CHAPTER III
.--THE INFINITE.
The Divine Attributes are the base of all true Art.
No work of art can be considered truly beautiful unless it recalls or reproduces, even in its finite form, some of the divine attributes; not that the work must treat of them, or consciously suggest them to the intellect, but that they must enter into the creation of the artist, that the immediate and intuitive perception of beauty, always attached to their manifestation, may appeal to those faculties or instincts which ever answer in delight when these attributes are suggested to the human spirit; for, consciously or unconsciously, the soul yearns for a clearer view of the beauty of God.
Whatever good there may be desirable by man, more especially good belonging to his moral nature, there will be a corresponding agreeableness in whatever external object reminds him of such good, whether it remind him by arbitrary association, by typical resemblance, or by awakening intuitions of the divine attributes, which he was created to glorify and to enjoy eternally. Leibnitz says:
'The perfections of God are those of our own souls, but He possesses them without limit; He is the exhaustless ocean from which we have received but a drop; we have some power, some wisdom, some love; but God is all power, all wisdom, all love. Order, unity, proportion, harmony, enchant us; painting, sculpture, music, poetry, charm us in the degree in which, in their appropriate spheres, they have succeeded in manifesting fragments of the above: but God is all order, all proportion, all unity, all harmony; and all beauty visible here is but a dim reflex of the eternal rays.'
The fact of our deriving constant pleasure from whatever is a type or semblance of the divine attributes, and from nothing enduringly but that which is, is the most ennobling of all that can be said of human nature, not only setting a great gulf of specific separation between us and the brutes that perish, but it seems a promise of a communion ultimately deep, close, and conscious with the Being in whose darkened manifestations we here unconsciously and instinctively delight. It is at least probable that the higher the order of intelligences, the more of the divine image becomes palpable in all around them, and the redeemed spirits and angels may have perceptions as much more full and rapturous than ours, as ours than those of the beasts and creeping things. It may be received almost as an axiom that no natural instinct or desire can be entirely frustrated, and as these desires for the beautiful are so unfailing that they have not escaped the thinkers of any age, but were held divine of old, and even in heathen countries, it must be admitted that in these visionary pleasures, lightly as we may now be disposed to regard them, there are causes of gratitude, grounds of hope, anchors of faith, more than in all the manifold material gifts with which God mercifully crowns the years and hedges the path of men.
We turn to Plato to show how clearly such ideas were held by the thinkers of antiquity:
'Eternal beauty, not created, not made; exempt from increase or decay; not beautiful in one part and deformed in another, beautiful in such a time, such a place, such a relation; not beauty which hath any sensible parts or anything corporeal, or which may be found comprised in any one thought or science, or residing in any creation different from itself, as in an animal, the earth, or the heavens;--but absolute beauty, identical and invariable in itself; beauty in which, would they please the spirit of men, other things must participate, but their creation or destruction brings IT neither diminution, increase, nor the slightest change.'
Plotinus writes in the same spirit:
'Let him who has closed his eyes upon mere sensuous beauty, advance boldly into the depths of the sanctuary. Let him reverently gaze upon the true beauty, the original type of those pale and fleeting images to which he may have hitherto applied the holy name of beautiful.'
We propose to consider reverently and with a humble sense of the limited sphere from which we must regard the infinite, some of the divine attributes, which must, in the finite mode, enter into every creation of artistic excellence. We begin our reflections with the infinite itself.
Infinite--this word is by no means the expression of a clear idea: it is merely the expression of an effort to attain one. It stands for the possible attempt at an impossible conception. Man needed a term by which to point out the direction of this effort--the cloud behind which lay, forever invisible, the object of this attempt. The fact is, that upon the enunciation of any one of that class of terms to which 'infinite' belongs--the class representing thoughts of thought--he who has a right to say he thinks at all, feels himself called upon, not to entertain a conception, but simply to direct his mental vision toward some given point, in the intellectual firmament, where lies a nebula never to be resolved. And yet to this very point, which the intellect cannot define, are our spirits forever tending. No artistic creation ever fully pleases unless there is given in it some suggestion of this mystic attribute, underlying and permeating all other attributes of Deity. It is the dim unconscious feeling after this attribute which causes the forever recurring dissatisfaction with the finite, which so ruthlessly pursues us through life. It is the source of that vague but tender longing, that restless but dreamy yearning, that haunting melancholy, which characterize human souls created for the enjoyment of the infinite; divining and insatiably thirsting for the absolute.
Let us now attempt to trace some of the various ways in which this feeling after the infinite manifests itself. Plato and his school tried to explain the existence of absolute ideas in the soul by the hypothesis of its preëxistence to that of the body in the bosom of the Absolute, the Infinite, the Eternal; and, consequently, that such ideas are but reminiscences of a more perfect life. We find the following passage in an ode of Wordsworth's:
'Our birth is but a sleep, and a forgetting: The soul that rises with us, our life's star, Hath had elsewhere its setting, And cometh from afar Not in entire forgetfulness, And not in utter nakedness, But trailing clouds of glory do we come From God, who is our home.
'Hence, in a season of calm weather, Though inland far we be, Our souls have sight of that immortal sea Which brought us hither, Can in a moment travel thither, And see the children sport upon the shore, And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.'
It seems useless here to enter upon the vexed subject of 'innate ideas,' or to attempt to convince the reader, metaphysically, that the very negation contained in the word finite, necessarily suggests its affirmation in the word infinite. Enough that the idea of the infinite is certainly found in the mind of man, that he seeks it in the material world, in himself, in God. High gifts may have been wrought into the dim soul, which are destined to be gradually awakened through the growing perceptions of the mind. Every spiritual being created by eternal love may have had imparted to him a ray from the sun of eternal love, which, in its due time and place, is to manifest itself in his consciousness. Such participation in God as the primary source of all that is to abide eternally with the redeemed, has, in the present state of our vague consciousness, been described by men who felt its stirrings in their soul as the memory of eternal love. It might more properly be called an intuition of eternal love; such an instinct as leads the chrysalis to prepare for the change which it certainly does not understand. Life, such as the beat of the heart, the action of the lungs, is not manifested to the consciousness--neither is the source of this intuition, which, however, gives evidence of itself by an intuitive feeling of incessant longing. It reveals its presence constantly; sometimes in an undefinable feeling of profound desire, satisfied with no earthly object, yet but vaguely directed to the eternal or divine; sometimes in a profound and absorbing religiosity. This longing exists in an inchoate state; it is a love yet to be developed. From this mystic root springs much that is intellectually great, even the love of scientific certainty. Philosophy may, indeed, almost be termed the science of longing.
Developing in its normal growth, it gives us our true saints; those who live but to love God, and to serve man. But like all human gifts, it may be perverted. It is some such perverted apprehension or illusory longing for the infinite, which causes a man to surrender himself, heart and soul, to the despotic tyranny of some ruling habit, some favorite and engrossing pursuit. Alas! it often leads the most gifted of our race to devote all their energies, thoughts, feelings, to one faulty, fading, changing object, vainly pouring that worship upon the creature, which should be rendered only to the Creator.
'He that sits above In His calm glory, will forgive the love His creatures bear each other, even if blent With a vain worship, for its close is dim Ever with grief, which leads the wrung soul back to Him.'
The despair which this feeling sometimes occasions in the perverted soul of one intent upon feeding it with the gross aliments of the debased senses, is, without doubt, a very frequent cause of suicide. It may lead, in the soul of the infidel or sensualist, to the idolatry of art. It is a feeling, and requires direction. When enlightened by revelation and purified by faith, it manifests itself in the sublime abnegation and ardent love of the faithful follower of Jesus Christ.
This instinctive longing for the infinite, existing in the soul itself, cannot be satisfied by any earthly longing, sensual gratification, or external possession. Made 'to glorify God and enjoy Him forever,' man is ruined and eternally miserable if he refuse to fulfil the destiny for which he was created. His misery springs from the root of his greatness; it is because there is an infinite in him, which, with all his cunning, he cannot succeed in burying under the finite. This is a pregnant subject; under this strange caption might be written the psychological history of most human despair.
'The Fiend that man harries Is love of the Best; Yawns the pit of the Dragon Lit by rays from the Blest. The Lethe of nature Can't trance him again, Whose soul sees the Perfect His eyes seek in vain.'
Thus is faith a necessity of the soul, 'the evidence of things not seen.'
The idea of eternity is necessarily evolved from the negation contained in the limited meaning of the word time. Eternity is the all embracing, completely complete time; eternity, which is infinite not only _a parte externa_, that is everpassing yet everlasting, without beginning and without end; but also infinite _a parte interna_--so that in the endlessly living, thoroughly luminous present, the whole past, also the whole future, are equally actual, equally clear, and equally present to us, as the very present itself. Can we indeed form any other conception of a state of _perfect_ bliss? Is the idea of a state of entire happiness at all compatible with the regret that must be felt for a blissful past; the consciousness of a flying present; and the fear of an uncertain future? Yet the idea of time does not seem necessarily excluded from a conception of the essence and operations of God. Does there in very reality exist such an absolute opposition between time and eternity, that it is quite impossible for them to subsist in any mutual contact or relation? Is there no transition from the one to the other conceivable? Is eternity anything more than time vitally full, blissfully complete? If eternity is nothing more than the living, full, essential time, and if our earthly, fettered, and fragmentary time is, as the great poet says, 'out of joint,' fallen with man's disobedience to his God into a state of strange disorder--it is easily conceivable that the two do not stand apart so as to have no mutual contact. Those who have seen a holy death leave a calm and beautiful smile upon the face of a dying Christian, can scarcely help believing that the beginning of a blissful eternity has impressed itself upon the rapt features, actually breaking through the shackles of time before the prisoner was emancipated from its fetters. And those brief intervals of rapture which are sometimes experienced in the midst of earnest and ardent devotion--what are they but eternity thus manifesting itself through time in the soul? Those who have been rescued from the very jaws of death, frequently tell us that the moment preceding insensibility was crowded and filled with vivid recollections of the whole apparently forgotten past--thus bringing into the soul in the midst of time, a foretaste and interval of eternity! and those prophetic intimations of things yet to be, which frequently break in with startling power upon the human spirit, what indeed are they but sudden contacts between our fettered time, 'so out of joint,' and the fulness of eternity? Men rave against the justice of eternal punishment, as if its duration were not essentially part of their own immortality! Ah! if the memories of the deeds done in the body are essentially undying, were it not well for us that the writing traced against us by our own hands should be nailed to the cross, obliterated in the blood of the Immaculate Victim? that mystic blood which has bathed the universe!
The innate longing for the infinite, with its accompanying intuitions of the eternal love, and the yearnings for that fulness of time when the past and future shall live with us as really as the present itself, are ever vivid within us, and are two of the great vital arteries of all true art. This burning human thirst for the fulness of eternity in opposition to our fragmentary time manifests itself in our agonizing efforts to bring back the past, to which sad efforts we have given the melancholy name of memory; shows itself in our restless longing for the future, which we call hope; and frequently reveals itself in an insane seizing upon something in the imperfect and fleeting present, which it insists upon worshipping, in regarding as divine. Upon this last phase is dependent all that excited, exaggerated, but frequently beautiful passion of language which marks our poems of love. Ah! it is the merciful will of the Creator that we should worship only the divine, and so the human passion ends in sobs and wails of anguish, for the finite idol can never fill the shrine of the Absolute, the infinite God!
As the intuition of eternal love in the past, we find this longing for the infinite breathing through poetry in the form of elegy; in sad recollections of a faded world of demigods and heroes; and in the plaints for the loss of man's native home in Paradise, in the faint and dying echoes of the happy innocence of creation before the first outbreak of evil, and the consequent misery of nature. Poetry is indeed so full of haunting, melancholy memories, that it might almost be called the 'mind's supersensuous recollection of the eternal.' And what else can be said of music? Is it not an art eminently addressed to this intuition of eternal love, this constant longing for the infinite? Do not its giddy flights and dying falls at once arouse this mystic yearning, seeking, feeling, which may appropriately be termed the passion of the soul? That music holds some deep relation to the soul not yet clearly developed, may be inferred, not only from the magic power it sways over our spirits, but from the fact that the inspired writers picture it among the joys of heaven. It is now the language of our 'divine despair;' it is yet to be the speech of our eternal beatitude!
'God is love:' through all the hidden veins of ever-germing life beats this divine pulse of universal being. Hope, faith, and charity spring from the revelation and answering intuitions of this blissful love: from the hope, faith, and love of men sprang all the really noble works of art. All this is full of consolation, 'though inward far we be'--even the mournful memory of a past of celestial innocence becomes the harbinger of a divine hope. Let the poet then still sing of the past; like the glories of the setting sun flushing down the golden west, it but whispers of a more glorious rise in the mythic east. The root of art springs from the intuitions of eternal love; its leaves, flowers, and fruit, are faith, hope, and charity. May the rapt artist ever remember that the beauty of this earth was not intended to satisfy the requisitions of his longing soul, but to awaken and nourish in it the love of eternal beauty!
A golden thread of glories yet to be, twines through the woof of this our mortal life, and by tracing its wavy lines of glittering brilliancy, shining even through the dim symbolism of matter, many secrets of the life to come may be divined. The arts may be regarded as significant hieroglyphics of delights yet to be fulfilled in other spheres of being. The living pulse of omnipotence, the heart of God, beats sensibly in the beauty of the boundless universe; it is the fountain at which the young immortal is to imbibe his first draught for eternity. Not that, as erroneously held by the Pantheists, nature is God, no more than Raphael is the pictures he paints; but assuming the existence of a God as the creator of the worlds, what else can nature be but a revelation of God and divine love, a visible and symbolic representation thereof in matter; living, because His breath is life?
The following remarkable passage on the religious origin and consecutive order of the arts occurs in De La Mennais' 'Sketch of Philosophy:'
'The temple of art is an emanation from that Divine Spirit who fills it with Himself. It is the plastic evolution of the idea which man has of Him, of His nature, of His ways, as manifested in the universe. From its central sanctuary in which He, the unseen, dwells, this temple projects, extending itself in space in every direction; but by an opposite movement all its parts, closely united, converge to the sanctuary, gravitating toward the central point where their Head, their essential and primordial Reason, dwells; they struggle to penetrate its mystic veil, to mingle with it, to have their being in it, in order to accomplish the perfect union of variety with unity, of the finite with the infinite.
'The art temple struggles to develop itself by a process analogous to that of creation. The surface of the earth was first clothed with vegetation, from the lowly moss and creeping lichen to the lofty cedar, whose solemn branches mingle with the floating clouds. When the earth was ready for their habitation, came the animals, gifted with higher life, with spontaneous motion, with instinct and sensibility. At last came man, endowed with the incomparable faculties of love and reason.
'The art temple has also its vegetation. Its walls are covered with varied plants, which wind along its cornices and wreathe its plinths; they blossom round the oriels, brightening or deepening in the light; they twine through the nerves of the vaulted arch; like the liane of the cedars, they embrace the tall minarets of the heaven-seeking spire, mounting into the blue depths of ether; they bind the clustering shafts of the columns in heavy sheaves, and crown their capitals with flowers and foliage. The stone grows more and more animated, puts forth in more luxuriant growth; multitudes of new forms spring up in the bosom of this magnificent creation; when lo! at length man completes and embodies them all--his own noble image stands revealed--the rude, but white and glittering stone glows almost into life under the passion of his forming hand.
'Sculpture is but an immediate development of architecture, proceeding naturally and organically from it. In proof of this, we have only to examine it in its first efforts. Forms, unfinished and embryonic, at first closely attached to the stone, growing by degrees in accordance with their own fixed laws until able to detach themselves from the medium through which they were originated, after having acquired the conditions necessary for their individual life, spring to actual life, to independent life, almost as the organized being springs from the womb of its mother.
'Sculpture, however, represents but imperfectly the marvellous glories of God's creation. It can give but faint ideas of the various effects of light and shade, the constantly shifting play of colors; it cannot offer that full harmony of beauty which nature is ever spreading before us in the complicated scenes of life. To satisfy this want, a new art is created! Closely linked with all those which have preceded it, its development is but their legitimate expansion. The gray and stern arches, the hitherto colorless sky of the art temple, now take the azure hue of the heavens, while hovering cherubs look down from their cerulean depths; the relievos glow, and color defines, as it etherealizes, the works of man. Painting, at first absorbed in the plastic arts, scarcely begins to show symptoms of life until she is fully born, and living in her own distinctive form! As that power which develops the almost infinite variety of forms is to the universe, so is painting with its ever ready and vivid canvas to the temple of art.
'Meanwhile the art temple has not remained wrapped in gloomy silence; and another series of developments, bearing the same relation to sound and hearing as the first did to light and sight, have commenced. As beings ascend in the scale of life, the forms appealing to sight alone, become less capable of expressing their nature. If the universe had been without voice, the highest which it contains had been shrouded in the pall of an eternal silence; but creation has a voice which is specific in every genus, in every species, in every individual. Transport yourself in thought to one of the vast solitudes of the New World--listen to the rustling of the myriad-leafed forests as they forever murmur on the banks of the thousands of nameless and unknown streams which ripple through them; to the clash of the impetuous torrents as they rush down the precipitous sides of the mountains to glide on from their feet through beds of soft moss or sedgy grass; to the booming thunder, driving, scattering, and tearing the flying clouds; to the intermingling sounds arising from the myriads of creatures which are roaring, bellowing, humming, buzzing, hissing, singing, upon the bosom of this primeval world--listen! this is the voice of nature, indistinct and confused, but majestic, solemn, multitudinous, full of mystery and palpitating with vague emotions.
'As the art temple symbolizes the creation, is the plastic image of it, a voice is also heard from its depths, which rides upon the winds, and pierces afar off. The echo of an invisible world, it is solemn, mysterious, and multiform, appealing to the inmost feelings, rousing the sleeping powers, awakening the internal life of the soul, which without it might lie forever benumbed and silent. Corresponding to the voice of nature, it, too, is specifically marked, is individualized in every medium through which it is produced. Developing in unceasing variety, yet ever bound in the closest unity, language syllables air into thought, love. As soon as man mingles his voice, his speech, with that of inferior beings, the whole creation is enlarged, dilates and throbs with new and glowing life. A closer tie unites the two worlds--the world of phenomena and the world of ideas. Rising from the bosom of organic nature, pressing up like a bud closely wrapped in its sheaf of clustering and sheltering leaves, destined to indefinite development, the human word is born; it is named: Oratory, Poetry, Music! The art temple is now complete. Symbol of the universe, it represents all that is contained therein under the glittering veil of art.'
It is strange how, in the middle ages, the temple of art almost grew into one with the temple of faith; to this fact may be traced the elevated and devout character of the _chefs-d'oeuvre_ of those dim centuries. Thus the church became a sublime poem, where the glowing imagination of a tender faith lavished all its glories. That the Christian church then satisfied the heart with its mystic dogmas and symbolic representations, is proved by the fact that the masses did not care how obscure and squalid their own hovels might be, provided the temple was great and magnificent. It was the temple of simple, unreasoning, unquestioning faith, but decorated with the highest marvels of art; it was always thrown open to the people, and in it they passed nearly half their days. Man brought what he held to be his best to the temple in which he came to worship God, and in it was concentrated all the world knew of beauty. Its light but ornate steeples seemed to pierce the very clouds; its columns rivalled the shafts of the forest; its balustrades were exquisitely chiselled; its tapestry inwrought with the finest needle work;--all gave evidence that the hand of love had lingered tenderly over every line in the house dedicated by man to his Maker. The pictured saints and angels seemed to smile upon the kneeling people, while the majestic chants and requiems sounded to them like the very voices of the angels, heard from within the 'jasper gates' of the heavenly city. The white-robed and entoning priests were their joy and pride; they, as well as the cherished artists, were most frequently from their own oppressed ranks. Religion and art were alone then democratic; alone expounded to them the original equality of man. Thus they looked upon these temples, which art beautified for faith, as peculiarly their own, their refuge, their solace, their ark of safety in those times of war and trouble. They earnestly and devoutly believed them to be the sanctuaries of the risen God, in which dwelt his glorified Body. With the first rays of the sun flushing with roseate hues the mystic beauty of the temple, they congregated there to receive, in the glorious unity of a common humanity, Him whom the heavens cannot contain--the Son of God. They did not think, they felt; they could not reason, but they heard the church. Naive, simple, and trusting souls, with the Virgin to smile upon them, and the saints to pray for them.
It cannot surely be denied that art is full of indefinite and instinctive longing for the infinite.
Poetry is full of its pining voice. Chateaubriand says:
'When we are alone with nature, the feeling of the infinite forces itself irresistibly upon us. When the universe with its inexhaustible variety opens before us, when we contemplate the myriads of stars moving in ever-mystic harmony through the limitless immensity of space, when we gaze upon the ocean mingling with the sky in the boundless distance of the far horizon, when the earth and sea are rocked into profound calm, and creation itself seems wrapped in mystic contemplation--an undefinable feeling of melancholy seizes upon us, unknown desires awaken in the soul, they seem to call us into other countries far beyond the limits of the known--must it not then be the vague feeling after, the dim longing for, the infinite, which at such moments we feel strangely stirring in the calm depths of the divining soul?'
We find the same yearning breathing through the following beautiful poem of Mrs. Osgood's:
'As plains the home-sick ocean shell Far from its own remembered sea, Repeating, like a fairy spell, Of love, the charmed melody It learned within that whispering wave, Whose wondrous and mysterious tone Still wildly haunts its winding cave Of pearl, with softest music-moan--
'So asks my home-sick soul below, For something loved, yet undefined; So mourns to mingle with the flow Of music from the Eternal Mind; So murmurs, with its childlike sigh, The melody it learned above, To which no echo may reply Save from thy voice, Eternal Love!'
It is to his fervent and fiery expression of this longing for the infinite, characterizing, whether pure or perverted, almost the whole of Byron's poetry, breaking out sometimes in imprecations and despair, and not to his immorality, that his great popularity is to be attributed. Even in the midst of the most unhappy scepticism, it was the haunting passion of his soul. Alas! that this longing for the food of heaven should have been fed on husks until the lower rungs of the heaven ladder became so covered with the corruption of matter and fiery sparks of evil, that it seemed rather meant for the foul feet of demons, than for the elastic tread of the redeemed human soul to God! We quote from him in proof:
'Blue rolls the water, blue the sky Spreads like an ocean hung on high, Bespangled with those isles of light, So wildly, spiritually bright; Who ever gazed upon them shining Nor turned to earth without repining, Nor wished for wings to flee away, And mix with their eternal ray?'
'Oh, thou beautiful And unimaginable ether! and Ye multiplying masses of increased And still increasing lights! what are ye? What Is this blue wilderness of interminable Air, wherein ye roll along as I have seen The leaves along the limpid streams of Eden?
Is your course measured for ye? or do ye Sweep on in your unbounded revelry Through an aerial universe of endless Expansion, at which my soul aches to think-- Intoxicated with eternity?'
'All heaven and earth are still--though not in sleep, And breathless, as we grow when feeling most; And silent, as we stand in thoughts too deep;-- All heaven and earth are still: from the high host Of stars, to the lulled lake and mountain coast, All is concentred in a life intense, Where not a beam, nor air, nor leaf is lost, But hath a part of being, and a sense Of that which is of all Creator and Defence.
'Then stirs the _feeling infinite_, so felt In solitude, where we are least alone; A truth, which through our being then doth melt, And purify from self: it is a tone The soul and source of music, which makes known Eternal harmony, and sheds a charm, Like to the fabled Cytherea's zone, Binding all things with beauty; 'twould disarm The spectre Death, had he substantial power to harm.'
In some of the most forcible lines ever penned, Byron has given us the whole psychological analysis of the effects of human passion, when, in its insane perversion, and misdirected thirst for the infinite, it pours upon the dust that love and worship which is due to God alone. No one who has thus sinned, will refuse to acknowledge their force and truth. Fearful in their Medusa-like beauty, they fascinate the heart, only to turn its warm pulses into ice. They are actually withering in their despair. Poor Byron! did he never, never cry with the repentant but happy St. Augustin: 'Oh, eternal beauty! too late have I known thee!'
'Alas! our young affections run to waste, Or water but the desert; whence arise But weeds of dark luxuriance, tares of haste, Rank at the core, though tempting to the eyes, Flowers whose wild odors breathe but agonies, And trees whose gums are poison; such the plants Which spring beneath her steps, as Passion flies O'er the world's wilderness, and vainly pants For some _celestial fruit_ forbidden to our wants.
'O Love! no habitant of earth thou art-- An unseen seraph, we believe in thee; A faith whose martyrs are the broken heart, But never yet hath seen, nor e'er shall see The naked eye, thy form, as it should be; The mind hath made thee, as it peopled heaven Even with its own desiring phantasy, And to a thought such shape and image given, As haunts the unquenched soul--parched--wearied--wrung and riven.
'Of its own beauty is the mind diseased, And fevers into false creation:--where, Where are the forms the sculptor's soul hath seized? In him alone. Can Nature show so fair? Where are the charms and virtues which we dare Conceive in boyhood and pursue as men, The unreached Paradise of our despair, Which o'er informs the pencil and the pen, And overpowers the page where it would bloom again?
'Who loves, raves--'tis youth's frenzy--but the cure Is bitterer still; as charm by charm unwinds Which robed our idols, and we see too sure Nor worth nor beauty dwells from out the mind's Ideal shape of such; yet still it binds The fatal spell, and still it draws us on, Reaping the whirlwind from the oft-sown winds; The stubborn heart, its alchemy begun, Seems ever near the prize--wealthiest when most undone.
'We wither from our youth, we gasp away-- Sick--sick; unfound the boon--unslaked the thirst, Though to the last, in verge of our decay Some phantom lures, such as we sought at first-- But all too late, so are we doubly cursed. Love, fame, ambition, avarice--'tis the same, Each idle--and all ill--and none the worst-- For all are meteors with a different name, And Death the sable smoke where vanishes the flame.
'Few--none--find what they love or could have loved, Though accident, blind contact, and the strong Necessity of loving, have removed Antipathies--but to recur, ere long, Envenomed with irrevocable wrong; And circumstance, that unspiritual god And miscreator, makes and helps along Our coming evils with a crutch-like rod, Whose touch turns hope to dust--the dust we all have trod.
'Our life is a false nature--'tis not in The harmony of things,--this hard decree, This uneradicable taint of sin, This boundless Upas, this all blasting tree. Whose root is earth, whose leaves and branches be The skies which rain their plagues on men like dew-- Disease--death--bondage--all the woes we see-- And worse--the woes we see not--which throb through The immedicable soul, with heartaches ever new.'
Again:
'What is the worst? Nay, do not ask-- In pity from the search forbear: Smile on--nor venture to unmask Man's heart, and view the hell that's there!'
Merciful God! how men suffer when they fly from Thee. When they refuse to listen to the sublime voice implanted within, which calls them to Thee, forever reminding them that they were made for things infinite, eternal! O ye men of pleasure, it is the very greatness of your nature which torments you: there is nothing save God capable of filling the immeasurable depths of your longing! How different the language of Klopstock, as already quoted: 'What recompense could I ask? I have tasted the cup of angels in singing of my Redeemer!'
One of the most dangerous, yet most brilliant among the novelists of the present day, says:
'Properly speaking, love is not a violent aspiration of every faculty toward a created being; it is rather a holy thirst of the most ethereal part of our being for the unknown. Tormented with intuitions of an eternal love, filled with torturing and insatiate desires for the infinite, we vainly seek their gratification in the dying forms which surround us, and obstinately adorn our perishable idols with that immaterial beauty which haunts our dreams. The emotions of the senses do not suffice us; in the treasure house of the simple joys of nature there is nothing sufficiently exquisite to fill our high demands; we would fain grasp heaven, and it is not within our reach. Then we seek it in a creature fallible as ourselves; we expend upon it all the high energies given us for far nobler ends. We refuse to worship God, and kneel before a worm like ourselves! But when the veil falls, when we see behind the clouds of incense and the halos woven by love, only a miserable and imperfect creature--we blush for our delusion, overturn our idol in our despair, and trample it rudely under foot. But as we must love, and will not give our hearts to God, for whom they were created, we seek another idol--and are again deceived! Through this bitter, bitter school we are purified and enlightened, until, abandoning all hope of finding perfection on earth, we are at last ready to offer God that pure, but now broken-hearted worship, which should never have been given save to Him alone.'--GEORGE SAND.
Thus is it that 'love's best interpreter is still a sigh.'
Let him who would in safety delight his soul with mystic intuitions of the infinite, turn to that most exquisite of all poems, the Apocalypse, for 'blessed is he that readeth and heareth the words of this prophecy, and keepeth those things which are written in it.' St. Jerome says 'it contains as many mysteries as words'--as many truths as mysteries--and these truths are all revelations of the infinite. 'Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee the crown of life,' says He who can bring thee into that heavenly city which needeth no temple: 'For the Lord God Almighty is the temple thereof, and the Lamb! And the city hath no need of the sun, nor of the moon to shine in it. For the glory of God hath enlightened it, and the Lamb is the lamp of it.' There shall we feed upon the infinite!
The pantheistic _feeling_ into which the imaginative mind so readily falls, is thus sketched by a poet of our own times:
'I seated myself, after sunset, by the water's side; nothing was to be heard save the dash of the waves as they broke upon the lonely shore; and I gradually fell into that state so well known among solitary travellers:--no distinct remembrance of my own separate being remained to me: I seemed to be but a part of some great whole, to undulate with the lake, to vegetate with the trees, to sigh with the winds, to blossom with the flowers.'
This feeling of the infinite so pervaded antiquity, that man almost lost the consciousness of his own personality in the immensity of the universe, regarding himself but as an element of the absolute unity of the world. His imagination fell into profound reverie, he felt himself but as an integral part of a universal movement drawing all things to a single centre, confounding all beings with one sole substance. We have only to open the Vedas to convince ourselves how deeply this feeling pervaded the early philosophy of the Hindoos. For example:
'Brahma is eternal, the only substantial being, revealing himself in happiness and joy. The universe is his name, his image; this primal existence, containing all in itself, is the only one substantially existing. All phenomena have their cause in Brahma: he is not subjected to the conditions of time and space. He is imperishable; he is the soul of the world; the soul of every individual being. The universe is Brahma--it comes from Brahma--it subsists in Brahma--Bramah, or the sole self-existing being, is the form of all science, the form of systems of worlds, without end forever. The universes of stars are one with him; they have no being but as they exist in the supremacy of his will. This eternal will is the central heart of all that is. It reveals itself in creation, in preservation, in destruction, in motion, in rest, in space, in time.'
Such an absorption of all things in the infinite, with the consequent loss of personality, individuality, and all moral responsibility, had a most depressing effect upon the character of the people who embraced this strange system. This is so manifest that it may be plainly read in the sombre character of their architectural remains.
'In their subterranean, vast, and dim excavations; in the gigantic proportions of their colossal architecture, always impressing us with sadness and with the nothingness of man; in their long, still, damp, dreary cities of sepulchres; in their half-shrouded and mummy-like statues, which, in their corpse-like immobility, seem struck with eternal death, or in slowly detaching themselves in their vast and unfinished forms from primeval and gigantic rocks, grow into a kind of dull, embryonic, and stagnant life, far more abhorrent than death itself--do we not clearly recognize the idea of the infinite absorbing all things into itself, crushing the soaring spirit of man under a blind fatalism, robbing him of all hope and aim in life, of the dignity of personal effort and moral responsibility, presenting as the only aim of all his glowing desires, the utter absorption of his own individuality in the bosom of the limitless whole--thus reducing the vivid action of his varied life to the stillness of the grave, without its repose?'
It is a strange fact, which we will view more closely when we treat of Unity, that the quest for variety which led men into polytheism, or the fractioning of the Deity into false and wicked gods and goddesses, necessarily forced man to the creation of a Fate, to which Jupiter himself was subjected, more blind, more crushing, more appalling to the imagination (because while retaining his entire individuality, man was yet forced to submit to its irrational and pitiless decrees) than was even the hopeless fatalism consequent upon the pantheistic absorption of the East.
What a step from the vague yet crushing, abstract yet deadening dreaming of a fearful and misinterpreted infinite; from the cruel rigors of an unreasoning and implacable fate--to that full revelation that the Infinite is a _personal_ God, cognizant of the human, gifting it with a free will to choose good or evil, and united with it in mercy and love through the mystic life and still more mystic death of the Divine Redeemer!
In sculpture, the thirst for the infinite is manifest in the various statues of the gods which it has given us; in painting, an art more closely related to Christianity, in the numberless figures of angels and heads of cherubs, in the countless pictures upon holy subjects with which it has presented us. The marble speaks, the canvas glows with human aspirations toward the infinite.
It is certainly a very significant fact, too, that there must be a point of escape in every picture, a window to let in the light, a glimpse of the sky: an idea of _distance_ must in some way be given, or the painting will oppress us like a prison. No amount of beauty in a nearer form will make us content to remain with it, so long as we are shut down to it alone, nor is any form so cold but that we may look upon it with kindness, so that it rise against the infinite light of hope beyond. Gaze into Vernet's pictures: always sunrises or sunsets, calms or tempests, nights of moonlight, misty horizons in which it is quite impossible to distinguish the limiting lines--the infinite is always suggested in them: hence their hold upon the popular imagination.
It is really wonderful in how many ways this feeling appeals to us; it seems to be the background of our whole finite being. Saint Pierre says:
'The reason of the pleasure we experience in the sight of an immense tree, springs from the feeling of the infinite which is excited in us by its pyramidal form. The decrease in the different tiers of its branches; the infinitesimal gradations in its shades of green, always lighter at the extremity of the tree than in the rest of its foliage--give it an elevation apparently without limit. We experience the same sensations in the horizontal lines of landscapes, where we see row after row of hills unrolling one behind the other, until the last appears to melt into the blue of the distant heavens. Nature seems to love to produce the same effect upon extended plains or rolling prairies through the means of the mists and vapors so frequently rising from the bosoms of lakes and rivers. Sometimes these mists hang like curtains along the skirts of isolated forests, sometimes they rise like armed columns, and move in serried ranks along the beds of rivers; sometimes they are gray, gloomy, and motionless, sometimes moving with startling rapidity; their sombre hues changing into glowing rose, or penetrated and permeated with the glittering and golden light of the sun. Under all these shifting aspects they open for us perspective after perspective of the infinite into the infinite itself.'
Indeed nature seems never wearied in her varied suggestions of the infinite. Ruskin says, Is not the pleasure we receive from the effects of calm and luminous distance at the hour of sunset and sunrise among the most memorable and singular of which we are conscious; and is not all that is dazzling in color, perfect in form, gladdening in expression, of evanescent and shallow appealing when compared with the still small voice of the level twilight behind purple hills, or the scarlet arch of dawn over the dark and troublous edged sea? Almost all poets and painters have depicted sunrises and sunsets; every heart responds--there must then be something in them of a peculiar character, which must be one of the primal and most earnest motives of beauty to human sensation. Do they show us finer characters of form than can be developed by the broader daylight? Not so--for their power is almost independent of the forms they assume or display; it matters little whether the bright clouds be simple or manifold, whether the mountain line be subdued or majestic; the fairer forms of earthly things are by them subdued and disguised, the round and muscular growth of the forest trunks is sunk into skeleton lines of quiet shade, the purple clefts of the hillside are labyrinthed in the darkness, the orbed spring and whirling wave of the torrent have given place to a white, ghastly, interrupted gleaming. Have they more perfection or fulness of color? Not so--for their effect is often deeper when their hues are dim than when they are blazoned with crimson and pale gold; and assuredly in the blue of the rainy sky, in the many tints of morning flowers, in the sunlight on summer foliage and field, there are more sources of mere sensuous color-pleasure than in the single streak of the wan and dying light of sunset. It is not then by nobler form, it is not by positiveness of hue, it is not by intensity of light, that this strange distant apace possesses its attractive power. But there is one thing which it has or suggests, which no other object of sight suggests in an equal degree, and that is--infinity. It is of all visible things the least material, the least finite, the farthest withdrawn from the earth prison-house, the most typical of the nature of God, the most suggestive of the glory of His dwelling place. For the sky of the night, though we may know it is boundless, is dark; it is a studded vault, a roof that shuts us in and down; but the transparent distance of sunrise and sunset has no limit; we feel its infinity as we rejoice in its purity of light. That this has been deeply felt by artists, is evident in their works.
'And can the sun so rise, So bright, so rolling back the clouds into Vapors more lovely than the unclouded sky, With golden pinnacles and snowy mountains, And billows purpler than the ocean's, making In heaven a glorious mockery of the earth, So like, we almost deem it permanent, So fleeting, we can scarcely call it aught Beyond a vision, 'tis so transiently Scattered along the eternal vault; and yet It dwells upon the soul, and soothes the soul, And blends itself into the soul, until Sunset and sunrise form the haunted epoch Of sorrow and of love; which they who mark not Know not the realm where these twin genii (Who chasten and who purify our hearts, So that we would not change their sweet rebukes For all the boisterous joys that ever shook The air with clamor) build the palaces Where their fond votaries repose and breathe Briefly;--but in that brief cool calm inhale Enough of heaven to enable them to bear The rest of common, heavy, human hours, And dream them through in placid sufferance.'
BYRON.
No work of art in which this expression of infinity is possible, can be very elevated without it; and in proportion to its presence it will exalt and render impressive themes in themselves tame and trivial. If we will but think of it, it is very strange in how many unexpected places we shall find it lurking: for example, the painter of portraits is unhappy without his conventional _white_ stroke under the sleeve or beside the armchair; the painter of interiors feels like a caged bird unless he can throw a window open or set a door ajar; the landscapist dare not lose himself in the forest without a gleam of light under its farthest branches, nor ventures out in the rain unless he may somewhere pierce to a better promise in the distance, or cling to some closing gap of variable blue above--escape from the finite--hope--infinity--by whatever conventionalism sought--the _desire_ is the same in all.
Our ideas of beauty are intuitive, and it is only in a dim way that we read the types, the powers for whose _immediate_ cognition we lost in the fall; but it is certain that a _curve_ of any kind is far more agreeable to us than a right line; may not the reason of this fact be: every curve divides itself infinitely by its changes of direction?
What curvature is to lines, gradation is to shade and color; it is their infinity--dividing them into an infinite number of degrees.
Such examples might be indefinitely multiplied, but having placed the _key_ in the hands of the reader, we leave him to unlock the treasure houses of suggestive thought, which he will find profusely lying in his daily paths. This key will not only open for him many of the rarest caskets in which art stores her gems, but will also unclose some of the ineffable wonders of God's mystically tender creation. 'My son, give me thy heart!' is written in God's own hand on everything He hath made.
'To me, the meanest flower that blows can give Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.'
The absence of that mental vision which unites the visible to the invisible is not only ruinous to the art of the present age, but also to its faith, and, consequently, to its happiness. Thousands, feeling themselves in a narrow world while they unceasingly long for the infinite, rush into rash and wicked suicide, that they may thus escape from the contradictions and complicated pangs of the finite. The rays of light from the everlasting sun of wisdom and love are indeed forever falling round us, but we no longer bear the prism of faith which would decompose them for us, giving them such direction as they fall upon the symbolic, the relative, that we might read in their three-fold splendor the symbolized, the Absolute. The human soul was created for the enjoyment of God, and, consequently, touches the infinite at every point, and the health and well being of the spirit are far more concerned in its exploration than in any of the vaunted discoveries which it is at present making for the comfort of the body in the material world.
As the limits of the horizon are constantly enlarging before the eyes of one who ascends a mountain, so does the moral world, of which the physical is but the symbol, unroll its immense perspectives of light and love before the gaze of the rapt seeker of truth.
'Deep love lieth under These secrets of time; They fade in the light of Their meaning sublime.'
The infinite is the vast background from which all life projects; upon whose unity the immense variety of the world is sketched. As understood or sought by the finite, it is the central fire, the burning heart of art; it is the _last_ line in all our horizons; the _last_ shade in all our colors; the _last_ note in all our concerts; the alpha and omega of all true genius. It aspires in the last sigh of the mortal as he lingeringly leaves its dim manifestations upon earth: it lightens in the first smile of the immortal as its full fruition greets him in the presence of his God!
'I am alpha and omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end. To him that thirsteth, I will give of the water of life freely.'
MRS. RABOTHEM'S PARTY.
AN EPISODE FROM FASHIONABLE LIFE.
There dwelleth in sumptuous state and in Gotham A merchant of character surnamed Rabothem. His wife, once a letterless rustic in Needham, Now leadeth the circles of great Upper-Threedom.[12]
There's nothing surprising in such a transition; For many a creature, of humbler position In the scale of creation, can shift its condition. For instance, the wriggling, despised pollywog In time may become a respectable frog; Then, perched on a stump, he may croak his disdain At former companions, who never can gain His present distinguished, sublime elevation, So greatly above their inferior station. And so, too, a worm, though the meanest of things, Becomes a most beautiful creature with wings, That bear it for many a sunshiny hour Through redolent meadows, from flower to flower. And surely if changes like these may occur, Ye men who have reason, how could ye demur At change in superior orders of nature? And least in a species so sure to create your Felicity (if it is not the reverse: In such an event she is rather a curse). No one, that possesses a spark of the human, Would think of opposing the progress of woman; But all would be happy when one of her kind A sphere more refined and exalted should find-- Should gracefully 'merge from a chrysalis state, To bask in the light of a loftier fate. But (those hateful digressions, I heartily loathe 'em) I was telling you something of Mrs. Rabothem. She's a mouthpiece of Fashion. Whatever she wears, The closest and carefullest scrutiny bears; And, backed by her husband's munificent pile, Whatever she does is accomplished in style.
A wonderful party was given one season By this excellent dame, for the excellent reason That wonderful parties were greatly in vogue, And a man was accounted as worse than a rogue Whose wife did not follow the prevalent fashion, And make what is commonly known as 'a dash' in The choicest society found in the city. (That the choice is not better is more than a pity.)
The writer, who happened to be a relation To Mrs. Rabothem, though lower in station, Was blest in receiving a kind invitation-- A delicate note, with a delicate scent on, Whose accurate, well-chosen sentences went on, In gentlest of terms, to 'solicit the favor,' Et cetera, and so on. She couldn't, to save her, Have been any more condescending; and so I gratefully reached the decision to go. And yet my decision was quite a concession, As I'll have to explain by another digression, In which, at the cost of some time and chirography, I'll give you a taste of an autobiography.
And in its beginning, 'tis proper to state That, somehow, it chanced to be part of my fate To be born far remote from the populous town, And therefore, perhaps, I've a spice of the clown. Be this as it may, I acquired a taste For joys which, though simple, are equally chaste. In rural employments expended, my years Knew not the unnatural pleasures, nor fears, Which fall to the fortune of one who is bred Where men on unwholesome excitements are fed, And horrible vices their poisons distil; Where Peace, from her home on the verdure-crowned hill, The whispering grove, or the tapestried mead, With the bright troop of blessings that follow her lead, Comes seldom to gladden the wearisome hours, And raise to new vigor the languishing powers, But when I arrived at the age of discretion (I find I must hasten my rambling digression), With the popular error my mind was deluded That life is not life from the city excluded; So I followed the bent of my new inclination, With the liveliest hopes of improving my station. 'Twas easy deciding, and easy to do it; 'Tis easy, when thinking it over, to rue it. To Gotham the writer with joy was transported, Where people in lots, either mixed or assorted, Are found in abundance, 'kept always on hand,' Of every conceivable texture and brand; Exposed at the mart and awaiting their sale, Like the cotton that lies in the corpulent bale. A thousand of such may be bought in a trice-- Some dearly, and some at a moderate price. I mingled among them; I met them on 'Change, And elsewhere, and surely it isn't so strange If sometimes, contracting to buy or to sell, I _should_ be contracting their habits as well. But, though the temptations about me were rife, I kept from the perils of 'fash'nable life,' So that, at the time when my story begins, I never had placed in the list of my sins (Though often invited, declining each call) The crime of attending a party or ball. For, early in life, I was taught to believe That pleasures are pitfalls prepared to deceive By wily old Satan (who constantly tries To catch you by throwing his dust in your eyes, Thus, blinding his victim, securing his prize); That the dance is a maelstrom, where sinners are whirled Around a few times, and then suddenly hurled From daylight to darkness, from pleasure to woe, From terrestrial regions, to regions--below: But now was afforded a fine opportunity For taking some pleasure with perfect impunity;-- Ostensibly pleasing a worthy relation, But really seeking a gratification.
I went, and, arriving at nine of the clock, I found that the guests were _beginning_ to flock. I could but conclude--though 'twas early, they said-- That when folks go to parties they should go--to bed.
Ere long the magnificent parlors were thronged By radiant beauties and gents, who belonged To the circles composed of the lofty _élite_, Whose presumption or pride 'twere not easy to beat. 'Twas a splendid, a gorgeous, a 'glorious' sight To be viewed in that parlor on that winter night. There were beaux, who the finest of broadcloth were dressed in-- Invested in vestments they always invest in-- And belles, who assisted to fill up the scene With roods upon roods of their huge crinoline. Such flounces! they seemed to my wondering eyes Like Alps upon Alps that in majesty rise. The costliest jewels and handsomest laces Imparted their charms to embellish their graces. And the men seemed to float through the mazes of girls, Like sharks in an ocean of mermaids and pearls.
But soon, as the evening began to advance, A movement was made to engage in a dance; And, being invited to join in a set, With a young demoiselle whom I never had met, I took a position to dance with the rest, And soon I was doing the thing with a zest.
For an hour the divinest sensations were mine; But then my enjoyment commenced to decline. In halting to rest, I but wearied the more, So I finally 'vowed that the dance was a bore. Exhausted at length, I collapsed in a chair, And studied the various characters there. Together they formed a remarkable show; For further particulars _vide_ below.
There was Trickster, a merchant of physical leanness, Distinguished alike for his means and his meanness; And Sharper, a lawyer, with manners as courtly, And practice as large, as his person was portly. There was Aderman Michaels, the head of his faction, Who had learned, it was whispered, the rule of subtraction, And practised it often in 'grinding his axes,' Which helped to account for the rise in the taxes. And there was a man with a rubicund nose, As bright as the bud of an opening rose, Disclosing a liking to 'live and be merry,' With a strong fellow feeling for brandy and sherry. And then there was one with elongated face, Who seemed to have made a mistake in the place. Not a jest, nor a pleasure, was known to beguile His lugubrious countenance into a smile; But he moved through the dance, from beginning to end, Like a man on his way to the grave of a friend.
Again, there was Simpkins, a clerk and a fop, Who sported a very luxuriant crop Of whiskers, cut clearly for 'cutting a dash,' And flanked by a stylishly twisted mustache, Adorning the uppermost part of the gash In his meaningless face, like a regular hedge Of russety foliage skirting the edge Of a cavern, containing a prominent ledge Of rocky projections, above and below (Though the charge was not 'cast in his teeth,' as I know). Arrayed, with intent to astonish the vision, In garments whose 'set' was the pink of precision;-- His chain was of workmanship costly and cunning, And the stone on his bosom was really stunning. The taste of which no one could doubt his possession, Had found in his waistcoat a fitting expression; Nor less in his neck tie, 'a neat institution,' And collar, which threatened to do execution. A marvel, indeed--from the soles of his boots To the hair, that was scented and greased to its roots-- A something for silly young damsels to scan, And sighingly say--'What a love of a man!' And then there was one sentimental young man, Got up on a rather irregular plan Of features and form, with a wandering air, A collar Byronic, and very long hair. 'Twas whispered about--'He's a genius and poet; And as for myself, I was happy to know it, For a package of genuine mental precocity Is certainly always a great curiosity, And worthy the cost and the toil of a visit-- Like Barnum's astonishing creature--'What is it?' (A good advertisement for Phineas, that is, And kind of the author to put it in gratis: I hope he'll observe my benign disposition, And send for the season a card of admission.)
Of course there was that unavoidable myth, Who is everywhere known by the _nomen_ of Smith-- For there never was aught in the way of sensation, From a horrible crime to a great celebration, But that somehow, before they had time to get through with it Mr. Smith has had something or other to do with it. Now Smith was a sensible sort of a fellow, With a beard that in color was nearest a yellow, And a visage denoting his faith in the creed That man is a creature intended to feed.
Another one still we must certainly mention-- 'Tis Mr. McFudgins, who claims our attention. In mould of plebeian he never was cast (His caste was of gentlemen, wealthy and 'fast'). Not noted for morals, nor even sobriety, He always had moved in the 'highest society.' I had seen him so 'high' as to hiccough and stutter, And once I had noticed him low in the gutter; Yet he was a 'very respectable' man; And into whatever excesses he ran, His riches and impudence safely would carry him, And plenty of ladies were dying to marry him.
The ladies assembled were wondrously fine (Young Sentimentality called them 'divine'). So graceful and pleasing, I could but confess Not one of the galaxy wanted address (For dress was abundant, nor lacking in taste, Though the waist was reduced, there was plenty of waste).
My attention was called to a dashing young widow, Whose husband, when living, knew not what he _did_ owe; For he helped her attempt to keep up with the fashion, Which hurried him on to a terrible crash in His business, which tended to shorten his life And the means that were left to his sorrowing wife. She, taken in charge by a wealthy relation, Still lived in the style that befitted her station; Displaying her charms with astonishing care, In hopes of enticing a man to her snare, Who, struck by her beauty, might hasten to court her, Then marry, and afterward finely support her.
Of many, whose fortunes were said to be ample, Miss Lily De Lusian may serve as a sample: She'd a smatter of French, and a languishing air, While of sense she possessed but a limited share. She played the piano remarkably well, And by all of her friends was considered a belle. And perhaps it was so, for she certainly 'told,' In the set where she moved, on account of her gold.
And then there was old Mr. Spriggins's daughter, Who wondered that no one in marriage had sought her (A trivial bait would have easily caught her); And now she had reached the mysterious age When maidens are far less attractive than sage. By staying so long, she had come to be staid, And appeared to be doomed to be always a maid.
The generous hostess was all in her glory-- A fact it is fair to infer _a priori_-- The costly apparel in which she paraded Was the best to be found in the store where she traded (The splendid establishment kept by a peer And the ninth of a man, as is ever so clear, If you only will notice the names on their palace-- A fact that is stated with nothing of malice; For a Lord and a Taylor no doubt you will find A match for two men of the average kind).
She moved through the rooms with a beautiful dignity, Conversing with all with the greatest benignity; Convincing her guests of a flow of geniality, As great as the stream of her large hospitality. Her dutiful husband was close at her side; And, though in his house, it could scarce be denied, He wasn't 'at home,' in the splutter and jargon, As much as in driving an excellent bargain. He suited his wife pretty well, for, at times, She found he was useful to furnish 'the dimes.' The most of his value she found in his pocket, And now he was playing the Stick to the Rocket.
But while I was noting the forms and the faces Of those who were present--their faults and their graces-- Reposing my arm on a volume of Tupper, I was startled to hear the announcement of 'SUPPER.' Rejoiced at the news of a change in the bill, I sprang from my seat with an excellent will, Presented my arm to a feminine guest, And marched to a neighboring room with the rest.
O Ceres and Bacchus! would I were but able To picture e'en faintly the scene on the table! There was every conceivable thing, beyond question, That could tickle the palate and ruin digestion. Of course there were oysters in various styles, And sandwiches ranged in appropriate piles; And turkey was present in lavish abundance, And of lobster there seemed to be quite a redundance. The cakes on the board were amazingly nice-- The largest encased in their saccharine ice, While some, that with nuts or with fruit were embellished, Expectant appeared to be tasted and relished. The light was reflected in many a gleam From mountains of jelly and towers of cream, With castles of Russes (I'd scorn to enlarge) Which, like Yorktown, were taken without any charge. And then there were several baskets of fruit-- Of such as were held in the highest repute-- With nuts, that in reckless profusion were stacked, And (like most of the jokes) had already been cracked. The liquors were all of the costliest brands (They had all been obtained at 'respectable stands'); And as quickly were bottles deprived of champagne, As ever were clouds of their treasures of rain. Some lauded the Heidsick, while others concurred In the settled opinion that 'Mumm' was the word. The sires and the matrons, the lads and the lasses, Were pledging each other and clicking their glasses; And several gentlemen present were fain Their goblets of stronger potations to drain: On trifles they certainly never could bandy, So great was their liking for excellent brandy. For those who might happen to be in the throng Whose nerves should be weak, or their principles strong, A due preparation was graciously made In the shape of a bowl of the best lemonade. They ate and they drank, and they laughed and they chattered, They simpered, and bantered, and lavishly flattered, Till, finally, weary of such an employment, They left for the scene of their former enjoyment.
And now, I had hoped there would be a variety, For dancing, I thought, had been done to satiety; But, as soon as the party reëntered the room, My hopes were consigned to a terrible doom; For I saw, to my horror, a body of dancers, Who were clearly intent on performing 'The Lancers.'
Terpsichore ruled with unlimited sway, While, moment by moment, the night wore away. To me, 'twas an agony sadly prolonged, To stay in that parlor, so heated and thronged, And witness the sickening, senseless parade, Which people, who claimed to be sensible, made. I stood it as long as I could, and as well, And struggled my rising emotions to quell, But hotter my blood momentarily grew, Till objects about me were changing their hue, And, just as my brain was beginning to totter, I rushed from the room for some air and some water. Returning refreshed, my composure resumed, I awaited the end, like a criminal doomed. With one demoiselle I essayed to converse, Whose sense I discovered was not worth a--purse. Disgusted with one so insipidly brainless, I turned from a task that was tedious and gainless, Adapted myself to my strange situation, And buried my mind in profound cogitation.
O Fashion, thou tyrant! adored as a god, By such as obey thy imperious nod-- How mortals their 'sweet independence' resign, When all that is precious they bring to thy shrine! Thy altar they grace with the fruit of their lives, Themselves and their fortunes, till nothing survives To prove to the world that they ever were free;-- Their souls and their bodies they offer to thee. And thou! how unworthy thou art of their trust! Thou givest them nought but a damnable lust Of silly, deceitful, contemptible show-- A lust that is stronger as older they grow. For this they surrender their faith and their truth, The artless, ingenuous goodness of youth, The strength that belongs to maturity's years: Exchanging their peace for the paltriest fears, Lest something, they happen to do or to say, Should not be considered exactly _au fait_; Or lest their attempts should be wholly surpassed By others who claim to belong to their _caste_. Thy fiat, O Fashion, their questions decides; Thy wisdom all needed direction provides For spending their time in genteel dissipations, For cutting their garments, and--poorer relations. Controlled by thy will, they select their society; Thou art their instructor in manners and piety. And thus they obey the decrees of a power, To which, in a servile allegiance, they cower-- A power that binds them in thraldom, and then Makes puppets of women and puppies of men.
Reflections like these were absorbing my mind, As I sat on the sofa, or partly reclined, While promiscuous edibles recently 'bolted,' In assiduous dancing were carelessly jolted.
The people about me my senses would strike, In spite of the facts, as extremely alike;-- In physical aspect dyspeptic or bilious, In manners affected, or quite supercilious, In mind, rather flippant--of false education-- In heart, scarcely worthy of recommendation. There was clearly a lack of the highest ability, With a splendid array of the 'purest gentility.' Of course I was not in condition to judge, And some would pronounce an emphatical 'fudge' At such an opinion as mine, and would scout it, Insisting that I 'could know nothing about it.' To which the narrator would humbly submit-- He has written what seemed to his mind as a fit And truthful recountment of all that he saw, Without a regard for the general law For stuccoing statements, to give them, forsooth, A pleasanter face than is worn by the truth.
The end came at last. I was glad, I avow;-- As glad--well, as glad as the reader is now, When he knows that I'll shortly be making my bow. The company left, and I marched in the van, A wiser, though hardly a happier, man.
Of course there are 'morals' attached to my poem, Though it may be a difficult matter to show 'em. Well, first (let me see, now), the foolishest passion Of mortals is that for obeying the fashion. It has been, and now is, a curse to humanity, A sinful, ridiculous species of vanity, The very quintessence of perfect inanity, And is likely to lead to a 'moral insanity.'
A second we'll have, and I think that will do-- (You will probably not recollect more than two): If you have any taste for the honest and hearty, Don't go to a GRAND METROPOLITAN PARTY.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 12: See account of the 'Prince's Ball,' given in New York, some time during the last century.]
DIARY OF FRANCES KRASINSKA;
OR, LIFE IN POLAND DURING THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.
PREFACE.
The following work is from the pen of Clementina Tauska, probably the most celebrated among the female writers of Poland. Her talents and judgment were so highly appreciated by her native country, that she was appointed to the superintendence of all the Polish schools for young ladies, as also to that of the large establishment at Warsaw devoted to the education of governesses.
The Diary of Frances Krasinska paints in the most lively manner the usages, manners, and customs of Poland during the eighteenth century, and possesses the charm of childlike _naiveté_, united to acute observation and deep feeling. The authoress has seized upon all that is peculiar and picturesque surrounding the heroine, and has laid bare before us a woman's heart in all its strength and weakness, its love and ambition, its joys and sorrows.
Frances Krasinska, the daughter of a noble house, was allied in various ways during her life to many distinguished personages, whose names fill a considerable space in the contemporaneous annals of Poland. Remarkable for her beauty and intellect, she excited a passionate admiration in the bosom of Charles, duke of Courland, prince royal, and son of the king of Poland, Augustus III, elector of Saxony. This attachment, with its consequences, awakened a lively interest, not only among the Poles, but also in the various foreign courts.
The castle of Maleszow, where Frances was born, was situated in the ancient palatinate of Sandomir, now that of Cracow. It is said to have been a very splendid mansion, and may still be remembered by a few aged persons, the actual building being no longer in existence. The journal commences at Maleszow, and continues through the most eventful period of the heroine's life, principally in and near Warsaw.
TRANSLATOR.
[We are happy to be able to offer to the readers of THE CONTINENTAL, an excellent translation of this characteristic work, especially noteworthy at the present time, when Poland is once more engaged in a struggle for independence, and occupies so important a position in the political adjustment of the civilized world.--EDS. CONTINENTAL.]
DIARY
CASTLE OF MALESZOW, Monday, _January 1st, 1759_.
Last Christmas day, only a week ago, my father commanded a large volume to be brought him, in which he inscribed with his own hand various public and private acts; the book is a medley of speeches, public documents, letters, poetry, bonmots, etc., all arranged in order according to their dates. This custom prevails among nearly all the Polish nobility. My father showed us these records, and even read some of them aloud to us. I can write quite well in both French and Polish, and as I am not at all averse to the use of my pen, I think I might keep a journal; I have been told that many of the women in France do so, and why should I not follow their example?
I have bound together quite a large volume of blank sheets, which I will fill with my thoughts as they arise, with minute accounts of all that concerns me or my family, without omitting public matters. My father, a grave and serious man, regards little else than the latter; but I, a very ignorant young girl, may be permitted to follow the dictates of my fancy, and the capricious guidance of my imagination; at least there shall be neither pretension nor affectation.
To-day brings a new year, and is truly an excellent time for commencing my journal. In this castle there will be no want of leisure. We have already said our morning prayers, and I will finish my spiritual reading during vespers. It has just struck ten, and I am dressed for the day, including the arrangement of my hair. I have consequently two spare hours before dinner. I will note down to-day my reflections upon myself: I will speak of my family, of our house, of the republic, and will in future detail all that may happen to any or all of us.
I was born in 1743, and am consequently sixteen years old; I received at my baptism the name of Frances. I am quite tall; I have often been told that I am handsome, and in truth my mirror reveals the fact that I am by no means ill looking. My mother says, however, that 'one must give thanks to God for such a gift, and beware of pride; for it is His goodness, and not our merit.' My eyes and hair are black, my complexion fair and well colored; but still I am not satisfied: I would like to be much taller. It is true that my figure is slight and well formed, but I have seen women of a loftier stature than myself, and I must envy them a little, as all tell me I have attained my full height.
I belong to a very noble and ancient family, the Corvini Krasinski. God grant that I may never sully so glorious a name by any unworthy action; my desire is to render it still more illustrious, and I am sometimes sorry that I am not a man, for I should then have been capable of performing great and brilliant deeds.
My father and mother are so fully persuaded of the excellence of their origin, that our neighbors, as well as ourselves, all know the genealogy of our ancestors by heart. I confess, to my shame, that I am much more conversant with it than with the succession of our kings.
But what will be the final fate of my journal? Will it live or die? Why should it not survive through many ages, as so many letters and memoirs written in France have done? Oh, I must pay great attention to my studies! What a pity I have not the talent of Madame de Sevigné, or of Madame de Motteville! Perhaps I could write my journal better in French ... But no--that would be unworthy of a Polish girl; a native of Poland, I must write in my national tongue. It is true that French is generally used among all our nobility, but then that is a fashion, which, like all other fashions, may soon pass away, and I should not like to leave such a blot upon my memory.
If these pages should escape the rats and the rage for curl papers, and fall into the hands of any one willing to read them through, I hope the reader will pardon my ignorance, and kindly remember that I write without method, and am totally uninstructed in all the rules prescribed for the keeping of a journal. I am but just sixteen, and the great little matters now occupying so much of my attention, may in the future seem futile and unworthy of having excited so much interest. What will a sensible, sober-minded reader think of all the strange fancies passing through my brain, and the wild dreams of my imagination? But let us now return to the genealogy of my family.
[Here follows the chronological enumeration of the Krasinski family, which we omit, as its interest is purely local, and can hence be neither amusing nor instructive to readers not of Polish origin. The Diary thus continues:]
Stanislaus Krasinski, starost of Nowemiasto, of Prasnysz, and of Uyscié, is my father; and Angelica Humiecka, daughter of the celebrated palatine of Podolia, my mother: but this branch of the Krasinskis will be extinct at their death, for to my great sorrow I have no brother. We are four, and all girls, Barbara, myself, Sophia, and Mary. The members of our little court often tell me I am the prettiest, but that I do not believe. We have received the education befitting our position as young and noble ladies, in short, as starostines.
We are all well grown, and have been taught to hold ourselves as straight as reeds; we are in excellent health, fair, fresh, and rosy. We have a governess, who is charged with the care of us; we call her madame; and when she has laced us, our waists might be spanned, as the saying is, between one's four fingers.
Madame has taught us to courtesy easily and gracefully, and to behave ourselves properly in the saloon; we seat ourselves on the edge of our chairs, with our eyes fixed upon the ground, and our arms modestly crossed.
Every one believes that we are quite ignorant, and cannot count beyond three; they fancy, too, that we do not know how to walk, and are always as quiet as mummies. What would they say could they see us running and jumping in the fine summer mornings? Ah! then we make up for all this tedious restraint; we are so joyful when our parents permit us to walk in the woods: then we leave our frizzed hair, stays, and our high-heeled shoes all behind us, and run about in our morning dresses like crazy girls; we climb the mountains, and poor madame, who thinks it her duty to follow us, soon loses her breath, halts with weary limbs, and can neither run after us, nor call us back.
My two younger sisters and myself have never been far from our own castle. Our longest journeys have been a visit to our aunt, the palatiness Malachowska, who lives at Konskié, and to the village of Piotrkowicé, which belongs to us.
When my father returned from Italy, he founded a pretty chapel in that village in imitation of the church of Our Lady of Loretto. He has also founded another chapel at Lissow, our parish, depending upon Maleszow. My knowledge of the world is hence very limited. But my elder sister has been more favored; she has journeyed to the ends of the earth; she has been twice to Opole, visiting an aunt, the princess Lubomirska, palatiness of Lublin; my father is most tenderly attached to his sister, and respects her as if she were his mother.
Barbara passed a year in Warsaw at the seminary of the ladies of the Holy Sacrament, and she is consequently much more learned than we. She can courtesy to perfection, and holds herself so straight that it is a real pleasure to see her; her carriage is admirable. I know that my parents intend placing me at some seminary, and I expect every day to see the carriage which is to bear me to Warsaw or Cracow drive up to the door. I shall be sorry to leave the castle, I am so happy here; but my sister Barbara found her sojourn in the convent very pleasant, and so doubtless would I. Meanwhile I must perfect myself in French. It is indispensable for a lady of quality, and I must also complete my knowledge of the minuet and of music. I should at least see a great city, and have something to remember.
As I have never had an opportunity of judging by comparison, it is impossible for me to decide whether our castle of Maleszow be really handsome or not; I know that it pleases me very much, but many persons say it has a melancholy air. It is certainly large and commodious, being four stories high, and having four towers. A ditch filled with running water surrounds it, which ditch is crossed by a drawbridge. The neighboring country is mountainous and well wooded.
My parents complain that their dwelling is not large enough, but then our household is so very numerous. I said that our castle had four floors, and each floor is thus divided: first a hall, then six rooms, and four cabinets in the four towers. We do not all live upon the same floor; on the first we dine, on the second we play and amuse ourselves with the other young ladies belonging to our household, and on the third, we have our own apartments. My parents, being no longer young, find it irksome to go up and down stairs, but to me it is delightful, especially before I have my stays on. I mount the balustrades, begin to slide, and in a moment reach the bottom, without having touched a single step.
We always have a great many visitors, and I believe that if the castle of Maleszow were three times its present size, it would still be crowded; even now it is so gay, animated, and lively, that our neighbors call it the little Paris. During the winter our guests are still more numerous; our cavalry captain does not then think it worth the trouble to lift the drawbridge: the new arrivals pour in from morning until night--visitors are continually coming and going. The orchestra belonging to our castle chapel plays unceasingly, and we dance as much as we can; it is a real pleasure to see us.
In summer we have other pastimes; we take long walks, and play various games in the vestibule of the castle, which is very lofty, reaching to the roof of the house, and lighted from above. It is delightfully cool during the warmest days.
I do not believe there are many mansions in Poland surpassing ours in magnificence. Our little court is composed of courtiers (dworzanin) and of the household suite (platny); in other words, of many persons having various employments in the castle: the first (the courtiers) are the most esteemed, because they serve for the honor alone, while the others (the suite) receive salaries; but as they are all gentlemen, they all wear a sabre at their sides. Some few, however, are of very low extraction, but my father says that 'a noble on his own territory (and remember that this territory sometimes consists of but a very few square feet) is the equal of a palatine.'
No one objects to this, however, as the suites of the great lords are thus nobly augmented, and they can control so many additional votes in the dietines; a circumstance of no little importance. The chief duty of the courtiers consists in awaiting their lord's appearance in his public apartments, where, suitably attired, they stand ready to serve him and execute any orders he may choose to give them; but if the lord have no command for them, they are expected to maintain the conversation as wittily and agreeably as they can, or to play cards. They must also accompany him in his walks, rides, drives, and visits, defend him on all difficult occasions, always give him their votes at the dietines, and finally, entertain him and all who belong to him whenever an opportunity may offer.
Our little Matthias performs this last duty to perfection; he is indeed a singular person! I have been told that all courts had formerly an attendant of this description, and that they could not do without one. Matthias is supposed to be stupid and devoid of reason, but he judges of everything with an accuracy and precision that is truly wonderful; his bonmots are inimitable. None of the courtiers have so many privileges as he has, for he alone may speak the truth without adornment or softening. The courtiers call him the fool, but we call him our little Matthias; he certainly does not deserve the nickname he has received.
We have, besides, six young ladies of noble families, who live in the castle, and are under madame's charge. Then there are two dwarfs; one is at least forty years old, and is about the size of a child of four: he is dressed in the Turkish fashion. The other is eighteen, and has a charming figure: he wears the costume of a Cossack. My father often permits him to mount upon the dining table during dinner, and he walks among the plates and dishes as if he were in a garden.
I think I mentioned that the courtiers had no salaries; nearly all of them belong to rich, or at least to independent families. They acquire fine manners at our court, and their training serves as a passport to all civil and military employments. They receive food for their horses, and two florins a week for their grooms. They have also a servant to wait upon them; this domestic is usually dressed in the Hungarian or Cossack costume. Nothing amuses me more than to watch their faces while they stand behind their masters' chairs; their eyes are fixed upon the plates during the whole of the dinner hour; surely not an unnatural proceeding, as their sole nourishment consists in what is left upon their masters' plates. Our little Matthias is never tired of ridiculing them, and makes us nearly die with laughter.
The major part of our household, however, receive salaries, and do not sit at the table with us, except the chaplain, the physician, and the secretary. The steward and butler are on their feet all the time we are dining; they walk about and watch if the table be properly served; they pour out the wine for the master of the castle and for the visitors. The courtiers are served with wine only on Sundays and festival days. The purveyor, the treasurer, the master of the horse, and the arm offerer (renkodajny), whose business it is to offer his arm to the master or mistress of the castle every time either one desires to go out, all dine at the steward's table. The courtiers who dine at our table certainly enjoy much honor, but little profit; they are served from the same dishes as we, but do not eat the same things. The cook arranges the roast meat in the form of a pyramid; at the top he places the game and the poultry, while below are the pork and the beef, the coarse food of the courtiers, to whom the dishes are not carried until after we have been served, and thus the end of the table where they sit is called the gray end.
When the dishes are first served, they are so enormous that one would think there must be a large portion for every one; but they disappear so rapidly that some poor courtiers have scarcely enough to give a flavor to their bread. There are some who eat in the most incredible fashion, and who devour all before the others have had a chance to help themselves. On ordinary occasions, our dinner consists of four dishes; but on Sundays and holidays, when we have visitors, from seven to twelve dishes are placed upon the table. The young ladies, our companions, dine with us.
The salaried courtiers are very well paid; they receive from three to four hundred florins every year; but then my father requires that they shall be well dressed, especially when there is a reception at the castle. He rewards them largely when he is pleased with their services. If one among them distinguishes himself by his zeal or his strict attention to his duties, my father recompenses him on his name day, either in money or in stuffs taken from his own wardrobe.
The salaried dependents are subject to the jurisdiction of the steward, who has the right of reprimanding and punishing them. The chamberlains are also under his command; they are gentlemen, and serve during three years. Their term of service begins between the ages of fifteen and twenty. When they have been guilty of any fault, the steward awards them so many lashes with a leathern strap. A carpet is first stretched over the floor, for the bare ground is only suitable for servants who are not noble, and the culprit is then chastised. The steward is very severe, and says that were he more lenient, it would be impossible to maintain discipline or pursue a proper and efficient method of education; severity being necessary to restrain youth within the bounds of reason. My father has told us that there is not a single room in the castle at Maleszow in which he has not received correction. This is doubtless the cause of his being so very good now....
We have a dozen chamberlains in our service; one of them, Michael Chronowski, will have finished his novitiate on Twelfth day, and the occasion will be celebrated by certain ceremonies. It is the chamberlains' duty to be always suitably dressed; they can enter our apartments; they accompany us on foot or on horseback when we ride out, and are always ready to carry our letters of invitation or our presents, whenever we have any to send.
As for the other servants in the castle, I cannot even enumerate them; I do not know the number of musicians, cooks, guards, Cossacks, and waiting men and women. I can only say that five tables are spread every day, and that two distributors (szafarz) are occupied from morning until night in giving out all that is necessary for the kitchen. My mother is often present at the distribution of the eatables; she carries with her the keys of the closets in which are the spices, cordials, and sweetmeats. Every morning the steward presents the bill of fare to my parents, who approve or change it as they find it well or ill.
Our every-day life is regulated as follows: We rise in summer at six o'clock, and in winter at seven. My three sisters and myself sleep in the third story, in a large room with madame. Each of us has an iron bed with curtains. Barbara, as the eldest, has two pillows and an eiderdown coverlet; the rest of us have only one pillow and a woollen counterpane. After having made a hurried toilet, we say our prayers in French, and then begin our lessons. Our tutor formerly taught us to read, write, and count in Polish, and the chaplain taught us our catechism; but Barbara and I are now entirely under madame's direction; our two younger sisters, however, still receive lessons from the tutor.
At eight we visit our parents, to wish them good morning, and take our breakfast. In winter we eat soup made with beer, and in summer we drink milk; on fast days we have a very good panada. After breakfast we all go and hear mass in the chapel. Our chapel is very pretty. When the service is ended, the chaplain says the morning prayers aloud in Latin; the whole court repeat them; but to tell the truth, I have as yet neglected to ask the meaning of them, and some day I must do it.
We then return to our apartment and recommence our studies. Madame makes us write, under her dictation, lines from Malherbe, the French poet.
We have a pianoforte, and a German, who directs our orchestra, gives us lessons; he receives three hundred florins every year. Barbara plays quite well. After the music lesson, the hair dresser comes to arrange our hair; he always begins with the eldest. When he has unfortunately heard of some new fashion, we rarely escape without shedding some blood. My hair is longer and thicker than that of my sisters, and when I sit on the stool it sweeps the floor; the barber consequently tries all his experiments upon my head. The present fashion pleases me exceedingly: it is a kind of very elegant _negligé_, one portion of the hair is gathered upon the top of the head and falls down in rich curls; the rest is in plaits, which hang about the neck and over the shoulders. The barber uses a half pound of powder every time he dresses my hair.
We employ two hours in making our toilette; but in order that the time may not be entirely lost, we learn French proverbs by rote, or madame reads aloud a new work, which is very moral and quite amusing: 'The Child's Magazine,' by Madame de Beaumont. I cannot express how charming I find these tales, narrated by a governess to her pupils. At noon the Angelus is rung, and we go down to dinner, which usually lasts about two hours; then, the weather permitting, we take a walk. When we return, we employ ourselves with our needle, and are now engaged on a piece of embroidery for the church at Piotrowicé. When the daylight fails us, wax tapers are lighted, and our work is pursued without intermission. We sup at seven in all seasons, and after supper we have leisure to do as we please. We converse or play cards. Our little Matthias makes such comical faces when he fails in getting the card he wishes! He certainly has the gift of always making me laugh.
The chamberlain is sent to Warsaw once every week, and brings the letters and papers; the chaplain reads them aloud to us, and to certain news I pay the most particular attention. My father often reads to us out of the old chronicles, but I must confess I am much more entertained by the books written in French. Madame, who does not know a word of Polish, always reads to us in French, and we thus become accustomed to the sound of the language. My father only reads to us one evening in the week. When the carnival comes, farewell to all reading; all then think of nothing but of playing, dancing, and amusement. The festivals in Warsaw must be much more splendid than those at our castle. Oh! how I long to see the magnificent array of a great court!...
But I hear the midday bell, and must say my Angelus, smooth my hair, and go down to dinner. I will write to-morrow all that I had no time to say to-day.
Tuesday, _January 2d_.
I was too much occupied yesterday with merely private affairs, and now I must dilate a little upon public matters. I should be unworthy of the Polish name, if the interests of our dear country did not occupy my thoughts in preference to all other subjects. I hear much conversation upon politics, and I am very attentive to all that is said; since I have commenced to write my journal, I find my desire to follow closely the course of events much increased.
Augustus III, elector of Saxony, reigns at the present time over Poland and Lithuania. He was crowned by the archbishop of Cracow on the seventeenth of this month, twenty-five years ago. The party opposed to his election wished to raise Stanislaus Leszczynski to the throne, but Augustus was so powerfully supported that he triumphed over his competitor. The virtuous Leszczynski, possessing neither money nor soldiers, was forced to return to his good people in Lorraine, who are very happy under his beneficent rule. It is said that the queen, who had so strongly encouraged the king in the struggles through which he won his throne, was truly worthy of being queen of the Poles, for she really loved them. Mary Josephine always hated intrigue; she was mild, charitable, and pious; she was indulgent toward her husband and children, but most severely stern toward herself in all matters of morals. She was in truth a model of all feminine virtues. She died in Dresden, about two years ago. She had had fourteen children, eleven of whom are still living, seven daughters, and four sons. I remember well the sorrow which her death caused the Poles. Funeral services were celebrated for her in every church in the kingdom. In our church at Piotrowicé there was a mass at which all the poor assisted, and they wept bitter tears while praying for their queen.
It is said that the king is of an easy temper, and leaves all to his minister Bruhl, the minister really ruling both Poland and Saxony. The last-mentioned country is at the present moment exposed to great miseries. Prussia, which is in fact but a new-born state, makes the whole of Europe tremble. A great man rules her fate. The elector of Brandenburg raised himself to the throne in 1701 by the power of his own will. Our republic has not yet recognized his new title as king, and now the elector's successor is able to confer crowns upon the heads of other states. He resists Austria, Saxony, Muscovy, and by means of forces raised within his little kingdom, daily extends his possessions. All say that his political capacity and knowledge of the military art are extraordinary; besides which, he is quite learned, a philosopher, and a great character. Many think that Poland should be ruled by a man of the stamp of Frederic the Great, but as we are not his subjects, and as his present position is contrary to our interests, strong fears are entertained that he may in the future become the cause of our ruin. God grant that Prussia, which is really but a fraction of Poland, do not one day swallow her up!...
The men occupied in public affairs scarcely venture to speak above their breath when they bewail the critical position of their beloved country. One circumstance especially seems to deprive us of all hope for the future, and that is, the apparent gradual extinction of those lofty virtues of the olden time which formerly contributed so much to the glory and prosperity of our country. Selfish interests seem now to have destroyed them nearly all; the wants of the common mother are entirely forgotten, no one thinks now except of his own personal benefit--the general cause is nothing. The diets assemble and disperse without having accomplished anything. The voice of Konarski and of his honorable friends is heard in vain; they preach in a desert; the vile passions of the wicked weigh heavily in the balance of our destinies. However, all means of safety are not yet lost: the throne of Poland is elective; the reigning monarch is aged; if his successor should be endowed with a great character, if his virtues accord with the elevation of his station, he may yet save the republic and restore it to its ancient preponderance among nations. Our frontiers are still unbroken, and I place all my hope in the mercy of God.
All good men and true patriots desire a king capable of commanding the Poles. Several candidates have already been proposed, but the two who seem to have the fairest prospects of success are Stanislaus Poniatowski, son of the castellan of Cracow, and Charles, prince royal, son of the reigning king. Poniatowski's father was the favorite of Charles XII, and was much beloved by the princess Czartoryska. I cannot tell though why my heart leans so strongly toward prince Charles. Poniatowski is a Pole, but the other is said to possess many noble qualities. I will here add all that I have heard and thought upon the subject of these two candidates.
Stanislaus Poniatowski is young and very handsome, affable, and fascinating; he has travelled much, his manners have all the elegance of the French, and he is generally pleasing to women. He loves science and learned men; he was more than four years in St. Petersburg in the capacity of secretary to the embassy. Some time has elapsed since his recall, and he is in high favor at court; hence the probability of his future elevation.
Charles, the prince royal, is twenty-six years of age; he is the king's third son, and is beloved by all who approach him. His figure is said to be noble, and his face most pleasing in expression; his manners are mild, and he is very accessible; he wins all hearts to love him. He has lived in Poland since his infancy, and hence loves the people, and speaks their language wonderfully well. Educated at the court of our republic, he is neither proud nor humble, but maintains a happy medium with every one. The king, recognizing all these qualities in his son, sent him to many foreign courts, beginning with that of St. Petersburg. Relying upon the aid of Muscovy, he desired that his son should make his first essay in arms under that power; besides which, he had other ends in view. He hoped that Charles would be made duke of Courland, a duchy tributary to Poland. In 1737 the czarina Anna appointed the count de Biren governor of Courland, but some years later he fell into disgrace, and was sent to Siberia with his family. The dukedom was consequently vacant during several years.
Our king, who had the right so to do, conferred the dignity upon his son, but the sanction of the court of St. Petersburg was required, and no one could have been more likely to obtain what he desired than the prince royal himself, for the fascination of his manners had become proverbial. He accordingly went to St. Petersburg, remaining on his way some time at Mittau, the capital of Courland, where he succeeded in winning the esteem and affection of the inhabitants of the duchy. The czarina soon after confirmed the nomination of the prince royal. Her consent was formally announced to the king of Poland during the past year, at the time of the session of the diet. But according to the fatal custom which so often rends our councils, that assemblage was dissolved by a nuncio from Wolhynia named Podhorski, and the affair in which Courland was so deeply interested was not discussed.
It then became necessary to refer it to the senate, where it occasioned many fierce debates. The prince Czartoryski especially endeavored to embroil the question by maintaining that the king had no right to dispose of the duchy without the consent of the diet; that Biren could not be degraded from the dignity conferred upon him without having been properly tried, judged, and condemned; and finally, that the nomination of the prince royal could only be provisional, or valid during the lifetime of the czarina. These foolish clamors were rendered powerless by an imposing majority; one hundred and twenty-eight white balls, against five black ones, decided in favor of Prince Charles. The diploma has already been presented to him by the grand chancellor of the crown, and the ceremony of investiture takes place to-day. The rejoicings in Warsaw must be truly magnificent, and I am quite sure that all are delighted.
It is said that the king has grown ten years younger since the happy termination of this affair. I cannot judge of the importance of these events to the general welfare of the republic, but I am enchanted with the good fortune of Prince Charles. I ask myself continually why this matter interests me so deeply. The destiny of my country may soon depend upon the prince, and I believe him called to avert the storm which seems ready to burst upon Poland. I believe that he will give us better laws and a good government. The dukedom of Courland will serve him as a stepping stone to the throne. I am truly grieved from the bottom of my heart that I cannot now be in Warsaw, where I should see such brilliant fêtes, a splendid court, and Prince Charles. ... But since that is impossible, I must content myself with drinking his health to-day at our table.
THE LADIES' LOYAL LEAGUE
As men led the way in the formation of a Loyal League throughout the country, many women, in view of an association of their sex under that name, seem to think themselves required to adopt ideas and regulations approaching as closely as may be to those already existing in the male League. But as, in private life, woman's duties, though equally important, are not identical with those of man, so whenever in a community there is call for united, and therefore public action on the part of its females, it is because something is necessary to be done which men by their methods cannot do; consequently, in performing it, our sex, by striving to merely imitate, without regard to uses, the machinery or measures of the other, would but defeat their own objects. This can be realized when we reflect on the fact that the public action of man has always a tendency to be directive of measures political or governmental, while that of woman is more legitimately humanitarian or social.
There is a class of thinking women who are very earnest and undoubtedly conscientious in their misapprehension of the existence of this fact. And so great is the restless tumult of their indignation at their supposed wrongs in not exercising direct influence, political and governmental, that they fail, either to perceive their own particular work--sufficient in itself to occupy all their faculties--or else they confound the sphere of society with the sphere of government, imagine they are not responsible for errors existing in the former, because they have no immediate control in the latter, and that in political matters at least, justice requires the direct action of both sexes; whereas, according to the natural laws of adaptation of means to ends, the special control of government on the one hand, and of society on the other, is distinctly divided between them; so that while the existing government is an organized expression of the manhood of the age that founded it, the existing society is a like expression of the womanhood of the time. Society and government, through the inevitable laws of sympathy and reaction between things closely connected, influence, modify, and constantly change each other. But any special interference on the part of one sex with the direct action of the other in its own province, not only impedes the other, but also argues a neglect of legitimate duties, which, it were well to remember, require for their just performance all the energy, intellect, and moral elevation, each for its own sphere, possessed by the respective manhood and womanhood of the community interested.
Although aware that the various circles of the Ladies' Loyal League, already established, entertain ideas which are in some respects, because of this existing confusion as to duties, political and social, dissimilar to each other, yet we believe the one grand moral aim, on the part of the several branches of the organization everywhere, will finally be the fostering a healthy, intelligent patriotism, in the _social and domestic circles_ of our land; and that, through the aggregate influence of a womanhood true to itself and its own work.
If this conviction be founded in fact, the best method by which such a patriotism can be cultivated becomes a topic of lively interest to every woman in America who loves her country. Therefore to all such the following brief consideration of a subject so intrinsically important, will not, we trust, seem untimely.
We proceed then to respectfully suggest to the ladies of the Loyal League some measures and ideas, which, it is hoped, will prove in their judgment not unworthy of general adoption, in the various branches of our association.
In enumerating methods whereby it is believed our sex has preëminent capacity to cultivate a genuine patriotism in our country, we will, as first in order, mention those easily recognized ones already generally understood.
As members of the Ladies' Loyal League, we can do good service, first, by cheering, honoring, and aiding in every fit way, and by every legitimate means, such men, privates no less than officers, as are our country's brave defenders, or as have been wounded in being such. Second, by encouraging new enlistments, and taking pride in seeing the dear members of our own households go forth to the help of our imperilled country. Third, by paying special honor to such women in our midst, as have sent son or husband or father or any near relative to camp life and battle field, in defence of our free institutions. In ordinary times, and in ordinary society, individuals take grade according to active intelligence, or the show of wealth, but in times like the present--and especially in an association whose awakening principle is patriotism, those persons who have made the greatest sacrifices for country should rank first. Indeed is it not advisable that the League confer honorary distinction on every woman who has given up such near relatives as son or husband to the dangers of this bloody war? So long as the United States is in her present condition, so long must we, as patriots, honor our soldiers, encourage enlistments, and pay our tribute of respectful admiration to those of our own sex whose beloved ones have already laid down their lives, or are now offering their lives in our national defence.
Another moral aim of our League, as explicitly stated in many of the pledges signed throughout the country, is to frown on all traitors and all such as we know to be sympathizers with them. We hope no one's displeasure, will be aroused by a word here. It is very true, no warmly patriotic woman can now, in the present hour of peril, cordially associate with such persons as offensively intrude their treasonable sentiments. But let the patriotic woman not go too far--let her not forget that when human beings give, as it were, a moral sanction to feelings of hatred or contempt, they unchain a demon in their breasts. We are all oftentimes shocked by anecdotes illustrative of the rancorous spite, and vulgar, unwomanly malignity, cherished by many Southern females against the Union and its defenders. Now were it not well for us, on the other side, to take warning, and, for the sake of our own peace of mind, our own dignity of character, our own Christian virtues, not fall into the fallacy of thinking it right to indulge in feelings and words of hate, even toward the criminally disloyal. This topic is one involving so much of social and personal happiness, we are tempted to enlarge upon it; but as all our remarks at this time are intended as mere hints and suggestions, and not as an elaborate discussion, we pass on to another method of fostering a healthy living patriotism--the fifth and last of those to which we now direct attention, but the one evidently the most difficult, and yet for final results the most important of all. It is the cultivation, in American women, of a true understanding and appreciation of the principles of our democratic institutions--with a view to their practical social bearing, and consequent obligations upon our sex.
Two years ago, a distinguished English philosopher and historian, lately deceased, expressed the fear that our American system of government was in advance of the culture of democratic ideas among our people. Doubtless this observation took the shape of a fear because its author was cognizant of the truth that when the spirit of a government fails to be continually nourished by a sympathetic spirit in the prevailing tone of society throughout the nation over which it presides, then the government has small assurance of perpetuity.
Being patriots, and having, as women, so much to do with matters social and educational, would it not be desirable to understand clearly wherein the foundation principles of our government differ from that of despotisms and monarchies, and to ascertain whether our practical life--our society--is in conformity with our own vaunted democracy or not?
Now the principles upon which our republic was founded teach that one person has no right to trample on the rights of another--that we can have no aristocratic order--that he who labors with head or hand is intrinsically more honorable than the mere idler and pleasure seeker, however wealthy--that legally neither birth nor riches confer any special privileges. And in all this the spirit of our American government is in direct opposition to the spirit of monarchical institutions. But how is it with American society, in the moulding and directing of which our sex has so much to do?
However opposed to each other democratic and republican partisans may feel, the titles of their parties are terms which imply principles synonymous--and alike in harmony with the genius our government. But examine society among these parties. Mix with the social circles of our capitals, during the meetings of our State Legislatures or sessions of Congress, when democratic ladies are in the ascendency: make another visit when the ladies of republicans are leading society in the same places--and do you not find in the practical life of both parties a lack of the simplicity and earnestness of real republicanism and democracy?
Yes, to our shame as daughters of a republic, we must admit that we take more pride in ostentation than in simplicity; and that our dominant social life and culture are a mere reflection, so far as the freedom of our government will permit them to be, of social life and culture amid the arrogant aristocracies of Europe!
The relation of an incident which came under our observation in a Northern city may not be considered out of place here, since it is illustrative of the workings of our anti-democratic social system, and how it may even be brought to swallow up practically all sense of the obligations of patriotism.
Last winter, a sick soldier, who had been suffering in hospital for many months, was finally discharged as incurable, found by his old widowed mother, and brought to his relatives, in the city mentioned, to die. As a soldier, so long as he could bear a musket--and when he was too weak to carry arms, so long as he could carry a cup of water to the wounded and dying on the bloody field of Corinth--since which exertion he had been himself helpless--so long did he serve his country faithfully and well. But when he came home to die, though some half a dozen Union families knew his condition, only one paid him the least attention and respect. It may be supposed this was because his relatives and their immediate friends were abundantly able to minister to his wants, so that any outside proffers would seem but officiousness. On the contrary, his relatives were poor, sickly, and, doubtless because of sickness, inefficient people. However strange, it is nevertheless true, that members from two of these Union families, some of them attendants on the aid society, and all loudly patriotic people, ridiculed the attention of the one Union family who did try to cheer the suffering soldier, expressing the sentiment that they would scorn to pay him any attention, 'his people were such a mean, low set.' That was the term applied to the relatives of the dying hero! and this--not because they failed in patriotism--not because they were guilty of any immoralities--but because they were burdened, beyond their strength, by poverty and ill fortune! And this neglect was persisted in till the end. The dying boy felt the cruelty of it--if he did not also feel the ingratitude of it--as may be inferred from the last words he uttered, wherein, after alluding to the family who did minister to him, he added, with parting breath, the melancholy comment: 'I am glad somebody noticed me.'
This instance of the pride of class in our country going so far as to destroy the impulses of ordinary charity, and to blot out of the conscience the claims of a suffering soldier upon the personal gratitude of every patriotic heart that can reach him, is, we do hope and believe, an extreme case. But being a fact, and one illustrative of the contradiction between the principles of our government and the principles that sway our social life, we relate it in order to vividly impress the mournful reality of that contradiction, and the consequent urgent duty of all women who are indeed patriotic, to make earnest efforts to bring the daily life of our people, in dress, manners, home surroundings, and motives of action in family and social circles nearer to the spirit of true democracy.
To do this requires so much of personal culture and denial of selfish, arrogant instincts in ourselves, so much of modification in our training of our children, so much uprooting on our part of cherished prejudices in society, that, as before stated, it is a most difficult work. But however difficult, it must be accomplished--and by American women, too, for men have no power to lead in such a matter as this: it must be accomplished, or the hope of the freedom and progress of humanity will be crushed, and democracy on earth die, even out of institutions of government.
The action of a government, if not modified by the differing social life of its people, is the practical realization of its theory: and social life among the people, if not too far restricted by the arbitrary interference of government, is also a practical realization of its controlling spirit; consequently, the freer the government the more plainly are evinced the prevailing principles of those who give the tone to society; and under our democratic system, women--those who give this tone to society--are with justice esteemed freer than elsewhere.
But of what value to the race is this greater freedom, if we employ it in imitating the spirit and customs that are the result of the impeded society of nations less beneficently governed; rather than in taking advantage of our wider opportunities to develop a true womanhood, such as would cause us to regard man neither as a natural foe nor as a model for servile imitation--such as would prompt us to influence man, not by any direct sharing in the performance of his peculiar work, but by doing our own so intelligently and beautifully, that it shall sympathize with, and elevate the spirit of his.
The society and government of a nation are two great institutions equally important, and requiring for their wise development equal mental capacity. And in the economy of Providence in regard to the distribution of responsibility between the sexes, while man has hitherto modified governments, woman, among Christian nations--and possibly among pagan also--has always moulded society. We glance back thus to repeat our leading idea, because we wish to add here, that to the minds of those who realize the truth of it, the often vexed question of the comparative intellectual ability of the sexes is put at rest. For where the imposed responsibilities, though differing, are equally great, we may justly infer that the Deity has bestowed on the differing sexes, upon whom these responsibilities are respectively distributed, equal capacity for wise performance in its own sphere, and equal power to intellectually comprehend the other's sphere. For although not so well fitted to perform the peculiar duties which belong to the other sex--yet each one, in order to intelligently perform its own labor, must of necessity understand and sympathize entirely with that of the other.
We cannot linger now upon how society and government always act and react upon each other--how, in our own particular case, the colonial matrons of the country lived democracy, before our forefathers instituted it--how, in times of after peace, the introduction of the leaven of the spirit of European manners and society caused the daughters, not having been sufficiently warned and instructed of their danger, to fall from the practised faith of their mothers, till to-day we read the alarming fact that American society has slid back, little by little, till now, alas, it is nearly in conformity with the moral barbarism of aristocratic institutions! In view of this retrograde state of things, as patriotic women of America, we can do nothing less than perform the work of our mothers over again. God grant we may do it--and do it more effectually than they--inasmuch as we, it is to be hoped, realize the necessity of so instructing our daughters, that after generations of women will never, like us, see society lagging behind the divine principles of true democracy.
The heart of many a patriotic female, throbbing with anguish for her torn and bleeding country, who has no husband, struggling on the side of the holy cause, at home or in the army, to be sustained by the inspiration of a loving woman's self-denying patriotism; who has no sons or brothers to send to the battle field, and to write brave, cheering, blessed letters to; whose means are so swallowed up by daily necessities that she has no money--has not even time to bestow on aid societies and loyal leagues--the heart of many such, in our land now, bends low in self-abasement, and groans daily with the thought that she is useless to her country in its hour of bitter need. Let all such females raise up their drooping heads, cheer up their hearts, and take courage. Neither God nor her country requires a woman to act in the face of circumstances which are inexorable. But this work of reforming the spirit and remodelling the customs of society on a simple democratic basis, is one in which every woman--no matter what her condition, nor how circumstanced--is capable of doing loyal service to country and humanity. For if she has the will, she can bring her own life, and that of those affected by her influence, gradually away from the sphere of principles which are antagonistic to our national institutions.
Let a controlling majority of our sex throughout the United States thus act--and were our threatened Government doomed now to be indeed overturned, the startled world has no cause to despair! For then the women of our land would prove its saviors--for, having recreated society according to the principle of democracy, they would, through the laws of reaction, restore that principle again to American institutions; restore--never again to be shaken thence, because upheld by the intelligent coöperation of woman.
WEST OF THE MISSISSIPPI.
[The Continental, drawing its very life from its desire of upholding, strengthening, and sustaining our sacred Union, welcomes the article from 'west of the Mississippi,' the object of which is to encourage, through a common literature, the fraternal relations between East and West, and cherish the great bond of national unity by proclaiming kindred ties.
We of the East stretch forth loving hands to our brothers of the West, and, feeling true and loyal hearts beating through the dim spaces dividing us, bid them God speed, as bone of our bone, and flesh of our flesh, whose prosperity is our life, whose ruin would be our own desolation.
'As from the East the lovely exile goes, Fair on the West a young Aurora glows; And all the flowers Ionian shores could yield Blush forth, reblooming in the Hesperian field.'
EDS. CONTINENTAL.]
From our quiet homes, on the western bank of the Mississippi, very nearly in Boston latitude, we send daily thoughts of business, friendly interest, and political sympathy unto you who dwell upon our Atlantic shore. Some of us look back unto you as the prodigal son is said to have regarded his father's house. All of us have intimate ties binding us unto you. From you, as the fountain head of literature and intelligence, through your magazines and journals, we are constantly supplied with the living current of thought and mental activity. Is it anything but fair that we should occasionally seek to respond and acknowledge the debt and the fellowship? For what shall more tend to strengthen the bonds of our broad Union than these common sympathies of a widespread and national fraternity of literary tastes and gratifications? Assimilation of mind, community of thought produced by free interchange of opinion, in the way of social intercourse, these will open our hearts to each other and strengthen the links of our national brotherhood. That we may love each other, let us know each other; that we may know each other, let us not fail to look each other fairly in the face.
West of the deep and gently flowing northern Mississippi, I know, is a long way off from the surging waters of your eastern coasts. When you have come this distance, you are, in so far as distance only is concerned, pretty well on your way toward the Rocky Mountains, and the new land of El Dorado, the young and golden Nevada. But yet we are in fact much nearer to your golden markets than to the hidden ore of our new Territories. Time and space, whose natural demands have been so rudely disregarded by the iron progress of science and skill between you and us, still to a great degree maintain their ancient rule over the lands west of us. That vast, thrifty vine of speedy transportation, which has wound itself about the trunk of our national tree, strikes here and there one of its tendrils out upon the branches beyond us, over the region of a few counties. In one instance, in the State immediately south of us, a single energetic scion has crept even to the banks of the rapid Missouri, and others are pushing steadily on in determined emulation. But in most cases, we must be content to ride to the westward, only on the back of the laggard and unambitious coach, that tortoise of travel, crawling on through prairie and swamp. And it is still within the recollection of almost the youngest inhabitant, how the daily trains, drawn by horse, mule, or ox, dragged themselves through our streets, proclaiming from their cotton coverings their distant destination, illustrating on their march the Western 'Excelsior'--
'The wheels in mud were sticking fast, As through a boundless prairie passed A youth, who drove a two-mule team, While on his wagon top was seen.
PIKE'S PEAK.'
Thus eastward we are within forty-eight hours of your press, while westward we are nearly as many days distant by private conveyance from the land of fabled wealth. But time and space must eventually give in. They are not equal to the task; and already the shadow of the great Pacific road makes them tremble for their natural tenure of the free West. It might have done for Æsop to talk about the tortoise and the hare, when they had not steam in those days to course their streams and stalk across their plains with giant tread, eclipsing the old seven-league boots of their fancy; but the tortoise is a used-up individual, is short of breath, and it is the passenger that sleeps, while the hare leaps onward to his covert.
Being thus brought near to you by the swift convoys of science, it will be evident that we are not so far away as we seem. We do not perpetrate an Irish bull when we say that the distance _to_ a place is often greater than the distance in returning. It is, on the contrary, a well authenticated natural fact--a phenomenon, if you please. And by way of illustration we may aver that it is a great deal farther from your metropolis to west of the Mississippi, than from west of the Mississippi to the metropolis.
You sit in your cosy parlors and offices and think of some friend or relative, perhaps a son or daughter, in the 'far West.' It seems as if a sea spread out between you, or at least the better part of a continent. You think of India and China, perchance, or of England or France, and you feel as if they were all nearly equidistant with the home of your beloved ones. It is so far away out to the Father of Waters, and you can never make up your mind, without great and frequent resolution, to undertake such a journey as this.
But, my friends, it is not half so far as that, from us to the Atlantic coast. It is not so far from us to you, as it is to some tardy customer, whose bills are yet to collect, a hundred miles down the country by a two-days' stage adventure. Not nearly so far. Why, when we want to go to New York or Boston, we don't pack our trunks and take a cargo of luggage on board for a two-months' voyage. We just tumble hurriedly a few things into a valise or carpet sack before we go to bed, and the next morning off we start, and after two days of sight-seeing and newspaper reading along the way, and two nights' comfortable sleeping-car rest, we wake up at the dawn of the third day to bid you good morning and inquire after the markets; and that is the end of it.
It isn't so very far, after all. We put off in the morning, bid good evening to Chicago, good morning to Toledo, a ten-o'clock good night to Buffalo, and we sit down to a late breakfast with you the following day.
But then if you have never been out here, it's a long, long distance, and we advise you not to try it all of a sudden, nor to come without a trunk. _Quod erat demonstrandum._
Then, in the next place, being out here, what sort of a people are we? This is a very important query. In the eyes of many we are Western semi-barbarians, without an overplus of manners, means, comforts, knowledge, or many, if any, of the means of Eastern and refined enjoyment. We have come hither to make our fortunes, or to care for those who have, and we are the fit objects of spiritual and temporal commiseration and missionary operations. That is the idea somewhat candidly expressed, isn't it? Oh, no! you don't think so poorly of us as that; but then we are a great ways off, in fact, in a new country, among strangers for the most part, and of course we cannot expect to find everything at hand which we enjoyed in our former comfortable homes.
Well, we are, many of us, from the 'far' East, and most of us from eastward. But we have tried to bring whatever of refinement, manners, knowledge, proprieties, and comforts we before possessed, such as they were, with us, and we haven't lost many of them. We do not believe that contact with the Indians has very much barbarized us. We still read and write and live in houses which we have built, and conduct mercantile and other transactions on former equitable principles; and our communications and intercourse with each other may still be said to be civilized, at least in great measure. We eat and drink what we formerly did, not excepting occasional shad and frequent oysters; and you do not seem to be averse to trying our deer and grouse once in a while--while we even share with you our wheat, cattle, and pork. We don't wear moccasons as yet, nor buckskin with Indian trimmings, instead of doeskin with the latest cut. We try, for the sake of appearances, to wear cotton and woollen and silk; and beads and trinkets are in no extraordinary demand. Beavers and furs are seen upon our streets; and the sound of the piano heard in the land, is not a very unusual disturbance. Our boys, as of old, smoke cigars in secret, fearful of ancient birch, and gum drops still adhere to the pockets of our girls in school. We don't see a very remarkable difference between the children about us and those we knew at a somewhat early age. Brick and stone rise with us into comfortable and even aspiring buildings, and the price of board is not less than we have paid before, nor so very much more. We neither travel nor live on half fare. And men still drive the horse before the cart, and carry the wheat in both ends of the bag as they go to mill.
In fact, we don't see that civilization has lost much flesh in its arduous journey to the far West; nor that, being human before, we have become less human now, or discarded our manners when we shut the doors of our birthplace behind us. We know indeed that Colenso went to convert the heathen, and that the heathen succeeded in converting him, thus putting the boot on the other leg; but the Indians have not yet won us to their dusky faith, although we must confess that assimilation to their copper-colored principles seems to have made some Copperheads among us.
As to works of art, they are not very plentiful hereabouts, excepting in the way of monuments perhaps. We have a generous number of those, erected to the large-heartedness and wisdom of persons who engaged in great improvement schemes, in the line of speculation, when there was but a fictitious basis of wealth in this land, before the bubble burst. These monuments, however, are not generally esteemed ornamental, and the wealth so lavishly expended upon them came not from the bosom of our communities, neither was it imported from north of us, nor west of us, but from whence I will not say. Perhaps some one who reads can help to account for part of it. These monuments, however, such as they are, have, by the liberal contributions made for their erection, exceeded in cost that of Bunker Hill, or the half-finished shot tower in Washington. Our only statues do not represent either the Father of his Country, nor the late old public defunctionary who sat in his chair--but they are principally devoted to 'the poor Indian,' in native costume. These statues, frequently wooden, exhibit the wonted hospitality of this race, and maintain the attitude of proffering a cigar to the friendly passer by.
Of paintings there is not a superfluity; still we have a small collection, comprising several which have for some years been on public exhibition, illustrating 'The Good Samaritan;' 'Prodigious;' 'Washington's Blacksmith shoeing Washington's Horse,' and others of less note, while ----'s panorama of the war has lately departed from us.
Still we have our public and private schools, seminaries, and churches, as others have in fully civilized countries; our newspapers, white and bronze; our leading men, and officeholders; natives of all climes and kindreds, Jew and Gentile, German and French, Bohemian and Scotch, English and Irish; our generals and our corporals; our learned and our unlearned; debtors and creditors--comprising mostly all of us; but believe me, friend, not a solitary living Indian.
I think we are a generous, hospitable, liberal people, up to the full limit of our means and capabilities. Being all away from home, as it were, and all strangers together, we have learned the blessedness of sympathy, and how a little lift is often a great boost, and a friend in need a friend indeed. It was formerly said that when a stranger appeared, the inhabitants emulously set to work to take him in, not however in the flattering and hospitable sense of the words. But as almost without exception any man in a new place or position is a verdant man, so we honestly maintain that they took themselves in, and found it rather difficult to take themselves out again. I believe that we are as quiet, honest, genteel, and mind-your-own-business a set of folks as you may find in most other and more favored communities. With the constant and increasing accessions to our society from more enlightened regions, it would be a wonder did we not attain in time to a level with many other and older-settled countries, who are apt to look abroad with serene complacency gathering motes in open eyes, We have had our castles in the air, and some of them are now underground; but we have read of South Sea bubbles, rise and fall in stocks, 'On to Richmonds,' McClellans, and Congress; and we don't think the beams are all in our own eyes and the motes too.
In fact we are not heathen nor barbarian, Goth nor Vandal, Hottentot nor Fire Eater--but bone of your bone, flesh of your flesh--one with you in all the customs, proprieties, civilization, and hopes of the great American people; bound to save the republic of our fathers, if we go to the death in defence of our mutual rights, principles, and homes.
Do you ask then, 'What is the need of saying all this, since we know it all?' I reply, there is need of saying it, and of repeating it again. There may not be need of it for you, my friend; there is need of it for many others. Talk not of making us of one flesh twain. It cannot be. It is not a question of mere _interest_ that shall bind us as a people inseparably in one. God will not solder a chain. It is a higher bond, a holier bond. We are essentially and intrinsically one; one by nature; one by mutual sympathies, by blood relations, by dearest ties; one in all that constitutes the unity of a family relation; one in heart, one in aim, one in mind, purpose, education, and will. None can make us two. Lines may be drawn by ambitious schemers, divisions discussed, but these do not constitute separation or alienation. The heart of the people beats in profound and resolute unison. What God hath joined together let not man put asunder.
Rise, then, as thou art already rising, great heart of the troubled nation, throb from one confine to the other, bid faction's agitation hush, crush down opposition, scorn the unholy threat, dash the traitorous scheme, and declare the resolute and solemn purpose of all the members to live and govern together, as parts of the same living unity, till the whole body politic becomes a prostrate, lifeless corpse. And from the western border of the States, even from among the youngest and least of the children of the Union of Seventy-six, the union of oaths and the union of hearts, the union of instincts and the union of hopes, do we, in the name of her daughters and sons, bid you, upon the eastern confines, and the States between, you the mothers, and you the elder daughters, all hail, and God speed you in the work of forging anew, even in the fierce fires, the links that bind us into one; 'so making peace.'
For we are of you and with you, and will be ever, while our setting sun is your rising sun--ever, until we become two distinct and divergent races--till you cease to be Joseph and we cease to be Benjamin--till you become Edom and we become Moab--till long centuries shall have erased all kindred ties and bonds of consanguinity, and all men, forgetful of history, shall sink together into vassalage and ancient barbarism. But until then we are one in heart, one in life, and must abide one in fact, or sink together to common shameful desolation.
THE CAVALIER THEORY REFUTED.
A remarkable feature of all discussions of questions connected with the present civil war, is the lack of any attempt to question the foundation of important assertions. Our orators and writers have been ready to explain or soften adverse statements, but they have rarely questioned the existence of any asserted facts. One of the most persistent assumptions of the secessionists has been that the inhabitants of their States are the descendants of the gentry of England, and that the Unionists of the loyal States have neither any identity of origin nor a historical pedigree. On this assumed fact they build two arguments: first, that being homogeneous, they are united to a degree to which the Northerners can never attain; secondly, that the English people, and especially the English gentry, are closely allied to them in blood, and should naturally sympathize with them in their voluntary opposition to the constituted Government.
I propose to show that not only are these assertions unfounded, but that the reverse is the truth; and this I feel authorized in doing for several reasons.
In the first place, if there be no advantage in placing ourselves right in our own eyes, our cause can be advanced in the eyes of foreign observers, by the publication of the truth. Were the facts as represented, an Englishman would be justified, to a certain degree, in sympathizing with a large number of the descendants of Englishmen, engaged in a revolt against a superior number of foreigners. His intense nationality, which has so long given his nation an undue influence, leads him to take this view, and his belief in English invincibility causes him to prejudge the case, and to deem the subjugation of his Southern relatives an impossibility.
Secondly, class prejudices are aroused everywhere in Europe by the idea that a nation of gentlemen is contending for every right against a vulgar crowd; the idea of what in reality constitutes an American democracy being still exceedingly nebulous to the European mind.
Thirdly, we have borne too long the imputation thus cast on us, for our own good in the management of our own affairs. Already expression has been given to threats of ultimate division of the North into separate nationalities, on the ground that we have no common interests and no common origin. It seems well, therefore, to investigate the data at hand, and to see if the South be so united or the North so divided as alleged.
A few tables, prepared from the official Census returns, will serve to place the question in a clear light, and they will be easily confirmed or rejected.
I assume in the following table that the inhabitants of the United States were citizens by birth, and by deducting at the end of each decade the number of immigrants, we have what may fairly be claimed as the percentage of natural increase. I have added the slight excess over the percentage to the column of native born, believing this advantage at least belongs to them:
WHITE POPULATION OF THE UNITED STATES.
TABLE NO. I.--INCREASE AND IMMIGRATION.
-----+--------+----------+----------+-------+-------+-------+-------+ |Percent | Total | Natives. |Aliens.|Aliens.|Aliens.|Aliens.| Date.| of | per | | | | | | |Natural | Census. | 1790. | 1800. | 1810. | 1820. | 1830. | |Increase| | | | | | | -----+--------+----------+----------+-------+-------+-------+-------+ 1790 | | 3,172,464| 3,172,464| | | | | | 33.7 | | 1,071,971| 50,000| | | | | | |----------+-------| | | | 1800 | | 4,294,435| 4,244,435| 50,000| | | | | 34.4 | | 1,465,290| 16,200| 70,000| | | | | |----------+-------+-------| | | 1810 | | 5,845,925| 5,709,725| 66,200| 70,000| | | | 32.1 | | 1,835,672| 21,250| 22,470|114,000| | | | |----------+-------+-------+-------+ | 1820 | | 7,839,317| 7,545,397| 87,450| 92,470|114,000| | | 32.1 | | 2,424,228| 28,071| 29,781| 36,594|151,824| | | |----------+-------+-------+-------+-------| 1830 | |10,509,815| 9,969,625|115,521|122,251|150,594|151,824| | 29 | | 2,899,444| 33,501| 35,452| 43,673| 44,028| | | |----------+-------+-------+-------+-------+ 1840 | |14,165,038|12,869,069|149,022|157,703|194,267|195,852| | 25.1 | | 3,238,699| 37,403| 39,583| 48,761| 49,157| | | |----------+-------+-------+-------+-------+ 1850 | |19,442,272|16,107,768|186,425|197,286|243,028|245,009| | 23.9 | | 3,868,994| 44,456| 47,151| 58,083| 58,557| | | |----------+-------+-------+-------+-------+ 1860 | |26,706,425|19,976,762|230,881|244,437|301,111|303,566| -----+--------+----------+----------+-------+-------+-------+-------+
-----+--------+----------+-------+---------+--------- |Percent | Total |Aliens.| Aliens. | Aliens. Date.| of | per | | | |Natural | Census. | 1840. | 1850. | 1860. |Increase| | | | -----+--------+----------+-------+---------+--------- 1790 | | 3,172,464| | | | 33.7 | | | | | | | | | 1800 | | 4,294,435| | | | 34.4 | | | | | | | | | 1810 | | 5,845,925| | | | 32.1 | | | | | | | | | 1820 | | 7,839,317| | | | 32.1 | | | | | | | | | 1830 | |10,509,815| | | | 29 | |599,125| | | | |-------| | 1840 | |14,165,038|599,125| | | 25.1 | |150,380|1,713,251| | | |-------+---------| 1850 | |19,442,272|749,505|1,713,251| | 23.9 | |179,131| 409,467|2,598,214 | | |-------+---------+--------- 1860 | |26,706,425|928,636|2,122,718|2,598,214 -----+--------+----------+-------+---------+---------
This table shows us that in the States in 1860, out of 26,706,425 white inhabitants, 19,976,762 were the descendants of the original citizens of 1790. I omit the Territories, as the number of inhabitants cannot affect the result, and it is difficult to decide upon their nationality.
In Table II, I propose to divide the inhabitants of 1790 into four classes, the first comprising New England; the second, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania; the third, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia; and the fourth, Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Tennessee.
Allowing to each class the same percentage of increase as in the former table, we shall see how our nineteen millions of native-born citizens originated:
INCREASE OF NATIVE WHITE POPULATION.
TABLE NO. II.
-----+---------+------------+-----------+-----------+-----------+----------- | | TOTAL | | | | | | as per | | | | | Percent | 'Native' | | | | | of | column, | New | New York, | Virginia, | Delaware, Date.|Increase.|Table No. I.| England. | &c. | &c. | &c. -----+---------+------------+-----------+-----------+-----------+----------- 1790 | | 3,172,464 | 992,781 | 908,195 | 923,383 | 348,105 | 33.7 | | 335,417 | 306,911 | 312,030 | 117,618 -----+---------+------------+-----------+-----------+-----------+----------- 1800 | | 4,244,435 | 1,328,198 | 1,215,106 | 1,235,413 | 465,718 | 34.4 | | 458,465 | 419,596 | 426,582 | 160,647 -----+---------+------------+-----------+-----------+-----------+----------- 1810 | | 5,709,725 | 1,786,663 | 1,634,702 | 1,661,995 | 626,365 | 32.1 | | 574,369 | 525,589 | 534,350 | 201,364 -----+---------+------------+-----------+-----------+-----------+----------- 1820 | | 7,545,397 | 2,361,032 | 2,160,291 | 2,196,345 | 827,729 | 32.1 | | 758,541 | 694,103 | 705,676 | 265,908 -----+---------+------------+-----------+-----------+-----------+----------- 1830 | | 9,969,625 | 3,119,573 | 2,854,394 | 2,902,021 | 1,093,637 | 29 | | 907,176 | 830,274 | 844,086 | 317,908 -----+---------+------------+-----------+-----------+-----------+----------- 1840 | | 12,869,069 | 4,026,749 | 3,684,668 | 3,746,107 | 1,411,545 | 25.1 | | 1,012,464 | 927,852 | 943,272 | 355,111 -----+---------+------------+-----------+-----------+-----------+----------- 1850 | | 16,107,768 | 5,039,213 | 4,612,520 | 4,689,379 | 1,766,656 | 23.9 | | 1,210,270 | 1,108,292 | 1,126,661 | 423,771 -----+---------+------------+-----------+-----------+-----------+----------- 1860 | | 19,976,762 | 6,249,483 | 5,720,812 | 5,816,040 | 2,190,427 -----+---------+------------+-----------+-----------+-----------+-----------
Here then we see that New England has contributed nearly one third of the number, and nearly one quarter of the entire population.
But I will endeavor further to analyze the constitution of the different States which were added to the Union previous to 1860. The following table will show the numbers at each decade:
TABLE NO. III.
NORTHERN FOREIGN IMMIGRATION AND SOUTHERN EMIGRATION.
-----+----------------------------------++----------------------------------- | FREE STATES. || SLAVE STATES. |-----------+----------+-----------++-----------+----------+------------ |Inhabitants| | ||Inhabitants| | Date.|per Census.| Natives. |Immigrants.||all Native.|Emigrants.|Immigrants. -----+-----------+----------+-----------++-----------+----------+------------- 1810 | 3,653,219| 3,421,365| 231,854 || 2,192,706 | 95,654 | | | | || | | 1820 | 5,030,371| 4,521,323| 509,048 || 2,808,946 | 215,048 | | | | || | | 1830 | 6,874,302| 5,973,967| 900,335 || 3,635,513 | 360,145 | | | | || | | 1840 | 9,560,165| 7,711,417| 1,848,748 || 4,604,873 | 552,779 | | | | || | | 1850 | 13,257,795| 9,651,733| 3,606,062 || 6,184,477 | 271,558 | | | | || | | 1860 | 17,993,585|11,970,295| 6,023,290 || 8,712,840 | -- | 706,373 -----+------------------------------------------------------------------------
We have now certain data from which to argue, and I will first investigate the alleged homogeneity of the South. Conceding that every citizen of the two classes of Virginia, etc., and Delaware, etc., in 1790, was indisputably the descendant of an English cavalier, and that the increase of population found an outlet into the new Slave States, how would the case stand?
In 1860 these States contained 8,712,840; by Table II we calculated they should contain 8,006,467; so that even in this case there are some 700,000 foreigners. But a little more research shows that the case is much more unfavorable.
Up to 1840, the Southern States not only could have furnished all the settlers in the Slave States, but must have sent out colonists. In 1840, they had 4,604,873 inhabitants; add to this the natural increase, 25.1 per cent. (1,155,823), and we have 5,760,696 native born, and 423,781 foreigners required make their total of 6,184,477 inhabitants.
But in the next decade, add to the 5,760,696 native born, their percentage of increase 23.9 (1,376,806), and we have 7,137,502, requiring 1,575,338 foreigners, _more than one sixth_, for their total of 8,712,840 white inhabitants.
By no conceivable chance can more than five sixths of the population of the South be descended from the English cavaliers.
But if we concede to every Virginian, not only his inherent gentility, but his unswerving purpose never to emigrate out of slave territory, and an intuitive presentiment which pointed out which were to be the slave portions of adjacent Territories, by these same percentages of increase the 442,215 Virginian cavaliers of 1790 could be the progenitors of only 2,785,927 patricians to rally around the model cavalier of 1860--Jefferson Davis.
Lastly, in an estimate published in 1848 by Mr. Jesse Pickering, devoted entirely to the consideration of immigration as a national question, it is argued, with every appearance of truth, that in 1840 the foreign population of the Slave States was 1,177,965. But these must have displaced an equal number of the native born, and we should have only 3,426,908 of that class in 1840, 4,287,061 in 1850, and 5,311,668 in 1860, or in that case only five eighths of the population could be of native descent, provided that not one emigrated. When we consider that the great immigration of all was between 1840 and 1860, we are forced to conclude that certainly not more than one half of the inhabitants of the present confederate States can present the faintest claim to a descent from the citizens of 1790.
When we seriously endeavor to investigate the claims of Virginians to a descent from the English gentry, we are stopped by their practical denial of the first principles of genealogy.
The public records of their State, as shown by the highest authority, the bishop of the diocese, are most imperfect. The records of the parishes have been lost, the churchyards destroyed, and few authorities, save tradition, can be given for these ambitious claims. Bishop Meade's work, especially devoted to the history of the 'Old Churches and Old Families of Virginia,' gives less than thirty families, clearly traced, to the English gentry. These are those of Ambler, Barradall, Baylor, Bushrod, Burwell, Carter, Digges, Fairfax, Fitzhugh, Fowke, Harrison, Jacqueline, Lee, Lewis, Ludwell, Mason, Robinson, Spottswood, Sandys, and Washington. I believe I have omitted none, and have rather strained a point in admitting some.
I do not, of course, mean to deny that others may exist, but until the proofs are submitted to examination, there is no justice in presuming them to exist. Let us see how far the historians of Virginia support the 'cavalier' theory. Robert Beverley (I quote from the edition published at Richmond in 1855) says:
'Those that went over to that country first, were chiefly single men who had not the incumbrance of wives and children in England; and if they had, they did not expose them to the fatigue and hazard of so long a voyage, until they saw how it should fare with themselves. From hence it came to pass, that when they were settled there in a comfortable way of subsisting a family, they grew sensible of the misfortune of wanting wives, and such as had left wives in England sent for them, but the single men were put to their shifts. They excepted against the Indian women on account of their being pagans, as well as their complexions, and for fear they should conspire with those of their own nation to destroy their husbands. Under this difficulty they had no hopes but that the plenty in which they lived might invite modest women, of small fortunes, to go over thither from England. However, they would not receive any but such as could carry sufficient certificate of their modesty and good behavior. Those, if they were but moderately qualified in all other respects, might depend upon marrying very well in those days, without any fortune. Nay, the first planters were so far from expecting money with a woman, that 'twas a common thing for them to buy a deserving wife that carried good testimonials of her character, at the price of one hundred pounds, and make themselves believe they had a bargain.
'§67. But this way of peopling the colony was only at first. For after the advantages of the climate and the fruitfulness of the soil were well known, and all the dangers incident to infant settlements were over, people of better condition retired thither with their families, either to increase the estates they had before, or to avoid being persecuted for their principles of religion or government.
'Thus in the time of the rebellion in England _several_ good cavalier families went thither with their effects to escape the tyranny of the usurper, or acknowledgment of his title. And so again, upon the Restoration, many people of the opposite party took refuge there, to shelter themselves from the king's resentment. But Virginia had not many of these last, because that country was famous for holding out the longest for the royal family of any of the English dominions.[13] For which reason the Roundheads went, for the most part, to New England, as did most of those that in the reign of King Charles II were molested on account of their religion, though some of these fell likewise to the share of Virginia.
As for malefactors condemned to transportation, though the greedy planter will always buy them, yet it is to be feared they will be very injurious to the country, which has already suffered many murders and robberies, the effect of that new law of England.'
Beverley notes also about these servants that 'a white woman is rarely or never put to work in the ground, if she be good for anything else.'
Bishop Meade (vol. i, p. 89) speaks also of these female servants:
'While the company and the Governor were endeavoring to improve the condition of the colony, by selecting a hundred young females of good character, to be wives to the laborers on the farms of Virginia, King James had determined to make of the colony a Botany Bay for the wretched convicts in England, and ordered one hundred to be sent over. The company remonstrated, but in vain. A large portion, if not all of them, were actually sent. The influence of this must have been pernicious. Whether it was continued by his successors, and how long, and to what extent, I know not.'
And again (pp. 365-'6), he says:
'The greatest difficulty they (the vestrymen) appear to have had was with the hired servants, of whom, at an early period, great numbers came over to this country, binding themselves to the richer families. The number of illegitimate children born of them and thrown upon the parish, led to much action on the part of the vestries and the legislature. _The lower order of persons in Virginia, in a great measure, sprang from these apprenticed servants and from poor exiled culprits.'_
Stith says (ed. 1747, p. 103), under date of 1609:
'But a great part of this new company consisted of unruly sparks, packed off by their friends to escape worse destinies at home. And the rest were chiefly made up of poor gentlemen, broken tradesmen, rakes, and libertines, footmen, and such others as were much fitter to spoil or ruin a commonwealth, than to help to raise or maintain one.'
Again (p. 306), in describing one of the domestic quarrels of the colony, he copies a statement:
'And whereas it was affirmed that very few of his majesty's servants were lost in those days, and those persons of the meanest rank, they replied that for one that then died, five had perished in Sir Thomas Smith's time, many being of ancient houses, and born to estates of a thousand pounds a year, some more, some less, who likewise perished by famine.'
These extracts are all that I can urge in support of the claim of Virginians to be descended from the English gentry. There may be many other authorities; it is for the asserters of this theory to produce them, and I certainly would republish them if I could obtain them.
Let us, however, leave Virginia for a time, to consider the origin of the inhabitants of Delaware, Maryland, the Carolinas, Georgia, and those other confederate States which also claim the honor of an English paternity. Here our means of information become more plain and accessible. From about 1730 up to the time of the Revolution, these colonies were the object of the constant attention of England. The wars with France and Spain and the projects of the proprietors of these grants of land combined to make the public of England anxious for information concerning them. I will merely cite from the _London Magazine_ of that date, though a more extended search, I doubt not, would add to the strength of my position. I find in the first place that the new population was not only not cavalier, but not even English. I find that 'the design of this settlement (Georgia) was to provide an asylum or place of refuge for the honest industrious poor, and the unfortunate, with some view to the relief of the persecuted Protestants in Germany. Among these unfortunate persons it could not be guarded against that numbers, unfortunate only by their own vices or follies, intruded themselves among the real 'objects of charity.' In 1737, these Saltzburghers had built a town, Ebenezer, in Georgia. Mr. Oglethorpe also 'planted upon the fourth frontier, at a place called by him Darien, a colony of Scottish Highlanders.' 'The southernmost settlement in South Carolina is now the town of Purrysburg, which was built by Captain Purry, a gentleman of Swisserland, at the head of a number of his own countrymen, who went over with him soon after that country became a royal government.' In 1765 a new fort was built 'on the Savannah river, about fifteen miles above Hillsborough township, which will be of great use to the three new settlements of Irish, French, and German Protestants.' In 1762, 'the Governor of South Carolina has granted forty thousand acres of land to be laid out into two townships for a number of people from Ireland, who are expected here.'
In 1762, 'upward of six hundred German emigrants, men, women, and children, consisting of Wurtzburghers and Palatines, all Protestants, who were brought here by one Colonel Stumpel, with a promise to be immediately settled in America,' were landed in England, and charitably aided to go to South Carolina. In 1766, I read of Florida, 'the principal town is Pensacola, and as many of the French, who inhabited here before the treaty, have chose to become British subjects for the sake of keeping their estates,' that more foreigners were added to the Southern colonies.
Mr. Pickett, whose history of Alabama was published at Charleston, S. C., in 1851, adds, 'a company of forty Jews, acting under the broad principle of the charter, which gave freedom to all religions, save that of the Romish Church, landed at Savannah. Much dissatisfaction, both in England and America, arose in consequence of these Israelites, and Oglethorpe was solicited to send them immediately from the colony. He, however, generously permitted them to remain, which was one of the wisest acts of his life, for they and their descendants were highly instrumental in developing the commercial resources of this wild land.' 'The colony of Georgia had prospered under the wise guidance of Oglethorpe. The colonists, being from different nations, were various in their characters and religious creeds. Vaudois, Swiss, Piedmontese, Germans, Moravians, Jews from Portugal, Highlanders, English, and Italians were thrown together in this fine climate, new world, and new home.'
Even Virginia was not entirely English. Barber's account of the State (p. 451) says of the valley of the Shenandoah:
'The eastern part of the valley being conveniently situated for emigrants from Pennsylvania, as well as from lower Virginia, the population there came to be a mixture of English Virginians and German and Scotch-Irish Presbyterians. The German Pennsylvanians, being passionate lovers of fat lands, no sooner heard of the rich valleys of the Shenando and its branches, than they began to join their countrymen from Europe in pouring themselves forth over the country above Winchester. Finding the main Shenando mostly preoccupied, they followed up the north and south branches on both sides of the Massanutten, or Peaked Mountain, until they filled up all the beautiful vales of the country for the space of sixty miles. So completely did they occupy the country, that the few stray English or Irish settlers among them did not sensibly affect the homogeneousness of the population.'
And again:
'The first settlements of this portion of the valley were made by the Scotch Irish, with a few original Scotch among them. They settled in the neighorhoods around Martinsburg, in Berkely county, Winchester, and almost the entire counties of Orange and Guilford. The same race went on into North Carolina, and settled in the counties of Orange and Guilford, especially in the northern and middle parts of the latter county.'
Beverley writes (p. 228):
'The French refugees sent in thither by the charitable exhibition of his late majesty King William, are naturalized by a particular law for that purpose. In the year 1699 there went over about three hundred of these, and in the year following about two hundred more, and so on, till there arrived in all between seven and eight hundred men, women, and children, who had fled from France on account of their religion.'
Bishop Meade (ii. 75) writes:
'That twelve Protestant German families, consisting of about fifty persons, arrived, April 17th, in Virginia, and were therein settled near the Rappahannock river. That in 1717, seventeen Protestant German families, consisting of about fourscore persons, came and set down near their countrymen. And many more, both German and Swiss families, are likely to come there and settle likewise.'
This report was made in 1720.
These facts show in the clearest manner that a great percentage of the inhabitants of the seceding States are not of English origin. Even the English were not all Cavalier and Episcopalian. The _London Magazine_, in an 'Account of the British Plantations,' says:
'What contributed much more toward the establishment of the colony, was their granting a plenary indulgence to people of all religions, as by their charter they were empowered to do; for by this great numbers of dissenters were induced to sell their estates in England and transport themselves and families to Carolina; so that by the year 1670 a numerous colony was at once sent out.'
One last consideration, of possible impurity of blood, and I will proceed to examine the antecedents of those colonists who were of English blood.
In 1853, a memoir of James Fontaine was published, accompanied by letters from members of his family. He was a Huguenot, who had settled in Virginia, and his descendants have been among the most distinguished of her citizens.
The letters of his sons to relatives in England are very instructive. I quote from one from Peter Fontaine, dated March 2, 1756, in which he regrets that the English had not intermarried with the Indians:
'But here methinks I can hear you observe, 'What! Englishmen intermarry with Indians?' But I can convince you that they are guilty of much more heinous practices, more unjustifiable in the sight of God and man (if that indeed may be called a bad practice); for many base wretches among us take up with negro women, by which means the country swarms with mulatto bastards, and these mulattoes, if but three generations removed from the black father or mother, may, by the indulgence of the laws of the country, intermarry with the white people, _and actually do every day so marry_.'
This is the testimony of a Virginian gentleman, made a century ago; I do not care to more than point to the possible infusion of other than English blood into the veins of the gentlemen who desire to adopt the Cavalier as their national device.
We now proceed to examine the social position, prior to the emigration, of those Englishmen who did in a certain degree colonize the present Slave States, and in a much greater degree colonize New England. I must confess having long wondered at the persistent statement of Englishmen that the citizens of the United States were the offspring of the vagabonds and felons of Europe. Having examined the history of the families of New England with much interest, and finding therein no confirmation of this idea, I had held it but the outbreak of prejudice and ignorance. Yet since the present rebellion has caused so much inquiry into the antecedents of the Southerners, I find that the assertion is well founded, but that it concerns those who have hitherto been loudest in their claims to a distinguished ancestry.
I find among the items of monthly intelligence in the _London Magazine_, the records of felons sentenced to transportation to his majesty's plantations in America, and often the different colonies named. I find a calculation incidentally made, about 1750, that 500 culprits were hung annually in Great Britain--and bloody as the circuits then were, I cannot believe that less than ten times that number annually received the questionable charity of expatriation. I will give a few extracts to show the foundation upon which Southern society has been erected.
In October, 1732, '68 men and 50 women, felons convict, were carried from Newgate to Black Fryars, and put on board a lighter to be carried down the river to be shipped on board the Cæsar, off of Deptford, for transportation to Virginia.' January, 1736: 'This morning 140 felons convict for transportation, were carried from Newgate, and shipped for the plantations, and 18 likewise from the new gaol at Southwark.' In May, 106 were also so shipped. In 1738, 126 were shipped at one time 'for the plantations.' In 1739, 127 were shipped 'to America.' In 1741, 9 of the felons on board a ship lying at Blackwall, 'to be transported to Virginia,' made a bold dash to escape. In May, 1747, 'We are informed that several large ships sailed lately from Liverpool with the rebel prisoners, under a strong convoy to Virginia and Maryland, and other of his majesty's plantations, which makes the whole of what have been transported upward of 1,000.' In January, 1749, 'the 'Laura,' with 135 convicts, bound to Maryland, was cast away.' In 1754, Mr. Stewart was the contractor to transport convicts 'to America.' In 1758, '63 men and women transports were sent from Newgate on board the ship 'Trial,' bound to Maryland, and 45 from the new gaol, Southwark.' Later in the same year, 53 'for America'--36 men and 20 women 'for the plantations.' In 1761, a ship sails with 8 men and 27 women 'convicts to America.' In October, '27 women and 18 men from Newgate, 14 from the new gaol, and 62 from the country gaols, were transported to America this month.' In 1762, 36 women and 5 men convicts were shipped 'to America;' '62 convicts were embarked for Maryland.'
In 1766, I find: 'The above observation occurred to my mind a few days ago, on seeing the convicts pass along to the water side, in order to be shipped for America, with fifes playing before them, 'Through the wood, laddie,' '--as an evidence that the practice was then in force and a matter of course.
In a 'Tour through the British Plantations,' published in this magazine, in 1755, which contains a good account of each colony, I read of Virginia that under Sir Edwyn Sandys, 'there were 12,000 acres laid off for the use of the company, and 100 tenants or planters sent to be placed thereon; and 3,000 acres for the support of the Governor, for the planting of which 100 more men were sent; and what was now become absolutely necessary, there were no less than 90 young women, of a healthful constitution, and unspotted reputation, sent out to be married to the planters, instead of diseased and profligate strumpets, _as is now_ the ridiculous practice.... Thus the company and colony began to be in a thriving way: but now they began to be oppressed by the Government here, for in November they were ordered to send over to Virginia, at their own charge, 100 felons or vagabonds, then it may be supposed in prison, which they were obliged to comply with.'
The same writer says of Maryland:
'The convicts that are transported here sometimes prove very worthy creatures and entirely forsake their former follies; but the trade has for some time run in another channel; and so many volunteer servants come over, especially Irish, that the other is a commodity much blown over. Several of the best planters, or their ancestors, have, in the two colonies,[14] been originally of the convict class, and therefore are much to be praised and esteemed for forsaking their old courses.'
In 1751 (p. 293) is printed the following:
'A LETTER LATELY PUBLISHED IN VIRGINIA.
'SIR: When we see our papers filled continually with accounts of the most audacious robberies, the most cruel murders, and infinite other atrocities perpetrated by convicts transported from Europe, what melancholy, what terrible reflections must it occasion! What will become of our posterity? These are some of thy favors, Britain! Thou art called our mother country; but what good mother ever sent thieves and villains to accompany her children; to corrupt some with their infectious vices, and murder the rest? What father ever endeavored to spread the plague in his family! We do not ask fish, but thou givest us serpents, and worse than serpents! In what can Britain show a more sovereign contempt for us, than by emptying their gaols into our settlements, unless they would likewise empty their offal upon our tables? What must we think of that board, which has advised the repeal of every law we have hitherto made to prevent this deluge of wickedness overwhelming us; and with this cruel sarcasm, that these laws were against the public utility, for they tended to prevent the improvement and well peopling of the colonies! And what must we think of those merchants, who, for the sake of a little paltry gain, will be concerned in importing and disposing of these abominable cargoes?'
With these quotations I would leave the subject to the consideration of every unprejudiced judgment. Is it not for the Southerner, even for the Virginian, to produce further evidence of his Cavalier descent before it can be allowed? We see abundant proofs, taken from authorities in no way connected with the present inimical feelings of the North and South, that a very large portion of the English colonists consisted of transported felons. To this direct evidence--which can only be rebutted by evidence of the extinction of the descendants of this class and the infusion of an equal amount of gentle blood--we have thus far only the fact of the presence of a very few good families, and the boasts of prejudiced partisans.
And now, after having indicated the grounds for a careful criticism of Southern claims, let me assert the claims of New England, not to gentle blood, but to a purely English ancestry. Here we come at once upon solid ground, and the authorities are numerous and trustworthy. Genealogy has, for the past ten or twelve years, been a favorite study in New England; and, as Sir Bernard Burke writes, 'for ten or twelve years before the civil conflict broke out ... Massachusetts was more genealogical than Yorkshire, and Boston sustained what London never did, a magazine devoted exclusively to genealogy.' The history of different families, the records of nearly all the older towns, the colonial records, have all been placed in print. Many of these books are larger than any English works on the subject, and are monuments of patient industry. After such researches we may claim to speak intelligently of our ancestry, and to point to the proofs of our assertions. In one work, contained in four volumes, covering two thousand five hundred pages, Mr. Savage has attempted to record the names of the settlers of New England and of two generations of their descendants. Imperfect as such an attempt may be, what other section of our country or any nation can pretend to such a knowledge of its antecedents? I give the result of his twenty years' study in his own words:
'From long and careful research I have judged the proportion of the whole number living here in 1775, that deduce their origin from the kingdom of England, i.e., the southern part of Great Britain, excluding also the principality of Wales, to exceed ninety-eight in a hundred.'
'A more homogeneous stock cannot be seen, I think, in any so extensive a region at any time, since that when the ark of Noah discharged its passengers on Mount Ararat, except in the few centuries elapsing before the confusion of Babel.'
So much for the idle slander that New England has no records nor homogeneity.
As to the other alleged stigma of Puritanism. Could Virginia maintain her claim to a Cavalier ancestry instead of failing on even a superficial scrutiny, the contrast attempted to be drawn between Puritan and Cavalier is based on a fallacy. When these colonies were established, the distinction was a political one as clearly as the succeeding divisions of Whig and Tory. In those days the gentry were the leaders--the Puritan was as much a gentleman in the technical English sense as the Cavalier. To take an instance which will strike our Virginia friends, who quote the Fairfaxes and Washingtons: Lord Fairfax, the Puritan, married the daughter of Lord Vere, 'a zealous Presbyterian and disaffected to the king.' Their daughter married the gay Cavalier, duke of Buckingham.
The Washingtons were connections, and rather humble ones, of the Spencers. Yet the latest account of the families show Henry Lord Spencer 'standing by the side of the Lords Northumberland and Essex, and the other noblemen who were afterward the leaders of the Parliament during the civil war.'
Puritan and Cavalier! The phrase only means that those, both of gentry and yeomanry, who had sufficient brains to understand liberty, and the courage to fight for it, combined and forever broke the chains of royal or oligarchical oppression. If the gentry were a minority in the party, so much the less reason to boast of such an ancestry.
Still, as no point in a contest should be thrown away, let it be avowed that Puritanic New England could always display a greater array of 'gentlemen by birth' than Virginia, or even the entire South. This is said deliberately, because we know whereof we speak. If the fact be of service in any way, it can easily be substantiated. A list of such names as I can at present remember is longer than any list I have been able to collect from Southern publications. These are, Adams, Amory, Anderson, Appleton, Belcher, Bond, Bowdoin, Bromfield, Browne, Burrill, Chauncy, Chester, Chute, Checkley, Clark, Clarke, Cotton, Coolidge, Corwin, Cradock, Davenport, Downing, Dudley, Dummer, Eyre, Fairfax, Foxcroft, Giffard, Jaffrey, Jeffries, Johnson, Hawthorne, Herrick, Holyoke, Hutchinson, Lawrence, Lake, Lechmere, Legge, Leverett, Lloyd, Lowell, Mascarene, Mather, Miner, Norton, Oliver, Pepperell, Phips, Phippen, Prince, Pynchon, Saltonstall, Sears, Sewall, Thornton, Usher, Vassall, Ward, Wendell, Wetmore, Wilson, Winslow, Winthrop, Wyllys.
I insert this list only for the benefit of those who have yielded to the claims of Virginia through ignorance on points which are peculiarly the care of genealogists. It can easily be extended, and every year, as our records are more fully examined, it will increase.
If we leave the dry details, which I have presented simply as indications of the method in which this question can be discussed, and regard the problem in a more general view, it is surprising to see how theory and fact agree. The United States are essentially English to-day, despite the millions of foreigners which have been absorbed into its population. The tendency of its citizens has been toward a democracy, and yet not toward anarchy and lawlessness. The throes of a gigantic revolution have not sufficed to outweigh the instinctive love of law and order peculiar to the English race. Though events unforeseen by the authors of the Federal Constitution have called for exercises of power, obscurely permitted perhaps by that instrument, yet unknown to former practice, still there has been no popular convulsion at the North, no armed outbreak, no phrensy of mob power. There is as yet no such thing known as an American mob.
When we inquire what controlling influence has impressed this form upon the national character, the enemies of the predominant party instinctively show that it is New England. Not the comparatively limited New England of 1863, but the New England stock and influence which has invigorated nearly every State of the Union. In their ignorance of the past, these revilers of New England have been blindly attacking a greater fact than they were aware of. Not only is nearly a third part of our native-born population the offspring of the New England of the Revolution, but long before that time the intermixture had commenced. Whitehead's 'New Jersey' (p. 159) quotes Governor Burnet's letter, written in 1729:
'The people of New Jersey (being generally of New England extraction, and therefore enthusiasts) would consider the number of planters, etc., as a repetition of the same sin as David committed in numbering the people.'
The History of Dorchester, Massachusetts, quotes a letter from the Secretary of Georgia, in 1755, in relation to a colony from that town, in which he says:
'I really look upon these people moving here to be one of the most favorable circumstances that could befall the colony.'
It is added:
'This settlement has furnished Georgia with two governors, two of its most distinguished judges, the theological seminary of South Carolina and Georgia with an able professor, the Methodist Episcopal Church with an influential and pious bishop, the Presbyterian and Baptist Churches of that State with many of their ablest and most useful ministers; and six of her sons have been called to professorial chairs in collegiate institutions.'
The first attempt at colonizing the Mississippi delta was made by the Lymans, Dwights, and their associates from Connecticut. New York received a constant accession from New England long before 1775.
Here, then, history and theory both agree. New England, colonized by Englishmen, homogeneous in a remarkable degree, has been the only thoroughly pure nationality within our territories. The few stray Englishmen of education in the Southern colonies, the much greater number of convicts, the increasing immigration of French, Irish, Scotch, and German settlers, have not only failed to overwhelm this compact and thoroughly alive minority, but have been formed and moulded into shape by it. In protesting against New England, the Vallandighams and Coxes are only proving the nullity of 'expunging resolutions.' 'Can they make that not to be which has been?' Until they can recall the past, annihilate the past inhabitants of these States, and from stones raise up some other progenitors for the present generation, they cannot destroy the influence of New England.
And yet we are called upon to believe that the race which has thus done the greatest work of the past two centuries was the random aggregation of opposite and mongrel races, the offspring of ignorance, poverty, and crime. We are to believe that while the pure blood of English gentlemen in Virginia has produced not only the gentlemanly vices of pride, treachery, and falsehood in the leaders, but the ignoble faults of crime and debasement in the 'poor trash'--that some occult influence of climate has advanced an entire community at the North far above the position of its progenitors--that while the gentle Cavalier has been overcome by the seductive charms of luxury and repose, the ignoble Puritan has thrown off his degrading antecedents, and has obtained the control of the allied races. The servant has become the master, the scum of all nations has overpowered the choicest offspring of that race which Macaulay terms 'the hereditary rulers of mankind.'
These conclusions, so eminently logical and convincing, we must believe, or we must doubt the pure blood of the aristocracy of the Slave States.
Is it not more reasonable to believe, as facts daily prove, that New England was colonized from the hardiest and best portion of the English stock? That our ancestors, accepting the state of English society as a fact, neither invited nor repelled the accession of the gentry. That many of that class did join in the enterprise, and that, where they were worthy, they received the slight preference which is accorded to personal advantages of any sort. That the bulk of the colonists were separated from this class by slight barriers, that many of them were excluded only by a want of the necessary property to maintain the position, and that on this new territory these distinctions were speedily forgotten--not because the higher class deteriorated, but because the lower, having but a slight advance to make, soon stood on an actual equality with them.
If the sympathy of England were now as desirable and as strongly expected as it was two years ago, I might urge the matter further. As it is, it seems sufficient to overthrow the claims of Southerners, based upon false pretences, and supported only by unblushing effrontery, and to refute the slanders which have been thrown upon an entire section of the loyal States.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 13: Yet our author had already shown that Dennis, Cromwell's captain, 'contrived a stratagem which betrayed the country. He had got a considerable parcel of goods aboard, which belonged to two of the Council, and found a method of informing them of it. By this means they were reduced to the dilemma, either of submitting or losing their goods. This caused factions amongst them, so that at last'--we blush to add--'the colony surrendered--and saved the goods.' _En dat Virginia quintam._ The fifth crown had its price, even for a 'usurper.']
[Footnote 14: Virginia was the other of which he was writing.]
THE EARLY ARBUTUS.
Give me water, give air, give me light! Oh, as life in my heart ebbs away, I pine through the dim, chilly night, I long for the sun's kindly ray! Even I, a poor little Arbutus!
I was plucked from my beautiful earth, And my soul it then quitted its form; What since has my life e'er been worth? Ah, would I had never been born! Thus I sigh, a poor little Arbutus!
Now to man in my anguish I cry: Ah, but what for a sigh does he care? To heaven I now raise my eye, And mourn in my futile despair! Even I, a poor, dying Arbutus!
Ah, a life for a life--it is just! But a life for a nothing, oh, cruel! Still low must I languish in dust? And is there for me no renewal? Ah, for me, poor, broken Arbutus!
Into elements now I resolve, Yet to life I still cling with each breath; As slowly away I dissolve, Life's sweeter as closer to death! Unto me, but a little Arbutus!
Too precocious the life which I bore, Which I drew sweetly in with each breath! The fulness of life did no more Than ripen a fruitage for death, Within me, a too early Arbutus!
THE THIRD YEAR OF THE WAR.
Few persons, at the beginning of this unhappy war, anticipated its prolongation to the present day. The projected rebellion was so daring and sudden in its appearance, so utterly causeless and reckless in its pretexts and objects, that an astounded people could scarcely believe it to be serious in its character and destined to give them any real and protracted trouble. The rebels themselves fed the credulity of their deluded victims with the promise of a peaceful separation, or, at the worst, of a short and triumphant contest, to be speedily followed by a career of boundless prosperity, expansion, greatness, and glory. And, on our part, when we came at length to understand that war was inevitable, we were scarcely less sanguine in our anticipation of easy victory and of the instant restoration of that noble Government, which the domestic enemy, with the most wicked ambition, sought to overthrow and utterly destroy. Confidently and even boastingly, we contrasted our strength with the weakness of the insurrection; we numbered our men in comparison with those of the rebellious States, proud of the favorable result; and we weighed the means of the adversary with our own, in such scales as our sanguine hopes and extravagant ideas served only too well to impose upon us.
The ultimate basis of our calculation was undoubtedly sound and solid, and the anticipated result must eventually come according to our original views, though not within the period then too hastily assigned for the duration of the bloody and disastrous contest. The stupendous force of our Government is amply sufficient to crush the rebellion in all its vast proportions, however slowly the great work may be carried on, and however wastefully and unskilfully the national means may be applied to that indispensable end. Though occasionally baffled in our projects, we are still advancing on the whole; and there is evidently no possible escape for the leaders of the rebellion. They must already begin to entertain fearful apprehensions of their certain ultimate doom. Our great fleet hovers upon their coast and penetrates their bays and rivers, cutting off most of their commerce with the outside world, and isolating them within the narrow limits of the territory actually occupied by them; while our immense armies are pressing them at all important points, with a deliberation and steadiness which evidently spring from the consciousness of superior strength and the certainty of ultimate triumph. The Mississippi river is virtually open to our commerce, or at least to the complete occupation of our gunboats and armies, and the suffering enemy is thus cut off from his communication with Texas, and from the only available resources on which he can securely rely to sustain him much longer in his wicked and desperate game of treason. His condition is in the last degree perilous; he seems to be in the very agony of dissolution, or at least in that stage which immediately precedes it. His extremities are already cold with the chill of mortal congestion; but the fever rages all the more fiercely about the vital parts, where the maddened energies of the whole system are concentrated in the last desperate struggle for life. Possibly there may be a little reaction here and there, or even a violent convulsive effort of tremendous energy; an incursion may be made into Kentucky, or some temporary success achieved in other quarters; but the revival will be deceptive and evanescent, and the fitful return of life to the limbs will only serve to complete the process of exhaustion and to hasten the final catastrophe.
After two years of civil war, maintained under great embarrassments and disadvantages--two memorable years, during which all the malignant powers of treason and hate have been arrayed against the Union with the determined purpose to destroy it--the condition of the Federal Government is wonderfully good, presenting a vivid contrast to the wretched poverty and prostration of the ambitious States which have so rashly assailed it. It would be vain to deny the vast injury suffered by the whole nation, from the inauguration and continuance of this most unnatural strife. It is chiefly this widespread mischief which constitutes the stupendous crime of the rebellion. Thousands upon thousands of valuable lives have been sacrificed; the maimed victims of the war appeal to our sympathies on every side; widows and orphans fill the whole land with lamentation. These are calamities that cannot be compensated by any material prosperity, however great and imposing. Besides, it is impossible to conceal from ourselves, upon mature reflection, that in the present marvellous activity of business and the great abundance of money, we are drawing largely on the future, and maintaining present prosperity at the cost of burdens which will weigh heavily both on ourselves and on coming generations. Nevertheless, the wonderful success of our financial measures and the evidently increasing strength of the Government, in spite of its immense efforts, and with all the alternations of triumph and defeat, of success and failure, of good fortune and disaster, cannot fail to inspire every friend of the Union with hope and confidence. That this great struggle for national existence can be conducted with so little disturbance to the prosperity of the loyal States, and, indeed, with actual increase of activity and immediate success in almost all departments of business, affords the best evidence of the solidity and greatness of our country, and of its ability finally to maintain itself against the vast and powerful conspiracy by which it has been so vigorously assailed. At this moment, the domestic foe, notwithstanding his defiant attitude, is actually writhing in the grasp of an outraged nation; and the foreign enemies of our cause, so recently rejoicing in our misfortunes and elated with the envious anticipation of our utter overthrow, are now looking on with silent apprehension and ill-concealed chagrin at the growing strength we exhibit with every day's experience in the mighty contest. They are disappointed that we are not overwhelmed by every slight check we suffer, and astounded that we are not at all discouraged even by serious disasters to our arms. We derive renewed energy and courage from our very reverses, which give us the inestimable advantage of experience, and enable us finally to turn misfortune into good. Our determination becomes more fixed and immovable with every demand upon our fortitude; and thus the power of the nation advances steadily through all the varying incidents of the struggle, so that now, after these two years of sanguinary civil war, with the gigantic rebellion still wrestling and warring in the bosom of the republic, we yet stand before the world an object of respect and fear to those who hate us and wish us evil, while the masses of men in all countries, who love liberty and desire to escape from despotism, still seek our shores as the very Canaan of promise and the asylum of freedom, even in the midst of our grand struggle for existence as a nation.
It is the people, in their national capacity, as distinguished from the mere agents of Government, who present this sublime spectacle to the view of mankind. The Government for the time being may commit blunders and follies innumerable; yet behind all these, there is the solid and enduring judgment of the nation, which will eventually correct all errors, and bring back the wandering statesman to the paths of common sense and ultimate safety. Two years have not sufficed to teach us what we require to know in order to bear ourselves altogether nobly and calmly in so grand an emergency. We have not yet been sufficiently schooled in war, and especially in the bitter experience of civil war, to be able to resist the pressure of great dangers and difficulties, and, at the same time, to maintain undisturbed all the ordinary operations of civil life, and to secure due respect for personal rights and liberties. The mighty and unexampled convulsion of the whole nation, consequent on the rebellion of a wealthy and powerful section, which constituted the bulk of one great political party in the country, and which necessarily had connections of interest and sympathy with large numbers in all the States, has tended to develop party political animosities to the highest pitch. This terrible excitement, continued without interruption for two years, has served at least to test the patriotism of the people, and to determine whether faction was destined so far to prevail as to paralyze the hand of Government and render secession triumphant through our own dissensions. These fearful contests of party have run their course up to the present time, without serious trouble; and it is now apparent that the mass of the people are settled in their devotion to the Union, and will sustain no man or party in factious opposition to the Government, or even in ill-timed exertions to obtain redress of acknowledged wrongs, when those exertions are calculated to embarrass the nation in its mortal struggle for safety and triumph. The existence of the nation, its unity and tranquillity, are paramount to all personal or party rights and interests; and though we may be justly indignant that many arbitrary and unnecessary things are done, yet must they be borne patiently for the sake of the country. The time for accountability will come at last. Under the pressure of vast responsibilities and difficulties, the agents of the people may plausibly, or even justly, excuse themselves for almost any irregularity; and the most honest and devoted patriot may, with apparent truth, be accused of sympathy with the adversary, if he take occasion, in the midst of great perils, to urge his personal sufferings, to the inconvenience and annoyance of the Government.
But while the last two years have subjected us to great difficulties, which have been happily surmounted, if not with entire immunity from evil, at least with substantial safety and great preponderance of good, we have yet to undergo an ordeal such as every thoughtful man might well wish to avoid. The greatest of all trials is to come upon us in the course of another year, if, unhappily, the war should last so long. Nothing could be more unfortunate than one of our presidential elections, to be carried on in the midst of a horrible civil war. It is impossible to anticipate the troubles which may ensue--the sympathies which may be expressed for the rebellion--the intolerance which may seek to suppress freedom of speech under pretext of preventing the consequences of treason--and the fearful license of denunciation which may be assumed and permitted, under that natural delicacy which would hesitate to use even a necessary severity against a political enemy and a rival. Deplorable and dangerous excitement is almost certain to prevail in all quarters; and we may well congratulate ourselves and our country, if we should pass through such a contest without having numerous scenes of trouble and even bloodshed in the war of parties, as episodes and accompaniments to the grand war of the sections. In its effects on the national cause at home and abroad, the violence of that proceeding will be something like one of those lamentable occurrences which sometimes take place in the army, when portions of our own forces, through misapprehension, turn their arms against each other in the face of the enemy. If we shall not actually take each other's lives, we shall weaken and distract the country by our dissensions and mutual denunciations. Ambition on both sides--on the part of those in power seeking to retain it and using their authority for that end, and on the part of their opponents resisting perhaps beyond the bounds of legitimate opposition--will shed its baleful influence through the land, and intensify the animosities naturally arising upon the recurrence of our great quadrennial struggle.
Yet would that grand emergency offer to a wise and patriotic Administration an inestimable opportunity for the noblest exhibition of unwavering firmness, justice, and self-denial. Should there be presented an example of perfect singleness of purpose, with no room for suspicion of sinister objects, or personal ambitions and enmities; should the Administration in all its departments, devote itself exclusively to the sacred work of preserving the nation, regardless of all consequences to individuals or parties, then would the approbation of a grateful people be its sure reward, and the patriotic masses would take care not only of the Government, but of those, also, who had thus nobly and fearlessly administered it in the critical hour of its mortal danger. A contrary course would only lead to disaster in the momentous operations of the war, and to distraction and weakness among the people, whose duty and disposition it is to sustain the Government in all honest efforts to conquer the rebellion. The temptation insensibly to depart from this pure and patriotic policy is great and almost irresistible. It is so easy and so natural for one in power to persuade himself that he ought to retain it, that himself or his party is the only safe depositary of public authority, and that the general interest requires him to be sustained by all the means at his command, _per fas aut nefas_, that few men in this country ever avoid the error of using official position and patronage to promote personal and party ends. This is the very bane and opprobrium of our institutions. It has already so perverted the democratic system, that men of the highest ability and character no longer seek political position, and seldom succeed if they do. Alas for our country, if this pernicious practice should prevail in conducting the tremendous operations of the present civil war!--if the coming presidential election should be permitted to cast the ominous influence of party intrigue and official mismanagement upon our struggling armies and our heavily taxed people! Let us fervently pray that our suffering country may escape this danger. It is in the power of the Administration in a great measure to control the whole subject; and upon it will rest the chief responsibility for any serious error that may be committed. It will be responsible not merely for its own conduct, but also for that which it necessitates or provokes on the part of opposing interests and
## parties. There must be forbearance, united with firmness and infinite
discretion in the use of just authority. A more difficult position was never occupied by any party since the organization of the Government. But in proportion to the difficulty and responsibility will be the merit of a wise and successful administration in this most perilous crisis.
If the progress of the war thus far, running through more than half of one Administration, has brought us under the ominous shadow of a coming presidential election, it has, on the other hand, effected a vast modification of opinion and feeling on some questions from which the greatest disturbances might well have been anticipated. From the beginning it was felt to be inevitable that the long continuance of the war would seriously affect the relation of master and slave directly in the rebellious States, and indirectly in all others wherever that relation existed. Far more rapidly than could well have been anticipated has this result been effected; but what is of much greater interest and importance, the violent prejudices of the people have melted away before the inevitable fact, and even the celebrated proclamation no longer excites the fierce animadversion with which it was at first greeted. From the escaped slaves of the rebellious States and the free colored men of the North, negro regiments have been organized and are still in process of formation. There is no outcry against the policy, but there seems to be a general acquiescence in the propriety of using the African race to assist in putting down the traitors who are ready to overthrow all free government in order to perpetuate the subjugation of that unfortunate people. Had the fortunes of war resulted in a speedy annihilation of the confederate authority, it would have been utterly impossible to have made any serious inroad upon the institution of slavery. Sympathy for the Southern people, and a natural indisposition to inaugurate fundamental changes, always attended with immense temporary disadvantages and inconveniences, would have prevented any thorough policy of emancipation from being adopted. But the day of moderation and compromise has now passed by, probably forever. The persistence of the rebels in their mad scheme, although their efforts were plainly destined to ultimate defeat, has secured for themselves the greatest boon which even the highest wisdom in the calmest times could have conferred. Their prodigious folly and wickedness have been overruled by a higher power, and mercifully directed to the complete regeneration of Southern society. The operation is severe, but in the end it will be salutary. In a state of continued peace, this could not have been done. Scores of years would have been required to prepare the Southern mind for it; but now, by one huge convulsive effort, made by themselves with far different views, all obstacles are swept away, and slavery is likely to come to a sudden and final end. A feeble insurrection, soon extinguished, would not have accomplished this work; and even now, if the war should speedily end, there would be serious embarrassment in disposing of the troublesome questions arising out of the subject. The continuance of the war, on its present basis, will soon settle the whole difficulty; and among the many tremendous evils and calamities attending the progress of the war, this inevitable result is one of the greatest compensations. Few men, perhaps, would have desired, or, by deliberate action, have promoted this violent destruction even of so pernicious a system as that which prevailed in the South; but, on the other hand, with the experience of the last two years, still fewer men, in the loyal States at least, can be found to deny that the judgment is righteous, and that, in the actual circumstances, it is destined to be in the end as beneficial to the Southern people themselves, as it is, in its immediate consequences, just in its retribution for their enormous crime. In the progress of so tremendous a war, in which, notwithstanding its origin and cause, the insurrectionary States have strangely been enabled to command foreign capital, together with the sympathy and even the indirect assistance of foreign powers, it would have been shortsighted in the extreme to have anticipated that slavery would escape attack. Though made the pretext for violence, and prominently put forward as the justification of rebellion, it was evidently the weakest point in the rebel cause, and was, therefore, alike from the choice of the rebels as from the necessity of the Government, destined to become the central object and pivotal point of the whole contest. Having once been placed in this position, and fixed in it by the inveterate enmities of prolonged war, it must from that time abide the arbitrament of arms. Two years of fierce and calamitous war seem to have brought the South to this alternative: either to restore the Union with immediate freedom to the slaves, or to accomplish its dissolution, with a doubtful and troubled continuance of the system for an uncertain period in the future.
If the continuance of the struggle thus far has done so much toward a final settlement of the most troublesome of all questions growing out of the contest between the North and the South; if it has probably prepared the way for disposing of slavery in all the States where it now exists, and even given the African a _status_ as a soldier of the republic; it has also had an equal effect in other important aspects. It has tended to develop and settle definitely the political objects and purposes of the contending parties. With the South, these, to some degree, have necessarily been changed. The original designs of the rebels, whatever they may have been in the beginning, have been modified according to the stringent exigencies of their condition. Their daring and ambitious plans have been restrained by the public opinion of the civilized world, and still more by the limitation of their own resources. So long as their strength was untried, imagination ran riot, and there was no bound to the magnificence of their bad schemes. But the experience of two years has taught them that, in their realization, all such wild dreams are destined to be curtailed within the inexorable limits of possibility. They have only begun to discover how narrow these limits are to them. Unexpected obstacles have arisen on every side, and the soaring purposes of the rebellion have vainly beaten their bruised and wearied wings against the solid walls which circumscribe them within the humble limits of their present uncertain hopes and expectations. The Federal Government, on the other hand, has not changed its purpose, as avowed in the beginning, to restore the national authority, in its unity and integrity, over the whole country. The prospect of accomplishing this end has grown brighter from the beginning. We have passed through almost all phases of party excitement; faction has tried its perilous experiments upon the national temper; divisions have been industriously fomented; and for a time discord has threatened seriously to weaken us. But the patriotism of the people has finally prevailed, and the question may now be considered settled. The people not less than the Government are fully committed to the grand purpose of putting down the rebellion and restoring the Union. Nor does this work, immense as it is, seem to be disproportioned to the national means and energies. The people believe themselves competent to the mighty task, and with this patriotic confidence, the undertaking is already more than half accomplished. The enemy has not the power to defeat our purpose. By our own unhappy divisions, we might possibly defeat ourselves; but with a united and determined people, there is not the slightest room for doubt.
The war continues to be carried on solely in the disaffected region. Threats of transferring the seat of the contest to the loyal States have constantly been made, and are now renewed with an energy of assertion equal to the longing desires with which the straitened rebels look upon the fat fields and the groaning storehouses of the Northern States. Their futile threats do indeed express their wishes or their disordered imaginations, rather than their actual intentions or their possible achievements. If they could transfer the war to Pennsylvania and Ohio, or even to Kentucky and Maryland, a new aspect would be given to the controversy, and different results might well be anticipated. But the time for such enterprises on the part of the rebels, if it ever existed, has evidently passed by, and is not likely to return. One of the strongest indications of the ultimate result of the war has been the rigid uniformity with which the military operations have been continually pushed back upon the soil of the seceded States, and maintained there in spite of all their efforts to the contrary. In all instances, their incursions into the States mentioned, though projected upon the grandest scale and with the most hopeful results, have eventually proved to be miserable failures; and if they have not always, or even in any instance, met with the severe punishment that ought to have followed them, it was only because the attempts were too preposterous to have been anticipated by a vigilant foe, and we were too confident in our strength to make the preparation necessary properly to repel them. With such experience on our part, after two years of constant efforts to invade our territories successfully met and more than merely repelled, it would be evidence of gross inefficiency and weakness in us, to permit the enemy to gain even a temporary foothold in any one of the loyal States, or even to attempt it, without the complete overthrow and destruction of the invading force. Our manifest policy is to attack them in their own country, and to hold them there, until we can annihilate their military power. We have successfully accomplished one half this programme; but so far we have failed in the other. However humiliating may be the admission, we are nevertheless compelled to make it. We have not yet overthrown their main armies in any decisive engagements; although we have achieved many important successes and made some fatal encroachments on the territory of the enemy, crippling his power and cutting off his resources. From the very inception of the rebellion, its field of operations has been gradually contracting. One after another the strongholds of the enemy have fallen into our hands, and whole regions of his territory have been over run and occupied by our forces, with every appearance of having been finally and forever lost to them. Our standards, advancing steadily, though slowly, have not receded anywhere, except temporarily, and then only, it would seem, to make still further advance into the very heart of the confederacy. With some few exceptions, such as the withdrawal of the army from the Peninsula, this has been the history of the last two years; and there is nothing in the present condition of affairs which would appear to forebode a departure from this uniform progress of our arms. We may complain, perhaps justly, of the slowness of this process. In the ardor and impatience of our patriotism, we may demand more rapid and energetic
## action, claiming that our immense resources shall be used with greater
vigor and concentration, and our vast armies hurled like a thunderbolt upon the enemy, to crush him with one sudden and overwhelming blow. Truly this would be a grand result--a consummation most devoutly to be wished--making short work of the bloody war which has so terribly afflicted our country. This done, there could not be any serious difficulty in resuscitating the love of Union among the masses in the South, and of reëstablishing the Union on its old foundations.
It may or may not be reasonable to demand such energy and speedy success at the hands of the Government. At all events, it is natural that the country, having confided unlimited means to the constituted authorities, should become impatient under the delays and difficulties of the contest, and that inexperienced men should expect the unequal forces of the two sections to be brought into quick and decisive conflict, with a result accordant to the relative strength of the opposing parties. A true Napoleonic genius might well have accomplished this grand result within the two years that have already passed. But such a mighty spirit has not yet come forth at the call of our agonized country; or if, perchance, he has made his appearance, he has certainly not been recognized and received by the powers that be. We must, therefore, needs be contented with the slow and gradual approach we are evidently making toward a final solution of the bloody problem. And as, even in the greatest misfortunes, there is often some hidden compensation for the unhappiness they produce, so in this case, perhaps we may find, in the great changes destined to be wrought in the condition of the Southern people by their stubborn perseverance in the war, ground for consolation in the midst of the calamities and bereavements which every day continues to bring upon us. The Southern rulers and masters pride themselves on their inveterate animosity. They glory in their own shame, and imagine themselves successful, so long as they can protract the struggle and renew the slaughter of great battles in which they are not utterly overthrown, though thousands of innocent victims are sacrificed to their mad and wicked ambition. But in truth, with every day of continued war they are only the more effectually destroying themselves, especially in that particular in which they are most anxious and determined to succeed. For the security of their slave property and the peaceful continuance of the institutions which sustain it, it would have been far better for them had they been thoroughly beaten and effectually put down at the very beginning of the war. There might then have been a chance for slavery to escape, at least for a while. Now it must be admitted there is hardly the vestige of such a chance. It is almost alike certain that slavery has been shaken to its very foundations in every State, whether the rebellion shall now either succeed or fail. The rebels have been wrong in all their calculations. Exactly the reverse of their aims and expectations will be the reward of their treason. They sought to overthrow the Government in order to perpetuate slavery; they have only succeeded in overthrowing slavery, to the certain strengthening and probable perpetuation of the Government they hate.
The leading rebels, occupying the seats of usurped power in their ephemeral confederacy, have succeeded in arousing and sustaining a considerable feeling of nationality and independence among the masses of their population. Grasping the sceptre of ill-gotten authority with great boldness, they have wielded it with a corresponding energy. Their early successes and their protracted resistance, sustained for more than two years by means of large and formidable armies, organized, disciplined, and led with great skill, have sufficed to give them credit and support at home, and much consideration abroad. In the midst of stirring events, carried away by the first impulse of excitement, the Southern people have not been in a mood to calculate the consequences of a long struggle. They have been elated and blinded by their apparent triumphs; and they, whose crafty purpose all the time has been to make use of them for the furtherance of their own ambitious projects, have been careful to preoccupy the minds of the people, and to conceal from them, by the plausible pretences and superficial successes of the hour, the certainty of ultimate discomfiture which has awaited them from the beginning. Occasionally, it is true, there have been indications that light was beginning to dawn on the popular mind; and in spite of the complete system of terror and compression which the leaders have inaugurated and sustained with the utmost determination, and with the most relentless rigor, we have seen every now and then, in different parts of the confederacy, the vivid flashes of a still living sentiment of love for the Union. As the hopes of the conspiracy become gradually less bright, this sentiment of affection for the old and honored Government of our fathers will grow stronger and more outspoken, and will not be confined to mere individual expressions. When the people begin to open their eyes and see the strength of the rebellion rapidly wasting away, with the repetition of its fruitless endeavors; when victories no longer compensate for the privations and horrible disasters which follow in their track; when, finally, they understand, as they soon must, that the whole movement is destined to end in utter failure, and that this failure is to be only the more overwhelming the longer the unhappy contest shall be continued, a complete revulsion of feeling may well be expected to take place. Many things in the course of the struggle have combined to delay the advent of this inevitable change. The progress of our arms has been extremely slow, with many checks and defeats in those campaigns and at those points which seemed to be the most important. If we have been successful in the West, it has not been without protracted efforts and immense expenditure of life and means--a long and bloody struggle, the uncertainty of which has not tended to strengthen us during its pendency. On the other hand, the brilliant successes of the rebels on the Rappahannock and at Charleston have not been fully counteracted by their actual and definitive discomfiture in other quarters. When Vicksburg and Port Hudson fall, as fall they must, the emptiness of all their triumphs will be felt and appreciated. Bull Run, twice famous, Fredericksburg, Charleston, Chancellorsville--all will then appear in their true light as magnificent phantoms of delusive success, alluring the proud victors to further fruitless efforts and barren victories, only to overwhelm them with more tremendous ruin, in the end which is slowly but certainly approaching.
Thus the continuance of the war, with its exhausting expenditures and its bloody sacrifices of life, is destined to be not altogether without its advantages in other respects besides its influence on the great question of slavery. It is preparing the public mind of the South for a most vehement reaction against all the false ideas which have been the animating spirit of the rebellion. In proportion to the greatness of the conflict, the immensity of its disasters, its delusive promises and barren victories, will be the thoroughness of the discomfiture, the completeness of the overthrow, the utter disgrace of the confederate cause, and of the men who have been its authors and leading representatives. It will be impossible for the Southern people to say, 'We have been engaged in a noble cause; we have failed for the time being; but there is a future for us in which we shall surely triumph.' On the contrary, every Southern man will feel that there is no resurrection for the bad designs which will thus have been forever prostrated. They have in them none of the elements of resuscitation. Failure in the present contest is annihilation forever. The very foundation and active power of the fatal movement will have been swept away, while at the same time the authors and the cause alike will be stamped with eternal infamy, as having aimed at the subversion of human liberty, and only succeeded in producing ruin and devastation to the beautiful region which they have misled and betrayed into a wicked war. The events of the mighty conflict will live in history, but only as an example of just punishment for a great crime, and as a solemn warning against the indulgence of selfish and unprincipled ambition in all future ages.
WAS HE SUCCESSFUL?
'Do but grasp into the thick of human life! Every one _lives_ it--to not many is it _known_; and seize it where you will, it is interesting.'--GOETHE.
'SUCCESSFUL.--Terminating in accomplishing what is wished or intended.'--WEBSTER'S _Dictionary_.
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