizzle, leaning over, and speaking in the others ear. Shes dead-set on having you under- take to make a gentleman out of our Sam. I tell her you cant make a whistle out of a pigs tall,ha, ha! 0, yes you can, was the cool re- ply; I have done things far more im- possible. At the Camerons breakfast-table, that morning, the subject of the intended trip to Newport had been fully discuss- ed. Mr. Cameron had consulted the family physician, who had urged at least a month by the sea-side, with plenty of salt-bathing and ocean-breezes for Milla. Mrs. Cameron was to go with her child, accompanied by Sabrina, as attendant. Milla was loth to go; cried, and said she always felt best at home; but this very nervousness was proof of the need of change, and her objections were overruled. Had money been as abundant as wishes, the family would have accom- panied the invalid en masse; but, as it was, Elizabeth thought best to save her little portion for that autumn journey the very thought of which kept her heart in such sweet tumult. Mr. Cameron never got away from his business until the first of August, and as Sabrina was so efficient a nurse, there 822 PUTNAMS MAGAZINR. [Mar. seemed no reason why any other should accompany the little party. Tt had been arranged that the three were to leave on the next Monday. It was some project connected with this plan which caused Dassel to tell Grizzle that he should call, that evening, on Mrs. Grizzle. In the meantime, he had serious business with Borden & De Witt. I dont like to disappoint them, he said to Mr. Cameron, before leaving him. I telegraphed that I had failed in the object of my visit, before leaving St. Louis; so they are prepared for the truth. I dont understand how my cousin Ritter came to make so absurd a mistake. The goods offered him were different in quality and character from those stolen; they were offered under price by their owner, in the hope of averting the failure of his little one- horse retail store, whose affairs had be- come embarrassed,~as he plainly proved when we took an officer to question him. He had received them directly from France, through a relative of his, and could afford to sell as low, or lower, than the importers. So, it all fell through. And you got hold of no other clue? No. It is my opinion the goods never left this city. But, here we are at the parting of the ways. Mr. Dassel went immediately to the house of Borden & De Witt, with whom he had a long interview, giving them clear and concise accounts of all he had said and done in their behalf, in St. Louis,not only in tracing up the sus- pected goods, but in setting the police of the city to work; so that ig as be- lieved, the property had been conveyed there, they would be on the alert to discover it. The firm thanked him for his efforts, endeavoring to lessen the keen chagrin which he evidently felt at having dis- appointed them, and put them to ex- pense without any good result. They had great confidence in his sagacity, and since he had failed to get track of the stolen goods, were convinced it was useless to look farther in that direc tion. In this belief iDassel encouraged them. I would have remained longer, if I had seen any excuse for it, the agent said, in conclusion; but, as it was, I came home to attend to my duties here. I have lost my reward laughing but I have had a peep at the Great West and the Father of Waters, which I suppose ought to satisfy me. He went to his desk and looked over what had accumulated during his ab- sence; finished his work, and was going down the steps into the street, when he passed Abel Bellows, the porter. He bowed, as he always did, with the gra- cious courtesy which won him so many hearts; and the porter, encouraged by his manner, arrested him with So, youre back aready, are you, Mister iDassel I Yes, Abel. How have you fared in my absence? Youve not been paying any visits to Liberty-street, ehl This was where poor Bellows, yield- ing to the fatal weakness so well known to his friends, exchanged, every month, a goodly portion of his wages for bits of cards, with numbers on them, which represented to his diseased eyes more gorgeous palaces in cloud-land than could stand in a row from the Park to Union Square, had they all taken visible form and settled themselves down in the shape of real estate. Usually Bellows took all jesting on this subject with a deprecating good- humorwhich was as if to say he knew he deserved it all for his folly; but this morning it nettled himperhaps be- cause Toddle was sick, and his wife had cried, at breakfast, because she could not take him to the country, and butter was high, and flour higher, and rent highest. Ill tell you what, Mr. Dassel, he made answer, looking straight into the clear blue eyes, as clear and far colder than his own, Ive got a ticket in a lottery now, which I calculate will draw a prize, enough to keep me and mine comfortable. AhI said Dassel, passing carelessly on, thats what you always say. 1868.1 323 MATERNITY. This aint the Royal Havana lot- tery,doggedly. The Opera House, perhaps, added the young gentleman, hardly knowing, himselg why he continued to chat with Abel Bellows. Neither it aint the Opera House, Mr. iDasseL Its a ticket I bought with a certain little article; and I mean to hold on to it, till the time comes for drawin the prize. What are you talking about? Something significant, or intended to be so, in the porters tone, caused Das- sel to turn again and look into the face, usually so merry and so frank that it gave one a pleasant sensation to meet it. It was clouded, now, and the eyes had not their twinkling smile, as he said, About that little article, sir. What? About a sleeve-button. About a sleeve-button, repeated Dassel, meeting the keen glance of the porter with an eye like a little childs, laughing and full of wonder, and what in the name of logical sequence has that to do with lottery-tickets? Oh, nothing, said Abel, after a blank pause of half a moment, I beg your pardon for cracking my little jokes on you, Mr. Dassel, and touching his hat, the porter turned to his work, while the correspondent stepped forth into the sunny street, humming a strain from Faust. [To be continued.] MATERNITY. LIRE a pearl left on the shore When the oceans rage is oer, So, from out the storm and strife Almost overwhelming life, My dear waif a little form, Fragile, tender, soft, and warm, In my happy arms found rest, Nestled to my loving breast. Oft and oft upon my bed Has my heart looked up, and said, Oh, my God, to Thee I call; Thou, who only knowest all All the anguish of the night, All the soft, serene delight, With which mothers wake to find Day before them, night behind; Knowest, too, how brief a part In the lifetime of one heart Are the moments, in which press All this flood of blessedness; How, through all the ages past, And as long as time shall last, Not an hour but, as it flies, Holds such pain-bought ecstacies, Yet unmoved canst bear the sight, In Thy silent, heavenly height, Never, never, did my heart Feel as now how great Thou art I And yet once that One unseen Left his hiding-place serene; Once half shone on human sight The Divine and Infinite:

1868.1 323 MATERNITY. This aint the Royal Havana lot- tery,doggedly. The Opera House, perhaps, added the young gentleman, hardly knowing, himselg why he continued to chat with Abel Bellows. Neither it aint the Opera House, Mr. iDasseL Its a ticket I bought with a certain little article; and I mean to hold on to it, till the time comes for drawin the prize. What are you talking about? Something significant, or intended to be so, in the porters tone, caused Das- sel to turn again and look into the face, usually so merry and so frank that it gave one a pleasant sensation to meet it. It was clouded, now, and the eyes had not their twinkling smile, as he said, About that little article, sir. What? About a sleeve-button. About a sleeve-button, repeated Dassel, meeting the keen glance of the porter with an eye like a little childs, laughing and full of wonder, and what in the name of logical sequence has that to do with lottery-tickets? Oh, nothing, said Abel, after a blank pause of half a moment, I beg your pardon for cracking my little jokes on you, Mr. Dassel, and touching his hat, the porter turned to his work, while the correspondent stepped forth into the sunny street, humming a strain from Faust. [To be continued.] MATERNITY. LIRE a pearl left on the shore When the oceans rage is oer, So, from out the storm and strife Almost overwhelming life, My dear waif a little form, Fragile, tender, soft, and warm, In my happy arms found rest, Nestled to my loving breast. Oft and oft upon my bed Has my heart looked up, and said, Oh, my God, to Thee I call; Thou, who only knowest all All the anguish of the night, All the soft, serene delight, With which mothers wake to find Day before them, night behind; Knowest, too, how brief a part In the lifetime of one heart Are the moments, in which press All this flood of blessedness; How, through all the ages past, And as long as time shall last, Not an hour but, as it flies, Holds such pain-bought ecstacies, Yet unmoved canst bear the sight, In Thy silent, heavenly height, Never, never, did my heart Feel as now how great Thou art I And yet once that One unseen Left his hiding-place serene; Once half shone on human sight The Divine and Infinite: 324 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Mar. Not in passionless repose, But as sharer of our woes: Born of woman,since that hour Has her curse lost half its power; Since He came its sphere within, Sorrow has joys servant been: Now, beneath its shadowing wing, Lo, our sweetest blessings spring; All the loves and hopes which start From the overflowing heart; All familiar joys and ties Gilded as with parting eyes; All the silent strength of faith Standing face to face with death; All the mornings sweet delight Dawning on the stormy night; And the glad return once more To the halfrelinquished shore, Doubly beautiful to view, With its old joys and its new Oh, if such Gods curses prove, What must be His full-orbed love! Ah, thou heaven-sent, precious thing, Thou didst need such heralding, Lest, too satisfied, my heart Dare forget from whence thou art; Dare forget thy royal rights In my fostering delights! And how tenderly God laid His dear hand on me, and said, I have noble work for thee; Come aside and learn of me! So I left the din and crowd, And the voices gay and loud, And, like Mary, did repair, Hasting, to the hills, for prayer; And in sweet retirement then, Near to God and far from men, On my waiting soul did ope All the glory of its hope. And my heart, once light and free, Learned the mothers mystery, Learned loves holy cross to bear Of sweet sorrow and dear care; While, each day, a heavenly voice Made me tremble and rejoice: Lo, the Father sends to thee A soul from out eternity; Come thou to the borderthere Its angel yields it to thy care! Now returned to all lifes charms, With the treasure in my arms, Oh, my God, from this full heart Let the vision not depart! 1868.] JUAN FERNANDEZ AND ROBINSON CRUSOE. 325 JUAN FERNANDEZ AND ROBINSON CRUSOE. THE bewitching romance of Dc Foe was, as most people are aware, not all a fiction. It had just that sufficient leaven or groundwork of truth which, aided by the charming simplicity and grave realism of the style, has served for so many generations to maintain its seduc- tive interest. A story woven out of whole cloth would never have had the permanent success of Robinson Crusoe. The poetic tales of Byron which are most attractive, and which Mr. Murray always found most profitable, are those in which rumor identified the poet with the hero of his song. The same may be said of a great number of celebrated poems and romances; and the example of the author of Pelham has doubt- less been prefigured from time immc- morial in cases where antiquity has ef- faced the line which divides history from tradition. Even the Arabian Nights, whose hold on popular favor is largely due, like that of Robinson Cru- soe, to a quaint but imposing candor of style, were doubtless originally based on legends partly authentic, and were thus started down the roads of time with a credit which remained to them long after its tangible foundations had crumbled away. It would seem that the salt which preserves literary commodi- ties from decay is very apt to consist of pure truth itself; and the hypothesis is fortified by the practice of those able writers who, in the absence of facts on which to build their structures, are at such ingenious pains to simulate that veritable air which is their most effect- ive substitute. De Foe was not of the number, since he had, at all events, a Crusoe in Selkirk and an island in Juan Fernandez. He had the flora and fauna, the dimpling, placid ocean, the usually gentle but sometimes implacably cruel savages, all of which were needed for his picture, in the accounts lately brought by ad- venturous Englishmen from the South Sea. In laying his material on the can- vas, he had the advantages of a rare eye for color, a crisp, rapid touch, a pro- found appreciation of the interest which attaches to details, and a Pre-Raphaelite faculty for their accurate delineation. Yet the success of Robinson Crusoe has not sprung from these qualifications alone. There have been exoteric reasons for it no less than esoteric ones; and these have lain in that profound sym- pathy with nature, that chafing against social restraints, that impatience with the hardness, the vice, and selfishness of mankind, that craving for luxurious, untroubled solitude, which make most feeling souls at intervals of their experi- ence wish that they too might fly away to some beautiful uninhabited island, haply with one fair spirit for its minister, where the world could be left behind, and they could be at rest. Thus the finest account of such a life which ex- ists in our language, apart from its con- ventional attractions to mere lovers of the marvellous, is regarded with a cer- tain affectionate interest by sensitive and imaginative spirits, because it is the echo of their own unspoken aspira- tions as well as sometimes the suggester of them. I feel sure that, could such dreamers see the island of Juan Fernan- dez itselfthe accepted theatre of poor Robinsons strange monologic drama such yearnings would frequently return to them, and that they would agree with me in thinking it more pictur- esque than even De Foes sketch of it, more romantic than it appears in his romantic story. It is some years agoit matters not how many, and in a ship bound it mat- ters not whitherthat I found myself in the 33d degree of south latitude and the 79th of west longitude, and touched at Juan Fernandez. The memory of the place will never fade from my mind,

1868.] JUAN FERNANDEZ AND ROBINSON CRUSOE. 325 JUAN FERNANDEZ AND ROBINSON CRUSOE. THE bewitching romance of Dc Foe was, as most people are aware, not all a fiction. It had just that sufficient leaven or groundwork of truth which, aided by the charming simplicity and grave realism of the style, has served for so many generations to maintain its seduc- tive interest. A story woven out of whole cloth would never have had the permanent success of Robinson Crusoe. The poetic tales of Byron which are most attractive, and which Mr. Murray always found most profitable, are those in which rumor identified the poet with the hero of his song. The same may be said of a great number of celebrated poems and romances; and the example of the author of Pelham has doubt- less been prefigured from time immc- morial in cases where antiquity has ef- faced the line which divides history from tradition. Even the Arabian Nights, whose hold on popular favor is largely due, like that of Robinson Cru- soe, to a quaint but imposing candor of style, were doubtless originally based on legends partly authentic, and were thus started down the roads of time with a credit which remained to them long after its tangible foundations had crumbled away. It would seem that the salt which preserves literary commodi- ties from decay is very apt to consist of pure truth itself; and the hypothesis is fortified by the practice of those able writers who, in the absence of facts on which to build their structures, are at such ingenious pains to simulate that veritable air which is their most effect- ive substitute. De Foe was not of the number, since he had, at all events, a Crusoe in Selkirk and an island in Juan Fernandez. He had the flora and fauna, the dimpling, placid ocean, the usually gentle but sometimes implacably cruel savages, all of which were needed for his picture, in the accounts lately brought by ad- venturous Englishmen from the South Sea. In laying his material on the can- vas, he had the advantages of a rare eye for color, a crisp, rapid touch, a pro- found appreciation of the interest which attaches to details, and a Pre-Raphaelite faculty for their accurate delineation. Yet the success of Robinson Crusoe has not sprung from these qualifications alone. There have been exoteric reasons for it no less than esoteric ones; and these have lain in that profound sym- pathy with nature, that chafing against social restraints, that impatience with the hardness, the vice, and selfishness of mankind, that craving for luxurious, untroubled solitude, which make most feeling souls at intervals of their experi- ence wish that they too might fly away to some beautiful uninhabited island, haply with one fair spirit for its minister, where the world could be left behind, and they could be at rest. Thus the finest account of such a life which ex- ists in our language, apart from its con- ventional attractions to mere lovers of the marvellous, is regarded with a cer- tain affectionate interest by sensitive and imaginative spirits, because it is the echo of their own unspoken aspira- tions as well as sometimes the suggester of them. I feel sure that, could such dreamers see the island of Juan Fernan- dez itselfthe accepted theatre of poor Robinsons strange monologic drama such yearnings would frequently return to them, and that they would agree with me in thinking it more pictur- esque than even De Foes sketch of it, more romantic than it appears in his romantic story. It is some years agoit matters not how many, and in a ship bound it mat- ters not whitherthat I found myself in the 33d degree of south latitude and the 79th of west longitude, and touched at Juan Fernandez. The memory of the place will never fade from my mind, 826 Puri~AMs MAGAZINE. [Mar. and a brief description may be not un- interesting. Our first sight of the isl- and was just at dawn: The morning watch was come; the vessel lay Her course, and gently made her liquid way; The cloven billow flashd from off her prow In furrows formed by that majestic plough; The waters with their world were all before; Behind, the South Seas many an islet shore. As we approached, being yet at a great distance, the island looked a mass of immensely high rocks covered with moss; which moss, on nearer scrutiny, turned out to be heavy forests covering lofty peaks. The latter were half buried in masses of cloud, and were now visi- ble, now invisible, as the fickle air-cur- rents disturbed the cumuli which yet in shifting forms continued to hang about the mountain-tops. The little harbor, which we very readily found, and which was named, if I mistake not, after that proud Cumberland~ who pranced~~ at Oulloden, faces the east, and is in the form of a half-moon or horsesjioe. In coming towards it, but still some miles away, a row of regular apertures became visible in the face of a cliff at right angles to the line of our approach. They looked so like a bat- tery, that one had to pause for a mo- ment and reflect how unsuitable their real if not apparent size must be as embrasures for guns. In point of fact, these holes were the entrances of caverns or chambers in the rock, in which, as we were assured, the Chilian govern- ment formerly imprisoned convicts. The stone is soft and porous, and the felons, for whom the island was used as a sort of Botany Bay, were employed in gangs at enlarging the subterranean spaces which nature had originally formed. Cannon were planted in contiguous gal- leries, and a garrison held the place in charge. The works were on the brow of a precipice which rises boldly from the little plain below, on which there nestled at that time a little town, the dwelling-place of officers and other functionaries with their wives and at- tendants, and such few small traders as are commonly found at such posts. All was quiet and sleepy, as might be ex- pected in an insignificant Spanish- American garrison-town, and, unvaried save probably by the delights of monte, aguardiente, and cigars, life rolled in the hamlet monotonously on. One night the convicts above got tired of it; or rather, they had been tired of it for a long time, and now found means to relieve the tediulu of their position by a summary process. In brief; they surprised the sentinels, overcame the guard, burst down upon the plain below, slaughtered all who opposed them, and having, as we were told, put to death all the males on the island not of their own party, and burn- ed most of the dwellings, they aban- doned themselves to the indolence and vicious excess which were natural to their antecedents and situation. Soon they quarrelled among themselves, and many lost their lives in brawls. The others lived on, following the bent of their own gross inclinations in compara- tive peace, until one fine morning one of the few men-of-war then comprised in the Chilian navy sailed quietly into Cumberland harbor, and dropped an- chor. The consequences may readily be guessed. The surviving convicts were hunted down like wild animals; all but one or two were shot or captured, and, supposing the whole to have been thus disposed of, the ship departed. Since these events, which are recited partly from memory and partly from a journal as received from residents of the island at the time of this visit, the Chilian authorities have not again endeavored to carry out their experiment of found- ing at Juan Fernandez a penal colony. The residents referred to consisted of about a dozen persons, mostly Chilians, and we suspected that some of the nuim- ber were survivors of the convict-gang who had managed to elude the crew of the man-of-wi#. There was also one negro, and a white North American, who was said to have been the mate of a whaler, and to have purposely suffered himself to be left behind by his ship some years before our arrivaL The man had formed a connection with a Chilian woman on the island, by whom he sub- sequently had several children. He ex 1868.] JUAN FRRNANDxZ AND ROBINSON Cnusoz. 827 pressed the intention of passing the re- mainder of his life in the place, and seemed quite happy and contented with that prospect. The houses, or rather huts, in which these people lived, were so exactly like Robinson Crusoes, as described by De Foe, in materials, structure, and appear- ance, as to be, for those familiar with the story, exceedingly striking. The inhabitants, too, wore goat-skins, and their primitive and shaggy appearance was equally suggestive of the famous romance. They knew all about the latter, and about Selkirk, their prede- cessor, on the island, and showed a cave, the remains of a log-hut, and various other things which they alleged tile Scotch sailor had built, lived in, or made. They were uncouth, but kindly enough, and although they would part with their poultry, of which they had plenty, for neither love nor money, they made not the least objection to our tak- ing freely9 peaches, quinces, figs, and grapes, with which the place abounds. Of the vegetables common with us they had few. One of our party offered a dollar for a bunch of onions he saw, but the owner refused it. Water was good and plenty, and a charge of three dol- lars was levied on each ship taking it, without regard to quantity. To get it, casks are floated to the shore, filled, and towed back again. Of aguardiente these people had no lack, as some of our ships company tested to their disad- vantage. The price was a realthe eighth of a dollarthe glass, and the stuff was very like liquid fire. Goats were numerous, and were said to be still more so at a smaller island, called Goat Island, nine miles distant. Horses, too, of a small breed, somewhat like the Mexican mustang, ran wild over Juan Fernandez, their ancestors having been brought hither, it is said, by the early buccaneers. It was extraordinary and most picturesque to see these creatures rushing in frantic play over the hills, and occasionally appearing on heights that looked inaccessible, where they stood in poses as if conscious of adding to the grandeur and beauty of the scene, and sought to impress it indelibly on the recollection of the spectator. For- tunately for them, wild oats grow with great luxuriance on the island, but whether grain is indigenous or not I am unable to state. Fish of choice sorts are reported to swarm in the ad- jacent waters, and wild fowl of different kinds we saw in plenty. Robinson Crusoes Island has about the same area as our own beautiful Staten Island, being some fifteen miles long by five or six wide. Topographi- cally the two could scarcely be more different, the former being wild and bold in contour, despite the smiling valleys which divide its rugged prom- ontories, and furnishing, as it does, pro- ducts almost tropical, although thirty- three degrees from the line. Boxwood and mahogany grow luxuriantly in the forests, and stone easily available for building is inexhaustible. It would be difficult indeed for imagination to con- ceive a spot where the favors of Nature should be more bountifully bestowed, or where, consequently, life could be enjoyed, physically speaking, with such comparative ease. Besides this, it lies in the track of all ships doubling Cape Horn, and bound anywhere save to and from Australia; a circumstance which would make the island a valuable ac- quisition to the United States, and one which, if it cpuld be honorably man- aged, this country should certainly pos- sess. This, however, is the prosaic view, essentially opposite to the one with which we set out. It is a mere com- mercial speculation, unworthy to be as- sociated with that spirit of poetry with which, to my eyes, the balmy atmos- phere of Robinson Crusoes Island is impregnated, and by which it is sur- rounded and hallowed. The characteristic of the place is that of wild and mysterious beauty. Travel- ling much in a time comparatively short, I have never yet seen a spot so full of curious nooks and corners, of unexpected views, of effects which, con- sidering the area wherein they are dis- played, may be called surprisingly grand. Meanwhile, the mind is soothed 828 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Mar. by the appearance of plenty, and a feel- ing of calm and security comes with gazing at the gently-rolling plains and the brightly-fertile valleys. De F6e never saw this island in the flesh, but his imagination was vivid enough to dispense with the necessity. I can well believe that Alexander Selkirk loved not to leave it. I can well understand the desertion of our friend, the whalers mate, even although his dusky partner could not boast, like Byrons island- maid, of Eyes that were a language and a spell, A form like Aphrodites in her shell, With all her loves around her on the deep, Volnptuou.s as the first approach of sleep. Here were indeed a retreat to live, to love, to dream in, apart from the strug gles, the envies, the hypocrisies of civil- ization, and with small need of the lux- uries or even of the comforts it supplies; here, a secluded place of rest, where, with a few kindred souls, life might glide sweetly and calmly on till its closea haven exempt from the roar of traffic or of strife, a bower where one might waken without fear, and sleep in spite of thunder. The hour of quit- ting Juan Fernandez was for me tinged with regret; a regret not to be forgot- ten if now less keenly felt than when, leaning over the taifrail, I gazed toward the space it last had occupied long after the lovely island had ceased to be visi- ble even as a blue speck upon the hori- zon. WHAT A NEWSPAPER SHOULD BE. IT ~s a strange fact, notwithstanding the general circulation, the acknowl- edged power for good or for evil, and the importance as an organ of public opinion, of the newspaper press, that no work has been written aiming to state the theory of conducting a public jour- nal, and the proper mode of putting the theory into practice. What is meant, is, that as yet there is no philosophy of journalism. Like every other mundane agency, it must have its laws. There are, unquestionably, certain laws of suc- cess and usefulness to which, conscio~isly or unconsciously, public journals must conform if they would become a real power in the community, or realize a profit on the capital invested in then~. It is purposed in this article to endeavor not only to suggest, with all diffidence, the true theory of successful journalism, but to indicate, as far as the writer can, what must be the prominent features of the great newspaper of the future. In the consideration of this subject, it is necessary to make a discrimination with regard to the functions of a daily paper, which is very generally overlook- ed. A public journal has a two-fold aspect. It is at once a record of news and an organ of public opinion. In the minds of most persons it is, besides, an educator or creator of public opinion, which to the writer seems entirely for- eign to the correct conception of the functions of a newspaper. It is a com- mon occurrence in this country to raise money to start journals for the purpose of changing the current of public senti- ment. The value of such papers may be questioned, because the true function of a journal is to represent rather than to create public opinion; indeed, it is doubtful whether the latter can be ac- complished save under peculiarly favor- able conditions. It is the experience of nearly every person who has contrib- uted to the establishment of an organ having this end in view, that every such journal has failed in the attempt. In proof of this statement a great num- ber of instances might be cited, but the mere mention of the fact must suffice. A condensed sketch of the origin and growth of the modern newspaper will furnish, perhaps, the clearest conception of the various functions which it fulfils. At first the newspaper was (in England) an occasional publication, designed to supply the public with some of the

828 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Mar. by the appearance of plenty, and a feel- ing of calm and security comes with gazing at the gently-rolling plains and the brightly-fertile valleys. De F6e never saw this island in the flesh, but his imagination was vivid enough to dispense with the necessity. I can well believe that Alexander Selkirk loved not to leave it. I can well understand the desertion of our friend, the whalers mate, even although his dusky partner could not boast, like Byrons island- maid, of Eyes that were a language and a spell, A form like Aphrodites in her shell, With all her loves around her on the deep, Volnptuou.s as the first approach of sleep. Here were indeed a retreat to live, to love, to dream in, apart from the strug gles, the envies, the hypocrisies of civil- ization, and with small need of the lux- uries or even of the comforts it supplies; here, a secluded place of rest, where, with a few kindred souls, life might glide sweetly and calmly on till its closea haven exempt from the roar of traffic or of strife, a bower where one might waken without fear, and sleep in spite of thunder. The hour of quit- ting Juan Fernandez was for me tinged with regret; a regret not to be forgot- ten if now less keenly felt than when, leaning over the taifrail, I gazed toward the space it last had occupied long after the lovely island had ceased to be visi- ble even as a blue speck upon the hori- zon. WHAT A NEWSPAPER SHOULD BE. IT ~s a strange fact, notwithstanding the general circulation, the acknowl- edged power for good or for evil, and the importance as an organ of public opinion, of the newspaper press, that no work has been written aiming to state the theory of conducting a public jour- nal, and the proper mode of putting the theory into practice. What is meant, is, that as yet there is no philosophy of journalism. Like every other mundane agency, it must have its laws. There are, unquestionably, certain laws of suc- cess and usefulness to which, conscio~isly or unconsciously, public journals must conform if they would become a real power in the community, or realize a profit on the capital invested in then~. It is purposed in this article to endeavor not only to suggest, with all diffidence, the true theory of successful journalism, but to indicate, as far as the writer can, what must be the prominent features of the great newspaper of the future. In the consideration of this subject, it is necessary to make a discrimination with regard to the functions of a daily paper, which is very generally overlook- ed. A public journal has a two-fold aspect. It is at once a record of news and an organ of public opinion. In the minds of most persons it is, besides, an educator or creator of public opinion, which to the writer seems entirely for- eign to the correct conception of the functions of a newspaper. It is a com- mon occurrence in this country to raise money to start journals for the purpose of changing the current of public senti- ment. The value of such papers may be questioned, because the true function of a journal is to represent rather than to create public opinion; indeed, it is doubtful whether the latter can be ac- complished save under peculiarly favor- able conditions. It is the experience of nearly every person who has contrib- uted to the establishment of an organ having this end in view, that every such journal has failed in the attempt. In proof of this statement a great num- ber of instances might be cited, but the mere mention of the fact must suffice. A condensed sketch of the origin and growth of the modern newspaper will furnish, perhaps, the clearest conception of the various functions which it fulfils. At first the newspaper was (in England) an occasional publication, designed to supply the public with some of the 1808.] WHAT A NEWSPAPER SIIOTYLD BE. 829 most important news of the time. Con- temporaneously with this gazette, or post, were published pamphlets, or occasional periodicals, representing some phase of public opinion, which in this way found expression in print. In the course of time these two very different func- tions were blended in what was called the newspaper, or public journal. Later still, a third feature was added by the mercantile portion of the community, which, taking advantage of the circula- tion of the paper, paid for the privilege of occupying a space in its columns with advertisements of their wares. Thus we have the three features of the modern journal, to wit: 1. Its connection with the business public in its advertising columns; 2. its record of current events in the news columns; 3. and lastly, and highest of all, in its editorial columns, its character as a representative of the various phases of public opinion. And here mention may be made of typog- raphy. Seemingly by common con- sent, the largest type is given to the expression of opinion; next, in order of size, is that in which is set the news of the day, arranged in the order of its interest; and lastly, the advertisements, which, as regards typogiaphical promi- nence, are, in every well-regulated news- paper, made subordinate to the news and editorials. It is not at all improbable but that, in time, there may be a division among journals corresponding to the three features just specified; e. g., some papers will be printed simply for advertise- ments, others for news and others still for representations of public opinion on current events. In fact, this process is now going on, as is seen by the estab- lishment within the last twenty or twen- ty-five years of daily and weekly papers to meet special wants of certain portions of the community. There are news- papers published to-day which are noted for the fulness, freshness, and variety of their news rather than for their value as exponents of public opinion. In Eng- land, again, where the population is denser and the number of educated men of leisure is greater than in the United voL. i.22 States, there is a class of papers such as the Saturday Review, i~pectator, Econo- mist, Examiner, London Review, and others of like character, which do not profess to give any news, have very lit- tle to do with the business world, and attract attention solely by the vigor and ability of their editorials and criti- cisms. Similar papers, but less perfect, such as the Round Table and Nation, are to be found here, and their number is certain to increase with the growth of our population. But before such a di- vision as has been indicated can take place among journalsif ever it does completelyit is clear that the paper which is conducted in accordance with the best theory as regards its business department, which displays the greatest activity and enterprise in its news de- partinent, and which exhibits in its editorial columns a proper conception of its function as a representative of public opinionsuch an one will be the leading newspaper in the country. What should be, in the writers esti- mation, the prominent features of the newspaper that would aspire to the front rank of American journalism, ~re now to be designated. Beginning with the advertising department, the rule should be inflexible that it should be conducted on the principle of an ab- solute democracy. All advertisers should be treated exactly alike, whether mil- lionaires or servant-girls, so far as typ- ographical prominence is concerned. The one may take three lines, and the other as many columns; but the former must have the same show, typographic- ally, as the latter. Special attention is directed to this point, because i~,no- rance of its importance is the sole ob- stacle to the success of some of our most prominent journals. The advan- tage of this rule was first discovered by the London Times. The readers of that great paper, if they will take the pains to examine it, will notice that all its advertisements are printed in the same size of type, and that they are strictly subordinate to the news and editorial departments as regards typographical prominence. This rule, with the added 330 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Mar. regulation that the advertisements must be changed with every issue, is one se- cret of the financial success of the lead- ing newspapers in England, and of such of the American journals as conform thereto. Examine the point more close ly. The persons who wish their adver- tisements to appear in extra large type, and who desire them to remain un- changed for some time, are generally quack doctors, venders of patent medi- cines, railroad, insurance, and other companies; if the publisher accedes to their demands, he loses the small ad- vertisements, which are the life of the business department of a paper. The number of these latter is the true index of the vitality of a journal. Marria~ es, deaths, employment sought and employ- ment offered, houses for sale or to let and houses wanted, articles lost and articles found, boarding and boarders, musical instruments to hire or for sale, furniture to be sold at auction, person- als, am~d so on through the whole cate- gory of the wants of societythese are always to be found among the smaller advertisements, and give interest to the advertising columns; these, moreover, are sure to be driven away from the newspaper which grants to the advertise- ments of the merchant, the doctor, the sewing-machine company or the insur- ance company a typographical promi- nence that overshadows them. So in- variable is this rule, that a person who desires to ascertain which of all the papers in a city is the most prosperous, has but to select the one which co - tains the largest number of small adver- tisements: he will find, also, that in this paper all the advertisements are set in type of a uniform size. Guided by this rule, be will select, for example, the Herald, in New York, as surpassing its city competitors in circulation and amount of business; the Ledger, in Philadelphia, the commercial, in Cincin- nati; and the selection will prove to be correct. This principle, it may be men- tioned, is not an American discovery. It was at first copied from the London Times by the New York Her id, and, strange to say, notwithstanding the amazing business success of the latter paper, to this day all its metropolitan competitors violate this simple rule, and to their own detriment. It is not sur- prising, however, that a publisher yields to the temptation to take two, four, or five hundred dollars from a vender of some nostrum for giving his notice a typographical prominence above all the other advertisements, forgetting that the apparent gain at the time is really a loss of thousands of dollars in the course of a year. Next in order is the news department of a journal. And here the rule is very simple. All the news should be given regardless of parties or persons, and without the slightest tinge of personal or partisan bias. Readers of newspapers expect, and have a right to expect, to be honestly dealt with. According to Burkes definition, a daily newspaper is the history of the world for one day, and it is in the interest of public mo- rality that the news should not be dis- torted. One of the most reprehensible features of partisan journalism in the United States is the almost universal disregard of this principle. Republican papers, if they do not actually distort, color their political news to suit per- sonal or partisan prejudices; and dem- ocratic papers are fully as guilty. Some one has said that it seems as if most American editors conducted their sheets on the theory that men are divided into three classes, to wit: first, and most numerous, fools; second, and less nu- merous, partisans; third, and least nu- merous, wise men; whereas, just the reverse is the case. The best journals, as they are the most successful in the end, are those which have the highest estimation of the intelligence of their readers. These remarks may seem to be mere truisms. So they are. Yet the writer would urge them as strongly as he can because the rule of printing ac- curate and truthful reports of political as well as of miscellaneous events, which seems so obvious, is so very generally disregarded; and it is right here that so many American journals fail. The un- worthy appeals, the distortions and 18t18.] WHAT A NEWSPAPER SHOULD BE. 331 bare-faced lies, which fill the columns of our party papers during a presiden- tial canvass are a disgrace to the moral sense of the community, and for which the only consolation is that the journals that offend to the greatest extent are the least esteemed and the least patron- ized. In the large cities, an enlightened public sentiment has compelled the leading papers to refrain from printing distorted news, so that now the reports of meetings and the st~ tements of politi- cal opponents are, in the main, correctly stated. The New York Herald, it is but fair to say, was the first American newspaper to imitate the London Times in this particular. There is one feature of the news de- partment of the journals of the day which has been overlooked or mis- understood even by the conductors of the press. It is popularly believed that the great advance in the means of corn- munication, especially in the use of the telegraph, ~has added to the value of news. This is true, but not in the gen- erally accepted sense. The telegraph has destroyed the monopolizing char- acter of the most enterprising journals. To appreciate this, imagine every tele- graph in the country to be swept away in a night. There would be at once an enormous demand for the New York papers. Now, the merchant in Cincin- nati, Chica~ o, St. Louis, New Orleans, or San Francisco, obtains in his local papers the quotations of the London, Liverpool, and New York markets quite as soon as the merchant in New York. If his local paper were dependent upon the New York journals for these reports, the competition of business would incite the merchant to procure a copy of a New York paper as early as possible, and thus secure the desired news in advance of its appearance in his local newspaper. But the telegraphic news agencies, such as the Associated Press in this country, and Renter, Woif~ and Iliver in Europe, have annihilated the mo- nopoly of news inhering in any single locality, and built up local papers all over the country, which, in their own sphere, are quite equal to the so-called metropolitan press. Any one who will examine a leading journal of Cincinnati, Chicago, St. Louis, or of several other cities that might be named, will find that it is not inferior, as regards news, to a New York paper. It has the same cable despatches, the same market re- ports, and almost as full details of cur- rent news from every quarter. In fact, the telegraph and the associated agencies for obtaining and distributing news are a check to individual enterprise. The result has been to create important cen- tres of news all over the country, which, while it prevents one or two leading papers from having a monopoly of the news, is yet a positive r~dvantage to the reading community and to the press. This important consideration brings to view the direction in which American newspapers must hereafter work to add to their value and attractive ess. The fact once acceptedas accepted it must bethat the news in one journal is no longer the special mark of its superior- ity over another journal, publishers will be forced to depend upon other means than the mere collection of current items to increase the circulation of their pa- pers. First, they will have to reflect the best public sentiment of the time; but of this more hereafter. Secondly, they will have to employ a higher order of talent than they do to-day. Men or women who can write intelligently, forcibly, gracefully, and attractively, must be sought after, and, when found, their services secured almost without regard to cost. Third, the leading newspapers must be printed on larger sheets, and the number of their depart- ments extended. It is only within the last twenty or twenty-five years that journals have printed marine news, market reports, and financial articles; yet in these the entire business of the coun- try is deeply interested, and upon them, in great measure, depends. And here reference should be made to a peculiar- ity of American journalism, which it has borrowed from the English press, and which is entirely foreign to the gen- ius of our institutions, viz.: its anony- mous character. This feature is indis 33~ PUTN~M5 MAGAZIKE. [Mar. pensable to that part of the paper in which the editor speaks not for huinself, but for the public, to wit: the editorial columns. The use of we instead of I simply means that the editor expresses not his own opinions alone, but those of the persons whom he represents, whether a political party or the entire commu- nity. If editors and persons otherwise interested in the public press would but reflect, they would perceive that the only defensible theory of anonymous journalism is its impersonality, whence arises its value as an expression of the general sense of the community. But in all the departments besides the editorial, the American press would gain by copy- ing the personal character of the Paris press. In France, journalism is specially honored through its representatives. Editors in that country are looked up to as leader~ of the literary and artistic taste of the community; they occupy the most enviable positions in society; they we elected to the Academy and are made members of the government. But they receive no such honors in this country, nor will they until the pub- lisher of some great newspaper has the wit to discern the attractiveness which would be added to its columns by al- lowing writers to make names for them- selves. In this connection it should be stated that there is one department of metro- politan, and, indeed, of American jour- nalism, which has fallen into great dis- repute, and that is its correspondence. Our newspapers being generally con- ducted for personal or party profit, and their correspondents and reporters hav- ing no chance to distinguish themselves, the department entrusted to them makes little or no impression upon the public mind. It contains, in most instances, only a rehash of the news previously announced by the telegraph, written unattractively, and garnished by such patent commonplaces as the theme in hand may suggest. In some instances circumstances have compelled news- papers to permit certain of their cor- respondents to append their names to their letters, and the result has shown how great would be the influence upon writers and readers alike if this system were more general. In order to fix the responsibility, during the war, for state- ments made in letters from the various Union armies, the War Department ordered the correspondents of the press to append their names in print to their published letters. One effect of this was to make some men almost eminent. Crounse and Swinton, of the New York Times, Smalley, of the Tribune, Colburn, Stillson, and Townsend, of the World, Shanks, of the Herald, Carle- ton, of the Boston Journal, Mac, of the Cincinnati Gommercial, Agate, of the Cincinnati Gazette, and several oth- ers, became well and honorably known throughout the country for the accuracy of their war records and their power of graphic description. It is easy to un- (lerstand how purely selfish considera- tions have led the conductors of our newspapers to withhold from the public the names of their contributors; but the writer is convinced that the destruction of the monopoly of news, which ap- proaches nearer every day, will force the leading journals to employ abler writers than they do now, and to set before them, in addition to the attraction of a good salary, the chance to make a repu- tation for themselves. The secret of Mr. Bonners success in publishing a weekly story-paper is very simple, and hi~ plan easily could be copied by every one of the daily papers of New York. He engaged, without regard to cost, the most attractive writers in the story-tell- ing field, and, by the munificent induce- ments that were offered, obtained as contributors nearly all the celebrities of the country. The result was an enor- mous circulation for the Ledger, and a handnome fortune for its owner. While urging that the editorial opinions of a journal should be anonymous, it should also be insisted that in the other depart- ments an opportunity be given for the development of individual talent. The present system of journalism, in this re- spect, is dishonest. Most papers which use the editorial we, and claim to rep- resent the thought of the time, are in 1808. WHAT A NEWSPAPRR SHOULD BE. fact only the exponents of the notions of A, B, or C, who write for them, and who, if honest, would sign their names to their productions. The habit of the public to associate certain journals with particular individuals (such as the Tri1~- une with Mr. Greeley, the Times with Mr. Raymond, or the Philadelphia Press with Mr. Forney) plainly shows that it does not consider that such papers represent its opinions. In discussing the editorial functions of a great journal, the writer will prob- ably be constrained to advance views for which the public is unprepared and which may be severely criticised. At the very start the averment is made that a public journal has no business to have views of its own. More than that, if it would attain to the highest position in journalism, it must not accept from any person or any party the views which it may advance. To go still farther, it should pay no heed to consistency. Never sho~ild it be influenced by the fear lest the views expressed in it to-day are not those of last week, or may not be those of the week to come. To repeat, a journal has no business to have opinions of its own. Its editorial columns should present as faithful a record of public opinions as its news columns do of cur- rent events. The discovery of this theory was first made by the London Times. It was, in the belief of the writer, a dis- covery as important in journalism as the invention of the spinning-jenny in man- ufactures, or of the steam-engine in me- chanics. As has been stated already, the value of the opinions expressed in a newspaper is in exact proportion to the number of persons whose views they represent. If it were possible for an in- habitant of another planet to visit Lon- don or New York for the purpose of learning what the people of Great Brit- in or the United States were thinking about, what were their views upon the social and political questions of the day, that journal which should most faithfully reflect the thought of the mass of the community would be to him the most valuable and the only one which he would care to read. There is 333 no delusion more prevalent among edit- ors, as there is none more groundless, than that they form or lead public opin- ion. They can do neither. Public opin- ion is created or moulded by public events, by the action of visible forces, such as the fluctuations of commerce, the operations of armies, changes in population, the rise, progress, and decay of religious and industrial organizations, the play of human passions and preju- dices, and the conflicts of races. It is sheer conceit on the part of any editor to suppose that his notions or his specu- lations are of the slightest possible im- portance except in so far as they rep- resent the views of the community, or a portion of the communityq to which they are addressed. Let no one infer that, in advancing this proposition, the writer would debase the function of an editor. On the contrary, lie would ele- vate it to its highest point by separat- ing it from all personal conceit and the advocacy of merely personal notions. The careful reader of the London Times for years must have noticed that it has espoused in turn almost every phase of British politics. It has been radical, tory, whig, and conservative; it has been for the Church and against the Church, for war and for peace, without so much as thinkin~ whether it was consistent or inconsistent. And the reason why the American press is com- pelled to quote so freely and so fre- quently from it, is because it represents the average public sentiment of the governing class of Great Britain. There is no journal in France which is its counterpart in this respect; hence, in reprinting articles from the French pa- pers, the American press is compelled to state the political status either of the authors or of the newspapers them- selves. In this country the journal which has the clearest conception of this idea of the editorial functions is the New York Herald, and its very large circulation shows that its apparent fickleness must be controlled by some principle which is satisfactory to the general public. Yet it falls very far short of what a great organ of public 334 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Mar. opinion should be by reason of its utter want of moral tone. It is never in earnest; whereas the public, when its mind is excited by passion, or prejudice, or righteous indignation, is terribly in earnest. A very noticeable feature of all the manifestations of popular senti- ment is, they are almost always incited by the better instincts of human nature, and that the object to which they tend is a disinterested o~ e. Perhaps the con- duct of an audience at a theatre, first instanced by Nacaulay, is a fair sample of the mode in which public sentiment expresses itself. Go to that theatre which~is patronized by the lowest of the population, and it will be found, in a representation on the stage of the con- test between vice and virtue, the tri- uinph of virtue is always applauded by the bods of the gallery. The utterance of a patriotic sentiment, an appeal to the best feelings of humanity, the rescue of innocence from the grip of vice, are sure t@ evoke a round of applause from even the vilest audiences. And in the general public the moral sentiment is still more strongly marked. Men act- ing in masses lose the meaner and more selfish attributes which distinguish them as individuals, and are compelled to join in the cry for some public good, though it may be of no special benefit to them as individuals. It is just this innate moral sense which the New York Herald lacks. Its intolerable flippancy, its want of earnestness, and its frequent change of opinion merely to pander to the caprice of the hour, are what has brought it into deservedly bad repute. Yet, despite these drawbacks, and de- spite its lack (as all must admit) of a high order of talent, it has won and maintained the position of the first jour- nal of the country, and will continue to hold it until some other journal equals it in enterprise and independence, and surpasses it in earnestness, ability, dig- nity, and moral purpose. It would be an easy matter for any one of the four leading morning papers of New York to attain to this position; indeed, many years cannot pass before the need of such an organ of public opinion will be so pressing as to call one into exist- ence. It is a curious fact, that, not fully reeognizin~ the representative character of a public journal, the press sometimes has run counter to the whole current of public opinion. The history of the Know-Nothing party furnishes an apt illustration of this. This strange phe- nomenon in our political history be- came a power in our politics before the press so much as knew of its existence. It had elected its candidates for public offices and entered the field as a great national party, without a single organ among the journals of the day. So soon as it became recognized as a power, of course, an hundred newspapers were ready to espouse its cause; and, in time, the New York Herald, true to its theory of journalism, advocated its principles and the election of its candidates. Singular to relate, from the moment that the press became interested in this party, the latter be~an to lose its power, and finally died through natural causes, despite its org~ us. The political his- tory of New York city furnishes nume- rous instances of the voting population holding to one opinion and the press to another. Ia the presidential campaign of 1856, the Herald, Tribune, Times, Post, Commercial Advertiser, and, in fact, nearly every daily paper in the city of any account at all, strenuously advocated the election of Premont; yet he received but 17,771 votes out of a total poll of 89,600. Another remark- able instance was the election of Gun- ther to the mayoralty in 1863. With the exception of the Journol of Commerce, he had not a solitary advocate among the daily papers; yet, from causes in- explicable to the conductors of the other journals whose snpport was divi- ded between Boole and Blunt, Gunther was elected. The frequent success of Fernando Wood in opposition to the united press shows how weak politically are the journals of New York city which fail to discern the drift of publie opin- ion. And, in general, it will be found that in all great local nd n4ional emergencies the public acts by laws of 1868.] WHAT A NEWSPAPER SHOULD BE. 335 its own, and without any reference to the general tone of the press; the latter is of no value except in so far as it per- forms its functions as a representative of public opinion. Having laid down what the writer believes to be the true theory of success- ful journalism, it is in order to state more definitely what must be the promi- nent features of the journal which shall stand at the head of the press of the country. 1. Editorially, as has been explained, it must represent public opinion, and that the highest and best. It must be purely representative in its character must be influenced by no individual or set of individuals for bis or their benefit, controlled by no party, and interested pecuniarily or otherwise in none of the great industrial enterprises of the day. 2. The anonymous system in cone- spondence, important reports, literary and art articles, musical and dramatic criticisms, must be discarded, and the merits of the writers in these depart- ments must be tested by individual standards. 3. The great journal of the future must add to the present features of a leading newspaper that of printing, as occasion may demand, summaries of current history. The loose, disjointed, and very unsatisfactory manner in which the telegraph furnishes the news from all parts of the world, renders almost valueless the accounts which are subsequently brought by the mails; yet it is indispensable to a correct compre- hension of current history and of the relations of events to each other, that fr6m time to time there should be writ- ten, by competent persons, clear, suc- cinct statements of important occur- rences. This has been done in partial measure by some of our newspapers, but fitfully, without method, and ia the usually careless manner. These histori- cal summaries should be committed to graphic, forcible, and intelligent wri- ters, and not to mere bald analysts. Current history should be as vivid as it is fresh. In this department, statistics should occupy an important place. The value of statistics is beginning to be understood, and there is probably not a journal in the country but feels the need of some person who is thoroughly con- versant with so familiar a subject as election returns. Yet this department of journalism is not conducted with any thing like the efficiency that it should be, or that it is destined to be at no distant day. 4. The number of the departments of the great journal yet to be published must be increased and their scope en- larged. The money article, the marine ne s and the market reports, are very modern features of American journal- ism, and are excellent so far as they go. To them must be added a department devoted to railroads. This interest, so vast, representing so much capital, and in which almost every individual is interested as a traveller, a forwarder, or a stockholder, now forms only a sub- ordinate portion of the money article of leading journals. All the New York papers, moreover, are deficient in special trade reports. This should not be so. Even the Chicago papers excel them in this feature. Nothing could be fuller or more admirable than the grain, lum- ber, and provision reports which the former print every day. Strangely enou~h, the business upon which the prosperity of New York is built is most inadequately represented in the New York journals, as is shown by the multi- plication of papers devoted to certain specialties of business, such as the Financial Ghronicle, Insurance 3fonitor, Shoe and Leather Reporter, Shipping Gazette, and others devoted to the inter- ests of mining, of real estate, of petro- leum, of inventions, of telegraphy, and one to gaslight associations. For all of these there would be no field if ths daily papers had the capital or the enterprise to occupy the various fields themselves. 5. A special feature of the leading journal should be a mining department, in which should be recorded the pre- cise facts with regard to mines through- out the country; but extreme care 836 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Mar. should be taken to prevent this, as well as all the departments pertaining to material interests, from being used for the advantage of any person or persons whatsoever. Readers should be hon- estly dealt with, and statements should be made solely for the benefit of the public, and never for that of speculators or other interested parties. And here it may be noted that one of the most dis- graceful features of New York journal- ism is the suspicious character of its financial articles. It is notorious that nearly all of them are written in the interest of the bulls or bears of Wail-street. The names can be given of at least half a dozen financial editors of leadin~ journals who have retired or died rich upon salaries rangin~ from $28 to 40 a-week. Not long since, the proprietors of an evening paper had a quarrel with its money-editor, and the fact was testified in court that he had made $40,000 in speculation, to do which .the former alleged that he had used the paper. * * * * Some day it will be necessary to give the his- tory of this department of the New York press with names and figures. It may not be just, perhaps, to charge the proprietors themselves of the news- papers with using the money articles for unworthy ends, but they are re- sponsible for the disrepute into which these articles have fallen. This entire department of the paper should contain nothing but statements of facts without any comments whatever. 6. No paper can hope to take the lead of its contemporaries that does not refuse first, last, and always, to be under the slightest obligations to its advertis- ing patrons. The rule should be inflexi- ble that the newspaper has discharged all its obligations to the advertiser when it has printed his advertisement, and the latter owes nothing to the paper when he has paid for inserting the same. One of the most disreputa- ble features of journals in this country is, that they are open to influence by pecuniary considerations. Hardly one can be named that is not moved by railroad or banking corporations, or industrial enterprises of various sorts, to promote the pecuniary gain of its owners or of their friends. Take the sewing-machine interest, for example. The various companies which are author- ized to avail themselves of the Howe patent are large advertisers, and, when they combine (as they always do) to influence the patent officers at Washing- ton to renew the various patents upon which their monopolies depend, no warning voice is raised by the press. If the newspapers were to deal honestly with the public, the sewing-machine business might be thrown open to ~eneral competition, and, as a conse- quence, a machine now sold for fifty-five dollars might be bought for fifteen or twenty dollars, thus enabling every poor woman to own one. The construction of great lines of railroads is another case to the point. 7. A marked feature of the coming leading journal will be its complete abolition of the dead-head system. The evils resulting therefrom are pat- ent, and cannot well be over-estima- ted. They are of less magnitude than they were a few years since, but are still too great to be tolerated even for another day. No paper can hope to be independent o ion0 as it permits those connected with it to beg or accept the shibbtest favor from any railroad or steamboat company, or from any man- ager of amusements; nor should the criticisms of a paper th t accepts any such favors be entitled to the slightest weight with the public. It may be urged that, so long as it is the custom for all the papers to accept passes, there can be no harm in it. Grant this, if need be; yet the first paper that will refuse to accept any favors of the kind will be the one, and the only one, whose criticisms will be of authority with the reading public. 8. The writing of paragraphsa fea- ture peculiar to American journalism must be sedulously cultivated by the great newspaper of the future. Cur- rent news, except such as is of very great importance, must be given in brief, and the comments upon it must 1868.] WHAT A NEWSPAPER 5HOPLD BE. 337 be terse, pertinent, and comprehensive. The extension of the telegraph will compel editors to study conciseness. It will not be long before the tele- graphic wires will connect every known portion of the globe, and will furnish the morning journals with the news of the previous day from every quarter of the world. To print this, the papers will be obliged to compress into small compass much of the intelligence which now they print in extenso. The column and column-and-a-half editorials, like the anonymous feature, are of English origin, and foreign to the tastes of our people. American orators are verbose beyond all others but our writers for the press are compelled to study terse- ness and pungency in their editorial statements and comments. The feu- illeton of the Paris press will never find a place in American journalism, since life in this country is so active, so in- tense, so exciting, that it needs not the stimulant ~f fiction in a daily paper. Still, the crisp personalities, the vivacity, and the culture that characterize the Paris journals, deserve to be naturalized in the United States. 9. A change in the form of our news- papers will crc long be rendered neces- sary. The present quarto-form is a great improvement upon the old single sheet which had grown so large as to be unwieldy; but it is far from satis- factory. Sixteen-page papers, such as the Pall Hall Garette of London (the only daily newspaper of its kind now published), will be next in order. The journals of eight pages are deemed by advertisers disadvantageous to their in- terests, and with reason; but with the introduction of sixteen pages their com- plaints will be silenced. This matter of form and typographical appearance is of greater importance than is generally suspected. Good paper, clear type, taste- ful head-lines, the maintenance of the proper relations between the depart- ments, and typographical excellence, are as essential to the prosperity of a news- paper as appropriate apparel is to the appearance of a ball-room belIe. Our metropolitan journals must be larger and command higher prices than they now do. Because papers published in this country or in England for one cent or one penny have occasionally attained to a large circulation, it is popularly sup- posed that all journals would do better if they were to become cheaper. But the supposition is erroneous. The mass of American readers do not mind ex- pense so long as they can obtain an ar- ticle which they believe to be the best of its kind. This is shown by the fact that the most expensive hotels and res- taurants, and the stores in which the highest-priced articles are sold, are the most extensively patronized. The per- sons who pay twenty or twenty-five cents a-piece for their cigars zill not be- grudge paying eight or ten cents for a newspaper that satisfies their wants. The very cheapness of American jour- nals has impeded their highest success. It has forced publishers to depend for their gains too much upon advertise- meats and accounts for the small sheets, poor type, brittle and dingy paper, and, in too many cases, subserviency to ad- vertising patrons. Strangely enough, most of the country papers would not live a day but for the job-printing offi- ces which are generally connected with them. This latter evil, however, cor- rects itself in course of time; for, as the population increases, the circulation of the really good journals is enlarged, and the publisher realizes that the demands of the readers are quite as important as those of the advertisers. But this evil might be met at the outset by affixing a price to papers sufficient to make a rea- sonable circulation remunerative. The Western newspapers, by charging five cents a copy, have partially, and the San Francisco papers, by charging ten cents a copy, have wholly avoided this obstacle to success. By consequence, the latter are not only excellent newspapers, but are ahnost entirely independent of their advertisers. Their circulation is so profitable that their conductors can afford to devote all their energies to pleasing their readers. The time is not remote when type will be set by machinery. This will 338 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Mar. be an immense saving of money to pub- lishers. If they study their true in- terests, they will not avail themselves of this to sell their papers at a reduced price, but will use the money thus saved to add to their size and attract- iveness. This paper is not presented as ex- haustive of the subject to which it is devoted. It has touched upon only its salient points. The writer is conscious that much more might be said, perhaps of equal interest, did he feel at liberty to occupy more space in a single article. So varied are the phases of journalism, so numerous and so important are the interests that centre in it, that the theme is well-nigh inexhaustible. The sole object of the writer, at the present time, has been to point out some of the more obvious evils connected with journalism in this country, and to suggest to edit- ors a theory of their functions, which, once put into practice, will make the press what it should bethe true repre- sentative of the spiritual force of an en- lightened public opinion. It is, further- more, his hope, nay, his belief, that the day is not far distant when the Ameri- can press will fully realize the high mission entrusted to its charge. In en- terprise, versatility, and vivacity; ia the fulness and variety of its news; and in its adaptability to the wants of such a busy, energetic, intelligent community as that to which it appeals, it surpasses the press of any other country. It is not, however, all that it should be, all that it might be, or all that it is destined to be. THE PRINCESS YAREDA. (FROM THE DIARY OF A DIFLOMAT.) In Two Parts. Part I. IT was the height of the season at Wiesbaden, when I alighted at the ho- tel of the Vier Jahreszeiten. The little town had awaked from its torpid sea- son, the winter, and was now all alive with gayly-dressed people and fashion- able equipages. A city of lodging- houses indeed. Eight months in the year it might pass for a place stricken by the plague and abandoned by its inhabitants, so empty are its broad avenues, so close and silent its great houses, which, as if mindful of their aristocratic guests, seem to draw them- selves up with a supercilious stare at the honest burghers who pass under their walls. Now the great army of health-seekers and pleasure-s~ekers, with their numerous following, had poured in to take possession. The gamester was here to pursue his regular calling, and the idler to venture a few Fried- ricks, in the faint hope not to slay, but to inflict some wounds on the monster Time, the bane of his existence. The Kursaal, that palatial temple to Fortune, again smiled agreeably through its many windows, and threw open its great doors, extending to all a hos- pitable welcome. Day and night the motley throng strolled about its lovely grounds, gathered in groups on the terrace, or flowed through its spacious halls; buzzing in an atmosphere of revelry like a swarm of bright-colored insects in the sunshine. To a student of human nature, Wies- baden is interesting. Where else than at a German Spa can one find such an epitome of life l where is there such a world en ret it ? Twenty thousand peo- ple of both sexes and every age, of every rank and calling, speaking every Euro- pean language, with every variety of costume, character, and way of life, are gathered here from all quarters of the

338 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Mar. be an immense saving of money to pub- lishers. If they study their true in- terests, they will not avail themselves of this to sell their papers at a reduced price, but will use the money thus saved to add to their size and attract- iveness. This paper is not presented as ex- haustive of the subject to which it is devoted. It has touched upon only its salient points. The writer is conscious that much more might be said, perhaps of equal interest, did he feel at liberty to occupy more space in a single article. So varied are the phases of journalism, so numerous and so important are the interests that centre in it, that the theme is well-nigh inexhaustible. The sole object of the writer, at the present time, has been to point out some of the more obvious evils connected with journalism in this country, and to suggest to edit- ors a theory of their functions, which, once put into practice, will make the press what it should bethe true repre- sentative of the spiritual force of an en- lightened public opinion. It is, further- more, his hope, nay, his belief, that the day is not far distant when the Ameri- can press will fully realize the high mission entrusted to its charge. In en- terprise, versatility, and vivacity; ia the fulness and variety of its news; and in its adaptability to the wants of such a busy, energetic, intelligent community as that to which it appeals, it surpasses the press of any other country. It is not, however, all that it should be, all that it might be, or all that it is destined to be. THE PRINCESS YAREDA. (FROM THE DIARY OF A DIFLOMAT.) In Two Parts. Part I. IT was the height of the season at Wiesbaden, when I alighted at the ho- tel of the Vier Jahreszeiten. The little town had awaked from its torpid sea- son, the winter, and was now all alive with gayly-dressed people and fashion- able equipages. A city of lodging- houses indeed. Eight months in the year it might pass for a place stricken by the plague and abandoned by its inhabitants, so empty are its broad avenues, so close and silent its great houses, which, as if mindful of their aristocratic guests, seem to draw them- selves up with a supercilious stare at the honest burghers who pass under their walls. Now the great army of health-seekers and pleasure-s~ekers, with their numerous following, had poured in to take possession. The gamester was here to pursue his regular calling, and the idler to venture a few Fried- ricks, in the faint hope not to slay, but to inflict some wounds on the monster Time, the bane of his existence. The Kursaal, that palatial temple to Fortune, again smiled agreeably through its many windows, and threw open its great doors, extending to all a hos- pitable welcome. Day and night the motley throng strolled about its lovely grounds, gathered in groups on the terrace, or flowed through its spacious halls; buzzing in an atmosphere of revelry like a swarm of bright-colored insects in the sunshine. To a student of human nature, Wies- baden is interesting. Where else than at a German Spa can one find such an epitome of life l where is there such a world en ret it ? Twenty thousand peo- ple of both sexes and every age, of every rank and calling, speaking every Euro- pean language, with every variety of costume, character, and way of life, are gathered here from all quarters of the 1868.1 THE PEiHCEss YAREDA. 339 world, jumbled together for a few weeks in a most surprising medley, and then vanish as they came, each one to his own place, scattering like beads from a broken string. The spirit of a Spa levels all social barriers, and class dis- tinctions melt in its sulphurous atmos- phere. rfhe lorette and the d~vote sit side by side at the roulette table, and the coryphfe jostles the countess in the ballroom. It is a sort of kaleidoscopic view of society in which the atoms are loosely thrown together, and each is in- dividually distinct. Society is of course always composed of atoi s, but ordina- rily they are welded into one mass like a mosaic, and it takes a close observer to distinguish them. Meditating somewhat in this wise, I sat on the terrace, the day after my arrival, sipping my Steinberger, and throwing crumbs of cake to the swans in the pond below, and feelina, to say the truth, a little lonely. Indeed, what solitude i~ so deep as the midst of a crowd, when you are in it, but not of it? Mingled, too, with this was another de- pressing sensation, that of disappoint- ment. I had confidently expected to meet some friends at Wiesbaden; but here was an entire day, and they had not appeared at the Kursaal. Natalie Zadnenski was not used to hide her li~ht under a bushel. I had seen much of her in Paris the winter before, where her beauty and vivacity had charmed every one, and taken criticism com- pletely by storm. Her father, one of my most intimate friends, was a Polish nobleman of high positionof unpleas- antly high position, indeed, consider- ing the restless state of feeling in that unhappy coun4y, and the known pa- triotism of his house. He had told me when he left Paris, in April, that he should spend the season at Wieshaden: indeed, this had partly decided me to engage apartments hero myself, and con- sequently I was beginning to fool a lit- tle injured at having been so led away on false pretences, when my meditations were interrupted by a cheery voice: What, Monsieur Home! let me wel- come you to Wiesbaden. I know you have just arrived, for I have inquired for you at your hotel every day for nearly two weeks, to the exhaustion of the porters patience, who must regret having told me that you were expected any day. Think of his Satanic Majesty, etc., though the expression was any thing but diabolical of the rosy, good-humor- ed face that greeted me as I recognized Count Zadnenski. X e shook hands heartily, and I sent for another bottle of Steinberger. One sees that you come here from choice, not necessity, s~id the Count, seating himself. The gout, now, for instance, would have brought you the 10th of June, instead of the 10th of Augnst; but you ask nothing of the waters save to smooth those few diplo- matic wrinkles from your brow. Unless I should prefer to keep them as tokens of experience and wisdom, that might not otherwise ho manifest. But have you been here so long? I hope the gout yields to two mouths bathing? And daily potations of abominable chicken-broth, that one must carry about for half an hour to reduce to a temperature endurable by the human system. Yesso, so; but, my friend, there is an ailment beyond the power of the spring to cure. The pool of Si- loam itself was not the fountain of youth. I shall not recover fro~ my sixty years. Nonsensesixty years! it is scarce- ly snore than the prime of life to a man like you. You are no older than I. It is not years that make us old; it is what we feel and think, what we do and what we suffer. Some are old before they are fairly young, and some keep their heart youthful to the last; now, you belong to the latter class. He shook his head. I was unpleas- antly reminded last night, he said, that ol Time, who, as the fable says, devours all his children, is fast running mc down. I dined with the Princess Yareda, and about an hour after we had risen from table, while I stood talking with her Highness, I was seized 340 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. EMar. with a sudden vertigo, and fell to the ground insensible. Her Highness phy- sician was fortunately in attendance, and his restoratives soon recovered me. I thought it temporary congestion of the brain, but he said it was not so bad as that. I expressed my concern, and inquired how long the attack had lasted. I was actually unconscious only a few moments, he replied, but was faint and dizzy for some time. The Princess sent me home in her coup6, and I have kept my room all day till an hour ago. At present I feel quite as strong as usual. So the Princess Yareda has dropped down among you. Does her Exclusive- ness condescend to mingle with the com- mon humanity of an hotel ? No she has rented the little box of the baron of Ansehesheim, through the woods, halfway to the Sonncnburg, where she lurks like an enchantress in her grotto, weaving the web of fate. Ah! he gave a slight shudder, she freezes me to the heart, this woman- like polished steel, so cold, so keen, so deadly. As Irish eloquence described Na- poleon, she is grand, gloomy, and pe- culiar, and ever wrapt in the mantle of her own originality. Originality yes! What do you think of her bringing together Pins- sians and Austrians, Danes and Ital- ians, in a party of twelve, and then proposing, with an unction pleasing to behold, the toast: To the perpetuity of peace, amity, and friendship among all membe:s of the European family purely, I believe, to indul~e her vein of satire, and enjoy their painful efforts to be unembarrassed as they thought of Yenetia and Schleswig-Holstein. A pity she had not added a Turk to her company.~~ Belonging myself to a member of the very selfish and quarrelsome family you mention, who has in a manner set up for herself andwithdrawn from family concerns, I could drink the toast with the disinterested calmness of a looker- on. But you, Count, have no objection to drink to the peace of Europe, and good-will to men? At least I could not refuse when the Princess offered me the glass with her own hand. But I forgot to say, she inquired after you with a greater appearance of interest than I have seen her manifest for any of the men that hang about her. Decidedly, you have made a conquest there. Her Highness is under infinite obligations to you for your management of her little English affair last winter, and, sin~nlarly enough, seems really to remember the circum- stance. Indeed, I answereda convenient word is indeed; with variety of intona- tion it will express any thing, or, what is often better still, nothing I could not have expected her to remember what I had forgotten myself. But,pardon my incivilityMlle. Natalie, she is with you? She is well, I trust? No ; my daughter is not with ~ replied the Count, with a slight re- straint; she is visiting her relatives in Sweden. I inwardly devoted the Swedish rela- tives to the shades of Avernus as I ex- pressed my regret in polite phrase. I felt that Mile. Zadnenski had interested me more than I had imagined. With her in Sweden, Wiesbaden seemed a blankworse, a bore; and I found my- self seriously debating the question of a longer stay. Was it, then, an affaire de cceur in embryo? Really, to say the exact truth, I did not know. Two young men passing arm in arm accidentally jostled the Count, who was filling his wine-glass, and the Steinberger ran over upon his silk waistcoat. They poured forth a profusion of apologies. The Count was politely be6giug thens to give themselves no concern for such a trifle, when he recognized one of them. Ah, Herr Anton, he said, smiling, the account between us is still unbal- anced; my awkwardness, the other day, caused you more trouble than this acci- dent repays.~ I hope, returned the other, in a pleasant tone, that Monsieur Zadnen- ski thinks to~ highly of me to believe 1808.1 Tuz PmxoEss YAREDA. 341 I would seek to repay such debts in kind. By no means; accident for accident, I am content to call quits. My bankers nephew and confiden- tial clerk, he explained to me, as the two drew chairs to a table near us. I overturned his inkstand the day before yesterday, in my hasty way, and ruined a fair copy of an account. But did you ever see two more opposite types of face? The contrast, indeed, ~as striking enough. The clerk presented the con- ventional North German physiognomy. Complexion, a broad-blown comeliness, red and white; yellow hair, bright, open blue eyes, and a large mouth shaded by a blonde moustache, which revealed a handsome set of teeth when it broke into the sunny German smile. An air of engaging frankness and sim- ple good-nature beamed about his whole manner. His companion was tall and slight; his delicate oval face, colored clear olive, was, as it were, thrown into relief by thick masses of lustreless black hair; no beard obscured its fine lines, which, like the thin, sensitive lips, evinced a highly-toned nervous organi- zation. The whole countenance seemed instinct with intellectuality, but desti- tute of a trace of feeling. The expres- sion of the eye was at once searching and self-contained; it disclosed noth- ing, while it looked through all. What a face for a diplomat, was my observation. It has an Oriental east, though nothing of the Hebrew. Perhaps he is from an Eastern province of the Russian Empire. iPerhaps, but Heaven knows; he may be a Kamschatkan, a Tartar, or a Bedonin of the desert, if he is in Wies- baden. And now, continued my friend, rising, the nymph of the Kochbrunnen summons me to her refreshing fount. Happy Home! your English constitu- tion snaps its fingers at the Kochbrun- nen. If it is drink deep or taste not that disagreeable spring, I certainly prefer the latter alternative; but you ought not to refuse a social glass with the nymph when the toast is confusion to gout. I shall see you to-morrow? Your hotel is? The Engliseher Hof a stones throw from you. Come and dine with me to-morrow, at six, if you have no more agreeable engagement. I shall be quite alone. One can have no engagement more agreeable than a cosy talk with ah old friend. I accept with pleasure. Adieu, then, till to-morrow, and he moved away. So! the Princess Yareda had made particular inquiries al)out me. On the whole, might it not be worth while to remain at Wiesbaden to renew my ac- quaintance with this woman l She in- terested me, though such an interest need not have conflicted with any de- gree of devotion to Mile. Natalie, since it was purely professional. If the proper study of mankind is man, the proper study of diplomats is other diplomats; and Madame Yareda, I made no doubt, was intrusted at least with the semi- official mamnuvering of affairs in the social world, if not with more import- ant charges. She had been the riddle of Paris last season. Suddenly arisen a new star in the Russian Court, she was gaining an altitude audi brilliancy that fast eclipsed the older lights of that fir- mament. Who she was, or what she had been before her marriage with the old Prince Yareda, about ten years before, were matters on which none could en- lighten public curiosity; or, if any could, they had good reasons for keeping such knowledge to themselves. Her husband, a representative of an ancient family of the Eastern provinces, had been an officer of the household, and attached to the imperial person; but nearly two years ago he had been thrown into such a state of disgust by some fancied slight to his dignity, the maintenance of which was the chief ob- ject of his life, that he took to his bed, and never rose from it. As the old gen- tleman had reached the extreme scrip- tural term of fourscore years, and had found his strength to be but labor and sorrow, and himself somewhat of a bore 842 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Mar. to his relatives, his wife, just twenty-six, would have been excusable, in the leni- ent judgment of tbe world, if she had not appeared inconsolable at his loss. But her period of mourning decorously accomplished, she showed no disposi- tion to repeat her matrimonial experi- ment, but seemed inspired with a sud- den ambition for political power. Her 8oir~es were exclusively diplomatic, and she cultivated the closest relations with statesmen both at home and abroad. Her intellectual power and force of character soon made themselves felt, and it was whispered shehad suceeededto more than her husband~s influence with the Czar. In Paris the reputed eccentricity of her habits, and the fascination of her personnelle, contributed to deepen the mystery surrounding her, and to excite the interest of the curious. Of course, every probable and improbable story cir- culated among the salons to account for the new phenomenon; but she moved with ~erene indifference through the so- cial round, as if she knew and cared nothing for the gossip of which she was the subject. I had been thrown into almost inti- mate relations with her by an opportu- nity I had had, L rough my influence with our new ministry, to do her a lit- tle diplomatic service; for which I had repaid myself by studying her closely to discover what she was, and the secret of her history. I had obtained a gene- ral outline of it. simple-minded peo- ple might call this dishonorable espio- nage into anothers affairs. As a man of the world, I have merely to say that it ]5 a neeessity imposed by the social system. La soc1~4i; cest la guerre de tous contre tous. To have secrets, is to carry concealed weapons. An individ- ual whom we do not comprehend, at least in outline, is the more dangerous in that we cannot calculate his purposes nor anticipate his movements; on the other hand, the completer our knowl- edge of our adversaries resources, the greater our advantage over them. I dare say you do not agree with me in all this; but it is necessary sometimes to justify ones course to oneself. It is true, it was not likely I should ever be aux prises with Madame Vareda, but no one could tell; and, in the mean time, it was good exercise for my faeul- ties, rusting a little for want of use. Not that I could boast of much suc- cess; it was diamond cut diamond with us, and I had not the least advantage. But it was the more interesting for that, and I was pleased now at the prospect of prosecuting the investigation, much as a physician might be in the diagnosis of a new and peculiar case. I resolved to call upon her next day, and, having so concluded, yawned, and looked at my watch. It was six oclock. Glancing around, I saw that the crowd had thinnedmost of the foreigners having wended their way dinnerward~, leaving the terrace to the Teutons whose primitive simplicity of appetite calls for dinner at an hour when people in civil- ized countries are usually breakfasting. I sauntered across the esplanade, and entered the Kursaal by the couloir of the Salles ax ~ku. The Crimson Hall was crowded; players sat and stood three deep around the table, and nothing broke the breathless silence of suspense but the click of the croupes as they swept up the piles of coin, and the mo- notonous calls of the croupier, uttered in the lifeless tone of constant habit: Le jeu est fait, rien ne va plus; Rouge gagne, et couleur, or Roage perd et couleur gagne as it might happen. The playing had been heavy, and the lookers-on shared the interest in the game. Ah, le ~ murmured a little man near me; Encore! Vrai- ment, il na as de chance. I followed the direction of his eye, and saw, seated next the dealer, the dark young man, companion of the bankers clerk. The latter stood behind him, with an expression of uneasiness on his face. His friend was losing steadily. His thin lips were tightly compressed, and his countenance contracted in rigid immobility as he watched every turn of the cards with that haggard anxiety only the gamblers face can show. I was a little surprised to see him here, 1868.] THE PRIncEss YAI?EDA. 843 for there was a strength in his face that looked superior to the fascination. But who can drag himself from the Devils quicksand o0 play, if once he inadver- tently set foot upon it! It was not an aareeable sightso many of ones fellow- creatures cro -ded together, with feverish eyes fastened on this green cloth, every face at its worst and ugliest, painted by the same low passion! The orchestra had assembled in the pavilion, and, as I passed out into the arcades, the strains of the Uhor der Bitter, from Robert, fell upon my ear. There was almost a sarcastic meaning in the music, so appropriate it seemed to the scene I had left; and I half fancied I could distinguish the mocking tones of the tempter Bertram, urging on his vic- tims to a ruin he hardly deigned to con- ceal from their view. Arrived at my hotel, my valet handed me a three-cornered note addressed in a feminine hand. Fortune certainly smiled on me. It was an invitation from the Princess Yareda to join a hunting-party that met at her villa the following day. The untiring pursuit of field-sports constitutes to my mind the one agree- able feature in the life of the middle ages; and I doubt if any of my stout old ancestors catered more enthusiastic- ally into the pleasures of the chase, than does their unworthy descendant. To be sure, they had not the advantage of our variety of amusements, and it must have been a little monotonous at times, when hunting was a gentlemans only recrea- tion from his habitual occupation of knocking his neighbors head ofl or sticking a lance into himoccupations, I would observe in passing, which did not necessarily betoken extraordinary depravity, but were merely the rough ways of the time. Our manners arc too refined now for their coarse and clumsy expedients to obtain revenge. We find that stabbing a man in the back with a slander is not less efficacious than ravag- ing his lands, and carrying off his wife and children, and far easier and more genteel. Conspicuous in my national pink and white, the next morning saw me at her Highness bridle-rein, and we set off at the head of the little troop. I observed the Princess through my glasses with attention. I have remark- ably good eyes, but I wear glasses of the best plate-glass, because they become me; and besides, it is convenient at times to be near-sighted. It was a striking face; the features had a clear-cut precision of outline like a fine cameo. If there was a fault, it was the unvarying pal- lor, enhanced now, by contrast with the black velvet vest, black hat and ostrich- feather to an almost deathly whiteness. You would hardly call her handsome, even while you wondered why you did not. Elegant, hi0h-bred, infinitely ~piri- tuelle, there was yet wanting a certain softness of tone, a roundness of outline, and that nameless charm of manner found in perfection perhaps only in Francethat flows from an airy grace- fulness and bright suavity. The Counts simile was not a bad one; she might readily suggest polished steel; and yet I fancied I could discern under- neath this hard, statue-like exterior, stray glimpses of a warmer nature that jeal- ously guarded itself from a near ap- proach. I thou lit of volcanic rock piled in solid masses over the burning sea that had cast it up, and wondered if this stony surface covered like hidden fires. Her eyes were remarkable; not only were they not to be deceivedone metallic flash cutting through whole meshes of entanglementbut, further, nothing could be withheld from them. They seemed lenses made to pierce the depths of the soul, and I could fancy the unavailing struggles of an unhappy wretch to protect his secret from their pitiless scrutiny. There was a magnet- ism about her whole manner. You felt under the spell of a strong character, and it required a resolute antagonism to retain ones self-respect; not to be absorbed for the moment into her per- sonality, and think and act at her pleas- ure. She was exceedingly agreeable, and, for my part, I put forth all my powers to entertain. It is an effort I seldom make without an adequate object; but 344 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Mar. I had asked myself a question, and was trying to find an answer. Our way lay over a broken country, the lo ~er slopes of the Taunus hills; and I, who find few men that can ride with me, soon discovered that I had rather need to stretch out than hold in, to keep the Princess at my side. Her riding was simply magnificent. Never does such a woman, of the Junonic type, not that of Venus, appear to greater ad- vantage than on horseback. There was an exulting freedom in look and gesture, in her whole bearing, that spoke the true horsewoman; and nothing could surpass the ease and firmness of her seat, or the superb grace of every motion of her figure. The excitement and exercise brought a faint color to her cheek; her eyes lost something of their intense ex- pression, as if they were resting for the time from their habitual exertions ;and her voiceyes, her voice was certain- ly softer, her manner more womanly, than I ~had ever known before. Surely, she did not listen to every ones conver- sation with the interest she so plainly manifested in mine. Her eyes did not rest on them with this expression. Was it fancy, or did I discover symptoms of a warmer regard than the terms of our acquaintance could lead me to expect? This was my question, and I could not answer it. She was no ordinary woman, and I had not fathomed her; but if, as I conjectured, her passions were strong, her will, I knew, was iron. A half-hours ride brought us to the coveis. The party rode up, the hunts- mea began to beat up the game, and the sport commenced in earnest. I found it impossible to resume my tite- d-tite with my fair enigma the rest of the day. She rode home between the Austrian ambassador at St. Petersburg and a gray-headed old Russian, with some atrociously uncouth patronymic, ending of course in the ritch. In revenge, I offered myself as cava- lier to the prettiest girl of the party, the daughter of a Hungarian baron, who enlivened the homeward journey by en- thusiastic eulogies upon Vienna halls, and lamentations of her own hard fate, whom a parents cruelty kept immured two thirds of the time in the dull seclu- sion of his castle on the Danube. On my return, I had just time to ex- change my dress and reach Count Zad- nenskis apartments at the appointed hour. He received me with his accus- tomed cordiality, but I thought there was a shade upon his open brow. He ate scarcely any thing, and seemed absent and thoughtful. At times he rallied, as if conscious of his unwonted seriousness, and talked with a forced animation that only made it more evident some disturb- ing reflections occupied his mind. I was sincerely attached to the old man; and, seeing that my conversation failed to rouse him, I finally presumed so far upon our intimacy as to let him see I noticed that something was amiss. He gave me a sudden glance of alarm, and tried to turn it off with an uneasy laugh, but meeting my steady gaze, that showed I was not to be put off, he paused abruptly, and said in a different tone: So you have detected me; I am a poor actor; would to God some other had been selected for this trust. Regi- nald Home, he continued, earnestly, I have known you long, and I know you to be honest and true-hearted. I think you have a regard for me, for my own sake, and more, perhaps, for my daugh- ters ;there, I have divined your secret, if you have guessed that I have one. I wifl trust you with it; but, remember I put her fate and mine into your hands. Our fortunes, our lives, perhaps, hang on a thread. It was not difficult to guess to what this exordium tended. Oh,these Poles! Forever in desperately heroic, but des- perately foolish revolt. Will nothing induce them to accept their conquered condition as afctit accompli? For some time past, the Count pursued, the patriots of Poland, nobles and people, have been concerting meas- ures to throw off the Russian yoke. Next Christmas is the time fixed for a general rising. The close surveillance we are placed under renders frequent meetings for consultation difficult and dangerous, and consequently, for the 1868.] THE PRINCESS YAREDA. 345 most part, our plans are settled upon, and combinations formed, by means of letters transmitted from hand to hand by parties to the enterprise. A packet of such correspondence, containing mat- ters of the most dangerous consequence, and implicating a number of the high- est families, was entrusted to my keep- ing, since I was about to travel in Ger- many, and it was thought safer to take the papers out of the country. You anticipate the rest: the packet is lost. Immediately on my arrival I gave it into the charge of my banker in this place, whom I know from long con- nection with him to be integrity itself; telling him it contained papers of im- portance to my family estate. It was enclosed in a locked ivory casket, and deposited in a particular safe, to which only Herr Wechsler and his nephew Anton have access. The lock is of curi- ous construction, and defies any attempt at picking; the key I have worn day and night,.in a little purse of chamois- leather, around my neck inside my clothes. I have been accustomed to stop at the bankers about twice a week to sat- isfy myself of the safety of the danger- ous deposit. Last Monday I saw it for the last time. To-day, Thursday, on opening the safe, I found the casket locked and in its usual place, but its contents had disappeared; it was emp- ty. I cannot hold the banker to ac- count; such trusts are always received at the owners risk; besides, it is im- possible to suspect him: if he were capable of abstracting the papers, what motive could he have for doing so, whether he believed them to be private papers or knew them for what they were l No, he concluded, with a de- spairing groan, the Czar is our only enemy, and from his toils we cannot escape. Si deseendero in Avernum, ctdest. St. Petersburg is an Argus with a hun- dred eyes, a Briareus with a hundred hands; it were better to give over strug- gling, and submit at once to be quietly devoured. Discretion may be the better part of valor in your case,~~ I answered~ but voL. i.23 let me understand. If you should re- cover possession of these papers, would you be out of danger, or is the mischief already done I If I regain them before they begin to act openly against us, replied the Count, they lose all legal evidence of our treason, and probably will have gained but slight information from the correspondence, for it is almost entirely in cipher, and will occasion them diffi- culty and delay to work out. Inforina- tion of the projected movement they had, of course, obtained, to a certain extent, previously, but it must have been of the vaguest kind, for every thing of consequence is contained in the documents. But why should the Government, if they had intelligence of your possess- ing this treasonable correspondence, put themselves to the trouble of carrying it off with so much mystery, and not rath- er seize it openly I It is a part of their policy, he an- swered,never to nip a growing con- spiracy too suddenly in the bud, but to let it blossom into fruit before they pluck it up root and branch. They play with us as a cat with a mouse. At present their object is only to obtain definite intelligence concerning the plot, and they will probably use their informa- tion to fan the flame of revolution till it is high enough to consume all those who have helped to light it. Enough, said I; give me the management of the affair, and I will restore the papers to you within a week. He shook his head. So confident? My dear Home, I know your astuteness, but I know the Secret Force of Russia better than you; they will give you no clue. The better; it is these very myste- rious things that are simple to a clever man. The clue is to be found on the surface and escapes (letection from the common mistake of attempting to be over-profound. Diplomats are little more than detectives on a larger scale; I have managed already more intricate affairs than this. 646 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Mar. The Count was roused by my tone. Really, lie exclaimed, you inspirit me in spite of myself. But, ali! I dare not hope; it would be wiser to seek for resignation to the worst. It will be time for that amiable virtue when all our efforts shall have failed; the gods help those who help themselves. But, if I succeed, promise me one thing. What might not the man demand of me who saves me from Siberia? he said, with a shudder; what is it? That you will meddle no more with revolutions, but leave your country in the hands of Providence, and come with Natalie and myself to England. A man of analytical faculty and habit of mind could hardly play a pleasanter part for once than to act as detective in some such case as I had undertaken. But to enjoy it he should take none but an intellectual interest in solving the puzzleplaying chess for ones life would be too exciting for amusement. It was not without a disagreeable feel- ing of anxiety as to the result that I took the first step towards unravelling the mystery of the lost papers, for I confess I had spoken to the Count with a greater confidence than I actually felt. The first step I speak of was, of course, to the bankers. That was plain- ly the point of departure for the search. There the packet had been deposited, and thence it had been taken some time between Monday morning and Thurs- day afternoon. At my first word with Herr Weclisler and his nephew, I agreed with the Count that they were innocent of any complicity in the affair. I am no phys- iognomist or I never saw two completer incarnations of simple, transparent hon- esty. The case opened, however, on a little questioning. The safe stood in a small inner rooma dark, fire-proof place, whose door was directly behind the clerks desk. Uncle and nephew each carried a key to this door, and one to the safe; both safe and room were al- ways kept locked. I asked them if they had had occasion to open the safe be- tween the time the packet was last seen by the Count, and his discovery of its absence. Yes, they said, they had both done so several times. Could they recollect how often, when, and under what circumstances? Herr Weclisler answered that he had entered the room but twice in the in- terval, on Tuesday morning, once to procure a ledger, and again two hours afterwards to return it to the safe. Anton, the clerk, said he had been engaged on Wednesday in making copies of papers kept in the safe, which he had opened two or three times in the course of the morning. Was Herr Wechsler positive that these were the only times the safe had been opened to his knowledge? He was. And Herr Anton? Yes; ah! no, he forgot. Wednesday after- noon he had been to the safe to draw from some private funds deposited there, for a loan to a friend, Mr. Ron- quette. And who, I inquired, is Monsieur Rouquette? He is a broker of Paris, replied the young man, whose acquaintance I have recently made. He came to me with a draft he wished to negotiate on Messrs. Gcltgenug & Cie. of Frankfort. And he has borrowed money of you already? A dangerous friend. He has been unfortunate at play, and has to wait for remittances from ~Paris. But I am in no danger; I have security. I think I saw him with you Wednes- day evening, when you passed us on the terrace, and spoiled the Counts vest with the Steinberger. Yes; that was he; we had then just come from the bank. He had been here with you to get the money? Yes; he came into the room with me to hold the light, while I took out and counted the notes. So! the affair was beginning to clear up. To be sure, it was nothing but con- jecture; I might be only distorting 1868.] THE PRINcEss VABEDA. 847 ordinary circumstances by looking at tliem through the lens of my one idea. Still my suspicion wore a strong appear- ance of probability. Here was a deposit purloined, and a stranger having access to its place of keeping; the two things naturally put themselves together. At any rate, it must be followed up, for it was the only clue that offered. One question remained. Could M. Ron- quette, supposing him in fact to be an agent of the Russian Police, have found opportunity, while the clerk was not observing him, to do what had been donetake out and unlock the casket, remove the papers, and replace it lock- ed l I believe, I said, having run this over hastily, that we have gained al- ready two points in the case, the time when, and the person by whom, these papers were taken. Now I wish you to relate clearly all that took place while you were in the dark room. It may be we shall gain a third point, the how they were taken. His account, after a little cross-exam- ination of its German confusion of state- ment, was in substance this: Young Wechsler had opened the safe while Rouquette held the candle beside him. On drawing his hand from the safe he had accidentally struck the candle with his shoulder, knocking it into the safe, where it had been extinguished by its fall. He had picked it up and re- lighted it hurriedly, and was not aware that Rouquette had moved in the in- terval: he had then relocked the safe, dnd they had returned to the outer office. This settled the question as to the possibility of the deed having been accomplished as I supposed. A few seconds darkness was all a quick man would need for such an operation, if he had calci4ated where to lay his hand. I felt now tolerably satisfied that I was on the right track. True, it was only another circumstancethe seem- ingly accidental dropping of a candle but it was a link that fitted exactly into its place in my chain. There was nothing further to be learned, an dlroseto go. You will proceed, if you please, gentlemen, I said, exactly as if noth- ing had happened. We wish to show the enemy no sign of being aware of the blow he has dealt us. Herr Anton will continue his intimacy with our friend M. Rouquette, and watch him closely to pick up any intelligence he may incau- tiously let drop. Stay,have you a piece of his handwriting l It may be useful. I have his note for three hundred forms, the sum I lent him, said the young man, who seemed somewhat chagrined at the turn the affair had taken, and he handed me a paper. I looked at it with interest. A deal of a mans character may be seen in his handwriting, but this was studiously commonplace, and, as it struck me, an imitation of mercantile hand. I put it in my pocket-book, and with- drew in high satisfaction at the first morning s operations. The two next days I passed, like Mr. Micawber, chiefly in waiting for some- thing to turn up; but, as was usually the case with that gentleman, nothing of consequence did turn up. My elation at the start I had taken began to sub- side into an uncomfortable doubt that it would ever be any thing more than a start. 348 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Mar. CITY POSTAL SERVICE IN THE UMTED STATES. Tini idea of the modern post-office system is an American idea. Pity that the complete realization of it is not yet an American, but only a European, fact. Like many other great ideas, it has had to go abroad from its native land to find its best development. There are three obsolete and un-Ameri- can conceptions of a postal system. The first of these is one of the most ancient things in the history of civiliza- tion. It is older than Augustus Cinsar, older than Darius the Great, older, prob- ably, than the immeasurably ancient book of Job (see chap. ix. 25)the establishment of relays of swift runners or riders for the carrying of government dispatches. No extension of this in the direction of popular accommodation seents to have been dreamed of by any government, until modern times. Another postal idea has been, that the common carriage of letters was a good thing for the government to un- dertake, because of the facilities which it afforded for government agents to practise private inquisition into political and criminal secrets, by tampering with the sacredness of seals. This was one of the acknowledged principles of the British Post-office, so lately as the mem- orable Home Secretaryship of Sir James Graham, in 1844. A third postal idea has been, that the monopoly of letter-carriage, like other profitable monopolies, might be grasped and held by the government as a con- venient way of extracting money from the people, and that that was the best postal system which cost the least or paid the best. This idea, some years ago abolished from theoretical economy, is wonderfully tenacious of its hold on the official mind. The modem ideathe American idea the true ideathat postal service is not a device for taxing the correspond- ence of a country, nor a monopoly for government favorites, nor an engine for crafty inquisitions, but a great public trust, held by the government for the interest of the peoplewas first enunci- ated in that vote of the Continental Congress, July 26, 1775, which insti- tuted the American Post-office instead of the Colonial Mail. The language of the vote is this: That the communica- tion of intelligence with frequency and dispatch from one part to another of this extensive continent, is essentially requisite to its safety. The consumma- tion of the splendid reform under Row- land lull is simply the practical appli- cation of this American principle to the British Post-office. It is a principle which includes within itself both ele- ments of that fine achievementcheap postage and effective service. How barbarously behind other na- tions we are in the application of our own idea, appears very distinctly in the comparison of city postal service in Great Britain and in the United States. The comparison will be more clear if we confine it to the chief city of each na- tion; but it affects the interests not only of our metropolis, but of every great city in the land. Murrays Hand-book for London, in its General Hints to Strangers, speaks of the capital arrangements of a company in that metropolis for provid- ing prompt and faithful messengers everywhere at 3d. a mile, and of the cab-communication at Gd. a mile; but adds: THE BE5T LoNDoN MESSENGER 15 A wELL-SEALED AND CLEARLY-DIRECTED PENNY-POST LETTER.7~ The machinery by which this result is achieved is vast, of course, bu1~ not complicated. The London District is divided, for postal purposes, into ten sub-districts, each of which is treated, in many re- spects, as a separate Post-town. * Near * Our information is taken chiefly from the British Postal Guide; containing the chief pub-

348 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Mar. CITY POSTAL SERVICE IN THE UMTED STATES. Tini idea of the modern post-office system is an American idea. Pity that the complete realization of it is not yet an American, but only a European, fact. Like many other great ideas, it has had to go abroad from its native land to find its best development. There are three obsolete and un-Ameri- can conceptions of a postal system. The first of these is one of the most ancient things in the history of civiliza- tion. It is older than Augustus Cinsar, older than Darius the Great, older, prob- ably, than the immeasurably ancient book of Job (see chap. ix. 25)the establishment of relays of swift runners or riders for the carrying of government dispatches. No extension of this in the direction of popular accommodation seents to have been dreamed of by any government, until modern times. Another postal idea has been, that the common carriage of letters was a good thing for the government to un- dertake, because of the facilities which it afforded for government agents to practise private inquisition into political and criminal secrets, by tampering with the sacredness of seals. This was one of the acknowledged principles of the British Post-office, so lately as the mem- orable Home Secretaryship of Sir James Graham, in 1844. A third postal idea has been, that the monopoly of letter-carriage, like other profitable monopolies, might be grasped and held by the government as a con- venient way of extracting money from the people, and that that was the best postal system which cost the least or paid the best. This idea, some years ago abolished from theoretical economy, is wonderfully tenacious of its hold on the official mind. The modem ideathe American idea the true ideathat postal service is not a device for taxing the correspond- ence of a country, nor a monopoly for government favorites, nor an engine for crafty inquisitions, but a great public trust, held by the government for the interest of the peoplewas first enunci- ated in that vote of the Continental Congress, July 26, 1775, which insti- tuted the American Post-office instead of the Colonial Mail. The language of the vote is this: That the communica- tion of intelligence with frequency and dispatch from one part to another of this extensive continent, is essentially requisite to its safety. The consumma- tion of the splendid reform under Row- land lull is simply the practical appli- cation of this American principle to the British Post-office. It is a principle which includes within itself both ele- ments of that fine achievementcheap postage and effective service. How barbarously behind other na- tions we are in the application of our own idea, appears very distinctly in the comparison of city postal service in Great Britain and in the United States. The comparison will be more clear if we confine it to the chief city of each na- tion; but it affects the interests not only of our metropolis, but of every great city in the land. Murrays Hand-book for London, in its General Hints to Strangers, speaks of the capital arrangements of a company in that metropolis for provid- ing prompt and faithful messengers everywhere at 3d. a mile, and of the cab-communication at Gd. a mile; but adds: THE BE5T LoNDoN MESSENGER 15 A wELL-SEALED AND CLEARLY-DIRECTED PENNY-POST LETTER.7~ The machinery by which this result is achieved is vast, of course, bu1~ not complicated. The London District is divided, for postal purposes, into ten sub-districts, each of which is treated, in many re- spects, as a separate Post-town. * Near * Our information is taken chiefly from the British Postal Guide; containing the chief pub- 1868.] CITY POSTAL SERVICE IN TUE UNITED STATES. 349 the centre of the metropolis is the Gen- eral Post-office. From this point a cir- cle, described by a radius of three miles, includes the region of the Town De- liveries. A circle of twelve miles radius includes also the Suburban De- liveries. At about half-past. 7 oclock every morning, the enormous mass of letters which all night long has been accumu- lating in the General Post-office, from the inland, the colonial, and the foreign mails, and from the early collections out of the city Pillar-boxes, goes forth under the charge of an army of carriers, and, within an hour and a hall every one of them, due within the three miles circle, has been delivered at the door to which it has been addressed. The second delivery, which com- mences about 9 A. M., includes the cor- respondence received by the night-mails from Ireland and France, and letters from the Provinces or abroad which may arrivc too late for the first delivery; as well as those posted in the nearer suburbs by 6.30 A. MY The next nine deliveries are made hourly, and include all letters reaching the General Post-office or the District offices in time for each dispatch. The last delivery commences about 7.45 r.~r. Each delivery occupies about an hour from the time of its commencement. The number of collections from the pillar-boxes corresponds with the num- ber of deliveries, and the collections are so adjusted as that no time is wasted between collection and delivery. Offi- cial information is furnished by which every depositor of a letter in any pillar- box may know at what minute his let- ter will leave the box, and, approxi- mately, the time when it will be de- livered at its address. We cannot turn aside from the single practical purpose of the present article to notice the peculiar facilities of rapid postal communication in Londonthe lic Regulations of tlio Post-Office, with other in- formation. Published, qnarterly,by command of the Postmaster-General. London, Eyre & Spottis- woode. To he had also of all hook ellers, and the principal postmasters in the United Kingdom. limo. pp. 240; price 6d. underground railway, or the subterra- nean and subfluvial popguns for shoot- ing letters and parcels from one region of the city to another; nor to illustrate the marvellous acquired skill of the London carriers in following the trail of a doubtful address, so that the pro- portion of dead-letters is reduced to an infinitesimal. Few travellers are long in London without bringing home won- derful stories of their experience in this matter. But we are concerned, now, only with those essentials of the London sys- teln which are capable of being imme- diately reproduced in this country, whenever the Post-office Department shall so choose. It is needless to say, after this ac- count of the working of the London Post-office, that it has become the uni- versal messenger of conimerce and of society in that metropolis. It serves every man at his own door. The Lon- doner no more thinks of sending to the Post-office for his letters, than the New Yorker thinks of sending to the print- ing-office for his newspaper. And he as little thinks of employing a private messenger for quickness of dispatch; fol the dictum of John Murray is only the embodiment of the general experience The best London messsnger is a well sealed and clearly-directed penny-post letter. In contrast with this perfect institution,~ is it needful to describe the derange- ments, the difficulties, the methods of in- commoding the public, which annoy our metropolis I We speak of this group of cities as a unit; for the various parts of London, on either side of its intersect-. ing river, are not more nearly bound into a whole, than the various parts of this metropolis of New York and Brooklyn, to say nothing of J& rsey City and Stat- en Island. In this vast, enormously in- creasing, double on~ triple city, one of. the things which m6~t strike a stranger with surprise and dis~pointment, and a well-informed citizei~ with shame, is the miserable deficiencyof its postal accommodation. A fresh illustration of this statement comes to hand in one of 350 PUTNAMS MAGAZINII. [Mar. the letters of Mr. John Oxenford, from New York, published a few months ago in the London Time8. He says: The postal system between America and Eu- rope is efficient enough, and, if you seiid a letter from New York to London, you may calculate, weather permitting, the date of its arrivaL Other- wise is it with a letter destined to reach some place within the precincts of the city itself. Post an epis- tle directed to Wall-street (the Threadneedle-sireet and Lombard-street of New Yerk) in a hex not above half a mile distant, and let it be addressed to the most eminent merchant, hanker, or broker, and the chance is that he will not receive it till the fol- lowing day. Hence the almost universal practice of employing special messengers, answering to our old light pocters, where any important business requiring speed is concerned. Suffering the inconvenience of this system, or ratherno system, two or three times, I execrated the internal postal arrangements of New York in no measured terms, and loudly extolled the frequent deliveries~ of London. -- - The merchants and bankers perfectly sympathized with my execration, and envied the Londoner with his complete postal system. Every body who has had any experi- ence with city-letters knows that this is a very mild statement of the ease: that ,twenty-four or even thirty-six hours are the least that one ought to allow for the delivery of a letter from one thickly-settled part of the metrop- olis to another; and that correspond- ence is not certain, even with this allow- ance. We are not content to speak thus in general terms in a matter in which exact statement is desirable. But it is impos- sible to speak by the card, for there is no card to speak by. One of the most obvious differences between the London and the New York Post-offices is the absence of full official information about the affairs of the latter. in Eng- land, ample official information, antici- pating to the utmost all questions in which the public has practical interest, is to be had for sixpence anywhere in the Kingdom; and if this be found in any point defective, it is promptly sup- plemented by courteous answers to all inquiries. In New York, an occasional broadside, posted in the lobbies of the Offlee, furnishes to the inquiring mind such satisfaction as one might get from The Yague Person in Punch. And if you think that the defects of this document would be promptly and cheer- fully supplied on personal application to the Postmaster, be advised by experi- ence, and dont try itnot, at least, unless you are a very eminent and in- fluential citizen indeed. If your man- ner in approaching a great man is marked with a dash of deference and diffidenceif a certain seriousness of face, or formal cut of costume, mark you as a member of that profession which being sworn at is debarred the privilege of swearing backif Meekness plant your backward-sloping hat, And Non-resistance tie your white cravat the attempt can only end in irritation of the feelings, without any compensa- ting advantage. But that no one need accuse us of speaking at random, we have made a series of rough experiments on the ve- locity of city-letters, of which we sub- mit the results: 1. Fourteen letters were posted in va- rious parts of the city, between Central Park and the Battery, to an address in Cortlandt-street, about five minutes walk from the Post-office. The range of time occupied in delivering them was as follows: Minimum 14h. lim. Maximum iSh. 51m. 2. Eleven letters were posted in vari- ous lamp-post boxes in Brooklyn (not in the remote parts of that city), to the same address in Cortlandt-street. The time of their transit was as follows: Minimum lib 21m. Maximum 112h. 41m. or (deducting 24 hours for an inter vening Snnday).... lib. 45m. 3. Eleven letters were posted in vari- ous lamp-post boxes in the thickly-set- tled parts of Brooklyn, to an address in the Eastern District of the same city, not far from the Post-office. [N. B. The Post-office Department, instead of unit- ing contiguous cities under one Post- office, divides Brooklyn nader several Post-offices.] Time of transit: Minimum ~ 19h. Maximum 25h. tOm. 4. Thirteen letters were posted in va- rious letter-boxes south of Central Park, to the same address in Brooklyn, E. Th (Williamsburg P. 0.) Time of transit: 1868.1 CITY POSTAL SEnvIcE IN TIlE UNITED STATES. 351 Minimum iSh. hOrn. Maximum 22h. 2Cm. 5. A letter posted at Williamsburg Post-office for 128th-street, New York (Harlem), was delivered in 18h. 30m. Remailed, after fifteen minutes delay, at corner of 128th-street and Second avenue, it was delivered in 25h. 30m. Time for the round trip 44 hours. 6. A letter posted at Williamsburg Post-office, for 683 Lexington avenue, New York, was delivered in 44h. iSm. Remailed to Williamsburg, after fifteen minutes delay, at the corner of Lexing- ton avenue and 61st-street, it was deliv- ered in 26h. 45m. Time for the round trip 71 hours. or three days lacking one hour. This tells the whole story, some- body remarked, as we showed our fig ures. / Begging your pardon, this does not 1egin to tell the story. This is simply the fair result of an experiment on the ordinary average velocity of letters in the commercial metropolis. It gives no idea whatever of those amazing occa- sional feats of dilatoriness of which the New York Post-office is capable, and of which every man of considerable city correspondence has anecdotes to tell. Besides, the whole story cannot be told in figures. It is a story of count- less vexatious and mortifications, of dis- appointed hopes and frustrated plans, of family anxieties, of forfeited business opportunities, of commercial losses, of the failure of actual business operations, not only, but the failure of operations to be begun, or even to be planned or thought of, which would have depended on some medium of prompt communi- cation. The whole story cannot be told at all. The method by which these curious postal delays are effected,the Way How Not To Do It,is one of the official secrets of the New York Post- office. Some notions about it, however, can be gathered by outside observation. The Postmasters policy depends a good deal on the East River. The population of the metropolis includes about a mil- lion of people on the western bank of this river, and something less than half a million on the eastern bank. It; now, you have the latter half-million divided into five or six postal districts, under independent postmasters, and communi- cating with each other only through the main Post-office in New York, each let- ter being treated to a little sea-voyage across the East River and back again before being delivered on the side where it started, you will see that the effect will be, not only to keep the Brooklyn people waiting for their letters, but also, by passing this Long Island correspond- ence through the choked and enormous- ly congested channel of the New York office, to clog and hinder all the postal business of Manhattan Island, and thus of the country generally. This pretty arrangement subsisted till last spring, when, at the remonstrance of a citizen of Brooklyn, the Post-office Department rectified it, in a characteristic fash- ion, by depriving all the Brooklyn of- fices, except one, of their direct com- munication with New York, and send- ing the correspondence of the hundred thousand people of Northern Brooklyn with various parts of the city and the world, two miles out of its way, to the Brooklyn City Hall, thence to be sent over Fulton Ferry, and jammed into the gorge of the old Dutch church in Nas- sau-street. Once lodged there, the pos- sibilities of further delay are ample and varied. If, now, some official gentleman thinks to pose us by asking us to describe how these difficulties are to be remedied, it is sufficient to have proved, from the London experiment, the fact that they can be remedied; the mode, it his busi- ness to discover, or else resign. If the sluggish American mind is un- able to grapple with the question, it might be well to borrow help from the effete nationalities of Europe. A request to Sir Rowland Hill for the loan of a couple of smart clerks to set our metropolitan Post-office a-running, would doubtless receive polite atten- tion. But one obvious hint toward the so- 852 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Mar. lution of this question is found in the official statement of the British Postal Guide, that in London the ten Postal Districts of the metropolis are treated, in many respects, each as a 8eparate Post- town. Let this idea once enter the official mind, and soon letters from Station A, in Spring-street, to Sta- tion B, twenty minutes distant in Grand-street, will cease to be carried thither, as now, by way of Sixty-fifth- street; the correspondence between the masses of population in the various parts of Brooklyn and upper New York, and the East, and North, and North- west, instead of being carried out of its way, both coming and going, to ferment awhile among the stacks of mail-bags in the old meeting-house, will go direct to and from the up-town railroad sta- tions, and the twenty-four hours delay now suffered, especially by Brooklyn let- ters to and from the country, will be saved; letters from Astoria to Harlem, or fro~n Williamsburg to Yorkville, or from Brooklyn to the Bible House, will go to their destinations at once, and not be sent doubling and twisting through the down-town alleys, nor be put to season and quarantine in what Bishop Potter might call the holy atmos- phere of the old church; and the over-gorged plethora of that ancient pile, over which successive postmasters have groaned to the agreeable tune of several millions of dollars, be in some measure depleted; and so the postal circulation of the whole country, which is clogged by that chronic congestion, be relieved and healthily quickened. If there be any doubt as to how a change of system so important to the commercial and social interests of all our great cities, is to be brought about, a glance at the history of modern postal reform will settle it. All the great im- provements in this part of our civiliza- tion have been originated, not by offi- cial enterprise, but by the suggestions of private citizens, and have generally been enforced by pertinacious public clamor upon reluctant and incredulous administrations. When, in 1782, Mr. John Palmer, manager of the Bath Theatre, proposed the change which was to rescue the lan- guishing British postal system from in- anition, and add a million sterling to the public revenue, he was told by one official that he did not understand what he was talking about an an- swer, by the way, which (making due allowance for grammatical infelicities and a love of religious expletive) was repeated in almost identical terms a few weeks ago by the New York Post- master to a citizen seeking information so invariable are the phenomena of official human nature! Another promi- nent official declared that the plan, if adopted, would fling the whole com- mercial correspondence of the country into confusion. But it was adopted, and saved the post-office system from ruin. However, the system fell back into old habits before long. As the silk- worm, gorged with mulberry-leaves, turns lazily over and spins from its own bowels the cocoon that is its winding- sheet, so the Department, fed fat from the revenues which accrued from the reform that had been forced upon it, turned over and commenced spinning out of itself tremendous coils of red tape, in which it rolled and rolled itself until, after about fifty years, it was growing black in the face and attenu- ated in the revenue, so that it was ne- cessary for another private citizenMr. Rowland Hill, late schoolmasterto in- terfere, and with a sharp pamphlet to cut the coils of this suicidal suffocation. His plan was scouted by practical men (as they delighted to call them- selves), including the entire corps of post-office functionaries, as visionary and ruinous. The Postmaster-General said of it, in the House of Lords, of all the wild and visionary schemes which I have ever heard of it is the most extravagant. But, in spite of flouting, and insult, and rebufl the schoolmaster kept at it and at it, and at it. He stretched forth his quill, and plagued the government with an ex- ceeding great plague of petitions. It 1868.] CITY POSTAL SERVICE IN THE UNITED STATES. 353 rained, hailed, and snowed petitions, until two thousand of them, from all classes of society, were lying in, under, and around the table of the House of Commons. At last Pharaoh had to yield. The wild and Visionary scheme was enacted into a law; and, notwithstanding the pertinacious and spiteful balking of the official corps, was carried into successful operation; and has proved itself the most benefi- cent invention to the human race, since that of the steam-engine. The introduction of cheap postage into the United States was the result of just such another long fight between the people and the Department. The proposal of low and uniform rates was resisted by futile and refuted arguments, and by the awful vis inertie which such an institution as the Post-office is capa- ble of exerting, whenever it chooses to do its stolid lubber-lifting at the wrong end of the lever. And when at last, in 1844, the great reform was at the point of being carried through in spite of him, the stubborn blockhead of a Post- master-GeneralWickliffe of Kentucky managed to have the bill so cooked and amended that he might, peradven- ture, insure the failure of the reform, and throw the odium of it on the re- formers. It has been only through many successive acts of legislation that we have reached the point of cheap and uniform postage. The exceptional fact that the British Post-office has been for twenty rears a self-improving institution, until now it so nearly approximates perfection, is due to this, that Sir Rowland Hill, baronet, and Secretary of the Post-of- fice, has not forgotten the experience of Mr. Rowland Hill, ex-schoolmaster; and that the doors that were once slam- med in his face as a private citizen, now that he sits within, are kept hospitably open to receive every suggestion, pro- posal, or complaint, from the highest and the humblest, and to reward with money every useful invention for expediting the enormous business under his control. The following sentence, from a late re- port of the British PostmasterGeneral, is worthy of being translated from the Downing-street dialect into English, and written on the door-posts of our own General Post-office, and hung up in the apartment of tile New York Post- master, that republican officials may learn, from a titled servant of the Brit- ish crown, something of the respect they owe the people: The sharp and watchful criticism of the public eye, even though it be sometimes founded in a mistaken view, is far from being an evil to any depart- ment of the government; nor can we ex- pect immunity from it. And probably the Post-office, the good administration of which concerns every class of the peo- ple, and depends greatly npon a care of minute details, is more likely to benefit by it than any other. The moral of this historical retrospect has been pointed in advance. The pub- lic may often hope, from those charged with the administration of a system, for the reform of petty abuses, and the im- provement of details; but for the re- formation of the system itself, they must depend upon themselves. Our exhibit implies no excessive censure of the ex- isting Post-office administration, wheth- er local or general. We may admit the claim of the city officials, that they do the best they can with the limited re- sources allowed them by the Depart- ment; and may give full credit to the present incumbents for considerable im- provements accomplished or intended. As for our new Postmaster-Gei~eral, whose first report gives many evidences of just and liberal views, it would be unfair to impute the existing policy of the Department to his fault, for it has obtained so long as to have become one of the immemorial traditions of the of- ficethe policy of skinning the cities of their postal revenues to balance the short accounts of the country offices. The mere work of running smoothly an existing system, on the scale of the American Post-office, is enough to en- gage all the powers of any man of less than the maximum of executive ability: and, so long as the responsible officer stands between an exacting Congress 354 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Mar. on the one hand, that insists on a good balance-sheet, and a patient public on the other, that does not care to insist on proper accommodation, is it to be expccted that ordinary official human nature will be cager for reform? One characteristic of the British Post- office, which we have not yet mention- ed, needs first of all to be imitated as the condition of successful reform in our own Post-office; and that is, the stability of the tenure of its commissions. A finely equipped and perfected system needs skilled men to manage it. Such a system, in the hands of raw and in- experienced officers, would be little bet- ter than our present one. It would be like a navy of first-class ships, whose officers, from admiral to boatswain, were removed every four years and re- placed by landsmen. They manage these things better in England. The honorable and profitable positiin of postmaster in the city of Oxford was held until his lamented death, through all changes of adminis- tration, by that active, outspoken friend of democracy and radicalism, Joseph Warne, known to multitudes of Ameri- cans as Agricola, the correspondent of The Independent in the days of its vigor. It was as if the Boston Post- office had been held nuder Fillmore, Pierce, Buchanan, and Lincoln, by Mr. iligginson or Mr. Edmund Quincy. To this usage we must come, if we would have effective postal service. It is even to be regretted that the Post- master-General should be a Cabinet officer, and so liable to change with the changes of administration. But to suffer great public trusts like the more import- ant post-offices, the expert administra- tion of which is matter of personal in- terest to every man in the nation, to be kicked to and fro by wrangling parties at every presidential election, is fatal to improvement in the service, as well as demoralizing to the public con- science. If ever, by dint of clamor, we can se- cure for the great triple city the insti- tution of a Metropolitan Post-office, that shall serve as a model for an improved postal service in all our great cities, the one condition of its success, involving all other conditions, is, that the charge of it shall be treated as a high and dig- nified position, not to be given out as a prize for successful intrigues on an elec- tion-committee, but to be held by an able and honorable gentleman who shall make the management of it The study of his life, and hold the appointment, promotion, and discipline of his sub- ordinates independent of the influence of ward-politicians. .4. MR. THOM. WHITES LITTLE SERMON. TEXT : It is surely better to marry, It must be blessed to wed.OLD SONG. No, not if I know myselg said a fine-looking young fellow to another fine-looking young fellow at Delmoni- cos, one evening. No? and why not? was his an- swer. You have been very sweet on Miss Julia, and it was generally under- stood that you meant something. Why not? Is it generally understood that I, Joseph lowland, bachelor and bank- clerk, am a fool I Not exactly that, his friend said, laughingly. But why not? Come! Listen to me, Peter. I, Joseph low- land, bachelor and bank-clerk, am in re- ceipt of two thousand dollars per year. I have tastes, I have wants, I have in- dulgences, and I have a mother who is poor. As the case stands, I get on with all of these very welL Where should I be if I married Miss Julia or any other girl that I know I Whybut old Pickles is rich?

354 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Mar. on the one hand, that insists on a good balance-sheet, and a patient public on the other, that does not care to insist on proper accommodation, is it to be expccted that ordinary official human nature will be cager for reform? One characteristic of the British Post- office, which we have not yet mention- ed, needs first of all to be imitated as the condition of successful reform in our own Post-office; and that is, the stability of the tenure of its commissions. A finely equipped and perfected system needs skilled men to manage it. Such a system, in the hands of raw and in- experienced officers, would be little bet- ter than our present one. It would be like a navy of first-class ships, whose officers, from admiral to boatswain, were removed every four years and re- placed by landsmen. They manage these things better in England. The honorable and profitable positiin of postmaster in the city of Oxford was held until his lamented death, through all changes of adminis- tration, by that active, outspoken friend of democracy and radicalism, Joseph Warne, known to multitudes of Ameri- cans as Agricola, the correspondent of The Independent in the days of its vigor. It was as if the Boston Post- office had been held nuder Fillmore, Pierce, Buchanan, and Lincoln, by Mr. iligginson or Mr. Edmund Quincy. To this usage we must come, if we would have effective postal service. It is even to be regretted that the Post- master-General should be a Cabinet officer, and so liable to change with the changes of administration. But to suffer great public trusts like the more import- ant post-offices, the expert administra- tion of which is matter of personal in- terest to every man in the nation, to be kicked to and fro by wrangling parties at every presidential election, is fatal to improvement in the service, as well as demoralizing to the public con- science. If ever, by dint of clamor, we can se- cure for the great triple city the insti- tution of a Metropolitan Post-office, that shall serve as a model for an improved postal service in all our great cities, the one condition of its success, involving all other conditions, is, that the charge of it shall be treated as a high and dig- nified position, not to be given out as a prize for successful intrigues on an elec- tion-committee, but to be held by an able and honorable gentleman who shall make the management of it The study of his life, and hold the appointment, promotion, and discipline of his sub- ordinates independent of the influence of ward-politicians. .4. MR. THOM. WHITES LITTLE SERMON. TEXT : It is surely better to marry, It must be blessed to wed.OLD SONG. No, not if I know myselg said a fine-looking young fellow to another fine-looking young fellow at Delmoni- cos, one evening. No? and why not? was his an- swer. You have been very sweet on Miss Julia, and it was generally under- stood that you meant something. Why not? Is it generally understood that I, Joseph lowland, bachelor and bank- clerk, am a fool I Not exactly that, his friend said, laughingly. But why not? Come! Listen to me, Peter. I, Joseph low- land, bachelor and bank-clerk, am in re- ceipt of two thousand dollars per year. I have tastes, I have wants, I have in- dulgences, and I have a mother who is poor. As the case stands, I get on with all of these very welL Where should I be if I married Miss Julia or any other girl that I know I Whybut old Pickles is rich? 1808.] Mn. ThoM. WHITES LITTLE SETIMOx. 855 May-be so; but his money is his own, and he means to keep it. I do not hear that his daughter has a penny. Yes, but he would give his daugh- ter something. Perhapsa good wardrobe, a few teaspoons, a pair of ear-rings and then! Why, Peter, my ample income would not pay for Miss Julias clothes. Her father does not propose to endow his children until he dies; and when he dies, he may not be worth one penny. Is that pleasant to look at? Not exactly; but you take rather a practical view of matrimony.~~ Yes, Ido; and I propose to take it before, rather than after. Before, it stands: two thousand a-year, and all bills paid; after, it would stand thus: House-rent $2,500 Home expenses 5,000 clothes, & c 1,500 Theatres, churches, and other necessities, 1,000 $10,000 Where, then, should I be? Oh! but old Pickles would do some- thing. And, besides, you put the figures too high. How do I know that the father would do any thing? He has never endowed his daughter. He has brought her up to live at the rate of twelve or fifteen thousand dollars a-year; but he has never settled a penny upon her. Do I propose to put myself before him as a beggar? Not if I know myself! Have I put the figures too high? Then halve them, and where should I be? Well, it may be all so; but people do get married, somehowwomen do something themselves, I guess, eh i Not a thingnot a thing. No lady expects or intends to do any thing but spend money. Now, Peter, put that in your pipe and smoke it; and do it be- fore you go any further with Miss Fos- ter. No, Peter; women, now, are not worth a tinkers mill-damthats what I think. Such was, in brief; the conversation that I happened to hear one evening at Delmonicos. The last invidious remark was certainly rough, if not profane; but it served to express a condition of mind, or a state of facts, which caused me to reflect. Just what a tinkers dam is, I have no means of knowing; but I believe it to be something very worth- less indeed. I reflected with myselffor I had nobody to talk tothat marriage was becoming more and more rare; that it was, indeed, more and more undesir- able; that more and more men, and women, too, were indulging in illicit connections; that marriage, when it did take place, was becoming more and more mercenary; and that divorce was getting to be more frequent. IL re- membered some ugly figures and facts how the streets of London swarm and reek with wretched women who have neither home, husband, child, nor friend; how, in the city of Paris, are some sev- enty-five thousand known unfortunates~ maiheureuses, known to the police; how, beside these, was a vast, vast crowd of decent women, not abandoned, whose love and virtue are simply commodities which they sell, whereby they live. I knew, too, that these women are almost none of them sinners, willingly; but that they sell themselves for money, because they find it difficult or impossible to live in any other decent way. It is well known that, while the appetites of men are gross, those of women are deli- caterarely gross. It is well known that, while many men are hunting and watch- ful for prey, a woman with such a nature is most rare. Believing, then, as I did and do, that women do not willingly live bad lives; that they do, from their very nature, desire love and marriage; that God intended it for them, and for all of usI was forced to ask: What does it all mean? Whence why what? I was perplexedknew not what to ask. It is quite certain that these crowds of pretty creatures, who swarm our streets, who display their charms so charmingly, do not intend to be nui- sances to their husbands when they get them; do not deliberately say to them- selves: I must be a lady, and must spend five or ten thousand dollars a- year in doing it; and my husband must 356 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Mar. get it for me, for I cannot earn one cent myself. They do not say this, and do not intend to be a load too heavy to bear, and yet I Let me illustrate. It has been my misfortune to hear such things as this for the last forty years: Oh, these dreadful servants! What can we do? They do not know how to do a thing; they must be seen to night and day; not a cook that understands her busi- ness, & c., & c. Good manners forbade me to say, what perhaps I may be par- doned for saying here: Ladies, do you know that every man has to see to his business, day and night; has to watch over his clerks; has to give directions here and there, again and again; has to spend his whole time with his men in the field, in the workshop, on the ships deck; has to work and watch and worry, in order to have his business done prop- erly and promptly? I might have asked, though I never did: Ladies, do you know how to do any thing? Can you make bread? can you cook a piece of beef? can you cut and make your childs clothes? do you know whether potatoes should be boiled two hours, or twenty minutes? do you know what your meat-bills are per mouth? do you know how much is eaten, and how much is wasted, in your house ?in fine, do you understand your business? I have never asked such foolish ques- tions, and I am sure that I should have been told, if I had, that cooking was not their business. If I had been ill- naturedas I am notI might have said: Ladies, what is your business? Again, there exists in the female mind or what they please to call their mind a vague idea of this sort: that they ought not to be called upon to make sacrifices of themselves; that they ought not to be put to inconveniences, and ought not to have so much trouble as they do have. No one will deny that they have a great deal of trouble and wretchedness, for which they are not responsible; but they do, also, have a great deal for which they are. A peculiar state of mind is shown in this that no woman, or rather no lady, will live off the pavements. She is so lonesome on a farmit is so dull in a villagethere are no theatres, or shops, or excitements in a rural townshe must live in Boston, or New York, or Phila- delphia, or Chicago, or St. Louis. Rash man,be warned in time! do not marry your lovely sweetheart expecting she is to be happy, or content, or even amia- ble, living with you upon your farm, or in your village of Stockbridge, or Mad- etta, or in your town of Paterson, or Lockport, or Easton. None of them are good enoughshe deserves better things. This state of mind~may be ex- plained by a single incident which hap- pened to myself, in a delightful family where I was making a short visit. They lived near a charming, healthy village, within thirty miles of the city, to which, daily, father and son came to earn the money which the family needed. They had a good house, good clothes, good health, a good horse and wagon. This was it: It is very hard on usme and my daughtersto have to get up so early. Our gentlemen must get off; and we have to have breakfast at seven oclock, and it really makes life very hard. Good Heaven! was my involuntary exclamation. I said no more, and I am persuaded my friends wife felt that she had my sympathyshe had. But I felt also for my friend : a complaining, dis- satisfied wifecomplaining, dissatisfied daughters! Over-worked himself anx- ious about business, living up to all he earned,~ growing older, harassed with cares and anxieties, with none to share or lighten themnobody thought it any hardship for him to get up and take his breakfast at seven oclock. I began to fear that matrimony was not now just what it had been in my time. A feeling of thanksgiving came over me, that my own dear wife had been removed before progress had brought us to this. I have reason to believe that my friend and his lovely family are a fair sample of American households. Is it not so? Most men prefer to look forward. I cannot myself see very far into the fu 1868.1 Mn. ThOM. Wnrrzs LITTLR SImMOX. 357 ture, but a good way into the past. In that past, I see that the patriarch Abra- ham kifled the meat, and Sarah his wife cooked it; that she made cakes, and baked them herself for the angelic vis- itors: and she was not the less a prin- cess for having done it. Are we doing any better now? If the man finds the meat, might not the woman cook it? Or, if society is so changed that she cannot, might she not be an amiable and contented wifeaccepting what she gets with gratitude, and a smiling face? I am told by a carping bachelor, that, as a rule, women are pleasanter and live- lier with any body than their husbands. Politeness requires that she shall wreathe her face with smiles; that she shall hear the voice of the stranger with attention or sympathy; that she shall endeavor try to he pleased and to please, in the company of strangers; but that none of these things are required in the domestic circle. There, a woman or a man, a son or a datighter, may be as grumpy and ill-mannered as he or she pleases, and nobody is put to death. I say, I am told these dreadful things by a dread- ful cynic; but I confess a shiver goes through my vitals. I fearI am aghast! I no longer wonder that matrimony is becoming difficult, and may become im- possible. Better bear the ills we have Than fly to others that we know not of. Was it not Shakespeare who said some such thing as that? And had he had experience with wives? Now, if matrimony is to become more and more difficult, who will suffer most by such a state of things? It must be woman. For, try to make her into a man, as some may, it is impossible; she is his equal, but she is not a man. The grape-vine and oak are equal, but not the same. Whoever builds his ship with the grape-vine will come to grief; whoever makes wine with the acorn will have a bitter mouth. Woman is weaker in the hard struggle of life, and she must go down in it, as she does, if she is not sustained by the robust and rough strength of man. She needs the strength and courage of man, and he needs her cheerfulness, her sympathy, her consolation. If man does not marry her, he will use her and trample upon her; he does it now in Paris, and in London, and in New York. She will he his sport, his indulgence. She will be his mistress, if she is not his wife. And then, when she is sick, or ill-tem- pered, or stupid, he will throw her away. If she is his wife, the mother of his chil- dren, the partner of his successes and the consoler of his failures, then, and only as such, will he cherish, defend, and sustain her. Now, if a woman can- not win a man by thosa virtues and fas- cinations and usefulnesses which pertain to her, and if she cannot keep him after she has won him, by kindness and sym- pathy and helpfulness, she will go to the wall. Are these hard sayings? Are they not true? Are they not oldold as the days of Adam? Time was when woman was described as the help-meet of man. Was it only a phrase, and mean- ingless? Possibly; but then, words in the Bible mostly did mean something. The time, too, was, and yet is in some quarters of the world, when a woman was a help-meet, when she was a full partner, and accepted and worked up to her position as such. She did not demand every thing, and do nothing. Why is marriage easy and universal in such a country as Japan? Let us see what the facts are. Life, there, is simple; two or three small rooms, a few dishes, a mat upon which to sleep, one dress, a little rice, and some fruitthese suffice for all, rich and poor alike, in a great city like Yedo, which has a civiliza- tion as perfect and as old as ours. And it is not a life of stupidity or barbarism; all can read and write; manners are good; books and pictures are plenty; theatres abound; processions and festi- val days enliven life. It is easy to see, therefore, why marriage is not a fearful thing in that far-off land; and, by con- trast, it is easy to understand why few have the courage to dare it here. This strange and most perplexing question has led me to ask, from one of our most accomplished modi8tes, a few figures. I asked her: What is 3~8 PUT?AMS MAGAZINE. [Mar. the finest trousseau you make? What is it that the few very richest people here in New York think it best for their daughters to have, when they marry? I received a very polite and civil reply, which hasI must admit it startled me. She said: In Paris, the upper classes, the aristocracy, & c., ap- propriate from fifty to sixty thousand francs for a trousseau, not including jewels. Here, this kind of thing is not uncommon, though not frequent: 1 Wedding-dress $400 1 Handsome handkerchief 100 6 $50 300 6 Embroidered 30 180 12 Plain 2 24 12 Linen chemises 20 to 25 800 12 16 192 6 Night-gowns 25 150 6 15 90 6 Drawers 12 72 6 6 36 12 Underskirts 30 360 Other articles of this sort, say 130 6 Sets undersiesyos and collars, .5 30 6 6 36 6 25 150 3 Handsome evening dresses, $300, $350, $400 1,050 2 Handsome dinner dresses, $250, $300 550 2 Handsome morning dresses, $150 500 2 Handsome walking dresses, $150, $350.... 500 1 Velvet cloak 250 I camels hair shawl 3,000 2 Lace shawls, $800, $1,200 2,000 1 Set lace Ilonnees 3 Bonnets, $40 to $50 125 I Opera cloak 175 Boots and slippers 200 6 Pairs stockings $5 36 12 4 48 12 3 36 12 Pairs Gloves 3 36 12 2 24 $9,700 Think of that! Ten thousand dollars in my day was an ample fortune in every country-townand, thank God! it is still. Ten thousand dollarswill buy eight thou- sand acres of the best land that lies out on the open prairie ready for our flocks and herdsa dukedom! and upon it a man may live, and te a duke! Ten thou- sand dollars put at interest will bring you seven hundred dollars a year as long as you livewill keep the wolf from the door, if misfortune ever comes, and no- body is safe from it! Ten thousand dol- lars will start a son splendidly on the path of life, if properly used! Ladies, think of these things! Moth- em, think of these things! So surprised was I with these figures, that I went to a lady who moves among those who call themselves fashionable, to learn her views. She made her fig- ures at my request, and said: A very nice outfit could be had for $2,097; and that $1,000 would do very well indeed. I was consoled; for many of my friends have daughters. She told me, however, that a very fine personMiss L.had just been married, who was worth, as she stood at the altar, $25,000. And so conscientious was this charming young creature, that she preferred to give a feast to a ragged-school on her wed- ding-day, rather than a breakfast to her over-fed world. She must stop somewhere in a lavish expenditure, and she chose to stop after she was dressed. Curious, is it not? Now, dear Putnam, I do not pro- pose, in my little sermon, to say that clothes are all nonsense, and vanity, and vexation of spirit, and all that, because it is not so; but I wish to ask you, and I wish to ask the women of my native land, where they expect this thing to end? And, moreover, what they can and will do to stop or stay the rushing car, which may, if not stayed, do some hurt to their sex as well as to mine? It is a certain and inflexible law of God, that whatever injures and demor- alizes woman, injures and demoralizes man; and then there is action and re- action, till it all ends in the pit. It is quite certainand every honest woman will agree with methat the spending of money does not insure happiness. It is quite certain that the superb wardrobe I have heretofore set down, does not in any perceptible de- gree insure a blissful marriage; that wealth even does not insure it in any known degree; and yet these influences are poisoning society, and driving peo- ple into strange courses; one of which leads to vice, another to celibacy, and all to selfishness and rum. Now, in sermons, people do not say pleasant things; and therefore I am for- bidden to mention the delightful Mrs. 1868.] Mia Tnow. WHITES LITTLE SERMON. 859 S. whom I know, and the charming J., and the fascinating 0., and the piquant Mrs. W., and the jovial Mrs. F., and the tender and sympathetic H.; these, and a thousand more lovely, delicious, charm- ing, and cornpanionable women of the world, do not come into my sermon. I am constrained to dwell upon the other kind. I remember with pain what one said to me: Oh, you do not know how hard it is to live on alone with inadequate means. I can never spend a cent without think- ing it over. I want all the luxuries I see, and I must deny myself; I have been used to them. Oh, I think I would marry the devil, if he had money! Dear! dear I What could I say I It was useless to moralize, and to say, How many, many are worse off than you! how many hungry, how many cold, how many friendless! That would have been useless, because she was thinking only of those who were better off~~ and so she let the seven devils of envy enter in, and dwell in her house; and very bad tenants they are, too. But, to marry the devil! It is not easy to live peaceably with an angel; and think of trying it with a devil even if he had bags of money! Better not try it, my dears. - It is not necessary, I believe, to assert that I am the friend of woman. It is because I am so deeply nnd devotedly her champion and admirer, that I write this sermon. And as I am writing it; let me say that, while Miss Susan An- thony and Mrs. George Train are clam- oring for woman to vote, and to work, and to sing bass if they wish, wethat is, Putnam and Iare clamoring for her right to be a royal wife and a lov- ing mother; which the tendencies of the times threaten to rob her of. We ask her to stand for thatto insist upon that forever. We affirm, and challenge the world in its defence, that woman is the equal of man, but not the sameby no manner of means; quite, quite other than man; not intended by the Creator to be the same, or to act in the same sphere, or to do the same work. Our mannish women and womanish men have got into a sad confusion of ideas in their efforts at a sensation, which seems likely to be a failure. Let us clear up that confusion. Woman and man are equal, but not the same; each completes the other. There is no per- feet man, and no perfect woman, with- out marriage and children. Each com- pletes and perfects the other, or would do so, were marriage what it was in- tended to be. One step further: man can do his work best, and woman can do her work best; but the question is, and a vital one, too, What is his work and what is 1i~er work? Miss Anthony and Mrs. Train, if I understand them, claim that woman can do just what man does, and has a right to do it,and can do it as well. Now, I claim and assert that man cannot do just what a woman can do, nor do it as well; and a part of it he cannot do at all. I claim that the great function of woman is to be a loyal wife and a loving moth- er; and I defy the world to prove that a man can do that at all. I assert that there is no work in this world equal or comparable to the production of a royal race of men and women; and that I affirm to be the greatest, vitalest, no- blest work that any woman can do. I affirm that no woman, be she doctor, artist, writer, law-maker, or soldier, can do any thing comparable to that. I affirm that, the very moment she aban- dons her great work, and attempts to (10 the work of man, she is likely to fail; and if she proposes to subvert the laws of her own being, which are the laws of her Creator, she will go to the wall. Woman can do her own work royally and nobly, or she can do it pitifully and meanly; but she cannot do mans work well, supremely well, at all. She will therefore be beaten in it by man, and will fail lamentably. In the great businesses of the world, woman cannot compete with man, be- cause she cannot do them as well. She is a perpetual invalid, as all know, and cannot be relied upon to do mans work year in and year out; that is one great fact of her existence which cannot be 360 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Mar. ignored, and it settles the question, if nothing else did it, of her inability to compete with man. There is no worlds work in which she is the equal to man; not even in some directions where men fancy she is supreme. Man invents and works out even the fashion-plates which show woman how she is to dress herself; and even in cutting and making her own dresses, man is her superior. One small fact will explain this curious inability to do business: for several thousands of years, woman has insisted on button- ing her own clothes, and her childrens clothes, lehind; so that by no possibility can they dress themselves without help. It is most curious, and significant. Now, she cannot be business-man, artist, writer, or law-giver in competi- tion with many because the best work wins, and man can do the lest work. I may be met by the names of Rosa Bon- heur, George Sand, George Eliot, Queen Elizabeth,and so on. Even if I admit all th4 is claimed for themas I do not it proves nothing at all. It no more proves the case, than an occasional wise boy under twenty, proves that boys under twenty are as wise as men over twenty. I may grant and must grant that a woman does now and then do perfect work out of her home, but I must be- lieve it to be exceptional. She has not the fibre to compete with man; her skin and her flesh and her very bones are different. Now, what does this mean? Does it mean that man is unjust to woman, or is it God who is accused? No: this revulsion which is going on in civilized societies against marriage is significant of much; and its evils will fall first and heaviest upon woman. What, then, can she do to protect her- self? That is the vital question. She wishes to be married, or she ought to; how can she secure it? Not by being useless and ignorant, not by being a spendthrift, not by being incompetent for the great business of wife and moth- er, not by being whimsical and ill-tem- pered (either before or after marriage), not by being chreless and indifferent to all the world but herself, not by being a fault-finding, dissatisfied woman. Just the reverse of these will insure marriage. I affirm that a kindly, sympathetic, lov- ing, industrious, capable, doing, intelli- gent, handsome young woman can marry whoever she pleases. I affirm that she can fascinate and win whom she will; that she can make a man love her for- ever and ever. You laugh! you say there are no such women, and that one not born so, cannot make herself so. I deny it. I affirm that she can make herself what she determines she will be. I assert that I know homely women who have made themselves fascinating, and not only so, have converted homely fea- tures into lovely faces; and it is because the great, loving soul shone through their freckled skins. But you will never grow handsome by repining, and by fault-find- ing, and by ill-naturenever; and you will never get married, I may hope for the sake of your husband and children. But now we come to a difficult, almost unmanageable question: how are those who do not or cannot or will not marry, to live? Some occupations they must have, and I believe they are not competent to cope with man in the great businesses of the world. If they are, if they wish tQ, there is nothing to hinder the great businesses are all open; as merchant, manufacturer, farmer, writer, publisher, & c., nothing can prevent her success if she has it in her to do it. But if she is to expect marriage and then drop her business, she will never do it thoroughly and suc- cessfully. It has been tried, and has always failed. But who will hinder her from attempting and filling any part she can fill, and will? Not Put- nam, not I. Who will hesitate to pay her the same wages for the same work, as a man? Not Putnam, not I. Surely not; nor do I believe any man will. Let a woman manufacture as good locomotives, or import as good teas, or produce as good books, or grow as good wheat, as a man, and she can command the same price. But if she rushes into the businesses which are over-stocked, she must take what wages she can get, and it will be poor; or, if 1868.] Mn. ThOM. Wuirns LIrrLu SEnMON. 361 she be a poor, careless workman, she will go to the wall, of course. There is no pity in the laws of God, not much in the hearts of man. As to the business of voting, which some fancy is to cure all the wrongs or misfortunes or weaknesses of woman (as it has not of man), let me say that, as the New York World has broken ground in favor of Womans Suffrage, it is not in human nature that the Demo- cratic party shall refuse to accept it and make it a fact; because it will give them the sweep of the country for the next hundred years. They can secure the votes of the baser sort, and nobody can secure the votes of the other kind; and that will settle the matter,so that Miss Anthony and Mrs. Train may rest on their oars at peace. Coming back to my text, let me say that, as a rule, those who wish to marry had better keep out of the great cities. In the city of New York there is already a surplus oT thirty-eight thousand and fifty-six spinsters, and you see plainly you are not wanted there. And you have heard, too, what my fine young man said, that you are not worth a tinkers mill-dam, to which I do not in any way agree. For myself, I remem- ber well how easy it was, how irre- sistible for me, when a gay young fel- low, to make love to any girl in the bosky lanes and shaded walks of the country, and I cannot remember ever to have had such an impulse in the blaze and whirl of the ball-room. I come back again to my QUEENs, to my loyal and royal wives and loving mothers. I have but a word more to say.. Stand by your homes, stand by your husbands, stand by your children! Stand fast! Stand forever! And in her own sphere, as a loyal wife and loving mother, what a splendid field she has! On those divine harps little childrenshe always has her ten- der and subtle fingers; and what deli- cious music she brings out! How she tempers the rugged blasts, and tunes the delicate strings to sweetest harmony! It is wonderful what she can doand so rarely does doin this way~ and VOL. x.24 how, in doing it, she makes herself one with the Father of light and life. And upon children of a larger growth, how she soothes and consoles, and what sub- tle yet divine wisdom she distils! Ah, there are such royal womenGod bless them! And these homes are royal pala- ces, compared with which Windsor Cas- tle and the Tuileries are as mud. Truth, however, compels me to say that, while I look for thousands of these, I find only tens; and I ask, I appeal to woman to answer me: What is the reason? A)nan whose blessedness it is to live with such a woman,he knows what heaven is; he never despairs; his soul never dies; he never gets drunkor, if he does, he is an eternal fool. To be a help-meet to man, to be a help-meet to woman, that is the key-note to earthly life; and those who fail here, fail every- where. As loyal wife and loving mother, then, woman is supreme. She is also supreme as charmer and as lover. Are these noth- ing? Are these to be contemned? Are these to be pushed aside, to plunge into politics and trade? God bless us! do women wish to forsake those, to go to these? Then they are quarrelling with God, and He will punish them. It is not for me to say how, but He will surely do it, because His laws are eter- nal and unchangeable. Is it possible that as blacksmith you will be a charmer? Is it possible as ploughman, as judge on the bench~ or as senator in Congress? Impossible indeed! I would say a word of caution, therefore, against be- ing deluded by the honey-fugling tongue of Mrs. Train; I would suggest that you fit yourself, in every possible way, to be charmer, lover, and loyal wife and moth- er; for then your day will surely come, your day of glory and blessedness. It is a pity how many failures there are in this. life, how little perfectness; and~. there- fore, how little comfort. I must again insist upon queenly mothers, and royal families, and perfect homes; and these are what woman can and does create. Now, as I have preached my little sermon, I will only offer one, further il 862 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Mar. lustration of some of the evil things which do exist; and then I will ask you to put this paper under your pil- lows, and dream on it. My friend groaned over his enormous rent and his enormous expenditures, which he found it impossible to con- troL Strange as it may seem, he asked my advice. He said: I cannot get along with it. I dont know how it is, but the money goes. Every time my wife and daughters go out of my door, it is to spend money, to buy something which they fancy they must have; but which they need as much as I do a stream of water down my back. What shall I do I I cannot stop it; they must do it,so they say. I ventured mildly to suggest that the rural districts offered less temptations for the indulgence of such an insanity. He interrupted me: But they wont gonot at all. They say they are not going to be shut up in a stt~Ad village. They wont go into my old homesteadno balls, no parties, no shops, no nothing. I ventured again to speak of sky, air, earth; of clouds and sunshine; of the charms of rural occupations; of gar- dens, and cows, and horses; of making butter and raising chickens; of being useful as well as ornamentaland so on. He smiled a pitying smile. I fear it was flavored with a dash of contempt. I fear he thought I was a fooland I fear I was. Whatiny daughters! Afy wife! was all he said. He turned away, and I went to my lonely room, to my lonely bed. Many a time I had lamented my own miserable state; but I contrasted it with my friends, and I resolved that I would not hastily add another to the noble army of martyrs. I returned the slippers that a fascinating widow had worked for me, with a pious fiction, that they did not fit may God pardon me Iand since that day I have not dared to looK upon her friendly face. EDIToRs PosTsclurT.Mr. Thom. White is, no doubt, a very eloquent, and, we trust, popular preacher; but he will pardon us, if, while commending his general purpose, we suggest that he may have beenin the digression in this discourse on the employments of womena little too sweeping in certain of his generalizations. A protest may surely be entered against the notion, if the article bear such an interpretation, of the destiny of women being marriage orstarvation. We admit the orators good intentions and chivalrous regard for the sex, and honor him accordingly; but, as a practical question, he somewhat unnecessarily limits the female sphere of activity. We, at least, are not will- ing to enrol ourselves with that class of philosophers described by the late Mrs. Kirkland, who think of womans career of industry as bounded at one end by a shirt, and at the other by a pudding-bag. Her history and that of advancing civilization tell a different story. As for the capacities and achieve- ments of woman in the higher fields of literature and art, her record is far too brilliant and imposing to call for any vindication or apology on that score. Without being unsexed herself, there arc surely various light avocations now engrossed by unsexed men which woman might enter upon with advan- tage to herself and to the community. There would, for instance, be no injury to society in her enjoying a monopoly of the retail trade in the articles, at least, of ladies apparel. This exchange alone would set free many thousands of handsome young fellows who might do credit to themselves and be an equal ornament to society in far more import- ant pursuits. Drawing for manufac- tures, the teaching of languages, the work of instruction generally, the more quiet clerkships, the minor editorial in- dustries in our newspaper officesthese and other kindred engagements might, profitably for all parties, be interposed for the support of woman. 1868.] OUT-OF-THE-WAY Booxs AND AUTHORS. 868 OUT-OF-THE-WAY BOOKS AND AUTHORS. I. THE WOHKS OF THOMAS ADAMS. WE propose occasionally, as humor and opportunity may serve, to take, for familiar discourse, a volume from our shelves which that much-devouring per- sonage, the general reader, may not have met with. We speak condition- ally; for it is impossible at this time of day, when persons of no particular literature at the start, and, perhaps, at the end, have distinguished themselves as collectors in the seemingly erudite school of Spenser and Dibdin, to say what book any reader has not seen or may not have in his possession. We may, very likely, in the course of these articles, to ~om e persons out of the mil- lions Putnam~ hopes and intends to have for his audience, be carrying coals to Newcastlebe found expatiating on the merits of an author as readily to be admitted as, for instance, those of Rob- inson Crusoe a work, by the way, which, being known mainly through pictures and abridgments, the public may not be so well acquainted with as it thinks itself to be. We might probably find novelty and undreamt- of profit and entertainment even there. It; however, we chance to stumble upon the favorite, familiar author of any reader, he must pardon any innocent pretension we may have been obliged to make in the premises. No one can publish any thing whatever without some pretension. If there were no pre- tension, there would be no literature a truism we commend to the kind at- tention of critics. We must take the risk of having something out of the way, at least of most readers, to write about; and as for any thing else, the less, no doubt, that is said about it, the better. We may premise, however, that we have a store of good literature, not to be picked up every day in Nassaustreet, to draw upon. Looking at these shelves, which it has taken more decades than it is worth while here to recount to stock with their precious burden, the thought occurs to us, what an interest- ing story might be made of the history of a library in its growth and forma- tion, with its elements of education, study, forethought, selection, accident, and opportunity. We do not, of conrse, mean by the word library what is ordinarily called by that name in acres of brown-front houses, where there is usually to be found something digni- fied with that appellation. There are plenty of such affairschance medleys of worn-out novels, religious magazines, and such-like; or, perhaps, something better, bookcases filled to order on the safe and respectable principle, for which the catholic sensibilities of Elia had so little sympathy books which no gen- tlemans library should be without. There are, we understand, eminent un- dertakers in that line, who furnish these things by contract; who will cover so many square yards of wall with volumes, which is the ordinary way; or, what is akin in convenience, will supply so many hundred dollars worth. Most of us know the complexion of such collections in the houses of the rich, as well as Mr. Ebbs or Mr. Kernotbooks mainly in sets, with an eye to uniformity, and with a certain patchwork appearance in the arrangement and relief of titles; vol- umes bound, all of them with elegance, in various degrc~cs of costliness, from crushed Levant morocco, through tree calf, to the cheap finery of marble edges. The bookssober histories, Alisonin twelve volumes, The Duke of Welling- tons Dispatches, and the like, with, happily, an infusion of Bancroft, Pres

1868.] OUT-OF-THE-WAY Booxs AND AUTHORS. 868 OUT-OF-THE-WAY BOOKS AND AUTHORS. I. THE WOHKS OF THOMAS ADAMS. WE propose occasionally, as humor and opportunity may serve, to take, for familiar discourse, a volume from our shelves which that much-devouring per- sonage, the general reader, may not have met with. We speak condition- ally; for it is impossible at this time of day, when persons of no particular literature at the start, and, perhaps, at the end, have distinguished themselves as collectors in the seemingly erudite school of Spenser and Dibdin, to say what book any reader has not seen or may not have in his possession. We may, very likely, in the course of these articles, to ~om e persons out of the mil- lions Putnam~ hopes and intends to have for his audience, be carrying coals to Newcastlebe found expatiating on the merits of an author as readily to be admitted as, for instance, those of Rob- inson Crusoe a work, by the way, which, being known mainly through pictures and abridgments, the public may not be so well acquainted with as it thinks itself to be. We might probably find novelty and undreamt- of profit and entertainment even there. It; however, we chance to stumble upon the favorite, familiar author of any reader, he must pardon any innocent pretension we may have been obliged to make in the premises. No one can publish any thing whatever without some pretension. If there were no pre- tension, there would be no literature a truism we commend to the kind at- tention of critics. We must take the risk of having something out of the way, at least of most readers, to write about; and as for any thing else, the less, no doubt, that is said about it, the better. We may premise, however, that we have a store of good literature, not to be picked up every day in Nassaustreet, to draw upon. Looking at these shelves, which it has taken more decades than it is worth while here to recount to stock with their precious burden, the thought occurs to us, what an interest- ing story might be made of the history of a library in its growth and forma- tion, with its elements of education, study, forethought, selection, accident, and opportunity. We do not, of conrse, mean by the word library what is ordinarily called by that name in acres of brown-front houses, where there is usually to be found something digni- fied with that appellation. There are plenty of such affairschance medleys of worn-out novels, religious magazines, and such-like; or, perhaps, something better, bookcases filled to order on the safe and respectable principle, for which the catholic sensibilities of Elia had so little sympathy books which no gen- tlemans library should be without. There are, we understand, eminent un- dertakers in that line, who furnish these things by contract; who will cover so many square yards of wall with volumes, which is the ordinary way; or, what is akin in convenience, will supply so many hundred dollars worth. Most of us know the complexion of such collections in the houses of the rich, as well as Mr. Ebbs or Mr. Kernotbooks mainly in sets, with an eye to uniformity, and with a certain patchwork appearance in the arrangement and relief of titles; vol- umes bound, all of them with elegance, in various degrc~cs of costliness, from crushed Levant morocco, through tree calf, to the cheap finery of marble edges. The bookssober histories, Alisonin twelve volumes, The Duke of Welling- tons Dispatches, and the like, with, happily, an infusion of Bancroft, Pres 384 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Mar. cott, and Motley, and their illustrious fellows of the home departmentare certainly very well in their wayit is to be hoped they are sometimes read but they are not to our purpose. These visible constellations shine for them- selves: our telescope shall be directed to the nebula~, unseen without aid in the blaze of night; or, we may look for the lost Pleiads of literature. There may be some, the unnamed demigods of letters, worth bringing out of obscu- rity. Time, especially in this nine- teenth century, is a hasty fellow, and drops many unconsidered trifles of value from the wallet which Ulysses, in Shakespeare, tells us he carries at his back. With this preamble, we fall toa grace to the coming coursesupon the works~~ of an old English Church di- vine. Of all the neglected species of literary composition, the perishables sown in the sands~ of Time, saving, perhaps, defunct chancery-bills and modem novels, old sermons have probably most surely pass- ed into oblivion. Nay, a sermon may not he very old to meet this fate. How many of the eloquent Boanerges, the Sons of Thunder, may we call to mind in this very city, who but a few years ago were lauded, and followed for the charm of their gifted oratory; upon whose lips hung persuasion, whose honeyed periods rolled smoothly in waves of sound over an entranced audi- ence: and now, what has become of all these felicities of expression? These ad- mired discourses were mostly written, and some of them have been printed. Where have they gone? There should be a precious mass of manuscript some- where, but no one seems to take any account of it; and, as for the books and pamphlets, they certainly are not the live stock of the booksellers of Broadwayyou may ~eek for them in that weltering mass of fast-decaying authorship entombed in the catacomb of Gowans. It would be unfair to the present generation of preachers to sup- pose that the old sermons have found their way, here and there rejuvenated with modern trimmings, to the new pulpits. The thing might be attempt- ed as a makeshift, but we apprehend the experiment would hardly be worth trying. It would be easier, in fact, to write another. Let some juvenile ven- ture on the experiment, and preach a sermon, say that triumphant oration which gained his grandfather his doc- torate in divinity and a seat for life in the cosy parsonage of his wealthy par- ish, with all its genial accompaniments: would this happy effort of genius, once so well rewarded, secure the young man a call now? We trow not. And why? Firstly,we naturally, on such a theme, fall into its own method of divisions, all spoken eloquence, depending upon the peculiar personality of the speaker, his eye, look, voice, manner, and the rest, must look mainly for its pros- perity to him; then, secondly, there is a general habit of expression, a form and taste in literature, of one generation which become quite out of keeping in the next; and thirdly, which shall be our lastly, there is a particular change going on constantly in the wear of theo- logical opinions. We say the wear, for the old dogmas, like our old garments, hang in the wardrobe; they have not been formally discarded or consigned to the old-clothesman: we will keep them to look at occasionally, for a while longer; only we do not put them on. It would be a much easier feat for you, the reader, a gentleman, and so, to a certain extent, a man of fashion, to walk down Broadway of a fine after- noon, wearing a last-years hat, than for your clergyman to parade his mind in the old-fashioned harangue which was so graceful and pleasing, so con- vincing and overpowering, to the fathers and mothers of the still miserable sin- ners in the pews beneath him. We are all this while supposing the sermons to be really good, fresh, original composi- tions of their day; for, if they were not, it would hardly be necessary to account for their going into oblivion. To sheer~ unmitigated dulness, we have nothing to say. Let it perishthe sooner the betterand reap the fruit of its own 1868.] OUT-OF-THE-WAY Booxs AND Ar~rnons. 365 devices. But we would protest against our old father Time, the devourer of his offspring, swallowing all, good and bad alike. We would at least pluck a dainty morsel from his jaws ia the revival, in a few pages of this magazine, of a verita- ble antique, and consequently, accord- ingly to our theoryand the fact of the casean almost unknown divine. It would probably cost the best estab- lished and safely presumptuous pastor of our day his place in the pockets and affections of the most enduring of con- gregations, if he were to take the ser- mons ivhich we are about to look into, with him to the pulpit; yet they are not the less, on that account, worthy of study, if it were only historically; while, though in a phraseology strange to modern ears, they will be found to tell that tale of human hopes and fears as novel to us to-day, and of as undy- ing interest, as to any, the remotest of our fathers. The Wqrkes of Tho: Adams. Being the summe of his Sermons, Meditations, and other Divine and Moral Discourses. Collected and Published in one intire volume. With additions of some New, and Emendations of the Old. The Titles whereof are placed in the begin- ning of the Booke: And a Table of the principal points, in the end. 2 Cor. 12. 15. I will very gladly spend and be spent for your soules. Sine merito, non sine commodo. London: Printed by Tho. Harp~r for John Grismand, and are to be sold at his shop in Inie Lane, at the signe of the Gunne. 1629. folio, pp. 1240, Index, pp. 12. A Commentary or Exposition upon the Divine Second Epistle General, writ- ten by the Blessed Apostle St. Peter. By Thomas Adams. 1 Peter 5. 10. The God of all grace, who hath called irs into his eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after that ye have suffered a while, make you perfect, stablish, strengthen, settle you: To ~im be glory and dominion, for ever and ever, Amen. London: Printed by Richard Badger for Jacob Bloome. MDCXXXIIL The Second Tome. Imprinted by Fe- lix Kingston, for Jacob Bloome. 1633, folio, pp. 1764; pp. 801, 1634.* Index, pp. 26. Such, in full, are the titles of the most comprehensive works of an English divine of the seventeenth century, some of whose interesting traits of thought and discourse, subtle, earnest, learned, quaint, colored by the animating inci- dents of a period as well worth study- ing as any in the annals of our English- speaking race, we propose to bring be- fore our readers. Before proceeding with this work, it is but a simple act of generosity to a departed friend to relate how we be- came first acquainted with the rare and peculiar merits of Thomas Adams. It was but a glimpse we had of this ven- erable author at the outset; but that glimpse determined our knowledge of the man, though many years were to elapse before we gained the opportunity of familiarity with his writings. The introduction happened on this wise: It was about a quarter of a century ago that, one eveningwe were all residing then in New YorkC. W., the most learned in all handy and much recondite knowledge of bibliopoles, summoned the present writer to accompany him in a call upon the late Rev. Dr. John 0. Choules, then in charge of a congrega- tion in the city. There are probably many of our readers, so rapid are the changes of our society, to whom the name of this estimable clergyman is quite unknown; though we may safely say there are few, who, having once come into contact with him, have for- gotten him. It is not very long ago, however, that it would have been quite superfluous to introduce Dr. Choules to any assembly of preachers, scholars, editors, politicians, or merchants gath- ered on any public or private occasion, * The want of sequence in the numbering of the pages between the drst and second volumes is not a solution of continuity, hut simply an error of the press, probably from the volumes heing entrusted to different printers. This work on the Epistle of St. Peter was republished, with some changes, revised and corrected by James Sherman, Minister of Surrey chapel, in a royal-octavo edi- tion by flenry G. Bohn in 1848. There has been no reprint of the Workes. 366 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Mar. between New York and Cincinnati, Boston and Washington. An English- man by birth, a native of Bristol, ani- mated in his youth by the kindling elo- quence of Robert Hall, he came to America to discharge the duties of a clergyman of the Baptist denomination. He was, at first, principal of an academy on the Hudson, and then a pastor in the city of New York, in the vicinity of Boston, and finally at Newport, Rhode Island. The pupils whom he had under his charge, as another parent, brought him into close personal relations with many wealthy merchants, notably among them Commodore Vanderbilt, whom he accompanied in his interesting pleasure North-Star steamboat excursion to the waters of Northern Europe and the Mediterranean; and of which expedi- tion, Dr. Choules, in an agreeable vol- ume, became the historiographer. Then, the Doctors various clerical positions led him to the knowledge of many; but he came to know a great many more from the irrepressible activity of his genial, hearty, spontaneous nature. He had a passion for locomotion and so- ciety; and, happily, living in an age of railroads, was, along the Atlantic coast, at least, well-nigh ubiquitous. He knew all the leading politicians, all the edit- ors; carried about with him, rolled up in his compact, jolly Horatian person, teres et rotundus, an infinite fund of sympathy for all the intellectual and philanthropic movements of the day; his honest face shining on every plat- form; his counsel lightening the per- plexities of every caucus; his gossip of Webster, with whom he was intimate, and of the political magnates, anticipat- ing tl~e newspaper press~~ in revela- tions of the latest Astor-House intelli- gence, or of the committee chambers at Washington. Was he not among the first to detect the rising political great- ness of H. J. R., whom, as he proudly boasted, he had sped on his editorial pathway? Was there a President elected in his time whose horoscope he had not long before successfully calculated? though, in the perversity of things human, one or two of his pet candidates, upon whom he had bestowed his most vigorous enthusiasm, failed to reach the goal. A kindly, cheerful man, to live and let live, great in the pulpit, greater at the social board, was John Overton Choules. Above all, he was a reader and lover of good books; and he introduced us, on that evening which we mention- ed a few sentences ago, to Thomas Adams. Taking the volume from a lower shelf of his extensive collection, he filled the intervals of a bounteous repast withto an intellectual epicure the more gustatory delights of the quaint wit, the pointed sayings, the earnest adjurations, of this folio of Thomas Adams. There are not three Bruscambilles in Christendom, said the stall-man to my Father in Tris- tram Shandy, except what are chained up in the libraries of the curious; and we verily believe round and amia- ble Dr. Choules thought the same of his Adams. Have you ever seen the book before? Have you ever heard of it? What do you think of this, and of this? as, like Sancho, plunging his flesh-hook into th~ meat-caldrons at ~ Camachos wedding, he fished up dainty after dainty. We left the house of the good pastor, that evening, feeling that we had made the acquaintance of a truly hospitable man. We admired, but did not envy him the possession of that book; nor did we seek, by any suggestions or requests, to borro~v the priceless volume. Only we did not for- get it: it might some day turn up, and, if we could, we would purchase it. Twenty or more years passed awaywe had read the titles of thousands of vol- nines before we again saw the folio of old Adams. The Workes then fell under the hammer of Mr. Merwin; and though several doctors of divinity and knowing book-dealers were present thanks for their blissful unconsciousness we p~rchased it, without competition, for a song. They probably let it pass as a lumbering book of unprofitable sermons. We shall see if they were right. The original folios of the Ex- position of St. Peters Epistle we sub- sequently found, a trifle worm-eaten, in 1868.1 OUT-OF-THE-WAY Booxa AND AuTHORS. 867 that multitudinous assemblage of old volumes, so well known to book-hun- ters, the storehouse of Gowans. He had something more than a suspicion of the worth of the old divine. Taking the books physically or ma- terially, they are not to be despised. There are more than 2,800 registered folio pages in them, to which are to be added the table and topical in- dex, ending with a distressing confes- sion which might be appended to most volumes: There be many unhappy mistakes in the printing of this book: with which no ingenious reader will charge the author; who was constrain- ed (in his absence) to trust all upon the corrector. Each of these pages con- tains a solid mass of type within the border-lines of ten inches by six. That may be measured; but who may count the intellectual portions, the logical di- visions and subdivisions, hair-splittings numberless, the infinity of texts, the parcelling ~out of sins and virtues, the sharp expostulations, the marrowy con- ceits, even the puns, the quips, the jests, the clinches, the fables, anecdotes, apo- logues, aphorisms, applications, the mer- ry tales, the intellectual junkets, of this enlivening book of devotion l The six- ty-four discourses of the Workes are, for the most part, exhaustive trea- tises, and many of them would fill dis- tinct volumes, if they were published like the works of Guthrie and others of the present daywith this difference, that the text of Adams, bristling with his thousands of citations and aphor- isms, would far surpass these his mod- ern successors in fulness of matter. The Commentary on St. Peter fol- lows the Epistle chapter by chapter, verse by verse, word by word, from the beginning to the end, expatiating upon that vast body of doctrine, practical and spiritual; the author adding his own life and the experience of the ages burning lamps in illumination of the text of the Apostle. Of the biography of Adams we have been able to learn but little. His name is omitted in all the popular histories of English literature. Fuller, a bird of the same feather, who should have been one of his sworn admirers, has nothing of him in his Worthies of England. Cattermole, in his Literature of the Church of England, does not mention him; only Southey, in his Common- place Book, has a few striking pas- sages from one or two of the sermons, and somewhere commends him for the possession of all the oddity and felici- ty of Fullers manner. This, Darling tells us in his special Cyclopa3dia Bil3lio- graphica, with the information that he was, in 1614, preacher of Gods word at Willington, in Bedfordshire; that he afterwards became Rector of St. Bennets, Pauls Wharf London, from which he was sequestered for his loyalty in the Grand Rebellion, and died before the Restoration. It was in London, .therefore, we may presume, that his ge- nius was chiefly fostered. He dedicates his Workes, in 1629, To my dearely beloved charge, the Parishioners of St. Bennets; and looking at their varied contents, so fully informed by the spirit of the times, it is difficult to suppose that so much eloquence could have been generated under any other influences than the concentrated interests of the metropolis. W~ look upon him, then, as essentially a London preacher, a pop- ular speaker to the people, a successor in the same city to silver-tongued Smith, to whom Fuller did pay a genial tribute; and, like him, a follower in another reign of the independence, hon- est eloquence, and homely genius of Latimer. Adams, who as a popular preacher may have had some Puritan sympathies, was, as we have seen, no Puritan; but a sufferer for State or Church. Writing in his quaint way of the salt of the word, he says, Indeed, a man may overpowder, and there is discretion in salting. There are some that have had too much salt, till they are ready to throw the Church out at the windows; the name of a Bishop frights them, a surplice makes them run: they fear a cross worse than the devil does. These are overpowdered but with ill salt; they are corrupt and must be new salted. 368 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Mar. The central and best years of Adams pulpit ministrations were probably co- eval with the reign of James I. At the date of his folio of sermons, Charles I. had been four years on the throne, and Laud, ascending the ladder of promo- tion, for a twelvemonth Bishop of Lon- don. Dr. Donne, the most notable of the court-divines in the city, died two years later, having filled, to the admira- tion of many of the best men in the country, for the preceding ten years, the pulpit of St. Pauls. The sainted Andrews, Bishop of Winchester, died in 1626, and, the following year, Joseph Hall was promoted to the see of Exeter. Hooker had departed at the beginning of the century, leaving the rich treasure of his Ecclesiastical Polity. Ussher was pursuing his learned career in Ire- land. It was an age of great men in the Church, and of fulness of thought and imagination in every department of lite- rature. Whenever you see a book bearing the date of that seventeenth -century, was the advice of Coleridge, be sure it is worth your reading. Under these influences Adams wrote and preached. He was evidently a man of great and various culture; not so solid in his style and attainments as some of the High Church divines who were his contemporaries; somewhat given to vagaries of thought and ex- pression; reflecting the humors and prejudices of his day; deeply marked in his style by the affectations and free- doms of the popular sermonizers; but withal a learned, vigorous, resolute ex- pounder of the faith, a sympathetic student of his fellow-men, his percep- tions alive at every pore, his faculties seizing every weapon, old and new, out of books or from the manners of the day, to fight the never-ending battle against sin, the flesh, and the devil, and exalt men in the scale of life toward the heights of eternity. The very titles of these discourses show their quality The Gallants Burden, an appeal to Epicurism aad false security in its various forms from the text, The morning cometh, and also the night; The White Devil, or the Hypocrite Uncased, which was preached at Pauls Crosse in 1612; Politicke Hunting, an improvement of the conduct of Esau; The Three Divine Sisters, Faith, Hope, and Char- ity; The Fatal Banket, where we are called to look upon a feast where the guests are the vices; The Sinners Passing Bell; The World of Mad Men; Spiritual Eye-Salve, or the Benefit of Illumination; The Soldiers Honour, and the likeall bright and animated, picturesque, filled with cun- ning devices of the orator to catch the ear and touch the feelings. There is not a trick or contrivance of popular preach- ing, in warning or appeal, which Adams did not employ; not an avenue to the heart which he did not traverse. His versatility, his invention, his memory, his reading, are everywhere. Wander- ing over his pages, we need no artful balancing of the critical divining-rod to detect beneath an arid surface the living spring. Well-nigh every sen- tence is a salient fountain. Perhaps, after the endless ramifica- tions of his animate divisions of the text, his pages With centric and eccentric scribbled oer, Cycle and epicycle, orb in orb, by which the reader, in the old-fashion- ed sermonizing of the day, is hemmed in by perpetual labyrinthine turns, the most constant quality of Adams ser- mons is the impetuous charge of his thronging illustrations. He never moves with a single idea, but throws vast bodies of infantry in clouded masses upon the foe. The fort is gained by the rapidity of the movement and the num- ber of the assailants. See, in this pas- sage from The Contagion of Sinne, how Adams, with whip and spur, drives on in breathless haste his brilliant array of examples and comparisons: The Frenchmen have a military prover~ The loss of a nail, the loss of an army. The wantof a nail loseth the shoe, the loss of a shoe troubles the horse, the horse endangereth the rider, the rider, breaking his rank, molests the company, so far as to hazard the whole army. From slender and re- gardless beginnings, grow out those fatal and de- structive effects. The doors are shut, the thief can- not enter; a little boy is put in at the window, and he opens the door for the great thicf: so the house 1868.1 OUT-OF-THE-WAY Booxs AND AUTHORS. 869 is robbed. A charm is cast in at the window, eye or ear; that quickly unlocks the door of the heart, till all the rooms be ransacked, not a piece of virtue or one gem of grace left. Pompey, marching to the wars, requested to lodge his army in a certain city, by whose borders he must needs pass; the governor answered that he would not trouble his city with so numerous and dangerous a guest. Pompey theu desired but entertainment and relief for his sick soldiers, who were perishing for want of succor: the governor thought sick men could do them no mischief; this was granted, they admitted. Being there awhile, they recovered their health, opened the gates to the rest, so became strong enough to take the city. If Satan cannot get leav& for his whole army of lusts, yet he begs hard for his weak ones, as sins of infirmity; but those sickly soldiers soon get strength to surprise th.e soul. Adams knew well the uses of the par- able, the fable, the apologue, in impress- ing truth upon the mind and heart. To what purpose, says he, in one of his discourses on the Epistle of St. ?eter, do we interpose a fable? To make you believe that it is literally true? No; but to work an impression of the moral use into your hearts. If we tell you that i~sops dog lost the substance by catching at the shadow, you apprel~end our meaning, that men lose God by catching at Mammon; or, that the fly on the chariot-wheel gave out that she made all that glorious dust, you know we mean, that a vain-glorious man brags more than does. Thus his Christian philosophy ever teaches by example. He knew, too, the value of constant surprise in this popular rheto- ric; and how weariness was to be driven away or rendered impossible by a rapid succession of varied imagery. So, without intermission, he follows up his hold upon the audience gained by that story of Pompeys soldiery, with a picturesque fable reaching the same end by a different route, still blending entertainment with instruction, and gaining conviction by the aid of the imagination. The trees of the forest held a solemn parliament, wherein they consulted of the innumerable wrongs the axe had done them: therefore made an act, that no tree should hereafter lend the axe a helve, on pain of being cut down. The axe travels up and down the forest, begs wood of the cedar, oak, ash, elm, even to the poplar; not one would lend him a chip. At last he desired so much as would serve him to cut down the briers and bushes; alleging that those shrubs did suck away the juice of the ground, hinder the growth, and obscure the glory of the fair and goodly trees. Hereon they were content to afford him so much. when he had got- ten his helve, he cut down themselves also. These be the subtle reaches of sin: give it but a little ad- vantage, on the fairpromisesto removethytroubles; and it will cut down thy soul also. Therefore, obsta princnpiis: trust it not in the least. consider a sin (as indeed it is) a crucifying of christ. Wilt thou say, I may crucify christ a little? I may scourge his flesh, wound his side, pierce his heart a little? Whet man loves the Lord Jesus, who would either say it or do it? consider thy falling into sin a hurling of thyself down from some high pinnacle: wilt thou say, I may break my neck a little? con- sider it a casting thyself into unquenchable fire; wilt thou say, I may burn my soul and body a lit- tie? As suffering, we think the last misery too great, so sinuing, let us think the least irdquity too great. So, avoiding also little sins, we shall find great favor with Jesus christ. This is a powerful close to a well- knitted discourse. By how many such and kindred labors of the faithful preacher have the people of England and America been advanced among the nations in their efforts and attain- ments in Christian civilization. There is something sublime in this continuity of effort, maintained Sunday after Sun- day, in every zone and throughout all longitudes, on sea and land, for ages of Christendom, wherever the Cross has found a foothold. Setting aside, for the moment, the religious and moral in- fluences of such a movement, who shall measure its merely intellectual force? Adams, following the example of a long array of Church authorities Roman and Protestant, from the days of the Fathers, was a violent assailant of the usurers of his time; making, according to the habit of the old theologians, no discrimination between legitimate or moderate and excessive interest. To take any interest on money, in his eyes, was a crime, scripturally, because it had been forbidden to the Jews by the law of Moses, and, what he did not perceive was a direct consequence of this uncall- ed-for extension of the prohibition, eco- nomically or charitably, because the peo- ple suffered by the gains of the moneys lenders. Though a statute of Elizabeth had legalized taking of interest, by fix- ing the rate at ten per cent., the preach- ers, as Henry Smith, still maintained the higher law of the Church. If Gods law forbids you, says he to the lenders, can any law of man excuse 8~0 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Mar. thee? The consequence was, that the more interest was put in disrepute, or endangered by prejudice, the louder be- came the demand to cover the risks. It was yet to be a long time before the science of political economy in this matter came to the relief of conscience and of trade. Meantime, Adams and his fellows thumped their pulpit cush- ions, and shook their fists at the usurers. It is indeed, he says, a thriving oc- cupation. Usury is like that Persian tree, that at the same time buds, blos- soms, and bears fruit.... Every bond the usurer takes of others, enters him into a new obligation of Satan: as he hopes his debtors will keep day with him, the Devil expects no less of him- self. Every forfeit he takes, score sup a new debt to Lucifer; and every mort- gaged land he seizeth upon, enlargeth his dominions in hell. A father, making provision for his family after his death, puts out money for his children, who are by this means dyed in the very wool of their youth with the scarlet wicked- ness of usury. All this and more is summed up in a character of the usurer: He hath a lean cheek, a meagre body, as if he were fed at the devils allowance. His eyes are almost sunk to the hack of his head th admha- tion of money. His ears are set to tell the clock; his whole carcase a mere anatomy. Some usurers have fatter caresses, and can find in their hearts to lard Ibelr flesh; but a common meagreness is upon all their consciences. Fressuspecuniee, funus assimes. Some spin usury into such fine threads of distinc- tion, that they take away all the names by which it offends: and because It is a dogged letter, and they conceive a toothless practise, interest, usury, and all terms with r in them shall be put out, assd the usurer shall be called only one that Uses up his monies. All his reaches are at riches. His wit works like a mole to dig himself through earlh into helL Plutarch writes strangely of hares, eode~e tern- pore et parere, et elere et dies c pere fcetus: nt one time to bring forth, nourish, and to conceive. Your usurer makes his money do all this at once. He drowns the noise of the peoples curses with the music of his money; as the Italians, in a great thunder, ring their hells and shoot off their can- nons, by an artificial noise of their own to dead the natural of broken clouds. His practise mocks phi- losophy, Quod ex ssihilo nihit fit, and teaches of nothing to get something. He is a rank whore- master with his mistress Pecunia, and lives upon the lechery of metals. He doth that office for the devil on earth, that his spirits do in hellwhip and torment poor souls. His blows are without fence; except men (as Strepolades desired) could pluck the moon out of the sky, his month and day will come. Nature bath set a pitch or term inall inferior things, when they shall cease to increase. Old cattle breed no longer; doted trees deny fruit; the tired earth becomes barren; only the usurers money, the longerit breeds, the lustier; and a hundred pounds put out twenty years since, is a great-grandmother of two or three hundred children; pretty strip- lings, able to beget their mother again in a short time. Verily the wit of Adams is piquant as its subject. Untiring, it teems with a constant succession of conceits. How these unseemly pretences of wealth are lashed! how Dives is followed up in his pages! It is even a maxim in common aceeptation, Ho is wise that is rich. Rich and wise are convertible terms, imagined to signify one thing. When the rich man speaks, all the people give (bare-headed) silence and attention. As if no argument could evince such a necessity as the Chief Priests to Judastenlum dabo, so much will I give thee. Tasstus valor in quatuor syllebis. Such force is there in four syllables and but two words. It i~ not only eloquence, but enchantment; and they that use it prevail like sorcerers; unless, perhaps, they light upon (multis e millibus nouns) a Peter Thou and thy money be damned together. The reader will observe, in this last citation (Acts viii. 20), the variation from the established version, Thy money perish with thee for the use of King James translation was not then fully established; and, indeed, the ser- mon may have been preached before 1611. The example is also worth not- ing as an instance of the value of that version in raising and preserving the tone of biblical language. Adams ren- dering, to modern ears, has a sound of familiar street profanity. There were two great events in Eng- lish history fresh in the recollection of Adams auditors, of which he made profitable use in his denunciations of the Pope, who was then, and not with- out reason, a stan ding mark for the shafts sped from the pulpits of England. These were the attempted invasion of Philip, by the Spanish armada, in 1~88, and the Gunpowder Plot early in the succeeding reign. We may imagine the effect of a passage like this, addres~ed to a popular audience at the beginning of the century: Have they seot specl~ have they not divided the prep? So the proud adversary in that wonderful year, 88; that came with an invincible navy and implacable fury; the ensigns of whose ships were Victoria, victoria; brought ready with them instrn 871 OUT-OF-THE-WAY Boons AND AUTIIOIIS. 1868.] ments of torture; as if the land of peace and money had in it no such engines of cruelty; and swallowed down an abundant hope of our desolation. They threw at dice for our wives and daughters, lands and vineyards, houses and heritages, shires and kingdom. They purposed to drive us through fire and water; but fire and water was their destruc- tion. Fire broke the sinews of their combination, and the waves drowned both their hopes and them- selves. There is a quaint improvement of the Guy Fawkes affair in an enforcement of the treacherous capacity of the heart: That which we call gunpowder is made of the salt and fatter earth: in the ground are the mate- rials, which, when Art bath concocted, chymd, prepared, charged, and discharged, it overturns towers and towns, forts and cities. We were once too near proving (by a woful experience) the vio- lence of it; but the goodness of our Lord Jesus averted it. So in thy earth, thy heart, there is this salt and spumy matter, the mineral of treason; unless the reason of a man and religion of a chris- tian keep it from eruption. Thou art resolved never to think highly of thine own worth, yet thou hast the seed of pride within thee: thou art naturally (as Luther said) horn with a Pope in thy belly. The quotations of Adams are not his least striking passages. Like Jeremy Taylor, he presses the profane wits of antiquity into his service Plautus not too heavy, nor Seneca too light. He quotes from Virgil, from Ovid, from Cicero, from Horace, and a host of others. Thus, in reference to the pen- alty of mankind for the sin of Adam, we have this Horatian gloss: As if we might say to every son of man, as Horace sung to his friend: Delietct mci- jorurm immeritus lues: Thou, being innocent dost suffer for thy nocent su- periors. This a philosopher objected against the gods; strangely conferring it, as if for the fathers disease, physic should be ministered to the son. Again, there is this happy use of a \Tirgilian te~ct in deprecation of mans imputing his misery to Heaven: Let us look home to our own flesh; from thence it cometh that destroyeth. ilk, me adsum quifeci. Here is a pulpit use of a fa- miliar couplet which would hardly be admitted into a modern sermon: Phy- sicians have a rule among themselves concerning their patients: Take while they be in pain. For whatever they promise sick, when they are well they will not perform it. You have often heard that old verse: Damon languebet, menachus tune ease velebet, Damon convcluit, darn ut cute fuit. And as wittily Englished: The devil was sick, the devil a monk would be; The devil was well, the devil a monk was he. Pithy sentences, flavoring divinity with wit, and not without an occa- sional tincture of poetry, abound in these sermons. Conscience he defines, Gods deputy in the souL Sin, in deprecation of the idea of a Providence at war with the welfare of man, he powerfully describes as a bastard brought into Gods house by stealth. Elsewhere he says, It struck a scar on the crystal brow of nature itself. To leave sin, says he, when sin leaves us, will never pass for true repentance a saying which we have somewhere met with in another form, in an epigram: When reformation thus begins, With legs so weak and eyes so dim, The sinner does not quit his sins, For then, in truth, his sins quit him. The covetous wretch that dares not eat an egg lest he should lose a chick- en, is one of Adams strong original proverbs. Here is another: We hang other mens faults at the pommel of the saddle, put our own in the cloak-bag behind us. They dye their hairs too, says Adams of the ladies of his day; but this seems to be no new fashion. For Cyprian writes of it in his time: Fceminex erines 8U08 S4ftciunt malo prcesagio, capillos enim 8i1fl flami- neos auspicctrt non metuunt. They got a flame-colored hairan ill presage; it is not safe coming so near that color which reminds us of quaint Fullers roaring boys, so called by an awful prolepsis, here for hereafter. Of the arrogance of old age, says Adams: It takes away wisdom from the young, and all true knowledge, as if they were waifs and strays proper only to itself as lord of the soil; and con- fines all learning into the circle of its own night-cap. Concerning mortality, he moralizes eloquently: Death is as near to the young as to the old; here is all the difference: death stands be- hind the young mans back, before the old mans face. 872 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Mar. Here is a quaint symbolism of the heart: The good heart is a receptacle for the whole Trinity; and therefore it hath three angles, as if the three persons of that one Deity should inhahit there. The Father made it, the Son hought it, the Holy Ghost sanctifles it: therefore they all three claimed a right in the heart. It hath three cells for the three persons, and is hut one heart for one God. The world cannot satisfy it: a glohe cannot fill a triangle. Only God can sufficiently content the heart. Good Bostonians, when they die, says a home-proverb of our own day, go to Paris. But there is an earlier authority for the saying in Adams. Thou that wert loath to hear of death, as having no hope of future bliss, he exclaims in one of his appeals, that wouldest not give thy possession on earth, for thy expectation in heaven: as that Freneh Cardinal that said, lie would not give his part in Paris for his part in Paradise. An ecclesiastical dig- nitary, akin to that Pope spoken of on nnother page who called all Christian- ity a table. Quantum nolns profuerit ista de Ch~sto fabula. In this comparison of the church to a city there are glimpses of old London, its perils and temptations: There is no city of sure refage, hut this city of the living God. Thou thinkest thyself secure, he- cause an inhahitant of this famous London. No; thou livest in an island, and therefore in danger of the sea; in a Christian island, therefore in danger of the Turk; in a Protestant island, therefore in danger of the Pope; in a chief city of the island, therefore in danger of the devil. The city is peril- ous for pride: the more spectators, the more aecla- mations; the larger the theatre, the louder the applause. The solemn assemhly in cesarca puffed up amhitions tiered to his own destruction. The people shouted, Vex Dei; hut the worms confuted their flattery and his folly. Simon Magus ventured that flight in a city, to which in an ohscure village he had neither heen tempted nor would have attempted. And whether quick comings in of money make not this city unsafe to many souls, miserahle experience hath evinced. Prseceps lu- cruns, princeps damnum: sudden profit is capital loss. But suppose men care not so much for the safety of their souls, are their hodies secure? Thieves, homicides, fires, deny it. lint if they scape all these fires, yet not the last fire. Your huckets may quench other fires, not this; no milk nor vinegar can extinguish that wild fire. As, in the days of Noah, a dove could not set down her foot for water, so nor at this day for fire. Let this meditation, like a fortunate storm, drive you to harhor: the weakness of all cities in the world, to the safety of the city of God. Old London, with its wooden houses and scant resources in time of conflagra- tion, was in the next generation to real- ize Adams vision, when the great fire of 1666 devoured, with so large a por- tion of the city, the very churches in which he had preached. St. Bennets, with its monument of Inigo Jones, and St. Gregorys, actually attached to and a part, as it were, of old St. Pauls, went down with the great cathedral. Prob- ably many of his folios also perished on that occasion with the booksellers shops and warehouses in the vicinity. The great fire consumed a vast deal of valuable literature; the only wonder is that so much escaped. All the literature of Shakespeares day deserves to be studied for the light which it casts upon the spirit of the great dramatist. In one of Adams dis- courses, The Way Home, we are di- rectly reminded of Mercutios famous passage in Romeo and Juliet. Queen Mab has been with the divine also. The particular suggestions in Several instances are the same in the play and the sermon. The courtier, the lawyer, the lover, the soldier, are in both. Every one can recall Shakespeare. Adams is treating of the manner of dreams; and has come to the head affection, which lie illustrates by a striking quotation from Claudian, followed by a kindred apoplithegm from St. Augustine, somni- urn nascitur e~ studiis pralteritis, and thus reinforced, goes on in his own manner. What man desires in the day, he dreams in the night. The hun- ters mind is in the forest, while his wearied bones are reposed on a soft bed. The soldier dreams of batteries, assaults, encounters; the lawyer of quirks and demurs; the citizen of tricks and frauds; the musician of crotchets, the Seminary of equivoca- tions. The glutted epicure dreams of dainty dishes and fat morsels. The thirsty drunkard dreams of his liquors, and behold he drinketh; but awake, his thirst is not satisfied. The usurer dreams of his trunks, and that he is telling his gold; and starts as if every rat were a thief breaking in upon him. The timorous dream that they are flying 1868.] OUT-or-THE-WAY BooKs M~ AUTHORS. 373 before overtaking danger. The lustful imagines his desired embracings. The angry, that he is fighting, killing, spoil- ing; the secui e, that they are whistling, singing, dancing. The jealous dreams of his wifes errors while she lies chaste- ly by his side. The ambitious, that he is kissing the kings hand and mounted into the saddle of honor. The over- charged mind dreams of his employ- ment. For a dream eometh through the multitude of business. How rare, how imaginative is his com- ment on the text, Dust and Ashes 1 Dust, the only compounder of differ- ences, the absolver of all distinctions: who can say which was the client, which the lawyer: whieh the borrower, which the lender: which the captive, which the conqueror, when they all lie together in blended dust? * * * The Dust is come of the same house that we are: and when she sees us proud and forgetful of ourselves, she thinks with herseli~, w~y should not she that is de- scended as well as we, bear up her plumes as high as ours. Therefore she so often borrows wings of the wind, to mount aloft into the air, and in the streets and highways, dasheth herself into our eyes: as if she should say, Are you my kindred, and will not know me? will you take no notice of your own mother? To tax the folly of our ambition, the dust in the street takes pleasure to be ambitious. You may learn pretty well from the sermons of Adams what human nature, from the preachers point of view, was in the age succeeding that of Elizabeth in England, and you will find it at bot- torn, when you have modernized the spelling, and looked through a few an- tiquated habits, the same human nature which confronts the pulpit of to-day to amend which Beecher, or Chapin, or our own Adams, or Osgood, or Vinton, or lligbie, or any one of a host of zealous and eloquent divines, exhausts, though in other language, the same well-worn incentives of terror and persuasion. Take that ancient sinner the usurer of Adams pen and tongue. We have seen what he was. Allowing for a little change of attire and giving him another name, he is pretty much the same being that lay-preacher, Charles Dickens, was showing up as a contemporary, from his pulpit the other evening in Scrooge: Oh! but he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping. clutch- ing, covetous old sinner. . . The cold within him from his old features, nip- ped his pointed nose, shrivelled his cheek, stiffened his gait, made his eyes red, his thin lips blue, and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice. The good old traditional miser all over. And the Pope and Jesuits of our old volume of Sermonsnot quite so for- midable now, perhaps, as they were then, but still very sufficient topics for an occasional discourse yet. And the seven deadly sinsthey are all in the world stilL If you object to the ac- count of the preacher as prejudiced, you may get the same from a very op- posite source, the popular novelists; it; indeed, they do not give you the worst statement of the two. So the world goesthe average allotment to each gen- eration and its component individuals since the days of Adam. We have but hinted at a few of the points in Adams discourses. But some- thing may have been dropped to enter- tain, to instruct, and, in accordance with the theme, to impress the readerbear- ing in mind the faithful, or, as he would have been called in his own day, pain- ful preachers own affectionate preface addressed To the Candid and Ingenu- ous Reader: I hear, (says he), of some idle drones humming out their dry derisions; that we (forsooth) affect to be men in print; as if that were the only end of these publications. But let the communication of goodness stop their mouths. Speech is only for pres- ence, writings have their use in absence: our books may come to be seen, where ourselves shall never be hear4. These may preach, when the author cannot, and (which is more) when he is not. The glory be only to God, the comfort to your souls and mine: with which prayer, I leave you to Him that never leaveth his. 874 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Mar. OUR ARTISTS. I. THE PEESIDEFT OF THE ACADEMY. WE here present a portrait * of the President of the National Academy of Design: hut it is not only as the present head of this honored institution that Mr. hUNTInGTON is justly re0arded as our most representative living artist; the versatility of his talent, the catholic liberality of his taste, and the breadth of his culture, entitle him equally to this distinction. His personal popularity is evident from the frequent choice of his confreres to represent them on social as well as professional occasions. He was selected to present the Artists tribute of respect and affection to Mr. Bryant, at the birthday-festival of the poet, celebrated by the Century Club; and he has just been elected vice-president of that association. Mr. Huntington owes the warm regard he enjoys as much to his liberal mind and kindly dispo- sition, as to his professional eminence. Born in the city of New York on the 14th of October, 1816, and educated at Hamilton College in this State, his early tendency to Art was first appa- rent in a comic vein; as a caricaturist and delineator of the homely and characteristic in ordi- nary life, the future artist is fondly remembered by the companions of his boyhood. He studied with Morse and Freeman, went abroad and sojourned many months at London, Paris, and Rome, assiduously practising his art and making a careful study of the human figure and the us~ of color. The most elaborate results of this discipline appeared in several compositions of a religious character. The Dream of Mercy and Christiana and her Children. illustrations of Bunyans popular allegorywon for the artist high commendation, and were thought by the best critics to indicate a natural and rare fitness for religious art. Although this sphere was singularly congenial to the young painter, and the illustrations of the Pil- grims Progress were followed by such pictures as Tribute-Money, The Sacred Lesson, The Good Samaritan, Roman Painters, and others of a like kind, the artist varied his work by frequent experiments in genre and landscape painting; among the former, Ichahod Crane and Katrina, and the Counterfeit Note, were deservedly much admired, both for expression and technical skill; in landscape, a marine view on the Rhode Island coast, several fine mountain and woodland scenes, and, more recently, a large landscaperepresenting Mount Chicora, New Hampshire, in Septemberattest the love of and eye for Nature charac- teristic of this artist. But he is perhaps still more distinguished for historical composition: early in his career several illustrations of English history from his pencil were favorite works of native art; and his last labor of love in this style is justly regarded as one of the few tione~ pictures of real interest and merit of which our country can boast. In delineating A Reception by Mrs. Washington, in the early days of the Republic, Mr. Huntington enjoyed a rare and congenial opportunity to display his refined taste and artistic skill. In 1850 there was a very successful exhibition of Mr. Huntingtons pictures in New York or of all that could be collectedby invitation of several of our leading citizens, most of them personal friends and admirers of the artist. Since then his time and pencil have been chiefly devoted to portraits, some of which rank among the best produced in this country; they are remarkable for refined treatment and masterly character. Of those which have been especially oommended by the public, we may instance the portraits ~of Mrs. Jane Bell, Lord Carlisle, Sir Charle~ Eastlake, Verplanek, Noycs, Morse, Agassiz, Bishop Mellvains, Dr. Muhlenberg, Bryant, Minturn, Tuckerman, John Jay, and Admiral Dupont. * From an excellent photograph by Eockwood.

874 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Mar. OUR ARTISTS. I. THE PEESIDEFT OF THE ACADEMY. WE here present a portrait * of the President of the National Academy of Design: hut it is not only as the present head of this honored institution that Mr. hUNTInGTON is justly re0arded as our most representative living artist; the versatility of his talent, the catholic liberality of his taste, and the breadth of his culture, entitle him equally to this distinction. His personal popularity is evident from the frequent choice of his confreres to represent them on social as well as professional occasions. He was selected to present the Artists tribute of respect and affection to Mr. Bryant, at the birthday-festival of the poet, celebrated by the Century Club; and he has just been elected vice-president of that association. Mr. Huntington owes the warm regard he enjoys as much to his liberal mind and kindly dispo- sition, as to his professional eminence. Born in the city of New York on the 14th of October, 1816, and educated at Hamilton College in this State, his early tendency to Art was first appa- rent in a comic vein; as a caricaturist and delineator of the homely and characteristic in ordi- nary life, the future artist is fondly remembered by the companions of his boyhood. He studied with Morse and Freeman, went abroad and sojourned many months at London, Paris, and Rome, assiduously practising his art and making a careful study of the human figure and the us~ of color. The most elaborate results of this discipline appeared in several compositions of a religious character. The Dream of Mercy and Christiana and her Children. illustrations of Bunyans popular allegorywon for the artist high commendation, and were thought by the best critics to indicate a natural and rare fitness for religious art. Although this sphere was singularly congenial to the young painter, and the illustrations of the Pil- grims Progress were followed by such pictures as Tribute-Money, The Sacred Lesson, The Good Samaritan, Roman Painters, and others of a like kind, the artist varied his work by frequent experiments in genre and landscape painting; among the former, Ichahod Crane and Katrina, and the Counterfeit Note, were deservedly much admired, both for expression and technical skill; in landscape, a marine view on the Rhode Island coast, several fine mountain and woodland scenes, and, more recently, a large landscaperepresenting Mount Chicora, New Hampshire, in Septemberattest the love of and eye for Nature charac- teristic of this artist. But he is perhaps still more distinguished for historical composition: early in his career several illustrations of English history from his pencil were favorite works of native art; and his last labor of love in this style is justly regarded as one of the few tione~ pictures of real interest and merit of which our country can boast. In delineating A Reception by Mrs. Washington, in the early days of the Republic, Mr. Huntington enjoyed a rare and congenial opportunity to display his refined taste and artistic skill. In 1850 there was a very successful exhibition of Mr. Huntingtons pictures in New York or of all that could be collectedby invitation of several of our leading citizens, most of them personal friends and admirers of the artist. Since then his time and pencil have been chiefly devoted to portraits, some of which rank among the best produced in this country; they are remarkable for refined treatment and masterly character. Of those which have been especially oommended by the public, we may instance the portraits ~of Mrs. Jane Bell, Lord Carlisle, Sir Charle~ Eastlake, Verplanek, Noycs, Morse, Agassiz, Bishop Mellvains, Dr. Muhlenberg, Bryant, Minturn, Tuckerman, John Jay, and Admiral Dupont. * From an excellent photograph by Eockwood.

874 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Mar. OUR ARTISTS. I. THE PEESIDEFT OF THE ACADEMY. WE here present a portrait * of the President of the National Academy of Design: hut it is not only as the present head of this honored institution that Mr. hUNTInGTON is justly re0arded as our most representative living artist; the versatility of his talent, the catholic liberality of his taste, and the breadth of his culture, entitle him equally to this distinction. His personal popularity is evident from the frequent choice of his confreres to represent them on social as well as professional occasions. He was selected to present the Artists tribute of respect and affection to Mr. Bryant, at the birthday-festival of the poet, celebrated by the Century Club; and he has just been elected vice-president of that association. Mr. Huntington owes the warm regard he enjoys as much to his liberal mind and kindly dispo- sition, as to his professional eminence. Born in the city of New York on the 14th of October, 1816, and educated at Hamilton College in this State, his early tendency to Art was first appa- rent in a comic vein; as a caricaturist and delineator of the homely and characteristic in ordi- nary life, the future artist is fondly remembered by the companions of his boyhood. He studied with Morse and Freeman, went abroad and sojourned many months at London, Paris, and Rome, assiduously practising his art and making a careful study of the human figure and the us~ of color. The most elaborate results of this discipline appeared in several compositions of a religious character. The Dream of Mercy and Christiana and her Children. illustrations of Bunyans popular allegorywon for the artist high commendation, and were thought by the best critics to indicate a natural and rare fitness for religious art. Although this sphere was singularly congenial to the young painter, and the illustrations of the Pil- grims Progress were followed by such pictures as Tribute-Money, The Sacred Lesson, The Good Samaritan, Roman Painters, and others of a like kind, the artist varied his work by frequent experiments in genre and landscape painting; among the former, Ichahod Crane and Katrina, and the Counterfeit Note, were deservedly much admired, both for expression and technical skill; in landscape, a marine view on the Rhode Island coast, several fine mountain and woodland scenes, and, more recently, a large landscaperepresenting Mount Chicora, New Hampshire, in Septemberattest the love of and eye for Nature charac- teristic of this artist. But he is perhaps still more distinguished for historical composition: early in his career several illustrations of English history from his pencil were favorite works of native art; and his last labor of love in this style is justly regarded as one of the few tione~ pictures of real interest and merit of which our country can boast. In delineating A Reception by Mrs. Washington, in the early days of the Republic, Mr. Huntington enjoyed a rare and congenial opportunity to display his refined taste and artistic skill. In 1850 there was a very successful exhibition of Mr. Huntingtons pictures in New York or of all that could be collectedby invitation of several of our leading citizens, most of them personal friends and admirers of the artist. Since then his time and pencil have been chiefly devoted to portraits, some of which rank among the best produced in this country; they are remarkable for refined treatment and masterly character. Of those which have been especially oommended by the public, we may instance the portraits ~of Mrs. Jane Bell, Lord Carlisle, Sir Charle~ Eastlake, Verplanek, Noycs, Morse, Agassiz, Bishop Mellvains, Dr. Muhlenberg, Bryant, Minturn, Tuckerman, John Jay, and Admiral Dupont. * From an excellent photograph by Eockwood. 1868.] MOKTHLY Onno~ncLE. 875 MONTHLY CHRONICLE. CURRENT EVENTS. UMTED STATES. ABOUT January 8th to 10th, the rumor gained credence in Washington that the Su- preme Court was abo~it to decide the Recon- struction Acts of Congress unconstitutional. The case under which the question is expected to be passed upon is that of an ex-rebel Ma- jor MeCardle, of Mississippi, who in his pa- per denounced Gen. Ord, commander of the military district, as a liar, coward, tyrant, & c., and attempted through his paper to ob- struct the operation of the law. Whether the nature of the obstruction passed the limits of legality is one of the questions in the case. Gen. Ord sent McCardle to prison, and or- dered a military tribunal, under the Act, for his trial He obtained a habeas corpus from the U. S. Circuit Court of Mississippi, which refused to interfere with the order of Gen. Ord, or to declare the Reconstruction Acts unconstitutional. From this judgment Mc- Cardle appeals to the Supreme Court. On the case being called in the Supreme Court, Attorney-General Stanberry, having given opinions against the constitutionality of the Act, declined to appear for the Government. On the preliminary question, whether it should be taken up out of its order, Gen. Grant and and Senator Trumbull appeared on behalf of the United States, and Ex-Gov. Sharkey for MeCardle. The decision of the Court on the preliminary point was reserved. The Republican National Convention is called to be held at Chicago on the 20th day of May next. The call is so framed as clear- ly to admit no delegates from the Southern States, except so far as those States shall have been reorganized under the Reconstruction Acts of Congress. The State Republican Convention for New York, to appoint delegates to the above, meets at Syracuse on 5th February. The vote given by the Ohio Legislature while it was Republican, in favor of the pro- posed 14th Constitutional Amendment, was rescinded on the 10th January by the lower House, by a vote of 52 dem. for, to 3~ rep. against. The Amendment makes citizens of all persons born in the United States, without distinction of color, and deducts from the representation in Congress according to the number of such citizens whom the laws of the State may prevent from voting. The Senate concurred on January 12th by a vote of 19 to Fi. On January 14th, the Legislature of Ohk elected Hon. A. G. Thurman, the defeated Democratic candidate for Governor at the last popular election, to be Senator of the United States in place of Benj. F. Wade, whose term expires March 4th, 1869. On January 11th, Gen. Meade, appointed by the President for supposed conservatism Commander of the Third Military District in place of Gen. Pope, removed from office the Governor (Jenkins) and State Treasurer (Jones) of the Provisional Government of Georgia, for their refusal to coi3perate with the General in taking measures for paying the members of the Reconstrnction Convention for their services under the Act of Congress. He appointed in their stead Gen. Thomas H. Ruger, Governor, and C. F. Rockwell, Treas- urer. Gen. Meades point was, that Treasurer Jones had paid the rebel Convention which took the State out of the Union, and the Re- construction Convention which assembled under the Presidents order; and there was no reason why a Convention meeting by au- thority of Congress should not be paid. Cer- tain funds due from the State Railroads were collected by order of Gen. Meade, and applied to the payment of the Convention. A further and amendatory Act of Re- construction was agreed upon by the Recon- struction Committee on January 12, the vote in committee being: yeas, Boutwell, Bingham, Farnsworth, Hubbard, Beaman, and Paine; nays, Messrs. Stevens of Penn., Brooks, and Beck. It authorizes the General of the Army to make the appointments of military com- manders and other officers under the Recon- struction Acts; repeals the power of the Presi- dent previously granted; prohibits the execu- tive and judiciary from recognizing the Pro- visional Governments as valid; and restrains the President from employing the army and navy in sustaining them by force. The Bill passed the House of Representatives, January 21, by the strict party vote of: ayes 123, rep., to 45 noes, dem. On January 13th the Senate, by a vo1~ of 35 yeas to 6 nays, adopted a resolution non-concurring in the suspension of Edwin

1868.] MOKTHLY Onno~ncLE. 875 MONTHLY CHRONICLE. CURRENT EVENTS. UMTED STATES. ABOUT January 8th to 10th, the rumor gained credence in Washington that the Su- preme Court was abo~it to decide the Recon- struction Acts of Congress unconstitutional. The case under which the question is expected to be passed upon is that of an ex-rebel Ma- jor MeCardle, of Mississippi, who in his pa- per denounced Gen. Ord, commander of the military district, as a liar, coward, tyrant, & c., and attempted through his paper to ob- struct the operation of the law. Whether the nature of the obstruction passed the limits of legality is one of the questions in the case. Gen. Ord sent McCardle to prison, and or- dered a military tribunal, under the Act, for his trial He obtained a habeas corpus from the U. S. Circuit Court of Mississippi, which refused to interfere with the order of Gen. Ord, or to declare the Reconstruction Acts unconstitutional. From this judgment Mc- Cardle appeals to the Supreme Court. On the case being called in the Supreme Court, Attorney-General Stanberry, having given opinions against the constitutionality of the Act, declined to appear for the Government. On the preliminary question, whether it should be taken up out of its order, Gen. Grant and and Senator Trumbull appeared on behalf of the United States, and Ex-Gov. Sharkey for MeCardle. The decision of the Court on the preliminary point was reserved. The Republican National Convention is called to be held at Chicago on the 20th day of May next. The call is so framed as clear- ly to admit no delegates from the Southern States, except so far as those States shall have been reorganized under the Reconstruction Acts of Congress. The State Republican Convention for New York, to appoint delegates to the above, meets at Syracuse on 5th February. The vote given by the Ohio Legislature while it was Republican, in favor of the pro- posed 14th Constitutional Amendment, was rescinded on the 10th January by the lower House, by a vote of 52 dem. for, to 3~ rep. against. The Amendment makes citizens of all persons born in the United States, without distinction of color, and deducts from the representation in Congress according to the number of such citizens whom the laws of the State may prevent from voting. The Senate concurred on January 12th by a vote of 19 to Fi. On January 14th, the Legislature of Ohk elected Hon. A. G. Thurman, the defeated Democratic candidate for Governor at the last popular election, to be Senator of the United States in place of Benj. F. Wade, whose term expires March 4th, 1869. On January 11th, Gen. Meade, appointed by the President for supposed conservatism Commander of the Third Military District in place of Gen. Pope, removed from office the Governor (Jenkins) and State Treasurer (Jones) of the Provisional Government of Georgia, for their refusal to coi3perate with the General in taking measures for paying the members of the Reconstrnction Convention for their services under the Act of Congress. He appointed in their stead Gen. Thomas H. Ruger, Governor, and C. F. Rockwell, Treas- urer. Gen. Meades point was, that Treasurer Jones had paid the rebel Convention which took the State out of the Union, and the Re- construction Convention which assembled under the Presidents order; and there was no reason why a Convention meeting by au- thority of Congress should not be paid. Cer- tain funds due from the State Railroads were collected by order of Gen. Meade, and applied to the payment of the Convention. A further and amendatory Act of Re- construction was agreed upon by the Recon- struction Committee on January 12, the vote in committee being: yeas, Boutwell, Bingham, Farnsworth, Hubbard, Beaman, and Paine; nays, Messrs. Stevens of Penn., Brooks, and Beck. It authorizes the General of the Army to make the appointments of military com- manders and other officers under the Recon- struction Acts; repeals the power of the Presi- dent previously granted; prohibits the execu- tive and judiciary from recognizing the Pro- visional Governments as valid; and restrains the President from employing the army and navy in sustaining them by force. The Bill passed the House of Representatives, January 21, by the strict party vote of: ayes 123, rep., to 45 noes, dem. On January 13th the Senate, by a vo1~ of 35 yeas to 6 nays, adopted a resolution non-concurring in the suspension of Edwin 378 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Mar. M. Stanton, Secretary of War, and ordered copies to be served on the President, Gen. Grant, Secretary ad interim, and Secretary Stanton. On the morning of the 14th, Mr. Stanton went to the War Department and took possession, Gen. Grant having retired and left the key in the hands of the Adju- tant-General. Attempts have been made by various parties to charge Gen. Grant with a breach of faith with the President, in violating an alleged promise to surrender the War De- partment to the President instead of to Sec- retary Stanton. Gen. Grant, in conversations in which the President sought to obtain such a promise from him, objected that he did not want to incur the fine and imprisonment to which he would be liable for disobeying the Act. The President offered to sustain all the fine and imprisonment that might arise from violation of the Act, but there is no evidence that Gen. Grant ever accepted this tempting offer. On January 13th, by a vote of 116 to 39, the Judiciary Committee reported favora- bly, and the House of Representatives passed, the Senate bill, requiring five judges to con- stitute t~ quorum of the Supreme Court, with an amendment, originating in the Judiciary Committee of the House, declaring that no case pending before the Supreme Court, in- volving the action or effect of any law of the United States, shall be decided adversely to the validity of such law without the concur- rence of two thirds of the members of the Court. On January 23d, the Committee on Re- construction agreed upon a bill to be reported (doubtless as a substitute for the above), which provides that all acts and things done under the Reconstruction acts are excepted from the appellate jurisdiction of the Su- preme Court, which is required to dismiss all such cases now pending in said Court on appeal. The vote of the Committee stood: yeas, Stevens, Boutwell, Bingham, Farns- worth, Paine, and Beamanall Republican, 6; nays, Hulburd, Rep., and Brooks and Beck, Dem., 3. The constitution gives the Supreme Court appellate jurisdiction, subject to such exceptions as Congress may enact. Mr. Opdyke, of the minority of the Com- mittee on Cities in the N. Y. Constitutional Convention, reports in favor of a new plan of governing the City of New York. It con- sists of having the Board of Aldermen com- posed of eleven persons, elected on a general ticket, by those voters of the city at large who have paid tax on $1,000. It is believed that this would secure a sort of Senate in the City Legislature, which would operate in favor of the tax-payers as a check on the lower House; under the present system both branch- es of the Common Council are elected by wards or districts. On January 15th, the Senate passed, by a vote of 33 to 4, a bill to stop any further contraction of the currency. It has since passed the House. The Blll introduced by Gen. Banks into the House, for the protection of naturalized citizens, authorizes the President to use the whole force of the government in securing to naturalized citizens abroad the same treat- ment accorded to native-born American citi- zens. But this protection shall not extend to citizens guilty of crime against the foreign state, or against the United States, or to per- sons fraudulently naturalized, or who have renounced their citizenship, or resided abroad five years. If any American citizens shall be arrested by any foreign Government, in viola- tion of the above provisions, the President may arrest any subject of such Government in the United States. Mr. J. Ross Browne has been nominated, by the President, for Minister to China, and Mr. S. S. Cox for Minister to Austria. The Senate has not yet acted on either appoint- ment. FOEzIGN. ABOUT January 2d we learned, by tele- graph from St. Petersburgh, Dec. 28th, that, on Nov. 21st, at Pekin, a decree was issued by the Emperor of China, appointing Hon. Anson Burlingame to be Special Ambassador for the Empire, to revise its treaties with the European powers; also that Mr. Burlingame had resigned his position as American Min- ister at that Court, to accept that tendered him by the Emperor. The appointment was favorably received by representatives of the European powers. The Tycoon of Japan has resigned the civil government of the Empire into the hands of the .Mikado, or Spiritual Sovereign, and a Council of Daimios. The situation of Italy is becoming crit- ical, owing to the financial question, and the simultaneous withdrawal of the confidence of the people and of Napoleon in Victor Em- manuel. One of the grandest eruptions of Mt. Vesuvius began on January 1st, and contin- ued, with steadily iacreasinct vehemence, to the close of the month. 1868.] MONTHLY CHRONICLE. 377 LITERATURE. WHEN DR. MOTLEY, 111 1857, returned from a brief visit to his native country to his long residence in Europe, he was bid God-speed, at a parting entertainment at Boston, in some felicitous verses by the poet Holmes: What pictures yet slumber unborn in his loom, Till their warriors shall breathe and their beauties shall bloom, While the tapestry lengthens the life-glowing dyes That caught from our sunsets the stain of their skies! In the alcoves of death, in the eharnels of time, Where lilt the gaunt spectres of passion and crime, There are triumphs untold, there are martyrs un- sung, There are heroes yet client to speak with his ton cI Let us hear the proud story which time has be- queathed, From lips that are warm with the freedom they breathed! Let him summon its tyrants, and tell us their doom, Though he sweep the black past like Yan Tromp with his broom. The prophecy of these lines has been well sustained in the animated and picturesque volumes which Dr. Motley has since given to the world. Gaunt spectres of passion and crime~ have indeed risen before us in the terrible pictures of the cruelties and oppres- sions generated in the breast of the remorse- less tyrant Philip; while the triumphs~ have been told, the martyrs~ celebrated, and the silent heroes given a tongue, as the authors pen has commemorated the fields consecrated by the story of civil liberty in the Netherlands, and of the struggles of Protestantism in France. The four volumes following the Rise of the Dutch Republic, occupied with the History of the United Netherlands, from the Death of William the Silent to the Twelve Years Truce in 1009, of which the last two have just appeared from the press of the Harpers, exhibit well-nigh every form of trial and endurance to which the human race can be exposed by the terri- ble assaults of armed invasion from without and civil conflict within. The period of the struggle of the sons of liberty in Holland was long, and the theatre was wide, extending with the immediate accessories of the historic action to En0land, France, and Spain. Great personages appear on the stage, William the Silent, Maurice, the inexorable Philip and his able vicegerents in the Provinces, Queen VOL. i..-25 Elizabeth with her statesmen; and, at the close, Henry IV. of Franca. The military operations set on foot by these controllers & human destiny; the battles fought, the sieges conducted by their officers; the intricate net- work of diplomacy spun by these politicians, exhibit every device and achievement of war, every species of statecraft of a century, the in- fluences of which still live in the progress of mankind; for the cause to which these sove- reigns ministered was not of their own day: they were unconsciously bringing despotism to a crisis, arousing by their opposition the genius of the people, and, while apparently performing their own will, in reality obeying the command of a higher power, like Cyrus of old in the hands of Omnipotence, even say- lug to the city of national prosperity, Thou shalt be built, and to the temple of liberty, Thy foundation shall be laid. No reader should be deterred by the length of Dr. Motleys narrative from giving it an~ attentive perusaL The story will grow upon him in interest as he becomes familiar with its details, many of which are now for the first time placed before the eyes of Engiish readers. On every page will be found same striking incident, some exhibition of charac- ter, or pregnant lesson in political moeality or public economy. The politician may here learn the laws of national prosperity; under what conditions communities prosper or are destroyed; how necessary individual virtue and freedom are to the public welfisre ;. how trade, which supplies the sinewa of every noble enterprise, is thwarted by restraint; and, above all, the lesson of our own time and country, how indispensable unity is to the being of a State. This laat moral is in- scribed upon every portion of the history of the United Netherlands. It is no matter of conjecture,. but simply a statement of fact, that Dr. Motley has written these last volumes of his work with a patriots consciousness, ever present to his mind, of the struggle going on at home, tothe consid- eration of which he was, indeed,, daily bound by his duties as the representative of his coun- try ~tt the central court of Europe. We may~ readily fancy him alternately giving vigor to a dispatch to Washington, and reinforcing a chapter of his history, as his thoughts vi- brated between the struggle of the Nether- lands, undor every adversity, against the force

1868.] MONTHLY CHRONICLE. 377 LITERATURE. WHEN DR. MOTLEY, 111 1857, returned from a brief visit to his native country to his long residence in Europe, he was bid God-speed, at a parting entertainment at Boston, in some felicitous verses by the poet Holmes: What pictures yet slumber unborn in his loom, Till their warriors shall breathe and their beauties shall bloom, While the tapestry lengthens the life-glowing dyes That caught from our sunsets the stain of their skies! In the alcoves of death, in the eharnels of time, Where lilt the gaunt spectres of passion and crime, There are triumphs untold, there are martyrs un- sung, There are heroes yet client to speak with his ton cI Let us hear the proud story which time has be- queathed, From lips that are warm with the freedom they breathed! Let him summon its tyrants, and tell us their doom, Though he sweep the black past like Yan Tromp with his broom. The prophecy of these lines has been well sustained in the animated and picturesque volumes which Dr. Motley has since given to the world. Gaunt spectres of passion and crime~ have indeed risen before us in the terrible pictures of the cruelties and oppres- sions generated in the breast of the remorse- less tyrant Philip; while the triumphs~ have been told, the martyrs~ celebrated, and the silent heroes given a tongue, as the authors pen has commemorated the fields consecrated by the story of civil liberty in the Netherlands, and of the struggles of Protestantism in France. The four volumes following the Rise of the Dutch Republic, occupied with the History of the United Netherlands, from the Death of William the Silent to the Twelve Years Truce in 1009, of which the last two have just appeared from the press of the Harpers, exhibit well-nigh every form of trial and endurance to which the human race can be exposed by the terri- ble assaults of armed invasion from without and civil conflict within. The period of the struggle of the sons of liberty in Holland was long, and the theatre was wide, extending with the immediate accessories of the historic action to En0land, France, and Spain. Great personages appear on the stage, William the Silent, Maurice, the inexorable Philip and his able vicegerents in the Provinces, Queen VOL. i..-25 Elizabeth with her statesmen; and, at the close, Henry IV. of Franca. The military operations set on foot by these controllers & human destiny; the battles fought, the sieges conducted by their officers; the intricate net- work of diplomacy spun by these politicians, exhibit every device and achievement of war, every species of statecraft of a century, the in- fluences of which still live in the progress of mankind; for the cause to which these sove- reigns ministered was not of their own day: they were unconsciously bringing despotism to a crisis, arousing by their opposition the genius of the people, and, while apparently performing their own will, in reality obeying the command of a higher power, like Cyrus of old in the hands of Omnipotence, even say- lug to the city of national prosperity, Thou shalt be built, and to the temple of liberty, Thy foundation shall be laid. No reader should be deterred by the length of Dr. Motleys narrative from giving it an~ attentive perusaL The story will grow upon him in interest as he becomes familiar with its details, many of which are now for the first time placed before the eyes of Engiish readers. On every page will be found same striking incident, some exhibition of charac- ter, or pregnant lesson in political moeality or public economy. The politician may here learn the laws of national prosperity; under what conditions communities prosper or are destroyed; how necessary individual virtue and freedom are to the public welfisre ;. how trade, which supplies the sinewa of every noble enterprise, is thwarted by restraint; and, above all, the lesson of our own time and country, how indispensable unity is to the being of a State. This laat moral is in- scribed upon every portion of the history of the United Netherlands. It is no matter of conjecture,. but simply a statement of fact, that Dr. Motley has written these last volumes of his work with a patriots consciousness, ever present to his mind, of the struggle going on at home, tothe consid- eration of which he was, indeed,, daily bound by his duties as the representative of his coun- try ~tt the central court of Europe. We may~ readily fancy him alternately giving vigor to a dispatch to Washington, and reinforcing a chapter of his history, as his thoughts vi- brated between the struggle of the Nether- lands, undor every adversity, against the force 378 PUTNAMS MAGAZINI~. [Mar. of Philip, and the costly effort~s of his coun- trymen for nationality, as blood and treasure were prodigally expended, in his own words, in the book before us, to repress the insur- rection of the slaveholders. If Gibbon, not without reason, congratulated himself, that his few months services as captain in the militia availed him in his great literary work, the discipline and evolutions of a modern battalion, says he, gave me a clearer no- tion of the phalanx and the legion, and the captain of the Hampshire grenadiers (the reader may smile) has not been useless to the historian of the Roman empire we may presume Dr. Motley will feel it no disparage- ment to his labors, to be reminded of his ob- ligations for the light thrown upon his ex- traordinary narrative by the home commen- tary, written in letters of fire in the life and death of Lincoln (he too, like William, fell by the shot of an assassin), the sieges and marches of Grant and Sheridan, the sea-faring energy of Farragut (so like that generated in the rising navy of Holland), the countless efforts in the field of a nation in arms for the assertion of its liberties, and, not least, in that diplomatic knowledge brought home to him in his mission at Vienna. !l/ie Speeches, Correspondence, d~c., of the late DANIEL S. DICKINSON, with a Biographi- cal Introduction by his brother, JOHN R. DIcK- INSON, are published, in two volumes octavo, by G. P. Putnam & Son. Mr. Dickinson was born in Goshen, Litch- field county, Connecticut, September 11th, 1800removed with his parents, in 1806, to Oxford, Chenango county, New York received there a plain, common-school educationread poetry, history, and political economy served his apprenticeship as a clothiertaught school from 1820 to 1825 amused himself by debatingstudied law, and, in 1828, was admitted to the barand was postmasterand removed, in 1831, to Binghamton, where he entered into a con- siderable law-practice, and resided the re- mainder of his life. In 1834, he was elected President of Binghamton. In 1835, he was a member of the Democratic National Con- vention at Baltimore, which nominated Van Buren and Johnson. In 1836, he entered the State Senate, certain of whose members were then ex-qifiejo members of the Court of Errors; ran for Lieutenant-Governor in 1840, was elected in 1842, and served two years. In 1844, he was a delegate (Polk and Dallas) to the Democratic National Convention; was a State elector, and, in December, was ap- pointed by Governor Bouck to the United States Senate, to which he was soon after- wards elected, serving until March 3, 1851. During this service, he was Chairman of the Committee of Finance; advocated the an- nexation of Texas, and originated the doc- trine of popular sovereignty, afterwards adopted by Douglas. In 1848, he aided in nominating Cass at Baltimore. In 1850, in the Senate, he sustained the compromise measures of Mr. Clay, by whom, as well as Mr. Webster, he was warmly esteemed. In 1852, again a member of the National Con- vention at Baltimore, Virginia presented his name for the Presidency, which he unwisely declined, out of fidelity to Cass. Virginia then nominated Pierce, who was elected. As Mr. Dickinson would have been nominated and elected, had he not dedllned, he may be said to be the only man who ever declined the Presidency. In 1853, he was tendered, but declined, the Collectorship of the Port of New York, and mingled less in political affairs, and held no office until 1861. In 1861, he supported Mr. Breckenridge as a candi- date; but, upon the division in the Demo- cratic Convention and party, he gave up the contest as a foregone conclusion, looked to the Republlcan victory as certain, and wrote peace-letters until the actual breaking out of the Rebellion. Thenceforth ~o his death, April 12th, 1866, he was a vigorous advocate of the most forcible and radical measures for sustaining the Union. Ills previous political conservatism, his advanced age, venerable appearance, known integrity, and popular and effective eloquence, exercised a great influ- ence, from his opening speech at the Union- Square meeting, in April, 1861, to the close of the war. In 1865, President Lincoln ap- pointed him United States District Attorney for New York, in which office he remained to his death. Though this is not the career either of a very great man, or of a very fortunate one it is the consistent and honorable record of one who, though long and prominently before the public eye, never sustained a blemish upon his fair reputation, and fulfilled always with creditable ability, and often with happy talent, whatever functions his public life called on him to perform. The public speeches here published, include one in favor of the Usury Laws, delivered in the New York Senate, in 1837; a Criticism of Governor Sewards Message, in 1840; an Agricultural Address at Queens County, in

378 PUTNAMS MAGAZINI~. [Mar. of Philip, and the costly effort~s of his coun- trymen for nationality, as blood and treasure were prodigally expended, in his own words, in the book before us, to repress the insur- rection of the slaveholders. If Gibbon, not without reason, congratulated himself, that his few months services as captain in the militia availed him in his great literary work, the discipline and evolutions of a modern battalion, says he, gave me a clearer no- tion of the phalanx and the legion, and the captain of the Hampshire grenadiers (the reader may smile) has not been useless to the historian of the Roman empire we may presume Dr. Motley will feel it no disparage- ment to his labors, to be reminded of his ob- ligations for the light thrown upon his ex- traordinary narrative by the home commen- tary, written in letters of fire in the life and death of Lincoln (he too, like William, fell by the shot of an assassin), the sieges and marches of Grant and Sheridan, the sea-faring energy of Farragut (so like that generated in the rising navy of Holland), the countless efforts in the field of a nation in arms for the assertion of its liberties, and, not least, in that diplomatic knowledge brought home to him in his mission at Vienna. !l/ie Speeches, Correspondence, d~c., of the late DANIEL S. DICKINSON, with a Biographi- cal Introduction by his brother, JOHN R. DIcK- INSON, are published, in two volumes octavo, by G. P. Putnam & Son. Mr. Dickinson was born in Goshen, Litch- field county, Connecticut, September 11th, 1800removed with his parents, in 1806, to Oxford, Chenango county, New York received there a plain, common-school educationread poetry, history, and political economy served his apprenticeship as a clothiertaught school from 1820 to 1825 amused himself by debatingstudied law, and, in 1828, was admitted to the barand was postmasterand removed, in 1831, to Binghamton, where he entered into a con- siderable law-practice, and resided the re- mainder of his life. In 1834, he was elected President of Binghamton. In 1835, he was a member of the Democratic National Con- vention at Baltimore, which nominated Van Buren and Johnson. In 1836, he entered the State Senate, certain of whose members were then ex-qifiejo members of the Court of Errors; ran for Lieutenant-Governor in 1840, was elected in 1842, and served two years. In 1844, he was a delegate (Polk and Dallas) to the Democratic National Convention; was a State elector, and, in December, was ap- pointed by Governor Bouck to the United States Senate, to which he was soon after- wards elected, serving until March 3, 1851. During this service, he was Chairman of the Committee of Finance; advocated the an- nexation of Texas, and originated the doc- trine of popular sovereignty, afterwards adopted by Douglas. In 1848, he aided in nominating Cass at Baltimore. In 1850, in the Senate, he sustained the compromise measures of Mr. Clay, by whom, as well as Mr. Webster, he was warmly esteemed. In 1852, again a member of the National Con- vention at Baltimore, Virginia presented his name for the Presidency, which he unwisely declined, out of fidelity to Cass. Virginia then nominated Pierce, who was elected. As Mr. Dickinson would have been nominated and elected, had he not dedllned, he may be said to be the only man who ever declined the Presidency. In 1853, he was tendered, but declined, the Collectorship of the Port of New York, and mingled less in political affairs, and held no office until 1861. In 1861, he supported Mr. Breckenridge as a candi- date; but, upon the division in the Demo- cratic Convention and party, he gave up the contest as a foregone conclusion, looked to the Republlcan victory as certain, and wrote peace-letters until the actual breaking out of the Rebellion. Thenceforth ~o his death, April 12th, 1866, he was a vigorous advocate of the most forcible and radical measures for sustaining the Union. Ills previous political conservatism, his advanced age, venerable appearance, known integrity, and popular and effective eloquence, exercised a great influ- ence, from his opening speech at the Union- Square meeting, in April, 1861, to the close of the war. In 1865, President Lincoln ap- pointed him United States District Attorney for New York, in which office he remained to his death. Though this is not the career either of a very great man, or of a very fortunate one it is the consistent and honorable record of one who, though long and prominently before the public eye, never sustained a blemish upon his fair reputation, and fulfilled always with creditable ability, and often with happy talent, whatever functions his public life called on him to perform. The public speeches here published, include one in favor of the Usury Laws, delivered in the New York Senate, in 1837; a Criticism of Governor Sewards Message, in 1840; an Agricultural Address at Queens County, in 1868.] MONTHLY CHRONIcLE. 379 1848; an Address for Irish Freedom (1844); an Argument for the Annexation of Texas, in 1845; a Speech in favor of ~~54O 40, or fight, on the Oregon Question; a Reply to Mr. Webster on the Northeastern Boundary Question, in 1846; a Defence of Popular Sovereignty in the Territories, in 1848; a Speech in favor of establishing Oregon, Cali- fornia, and New Mexico as territories without saying any thing about slavery; a Speech for Cass and Butler, in 1848, in Tammany; a Speech opposing the Wilmot Proviso,in 1849; a Speech against Freesoilism, in 1849; on appointing a Military Governor for California; a Tammany Speech, in 1850; a Centennial Address at Litchfield; a Hardshell Speech at Rochester, in 1853; a Speech to the Jury in the case of James Collier, & c., & c., & c. Scores of similar addresses opposing tem- perance legislation, and sustaining the other well-known policies of the Democratic party, make up the first volume. The second con- sists of his speeches in favor of sustaining the War for the Union, and his correspondence and poems. F6r not o~ly did Mr. Dickinsons public addresses show, by his frequent and generally apt though popular quotations, an ardent love for the magic witchery of verse, but the specimens given of his own muse are, certain- ly, for a lawyer and a politician, very credit- able. We have said that Mr. Dickinsons career was consistent. When he acted with the pro-slavery Democratic party, even with the ultra wing of them, he steadfastly and sin- cerely denied that he had any sympathy with slavery. He claimed only that it should be left where the Constitution left it, to be re,,u- lated by the people of the States where it ex- isted, and by the people of the territories into which it might be introduced. Hence, when Slavery threw off the shield of the Consti- tution by open rebellion, his previous argu- ment for letting it alone had been converted by thcir own act into a reason for its destruc- tion. Then he advocated hitting the enemy hardest where they would feel it most. All his political associations before the war im- pressed him with the belief that the national triumph of an anti-slavery party would be at- tended by a long, bloody, and doubtful war for the dissolution of the Union. Foreseeing this danger more cleaily than many of those who voted the anti-slavery ticket in the belief that its success would lead to no war, and foreseeing the vast military power and en- durance of the North better than many of the Southern democracy, who thoo~ht the dissolution of the Union would be effected without bloodshed, perhaps no portion of the people of our country are so freely entitled to the esteem alike of former friends and foes, now that we may look back on the terrible events which they proguosticated, than those who admitted the evils of slavery, foresaw the mighty carnage which would at- tend the triumph of the anti-slavery sentiment, and strove to avert war, because they be- lieved it the more terrible of the two evils; but the war having come, despite their efforts to ward it oft; who stood manfully by the Union and freedom till both were triumph- antly secured. Foremost among this num- ber, and one of the purest men our country ever produced, stood Daniel S. Dickinson. Ma. S. G. W. BENJAMINS Turk cad the Greek, Creeds, Races, Society, and Scenery in Turkey, Greece, and the Isles of Greece (Hurd & Hou0hton), is a sketchy, and here and there rather too declamatory, account of scenes and society in the Levant. The author starts with a glowing picture of Constanti- nople, followed up by an animated descrip- tion of localities on the Bosphorus, passing thence to Smyrna, Scio, Athens, and finally Crete. The central chapter of the book con- tains an account of missionary operations in Turkey, from which it appears that the pros- pects of spreading a Christian civilization in that quarter are encouraging. The writer, indeed, proclaims that Mohammedanism, in its toleration or indifference, offers better oppor- tunities in this respect, that is to say, of con- version to Protestantism, than would be likely to be afforded if the land were under the con- trol of Russia and the Greek Church. The declarations of Mr. Benjamin on this head will strike many readers with surprise. There is, says he, very much less freedom of conscience in the Christian Kingdoms of Rus- sia, Greece, or Spain, than in Turkey. What- ever may be the reasons for this state of things, the fact remainsa fact to make me reflect. Should Turkey now come into the hands of Russia, the missionaries would have to desist from their labors in elevating the condition of the races of Turkey. In religious matters, with a few disabilities, such as being forbidden to have bells in their churches, the Christians have been left to their own de- vices. It will be inferred froi this that the writer is no admirer of the Greek Church and tl,e inference is fully sustained by the chapter on Hellas, where the reader will find this little fable:

1868.] MONTHLY CHRONIcLE. 379 1848; an Address for Irish Freedom (1844); an Argument for the Annexation of Texas, in 1845; a Speech in favor of ~~54O 40, or fight, on the Oregon Question; a Reply to Mr. Webster on the Northeastern Boundary Question, in 1846; a Defence of Popular Sovereignty in the Territories, in 1848; a Speech in favor of establishing Oregon, Cali- fornia, and New Mexico as territories without saying any thing about slavery; a Speech for Cass and Butler, in 1848, in Tammany; a Speech opposing the Wilmot Proviso,in 1849; a Speech against Freesoilism, in 1849; on appointing a Military Governor for California; a Tammany Speech, in 1850; a Centennial Address at Litchfield; a Hardshell Speech at Rochester, in 1853; a Speech to the Jury in the case of James Collier, & c., & c., & c. Scores of similar addresses opposing tem- perance legislation, and sustaining the other well-known policies of the Democratic party, make up the first volume. The second con- sists of his speeches in favor of sustaining the War for the Union, and his correspondence and poems. F6r not o~ly did Mr. Dickinsons public addresses show, by his frequent and generally apt though popular quotations, an ardent love for the magic witchery of verse, but the specimens given of his own muse are, certain- ly, for a lawyer and a politician, very credit- able. We have said that Mr. Dickinsons career was consistent. When he acted with the pro-slavery Democratic party, even with the ultra wing of them, he steadfastly and sin- cerely denied that he had any sympathy with slavery. He claimed only that it should be left where the Constitution left it, to be re,,u- lated by the people of the States where it ex- isted, and by the people of the territories into which it might be introduced. Hence, when Slavery threw off the shield of the Consti- tution by open rebellion, his previous argu- ment for letting it alone had been converted by thcir own act into a reason for its destruc- tion. Then he advocated hitting the enemy hardest where they would feel it most. All his political associations before the war im- pressed him with the belief that the national triumph of an anti-slavery party would be at- tended by a long, bloody, and doubtful war for the dissolution of the Union. Foreseeing this danger more cleaily than many of those who voted the anti-slavery ticket in the belief that its success would lead to no war, and foreseeing the vast military power and en- durance of the North better than many of the Southern democracy, who thoo~ht the dissolution of the Union would be effected without bloodshed, perhaps no portion of the people of our country are so freely entitled to the esteem alike of former friends and foes, now that we may look back on the terrible events which they proguosticated, than those who admitted the evils of slavery, foresaw the mighty carnage which would at- tend the triumph of the anti-slavery sentiment, and strove to avert war, because they be- lieved it the more terrible of the two evils; but the war having come, despite their efforts to ward it oft; who stood manfully by the Union and freedom till both were triumph- antly secured. Foremost among this num- ber, and one of the purest men our country ever produced, stood Daniel S. Dickinson. Ma. S. G. W. BENJAMINS Turk cad the Greek, Creeds, Races, Society, and Scenery in Turkey, Greece, and the Isles of Greece (Hurd & Hou0hton), is a sketchy, and here and there rather too declamatory, account of scenes and society in the Levant. The author starts with a glowing picture of Constanti- nople, followed up by an animated descrip- tion of localities on the Bosphorus, passing thence to Smyrna, Scio, Athens, and finally Crete. The central chapter of the book con- tains an account of missionary operations in Turkey, from which it appears that the pros- pects of spreading a Christian civilization in that quarter are encouraging. The writer, indeed, proclaims that Mohammedanism, in its toleration or indifference, offers better oppor- tunities in this respect, that is to say, of con- version to Protestantism, than would be likely to be afforded if the land were under the con- trol of Russia and the Greek Church. The declarations of Mr. Benjamin on this head will strike many readers with surprise. There is, says he, very much less freedom of conscience in the Christian Kingdoms of Rus- sia, Greece, or Spain, than in Turkey. What- ever may be the reasons for this state of things, the fact remainsa fact to make me reflect. Should Turkey now come into the hands of Russia, the missionaries would have to desist from their labors in elevating the condition of the races of Turkey. In religious matters, with a few disabilities, such as being forbidden to have bells in their churches, the Christians have been left to their own de- vices. It will be inferred froi this that the writer is no admirer of the Greek Church and tl,e inference is fully sustained by the chapter on Hellas, where the reader will find this little fable: 880 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Mar. ~Esop tells the story of a hawk that en- tan,~led its claws in the woolly back of a sheep, and then sought to fly up with his prey, but found, instead, that the sheep was too much for him, and he was thus kept down until the shepherds came up and etught him. Not to speak irreverently, the state of Greece is exactly that of the hawk. She is trammelled by the weight of a gross, inert, material hie- rarchy, and seeks in vain to soar into higher regions. If soaring into higher regions, in other words freedom of thought and action, would bring about some very humble reforms in the way of a good police for the kingdom, good roads and good travelling, for instance, it is to be hoped this desirable emancipation may be speedily effected. Until it is, the owls, which, it is curious to learn, still, as of old, haunt the sides of the Acropolis, may profit- ably continue their judicious winking. ANOTHER volume of Mediterranean travel, The Far East; or, Letters from Egypt, Pal- estine, end other Lands of tire Orient, by the Rev. Dr. N. C. Buax (Carroll & Co.), may be said to be a characteristic American produc- tion. It is written by a clergyman of Ohio, and the Letters of which it is composed were originally published in the Cincinnati Gazette. The ground traversed by Dr. Burt is the now established route for travellers as- cending the Nile and visiting Palestine; but he imparts a certain rude freshness to it by honestly recording his immediate impressions, which at times are quite at war with the usual conventional or poetical treatment of these scenes. Thus the glowing beauties of Cairo, its buildings and its women, are disenchanted at a stroke of the pen. The architecture is ornamental enough; yet, with rare excrp- tions, it is coarsely so; and as for the beau- tiful lattices through which dark-eyed houris glance upon the passer-by, suggesting visions of the Mohammedan paradise, nothing could he more absurd. Any of our country car- penters could beat any lattice-work lever saw; and the women, whether seen behind the lattices or on the streets, peeping through th r veils, suggested to me our negro wenches and Indian squaws. This would hardly satisfy Ruskin any more than the following curious passage would the Egyptologists It is com- monly believed that the religion of the ancient Egyptians was one thing for the learned, and another for the common people. The phrase, wisdom of the Egyptians, is of divine in- spiration, and probably underneath their my- thology was a system of abstract principles a profound philosophy. Whether so or not, the representations on the wails of temples and tombs indicate a degrading polytheism; and I feel no regret at the prospect of never more gazing on the stiff human figures, with heads of hawks and crocodiles, which, in num- berless repetitions, and sometimes in colossal proportions, deform most of the architectural grandeur of this country. This is certainly a summary disposition of the antiquities of the country; and other specimens of the au- thors handling might be cited equally col- loquial and slashing as in the notice of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, at Jerusa- lem: The church-building is a large, heavy, dirty, gloomy affair. And the remark of a famous incident of the Holy Week: The Greeks are great onjire; yet their invention of the destructive fire used in warfare bears no comparison to that of the Sacred Fire, which is used by the Church as a weapon of salvation. These, however, are off-hand sayings, and are associated with much that is acute and practical. It is worth knowing how countries like Egypt and the Holy Land im- press different minds. As a picture of the travel of the day, Dr. Burts book certainly has its points of interest. Tnzaz is something very pleasing, to one who has watched the progress of American literature, in the contemplation of the new series of works which has been undertaken by our late Minister to Switzerland, the Hon. Tiszonoaz S. Fay. A native of the city of New York, his early essays lathe old Mirror, and later novels, charmed a generation of readers, who certainly lost much of agreeable and profitable entertainment, when the au- thor one dayit is now thirty years ago received an appointment as Secretary of Le- gation at Berlin. Thence, after some fifteen years service, he was transferred as Minister Resident to Berne, the diplomatic duties of which he discharged for several years. In 1861 he revisited his native city, aftei an absence of thirty years. During all this time, though lost to our home literary circles, his pen was not altogether idle. A poetical romance, IJlric, and a novel or two, wit- nessed his continued devotion to letters in the earlier years of his absence from America. Of his late studies, we have the first-fruits before us in an important text-book, entitled Great Outline f Geography for Iii ghSchools and Families (Putnam & Son), with an Atlas in quarto. The design of tuese works, which is very successfully carried out, is to present

880 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Mar. ~Esop tells the story of a hawk that en- tan,~led its claws in the woolly back of a sheep, and then sought to fly up with his prey, but found, instead, that the sheep was too much for him, and he was thus kept down until the shepherds came up and etught him. Not to speak irreverently, the state of Greece is exactly that of the hawk. She is trammelled by the weight of a gross, inert, material hie- rarchy, and seeks in vain to soar into higher regions. If soaring into higher regions, in other words freedom of thought and action, would bring about some very humble reforms in the way of a good police for the kingdom, good roads and good travelling, for instance, it is to be hoped this desirable emancipation may be speedily effected. Until it is, the owls, which, it is curious to learn, still, as of old, haunt the sides of the Acropolis, may profit- ably continue their judicious winking. ANOTHER volume of Mediterranean travel, The Far East; or, Letters from Egypt, Pal- estine, end other Lands of tire Orient, by the Rev. Dr. N. C. Buax (Carroll & Co.), may be said to be a characteristic American produc- tion. It is written by a clergyman of Ohio, and the Letters of which it is composed were originally published in the Cincinnati Gazette. The ground traversed by Dr. Burt is the now established route for travellers as- cending the Nile and visiting Palestine; but he imparts a certain rude freshness to it by honestly recording his immediate impressions, which at times are quite at war with the usual conventional or poetical treatment of these scenes. Thus the glowing beauties of Cairo, its buildings and its women, are disenchanted at a stroke of the pen. The architecture is ornamental enough; yet, with rare excrp- tions, it is coarsely so; and as for the beau- tiful lattices through which dark-eyed houris glance upon the passer-by, suggesting visions of the Mohammedan paradise, nothing could he more absurd. Any of our country car- penters could beat any lattice-work lever saw; and the women, whether seen behind the lattices or on the streets, peeping through th r veils, suggested to me our negro wenches and Indian squaws. This would hardly satisfy Ruskin any more than the following curious passage would the Egyptologists It is com- monly believed that the religion of the ancient Egyptians was one thing for the learned, and another for the common people. The phrase, wisdom of the Egyptians, is of divine in- spiration, and probably underneath their my- thology was a system of abstract principles a profound philosophy. Whether so or not, the representations on the wails of temples and tombs indicate a degrading polytheism; and I feel no regret at the prospect of never more gazing on the stiff human figures, with heads of hawks and crocodiles, which, in num- berless repetitions, and sometimes in colossal proportions, deform most of the architectural grandeur of this country. This is certainly a summary disposition of the antiquities of the country; and other specimens of the au- thors handling might be cited equally col- loquial and slashing as in the notice of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, at Jerusa- lem: The church-building is a large, heavy, dirty, gloomy affair. And the remark of a famous incident of the Holy Week: The Greeks are great onjire; yet their invention of the destructive fire used in warfare bears no comparison to that of the Sacred Fire, which is used by the Church as a weapon of salvation. These, however, are off-hand sayings, and are associated with much that is acute and practical. It is worth knowing how countries like Egypt and the Holy Land im- press different minds. As a picture of the travel of the day, Dr. Burts book certainly has its points of interest. Tnzaz is something very pleasing, to one who has watched the progress of American literature, in the contemplation of the new series of works which has been undertaken by our late Minister to Switzerland, the Hon. Tiszonoaz S. Fay. A native of the city of New York, his early essays lathe old Mirror, and later novels, charmed a generation of readers, who certainly lost much of agreeable and profitable entertainment, when the au- thor one dayit is now thirty years ago received an appointment as Secretary of Le- gation at Berlin. Thence, after some fifteen years service, he was transferred as Minister Resident to Berne, the diplomatic duties of which he discharged for several years. In 1861 he revisited his native city, aftei an absence of thirty years. During all this time, though lost to our home literary circles, his pen was not altogether idle. A poetical romance, IJlric, and a novel or two, wit- nessed his continued devotion to letters in the earlier years of his absence from America. Of his late studies, we have the first-fruits before us in an important text-book, entitled Great Outline f Geography for Iii ghSchools and Families (Putnam & Son), with an Atlas in quarto. The design of tuese works, which is very successfully carried out, is to present

880 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Mar. ~Esop tells the story of a hawk that en- tan,~led its claws in the woolly back of a sheep, and then sought to fly up with his prey, but found, instead, that the sheep was too much for him, and he was thus kept down until the shepherds came up and etught him. Not to speak irreverently, the state of Greece is exactly that of the hawk. She is trammelled by the weight of a gross, inert, material hie- rarchy, and seeks in vain to soar into higher regions. If soaring into higher regions, in other words freedom of thought and action, would bring about some very humble reforms in the way of a good police for the kingdom, good roads and good travelling, for instance, it is to be hoped this desirable emancipation may be speedily effected. Until it is, the owls, which, it is curious to learn, still, as of old, haunt the sides of the Acropolis, may profit- ably continue their judicious winking. ANOTHER volume of Mediterranean travel, The Far East; or, Letters from Egypt, Pal- estine, end other Lands of tire Orient, by the Rev. Dr. N. C. Buax (Carroll & Co.), may be said to be a characteristic American produc- tion. It is written by a clergyman of Ohio, and the Letters of which it is composed were originally published in the Cincinnati Gazette. The ground traversed by Dr. Burt is the now established route for travellers as- cending the Nile and visiting Palestine; but he imparts a certain rude freshness to it by honestly recording his immediate impressions, which at times are quite at war with the usual conventional or poetical treatment of these scenes. Thus the glowing beauties of Cairo, its buildings and its women, are disenchanted at a stroke of the pen. The architecture is ornamental enough; yet, with rare excrp- tions, it is coarsely so; and as for the beau- tiful lattices through which dark-eyed houris glance upon the passer-by, suggesting visions of the Mohammedan paradise, nothing could he more absurd. Any of our country car- penters could beat any lattice-work lever saw; and the women, whether seen behind the lattices or on the streets, peeping through th r veils, suggested to me our negro wenches and Indian squaws. This would hardly satisfy Ruskin any more than the following curious passage would the Egyptologists It is com- monly believed that the religion of the ancient Egyptians was one thing for the learned, and another for the common people. The phrase, wisdom of the Egyptians, is of divine in- spiration, and probably underneath their my- thology was a system of abstract principles a profound philosophy. Whether so or not, the representations on the wails of temples and tombs indicate a degrading polytheism; and I feel no regret at the prospect of never more gazing on the stiff human figures, with heads of hawks and crocodiles, which, in num- berless repetitions, and sometimes in colossal proportions, deform most of the architectural grandeur of this country. This is certainly a summary disposition of the antiquities of the country; and other specimens of the au- thors handling might be cited equally col- loquial and slashing as in the notice of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, at Jerusa- lem: The church-building is a large, heavy, dirty, gloomy affair. And the remark of a famous incident of the Holy Week: The Greeks are great onjire; yet their invention of the destructive fire used in warfare bears no comparison to that of the Sacred Fire, which is used by the Church as a weapon of salvation. These, however, are off-hand sayings, and are associated with much that is acute and practical. It is worth knowing how countries like Egypt and the Holy Land im- press different minds. As a picture of the travel of the day, Dr. Burts book certainly has its points of interest. Tnzaz is something very pleasing, to one who has watched the progress of American literature, in the contemplation of the new series of works which has been undertaken by our late Minister to Switzerland, the Hon. Tiszonoaz S. Fay. A native of the city of New York, his early essays lathe old Mirror, and later novels, charmed a generation of readers, who certainly lost much of agreeable and profitable entertainment, when the au- thor one dayit is now thirty years ago received an appointment as Secretary of Le- gation at Berlin. Thence, after some fifteen years service, he was transferred as Minister Resident to Berne, the diplomatic duties of which he discharged for several years. In 1861 he revisited his native city, aftei an absence of thirty years. During all this time, though lost to our home literary circles, his pen was not altogether idle. A poetical romance, IJlric, and a novel or two, wit- nessed his continued devotion to letters in the earlier years of his absence from America. Of his late studies, we have the first-fruits before us in an important text-book, entitled Great Outline f Geography for Iii ghSchools and Families (Putnam & Son), with an Atlas in quarto. The design of tuese works, which is very successfully carried out, is to present 1868.3 MONTHLY OHBONICLE. 381 in a cheap, connected, scientific form, with all the lights of modern research, discovery, and especially the new system of. analysis, a com- prehensive view of the surface of the globe which we inhabitbetter adapted than any hitherto given to the needs of intelligent pupils, in securing a firm grasp of the ele- ments of this most important subject. These are presented in four partsan introductory exhibition of Astronomical Geography, the Phenomena of the Seasons, the division of Zones, & c., followed by sections on Physical and Political Geography; a special outline view of the Provinces, Rivers, Towns, & c., of Southwestern Europe, and another similar view of the United States of America. The method pursued of inculcatingwe use the word in its etymological sense of pressing in these instructions is simple and forcible, requiring exactness on the part of the teach- er, attention on the part of the student, and securing, by the most direct processes, an intelligent understanding of the groundwork of the whole. Knowledge, through insight, not the pretence of knowledge by a pack- horse burden of memory to be cast off with the teacher; is Mr. Fays grand object; and that his work is well adapted to accomplish this, we think may be perceived at once; and we have, moreover, in the testimony of instructors, proofs of its practical value. In 1854, when it was in progress, it was sub- mitted to Alexander Humboldt, who, in a man- uscript letter, commended its philosophi- cal plan and ingenious method of descending gradually from generalities to special details of subdivisions. It has also the approval of other eminent authorities. One great advan- tage, incident to the use of this outline, is, that as the lesson is taught, it is learned at once, the pupil being directly in communica- tion with the mind of the teacher, and the subject being brought vividly before him in the maps and plans; so that there is no oc- casion to study out of school. In Mr. Fays words, the recitation is study enough. The analysis is very thorough, and the fami- liar illustrations are apt and striking. We may commend particularly the execution of the maps, drawn by an adept at Berlin, and engraved and printed in colors at the same place Nowhere has geography been more fully and scientifically studied than in Prussia; and it is a valuable result of Mr. Fays foreign residence, that he is enabled to furnish new generations of his countrymen with the best of these achievements. The field of human enterprise is now, more than ever, the whole world; and Young America, inheriting the great central continent, should be well ac- quainted with the theatre of the achievements before him. For this, in the elementary knowledge which lies at the foundation, he will find an admirable guide in the work be. fore us. The outline maps of the German States, as they existed before 1866, and as they now exist with the kingdom of Prussia, reader the Atlas of fresh value outside as well as within the schoolhouse. THE history of the Witchcraft delusion in Massachusetts, which culminated in the memo- rable proceedings at Salem in 1692, is worthy the pen of a philosophical historian, capable of tracing consequences to their source beyond personal character, to the social and other influences required to dispose and enable individuals to act in an extraordinary manner. Salem Witchcraft was more than a malicious tricksomething besides a priestly imposture. The theological, though by far the most impor- tant agency in the current delusion, was by no means the only instrument by which it was furthered and sustained. The witch-trials o~ New England of the seventeenth century in- volved, as conditions precedent, the life of the country, in its settlement, its judicial govern- ment, its peculiar social relations, as well as in the all-pervading influence of the dominant religious system. These and other elements of the question are discussed with equal learn- ing and candor in the narrative Salem Witch- craft; with an account of Salem Village and a History of Opinio on Witchcr4t and kindred subjects, by the Hon. CnAaaEs WENT- WORTH UPHAM. (Wiggin & Lunt.) The work is indeed exhaustive in its treatment of a difficult subject; and could be written only by one who, like its author, brings to the topic, not merely the dili~ence of years given to a thorough examination of the facts, but a truly judicial mind and that sagacity of moral perception which can be derived only from a sympathetic knowledge of human life and ac- tion in some of their most important manifes- tations. Mr. Upham has no common claims to be heard on this subject. Though born in New Brunswick, he came in his boyhood to Massachusetts, the land of his ancestors, in time to become, at the usual age, a graduate of Harvard College; and thenceforward as an instructor and for twenty years till the failure of his voice compelled him to relinquish the charge, pastor of the first Church in Salem; a public orator on various occasions; actively occupiedinthecauseofeducation;and,not

1868.3 MONTHLY OHBONICLE. 381 in a cheap, connected, scientific form, with all the lights of modern research, discovery, and especially the new system of. analysis, a com- prehensive view of the surface of the globe which we inhabitbetter adapted than any hitherto given to the needs of intelligent pupils, in securing a firm grasp of the ele- ments of this most important subject. These are presented in four partsan introductory exhibition of Astronomical Geography, the Phenomena of the Seasons, the division of Zones, & c., followed by sections on Physical and Political Geography; a special outline view of the Provinces, Rivers, Towns, & c., of Southwestern Europe, and another similar view of the United States of America. The method pursued of inculcatingwe use the word in its etymological sense of pressing in these instructions is simple and forcible, requiring exactness on the part of the teach- er, attention on the part of the student, and securing, by the most direct processes, an intelligent understanding of the groundwork of the whole. Knowledge, through insight, not the pretence of knowledge by a pack- horse burden of memory to be cast off with the teacher; is Mr. Fays grand object; and that his work is well adapted to accomplish this, we think may be perceived at once; and we have, moreover, in the testimony of instructors, proofs of its practical value. In 1854, when it was in progress, it was sub- mitted to Alexander Humboldt, who, in a man- uscript letter, commended its philosophi- cal plan and ingenious method of descending gradually from generalities to special details of subdivisions. It has also the approval of other eminent authorities. One great advan- tage, incident to the use of this outline, is, that as the lesson is taught, it is learned at once, the pupil being directly in communica- tion with the mind of the teacher, and the subject being brought vividly before him in the maps and plans; so that there is no oc- casion to study out of school. In Mr. Fays words, the recitation is study enough. The analysis is very thorough, and the fami- liar illustrations are apt and striking. We may commend particularly the execution of the maps, drawn by an adept at Berlin, and engraved and printed in colors at the same place Nowhere has geography been more fully and scientifically studied than in Prussia; and it is a valuable result of Mr. Fays foreign residence, that he is enabled to furnish new generations of his countrymen with the best of these achievements. The field of human enterprise is now, more than ever, the whole world; and Young America, inheriting the great central continent, should be well ac- quainted with the theatre of the achievements before him. For this, in the elementary knowledge which lies at the foundation, he will find an admirable guide in the work be. fore us. The outline maps of the German States, as they existed before 1866, and as they now exist with the kingdom of Prussia, reader the Atlas of fresh value outside as well as within the schoolhouse. THE history of the Witchcraft delusion in Massachusetts, which culminated in the memo- rable proceedings at Salem in 1692, is worthy the pen of a philosophical historian, capable of tracing consequences to their source beyond personal character, to the social and other influences required to dispose and enable individuals to act in an extraordinary manner. Salem Witchcraft was more than a malicious tricksomething besides a priestly imposture. The theological, though by far the most impor- tant agency in the current delusion, was by no means the only instrument by which it was furthered and sustained. The witch-trials o~ New England of the seventeenth century in- volved, as conditions precedent, the life of the country, in its settlement, its judicial govern- ment, its peculiar social relations, as well as in the all-pervading influence of the dominant religious system. These and other elements of the question are discussed with equal learn- ing and candor in the narrative Salem Witch- craft; with an account of Salem Village and a History of Opinio on Witchcr4t and kindred subjects, by the Hon. CnAaaEs WENT- WORTH UPHAM. (Wiggin & Lunt.) The work is indeed exhaustive in its treatment of a difficult subject; and could be written only by one who, like its author, brings to the topic, not merely the dili~ence of years given to a thorough examination of the facts, but a truly judicial mind and that sagacity of moral perception which can be derived only from a sympathetic knowledge of human life and ac- tion in some of their most important manifes- tations. Mr. Upham has no common claims to be heard on this subject. Though born in New Brunswick, he came in his boyhood to Massachusetts, the land of his ancestors, in time to become, at the usual age, a graduate of Harvard College; and thenceforward as an instructor and for twenty years till the failure of his voice compelled him to relinquish the charge, pastor of the first Church in Salem; a public orator on various occasions; actively occupiedinthecauseofeducation;and,not 882 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Mar. least, an eminent servant of the public in political life in his town, in his State, in the National Congress, he has at the age of sixty- five rounded a career of the most varied ex- perience. He has thus become practically acquainted in our own day, and at the very place of their exhibition, with the phases of life, religious, social, and judicial, which, at that earlier period, entered into the composi- tion of the melancholy drama which he has undertaken to reconstruct. More than thirty years ago, moreover, he published a volume of Lectures on the subject, which has since been consulted as an authority. The interval which has elapsed has been one of extraordinary labor and of the most valuable results in the department of the historical antiquities of New England. In- quirers have sprung up on all sides; family papers and public records, at home and abroad, the registers of courts and churches; the testimony of tombs and inscriptiQas; books and newspapers; have all been made to yield their quota to this work of rescuing from oblivion the life of the past. The con- sequence is a variety and extent of knowledge, frequently of the humblest villagers, which it may confidently be said no other nation has or can possess of the corresponding early period of its formation and development. It is perhaps not too much to say that in Mr. Uphams present volumes we may learn more of Salem as it was inhabited a hundred years ago, than its best-informed citizen is likely to tell us of the place as it exists at present. The work is divided into three parts, the first relating the public and private history of Salem Village, the scene of the explosion; the second, discoursing on the old belief in witchcraft; the third, giving an account of the personages concerned, the evidence, and the trials, ending in the executions on Witch Hill. Mr. Upham thus lays a broad and solid foun- dation for his story in its antecedents in vil- lage life, detecting as it were the peculiar atmosphere which drew down upon this de- voted spot the electricity which pervaded the air of the whole province. His exhibition of the daily life of the inhabitants is very curi- ous, and may stand, once for all, as the anat- omy of a New-England settlement. The reader may pass in these early pages of his book from house to house, from the well-built abodes of the gentry, erected for posterity and unworn at the present time, to the hum- ble cottages of the yeomanry; learning the ways of the occupants, their daily occupations, their loves and their hates, their much pray ing and their scantnone so-calledamuse- ments, as if Asmodeus were unroofing the buildings and showing all within. It does not appear to have been, upon the whole, fairly regarded, so gloomy a life as has been supposed. It was, for the most part, xvell filled with honest work; its pleasures, as in various scenes of social intercourse, church gatherings, huskings, sugar-making, and the like, growing out of its profitable occupations. No better recipe for happiness has been dis- covered than that,to unite business and en- joyment, and render toil a felicity. When that shall be fully brought about, the problem of labor, so puzzling to social economists, will be solved. It is not a little singular, to select one striking fact from many in Mr. Uphams volumes, that the witchcraft delusion itself in Salem Village gre~v out of the sport- ive amusements of a troop of young girls holding their junketings at the house of the clergyman Mr. Parris. These elfish damsels, who ought to have been the accused, not the accusers, began by forming a circle~ for the practice of palmistry, juggling, sleight of handtricks which we should not have looked for in this reverend enclosure; and much of the fearful interest of the hellish plot which ensued depended, as Mr. Upham shrewdly remarks, upon the sight-seeing pas- sion of the Puritan audience. There has seldom, says he, been better acting in a theatre than the girls displayed in the pres- ence of the astonished and horror-stricken rulers, magistrates, ministers, judges, jurors, spectators, and prisoners. * * * The austere principles of that generation forbade, with the utmost severity, all theatrical shows and performances. But at Salem Village and the old town, in the respective meeting-houses, and at Deacon Nathaniel Ingersolls, some of the best playing ever got up in this country was practised; and patronized for weeks and months, at the very centre and heart of Puri- tanism, by the most straitest sect of that solemn order of men. Pastors, deacons, church-members, doctors of divinity, college professors, officers of state, crowded, day after day, to behold feats which have never been surpassed on the boards of any theatre; which rivalled the most remarkable achieve- ments of pantomimists, thaumaturgists, and stage-players; and made considerable ap- proaches towards the best performances of ancient sorcerers and magicians, or modern jugglers and mesmerizers. So human nature will out. It might have been as well for these amusement-seeking 1868.] MONTHLY CHRoNIcLE. 383 functIonaries to have had a play of Shakes- peareMacbeth, say, or the Tempestper- formed in the village, rather than make dangling puppets of the good and unfortu- nate in the satanic drama, in which they were stage managers, on Witch Hill. FROM Lee & Shepard, Boston, we have, in a stout octavo volume, a new edition of the Essays of Lord Bacon, with Archbishop WHATELYs Annotations, and a glossarial index by FRANKLIN FIsKE HEARD. The writings of Lord Bacon have exercised an influence second only to those of Aristotle on the direction and method of philosophic thought; and although we believe it is now generally conceded that his earlier disciples claimed too much in calling him the author of the inductive system of investigation, his labors in giving expression to that system, and urging its claims, can hardly be over- estimated. Bacons reputation rests principally upon his Norman Organum, but he is probably better known through his Essays, which have more interest for general readers, and should have a place in the library of every thought- ful man. They are presented here in an ex- ceedingly attractive shape; their value is much increased by Archbishop Whatelys annotations, and the notes of Mr. heard are added with discrimination and judgment. The volume is a very handsome specimen of book-making, and reflects credit on the taste and enterprise of the publishers. like Se tons Tale, and other Poems, by THEODORE TILTON, published by Sheldon & Company, embraces a series of poems, a few of which, including The Great Bell Roland, The True Church, The Mystery of Na- ture, A Laymans Confession of Faith, The Lotus-Planter, and that prettiest of nursery rhymes, The Fly, and several others, were already well known throughout the country. The volume, as a whole, is marked by originality, individuality, or per- sonality, as distinguished from the whole imitative class of poets. It has an inspiration of its own. As in nature, the falling of the old leaves enriches the soil for the production of the new, so in mind, the reading of the old poets prepares the heart to bud and blossom into new forms and flowers of song. While this volume shows that Mr. Tilton has studied the details of poetic composition with care, fidel- ity, and taste, we no more find in Mr. Tiltons songs the marks of Goethe, Tennyson, Long- fellow, or any other, than we can detect on this years geranium-leaf the mark of last years buried clover. In this age of crude absorption and undigested imitation, this is a peculiar excellence. Mr. Tiltons verse and rhythm are very finished. Nothing is slipshod. There are great simplicity and conciseness, and much thought and feelin,, are expressed in a few clear words. If we have any cen- sure to pass upon these poems, it would be that, while each is admirable singly, like con- fectionery, they clog upon the taste in the mass. And, if we analyze our own feeling, it is that a very sweet, short, simple, yet artisti- cally perfect rhythm, employed to narrate, as in nearly every one of these poems, a sweet, condensed, unique incident, to which there is invariably a concentrated moral or reli,,ious lesson, is excellent as dessert, but all too sweet for Human natures daily food As the moral and spiritual element is strong and irrepressible in Mr. Tiltons poetry, he can afford to sacrifice it much more largely than he has done in these poems to the ima. ginative, the constructive, or the purely ideal; which, after all, must distinguish the pure poem from the sermon in verse. The design of pure poetry is still to delIght the imagina- tion, not to reform the vorld. It is a variety of utilitarianism fatal to the highest creations of art, to ally it with any other purpose than the strict function of art, viz., to communi- cate pleasure, as distinguished from either material, moral, or spiritual profit. Poems of Ihith, Hope, and Love, by PHUIBE CARY (ilurd & Houghton), is a delicate vol- ume of verses for the homes and affections of all gentle people; light, airy, and refined; touching upon occasional topics of the day, but oftener on those religious and moral sen- timents which are of perpetual recurrence, and never grow old. JEAN MAcfls Histoire dune Bouchie de Pain is one of the most charming little fairy stories that children ever read, or grown people either. And we hope that the knowl- edge that it is all true will not spoil the pretty tale for the little ones, for surely nevei~ was physiology presented in so bewitchin~ a form. If old Dame Science, the whilom terror of children, is to come masquerading among them in such an attractive garb as this with all the fascinating dimples and smiles that French esprit can lend her, we shall have our

1868.] MONTHLY CHRoNIcLE. 383 functIonaries to have had a play of Shakes- peareMacbeth, say, or the Tempestper- formed in the village, rather than make dangling puppets of the good and unfortu- nate in the satanic drama, in which they were stage managers, on Witch Hill. FROM Lee & Shepard, Boston, we have, in a stout octavo volume, a new edition of the Essays of Lord Bacon, with Archbishop WHATELYs Annotations, and a glossarial index by FRANKLIN FIsKE HEARD. The writings of Lord Bacon have exercised an influence second only to those of Aristotle on the direction and method of philosophic thought; and although we believe it is now generally conceded that his earlier disciples claimed too much in calling him the author of the inductive system of investigation, his labors in giving expression to that system, and urging its claims, can hardly be over- estimated. Bacons reputation rests principally upon his Norman Organum, but he is probably better known through his Essays, which have more interest for general readers, and should have a place in the library of every thought- ful man. They are presented here in an ex- ceedingly attractive shape; their value is much increased by Archbishop Whatelys annotations, and the notes of Mr. heard are added with discrimination and judgment. The volume is a very handsome specimen of book-making, and reflects credit on the taste and enterprise of the publishers. like Se tons Tale, and other Poems, by THEODORE TILTON, published by Sheldon & Company, embraces a series of poems, a few of which, including The Great Bell Roland, The True Church, The Mystery of Na- ture, A Laymans Confession of Faith, The Lotus-Planter, and that prettiest of nursery rhymes, The Fly, and several others, were already well known throughout the country. The volume, as a whole, is marked by originality, individuality, or per- sonality, as distinguished from the whole imitative class of poets. It has an inspiration of its own. As in nature, the falling of the old leaves enriches the soil for the production of the new, so in mind, the reading of the old poets prepares the heart to bud and blossom into new forms and flowers of song. While this volume shows that Mr. Tilton has studied the details of poetic composition with care, fidel- ity, and taste, we no more find in Mr. Tiltons songs the marks of Goethe, Tennyson, Long- fellow, or any other, than we can detect on this years geranium-leaf the mark of last years buried clover. In this age of crude absorption and undigested imitation, this is a peculiar excellence. Mr. Tiltons verse and rhythm are very finished. Nothing is slipshod. There are great simplicity and conciseness, and much thought and feelin,, are expressed in a few clear words. If we have any cen- sure to pass upon these poems, it would be that, while each is admirable singly, like con- fectionery, they clog upon the taste in the mass. And, if we analyze our own feeling, it is that a very sweet, short, simple, yet artisti- cally perfect rhythm, employed to narrate, as in nearly every one of these poems, a sweet, condensed, unique incident, to which there is invariably a concentrated moral or reli,,ious lesson, is excellent as dessert, but all too sweet for Human natures daily food As the moral and spiritual element is strong and irrepressible in Mr. Tiltons poetry, he can afford to sacrifice it much more largely than he has done in these poems to the ima. ginative, the constructive, or the purely ideal; which, after all, must distinguish the pure poem from the sermon in verse. The design of pure poetry is still to delIght the imagina- tion, not to reform the vorld. It is a variety of utilitarianism fatal to the highest creations of art, to ally it with any other purpose than the strict function of art, viz., to communi- cate pleasure, as distinguished from either material, moral, or spiritual profit. Poems of Ihith, Hope, and Love, by PHUIBE CARY (ilurd & Houghton), is a delicate vol- ume of verses for the homes and affections of all gentle people; light, airy, and refined; touching upon occasional topics of the day, but oftener on those religious and moral sen- timents which are of perpetual recurrence, and never grow old. JEAN MAcfls Histoire dune Bouchie de Pain is one of the most charming little fairy stories that children ever read, or grown people either. And we hope that the knowl- edge that it is all true will not spoil the pretty tale for the little ones, for surely nevei~ was physiology presented in so bewitchin~ a form. If old Dame Science, the whilom terror of children, is to come masquerading among them in such an attractive garb as this with all the fascinating dimples and smiles that French esprit can lend her, we shall have our

1868.] MONTHLY CHRoNIcLE. 383 functIonaries to have had a play of Shakes- peareMacbeth, say, or the Tempestper- formed in the village, rather than make dangling puppets of the good and unfortu- nate in the satanic drama, in which they were stage managers, on Witch Hill. FROM Lee & Shepard, Boston, we have, in a stout octavo volume, a new edition of the Essays of Lord Bacon, with Archbishop WHATELYs Annotations, and a glossarial index by FRANKLIN FIsKE HEARD. The writings of Lord Bacon have exercised an influence second only to those of Aristotle on the direction and method of philosophic thought; and although we believe it is now generally conceded that his earlier disciples claimed too much in calling him the author of the inductive system of investigation, his labors in giving expression to that system, and urging its claims, can hardly be over- estimated. Bacons reputation rests principally upon his Norman Organum, but he is probably better known through his Essays, which have more interest for general readers, and should have a place in the library of every thought- ful man. They are presented here in an ex- ceedingly attractive shape; their value is much increased by Archbishop Whatelys annotations, and the notes of Mr. heard are added with discrimination and judgment. The volume is a very handsome specimen of book-making, and reflects credit on the taste and enterprise of the publishers. like Se tons Tale, and other Poems, by THEODORE TILTON, published by Sheldon & Company, embraces a series of poems, a few of which, including The Great Bell Roland, The True Church, The Mystery of Na- ture, A Laymans Confession of Faith, The Lotus-Planter, and that prettiest of nursery rhymes, The Fly, and several others, were already well known throughout the country. The volume, as a whole, is marked by originality, individuality, or per- sonality, as distinguished from the whole imitative class of poets. It has an inspiration of its own. As in nature, the falling of the old leaves enriches the soil for the production of the new, so in mind, the reading of the old poets prepares the heart to bud and blossom into new forms and flowers of song. While this volume shows that Mr. Tilton has studied the details of poetic composition with care, fidel- ity, and taste, we no more find in Mr. Tiltons songs the marks of Goethe, Tennyson, Long- fellow, or any other, than we can detect on this years geranium-leaf the mark of last years buried clover. In this age of crude absorption and undigested imitation, this is a peculiar excellence. Mr. Tiltons verse and rhythm are very finished. Nothing is slipshod. There are great simplicity and conciseness, and much thought and feelin,, are expressed in a few clear words. If we have any cen- sure to pass upon these poems, it would be that, while each is admirable singly, like con- fectionery, they clog upon the taste in the mass. And, if we analyze our own feeling, it is that a very sweet, short, simple, yet artisti- cally perfect rhythm, employed to narrate, as in nearly every one of these poems, a sweet, condensed, unique incident, to which there is invariably a concentrated moral or reli,,ious lesson, is excellent as dessert, but all too sweet for Human natures daily food As the moral and spiritual element is strong and irrepressible in Mr. Tiltons poetry, he can afford to sacrifice it much more largely than he has done in these poems to the ima. ginative, the constructive, or the purely ideal; which, after all, must distinguish the pure poem from the sermon in verse. The design of pure poetry is still to delIght the imagina- tion, not to reform the vorld. It is a variety of utilitarianism fatal to the highest creations of art, to ally it with any other purpose than the strict function of art, viz., to communi- cate pleasure, as distinguished from either material, moral, or spiritual profit. Poems of Ihith, Hope, and Love, by PHUIBE CARY (ilurd & Houghton), is a delicate vol- ume of verses for the homes and affections of all gentle people; light, airy, and refined; touching upon occasional topics of the day, but oftener on those religious and moral sen- timents which are of perpetual recurrence, and never grow old. JEAN MAcfls Histoire dune Bouchie de Pain is one of the most charming little fairy stories that children ever read, or grown people either. And we hope that the knowl- edge that it is all true will not spoil the pretty tale for the little ones, for surely nevei~ was physiology presented in so bewitchin~ a form. If old Dame Science, the whilom terror of children, is to come masquerading among them in such an attractive garb as this with all the fascinating dimples and smiles that French esprit can lend her, we shall have our

1868.] MONTHLY CHRoNIcLE. 383 functIonaries to have had a play of Shakes- peareMacbeth, say, or the Tempestper- formed in the village, rather than make dangling puppets of the good and unfortu- nate in the satanic drama, in which they were stage managers, on Witch Hill. FROM Lee & Shepard, Boston, we have, in a stout octavo volume, a new edition of the Essays of Lord Bacon, with Archbishop WHATELYs Annotations, and a glossarial index by FRANKLIN FIsKE HEARD. The writings of Lord Bacon have exercised an influence second only to those of Aristotle on the direction and method of philosophic thought; and although we believe it is now generally conceded that his earlier disciples claimed too much in calling him the author of the inductive system of investigation, his labors in giving expression to that system, and urging its claims, can hardly be over- estimated. Bacons reputation rests principally upon his Norman Organum, but he is probably better known through his Essays, which have more interest for general readers, and should have a place in the library of every thought- ful man. They are presented here in an ex- ceedingly attractive shape; their value is much increased by Archbishop Whatelys annotations, and the notes of Mr. heard are added with discrimination and judgment. The volume is a very handsome specimen of book-making, and reflects credit on the taste and enterprise of the publishers. like Se tons Tale, and other Poems, by THEODORE TILTON, published by Sheldon & Company, embraces a series of poems, a few of which, including The Great Bell Roland, The True Church, The Mystery of Na- ture, A Laymans Confession of Faith, The Lotus-Planter, and that prettiest of nursery rhymes, The Fly, and several others, were already well known throughout the country. The volume, as a whole, is marked by originality, individuality, or per- sonality, as distinguished from the whole imitative class of poets. It has an inspiration of its own. As in nature, the falling of the old leaves enriches the soil for the production of the new, so in mind, the reading of the old poets prepares the heart to bud and blossom into new forms and flowers of song. While this volume shows that Mr. Tilton has studied the details of poetic composition with care, fidel- ity, and taste, we no more find in Mr. Tiltons songs the marks of Goethe, Tennyson, Long- fellow, or any other, than we can detect on this years geranium-leaf the mark of last years buried clover. In this age of crude absorption and undigested imitation, this is a peculiar excellence. Mr. Tiltons verse and rhythm are very finished. Nothing is slipshod. There are great simplicity and conciseness, and much thought and feelin,, are expressed in a few clear words. If we have any cen- sure to pass upon these poems, it would be that, while each is admirable singly, like con- fectionery, they clog upon the taste in the mass. And, if we analyze our own feeling, it is that a very sweet, short, simple, yet artisti- cally perfect rhythm, employed to narrate, as in nearly every one of these poems, a sweet, condensed, unique incident, to which there is invariably a concentrated moral or reli,,ious lesson, is excellent as dessert, but all too sweet for Human natures daily food As the moral and spiritual element is strong and irrepressible in Mr. Tiltons poetry, he can afford to sacrifice it much more largely than he has done in these poems to the ima. ginative, the constructive, or the purely ideal; which, after all, must distinguish the pure poem from the sermon in verse. The design of pure poetry is still to delIght the imagina- tion, not to reform the vorld. It is a variety of utilitarianism fatal to the highest creations of art, to ally it with any other purpose than the strict function of art, viz., to communi- cate pleasure, as distinguished from either material, moral, or spiritual profit. Poems of Ihith, Hope, and Love, by PHUIBE CARY (ilurd & Houghton), is a delicate vol- ume of verses for the homes and affections of all gentle people; light, airy, and refined; touching upon occasional topics of the day, but oftener on those religious and moral sen- timents which are of perpetual recurrence, and never grow old. JEAN MAcfls Histoire dune Bouchie de Pain is one of the most charming little fairy stories that children ever read, or grown people either. And we hope that the knowl- edge that it is all true will not spoil the pretty tale for the little ones, for surely nevei~ was physiology presented in so bewitchin~ a form. If old Dame Science, the whilom terror of children, is to come masquerading among them in such an attractive garb as this with all the fascinating dimples and smiles that French esprit can lend her, we shall have our

1868.] MONTHLY CHRoNIcLE. 383 functIonaries to have had a play of Shakes- peareMacbeth, say, or the Tempestper- formed in the village, rather than make dangling puppets of the good and unfortu- nate in the satanic drama, in which they were stage managers, on Witch Hill. FROM Lee & Shepard, Boston, we have, in a stout octavo volume, a new edition of the Essays of Lord Bacon, with Archbishop WHATELYs Annotations, and a glossarial index by FRANKLIN FIsKE HEARD. The writings of Lord Bacon have exercised an influence second only to those of Aristotle on the direction and method of philosophic thought; and although we believe it is now generally conceded that his earlier disciples claimed too much in calling him the author of the inductive system of investigation, his labors in giving expression to that system, and urging its claims, can hardly be over- estimated. Bacons reputation rests principally upon his Norman Organum, but he is probably better known through his Essays, which have more interest for general readers, and should have a place in the library of every thought- ful man. They are presented here in an ex- ceedingly attractive shape; their value is much increased by Archbishop Whatelys annotations, and the notes of Mr. heard are added with discrimination and judgment. The volume is a very handsome specimen of book-making, and reflects credit on the taste and enterprise of the publishers. like Se tons Tale, and other Poems, by THEODORE TILTON, published by Sheldon & Company, embraces a series of poems, a few of which, including The Great Bell Roland, The True Church, The Mystery of Na- ture, A Laymans Confession of Faith, The Lotus-Planter, and that prettiest of nursery rhymes, The Fly, and several others, were already well known throughout the country. The volume, as a whole, is marked by originality, individuality, or per- sonality, as distinguished from the whole imitative class of poets. It has an inspiration of its own. As in nature, the falling of the old leaves enriches the soil for the production of the new, so in mind, the reading of the old poets prepares the heart to bud and blossom into new forms and flowers of song. While this volume shows that Mr. Tilton has studied the details of poetic composition with care, fidel- ity, and taste, we no more find in Mr. Tiltons songs the marks of Goethe, Tennyson, Long- fellow, or any other, than we can detect on this years geranium-leaf the mark of last years buried clover. In this age of crude absorption and undigested imitation, this is a peculiar excellence. Mr. Tiltons verse and rhythm are very finished. Nothing is slipshod. There are great simplicity and conciseness, and much thought and feelin,, are expressed in a few clear words. If we have any cen- sure to pass upon these poems, it would be that, while each is admirable singly, like con- fectionery, they clog upon the taste in the mass. And, if we analyze our own feeling, it is that a very sweet, short, simple, yet artisti- cally perfect rhythm, employed to narrate, as in nearly every one of these poems, a sweet, condensed, unique incident, to which there is invariably a concentrated moral or reli,,ious lesson, is excellent as dessert, but all too sweet for Human natures daily food As the moral and spiritual element is strong and irrepressible in Mr. Tiltons poetry, he can afford to sacrifice it much more largely than he has done in these poems to the ima. ginative, the constructive, or the purely ideal; which, after all, must distinguish the pure poem from the sermon in verse. The design of pure poetry is still to delIght the imagina- tion, not to reform the vorld. It is a variety of utilitarianism fatal to the highest creations of art, to ally it with any other purpose than the strict function of art, viz., to communi- cate pleasure, as distinguished from either material, moral, or spiritual profit. Poems of Ihith, Hope, and Love, by PHUIBE CARY (ilurd & Houghton), is a delicate vol- ume of verses for the homes and affections of all gentle people; light, airy, and refined; touching upon occasional topics of the day, but oftener on those religious and moral sen- timents which are of perpetual recurrence, and never grow old. JEAN MAcfls Histoire dune Bouchie de Pain is one of the most charming little fairy stories that children ever read, or grown people either. And we hope that the knowl- edge that it is all true will not spoil the pretty tale for the little ones, for surely nevei~ was physiology presented in so bewitchin~ a form. If old Dame Science, the whilom terror of children, is to come masquerading among them in such an attractive garb as this with all the fascinating dimples and smiles that French esprit can lend her, we shall have our ~384 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Mar. grave doctors crowded out of their chairs by a set of rosy urchins who think learning bet- ter fun than play. Our author traces the his- tory of a mouthful of bread, from its first seizure by the hand to its final conversion into the substances which compose the blood and nourish the body. The last chapters, on the Ailments de Nutrition, are neither quite so interesting, nor quite so simple, as the first part of the book, which is as full of delight- ful surprises as a Christmas pantomime. Messrs. Leypoldt & Holt, to whom we owe this charming book, have also published La Litt~rature Fran~aise Contemporaine, a much needed compendium of the literature of the day, and a little book called Condensed French Instruction, very good as far as it goes. The New Eclectic, a mont/dy Magazine of Se- lect Literature (Turnbull & Murdoch), is a well-selected miscellany from the home as well as foreign periodical literature of the day, with a view to intellectual and moral culture, as well as lighter entertainmentwith the nov- elty o~ including papers representing the views of the Roman Catholic Church. IN another form of enterprise we have a use- ful selection, in the, new paper, The Week, a Reflex of Home and Foreign Opinion. It is sent forth by the Round Table Association,~~ a sufficient guaranty of its spirit and intelli- gence. The European and American news- papers are drawn upon for their best articles to enliven its pages. This multiplication of periodical publications is a natural attendant upon the development of the country, in the rapid progress of distant settlements, in the great extension of railway and other lines of travel. Parsons & Co., Albany,) compiled by S. C. IIIJTCHINs, presents in the clearest and best arranged manner a vast mass of information concerning the official administration of the whole country, and particularly of the State of New York. It is in many respects a con- venient substitute for the old American Al- manac, the discontinuance of which was much to be regretted. The Yearly Sketch Book, a summary of national political events, is well prepared. BOOK5 REcEIvED. Lzz & SHEIARD, Boston: Sir Pavon and St. Pavon. The College, the Market, and the Court; by Mrs. C. II. Dali. LONGRAN, GREEN & Co., London: Melusine, and other Poems. The Papal Drama; by J. II. Gill. HUED ~ HOUGHTON, New York: Philoso- phy of Eating; by A. J. Bellows, M. D. Poems; by E. C. Kinney. Diary of a Mil- liner; by Belle Otis. Turk and Greek; by S. G. W. Benjamin. LEvPOLDT & HOLT, New York: Nathan the Wise; Lessing; translated by Ellen Frothiagham. La Litt6rature Francaise: Bouch6e de Pain; by J. Mac6. M. DooLAnv, New York: The Painters Camp; by Laughton Osborne. Lucia Dare; by Filia. Tscnnoa & FIELDS, Boston: A Journey in Brazil; illustrated ; by Professor Louis Agassiz. Womans Wrongs; by Gail Hamil- ten. R. M. DEWITT, New York: Anne Judge, Spinster; by F. W. Robinson. BRADFORD Caun, New York: Army Cor- The Evening Journal Almanac, (Weed, respondence of Col. Jno. Laurens. FINE ARTS. Tnz pleasant Saturday receptions which most of our New York artists have given during the winter, have done muck towards the cultivation of a truer art-sentiment among the people, who were thus brought into con- tact with artists and their works, and became familiarized with studios and studio-life. There was, at first, a certain shyness on both sides. Visitors hesitated to ask questions, and the ~artists to volunteer information, about their pictures. But, after a little while, the feeling of reserve wore off, as artists and public be- came better acquainted with each other, and visitors who felt doubtful whether they ought to admire a picture as a sunset or a sunrise, no longer hesitated to inquire the time of day. This sometimes, to be sure, occasioned awk- ward explanations on the part of the artist, who, apart from the inevitable mortification of having even an ignorant person mistake

~384 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Mar. grave doctors crowded out of their chairs by a set of rosy urchins who think learning bet- ter fun than play. Our author traces the his- tory of a mouthful of bread, from its first seizure by the hand to its final conversion into the substances which compose the blood and nourish the body. The last chapters, on the Ailments de Nutrition, are neither quite so interesting, nor quite so simple, as the first part of the book, which is as full of delight- ful surprises as a Christmas pantomime. Messrs. Leypoldt & Holt, to whom we owe this charming book, have also published La Litt~rature Fran~aise Contemporaine, a much needed compendium of the literature of the day, and a little book called Condensed French Instruction, very good as far as it goes. The New Eclectic, a mont/dy Magazine of Se- lect Literature (Turnbull & Murdoch), is a well-selected miscellany from the home as well as foreign periodical literature of the day, with a view to intellectual and moral culture, as well as lighter entertainmentwith the nov- elty o~ including papers representing the views of the Roman Catholic Church. IN another form of enterprise we have a use- ful selection, in the, new paper, The Week, a Reflex of Home and Foreign Opinion. It is sent forth by the Round Table Association,~~ a sufficient guaranty of its spirit and intelli- gence. The European and American news- papers are drawn upon for their best articles to enliven its pages. This multiplication of periodical publications is a natural attendant upon the development of the country, in the rapid progress of distant settlements, in the great extension of railway and other lines of travel. Parsons & Co., Albany,) compiled by S. C. IIIJTCHINs, presents in the clearest and best arranged manner a vast mass of information concerning the official administration of the whole country, and particularly of the State of New York. It is in many respects a con- venient substitute for the old American Al- manac, the discontinuance of which was much to be regretted. The Yearly Sketch Book, a summary of national political events, is well prepared. BOOK5 REcEIvED. Lzz & SHEIARD, Boston: Sir Pavon and St. Pavon. The College, the Market, and the Court; by Mrs. C. II. Dali. LONGRAN, GREEN & Co., London: Melusine, and other Poems. The Papal Drama; by J. II. Gill. HUED ~ HOUGHTON, New York: Philoso- phy of Eating; by A. J. Bellows, M. D. Poems; by E. C. Kinney. Diary of a Mil- liner; by Belle Otis. Turk and Greek; by S. G. W. Benjamin. LEvPOLDT & HOLT, New York: Nathan the Wise; Lessing; translated by Ellen Frothiagham. La Litt6rature Francaise: Bouch6e de Pain; by J. Mac6. M. DooLAnv, New York: The Painters Camp; by Laughton Osborne. Lucia Dare; by Filia. Tscnnoa & FIELDS, Boston: A Journey in Brazil; illustrated ; by Professor Louis Agassiz. Womans Wrongs; by Gail Hamil- ten. R. M. DEWITT, New York: Anne Judge, Spinster; by F. W. Robinson. BRADFORD Caun, New York: Army Cor- The Evening Journal Almanac, (Weed, respondence of Col. Jno. Laurens. FINE ARTS. Tnz pleasant Saturday receptions which most of our New York artists have given during the winter, have done muck towards the cultivation of a truer art-sentiment among the people, who were thus brought into con- tact with artists and their works, and became familiarized with studios and studio-life. There was, at first, a certain shyness on both sides. Visitors hesitated to ask questions, and the ~artists to volunteer information, about their pictures. But, after a little while, the feeling of reserve wore off, as artists and public be- came better acquainted with each other, and visitors who felt doubtful whether they ought to admire a picture as a sunset or a sunrise, no longer hesitated to inquire the time of day. This sometimes, to be sure, occasioned awk- ward explanations on the part of the artist, who, apart from the inevitable mortification of having even an ignorant person mistake

~384 PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. [Mar. grave doctors crowded out of their chairs by a set of rosy urchins who think learning bet- ter fun than play. Our author traces the his- tory of a mouthful of bread, from its first seizure by the hand to its final conversion into the substances which compose the blood and nourish the body. The last chapters, on the Ailments de Nutrition, are neither quite so interesting, nor quite so simple, as the first part of the book, which is as full of delight- ful surprises as a Christmas pantomime. Messrs. Leypoldt & Holt, to whom we owe this charming book, have also published La Litt~rature Fran~aise Contemporaine, a much needed compendium of the literature of the day, and a little book called Condensed French Instruction, very good as far as it goes. The New Eclectic, a mont/dy Magazine of Se- lect Literature (Turnbull & Murdoch), is a well-selected miscellany from the home as well as foreign periodical literature of the day, with a view to intellectual and moral culture, as well as lighter entertainmentwith the nov- elty o~ including papers representing the views of the Roman Catholic Church. IN another form of enterprise we have a use- ful selection, in the, new paper, The Week, a Reflex of Home and Foreign Opinion. It is sent forth by the Round Table Association,~~ a sufficient guaranty of its spirit and intelli- gence. The European and American