Book-_ -sl-(^ COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT A CBNTURT American Literature BENJAMIN FRANKLIN TO JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL SELECTIONS FROM A HUNDRED AUTHORS CHOSEN AND ARRANGED HUNTINGTON SMITH J' 301889 '■H[^lGTC5^i. NEW""^ THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO. 13 AsTOR Place \ 6^ COI I'RIGHT, 1889, By Thomas Y. Crowell & Co. jz-z^jty Ttpoorapht bt J. 8. Gushing & Co., Boston. PREFACE. In view of that scholarly and elaborate enterprise, the Stedman-Hutehinson Library of American Literature, and of Mr. Morris's entertaining Half Hours with American Authors, to say nothing of an indefinite series of antholo- gies of one sort and another, it might seem at first glance as if the present collection were on the whole superfinons j I hope, however, that such will not be the verdict of the great mass of readers for whose use it has been prepared. Whether we have or have not, in the strictly critical sense, an American literature, it is certain that histories of that subject have been written and that they demand a fair amount of illustration in the form of extracts which could not, by reason of limitations of space, be introduced to any considerable extent with the current of biographical narra- tive and aesthetic comment. Such a collection of extracts must not be too voluminous, it must be representative in range, and it must give a definite conception of each writer's method and style. This want the present work undertakes to supply. It is offered, primarily, as a com- panion to all existing histories of American literature, and as such I trust it may find a welcome. But I have not, in making and arranging these selections, kept entirely to this primary object. I have sought to give, as far as possible in the space at my disposal, a bird's- eye view of the development of our native literature from IV PREFACE. Franklin, with whom it may safely be said to have taken its rise, to the brilliant group of contemporary authors, of whom Mr. Lowell is the unquestioned leader. Any one who reads the following pages in due order will obtain, I think, in a reasonably short space of time, a conception of the intellectual growth of this country not to be had so readily in any other way. I have, moreover, tried to make each selection as far as possible complete in itself and expressive of an American idea. This last aim has of course been chiefly maintained with regard to the extracts from political writers, and the result may perhaps compensate for an occasional lack of purely literary charm. The list of authors which has been chosen includes, I believe, every name of importance during the period cov- ered by the plan of the book, and, although it might have been enlarged to some extent, the consequent additions would have been of questionable advantage. In this cen- tennial year of the republic a little humility in the things of the mind may not be an unprofitable contrast with our pride in material progress. Let us recognize and duly reverence the merits of these noble forerunners in the field of letters, but let us acknowledge, once for all, that the great majority of the writers we have thus far produced, when tested by the world's standard of excellence, fall somewhat below the level of immortal renown. In such an attitude there can be no disgrace, and it will perhaps conduce to healthy growth in the future. Seven centuries passed over Rome before her genius ripened into eternal song ; Greece was a thousand years in developing a litera- ture ; nearly as long a period elapsed before the amalgama- tion of the Angle and the Saxon resulted in Chaucer and PREFACE. V his long line of illustrious successors. Shall we, although the heirs of all the ages with the spoils of civilization at our feet, develop a literature worthy the name in the space of six brief generations ? A literature is the record of a nation's life ; a nation must have lived long and much be- fore its deeds and its aspirations, its trials and its triumphs, are recorded for the benefit of its posterity. The first cen- tury of the republic has been one of unbounded vigor ; ideas have been brought forth not all of which have yet found a fit historian ; and, meanwhile, let us be grateful that we have produced even half a dozen names that we may reasonably hope will shine on the bead-roll of Fame forever. HUNTINGTON SMITH. Dorchester, Mass., May 29, 1889. NOTE. For permission to employ copyrighted material in the preparation of this volume, the hearty thanks of the editor are due to many publishers. He wishes especially to ac- knowledge the courtesy of Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Co. in allowing him to make use of extracts from upwards of a dozen prominent authors, and to express further his obli- gations to Messrs. D. Appleton & Co., Messrs. Harper & Brothers, Messrs. Charles Scribner's Sons, Messrs. Little, Brown & Co., Messrs. Roberts Brothers, Messrs. Lee & Shepard, and Messrs. J. Stilman Smith & Co. CONTENTS. 1. Benjamin Franklin (1700-1790). page Happiness 1 His Father 2 Poor Ricliard's Wisdom 3 Oil on Water 4 2. John Woolman (1720-1772). His Last Voyage 6 3. James Otis (1725-1783). Representative Government 9 4. Patrick Henry (1736-1799). The Appeal to Arms 11 5. Thomas Paine (1737-1809). The Advent of Peace 13 6. George Washington (1732-1799). Party Spirit 15 7. Thomas Jefferson (1743-1820). Political Tolerance 17 Good Humor 18 8. John Jay (1745-1829). The Outlook 20 9. John Trumbull (1750-1831). The British Onslaught 22 10. James Madison (1751-1830). The Republican Experiment 25 11. Alexander Hamilton (1757-1804). The National Government 27 12. Fisher Ames (1758-1808). National Obligations 29 Vlll CONTENTS. 13. Joel Barlow (1754-1812). page The Husking 31 Invocation to Freedom 32 14. John Marshall (1755-1835). Character of Washington 34 15. Philip Freneau (1752-1832). The Wild Honeysuckle 36 To the Memory of the Americans who fell at Eutaw 37 16. Charles Brockden Brown (1771-1810). In the Cavern 38 17. William Wirt (1772-1834). Patrick Henry's Eloquence 43 18. James Kent (1763-1847). Science and Literature 45 19. Joseph Rodman Drake (1795-1820). A Fairy Meeting 47 20. Noah W^ebster (1758-1843). The Standard of Speech 49 21. William Ellery Channing (1780-1842). Individual Responsibility 53 22. John Pierpont (1785-1866). My Child 57 23. Henry Clay (1777-1852). A Plea for Compromise 59 24. John Caldwell Calhoun (1782-1850). State Sovereignty 62 25. Daniel W^ebster (1782-1852). Preservation of the Union 64 26. Richard Henry Wilde (1789-1847). Stanzas 68 27. Washington Irving (1783-1859). Rip Van Winkle's Return 69 28. Robert Taylor Conrad (1810-1858). On a Blind Boy 75 29. James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851). An Encounter with the Iroquois 76 CONTENTS. IX 30. James Gates Percival (1795-1856). fage The Coral Grove 90 31. WUliam Hickling Prescott (1790-1859). The Battle of Tlascala 92 32. Fitz-Greene Halleck (1790-1867). On the Death of Joseph Rodman Drake 102 33. Edward Everett (1794-1865). The Need of Patriotism 103 34. Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849). Annabel Lee 106 The Haunted Palace 107 The City in the Sea 109 To 110 Torture Ill 35. Richard Henry Dana (1787-1879). The Moss supplicateth for the Poet 117 The Little Beach Bird 119 36. George Ticknor (1791-1871). Cervantes 121 37. William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878). To the Fringed Gentian 123 To a Water-Fowl 124 " Oh Fairest of the Rural Maids " 125 The Planting of the Apple-Tree 126 The Third of November, 1861 128 38. John Gorham Palfrey (1796-1881). The Witchcraft Tragedy 130 39. Edward Coate Pinkney (1802-1828). A Health 135 40. Rufus Choate (1799-1859). Private Character of Webster 137 41. Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864). Little Pearl in the Forest 141 The Judge's Vigil 142 The Skeptic's Doom 144 42. Richard Hildreth (1807-1865). Aboriginal America 150 X CONTENTS. 43. Nathaniel Parker Willis (1806-1867). page Two Women 153 Saturday Afternoon 154 44. William Henry Seward (1801-1872). The Source of Public Virtue 156 45. George Perkins Marsh (1801-1882). Limits of Human Power 159 46. Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882). Individuality 162 Opportunity 163 Obedience 164 The Moral Law in Nature 165 Each and All 166 The World-Soul 167 Forerunners 171 Concord Hymn 172 Two Rivers ... 172 47. Charles Pernio Hoffman (1806-1884). The Bob-o-Linkum 174 To an Autumn Kose 175 48. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882). Footprints of Angels 177 The Arrow and the Song 179 The Bridge 179 Sunset 181 Launching the Ship 182 Hiawatha's Wooing 184 Nature 187 49. Sylvester Judd (1813-1853). A Midwinter Walk 188 50. William Gilmore Simms (1806-1870). A Sudden Hurricane 191 The Lost Pleiad 197 51. Theodore Parker (1810-1860). Degrees of Greatness 199 52. Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862). Solitude 203 Morning Air 204 Walden Pond 205 Spring Prospects 206 Inspiration 207 CONTENTS. XI 53. Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865). paqb The Gettysburg Address ." 208 54. George Bancroft (1800- Tlie New England Puritans 209 55. Alfred Billings Street (1811-1881). A Forest Walk 213 50. AUce Gary (1820-1871). The Little House on the Hill 210 Winter and Summer 217 57. PhcEbe Gary (1824-1871). A Prayer 219 March Crocuses 220 True Love 221 58. Henry Howard Brownell (1820-1872). The Burial of the Dane 222 Alone 224 59. Henry James (1811-1882). Spiritual Emancipation 225 CO. Gharles Etienne Arthur Gayarre (1805- The Legend of the Date Tree 227 61. Thomas Buchanan Read (1822-1872). The Way-Side Spring 230 The Stranger on the Sill 231 62. Thomas Starr King (1824- Sight and Insight 233 63. John Greenleaf Whittier (1807- In School Days 235 Ichabod ! 236 Worship 238 Snow-Bound 240 64. Albert Pike (1809- To Ceres 242 To Spring 244 65. Robert Charles Winthrop (1809- The Pilgrim Fathers 246 66. Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809- Opinions 249 Talk 250 Xll CONTENTS. PAGE Truth and Falsehood 251 The Last Leaf 252 The Chambered Nautilus 253 Under the Violets 254 67. Harriet Beecher Stowe (1812- Sani mends the Clock 257 Eva and Topsy 259 Romance 261 68. Jones Very (1813-1880). The Lost 264 To the Humming-Bird 264 69. William Ross Wallace (1819-1881). El Amin — The Faithful 266 70. John Lothrop Motley (1814-1877). Abdication of Charles the Fifth 268 71. Richard Henry Dana, Jr. (1815-1882). Flogging 275 72. Bayard Taylor (1825-1878). Love returned 277 Bedouin Song 278 The Song of the Camp 280 From " The Pines " 281 73. Wendell Phillips (1811-1884). The Duty of Scholarship 283 74. Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887). Strength of Self-Government 286 75. John Godfrey Saxe (1816-1887). My Castle in Spain 290 76. Edwin Percy Whipple (1819-1886). Webster and Calhoun 292 77. Byron Forceythe Willson (1837-1867). The Last Watch 294 The Estray 295 Autumn Song 295 78. David Atwood Wasson (1823-1887). All's Well 297 79. Christopher Pearse Cranch (1813- Written at Sorrento 300 CONTENTS. Xm 80. Robert Trail Spence Lowell (1816- page Love disposed of 302 81. Theodore Winthrop (1828-1861). A Gallop of Three 304 82. Henry Timrod (1829-1867). The Unknown Dead 307 83. John Esten Cooke (1830-1886). An Adventure 309 Tlie Rose of Glengary 313 84. Helen Hunt Jackson (1831-1885). Spinning 315 Two Truths 316 Poppies on the Wheat 317 Coronation 317 85. George Arnold (1834-1865). The Matron Year 319 86. Herman Melville (1819- A Scene in the Forecastle 321 Sheridan at Cedar Creek 324 Shiloh 326 87. William Wetmore Story (1819- The Sad Country 327 The Rose 327 88. Thomas William Parsons (1819- Louisa's Grave 329 89. Walt Whitman (1819- Greatness in Poetry 331 O Captain ! My Captain ! 333 The Singer in the Prison 334 For You, O Democracy 336 90. Julia Ward Howe (1819- Battle Hymn of the Republic 337 91. James Russell Lowell (1819- Dryden 339 Books and Reading 340 Snow 341 The First Snow-Fall 342 Spring comes 344 To the Dandelion 346 From " Appledore " 347 From " Tlie Present Crisis " 349 XIV CONTENTS. 92. Edward Everett Hale (1822- page A Lesson in Patriotism 352 93. Richard Malcolm Johnston (1822- Nipped in the Bud 356 9i. Donald Grant Mitchell (1822- Tlie Country Church 361 95. Thomas Wentworth Higginson (1823- Spring in New England 365 96. Francis Parkman (1823- The Heroes of the Long Saut 367 97. George Henry Boker (1823- The Queen's Touch 374 98. George William Curtis (1824- Pastoral Walks ' 379 99. Charles Godfrey Leland (1824- Thelerae 382 100. Richard Henry Stoddard (1825- The Country Life 385 Hymn to the Sea 386 A CENTURY AMERICAN LITERATURE. 23enjamin jFranitlm* [b. Boston, Massachusetts, January 17, 1706. d. April 17, 1790.] HAPPINESS. If we reflect upon any one passion and disposition of mind abstract from virtue, we shall soon see the discon- nexion betAveen that and true, solid happiness. It is of the very essence, for instance, of envy J^ •^ ' 7 J Happiness, to be uneasy and disquieted. Pride meets with provocations and disturbances upon almost every occasion. Covetousness is ever attended with solicitude and anxiety. Ambition has its disappointments to sour us, but never the good fortune to satisfy us ; its appetite grows the keener by indulgence, and all we can gratify it with at present serves but the more to inflame its insatiable desires. The passions, by being too much conversant with earthly objects, can never fix in us a proper composure and acquies- cence of mind. Nothing but an indifference to the things of this world, an entire submission to the will of Provi- dence here, and a well-grounded expectation of happiness hereafter, can give us a true satisfactory enjoyment of our- selves. Virtue is the best guard against the many unavoid- able evils incident to us ; nothing better alleviates the weight of the afflictions or gives a truer relish of the bless- ings of human life. 2 AMERICAN LITERATURE. What is without us has not the least connexion with happiness only so far as the preservation of our lives and health depends upon it. Health of body, though so far necessary that we cannot be perfectly happy without it, is not sufficient to make us happy of itself. Happiness springs immediately from the mind; health is but to be considered as a condition or circumstance, without which this happiness cannot be tasted pure and unabated. Virtue is the best preservative of health, as it prescribes temperance and such a regulation of our passions as is most conducive to the well-being of the animal economy, so that it is at the same time the only true happiness of the mind, and the best means of preserving the health of the body. If our desires are to the things of this world, they are never to be satisfied. If our great view is upon those of the next, the expectation of them is an infinitely higher satisfaction than the enjoyment of those of the present. There is no happiness then but in a virtuous and self- approving conduct. Unless our actions will bear the test of our sober judgments and reflections upon them, they are not the actions and consequently not the happiness of a rational being. HIS FATHER. He had an excellent constitution of body, was of middle stature, but well set, and very strong; he was ingenious, could draw prettily, was skilled a little in music, ^° ^°^' and had a clear, pleasing voice, so that when he played psalm tunes on his violin and sung withal, as he sometimes did in an evening after the business of the day was over, it was extremely agreeable to hear. He had a mechanical genius too, and, on occasion, was very handy in the use of other tradesmen's tools ; but his great excel- lence lay in a sound understanding and solid judgment in prudential matters, both in private and publick affairs. In BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 3 the latter, indeed, he was never employed, the numerous family he had to educate and the straitness of his circum- stances keeping him close to his trade ; but I remember well his being frequently visited by leading people, who consulted him for his opinion in affairs of the town or of the church he belonged to, and showed a good deal of respect for his judgment and advice. He was also much consulted by private persons about their affairs when any difficulty occurred, and frequently chosen an arbitrator between contending parties. At his table he liked to have, as often as he could, some sensible friend or neighbor to converse with, and always took care to start some ingenious or useful topic for dis- course, which might tend to improve the minds of his chil- dren. By this means he turned our attention to what was good, just, and prudent in the conduct of life ; and little or no notice was ever taken of what related to the victuals on the table, whether it was well or ill dressed, in or out of season, of good or bad flavor, preferable or inferior to this or that other thing of the kind, so that I was bro't up in such a perfect inattention to those matters as to be quite indifferent what kind of food was set before me, and so unobservant of it that to this day, if I am asked, I can scarcely tell a few hours after dinner what I dined upon. POOR RICHARD'S WISDOM. So what signifies wishing and hoping for better times ? We may make these times better if we bestir ourselves. Industry need not wish, and he that lives upon hopes will die fasting. There are no gains without pains ; then help, hands, for I have no lands ; or if I ^ i^ ^J, ■■^ ' ' 'to Wealth, have, they are smartly taxed. He that hath a trade, hath an estate, and he that hath a calling hath an office of profit and honor, as Poor Richard says ; but then 4 AMERICAN LITERATURE. the trade must be worked at and the calling followed, or neither the estate nor the office will enable us to pay our taxes. If we are industrious, we shall never starve, for at the workingman's house hunger looks in but dares not enter. Kor will the bailiff nor the constable enter, for Industry pays debts, while despair increaseth them. What though you have found no treasure, nor has any rich rela- tion left you a legacy, Diligence is the mother of good luck, and God gives all things to industry. Then plough deep while sluggards sleep, and you shall have corn to sell and to keep. Work while it is called to-day, for you know not how much you may be hindered to-morrow. One to-day is worth two to-morrows, as Poor Kichard says ; and fur- ther. Never leave that till to-morrow which you can do to-day. OIL ON WATER. During our passage to Madeira, the weather being warm, and the cabin windows constantly open for the benefit of Letter to ^^^® ^^^' ^^® candles at night flared and ran very John much, which was an inconvenience. At Madeira, Pringle. ^ye got oil to burn, and with a common glass tum- bler or beaker, slung in wire, and suspended to the ceiling of the cabin, and a little wire hoop for the wick, furnished with corks to float on the oil, I made an Italian lamp, that gave us very good light all over the table. The glass at bottom contained water to about one-third of its height ; an- other third was taken up with oil ; the rest was left empty that the sides of the glass might protect the flame from the wind. There is nothing remarkable in all this ; but what follows is particular. At supper, looking on the lamp, I remarked that though the surface of the oil was perfectly trancpul, and duly preserved its position and distance with regard to the brim of the glass, the water under the oil was in great commotion, rising and falling in irregular waves, BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 5 which continued during the whole evening. The lamp was kept burning as a watch-light all night, till the oil was spent and the water only remained. In the morning I observed that though the motion of the ship continued the same, the water was now quiet, and its surface as tranquil as that of the oil had been the evening before. At night again, when oil was put upon it, the water resumed its irregular motions, rising in high waves almost to the surface of the oil, but without disturbing the smooth level of that surface. And this was repeated every day during the voyage. AMERICAN LITERATURE. 3o!}n SEoolman. [b. Northampton, New Jersey, August, 1720. d. October 7, 1772.] HIS LAST VOYAGE. The second day of the sixth month. — Last evening the sea- men found bottom at about seventy fathom. This morning fair wind, and pleasant : and as I sat on deck, my heart was overcome with the love of Christ, and melted into contrition before him : and in this state, the prospect of that work, to which I have felt my mind drawn when in my native land, being in some degree opened before me, I felt like a little child ; and my cries were put up to my heavenly Father for preservation, that in a humble dependence on him, my soul may be strengthened in his love, and kept inwardly waiting for his counsel. This afternoon we saw that part of England called the Lizard. Some dunghill fowls yet remained of those the passen- gers took for their sea-stores : I believe about fourteen per- ished in the storms at sea, by the waves breaking over the quarter-deck ; and a considerable number with sickness, at different times. I observed the cocks crew coming down the Delaware, and while we were near land ; but afterward, I think, I did not hear one of them crow till we came near the land in England, when they again crowed a few times. In observing their dull appearance at sea, and the pining sickness of some of them, I often remembered the Fountain of Goodness, who gave being to all creatures, and whose love extends to that of caring for the sparrows ; and believe, where the love of God is verily perfected, and -the true spirit of government watchfully attended to, a tenderness toward all creatures made subject to us will be experienced; and a care felt in us, that we do not lessen that sweetness of JOHN WOOLMAN. T life, in the animal creation, which the great Creator intends for them under our government. The fourth day of the month. — Wet weather, high winds, and so dark that we could see but a little way. I perceived our seamen were apprehensive of danger of missing the channel ; which, I understood, was narrow. In a while it grew lighter ; and they saw the land, and they knew where we were. Thus the Father of mercies was pleased to try us with the sight of dangers, and then graciously, from time to time, deliver from them : thus sparing our lives, that, in humility and reverence, we may walk before him, and put our trust in him. About noon a pilot came off from Dover ; where my be- loved friend Samuel Emlen went on shore, and thence to London, about seventy-two miles, by land ; but I felt easy in staying in the ship. The seventh day of the month, and first of the tveek. — Clear morning, lay at anchor for the tide, and had a parting meeting with the ship's company, in which my heart was enlarged in a fervent concern for them, that they may come to experience salvation through Christ. — Had a head wind up the Thames ; lay sometimes at anchor ; saw many ships passing, and some at anchor near; and had large opportu- tunity of feeling the spirit in which the poor bewildered sailors too generally live. That lamentable degeneracy, which so much prevails on the people employed on the seas, so affected my heart that I may not easily convey the feeling I have had to another. The present state of the sea-faring life, in general, appears so opposite to that of a pious education, so full of corrup- tion and extreme alienation from God, so full of examples, the most dangerous to young people, that in looking toward a young generation, I feel a care for them, that they may have an education different from the present education of lads at sea ; and that all of us who are acquainted with the pure gospel spirit may lay this case to heart, may remember the lamentable corruptions which attend the conveyance 8 AMERICAN LITERATURE. of merchaiitlize across the seas, and so abide in the love of Christ, that being delivered from the love of money, from the entangling expenses of a curious, delicate, luxurious life, we may learn contentment with a little, and promote the sea-faring life no further than that spirit, which leads into all truth, attends us in our proceedings. JAMES OTIS. [b. West Barnstable, Massachusetts, February 5, 1725. d. May 23, 1783.] REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT. The first principle and great end of government being to provide for the best good of all the people, this can be done only by a supreme legislative and executive ulti- ^j^^ ■RXsktn mately in the people or whole community, where of the God has placed it ; but the inconveniences, not to British say impossibility, attending the consultations and *^°^°^^^^' operations of a large body of people, have made it necessary to transfer the power of the whole to a few. This necessity gave rise to deputation, proxy, or a right of representation. A power of legislation, without a power of execution in the same or other hands, would be futile and vain. On the other hand, a power of execution, supreme or subordinate, without an independent legislature, would be perfect des- potism. The difficulties attending an universal congress, especially when society became large, have brought men to consent to a delegation of the power of all. The weak and the wicked have too often been found in the same interest ; and in most nations have not only brought these powers jointly into the hands of one, or some few, of their number, but made them hereditary in the families of despotic nobles and princes. The wiser and more virtuous states have always provided that the representation of the people should be numerous. Nothing but life and liberty are naturally hereditable. This has never been considered by those who have tamely given up both into the hands of a tyrannical oligarchy or despotic monarchy. The analogy between the natural or material, as it is called, and the moral world is very obvious. God himself 10 AMERICAN LITERATURE. appears to us at some times to cause the intervention or combination of a number of simple principles, though never when one will answer the end. Gravitation and attraction have place in the revolution of the planets, because the one would fix them to a centre, and the other would carry them off indefinitely ; so in the moral world, the first simple prin- ciple is equality and the power of the whole. This will answer in small numbers ; so will a tolerably virtuous oli- garchy or monarchy. But when the society grows in bulk, none of them will answer well singly, and none worse than absolute monarchy. It becomes necessary, therefore, as numbers increase, to have those several powers properly combined, so as from the whole to produce that harmony of government so often talked of and wished for, but too seldom found in ancient or modern states. The grand polit- ical problem in all ages has been to invent the best combi- nation or distribution of the supreme powers of legislation and execution. Those states have ever made the greatest figure, and have been most durable, in which those powers have not only been separated from each other, but placed each in more hands than one or a few. The Eomans are the most shining example, but they never had a balance between the senate and the people ; and the want of this is generally agreed, by the few who know anything of the matter, to have been the cause of their fall. The British constitution, in theory and in the present administration of it, in general comes nearest the idea of perfection of any that has been reduced to practice ; and if the principles of it are adhered to, it will, according to the infallible predic- tion of Harrington, always keep the Britains uppermost in Europe till their only rival nation shall either embrace that perfect model of a commonwealth given us by that author, or come as near it as Great Britain is. Then indeed, and not till then, will that rival and our nation either be eternal confederates, or contend in greater earnest than they have ever yet done, till one of them shall sink under the power of the other, and rise no more. PATRICK HENRY. 11 [b. Studley, Virginia, May 29, 1736. d. June 6, 1799.] THE APPEAL TO ARMS. It is natural to man to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth, and listen to the song of that syren, till she trans- „ , . forms us into beasts. Is this the part of wise Conven- men, engaged in a great and arduous struggle for tion of liberty? Are we disposed to be of the number ^^^^S^tes. of those who, having eyes, see not, and having ears, hear not, the things which so nearly concern their temporal sal- vation? For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth, to know the worst, and to provide for it. I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided ; and that is the lamp of experience. I know of no way of judging of the future, but by the past. And judging by the past, I wish to know what there has been in the conduct of the British ministry for the last ten years, to justify those hopes with which gentlemen have been pleased to solace themselves and the House ? Is it that insidious smile with which our petition has been lately received ? Trust it not, sir; it will prove a snare to your feet. Suffer not your- selves to be betrayed with a kiss. Ask yourselves how this gracious reception of our petition comports with these war- like preparations which cover our waters and darken our land. Are fleets and armies necessary to a work of love and reconciliation ? Have we shown ourselves so unwil- ling to be reconciled, that force must be called in to win back our love ? Let us not deceive ourselves, sir. These are the implements of war and subjugation; the last argu- ments to which kings resort. 12 AMERICAN LITERATURE. I ask, gentlemen, sir, what means this martial array, if its purpose be not to force us to submission ? Can gentle- men assign any other possible motive for it ? Has Great Britain any enemy, iii this quarter of the world, to call for all this accumulation of navies and armies ? No, sir, she has none. They are meant for us ; they can be meant for no other. They are sent over to bind and rivet upon us those chains which the British ministry have been so long forging. And what have we to oppose to them ? Shall we try argument ? Sir, we have been trying that for the last ten years. Have we anything new to offer on the subject ? Nothing. We have held the subject up in every light of which it is capable ; but it has been all in vain. Shall we resort to entreaty and humble supplication ? \Vliat terms shall we find which have not been already exhausted ? Let us not, I beseech you, sir, deceive ourselves longer. Sir, we have done everything that could be done to avert the storm which is now coming on. We have petitioned ; we have remonstrated ; we have supplicated ; we have pros- trated ourselves before the throne, and have implored its interposition to arrest the tyrannical hands of the ministry and parliament. Our petitions have been slighted ; our re- monstrances have produced additional violence and insult ; our supplications have been disregarded ; and we have been spurned with contempt from the foot of the throne. In vain, after these things, may we indulge the fond hope of peace and reconciliation. There is no longer any room for hope. If we wish to be free — if we mean to preserve in- violate those inestimable privileges for which we have been so long contending — if we mean not basely to abandon the noble struggle in which we have been so long engaged, and which we have pledged ourselves never to abandon until the glorious object of our contest shall be obtained, we must fight ! I repeat it, sir, we must fight ! An appeal to arms, and to the God of Hosts is all that is left us ! THOMAS PAINE. 13 [b. Thetford, England, January 29, 1737. d. June 8, 1809.] THE ADVENT OF PEACE. The times that tried men's souls are over, and the greatest and completest revolution the world ever knew, gloriously and happily accomplished. But to pass from the extremes of danger to safety, from the tumult of war to the tranquillity of ., , , . , 1 ^- • The Crisis, peace, — though sweet m contemplation, requires a gradual composure of the senses to receive it. Even calm- ness has the power of stunning, when it opens too instantly upon us. The long and raging hurricane that should cease in a moment would leave us in a state rather of won- der than enjoyment; and some moments of recollection must pass before we could be capable of tasting the felicity of repose. There are but few instances in which the mind is fitted for sudden transitions ; it takes in its pleasures by reflection and comparison, and those must have time to act before the relish for new scenes is complete. In the present case, the mighty magnitude of the object, the various uncertainties of fate it has undergone, the numer- ous and complicated dangers we have suffered or escaped, the eminence we now stand on, and the vast prospect before us, must all conspire to impress us with contemplation. To see it in our power to make a world happy, to teach mankind the art of being so, to exhibit on the theatre of the universe a character hitherto unknown, and to have, as it were, a new creation entrusted to our hands, are honors that command reflection, and can neither be too highly esti- mated, nor too gratefully received. In this pause then of reflection, while the storm is ceasing, and the long agitated mind vibrating to a rest, let 14 AMERICAN LITERATURE. US look back on the scenes we have passed, and learn from experience what is yet to be done. Never, I say, had a country so many openings to happi- ness as this. Her setting out in life, like the rising of a fair morning, was unclouded and promising. Her cause was good. Her principles just and liberal. Her temper serene and firm. Her conduct regulated by the wisest steps, and everything about her wore the mark of honor. It is not every country (perhaps there is not another in the world) that can boast so fair an origin. Even the first settlement of America corresponds with the character of the revolution. Eome, once the proud mistress of the universe, was origi- nally a band of ruffians. Plunder and rapine made her rich, and her oppression of millions made her great. But Amer- ica need never be ashamed to tell her birth, nor relate the stages by which she rose to empire. The remembrance then of what is past, if it operates rightly, must inspire her with the most laudable of all am- bitions, that of adding to the fair fame she began with. The world has seen her great in adversity ; struggling, without a thought of yielding, beneath accumulated difficulties, bravely, nay, proudly encountering distress, and rising in resolution as the storm increased. All this is justly due to her, for her fortitude has merited the character. Let then the world see that she can bear prosperity ; and that her honest virtue in time of peace is equal to the bravest vir- tue in time of war. She is now descending to the scenes of quiet and domes- tic life, — not under the cypress shade of disappointment, but to enjoy, in her own land, and under her own vine, the sweet of her labors, and the reward of her toil. In this situation may she never forget that a fair national reputa- tion is of as much importance as independence, that it pos- sesses a charm that wins upon the world, and makes even enemies civil, that it gives a dignity which is often supe- rior to power, and commands reverence where pomp and splendor fail. GEORGE WASHINGTON. 15 George 2li:as!}m0ton, [b. "Westmoreland County, "Virginia, February 22, 1732. d. December 14, 1799.] PARTY SPIRIT. There is an opinion that parties in free countries are useful checks upon the administration of the government, and serve to keep alive the spirit of liberty. This, "within certain limits, is probabl"y true; and ^^^^^ 1 . 1 • Address, m governments of a monarchical cast patriotism may look "with indulgence, if not "with favor, upon the spirit of party. But in those of the popular character, in govern- ments purely elective, it is a spirit not to be encouraged. From their natural tendency, it is certfiin there "will always be enough of that spirit for every salutary purpose ; and, there being constant danger of excess, the effort ought to be, by force of public opinion, to mitigate and assuage it. A fire not to be quenched, it demands a uniform vigi- lance to prevent its bursting into a flame, lest, instead of warming, it should consume. It is important, like"wise, that the habits of thinking in a free country should inspire caution in those intrusted with its administration to confine themselves within their respec- tive constitutional spheres, avoiding in the exercise of their powers of one department to encroach upon another. The spirit of encroachment tends to consolidate the powers of the departments in one, and thus to create, whatever the form of government, a real despotism. A just estimate of that love of power, and proneness to abuse it, which pre- dominates in the human heart, is sufficient to satisfy us of the truth of this position. The necessity of reciprocal checks in the exercise of political power, by dividing and distributing it into different dispositions, and constituting each the guardian of the public weal against invasions by 16 AMERICAN LITERATURE. others, has been evinced by experiments ancient and mod- ern, some of them in our own country and under our own eyes. To preserve them must be as necessary as to insti- tute them. If, in the opinion of the people, the distribution or modification of the constitutional powers be in any par- ticular wrong, let it be corrected by an amendment in a Avay which the constitution designates. But let there be no change by usurpation ; for though this, in one instance, may be the instrument of good, it is the customary weapon by Avhich free governments are destroyed. The precedent must always greatly overbalance in permanent evil any partial or transient benefit which the use can at any time yield. THOMAS JEFFERSON. 17 [b. Shadwell, Virginia, April 2, 1743. d. July 4, 1826.] POLITICAL TOLERANCE. During the contest of opinion throngh which we have passed, the animation of discussions and of exertions has sometimes worn an aspect which might impose on strangers unused to think freely, and to speak ^'''^* and to write what they think; but tliis being Ajjjg„ now decided by the voice of the nation, announced according to the rules of the constitution, all will of course arrange themselves u.nder the will of the law, and unite in common efforts for the common good. All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that, though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will, to be rightful, must be reasonable ; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal laws must protect, and to violate which would be oppression. Let us then, fellow-citizens, unite with one heart and one mind ; let us restore to social inter- course that harmony and affection without which liberty, and even life itself, are but dreary things. And let us reflect, that having banished from our land that religious intolerance under which mankind so long bled and suffered, we have yet gained little if we countenance a political in- tolerance as despotic, as wicked, and as capable of as bitter and bloody persecutions. During the throes and convul- sions of the ancient world, during the agonizing spasms of infuriated man, seeking through blood and slaughter his long-lost liberty, it was not wonderful that the agitation of the billows should reach even this distant and peaceful shore ; that this should be more felt and feared by some, and less by others, and should divide opinions as to meas- ures of safety. But every difference of opinion is not a 18 AMERICAN LITERATURE. difference of principle. We have called by different names brethren of the same principle. We are all Republicans ; we are all Federalists. If there be any among us who wish to dissolve this union, or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it. I know, indeed, that some honest men fear that a republican government cannot be strong, that this government is not strong enough. But would the honest patriot, in the full tide of successful experiment, abandon a government which has so far kept us free and firm, on the theoretic and visionary fear that this govern- ment, the world's best hope, may, by possibility, want energy to preserve itself ? I trust not. I believe this, on the contrary, the strongest government on earth. I believe it the only one where every man, at the call of law, would fly to the standard of the law, and would meet invasions of the public order as his own personal concern. Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he then be trusted with the government of others ? Or, have we found angels in the form of kings to govern him ? Let history answer this question. GOOD HUMOR. I have mentioned good humor as one of the preservatives of our peace and tranquillity. It is among the most effect- ual, and its effect is so well imitated and aided. Letter to T. J. dolph. artificially, by politeness, that this also becomes "an acquisition of first-rate value. In truth, polite- ness is artificial good humor; it covers the natural want of it, and ends by rendering habitual a substitute nearly equivalent to the real virtue. It is the practice of sacrificing to those whom we meet in society, all the little conveniences and preferences which will gratify them, and THOMAS JEFFERSON. 19 deprive us of nothing worth a moment's consideration ; it is the giving a pleasing and flattering turn to our expres- sions, which will conciliate others, and make them pleased with us as well as themselves. How cheap a jDrice for the good will of another ! When this is in return for a rude thing said by another, it brings him to his senses, it mor- tifies and corrects him in the most salutary way, and places him at the feet of your good nature, in the eyes of the company. But in stating prudential rules for our govern- ment in society, I must not omit the important one, of never entering into dispute or argument with another. I never yet saw an instance of one of two disputants con- vincing the other by argument. I have seen many, of their getting warm, becoming rude, and shooting one another. Conviction is the effect of our own dispassionate reasoning, either in solitude, or weighing within ourselves, dispassion- ately, what we hear from others, standing uncommitted in argument ourselves. It Avas one of the rules Avhich, above all others, made Doctor Franklin the most amiable of men in society, "never to contradict anybody." If he was urged to announce an opinion, he did it rather by asking questions, as if for information, or by suggesting doubts. When I hear another express an opinion which is not mine, I say to myself, he has a right to his opinion, as I to mine ; why should I question it ? His error does me no injury, and shall I be- come a Don Quixote, to bring all men by force of argument to one opinion ? If a fact be misstated, it is probable he is gratified by a belief of it, and I have no right to deprive him of the gratification. If he wants inforination, he will ask it, and then I will give it in measured terms; but if he still believes his own story, and shows a desire to dispute the fact with me, I hear him and say nothing. 20 AMERICAN LITERATURE. Jotjn Sag. [b. New York, New York, December 12, 1745. d. May 17, 1829.] THE OUTLOOK. That the time lias been when honest men might, without being chargeable with timidity, have doubted the success of the present revolution, we admit ; but that Circular period is past. The independence of America is Letter fro~ Congress. rom ^^^^^^ ^^ fixed as fate, and the petulant efforts of 15 ri tain to break it down are as vain and fruitless as the raging of the waves which beat against her cliffs. Let those who are still afflicted with these doubts consider the character and condition of our enemies. Let them re- member that we are contending against a kingdom crum- bling into pieces ; a nation without public virtue, and a people sold to and betrayed by their own representatives ; against a prince governed by his passions, and a ministry without confidence or wisdom; against armies half paid and generals half trusted ; against a government equal only to plans of plunder, conflagration, and murder — a govern- ment, by the most impious violations of the rights of relig- ion, justice, humanity, and mankind, courting the vengeance of Heaven and revolting from the protection of Providence. Against the fury of these enemies you made successful re- sistance, when single, alone, and friendless, in the days of weakness and infancy, before your hands had been taught to war or your fingers to fight. And can there be any rea- son to apprehend that the Divine Disposer of human events, after having separated us from the house of bondage, and led us safe through a sea of blood towards the land of liberty and promise, will leave the work of our ■])olitical redemption unfinished, and either permit us to perish in a wilderness of difficulties, or suffer us to be carried back in JOHN JAY. 21 chains to that country of oppression, from whose tyranny he hath mercifully delivered us with a stretched-out arm ? In close alliance with one of the most powerful nations in Europe, which has generously made our cause her own, in amity with many others, and enjoying the good will of all, what danger have we to fear from Britain ? Instead of acquiring accessions of territory by conquest, the limits of her empire daily contract ; her fleets no longer rule the ocean, nor are her armies invincible by land. How many of her standards, wrested from the hands of her champions, are among your trophies, and have graced the triumphs of your troops ? And how great is the number of those who, sent to bind you in fetters, have becoane your captives, and received their lives at your hands ? In short, whoever considers that these States are daily increasing in power ; that their armies have become veteran ; that their govern- ments, founded in freedom, are established ; that their fertile country and their affectionate ally furnish them with ample supplies ; that the Spanish monarch, well pre- pared for war, with fleets and armies ready for combat, and a treasury overflowing with wealth, has entered the lists against Britain ; that the other European nations, often insulted by her pride, and alarmed at the strides of her ambition, have left her to her fate ; that Ireland, wearied with her oppression, is panting for liberty ; and even Scot- land displeased and uneasy at her edicts : whoever con- siders these things, instead of doubting the issue of the war, will rejoice in the glorious, the sure, and certain pros- pect of success. 22 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 3oi}u ErumiulL [b. Woodbury, C'uiinocticut, April 24, 17.J0. d. May 12, 1S31.] THE BRITISH ONSLAUGHT. [From "McFingal."] But now your triumphs all are o'er ; For see, from Britain's angry shore, With deadly hosts of valor join Her Howe, her Clinton, and Burgoyne ! As comets thro' th' affrighted skies Pour baleful ruin as they rise ; As iEtna with infernal roar In conflagration SAveeps the shore ; Or as Abijah White, when sent Our Marshfield friends to represent, Himself Avhile dread array involves, Commissions, pistols, swords, resolves, In awful pomp descending down, Bore terror on the factious town : Not with less glory and affright, Parade these generals forth to fight. No more each British colonel runs From whizzing beetles as air-guns ; Thinks horn-bugs bullets, or, thro' fears, Muskitoes takes for musketeers ; Nor scapes, as if you'd gain'd su})plies. From Beelzebub's Avhole host of flies. No bug these warlike hearts appalls ; They better know the sound of balls. I hear the din of battle bray ; The trump of horror makes its way, I see afar the sack of cities. The gallows strung with Whig committees ; JOHN TRUMBULL. 23 Your moderators triced, like vermin, And gate-posts graced with heads of chairmen; Your Congress for wave-ofE'rings hanging, And Ladders thronged with priests haranguing. What pillories glad the Tories' eyes With patriot ears for sacrifice ! What whipping-posts your chosen race Admit successive in embrace, While each bears off his sins, alack. Like Bunyan's pilgrim, on his back ! Where, then, when Tories scarce get clear, Shall Whigs and Congresses appear ? What rocks and mountains will you call To wrap you over with their fall, And save your heads, in these sad Aveathers, From fire .and sword, and tar and feathers ? For lo ! with British troops tar bright. Again our Nesbitt heaves in sight ; He comes, he comes, your lines to storm. And rig your troops in uniform. To meet such heroes Avill ye brag, With fury arm'd, and feather-bag. Who wield their missile pitch and tar With engines new in British war ? Lo ! where our mighty navy brings Destruction on her canvas wings. While through the deep the British thunder Shall sound th' alarm, to rob and plunder ! As Phoebus first, so Homer speaks. When he march'd out t' attack the Greeks. 'Gainst mules sent forth his arrows fatal, And slew th' auxiliaries, their cattle : So where our ships shall stretch the keel, What vanquish'd oxen shall they steal ! What heroes, rising from the deep, Invade your marshall'd hosts of sheep ; Disperse whole troops of horse, and pressing. 24 JOHX TRUMBULL. Make cows surrender at discretion ; Attack your hens, like Alexanders, And regiments rout of geese and ganders ; Or where united arms combine, Lead captive many a herd of swine ; Then rush in dreadful fury down To fire on every seaport town ; Display their glory and their wits, Fright heljiless children into fits ; And stoutly, from the unequal fray, Make many a Avoman run awa}-. JAMES MADISON. 25 3amrs flatiiSDit. [b. Port Coventry, Virginia, March 16, ITol. d. June 28, 1836.] THE REPUBLICAN EXPERIMENT. Hearkex not to the unnatural voice wliieli tells you that the people of America, knit together as they are by so many cords of affection, can no longer live together as members of the same family; can no longer I continue the mutual guardians of their mutual happiness ; can no longer be fellow-citizens of one great, respectable, and flourishing empire. Hearken not to the voice v/hich petulantly tells you that the form of govern- ment recommended for your adoption is a novelty in the political world ; that it has never yet had a place in the theories of the wildest projectors ; that it rashly attempts what it is impossible to accomplish. iSTo, my countrymen : shut your ears against this unhallowed language. Shut your hearts against the poison which it conveys. The kindred blood which flows in the veins of American citizens, the mingled blood Avhich they have shed in defence of their sacred rights, consecrate their union, and excite horror at the idea of their becoming aliens, rivals, enemies. And if novelties are to be shunned, believe me, the most alarming of all novelties, the most wild of all projects, the most rash of all attempts, is that ' of rending us in pieces, in order to preserve our liberties, and promote our happiness. But why is the experiment of an extended republic to be re- jected, merely because it may comprise Avhat is new ? Is it not the glory of the people of America, that whilst they have paid a decent regard to the opinions of former times and other nations, they have not suffered a blind veneration for antiquity, for custom, or for names, to overrule the sug- gestions of their own good sense, the knowledge of their 26 AMERICAN LITERATURE. own situation, and the lessons of their own experience ? To this manly spirit posterity Avill be indebted for the x>os- session, and the world for the example, of the numerous innovations displayed on the American theatre, in favor of private rights and public happiness. ALEXANDER HAMILTON. 27 ^Icxanticr HMmtltoiu [b. Nevis, West Indies, Janimry 11, IT.M. it. July 12, 1804.] THE NATIONAL GOVERNMENT. Gentlemen indulge too many unreasonable apprehensions of danger to the State governments ; they seem to suppose that the moment you put men into a national coun- cil they become corrupt and tyrannical, and lose Speech in the all their affection for their fellow-citizens. But Co^entLn can we imagine that the Senators will ever be so insensible of their own advantage as to sacrifice the genuine interest of their constituents ? The State governments are essentially necessary to the form and spirit of the general system. As long, therefore, as Congress has a full convic- tion of this necessity, they must, even upon principles purely national, have as firm an attachment to the one as to the other. This conviction can never leave them unless they become madmen. While the constitution continues to be read, and its principle known, the States must, by every rational man, be considered as essential, component parts of the Union; and therefore the idea of sacrificing the former to the latter is wholly inadmissible. The objectors do not advert to the natural strength and resources of State governments, which will ever give them an important superiority over the general government. If we compare the nature of their different powers, or the means of popular influence which each possesses, Ave shall find the advantage entirely on the side of the States. This consideration, important as it is, seems to have been little attended to. The aggregate number of representatives throughout the States may be two thousand. Their per- sonal influence will, therefore, be proportionably more exten- sive than that of one or two hundred men in Congress. The 28 AMERICAN LITERATURE. State establishments of civil and military officers of every description, infinitely surpassing in number any possible correspondent establishments in the general government, will create such an extent and complication of attachments as will ever secure the predilection and support of the people. Whenever, therefore. Congress shall meditate any infringement of the State constitutions, the great body of the people will naturally take part with their domestic rep- resentatives. Can the general government withstand such an united opposition ? Will the people suffer themselves to be stripped of their privileges ? Will they suffer their legislatures to be reduced to a shadow and a name ? The idea is shocking to common sense. From the circumstances already explained, and many others which might be mentioned, results a complicated, irresistible check, which must ever support the existence and importance of the State governments. The danger, if any exists, flows from an opposite source. The probable evil is, that the general government will be too dependent on the State legislatures, too much governed by their preju- dices, and too obsequious to their humors ; that the States, with every power in their hands, will make encroachments on the national authority till the Union is weakened and dissolved. FISHER AMES. 29 JFisijrr ^mrs. [b. Dedham, Massachusetts, April 0, 1758. d. July 4, 1S08.] NATIONAL OBLIGATIONS. What is patriotism? Is it a narrow affection for the spot where a man was born ? Are the very clods where we tread entitled to this ardent preference because gpgechon they are greener ? No, sir, this is not the character the British of the virtue, and it soars higher for its object. It Treaty, is an extended self-love, mingling with all the en- ' ' joyments of life, and twisting itself with the minutest fila- ments of the heart. It is thus we obey the laws of society, because they are the laws of virtue. In their authority we see, not the array of force and terror, but the venerable image of our country's honor. Every good c^iizen makes that honor his own, and cherishes it not only as precious, but as sacred. He is willing to risk his life in its defence, and is conscious that he gains protection while he gives it. For, what rights of a citizen will be deemed inviolable when a state renounces the principles that constitute their secu- rity. Or if his. life should not be invaded, what would its enjoyments be in a country odious in the eyes of strangers and dishonored in his own ? Could he look with affection and veneration to such a country as his parent ? The sense of having one would die within him ; he would blush for his patriotism, if he retained any, and justly, for it would be a vice. He would be a banished man in his native land. I see no exception to the respect that is paid among nations to the law of good faith. If there are cases in this enlight- ened period where it is violated, there are none where it is decried. It is the philosophy of politics, the religion of governments. It is observed by barbarians — a whiff of tobacco-smoke, or a string of beads, gives not merely bind- 30 AMEBIC AN LITERATURE. ing force but sanctity to treaties. Even in Algiers, a truce may be bought for money, but when ratified, even Algiers is too wise, or too just, to disown and annul its obligation. Thus we see, neither the ignorance of savages, nor the prin- ciples of an association for piracy and rapine, permit a na- tion to despise its engagements. If, sir, there could be a resurrection from the foot of the gallows, if the victims of justice could live again, collect together and form a society, they would, however loath, soon find themselves obliged to make justice, that justice under which they fell, the funda- mental law of their state. They would perceive it was their interest to make others respect, and they would therefore soon pay some respect themselves, to the obligations of good faith. JOEL BARLOW. 31 3orl Barlob)^ [b. Redding, Counccticut, March 24, 1754. d. December 24, 1812.] THE HUSKING. [From "Hasty Pudding."] The days grow short ; but though the fallen sun To the glad swain proclaims his day's work done, Night's pleasant shades his various tasks prolong, And yield new subjects to my various song. For now, the corn-house fiU'd, the harvest home, Th' invited neighbors to the husking come ; A frolic scene, whose work, and mirth, and play. Unite their charms to chase the hours away. AVhere the huge heap lies centred in the hall. The lamp suspended from the cheerful wall. Brown corn-fed nymphs, and strong hard-handed beaux Alternate rang'd, extend in circling rows, Assume their seats, the solid mass attack ; The dry husks rustle, and the corn-cobs crack ; The song, the laugh, alternate notes resound. And the sweet cider trips in silence round. The laws of husking ev'ry wight can tell ; And sure no laws he ever keeps so well : For each red ear, a gen'ral kiss he gains, With each smut ear he smuts the luckless swains. But when to some sweet maid a prize is cast. Bed as her lips, and taper as her waist. She walks the round, and culls one favor'd beau. Who leaps, the luscious tribute to bestow. Various the sports, as are the wits and brains Of well-pleased lasses and contending swains ; Till the vast mound of corn is swept away, And he that gets the last ear wins the day. 32 AMERICAN LITERATURE. Meanwhile the house-wife urges all her care, The well-earned feast to hasten and prepare. The sifted meal already waits her hand, The milk is strain'd, the bowls in order stand, The fire flames high ; and, as a pool (that takes The headlong stream that o'er the mill-dain breaks) Foams, roars, and rages with incessant toils. So the next caldron rages, roars, and boils. First with clean salt she seasons well the food. Then strews the flour, and thickens all the flood. Long o'er the simm'ring fire she lets it stand ; To stir it well demands a stronger hand ; The husband takes his turn ; and round and round The ladle flies ; at last the toil is crown'd ; When to the board the thronging buskers pour, And take their seats as at the corn before. INVOCATION TO FREEDOM. [From "Tue Columbiad."] Sun of the moral world ! effulgent source Of man's best wisdom and his steadiest force. Soul-searching Freedom ! here assume thy stand, And radiate hence to every distant land ; Point out and prove how all the scenes of strife, The shock of states, the impassion'd broils of life, Spring from unequal sway, and how they fly Before the splendor of thy peaceful eye ; Unfold at last the genuine social plan, The mind's full scope, the dignity of man. Bold nature bursting thro' her long disguise, And nations daring to be just and wise. Yes ! righteous Freedom, heaven and earth and sea Yield or withhold their various gifts for thee ; Protected Industry beneath thy reign JOEL BARLOW. 33 Leads all the virtues in her filial train ; Courageous Probity with brow serene, And Temperance calm presents her jilacid mien; Contentment, Moderation, Labor, Art, Mould the new man and humanize his heart ; To public plenty private ease dilates, Domestic peace to harmony of states. Protected Industry, careering far, Detects the cause and cures the rage of war. And sweeps, with forceful arm, to their last graves, Kings from the earth and pirates from the waves. 34 AMERICAN LITERATURE. [b. Germantown, Virginia, September 24, 17-J5. d. July 6, 1835.] CHARACTER OF WASHINGTON. No man ever appeared upon the theatre of piiblie action, whose integrity was more incorruptible, or whose princi- ples Avere more perfectly free from the contamina- '® °, tion of those selfish and unworthy passions which Washington, , , , . . , . , "^ f_ hnd their nourishment in the conflicts of party. Having no views which required concealment, his real and avowed motives were the same ; and his Avhole correspond- ence does not furnish a single case from which even an enemy would infer that lie w\t,s capable, under any circum- stances, of stooping to the employment of duplicity. No truth can be uttered Avith more confidence than that his ends were always upright, and his means always pure. He exhibits the rare example of a politician to whom wiles were absolutely unknown, and whose professions to foreign governments and to his own countrymen were always sincere. In him was fully exemplified the real distinction which for- ever exists between wisdom and cunning, and the importance as well as truth of the maxim that "honesty is the best policy." If Washington possessed ambition, that passion was, in his Ijosom, so regulated by principles, or controlled by cir- cumstances, that it Avas neither vicious nor turbulent. In- trigue was never employed as the means of its gratification, nor Avas personal aggrandizement its object. The various high and important stations to Avhich he Avas called by the public voice, Avere unsought by himself ; and in consenting to fill them, he seems rather to have yielded to a general conviction that the interests of his country Avould be thereby promoted, than to his particular inclination. Neither the extraordinary partiality of the American peo- JOHN MARSHALL. 35 pie, the extravagant praises which were bestowed upon him, nor the inveterate opposition and malignant calumnies which he experienced, had any visible influence upon his conduct. The cause is to be looked for in the texture of his mind. In him, that innate and unassuming modesty Avhich adu- lation would have offended, which the voluntary plaudits of millions could not betray into indiscretion, and which never obtruded upon others his claim to superior considera- tion, was happily blended with a high and correct sense of personal dignity, and with a just consciousness of that re- spect which is due to station. Without exertion, he could maintain the happy medium between that arrogance which wounds, and that facility Avhich allows the office to be degraded in the person who fills it. It is impossible to contemplate the great events which have occurred in the United States under the auspices of Washington, without ascribing them, in some measure, to him. If we ask the causes of the prosperous issue of a war, against the successful termination of which there were so many i)robabilities ; of the good which was produced, and the ill which was avoided during an a.dministration fated to contend with the strongest prejudices that a combination of circumstances and of passions could produce ; of the con- stant favor of the great mass of his fellow-citizens, and of the confidence which, to the last moment of his life, they reposed in liim; — the answer, §o far as the causes may be found in his character, will fiirnish a lesson well meriting the attention of those who are candidates for political fame. EndoAved by nature with a sound judgment, and an accu- rate, discriminating mind, he feared not that laborious at- tention which made him perfectly master of those subjects, in all their relations, on which he Avas to decide ; and this essential quality Avas guided by an unvarying sense of moral right, Avhich Avoidd tolerate the employment only of those means that Avould bear the most rigid examination ; by a fairness of intention which neither sought nor required dis- guise ; and by a purity of virtue Avhich Avas not only un- tainted, but unsuspected. 36 AMERICAN LITERATURE. PfjtUp jFrrnrau, [b. New York, New York, January 2, 1752. d. December 18, 1832.] THE WILD HONEYSUCKLE. Fair flower that dost so comely grow, Hid in the silent, dull retreat. Untouched thy honey'd blossoms blow, Unseen thy little branches greet ; No roving foot shall crush thee here, No busy hand provoke a tear. By Nature's self in white arrayed, She bade thee shun the vulgar eye, And planted here the guardian shade, And sent soft Avaters murmuring by ; Thu.s cj^uietly thy summer goes — Thy days declining to repose. Sniit with those charms, that must decay, I grieve to see your future doom ; They died — nor were those flowers more gay — The flowers that did in Eden bloom ; Unpitying frosts and Autumn's power Shall leave no vestige of this flower. From morning suns and evening dews At first thy little being came ; If nothing once, you nothing lose, For when you die you are the same ; The space between is but an hour, The frail duration of a flower. / PIIILir FRENEAU. 37 TO THE MEMORY OF THE AMERICANS WHO FELL AT EUTAW. At Eiitaw Springs the valiant died ; Their limbs with dust are cover'd o'er ; Weep on, ye springs, your tearful tide — How many heroes are no more ! If, in this wreck of ruin, they Can yet be thought to claim the tear, Oh, smite your gentle breast and say, The friends of freedom slumber here ! Thou Avho shalt trace this bloody plain. If goodness rules thy generous breast, Sigh for the wasted rural reign ; Sigh for the shepherds, sunk to rest ! Stranger, their humble graves adorn ; You too may fall, and ask a tear ; 'Tis not the beauty of the morn That proves the evening shall be clear. They saw their injured country's wo — The flaming town, the wasted field. Then rush'd to meet the insulting foe ; They took the spear, but left the shield. Led by the conquering genius, Greene, The Britons they compell'd to fly ; None distant viewed the fatal plain ; None grieved in such a cause to die. But like the Parthians, famed of old. Who, flying, still their arrows threw. These routed Britons, full as bold, Ketreated, and retreating slew. Now rest in peace, our patriot band ; Though far from Nature's limits thrown, We trust they find a happier land, A brighter sunshine of their own. 38 AMERICAN LITERATURE. Cl}arlrs 33rorfetifn 33rob]n. [b. Philadelphia, Penusylvauia, January 17, 1771. d. February 22, 1810.] IN THE CAVERN. I xow exerted my voice, and cried as loud as my wasted strength would admit. Its echoes were sent back to me in broken and confused sounds and from above. This Edgar effort was casual, but some parts of that uncer- tamty in which I was involved was instantly dis- pelled by it. In passing through the cavern on the former day, I have mentioned the verge of the pit at which I ar- rived. To acquaint me as far as Avas possible with the dimensions of the place, I had halloed with all my force, knowing that sound is reflected according to the distance and relative positions of the substances from which it is repelled. The effect produced by my voice on this occasion resem- bled, Avith remarkable exactness, the effect which was then produced. Was I, then, shut up in the same cavern ? Had I reached the brink of the same precipice and been thrown headlong into that vacuity? Whence else could arise the bruises which I had received, but from my fall? Yet all remem- brance of my journey hither was lost. I had determined to explore this cave on the ensuing day, but my memory in- formed me not that this intention had been carried into effect. Still, it Avas only possible to conclude that I had come hither on my intended expedition, and had been throAvn by another, or had by some ill chance, fallen, into the pit. This opinion Avas conformable to what I had already ob- served. The pavement and Avails were rugged like those of the footing and sides of the cave through Avhich I had for- merly passed. CHARLES BROCKDEN BROWN. 39 But if this were true, what was the abhorred catastrophe to Avhieh I was now reserved ? The sides of this pit were inaccessible; human footsteps would never wander into these recesses. My friends were unapprized of my forlorn state. Here I sliould continue till wasted by famine. In this grave should I linger out a few days in unspeakable agonies, and then perish forever. The inroads of hunger were already experienced; and this knowledge of the desperateness of my calamity iirged me to frenzy. I had none but capricious and unseen fate to condemn. The author of my distress, and the means he had taken to decoy me hither, were incomprehensible. Surely my senses were fettered or depraved by some spell. I was still asleep, and this was merely a tormenting vision ; or madness had seized me, and the darkness that environed and the hunger that afflicted me existed only in my own distempered imagination. The consolation of these doubts could not last long. Every hour added to the proof that my perceptions were real. IVIy hunger speedily became ferocious. I tore the linen of my shirt between my teeth, and swallowed the fragments. I felt a strong propensity to bite the flesh from my arm. IVIy heart overflowed with cruelty, and I pondered on the delight I should experience in rending some living animal to pieces, and drinking its blood, and grinding its quivering fibres between my teeth. This agony had already passed beyond the limits of endurance. I saw that time, instead of bringing respite or relief, would only aggravate my wants, and that my only remain- ing hope was to die before I should be assaulted by the last extremes of famine. I now recollected that a tomahawk was at hand, and rejoiced in the possession of an instrument by which I could so effectually terminate my sufferings. I took it in my hand, moved its edge over my fingers, and reflected on the force that was required to make it reach my heart. I investigated the spot where it should enter, 40 AyfEEICAN LITERATURE. and strove to fortify myself Avith resolution to repeat the stroke a second or third time, if the first should prove insufficient. I was sensible that I might fail to inflict a mortal Avound, but delighted to consider that the blood which would be made to flow Avould finally release me, and that meanwhile my pains would be alleviated by swallowing this blood. You will not wonder that I felt some reluctance to em- ploy so fatal though indispensable a remedy. I once more ruminated on the possibility of rescuing myself by other means. I now reflected that the upper termination of the wall could not be at an immeasurable distance from the pavement. I had fallen from a height ; but if that height had been considerable, instead of being merely bruised, should I not have been dashed into pieces ? Gleams of hope burst anew upon my soul. Was it not possible, I asked, to reach the top of this pit ? The sides were rugged and uneven. Would not their projectures and abruptnesses serve me as steps by Avhich I might ascend in safety ? This expedient was to be tried Avithout delay. Shortly my strength Avould fail, and my doom Avould be irrevocably sealed. I will not enumerate my laborious efforts, my alterna- tions of despondency and confidence, the eager and un- wearied scrutiny Avith AAdiich I examined the surface, the attempts Avhich I made, and the failures Avhich, for a time, siicceeded each other. A hundred times, Avhen I had ascended some feet from the bottom, I was compelled to relinquish my undertaking by the untenable smoothness of the spaces which remained to be gone over. A hundred times I thrcAv myself, exhausted by fatigue and my pains, on the ground. The consciousness was gradually restored that, till I had attempted every part of the Avail, it Avas absurd to despair, and I again drew my tottering limbs and aching joints to that part of the Avail Avhich had not been surveyed. At length, as I stretched my hand upward, I found some- CHARLES r.ROCKDEN BROWN, 41 Avhat that seemed like a recession in the wall. It was possible that this was the top of the cavity, and this might be the avenue to liberty. INIy heart leaped with joy, and I proceeded to climb the Avail. No undertaking could be con- ceived more arduous than this. The space between the verge and the floor was nearly smooth. The verge Avas higher frora the bottom than my head. The only means of ascending that Avere offered me were by my hands, Avith Avhich I could draw myself upward, so as, at length, to maintain \\\y hold Avith my feet. My efforts Avere indefatigable, and at length I placed myself on the verge. When this Avas accomplished, my strength Avas nearly gone. Had I not found space enough beyond this brink to stretch myself at length, I shoidd unavoidably have fallen backAvard into the pit, and all my pains had served no other end than to deepen my despair and hasten my destruction. What impediments and perils remained to be encountered I could not judge. I was noAV inclined to forebode the Avorst. The inter\'al of repose Avhich Avas necessary to be taken, in order to recruit my strength, Avould accelerate the ravages of famine, and leave me Avithout the poAver to proceed. In this state, I once more consoled myself that an instru- ment of death was at hand. I had drawn up Avith me the tomahaAvk, being sensible that, should this impediment be overcome, others might remain that Avould prove insuper- able. Before I employed it, hoAvever, I cast my eyes Avildly and languidly around. The darkness Avas no less intense than in the pit below, and yet two objects Avere distinctly seen. They resembled a fixed and obscure flame. They were motionless. Though lustrous themselves, they created no illumination around them. This circumstance, added to others, Avhich reminded me of similar objects noted on former occasions, immediately explained the nature of Avhat I beheld. They were the eyes of a panther. 42 AMEBIC AN LITERATURE. Thus had I struggled to obtain a post where a savage was lurking, and waited only till my efforts should place me within reach of his fangs. The first impulse was to arm myself against this enemy. The desperateness of my condition was for a moment forgotten. The weapon which was so lately lifted against my own bosom was now raised to defend my life against the assault of another. There was no time for deliberation and delay. In a mo- ment he might spring from his station and tear me to pieces. My utmost speed might not enable me to reach him where he sat, but merely to encounter his assault. I did not reflect how far my strength was adequate to save me. All the force that remained was mustered up and ex- erted in a throw. No one knows the poAvers that are latent in his constitu- tion. Called forth by imminent dangers, our efforts fre- quently exceed our most sanguine belief. Though tottering on the verge of dissolution, and apparently unable to crawl from this spot, a force was exerted in this throw, probably greater than I had ever before exerted. It was resistless and unerring. I aimed at the middle space between those glowing orbs. It penetrated the skull, and the animal fell, struggling and shrieking, on the ground. My ears quickly informed me when his pangs were at an end. His cries and his convulsions lasted for a moment, and then ceased. The effect of his voice, in these subter- ranean abodes, was unspeakably rueful. WILLIAM WIRT. 43 maimm mixt [b. Bladensburg, Maryland, November 8, 1772. d. February 18, 1834.] PATRICK HENRY'S ELOQUENCE. Ix what did liis peculiar excellence as an orator consist ? In what consisted that unrivalled power of speaking, which all who ever heard him admit him to have pos- sessed ? The reader is already apprized that the ^^^® °*' author of these sketches never had the advantage gg^j.^, of hearing Mr. Henry, and that no entire speech of his was ever extant, either in print or writing : hence there are no materials for minute and exact analysis. This inquiry, however, is natural, and has been directed, without success, to many of the most discriminating of Mr. Henry's admirers. Their answers are as various as the complexion of their own character, each preferring that property from which he had himself derived the most enjoyment. Some ascribe his excellence wholly to his manner ; others, in great part, to the originality and soundness of his matter. And among the admirers, in both classes, there are not two who concur in assigning the pre-eminence to the same quality. C)f his matter, one will admire the plainness and strength of his reasoning; another, the concentrated spirit of his aphorisms ; a third, his wit ; a fourth, his pathos ; a fifth, the intrinsic beauty of his imagination : so in regard to his manner, one will place his excellence in his articulation and emphasis ; a second, in the magic power with which he infused the tones of his voice into the nerves of his hearers, and riveted their attention. The truth, therefore, probably is that it was not in any singular charm, either of matter or manner, that we are to look for the secret of his power ; but that, like Pope's definition of beauty, it was " the joint force and full result of all." 44 AMEBIC AN LITERATURE. If, however, we are to consider as really and entirely his, those speeches which have already been given in his name to the public, or are now prepared for them, there can be no difficulty in deciding that his power must have consisted principally in his delivery. We know what extraordinary effects have been produced by the mere manner of an orator, without any uncommon weight or worth of matter. . . . The basis of Mr. Henry's intellectual character was strong natural sense. His knowledge of human nature was, as we have seen, consummate. His wisdom was that of observa- tion rather than of reading. His fancy, although sufficiently pregnant to furnish sup- plies for the occasion, was not so exuberant as to oppress him with its productions. He was never guilty of the fault, with which Corinna is said to have reproached her rival Pindar, of pouring his vase of flowers all at once upon the ground ; on the con- trary, their beauty and their excellence were fully observed, from their rarity, and the happiness with which they were distributed through his speeches. His feelings were strong, yet completely under his com- mand ; they rose up to the occasion, but were never suffered to overflow it ; his language was often careless, sometimes incorrect ; yet upon the whole it was pure and perspicuous, giving out his thoughts in full and clear proportion ; free from affectation and frequently beautiful ; strong without effort, and adapted to the occasion ; nervous in argument, burning in passion, and capable of matching the loftiest flights of his genius. . . . His eloquence was indeed a mighty and a roaring torrent : it had not, however, that property of Horace's stream, labi- tur et labetur, in oinne volubis oevum — on the contrary, it commonly ran by in half an hour. But it bore a striking resemblance to the eloquence of Lord Chatham : it was a short but bold and most terrible assault, — a vehement, im- petuous, and overwhelming burst, — a magnificent meteor, which shot majestically across the heavens from pole to pole, and straight expired in a glorious blaze. JAMES KENT. 45 James %tnt [b. Putnam County, New York, July .01, 1703. d. December 12, 1847.] SCIENCE AND LITERATURE. The tendency of some modern theories of education is to depress the study of ancient languages and literature, and to raise up in their stead a more exclusive pj^. ^^^^ devotion to the exact sciences and mechanical phi- Zappa losophy. But this would be to prefer the study Address, of the laws of matter to the study of man as an intellectual, moral, and accountable being. And when we duly consider how unspeakably important, and how intensely interesting is the knowledge of our race, of their history, their governments, their laws, their duties, their languages, and their final destiny, we shall not be disposed to under- value literary pursuits, or to think lightly of the cultivation of the moral sciences and the study of the rights and his- tory of man as a member of civil society. Nothing con- tributes more to elevate and adorn the character of a nation than the refinements of taste, the embellishments of the arts, the spirit of freedom, the love of justice, and the study and imitation of those exalted endowments and illustrious actions, of which history furnishes the examples, and which " give ardor to virtue and confidence to truth." But I wish not to be misunderstood. I entertain no nar- row or hostile prejudice to a course of scientific education. Such a course is adapted to the wants and business of so- ciety, and this college has very wisely met on that subject the spirit of the times, and given a more extended and closer attention than formerly to the various branches of the mathematics and of the physical sciences. No one can contemplate, without astonishment and admiration, the splendid discoveries and improvements which have been 46 AMERICAN LITERATURE. made, ever since the beginning of tlie present century, in astronomy, electricity, chemistry, mineralogy, geology, and the mechanic arts, nor will he be destitute of a glow of gratitude for the skilful and triumphant application of those sciences to commercial, agricultural, manufacturing and domestic purj)oses. They have contributed in a won- derful degree to abridge labor, facilitate intercourse, accu- mulate products, enlarge commerce, multiply the comforts of life, and elevate the power and character of the nation. My only wish is that science and literature may flourish in concert, and the one is not to regard the other as a useless or dangerous rival. They are necessary helps to each other ; and he who deals constantly in matters of fact, with strict method and patient induction, will find his Avhole moral constitution to stand greatly in need, from time to time, of the invigorating warmth and impulse of the creations of genius. The college was founded with the generous inten- tion of teaching in due proportion literature and science, and this is all that we can wish or ought to contend for. If literature eloquently recommends and elegantly adorns science, the latter supplies that knowledge of the laws of the visible creation, and of those astonishing combinations by which it is directed, that imparts to literature its highest dignity. Science furnishes arguments and helps to ethics and to some parts of civil jurisprudence, and it supplies eloquence and poetry with much of that beautiful, affecting, and sublime imagery, which accompanies them in their most animated strains and loftiest effusions. JOSEPH RODMAN DRAKE. 47 Sosrpi) l^otiman ©rafec, [h. Xew York, New York, Aui;ust 7, 1795. U. September 21, 1820.] A FAIRY MEETING. [Fkom " The Culprit Fay."] The stars are on the moving stream, And fling as its ripples gently flow, A burnished length of wavy beam In an eel-like, spiral line below ; The winds are whist, and the owl is still, The bat in the shelvy rock is hid. And nought is heard on the lonely hill But the cricket's chirp, and the answer shrill Of the gauze- winged katy-did ; And the })laint of the wailing whip-poor-will. Who moans unseen, and ceaseless sings, Ever a note of Avail and wo. Till morning spreads her rosy Aviugs, And earth and sky in her glances glow. 'Tis the hour of fairy ban and spell ; The wood-tick has kept the minutes well ; He has counted them all Avith click and stroke. Deep in the heart of the mountain oak. And he has aAvakened the sentry elve Who sleeps Avith him in the hau^nted tree, To bid him ring the hour of twelve. And call the fays to their revelry ; TAvelve small strokes on his tinkling bell — ('TAvas made of the Avhite snail's pearly shell : — ) " Midnight comes, and all is well ! Hither, hither, wing your way ! 'Tis the daAvn of the fairy day." 48 AMERICAN LITERATURE. They come from beds of lichen green, They creep from the mullein's velvet screen; Some on the backs of beetles fly From the silver tops of moon-touched trees, Where they swung in their cobweb hammocks high, And rock'd about in the evening breeze ; Some from the hum-bird's downy nest — They had driven him out by elfin power, And pillowed on plume of his rainboAV breast. Had slumbered there till the charmed hour ; Some had lain in the scoop of the rock. With glittering ising-stars iidaid ; And some had opened the four-o'clock, And stole Avithin its purple shade. And now they throng the moonlight glade, Above — below — on every side. Their little minim forms arrayed In the tricksy pomp of fairy pride ! NO All WE BISTER. 49 [b. Hartford, Comicclicut, October 16, IT-JS. d. May 2S, lS4o.] THE STANDARD OF SPEECH. Whatever predilection the Ainerieaiis may have for their native European tongues, and particularly the 1 British J.. descendants for the English, yet several circum- tions on the stances render a future separation of the Anieri- English can tongue from the English, necessary and una- anguage. voidable. The vicinity of the European nations, with the uninterrupted communication in peace and the changes of dominion in Avar, are gradually assimilating their respective languages. The English with others is suffering continual alterations. America, placed at a distance from those nations, will feel in a much less degree, the influence of the assimilating causes ; at the same time, numerous local causes, such as a new country, new associations of people, new combinations of ideas in arts and science, and some intercourse with tribes wholly unknown in Europe, Avill introduce new words into the American tongue. These causes will produce, in a course of time, a -language in North America as different from the future language of England as the modern Dutch, Danish, and Swedish are from the German, or from one another; like remote branches of a tree springing from the same stock, or rays of light, shot from the same centre, and diverging from each other in proportion to their distance from the point of separation. Whether the inhabitants of America can be brought to a perfect uniformity in the pronunciation of words, it is not easy to predict ; but it is certain that no attempt of the kind has been made, and an experiment, begun and pursued on the right principles, is the only way to decide the question. Schools in Great Britain have gone far towards demolish- 60 AMEBIC AX LITERATURE. ing local dialects — commerce has also had. its influence — and in America these causes, operating more generally, must have a proportional effect. In many parts of America, people at present attempt to copy the English phrases and pronunciation — an attempt that is favored by their habits, their prepossessions, and the intercourse between the two countries. This atteinjjt has, within the period of a few years, produced a multitude of changes in these particulars, especially among the leading classes of people. These changes make a difference between the language of the higher and common ranks, and indeed between the same ranks in different states, as the rage for copying the English does not prevail ecjually in every part of North America. But besides the reasons already assigned to prove this imitation absurd, there is a difficulty attending it which will defeat the end proposed by its advocates ; which is, that the English themselves have no standard of pronuncia- tion, nor can they ever have one on the plan they propose. The authors, who have attempted to give us a standard, make the practice of the court and stage in London the sole criterion of propriety in speaking. An attempt to establish a standard on this foundation is both unjust and idle. It is unjust, because it is abridging the nation of its rights. The general practice of a nation is the rule of propriety, and this practice should at least be consulted in so impor- tant a matter as that of making laws for speaking. While all men are upon a footing and no singularities are accounted vulgar or ridiculous, every man enjoys perfect liberty. But when a particular set of men, in exalted stations, undertake to say, " we are the standards of propriety and elegance, and if all men do not conform to our practice they shall be ac- counted vulgar and ignorant," they take a very great liberty with the rules of the language and the rights of civility. But an attempt to fix a standard on the practice of any particular class of people is highly absurd; as a friend of mine once observed, it is like fixing a light-house on a float- NOAH WEBSTER. 51 ing island. It is an attempt to fix that which is in itself variable ; at least it must be variable so long as it is sup- posed that a local practice has no standard but a local prac- tice, that is, no standard but itself. While this doctrine is believed, it will be impossible for a nation to follow as fast as the standard changes — for if the gentlemen at court con- stitute a standard, they are above it themselves, and their practice must shift with their passions and their whims. But this is not all. If the practice of a few men in the capital is to be the standard, a knowledge of this must be communicated to the whole nation. Who shall do this ? An able compiler perhaps attempts to give this practice in a dictionary ; but it is probable that the pronunciation, even at court or on the stage, is not uniform. The compiler there- fore must follow his particular friends and patrons, in which case he is sure to be opposed and the authority of his stand- ard called in question ; or he must give two pronunciations as the standard, which leaves the student in the same un- certainty as it found him. Both these events have actually taken place in England, with respect to the most approved standards ; and of course no one is universally followed. Besides, if language must vary, like fashions, at the caprice of a court, we must have our standard dictionaries repub- lished with the fashionable pronunciation, at least once in five years ; otherwise a gentleman in the country will become intolerably vulgar by not being in a situation to adopt the fashion of the day. The new editions of them will super- sede the old, and we shall have our pronunciation to relearn, with the polite alterations, which are generally corruptions. Such are the consequences of attempting to make a local practice the standard of language in a nation. The attempt must keep the language in perpetual fluctuation, and the learner in uncertainty. If a standard therefore cannot be fixed on local and vari- able custom, on what shall it be fixed ? If the most emi- nent speakers are not to direct our practice, where shall we look for a guide ? The answer is extremely easy ; the rules 52 AMERICAN LITERATURE. of the language itself, and the general practice of the na- tion, constitute propriety in speaking. If we examine the structure of any language, we shall find a certain principle of analogy running through the whole. We shall find in English that similar combinations of letters have usually the same pronunciation, and that words having the same terminating syllable generally have the accent at the same distance from that termination. These principles of analogy were not the result of design — they must have been the effect of accident, or that ten- dency which all men feel towards uniformity. But the principles, when established, are productive of great con- venience, and become an authority superior to the arbitrary decisions of any man or class of men. There is one excep- tion only to this remark. When a deviation from analogy has become the universal practice of a nation, it then takes place of all rules and becomes the standard of propriety. The two points, therefore, which I conceive to be the basis of a standard in speaking, are these — universal undis- puted practice, and the principle of analogy. Universal practice is generally, perhaps always, a rule of propriety ; and in disputed points, where people differ in opinion and practice, analogy should always decide the controversy. These are authorities to which all men will submit — they are superior to the opinions and caprices of the great, and to the negligence and ignorance of the multitude. The authority of individuals is always liable to be called in question, but the unanimous consent of a nation, and a fixed principle interwoven with the very construction of a language, coeval and coextensive with it, are like the com- mon laws of a land or the immutable rules of morality, the propriety of which every man, however refractory, is forced to acknowledge, and to which most men will readily submit. Fashion is usually the child of caprice and the being of a day ; principles of propriety are founded in the very nature of things, and remain unmoved and unchanged, amidst all the fluctuations of human affairs and the revolutions of time. WILLI A3I ELLERY C MANNING. 53 SEilliam lEllrrg C!)anning. [b. Newport, Rhode Island, April 7, 17S0. d. October 2, 1842.] INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBILITY. Free institutions contribute in no small degree to freedom and force of mind, by teaching the essential equality of men and their right and duty to govern them- selves ; and I cannot but consider the superiority °P'"*°^ ' . . . i Freedom. of an elective government as consisting very much in the testimony which it bears to these ennobling truths. It has often been said that a good code of laws, and not the form of government, is what determines a people's happi- ness. But good laws, if not springing from the community, if imposed by a master, wou^ld lose much of their value. The best code is that which has its origin in the will of the people who obey it ; which, whilst it speaks with authority, still recognizes self-government as the primary right and duty of a rational being, and which thus cherishes in the individual, be his condition what it may, a just self-respect. We may learn that the chief good and the most precious fruit of civil liberty is spiritual freedom and power, by considering what is the chief evil of tyranny. I know that tyranny does evil by invading men's outward interests, by making property and life insecure, by robbing the laborer to pamper the noble and king. But its worst influence is within. Its chief curse is that it breaks and tames the spirit, sinks man in his own eyes, takes away vigor of thought and action, substitutes for conscience an outward rule, makes him abject, cowardly, a parasite, and a cringing slave. This is the curse of tyranny. It wars with the soul, and thus it wars with God. We read in theologians and poets 64 AMERICAN LITERATURE. of angels fighting against the Creator, of battles in heaven. But God's throne in heaven is unassailable. The only war against God is against his image, against the divine prin- ciple in the soul, and this is waged by tyranny in all its forms. We here see the chief curse of tyranny ; and this should teach us that civil freedom is a blessing chiefly as it reverences the human soul and ministers to its growth and power. Without this inward spiritual freedom outward liberty is of little worth. What boots it that I am crushed by no foreign yoke if, through ignorance and vice, through selfish- ness and fear, I want the command of my own mind ? The worst tyrants are those which establish themselves in our own breast. The man who wants force of principle and purpose is a slave, however free the air he breathes. The mind, after all, is our only possession, or, in other words, we possess all things through its energy and enlargement ; and civil institutions are to be estimated by the free and pure minds to which they give birth. It will be seen from these remarks, that I consider the freedom or moral strength of the individual mind as the supreme good, and the highest end of government. I am aware that other views are often taken. It is said that government is intended for the public, for the community, not for the individual. The idea of a national interest prevails in the minds of statesmen, and to this it is thought that the individual may be sacrificed. But I would main- tain that the individual is not made for the state so much as the state for the individual. A man is not created for political relations as his highest end, but for indefinite spiritual progress, and is placed in political relations as the means of his progress. The human soul is greater, more sacred, than the state, and must never be sacrificed to it. The human soul is to outlive all earthly institutions. The distinction of nations is to pass away. Thrones which have stood for ages are to meet the doom pronounced upon all man's works, But the individual mind survives, and the WILLIAM ELLERY CIIANNING. 55 obscurest subject, if true to God, Avill rise to a power never wielded by earthly potentates. A human being is a member of the community, not as a limb is a member of the body, or as a wheel is a part of a machine, intended only to contribute to some general, joint result. He was created, not to be merged in the whole, as a drop in the ocean, or as a particle of sand on the sea-shore, and to aid only in composing a mass. He is an ultimate being, made for his own perfection as the high- est end, made to maintain an individual existence, and to serve others only as far as consists with his OAvn virtue and progress. Hitherto governments have tended greatly to obscure this importance of the individual, to depress him in his own eyes, to give him the idea of an outward interest more important than the invisible soul, and of an outward author- ity more sacred than the voice of God in his own secret conscience. Rulers have called the private man the prop- erty of the state, meaning generally by the state them- selves, and thus the many have been immolated to the few, and have even believed that this was their highest destination. These views cannot be too earnestly with- stood. Nothing seems to me so needful as to give to the mind the consciousness, which governments have done so much to suppress, of its own separate worth. Let the indi- vidual feel that, through his immortality, he may concen- trate in his own being a greater good than that of nations. Let him feel that he is placed in the community, not to part with his individuality or to become a tool, but that he should find a sphere for his various powers, and a prepara- tion for immortal glory. To me, the progress of society consists in nothing more than in bringing out the indi- vidual, in giving him a consciousness of his own being, and in quickening him to strengthen and elevate his own mind. In thus maintaining that the individual is the end of social institutions, I may be thought to discourage public efforts and the sacrifice of private interests to the state. 56 AMERICAN LITERATURE. Far from it. No man, I affirm, will serve his fellow-beings so effectually, so fervently, as lie who is not their slave, — as he who, casting off every other yoke, subjects himself to the law of duty in his own mind. For this law enjoins a disin- terested and generous spirit as man's glory and likeness to his Maker. Individuality, or moral self-subsistence, is the surest foundation of an all-comprehending love. No man so multiplies his bonds with the community as he who watches most jealously over his own perfection. There is a beautiful harmony between the good of the state and the moral freedom and dignity of the individual. Were it n^t so, were these interests in any case discordant, were an individual ever called to serve his country by acts debasing his own mind, he ought not to waver a moment as to the good which he should prefer. Property, life, he should joyfully surrender to the state. But his soul he must never stain or enslave. From poverty, pain, the rack, the gibbet, he should not recoil ; but for no good of others ought he to part with self-control or violate the inward law. We speak of the patriot as sacrificing himself to the public weal. Do we mean that he sacrifices what is most properly himself, the principle of piety and virtue ? Do we not feel that, however great may be the good which through his sufferings accrues to the state, a greater and purer glory redounds to himself, and that the most precious fruit of his disinterested services is the strength of resolution and philan- thropy which is accumulated in his own soul ? JOHN PIERPONT. 57 3of)n ^irrpont. [b. Litchfield, Connecticut, April G, 1785. d. August 26, 1866.] MY CHILD. I CAN not make him dead ! His fair sunshiny head Is ever bounding round my study chair ; Yet, when my eyes, now dim With tears, I turn to him, The vision vanishes — he is not there ! I walk my parlor floor, And, through the open door, I hear a footfall on the chamber stair ; I'm stepping tow'rd the hall To give the boy a call ; And then bethink me that — he is not there ! I thread the crowded street ; A satchel' d lad I meet. With the same beaming eyes and color'd hair : And, as he's running by. Follow him with my eye, Scarcely believing that — he is not there ! I know his face is hid Under the coffin-lid ; Closed are his eyes ; cold is his forehead fair ; My hand that marble felt ; O'er it in prayer I knelt ; Yet my heart whispers that — he is not there ! I can not make him dead ! When passing by the bed. So long watched over with parental care. 58 AMERICAN LITERATURE. My spirit and my eye Seek him inquiringly, Before the thought comes that — he is not there ! When, at the cool gray break Of day, from sleep I Avake, With my first breathing of the morning air My soul goes up, with joy, To Him who gave my boy ; Then comes the sad thought that — he is not there ! When at the day's calm close. Before we seek repose, I'm with his mother, offering up our prayer, Whate'er I may be saying, I am in spirit praying For our boy's spirit, though — he is not there ! Not there ! — Where, then, is he ? The form I used to see Was but the raiment that he used to wear. The grave, that now doth j)ress Upon that cast-off dress, Is but his wardrobe lock'd ; — he is not there ! He lives ! — In all the past He lives ; nor, to the last. Of seeing him again will I despair ; In dreams I see him now ; And on his angel brow, I see it written — " Thou shalt see me there ! " Yes, we all live to God ! Father ! Thy chastening rod So help us, thine afflicted ones, to bear. That, in the spirit land. Meeting at Thy right hand, 'Twill be our heaven to find that — he is there ! HENRY CLAY. 59 Incurs Clau, [b. Hanover County, Virginia, April 12, 1777. d. June 29, 1852.] A PLEA FOR COMPROMISE. The responsibility of this great measure passes from the hands of the committee, and from my hands. They know, and I know, that it is an aAvful and tremendous „ i • ' Speech m responsibility. I hope that you will meet it with the Senate, a just conception and a true apj)reciation of its July 22, magnitude, and the magnitude of the consequences that may ensue from your decision one way or the other. The alternatives, I fear, which the measure presents, are concord and increased discord; a servile civil Avar, origi- nating in its causes on the lower Kio Grande, and termi- nating possibly in its consequences on the upper Eio Grande in the Santa Fe country, or the restoration of harmony and fraternal kindness. I believe, from the bottom of my soul, that the measure is the reunion of this Union. I believe it is the dove of peace, which, taking its aerial flight from the dome of the Capitol, carries the glad tidings of assured peace and restored harmony to all the remotest extremities of this distracted land. I believe that it will be attended with all these beneficent effects. And now let us discard all resentment, all passions, all petty jealousies, all personal desires, all love of place, all hankerings after the gilded crumbs which fall from the table of power. Let us forget popular fears, from Avhatever quarter they may spring. Let us go to the limpid fountain of unadulterated patriot- ism, and, performing a solemn lustration, return divested of all selfish, sinister, and sordid impurities, and think alone of our God, our country, our consciences, and our glorious Union — that Union without which we shall be 60 AMERICAN LITERATURE. torn into hostile fragments, and sooner or later become the victims of military despotism, or foreign domination. Mr. President, what is an individual man? An atom, almost invisible without a magnifying glass — a mere speck upon the surface of the immense universe ; not a second in time, compared to immeasurable, never-beginning, and never-ending eternity ; a drop of water in the great deep, which evaporates and is borne off by the winds ; a grain of sand, which is soon gathered to the dust from which it sprung. ShaH a being so small, so petty, so fleeting, so evanescent, oppose itself to the onward march of a great nation, which is to subsist for ages and ages to come; oppose itself to that long line of posterity, which, issuing from our loins, will endure during the existence of the world? Forbid it, God. Let us look to our country and our cause, elevate ourselves to the dignity of pure and disin- terested patriots, and save our country from all impending dangers. What if, in the march of this nation to greatness and power, Ave should be buried beneath the wheels that propel it onward ! What are we — what is any man — worth who is not ready and willing to sacrifice himself for the benefit of his country when it is necessary ? . . . If this Union shall become separated, new unions, new confederacies will arise. And with respect to this, if there be any — I hope there is no one in the Senate — before whose imagination is flitting the idea of a great Southern Confederacy to take possession of the Balize and the mouth of the Mississippi, I say in my place, never ! never ! never ! will we who occupy the broad waters of the Mississippi and its upper tributaries consent that any foreign flag shall float at the Balize or upon the turrets of the Crescent City — never ! never ! I call upon all the South. Sir, we have had hard words, bitter words, bitter thoughts, unpleasant feelings toward each other in the progress of this great measure. Let us forget them. Let us sacrifice these feel- ings. Let us go to the altar of our country and swear, as the oath was taken of old, that we will stand by her ; that HENRY CLAY. 61 we will support her ; that we will uphold her Constitution; that we will preserve her Union ; and that we will pass this great, comprehensive, and healing system of measures, Avhich will hush all the jarring elements, and bring peace and tranquillity to our homes. 62 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 3o|}n Caltibjrll (fTalfjoun, [b. Abbeville, South Carolina, Marcb IS, 1782. d. March 31, 1850.] STATE SOVEREIGNTY. Is this a Federal Union ? a union of States, as distinct from that of individuals ? Is the sovereignty in the several States, or in the American people in the aggre- Speech on gr^^^g 9 rp]^g very language which we are compelled tion ^^ ^^'^® when speaking of our political institutions, affords proof conclusive as to its real character. The terms union, federal, united, all imply a combination of sovereignties, a confederation of States. They never apply to an association of individuals. Who ever heard of the United State of New York, of Massachusetts, or of Virginia? Who ever heard the term federal or union applied to the aggregation of individuals into one commu- nity? No^' is the other point less clear — that the sover- eignty is in the several States, and that our system is a union of twenty-four sovereign powers, under a constitu- tional compact, and not of a divided sovereignty between the States severally and the United States. In spite of all that has been said, I maintain that sovereignty is in its nature indivisible. It is the supreme power in a State, and we might just as well speak of half a square, or half of a triangle, as of half a sovereignty. It is a gross error to confound the exercise of sovereign powers with the surren- der of them. A sovereign may delegate his powers to be exercised by as many agents as he may think proper, under such conditions and with such limitations as he may im- pose ; but to surrender any portion of his sovereignty to another is to annihilate the whole. The Senator from Dela- ware (Mr. Clayton) calls this metaphysical reasoning, which JOHN CALDWELL CALHOUN. 63 he says he cannot comprehend. If by metaphysics he means that scholastic refinement which makes distinctions without difference, no one can hold it in more utter contempt than I do ; but if, on the contrary, he means the power of analy- sis and combination — that power which reduces the most complex idea into its elements, which traces causes to their first principle, and, by the power of generalization and com- bination, unites the whole in one harmonious system — then, so far from deserving contempt, it is the highest attribute of the human mind. It is the power which raises man above the brute — which distinguishes his faculties from mere sagacity, which he holds in common with iiafe- rior animals. It is this power which has raised the astron- omer from being a mere gazer at the stars to the high intellectual eminence of a Newton or a Laplace, and astron- omy itself from a mere observation of insulated facts into that noble science which displays to our admiration the system of the universe. And shall this high power of the mind, which has effected such wonders when directed to the laws which control the material world, be forever prohibited, under a senseless cry of metaphysics, from being applied to the high purposes of political science and legislation? I hold them to be subject to laws as fixed as matter itself, and to be as fit a subject for the application of the highest intellectual power. Denun- ciation may, indeed, fall upon the philosophical inquirer into these first principles, as it did upon Galileo and Bacon, when they first unfolded the great discoveries which have immortalized their names ; but the time will come when truth will prevail in spite of prejudice and denunciation, and when politics and legislation will be considered as much a science as astronomy and chemistry. 64 AMERICAN LITERATURE. ©anicl SEciJStcr. [b. Salisbury, New Hampshire, January 18, 1782. d. October 24, 1852.] PRESERVATION OF THE UNION. If anything be found in the national Constitution, either by original provision or subsequent interpretation, which ought not to be in it, the people know how to get ep y to ^.-^1 ^£ -^^ j£ ^^^^ construction, unacceptable to them, be established so as to become practically a part of the Constitution, they will amend it at their own sovereign pleasure. But while the people choose to main- tain it as it is, while they are satisfied with it and refuse to change it, who has given, or who can give, to the legisla- tures a right to alter it, either by interference, construction, or otherwise ? Gentlemen do not seem to recollect that the people have any power to do anything for themselves. They imagine there is no safety for them, any longer than they are under the close guardianship of the State legisla- tures. Sir, the people have not trusted their safety in regard to the General Constitution, to these hands. They have required other security, and taken other bonds. They have chosen to trust themselves, first, to the plain words of the instrument, and to such construction as the Govern- ment themselves, in doubtful cases, should put on their powers, under their oaths of office, and subject to their responsibility to them, just as the people of a State trust to their own governments with a similar power. Secondly, they have reposed their trust in the efficacy of frequent elections, and in their own power to remove their own servants and agents whenever they see cause. Thirdly, they have reposed trust in the judicial power, which, in order that it might be trustworthy, they have made as DANIEL WEBSTER. 65 respectable, as disinterested, and as independent as was practicable. Fourthly, they have seen fit to rely, in case of necessity, or high expediency, on their known and admitted power to alter or amend the Constitution, peaceably and quietly, whenever experience shall poiiiit out defects or im- perfections. And, finally, the people of the United States have at no time, in no way, directly or indirectly, author- ized any State legislature to construe or interpret their high instrument of government ; much less to interfere, by their own poAver, to arrest its course and operation. If, sir, the people in these respects had done otherwise than they have done, their Constitution could neither have been preserved, nor would it have been worth preserving. And if its plain provisions shall now be disregarded, and these new doctrines interpolated in it, it will become as feeble and helpless a being as its enemies, whether early or more recent, could possibly desire. It will exist in every State but as a poor dependent on State permission. It must borrow leave to be ; and will be, no longer than State pleas- ure, or State discretion, sees fit to grant the indulgence, and to prolong its poor existence. But, sir, although there are fears, there are hopes also. The people have preserved this, their own chosen Constitu- tion, for forty years, and have seen their happiness, prosper- ity, and renown grow with its growth, and strengthen with its strength. They are now, generally, strongly attached to it. Overthrown by direct assault, it cannot be ; evaded, undermined, nullified, it will not be, if we, and those who shall succeed us here, as agents and representatives of the people, shall conscientiously and vigilantly discharge the two great branches of our public trust, faithfully to pre- serve and wisely to administer it. Mr. President, I have thus stated the reasons of my dissent to the doctrines Avhich have been advanced and maintained. I am conscious of having detained you and the Senate much too long. I was drawn into the debate with no previous deliberation, such as is suited to the 66 AMERICAN LITERATURE. discussion of so grave and important a subject. But it is a subject of which my heart is full, and I have not been will- ing to suppress the utterance of its spontaneous sentiments. I cannot, even now, persuade myself to relinquish it, with- out expressing once more my deep conviction, that since it respects nothing less than the union of the States, it is of most vital and essential importance to the public happiness. I profess, sir, in my career hitherto, to have kept steadily in view the prosperity and honor of the whole country, and the preservation of our Federal Union. It is to that Union we owe our safety at home, and our consideration and dignity abroad. It is to that Union that we are chiefly indebted for whatever makes us most proud of our country. That Union we reached only by the discipline of our virtues in the severe school of adversity. It had its origin in the necessities of disordered finance, prostrate commerce, and ruined credit. Under its benign influences, these great interests immedi- ately awoke, as from the dead, and sprang forth with new- ness of life. Every year of its duration has teemed with fresh proofs of its utility and its blessings ; and although our territory has stretched out wider and wider, and our population spread farther and farther, they have not outrun its protection or its benefits. It has been to us all a copious fountain of national, social, and personal happiness. I have not allowed myself, sir, to look beyond the Union, to see what might lie hidden in the dark recess behind. I have not coolly weighed the chances of preserving liberty when the. bonds that unite us together shall be broken asunder. I have not accustomed myself to hang over the precipice of disunion, to see whether, Avith my short sight, I can fathom the depth of the abyss below ; nor could I regard him as a safe counsellor in the affairs of this Govern- ment, whose thoughts should be mainly bent on considering, not how the Union may be best preserved, but how tolerable might be the condition of the people, when it should be broken up and destroyed. DANIEL WEBSTER. 67 While the Union lasts wq have high, exciting, gratifying prospects spread out before us, for us and our children. Beyond that I seek not to penetrate the veil. God grant that in my day at least, that curtain may not rise ! God grant that on my vision never may be opened what lies behind ! When my eyes shall be turned to behold for the last time the sun in heaven, may I not see him shining on the broken and dishonored fragments of a once glorious Union ; on States dissevered, discordant, belligerent ; on a land rent Avith civil feuds, or drenched, it may be, in fraternal blood ! Let their last feeble and lingering glance rather behold the gorgeous ensign of the Republic, now known and honored throughout the earth, still full high advanced, its arms and trophies streaming in their original lustre, not a stripe erased or polluted, not a single star obscured, bearing for its motto, no such miserable interrog- atory as " What is all this worth ? " nor those other words of delusion and folly, " Liberty first and Union afterward " ; but everywhere, spread all over in characters of living light, blazing on all its ample folds, as they float over the sea and over the land, and in every wind under the whole heavens, that other sentiment, dear to every trvie American heart, "Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable!" 68 AMERICAN LITERATURE. lairfjartr ^tnx^ SEiltie. [b. Dublin, Ireland, September 24, 1789. d. September 10, 1847.] STANZAS. My life is like the summer rose That opens to the morning sky, But ere the shades of evening close, Is scatter'd on the ground — to die ! Yet on the rose's humble bed The sweetest dews of night are shed, As if she wept the waste to see — But none shall weep a tear for me ! My life is like the autumn leaf That trembles in the moon's pale ray. Its hold is frail — its date is brief, Eestless — and soon to pass away ! Yet ere that leaf shall fall and fade. The parent tree will mourn its shade, The winds bewail the leafless tree, But none shall breathe a sigh for me ! My life is like the prints, which feet Have left on Tampa's desert strand ; Soon as the rising tide shall beat. All trace will vanish from the sand ; Yet, as if grieving to efface All vestige of the human race. On that lone shore loud moans the sea, But none, alas ! shall mourn for me ! WASHINGTON IRVING. 69 SHasfjington Kiting. [b. New York, New York, April 3, 1783. d. November 28, 1859.] RIP VAN WINKLE'S RETURN. The appearance of Rip, with his long grizzled beard, his rusty fowling-piece, his uncouth dress, and an army of women and children at his heels, soon attracted the attention of the tavern politicians. They The crowded round him, eyeing him from head to foot -^^^^^ with great curiosity. The orator bustled up to him, and drawing him partly aside, inquired "on which side he voted." Rip stared in vacant stupidity. Another short but busy little fellow pulled him by the arm, and rising on tiptoe, inquired in his ear, "whether he was a Federal or Democrat ? " Rip was equally at a loss to com- prehend the question, when a knowing, self-important old gentleman, in a sharp cocked hat, made his way through the crowd, putting them to the right and left with his elbows as he passed, and planting himself before Van Winkle, with one arm akimbo, the other resting on his cane, his keen eye and sharp hat penetrating, as it were, into his very soul, demanded in an austere tone, " what brought him to the election with a gun on his shoulder, and a mob at his heels, and whether he meant to breed a riot in the vil- lage ? " " Alas ! gentlemen," said Rip, somewhat dismayed, " I am a poor, quiet man, a native of the place, and a loyal subject of the king, God bless him ! " Here a general shout burst from the by-standers — "A tory ! a tory ! a spy ! a refugee ! hustle him ! away with him ! " It was with great difficulty that the self-important man in the cocked hat restored order ; and, having assumed a tenfold austerity of brow, demanded again of the unknown culprit, what he came there for, and whom he was seeking ? 70 AMERICAN LITERATURE. The poor man humbly assured him that he meant no harm, but merely came there in search of some of his neighbors, who used to keep about the tavern. '' Well, who are they ? — name them." Rip bethought himself a moment, and inquired, " Where's Nicholas Vedder ? " There was a silence for a while, when an old man replied, in a thin, piping voice, " Nicholas Vedder ! why, he is dead and gone these eighteen years. There was a wooden tomb- stone in the church-yard, that used to tell all about him, but that's rotten and gone too." '' Where's Brom Dutcher ? " "Oh, he went off to the army in the beginning of the war ; some say he was killed at the storming of Stony Point — others say he was drowned in a squall at the foot of Antony's Nose. I don't know — he never came back again." " Where's Van Brummel, the schoolmaster ? " '' He went off to the wars too, was a great militia general, and is now in Congress." Eip's heart died away at hearing of these sad changes in his home and friends, and finding himself thus alone in the world. Every answer puzzled him too, by treating of such enor- mous lapses of time, and of matters which he could not understand: war — Congress — Stony Point; — he had no courage to ask after any more friends, but cried out in de- spair, " Does nobody here know Rip Van Winkle ? " " Oh, Rip Van Winkle ! " exclaimed two or three, '' Oh, to be sure ! That's Rip Van Winkle yonder, leaning against the tree." Rip looked, and beheld a precise counterpart of himself, as he went up the mountain : apparently as lazy, and cer- tainly as ragged. The poor fellow Avas now completely confounded. He doubted his OAvn identity, and whether he was himself or another man. In the midst of his bewilder- WASHINGTON IRVING. 71 ment, the man in the cocked hat demanded who he was, and what was his name ? " God knows," exclaimed he, at his wits' end ; " I'm not myself — I'm somebody else — that's me yonder — no — that's somebody else got into my shoes — I was myself last night, but I fell asleep on the mountain, and they've changed my gun, and everything's changed, and I'm changed, and I can't tell what's my name, or who I am ! " The by-standers now began to look at each other, nod, Avink significantly, and tap their fingers against their fore- heads. There was a whisper, also, about securing the gun, and keeping the old fellow from doing mischief, at the very suggestion of which the self-important man in the cocked hat retired with some precipitation. At this critical mo- ment a fresh, comely woman passed through the throng to get a peep at the gray-headed man. She had a chubby child in her arms, which, frightened at his looks, began to cry. "Hush, Eip," cried she, "hush, you little fool ; the old man won't hurt you." The name of the child, the air of the mother, the tone of her voice, all awakened a train of recollections in his mind. " What is your name, my good woman ? " asked he, "Judith Gardenier." " And your father's name ? " "Ah, poor man, Eip \'d\\ Winkle was his name, but it's twenty years since he went away from home with his gun, and never has been heard of since — his dog came home with- out him ; but whether he shot himself, or was carried away by the Indians, nobody can tell. I was then but a little girl.;' Rip had but one more question to ask; but he put it with a faltering voice : " Where's your mother ? " " Oh, she too had died but a short time since ; she broke a blood-vessel in a fit of passion at a New-England peddler." There was a drop of comfort, at least, in this intelligence. The honest man could contain himself no longer. He 72 AMERICAN LITERATURE. caught his daughter and her chikl in his arms. "I am your father!" cried he — "Young Rip Van Winkle once — old Rip Van Winkle now ! — Does nobody know poor Rip Van Winkle ? " All stood amazed, until an old woman, tottering out from among the crowd, put her hand to her brow, and peering under it in his face for a moment, exclaimed, " Sure enough ! it is Rip Van Winkle — it is himself ! Welcome home again, old neighbor — Why, where have you been these twenty long years ? " Rip's story was soon told, for the whole twenty years had been to him but as one night. The neighbors stared when they heard it: some were seen to wink at each other, and put their tongues in their cheeks : and the self-impor- tant man in the cocked hat, who, when the alarm was over, had returned to the field, screwed down the corners of his mouth, and shook his head — upon which there was a general shaking of the head throughout the assemblage. It was determined, however, to take the opinion of old Peter Vanderdonk, who was seen slowly advancing up the road. He was a descendant of the historian of that name, who wrote one of the earliest accounts of the province. Peter was the most ancient inhabitant of the village, and well versed in all the wonderful events and traditions of the neighborhood. He recollected Rip at once, and cor- roborated his story in the most satisfactory manner. He assured the company that it was a fact, handed down from his ancestor the historian, that the Kaatskill Mountains had always been haunted by strange beings. That it was affirmed that the great Hendrick Hudson, the first discov- erer of the river and country, kept a kind of vigil there every twenty years, with his crew of the Half -moon ; being permitted in this way to revisit the scene of his enterprise, and keep a guardian eye upon the river, and the great city called by his name. That his father had once seen them in their old Dutch dresses playing at nine-pins in a hollow of the mountain ; and that he himself had heard, one summer WASHINGTON IRVING. ■ 73 afternoon, the sound of their balls, like distant peals of thunder. To make a long story short, the company broke up, and returned to the more important concerns of the election. Rip's daughter took him home to live with her ; she had a snug, well-furnished house, and a stout cheery farmer for a husband, whom Rip recollected for one of the urchins that used to climb upon his back. As to Rip's son and heir, who was the ditto of himself, seen leaning against the tree, he was employed to work on the farm ; but evinced an hereditary disposition to attend to anything else but his business. Rip now resumed his old walks and habits ; he soon found many of his former cronies, though all rather the worse for the wear and tear of time ; and preferred making friends among the rising generation, with whom he soon grew into great favor. Having nothing to do at home, and being arrived at that happy age when a man can be idle with impunity, he took his place once more on the bench at the inn door, and was reverenced as one of the patriarchs of the village, and a chronicle of the old times " before the war." It was some time before he could get into the regular track of gossip, or could be made to comprehend the strange events that had taken place during his torpor. How that there had been a revolutionary war — that the country had thrown off the yoke of old England — and that, instead of being a subject of his Majesty George the Third, he Avas now a free citizen of the United States. Rip, in fact, was no politician ; the changes of states and empires made but little impression on him; but there was one species of despotism under which he had long groaned, and that was — petticoat government. Happily that was at an end ; he had got his head out of the yoke of matrimony, and could go in and out whenever he pleased, without dreading the tyranny of Dame Van Winkle. Whenever her name was mentioned, however, he shook his head, shrugged his shoulders, and cast up his 74 AMERICAN LITERATURE. eyes ; which might pass either for an expression of resigna- tion to his fate, or joy at his deliverance. He used to tell his story to every stranger that arrived at Mr. Doolittle's hotel. He was observed, at first, to vary on some points every time he told it, which was, doubtless, owing to his having so recently awaked. It at last settled down precisely to the tale I have related, and not a man, woman, or child in the neighborhood, but knew it by heart. Some always pretended to doubt the reality of it, and insisted that Rip had been out of his head, and that this was one point on which he always remained flighty. The old Dutch inhabitants, however, almost universally gave it full credit. Even to this day they never hear a thunder- storm of a summer afternoon about the Kaatskill, but they say Hendrick Hudson and his crew are at their game of nine-pins ; and it is a common wish of all henpecked hus- bands in the neighborhood, when life hangs heavy on their hands, that they might have a quieting draught ou.t of Rip Van Winkle's flagon. ROBERT TAYLOR CONRAD. 75 Hobrrt Eaglor ConratJ, [b. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, June 10, ISIO. d. June 27, 1858.] ON A BLIND BOY. ' Tis vain ! They heed thee not ! Thy flute's meek tone Thrills thine own breast alone. As streams that glide Over the desert rock, whose sterile frown Melts not beneath the soft and crystal tide, So passes thy sweet strain o'er hearts of stone. Thine outstretched hands, thy lips' unutterecl moan, Thine orbs upturning to the darkened sky, (Darkened, alas ! poor boy, to thee alone ! ) Are all unheeded here. They pass thee by : — Away ! Those tears unmarked fall from thy sightless eye ! Ay, get thee gone, benighted one ! Away ! This is no place for thee. The buzzing mart Of selfish trade, the glad and garish day. Are not for strains like thine. Thei'e is no heart To echo to their soft appeal : — depart ! Go seek the noiseless glen, where shadows reign, Spreading a kindred gloom : and there, apart From the cold world, breathe out thy pensive strain ; Better to trees and rocks, than heartless man, complain ! I pity thee ! thy life a live-long night ; Ko friend to greet thee, and no voice to cheer ; No hand to guide thy darkling steps aright. Or from thy pale face wipe th' unbidden tear. I pity thee ! thus dark and lone and drear ! Yet haply it is well. The world from thee Hath veiled its wintry frown, its withering sneer, Th' oppressor's triumph, and the mocker's glee ; Why, then, rejoice, poor boy — rejoice thou canst not see ! 76 AMERICAN LITERATURE. Samrs jFrnimorr Cooper* [b. Burlington, New Jersey, September 15, 1789. d. September 14, 1851.] AN ENCOUNTER WITH THE IROQUOIS. [Cora and Alice Munro, under the escort of Major Duncan Heyward, are on their way from Fort Edward to Fort William Henry, accompanied by Hawk-eye, the scout; Chingachook, a Delaware chieftain; Uncas, his son, " the last of the Mohicans " ; and David Gamut, the singing-master. Warned by certain signs of the proximity of the enemy, the party take refuge in a cave where they are disturbed by a " strong horrid cry."] " 'TwouLD be neglecting a warning that is given for our good, to lie hid any longer," said Hawk-eye, " when such The Last sounds are raised in the forest ! These gentle of the Mo- ones may keep close, but the Mohicans and I will hicans, Avatch upon the rock, where I suppose a major of the 60th would wish to keep us company." " Is then our danger so pressing ? " asked Cora. " He who makes strange sounds, and gives them out for man's information, alone knows our danger. I should think myself wicked, unto rebellion against his will, was I to burrow with such warnings in the air ! Even the weak soul who passes his days in singing, is stirred by the cry, and, as he says, is 'ready to go forth to the battle.' If 'twere only a battle, it would be a thing understood by us all, and easily managed ; but I have heard that when such shrieks are atween heaven and 'arth, it betokens another sort of warfare ! " "If all our reasons for fear, my friend, are confined to such as proceed from supernatural causes, we have but little occasion to be alarmed," continued the undisturbed Cora ; " are you certain that our enemies have not invented some new and ingenious method to strike us with terror that their conquest may become more easy ? " JAMES FENIMORE COOPER. 77 "Lady," returned the scout, solemnly, "I have listened to all the sounds of the woods for thirty years, as a man will listen whose life and death depend on the quickness of his ears. There is no whine of the panther ; no whistle of the cat-bird ; nor any invention of the devilish Mingoes, that can cheat me ! I have heard the forest moan like mortal men in their affliction ; often, and again, have I lis- tened to the wind playing its music in the branches of the girdled trees ; and I have heard the lightning cracking in the air, like the snapping of blazing brush, as it spitted forth sparks and forked flames ; but never have I thought that I heard more than the pleasure of Him who sported with the things of his hand. But neither the Mohicans, nor I, who am a white man without a cross, can explain the cry just heard. We, therefore, believe it is a sign given for our good." " It is extraordinary ! " said Hey ward, taking his pistols from the place where he had laid them on entering ; " be it a sign of peace or a signal of war, it must be looked to. Lead the way, my friend ; I follow." On issuing from their place of confinement, the whole party instantly experienced a grateful renovation of spir- its, by exchanging the pent air of the hiding-place for the cool and invigorating atmosphere, which played around the whirlpools and pitches of the cataract. A heavy evening breeze swept along the surface of the river, and seemed to drive the roar of the falls into the recesses of their own caverns, whence it issued heavily and constant, like thun- der rumbling beyond the distant hills. The moon had risen, and its light was already glancing here and there on the waters above them; but the extremity of the rock where they stood still lay in shadow. With the exception of the sounds produced by the rushing waters, and an occasional breathing of the air, as it murmured past them in fitful currents, the scene was still as night and solitude could make it. In vain were the eyes of each individual bent along the opposite shore, in quest of some signs of life that 78 AMERICAN LITERATURE. might explain the nature of the interruption they had heard. Tlieir anxious and eager looks were baffled by the deceptive light, or rested only on naked rocks, and straight and immovable trees. '• Here is nothing to be seen but the gloom and quiet of a lovely evening," whispered Duncan ; " how much should we prize such a scene, and all this breathing solitude, at any other moment, Cora ! Fancy yourselves in security, and what now, perhaps, increases your terror, may be made conducive to enjoyment " — " Listen ! " interrupted Alice. The caution was unnecessary. Once more the same sound arose, as if from the bed of the river, and having broken out of the narrow bounds of the cliffs, was heard undulating through the forest, in distant and dying cadences. " Can any here give a name to such a cry ? " demanded Hawk-eye, when the last echo was lost in the Avoods ; " if so, let him speak ; for myself, I judge it not to belong to 'arth ! " "Here, then, is one who can undeceive you," said Dun- can ; " I know the sound full well, for often have I heard it on the field of battle, and in situations which are frequent in a soldier's life. 'Tis the horrid shriek that a horse will give in his agony ; oftener drawn from him in pain, though sometimes in terror. My charger is either a prey to the beasts of the forest, or he sees his danger without the power to avoid it. The sound might deceive me in the cavern, but in the open air, I know it too well to be wrong." The scout and his companions listened to this simple explanation with the interest of men who imbibe new ideas, at the same time that they get rid of old ones which had proved disagreeable inmates. The two latter uttered their usual and expressive excla- mation, " hugh ! " as the truth first glanced upon their minds ; while the former, after a short musing pause, took upon himself to reply. " I cannot deny your words," he said, '• for I am little JAMES FENIMORE COOPER. 79 skilled in horses, though born where they abound. The wolves mu.st be hovering above their heads on the bank, and the timorsome creatures are calling on man for help, in the best manner they are able. Uncas " — he spoke in Delaware — " Uncas, drop down in the canoe, and whirl a brand among the pack ; or fear may do what the wolves can't get at to jjerform, and leave us without horses in the morning, when v/e shall have so much need to journey swiftly! " The young native had already descended to the water, to comply, when a long howl was raised on the edge of the river, and was borne swiftly off into the depths of the forest, as though the beasts, of their own accord, were abandoning their prey in sudden terror. Uncas, with instinctive quick- ness, receded, and the three foresters held another of their low, earnest conferences. " We have been like hunters who have lost the points of the heavens, and from whom the sun has been hid for days," said Hawk-eye, turning away from his companions ; " now Ave begin again to know the signs of our course, and the paths are cleared from briers ! Seat yourselves in the shade Avhich the moon throws from yonder beech — 'tis thicker than that of the pines — and let us wait for that which the Lord may choose to send next. Let all your conversation be in whispers ; though it would be better, and perhaps, in the end, wiser, if each one held discourse with his own thoughts for a time." The manner of the scout was seriously impressive, though no longer distinguished by any signs of unmanly apprehen- sion. It was evident that his momentary weakness had vanished with the explanation of a mystery which his own experience had not served to fathom ; and though he now felt all the realities of their actual condition, that he was prepared to meet them with the energy of his hardy nature. This feeling seemed also common to the natives, who placed themselves in positions which commanded a full view of both shores, while their own persons were effectu- 80 AMERICAN LITERATURE. ally concealed from observation. In such circumstances common prudence dictated that Heyward and his compan- ions should imitate a caution that proceeded from so intelli- gent a source. The young man drew a pile of the sassafras from the cave, and placing it in the chasm which separated the two caverns, it was occupied by the sisters ; who were thus protected by the rocks from any missiles, while their anxiety was relieved by the assurance that no danger could approach without a warning. Heyward himself was posted at hand, so near that he might communicate with his companions without raising his voice to a dangerous elevation ; while David, in imita- tion of the woodsmen, bestowed his person in such a man- ner among the fissures of the rocks, that his ungainly limbs were no longer offensive to the eye. In this manner hours passed by, without further interruption. The moon reached the zenith, and shed its mild light perpendicularly on the lovely sight of the sisters slumbering peacefully in each other's arms. Duncan cast the wide shawl of Cora before a spectacle he so much loved to contemplate, and then suffered his own head to seek a pillow on the rock. David began to utter sounds that would have shocked his delicate organs in more wakeful moments ; in short, all but Hawk-eye and the Mohicans lost every idea of consciousness, in uncontrollable drowsiness. But the watchfulness of these vigilant protec- tors neither tired nor slumbered. Immovable as that rock of which each appeared to form a part, they lay, with their eyes roving, without intermission, along the dark margin of trees that bounded the adjacent shores of the narrow stream. Not a sound escaped them; the most subtle examination could not have told they breathed. It was evident that this excess of caution proceeded from an experience that no subtlety on the part of their enemies could deceive. It was, however, continued without any apparent conse- quences, until the moon had set, and a pale streak above JAMES FENIMORE COOPER. 81 the tree-tops, at the bend of the river a little below, an- nounced the approach of day. Then, for the first time, Hawk-eye was seen to stir. He crawled along the rock, and shook Duncan from his heavy slumbers. "Now is the time to journey," he whispered; " Awake the gentle ones, and be ready to get into the canoe when I bring it to the landing-place." " Have you had a quiet night ? " said Heyward ; " for myself, I believe sleep has got the better of my vigilance." " All is yet still as midnight. Be silent, but be quick." By this time Duncan was thoroughly awake, and he immediately lifted the shawl from the sleeping females. The motion caused Cora to raise her hand as if to repulse him, while Alice murmured, in her soft, gentle voice, " No, no, dear father, we were not deserted ; Duncan was with us ! " "Yes, sweet innocence," whispered the youth; "Duncan is here, and while life continues or danger remains, he will never quit thee. Cora ! Alice ! awake ! The hour has come to move ! " A loud shriek from the younger of the sisters, and the form of the other standing upright before him, in be- wildered horror, Avas the unexpected answer he received. While the words were still on the lips of Heyward, there had arisen such a tumult of yells and cries as served to drive the swift currents of his own blood back from its bounding course into the fountains of his heart. It seemed, for near a minute, as if the demons of hell had possessed themselves of the air about them, and were venting their savage humors in barbarous sounds. The cries came from no particular direction, though it was evident they filled the woods, and as the appalled listeners easily imagined, the caverns of the falls, the rocks, the bed of the river, and the u^jper air. David raised his tall person in the midst of the infernal din, with a hand on either ear, exclaiming — " Whence comes this discord ? Has hell broke loose, that man should utter sounds like these ? " 82 AMERICAN LITERATURE. The bright flashes and the quick reports of a dozen rifles, from the opposite banks of the stream, followed this incau- tious exposure of his person, and left the unfortunate sing- ing-master senseless on that rock where he had been so long slumbering. The Mohicans boldly sent back the intimidat- ing yell of their enemies, who raised a shout of savage triumph at the fall of Gamut. The flash of rifles was then quick and close between them, but either party was too well skilled to leave even a limb exposed to hostile aim. Duncan listened with intense anxiety for the strokes of the paddle, believing that flight was now their only refuge. The river glanced by with its ordinary velocity, but the canoe was nowhere to be seen on its dark waters. He had just fancied they were cruelly deserted by the scout, as a stream of flame issued from the rock beneath him, and a fierce yell, blended with a shriek of agony, announced that the messenger of death, sent from the fatal weapon of Havfk-eye, had found a victim. At this slight repulse the assailants instantly withdrew, and gradually the place be- came as still as before the sudden tumult. Duncan seized the favorable moment to spring to the body of Gamut, which he bore within the shelter of the narrow chasm that protected the sisters. In another minute the whole party Avas collected in this spot of comparative safety. "The poor fellow has saved his scalp," said Hawk-eye, coolly passing his hand over the head of David ; " but he is a proof that a man may be born with too long a tongue ! 'Twas downright madness to show six feet of flesh and blood, on a naked rock, to the raging savages. I only wonder he has escaped Avith life." " Is he not dead ? " demanded Cora, in a voice whose husky tones shoAved how powerfully natural horror strug- gled Avith her assumed firmness. ''Can we do aught to assist the Avretched man ? " " No, no ! the life is in his heart yet, and after he has slept aAvhile he Avill come to himself, and be a Aviser man JAMES FENIMORE COOPER. 83 for it, till the hour of his real time shall come," returned Hawk-eye, casting another oblique glance at the insensible body, while he filled his charges with admirable nicety. '' Carry him in, Uncas, and lay him on the sassafras. The longer his nap lasts the better it will be for him, as I doubt Avhether he can find a proper cover for such a shape on these rocks ; and singing won't do any good with the Iroquois." " You believe, then, the attack will be renewed ? " asked Heyward. " Do I expect a hungry wolf will satisfy his craving with a mouthful ! They have lost a man, and 'tis their fashion, when they meet a loss, and fail in the surprise, to fall back ; but we shall have them on again, with new expedients to circumvent us, and master our scalps. Our main hope," he continued, raising his rugged countenance, across which a shade of anxiety just then passed like a darkening cloud, '' will be to keep the rock until Munro can send a party to our help ! God send it may be soon, and under a leader that knows the Indian customs ! " "You hear our probable fortunes, Cora," said Duncan; "and you know we have everything to hope from the anxiety and experience of your father. Come, then, with Alice, into this cavern, where you, at least, will be safe from the murderous rifles of our enemies, and where you may bestow a care suited to your gentle natures on our unfortunate comrade." The sisters followed him into the outer cave, where David was beginning, by his sighs, to give symptoms of returning consciousness ; and then commending the wounded man to their attention, he immediately prepared to leave them. " Duncan ! " said the tremulous voice of Cora, when he had reached the mouth of the cavern. He turned, and beheld the speaker, whose color had changed to a deadly paleness, and whose lip quivered, gazing after him, with an expression of interest which immediately recalled him to 84 AMERICAN LITERATURE. her side. " Kemember, Duncan, how necessary your safety is to our own — how you bear a father's sacred trust — how much depends on your discretion and care — in short," she added, while the tell-tale blood stole over her features, crim- soning her very temples, "how very deservedly dear you are to all of the name of Munro." "If anything could add to my own base love of life," said Heyward, suffering his unconscious eyes to wander to the youthful form of the silent Alice, " it would be so kind an assurance. As major of the GOth, our honest host will tell you I must take my share of the fray ; but our task will be easy ; it is merely to keep these blood-hounds at bay for a few hours." Without waiting for a reply, he tore himself from the presence of the sisters, and joined the scout and his com- panions, who still lay within the protection of the little chasm between the two caves. "I tell you, Uncas," said the former, as Heyward joined them, "you are wasteful of your powder, and the kick of the rifle disconcerts your aim ! Little powder, light lead, and a long arm, seldom fail of bringing the death screech from a Mingo ! At least, such has been my experience with the creature. Come, friends ; let us to our covers, for no man can tell when or where a Maqua will strike his blow." The Indians silently repaired to their appointed stations, which were fissures in the rocks, whence they could com- mand the approaches to the foot of the falls. In the centre of the little island, a few short and stunted pines had found root, forming a thicket, into which Hawk-eye darted with the swiftness of a deer, followed by the active Duncan. Here they secured themselves, as well as circumstances would permit, among the shrubs and fragments of stone that were scattered about the place. Above them was a bare, rounded rock, on each side of which the water played its gambols, and plunged into the abysses beneath, in the manner already described. As the day had now dawned, JAMES FENIMORE COOPER. 85 the opposite shores no longer presented a confused outline, but they were able to look into the woods, and distinguish objects beneath the canopy of gloomy pines. A long and anxious watch succeeded, but without any further evidences of a renewed attack ; and Duncan began to hope that their fire had proved more fatal than was sup- posed, and that their enemies had been effectually repulsed. When he ventured to utter this impression to his companion, it was met by Hawk-eye with an incredulous shake of the head. " You know not the nature of a Maqua, if you think he is so easily beaten back without a scalp ! " he answered. " If there was one of the imps yelling this morning, there were forty ! and they know our number and quality too well to give up the chase so soon. Hist ! look into the water above, just where it breaks over the rocks. I am no mortal, if the risky devils haven't swam down upon the very pitch, and, as bad luck would have it, they have hit the head of the island. Hist ! man, keep close ! or the hair will be off your crown in the turning of a knife ! " Heyward lifted his head from the cover, and beheld Avhat he justly considered a prodigy of rashness and skill. The river had worn away the edge of the soft rock in such a manner as to render its first pitch less abrupt and perpen- dicular than is usual at waterfalls. With no other guide than the ripple of the stream where it met the head of the island, a party of their insatiable foes had ventured into the current, and swam down upon this point, knowing the ready access it would give, if successful, to their intended victims. As Hawk-eye ceased speaking, four human heads could be seen peering above a few logs of drift wood that had lodged on these naked rocks, and which had probably suggested the idea of the practicability of the hazardous undertaking. At the next moment, a fifth form was seen floating over the green edge of the fall, a little from the line of the island. The savage struggled powerfully to gain the point of safety. 8b AMERICAN LITERATURE. and, favored by the glancing water, he was already stretch- ing forth an arm to meet the grasp of his companions, when he shot away again with the whirling current, appeared to rise into the air, with uplifted arms, and starting eyeballs, and fell Avith a sudden plunge into that deep and yawning abyss over which he hovered. A single, wild, despairing shriek rose from the cavern, and all was hushed again, as the grave. The first generous impulse of Duncan was to rush to the rescue of the hapless wretch ; but he felt himself bound to the spot by the iron grasp of the immovable scout. '' Would ye bring certain death upon us, by telling the Mingoes where we lie ? " demanded Hawk-eye, sternly ; "'tis a charge of powder saved, — and ammunition is as precious now as breath to a worried deer ! Freshen the priming of your pistols — the mist of the falls is apt to dampen the brimstone — and stand firm for a close struggle, while I fire on their rush." He placed a finger in his mouth, and drew a long, shrill whistle, which was answered from the rocks that were guarded by the Mohicans. Duncan caught glimpses of heads above the scattered drift wood, as this signal rose on the air, but they disappeared again as suddenly as they had glanced upon his sight. A low, rustling sound next drew his attention behind him, and turning his head, he beheld Uncas within a few feet, creeping to his side. Hawk-eye spoke to him in Delaware, when the young chief took his position with singular caution and undisturbed coolness. To Hey ward, this was a moment of feverish and impatient suspense ; though the scout saw fit to select it as a fit occasion to read a lecture to his more j^outhful associates on the art of using fire-arms with discretion. "Of all we'pons," he commenced, "the long-barrelled, true-grooved, soft-metalled rifle is the most dangerous in skilful hands, though it wants a strong arm, a quick eye, and great judgment in charging, to put forth all its beau- ties. The gunsmiths can have but little insight into their JAMES FENIMORE COOPER. 87 trade, when they make their fowling-pieces and short horse- men's — " He was interrupted by the low but expressive '' hugh " of Uncas. " I see them, boy, I see them ! " continued Hawk-eye ; " they are gathering for the rush, or they would keep their dingy backs below the logs. Well, let them," he added, examining his flint ; " the leading man certainly comes on to his death, though it should be Montcalm himself ! " At that moment the woods were filled with another burst of cries, and at the signal four savages sprang from the cover of the drift wood. Heyward felt a burning desire to rush forward to meet them, so intense was the delirious anxiety of the moment ; but he was restrained by the de- liberate examples of the scout and Uncas. When their foes, who leaped over the black rocks that divided them, with long bounds, uttering the wildest yells, were within a few rods, the rifle of Hawk-eye slowly rose among the shrubs, and poured out its fatal contents. The foremost Indian bounded like a stricken deer, and fell headlong among the clefts of the island. "Now, Uncas," cried the scout, drawing his long knife, while his quick eyes began to flash with ardor, '' take the last of the screeching imps ; of the other two we are sartain ! " He was obeyed ; and but two enemies remained to be overcome. Heyward had given one of his pistols to Hawk- eye, and together they rushed down a little declivity towards their foes ; they discharged their weapons at the same instant, and equally without success. " I know'd it ! and I said it ! " muttered the scout, whirl- ing the despised little implement over the falls with bitter disdain. " Come on, ye bloody-minded hell-hounds ! ye meet a man without a cross ! " The words were barely uttered, when he encountered a savage of gigantic stature, and of the fiercest mien. At the same moment, Duncan found himself ensasred with the 88 AMERICAN LITERATURE. ottier, in a similar contest of hand to hand. With ready skill, Hawk-eye and his antagonist each grasped that up- lifted arm of the other which held the dangerous knife. For near a minute they stood looking one another in the eye, and gradually exerting the power of their muscles for the mastery. At length the toughened sinews of the white man prevailed over the less practised limbs of the native. The arm of the latter slowly gave way before the increasing force of the scout who, suddenly wresting his armed hand from tiie grasp of his foe, drove the sharp weapon through his naked bosom to the heart. In the meantime, Heyward had been pressed in a more deadly struggle. His slight sword was snapped in the first encounter. As he was desti- tute of any other means of defence, his safety now depended entirely on bodily strength and resolution. Though deficient in neither of these qualities, he had met an enemy every way his equal. Happily he soon succeeded in disarming his adversary, whose knife fell on the rock at their feet ; and from this moment it became a fierce struggle who should cast the other over the dizzy height into a neighboring cavern of the falls. Every successive struggle brought them nearer to the verge, where Duncan perceived the final and conquering effort must be made. Each of the combatants thrcAv all his energies into that effort, and the result was, that both tottered on the brink of the precipice. Heyward felt the grasp of the other at his throat, and saw the grim smile the savage gave, under the revengeful hope that he hurried his enemy to a fate similar to his own, as he felt his body slowly yielding to a resistless power, and the young man experienced the passing agony of such a moment in all its horrors. At that instant of extreme dan- ger, a dark hand and glancing knife appeared before him ; the Indian released his hold, as the blood flowed freely from around the severed tendons of his wrist; and while Duncan was drawn backward by the saving arm of Uncas, his charmed eyes were still riveted on the fierce and disap- JAMES FENIMORE COOPER. 89 pointed countenance of his foe, who fell sullenly and disap- pointed down the irrecoverable precipice. "To cover! to cover!" cried Hawk-eye, who just then had despatched his enemy; "to cover, for your lives ! the work is but half ended ! " The young Mohican gave a shout of triumph, and, fol- lowed by Duncan, he glided up the acclivity they had descended to the combat, and sought the friendly shelter of the rocks and shrubs. 90 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 3 antes ffiatcs pcrctfaaL [b. Kensington, Connecticut, September 15, 1795. d. May 2, 1856.] THE CORAL GROVE. Deep in the wave is a coral grove, Where the purple mullet and gold-fish rove ; Where the sea-flower spreads its leaves of blue, That never are wet with falling dew. But in bright and changeful beauty shine, Far down in the green and glassy brine. The floor is of sand, like the mountain drift, And the pearl-shells spangle the flinty snow ; From coral rocks the sea-plants lift Their boughs, where the tides and billows flow ; The water is calm and still below. For the winds and waves are absent there. And the sands are bright as the stars that glow In the motionless fields of upper air : There, with its waving blade of green, The sea-flag streams through the silent water. And the crimson leaf of the dulse is seen To blush, like a banner bathed in slaughter ; There, with a light and easy motion. The fan-coral sweeps through the clear, deep sea. And the yellow and scarlet tufts of ocean Are bending like corn on the upland lea ; And life, in rare and beautiful forms, Is sporting amid those bowers of stone. And is safe, when the wrathful spirit of storms Has made the top of the wave his own. And when the ship from his fury flies, Where the myriad voices of ocean roar. JAMES GATES PERCIVAL. 91 When the wind-god frowns in the murky skies, And demons are waiting the wreck on shore, — Then^ far below, in the peaceful sea. The purple mullet and gold-fish rove. Where the waters murmur tranquilly, Through the bending twigs of the coral grove. AMERICAN LITERATURE. William Htcfeltng Prescott. [b. Salem, Massachusetts, May 4, 1796. d. January 28, 1859.] THE BATTLE OF TLASCALA. As a battle was now inevitable, Cortez resolved to march out and meet the enemy in the field. This would have a show of confiden(ie, that might serve the double Conquest purpose of intimidating the Tlascalans, and inspir- iting his own men, whose enthusiasm might lose somewhat of its heat, if compelled to await the assault of their antagonists, inactive in their own intrenchments. The sun rose bright on the following morning, the 5th of September, 1519, an eventful day in the history of the Spanish Conquest. The general reviewed his army, and gave them, preparatory to marching, a few words of encour- agement and advice. The infantry he instructed to rely on the point rather than the edge of their swords, and to endeavor to thrust their opponents through the body. The horsemen were to charge at half speed, with their lances aimed at the eyes of the Indians. The artillery, the arquebusiers, and cross- bow-men, were to support one another, some loading while others discharged their pieces, that there should be an unintermitted firing kept up through the action. Above all, they were to maintain their ranks close and unbroken, as on this depended their preservation. They had not advanced a quarter of a league, when they came in sight of the Tlascalan army. Its dense array stretched far and wide over a vast plain or meadow ground, about six miles square. Its appearance justified the report which had been given of its numbers. Nothing could be more picturesque than the aspect of WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT. 93 these Indian battalions with the naked bodies of the com- mon sohliers gaudily painted, the fantastic helmets of the chiefs glittering with gold and precious stones, and the glowing panoplies of feather-work which decorated their persons. Innumerable spears and darts tipped with points of transparent itztli, or fiery copper, sparkled bright in the morning sun, like the phosphoric gleams playing on the surface of a troubled sea, while the rear of the mighty host was dark with the shadows of banners, on which were emblazoned the armorial bearings of the great Tlascalan and Otomir chieftains. Among these, the white heron on the rock, the cognizance of the house of Xicotencatl, was conspicuous, and, still more, the golden eagle with out- spread wings, in the fashion of a Eoman signum, richly ornamented with emeralds and silver-work, the great stand- ard of the republic of Tlascala. The common file wore no covering except a girdle around the loins. Their bodies were painted with the appropriate colors of the chieftain whose banner they followed. The feather-mail of the higher class of warriors exhibited, also, a similar selection of colors for the like object, in the same manner as the color of the tartan indicates the peculiar clan of the Highlander. The caciques and principal war- riors were clothed in a-quilted cotton tunic, two inches thick, which, fitting close to the body, protected also the thighs and the shoulders. Over this the wealthier Indians wore cuirasses of thin gold plate, or silver. Their legs were defended by leathern boots or sandals, trimmed with gold. But the most brilliant part of their costume was a rich mantle of the plumage of feather-work, embroidered with curious art, and furnishing some resemblance to the gor- geous surcoat worn by the European knight, over his armor in the Middle Ages. This graceful and picturesque dress was surmounted by a fantastic head-piece made of wood or leather, representing the head of some wild animal, and frequently displaying a formidable array of teeth. With this covering the warrior's head was enveloped, producing a 94 AMERICAN LITERATURE. most grotesque and hideous effect. From the crown floated a splendid panache of the richly variegated plumage of the tropics, indicating, by its form and colors, the rank and family of the wearer. To complete their defensive armor, they carried shields or targets, made sometimes of wood covered with leather, but more usually of a light frame of reeds quilted with cotton, which were preferred, as rougher and less liable to fracture than the former. They had other bucklers, in which the cotton was covered with an elastic substance, enabling them to be shut up in a more compact form, like a fan or umbrella. These shields were decorated with showy ornaments, according to the taste or wealth of the wearer, and fringed with a beautiful pendant of feather- work. Their weapons were slings, bows and arrows, javelins, and darts. They were accomplished archers, and would discharge two or even three arrows at a time. But they most excelled in throwing the javelin. One species of this, with a thong attached to it, which remained in the slinger's hand, that he might recall the weapon, was especially dreaded by the Spaniards. These various weapons were pointed with bone, or the mineral itztli (obsidian), the hard, vitreous substance, already noticed, as capable of taking an edge like a razor, though easily blunted. Their spears and arrows were also frequently headed with copper. Instead of a sword, they bore a two-handed staff, about three feet and a half long, in which, at regular distances, were inserted transversely, sharp blades of itztli, — a formidable weapon, which, an eye-witness assures us, he had seen fell a horse at a blow. Such was the costume of the Tlascalan warrior, and indeed of that great family of nations generally, who occu- pied the plateau of Anahuac. Some parts of it, as the targets and the cotton-mail, or escaupil, as it was called in Castilian, were so excellent, that they were subsequently adopted by the Spaniards, as equally effectual in the way of protection, and superior, on the score of lightness and con- WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT. 95 venience, to tlieir own. They were of sufficient strength to turn an arrow, or the stroke of a javelin, although izupotent as a defence against fire-arms. But what armor is not ? Yet it is probably no exaggeration to say, that, in con- venience, gracefulness, and strength the arms of the Indian warrior were not very inferior to those of the polished nations of antiquity. As soon as the Castilians came in sight, the Tlascalans set up their yell of defiance, rising high above the wild barbaric minstrelsy of shell, atabal, and trumpet, with which they proclaimed their triumphant anti- cipation of victory over the paltry forces of the invaders. When the latter had come within bowshot, the Indians hurled a tempest of missiles, that darkened the sun for a moment as with a passing cloud, strewing the earth around with heaps of stones and arrows. Slowly and steadily the little band of Spaniards held on its way amidst this arrowy shower, until it had reached what appeared the proper dis- tance for delivering its fire with full effect. Cortez then halted, and, hastily forming his troops, opened a general well-directed fire along the whole line. Every shot bore its errand of death ; and the ranks of the Indians were mowed down faster than their comrades in the rear could carry off their bodies, according to custom, from the field. The balls in their passage through the crowded files, bearing splinters of the broken harness, and mangled limbs of the warriors, scattered havoc and desolation in their path. The mob of barbarians stood petrified with dismay, till, at length, galled to desperation by their intolerable sufferings, they poured forth simultaneously their hideous war-shriek, and rushed impetuously on the Christians. On the}' came like an avalanche, a mountain torrent, shaking the solid earth, and sweeping away every obstacle in its path. The little army of Spaniards opposed a bold front to the overwhelming mass. But no strength could withstand it. They faltered, gave way, were borne along before it, and their ranks were broken and thrown into disorder. It was in vain the general called on them to close 96 AMERICAN LITERATURE. again, and rally. His voice was drowned by the din of fight, and the fierce cries of the assailants. For a moment, it seemed that all was lost. The tide of battle had turned against them, and the fate of the Christians was sealed. But every man had that within his bosom which spoke louder than the voice of the general. Despair gave un- natural energy to his arm. The naked body of the Indian afforded no resistance to the sharp Toledo steel ; and with their good swords, the Spanish infantry at length succeeded in staying the human torrent. The heavy guns from a distance thundered on the flank of the assailants, which, shaken by the iron tempest, was thrown into disorder. Their very numbers increased the confusion, as they were precipitated on the masses in front. The horse at the same moment, charging gallantly under Cortez, followed up. the advantage, and at length compelled the tumultuous throng to fall back with greater precipitation and disorder than that with which they had advanced. More than once in the course of the action a similar assault was attempted by the Tlascalans, but each time with less spirit, and greater loss. They were too deficient in military science to profit by their vast superiority in numbers. They were distributed into companies, it is true, each serving under its own chieftain and banner. But they were not arranged by rank and file, and moved in a confused mass, promiscuously heaped together. They knew not how to concentrate numbers on a given point, or even how to sustain an assault, by employing successive detachments to support and relieve one another. A very small part only of their array could be brought into contact with an enemy inferior to them in amount of forces. The remainder of the army, inactive and worse than useless, in the rear, served only to press tumultuously on the advance, and embarrass its movements by mere weight of numbers, while, on the least alarm, they were seized with a panic and threw the whole body into inextricable confusion. It was, in short, the combat of the ancient Greeks and Persians over asrain. WILLIAM IIICKLING PRESCOTT. 97 Still the great numerical superiority of the Indians might have enabled them, at a severe cost of their own lives, indeed, to wear out, in time, the constancy of the Spaniards, disabled by wounds and incessant fatigue. But, fortunately for the latter, dissensions arose among their enemies. A Tlascalan chieftain, commanding one of the great divisions, had taken umbrage at the haughty demeanor of Xicotencatl, who had charged him with misconduct or cowardice in the late action. The injured cacique challenged his rival to single combat. This did not take place. But, burning with resentment, he chose the present occasion to indulge it, by drawing off his forces, amounting to ten thousand men, from the field. He also persuaded another of the commanders to follow his example. Thus reduced to about half his original strength, and that greatly crippled by the losses of the day, Xicotencatl could no longer maintain his ground against the Spaniards. After disputing the field with admirable courage for four hours, he retreated and resigned it to the enemy. The Spaniards were too much jaded, and too many were dis- abled by wounds, to allow them to pursue ; and Cort^z, satisfied with the decisive victory he had gained, returned in triumph to his position on the hill of Tzompach. The number of killed in his own ranks had been very small, notwithstanding the severe loss inflicted on the enemy. These few he was careful to bury where they could not be discovered, anxious to conceal not only the amount of the slain, but the fact that the whites were mor- tal. But very many of the men were wounded, and all the horses. The trouble of the Spaniards was much enhanced by the want of many articles important to them in their present exigency. They had neither oil nor salt, which, as before noticed, was not to be obtained in Tlascala. Their clothing, accommodated to a softer climate, was ill adapted to the rude air of the mountains ; and bows and arrows, as Bernal "Diaz sarcastically remarks, formed an indifferent protection against the inclemency of the weather. 98 AMERICAN LITERATURE. Still, they had much to cheer them in the events of the day ; and they might draw from them a reasonable ground for confidence in their own resources, such as no other ex- perience could have supplied. Not that the results could authorize anything like contempt for their Indian foe. Singly and Avith the same weapons, he miglit have stood his ground against the Spaniard. But the success of the day established the superiority of science and discipline over mere physical courage and numbers. It was fighting over again, as we have said, the old battle of the ' European and the Asiatic. But the handful of Greeks who routed the hosts of Xerxes and Darius, it must be remembered, had not so obvious an advantage on tlie score of weapons as was enjoyed by the Spaniards in tliese wars. The use of fire-arms gave an ascendency which cannot easily be estimated ; one so great, that a contest between nations equally civilized, which should be similar in all other re- spects to that between the Spaniards and the Tlascalans, would probably be attended with a similar issue. To all this must be added the effect produced by the cavalry. The nations of Anahuac had no large domesticated animals, and were unacquainted with any beast of burden. Their imaginations were bewildered when they beheld the strange apparition of the horse and his rider moving in unison and obedient to one impulse, as if possessed of a common nature ; and when they saw the terrible animal, with his " neck clothed in thunder," bearing down their squadrons and trampling them in the dust, no wonder they should have regarded him with the mysterious terror felt for a super- natural being. A very little reflection on the manifold grounds of superiority, both moral and physical, possessed by the Spaniards in this contest, will surely explain the issue, without any disparagement to the courage or capacity of their opponents. Cort^z, thinking the occasion favorable, followed up the important blow he had struck by a new mission to the cap- WILLIAM IIICKI^NG rRESCOTT. 99 ital, bearing a message of similar import with that recently sent to the camp. But the senate was not yet sufficiently humbled. The late defeat caused, indeed, general conster- nation. Maxixcatzin, one of the four great lords who pre- sided over the republic, reiterated with greater force the arguments before urged by him for embracing the proffered alliance of the strangers. The armies of the state had been beaten too often to allow any reasonable hope of successful resistance ; and he enlarged on the generosity shown by the politic Conqueror to his prisoners, — so unusual in Ana- huac, — as an additional motive for an alliance with men who knew how to be friends as well as foes. But in these views he was overruled by the war party, whose animosity was sharpened, rather than subdued, by the late discomfiture. Their hostile feelings were further exasperated by the younger Xicotencatl, who burned for an opportunity to retrieve his disgrace, and to wipe away the stain which had fallen for the first time on the arms of the republic. In their perplexity, they called in the assistance of the priests, whose authority was frequently invoked in the deliberations of the American chiefs. The latter inquired, with some simplicity, of these interpreters of fate, whether the strangers were supernatural beings, or men of flesh and blood like themselves. The priests, after some consulta- tion, are said to have made the strange answer, that the Spaniards, though not gods, were children of the Sun ; that they derived their strength from that luminary, and, when his beams were withdrawn, their powers would also fail. They recommended a night attack, therefore, as one which afforded the best chance of success. This apparently childish response may have had in it more of cunning than credulity. It was not improbably suggested by Xicotencatl himself, or by the caciques in his interest, to reconcile the people to a measure which was contrary to military usages, — indeed, it may be said, to the public law of Anahuac. 100 AMERICAN LITERATURE. Whether the fruit of artifice or superstition, it prevailed ; and the TlascaLan general was empowered, at the head of a detachment of ten thousand warriors, to try the effect of an assault by night on the Christian camp. The affair was conducted with such secrecy, that it did not reach the ears of the Spaniards. But their general was not one who allowed himself, sleeping or waking, to be sur- prised on his post. Fortunately, the night appointed was illumed by the full beams of an autumnal moon ; and one of the videttes perceived by its light, at a considerable dis- tance, a large body of Indians moving towards the Christian lines. He was not slow in giving the alarm to the garrison. The Spaniards slept, as has been said, with their arms by their side ; while their horses, picketed near them, stood ready saddled, with the bridle hanging at the bow. In five minutes, the whole camp was under arms; when they beheld the dusky columns of the Indians cautiously advanc- ing over the plain, their heads just peering above the tall maize with which the land was partially covered, Cortdz determined not to abide the assault in his intrenchments, but to sally out and pounce on the enemy when he had reached the bottom of the hill. Slowly and stealthily the Indians advanced, while the Christian camp, hushed in profound silence, seemed to them buried in slumber. But no sooner had they reached the slope of the rising ground, than they were astounded by the deep battle cry of the Spaniards, followed by the instanta- neous apparition of the whole army, as they sallied forth from the works, and poured down the sides of the hill. Brandishing aloft their weapons, they seemed to the troubled fancies of the Tlascalans, like so many spectres or demons hurrying to and fro in mid-air, while the uncertain light magnified their numbers, and expanded the horse and his rider into gigantic and unearthly dimensions. Scarcely waiting the shock of their enemy, the panic- struck barbarians let off a feeble volley of arrows, and, offer- WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT. 101 ing no other resistance, fled rapidly and tumultuously across the plain. The horse easily overtook the fugitives, riding them down and cutting them to pieces without mercy, until Cort^z, weary with slaughter, called off his men, leaving the field loaded with the bloody trophies of victory. 102 AMERICAN LITERATURE. [b. Guilford, Connecticut, July 8, 1790. d. November 19, 1867.] ON THE DEATH OF JOSEPH RODMAN DRAKE. Green be the turf above thee, Friend of my better days ! None knew thee but to love thee, Nor named thee but to praise. Tears fell when thou wert dying. From eyes unused to weep. And long, where thou art lying. Will tears the cold turf steep. When hearts, whose truth was proven, Like thine, are laid in earth. There should a wreath be woven, To tell the world their worth. And I, who woke each morrow To clasp thy hand in mine. Who shared thy joy and sorrow. Whose weal and woe were thine. It should be mine to braid it Around thy faded brow, But I've in vain essayed it. And feel I cannot now. While memory bids me weep thee, Nor thoughts nor words are free. The grief is fixed too deeply That mourns a man like thee. EDWARD EVERETT. 103 lEtitaarti ISberett. [b. Dorchester, Massachusetts, April 11, 1794. d. January 15, 1865.] THE NEED OF PATRIOTISM. We live at an eventful period. Mighty changes in human affairs are of daily occurrence at home and abroad. In Europe, the strongest governments are shaken; Banker Hill the pillars of tradition, rooted in the depths of June 17, antiquity, are heaved from their basis ; and that fearful war of opinion, so long foretold, is raging, with various fortune, from Lisbon to Archangel. Have you not noticed that in the midst of the perplexity and dismay, of the visions and the hopes of the crisis, the thoughts of men have been turned more and more to what has passed and what is passing in America ? They are looking anxiously to us for lessons of practical freedom, for the solution of that great mystery of state, that the strongest government is that which, with the least array of force, is deepest seated in the welfare and affections of the people. The friends of republican government in France, taunted with the impos- sibility of making such a government efficient and respecta- ble, point to our example as the sufficient answer. Austria, breaking down beneath the burden of her warring races, offers them too late a federal constitution modelled on our own ; and even in England, from which the original ele- ments of our free institutions were derived, scarce a debate arises in parliament, or an important question, without ref- erence to the experience of the United States. The constitu- tional worship of mankind is reversed ; they turn their faces to the West. Happy for them, happy for us, should they behold nought in this country to disappoint the hopes of progress, to discourage the friends of freedom, to strengthen 104 AMERICAN LITERATURE. the arm of the oppressor; and may God grant that those who look to us for guidance and encouragement, may be able to transplant the germs of constitutional liberty to the ancient gardens of the earth, that the clouds which now darken the horizon of Europe may clear away, and the long- deferred hopes of the friends of freedom be fulfilled ! But chiefly let us trust that the principles of our fathers may more and more prevail throughout our beloved country. We have erected a noble monu^ment to their memory, but we shall not have performed all our duty unless we our- selves catch some portion of their spirit. Oh, that the contemjilation of their bright example and pure fame might elevate our minds above the selfish pas- sions, the fierce contentions, and the dark forebodings of the day ! We need the spirit of '75 to guide us safely amidst the dizzy activities of the times. While our own numbers are increasing in an unexampled ratio, Europe is pouring in upon us her hundreds of thou- sands annually, and new regions are added to our domain, which we are obliged to count by degrees of latitude and longitude. In the mean time the most wonderful discov- eries of art and the most mysterious powers of nature, com- bine to give an almost fearful increase to the intensity of our existence. Machines of unexampled complication and ingenuity have been applied to the whole range of human industry. We rush across the land and sea by steam ; we correspond by magnetism ; we paint by the solar ray ; we count the beats of the electric clock at the distance of a thousand miles ; we do all but annihilate time and distance ; and amidst all the new agencies of communication and action, the omnipotent press, the great engine of modern progress, not superseded or impaired, but gathering new power from all the arts, is daily clothing itself with louder thunders. While we contemplate with admiration, — almost with awe, — the mighty influences which surround us, and Avhich demand our cooperation and our guidance, let our hearts EDWARD EVERETT. 105 overflow with gratitude to the patriots who have handed down to us this great inheritance. Let us strive to furnish ourselves, from the storehouse of their example, with the principles and virtues which will strengthen us for the per- formance of an honored part on this illustrious stage. Let pure patriotism add its bond to the bars of iron which are binding the continent together ; and as intelligence shoots with the electric spark from ocean to ocean, let public spirit and love of country catch from heart to heart. 106 AMERICAN LITERATURE. lEtigar ^llan Poe. [b. Boston, Massachusetts, January 19, 1809. d. October 7, 1849.] ANNABEL LEE. It was many and many a year ago, In a kingdom by the sea, That a maiden there lived whom you may know By the name of Annabel Lee ; And this maiden she lived with no other thought Than to love and be loved by me. I was a child and she was a child, In this kingdom by the sea : But we loved with a love which was more than love I and my Annabel Lee ; With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven Coveted her and me. And this was the reason that, long ago, In this kingdom by the sea, A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling My beautiful Annabel Lee ; So that her highborn kinsmen came, And bore her away from me. To shut her up in a sepulchre In this kingdom by the sea. The angels, not half so happy in heaven. Went envying her and me — Yes ! — that was the reason (as all men know, In this kingdom by the sea) That the wind came out of the cloud by night. Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee. EDGAR ALLAN POE. 107 But our love it was stronger by far than the love Of those who were older than we — Of many far wiser than we — And neither the angels in heaven above, Nor the demons down under the sea, Can ever dissever my soul from the soul Of the beautiful Annabel Lee : For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams Of the beautiful Annabel Lee ; And the stars never rise but I feel the bright eyes Of the beautiful Annabel Lee ; And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side Of my darling — my darling — my life and my bride, In her tomb by the sounding sea. THE HAUNTED PALACE. In the greenest of our valleys By good angels tenanted, Once a fair and stately palace — Eadiant palace — reared its head. In the monarch Thought's dominion — It stood there ! Never seraph spread a pinion Over fabric half so fair ! Banners yellow, glorious, golden. On its roof did float and flow, (This — all this — was in the olden Time long ago,) And every gentle air that dallied, In that sweet day. Along the ramparts plumed and pallid, A winged odor went away. 108 AMERICAN LITERATURE. Wanderers in that liappy valley, Through two luminous windows, saw Spirits moving musically. To a lute's well-tun^d law. Round about a throne where, sitting (Porphyrogene ! ) In state his glory well-befitting. The ruler of the realm was seen. And all with pearl and ruby gloAving Was the fair palace door, Through which came flowing, flowing, flowing And sparkling evermore, A troop of Echoes, whose sweet duty Was but to sing. In voices of surpassing beauty, The wit and wisdom of their king. But evil things, in robes of sorrow, Assailed the monarch's high estate. (Ah, let us mourn ! — for never morrow Shall dawn upon him desolate ! ) And round about his home the glory That blushed and bloomed, Is but a dim-remembered story Of the old time entombed. And travellers, now, within that valley, Through the red-litten windows see Vast forms, that move fantastically To a discordant melody. While, like a ghastly, rapid river. Through the pale door A hideous throng rush out forever And laugh — but smile no more. EDGAR ALLAN POE, 109 THE CITY IN THE SEA, Lo ! Death has reared himself a throne In a strange city lying alone Far down within the dim West, Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best Have gone to their eternal rest. There shrines and palaces and towers (Time-eaten towers that tremble not !) Resemble nothing that is ours. Around, by lifting winds forgot, Eesignedly beneath the sky The melancholy waters lie. No rays from the holy heaven come down On the long night-time of that town ; But light from out the lurid sea Streams up the turrets silently — Gleams up the pinnacles far and free — Up domes — up spires — up kingly halls — Up fanes — up Babylon-like walls — Up shadowy, long-forgotten bowers Of sculptured ivy and stone flowers — Up many and many a marvellous shrine Whose wreathed friezes intertwine The viol, the violet, and the vine. Resignedly beneath the sky The melancholy waters lie. So blend the turrets and shadows there That all seem pendulous in air, While from a proud tower in the town Death looks gigantically down. There open fanes and gaping graves Yawn level with the luminous waves 5 But not the riches there that lie In each idol's diamond eye — 110 AMERICAN LITERATURE. Not the gaily -jewelled dead Tempt the waters from their bed ; For no ripples curl, alas ! Along that wilderness of glass — No swellings tell that winds may be Upon some far-off happier sea — No heavings hint that winds have been On seas less hideously serene. But lo, a stir is in the air ! The wave — there is a movement there ! As if the towers had thrust aside, In slightly sinking, the dull tide — As if their tops had feebly given A void within the filmy Heaven. The waves have now a redder glow — The hours are breathing faint and low — And when, amid no earthly moans, Down, down that town shall settle hence. Hell, rising from a thousand thrones. Shall do it reverence. TO . I heed not that my earthly lot Hath little of Earth in it — That years of love have been forgot In the hatred of a minute : — I mourn not that the desolate Are happier, sweet, than I, But that you sorrow for my fate, Who am a passer by. EDGAR ALLAN FOE. Ill TORTURE. I now lay upon my back, and at full length, on a species of low framework of wood. To this I was securely bound by a long strap resembling a surcingle. It passed in many convolutions about my limbs and body, The Pit leaving at liberty only my head, and my left arm p , , to such extent that I could by dint of much exer- tion supply myself with food from an earthen dish which lay by my side on the floor. I saw to my horror that the pitcher had been removed. I say to my horror, for I was consumed with intolerable thirst. This thirst it appeared to be the design of my persecutors to stimulate, for the food in the dish was meat pungently seasoned. Looking upward I surveyed the ceiling of my prison. It was some thirty or forty feet overhead, and constructed much as the side walls. In one of its panels a very singular figure riveted my whole attention. It was the painted figure of Time as he is commonly represented, save that in lieu of a scythe he held what at a casual glance I supposed to be the pictured image of a huge pendulum, such as we see on antique clocks. There was something, however, in the appearance of this machine which caused me to regard it more attentively. While I gazed directly upward at it (for its position was immediately over my own), I fancied that I saw it in motion. In an instant afterward the fancy was confirmed. Its sweep was brief, and of course slow. I watched it for some minutes, somewhat in fear but more in wonder. Wearied at length with observing its dull movement, I turned my eyes upon the other objects in the cell. A slight noise attracted my notice, and looking to the floor, I saw several enormous rats traversing it. They had issued from the well which lay just within view to my right. Even then while I gazed, they came up in troops, hurriedly, with ravenous eyes, allured by the scent of the 112 AMERICAN LITERATURE. meat. From this it required much effort and attention to scare them away. It might have been half-an-hour, perhaps even an hour (for I eoukl take but imperfect note of time), before I again cast my eyes upward. What I then saw confounded and amazed me. The sweep of the pendulum had increased in extent by nearly a yard. As a natural consequence, its velocity was much greater. But what mainly disturbed me was the idea that it had perceptibly descended. I now observed, with what horror it is needless to say, that its nether extremity was formed of a crescent of glittering steel, about a foot in length from horn to horn; the horns upward, and the under edge evidently as keen as that of a razor. Like a razor also it seemed massy and heavy, taper- ing from the edge into a solid and broad structure above. It was appended to a weighty rod of brass, and the whole hissed as it swung through the air. I could no longer doubt the doom prepared for me by monkish ingenuity in torture. My cognizance of the pit had become known to the inquisitorial agents — the pit, whose horrors had been destined for so bold a recusant as myself, the pit, typical of hell, and regarded by rumor as the Ultima Thule of all their punishments. The plunge into this pit I had avoided by the merest of accidents, and I knew that surprise or entrapment into torment formed an important portion of all the grotesquerie of these dungeon deaths. Having failed to fall, it was no part of the demon plan to hurl me into the abyss, and thus (there being no alternative) a different and a milder destruction awaited me. Milder ! I half smiled in my agony as I thought of such application of such a term. What boots it to tell of the long, long hours of horror more than mortal, during which I counted the rushing oscillations of the steel! Inch by inch — line by line — with a descent only appreciable at intervals that seemed ages — down and still down it came ! Days passed — it might have been that many days passed — ere it swept EDGAR ALLAN FOE. 113 sn closely over me as to fan me with its acrid breath. The odor of the sharp steel forced itself into my nostrils. I prayed — I wearied heaven with my prayer for its more speedy descent. I grew frantically mad, and struggled to force myself upward against the sweep of the fearful scimi- tar. And then I fell suddenly calm, and lay smiling at the glittering death as a child at some rare bauble. There was another interval of utter insensibility ; it was brief, for upon again lapsing into life there had been no perceptible descent in the pendulum. But it might have been long — for I knew there were demons who took note of my swoon, and who couM have arrested the vibration at pleasure. Upon my recovery, too, I felt very — oh ! inex- pressibly — sick and weak, as if through long inanition. Even amid the agonies of that period the human nature craved food. With painful effort I outstretched my left arm as far as my bonds permitted, and took possession of the small remnant which had been spared me by the rats. As I put a portion of it within my lips there rushed to my mind a half-formed thought of joy — of hope. Yet what business had I with hope ? It was, as I say, a half-formed thought — man has many such, which are never completed. I felt that it was of joy — of hope ; but I felt also that it had perished in its formation. In vain I struggled to per- fect — to regain it. Long suffering had nearly annihilated all my ordinary powers of mind. I was an imbecile — an idiot. The vibration of the pendulum was at right angles to my length. I saw that the crescent was designed to cross the region of the heart. It would fray the serge of my robe ; it would return and repeat its operations — again — and again. Notwithstanding its terrifically wide sweep (some thirty feet or more) and the hissing vigor of its descent, sufficient to sunder these very walls of iron, still the fraying of my robe would be all that for several minutes it would accomplish ; and at this thought I paused. I dared not go farther than this reflection. I dwelt upon it with a perti- 114 AMERICAN LITERATURE. nacity of attention — as if, in so chvelling, I could arrest here the descent of the steel. I forced myself to ponder upon the sound of the crescent as it should pass across the garment — upon the peculiar thrilling sensation which the friction of cloth produces on the nerves. I pondered upon all this frivolity until my teeth were on edge. Down — steadily down it crept. I took a frenzied pleas- ure in contrasting its downward with its lateral velocity. To the right — to the left — far and wide — with the shriek of a damned spirit ! to my heart with the stealthy pace of a tiger ! I alternately laughed and howled, as the one or the other idea grew predominant. Down — certainly, relentlessly down ! It vibrated within three inches of my bosom ! I struggled violently — furi- ously — to free my left arm. This was free only from the elbow to the hand. I could reach the latter from the plat- ter beside me to my mouth with great effort, but no farther. Could I have broken the fastenings above the elbow, I would have seized and attempted to arrest the pendulum. I might as well have attempted to arrest an avalanche ! Down — still unceasingly — still inevitably down ! I gasped and struggled at each vibration. I shrunk convul- sively at its every sweep. My eyes followed its outward or upward Avhirls with the eagerness of the most unmeaning despair; they closed themselves spasmodically at the de- scent, although death would have been a relief, O, how unspeakable ! Still I quivered in every nerve to think how slight a sinking of the machinery would precipitate that keen glistening axe upon my bosom. It was hope tliat prompted the nerve to quiver — the frame to shrink. It was hope — the hope that triumphs on the rack — that whispers to the death-condemned even in the dungeons of the Inquisition. I saw that some ten or twelve vibrations would bring the steel in actual contact with my robe, and with this observa- tion there suddenly came over my spirit all the keen col- EDGAR ALLAN POE. 115 lected calmness of despair. For the first time during many hours, or perhaps days, I thought. It now occurred to me that the bandage or surcingle which enveloped me was unique. I was tied by no separate cord. The first stroke of the razor-like crescent athwart any portion of the band would so detach it that it might be unwound from my person by means of my left hand. But how fearful in that case the proximity of the steel ! The result of the slightest struggle how deadly ! Was it likely, moreover, that the minions of the torturer had not foreseen and provided for this possibility ? Was it probable that the bandage crossed my bosom in the track of the pendulum ? Dreading to find my faint, and, as it seemed, my last hope frustrated, I so far elevated my head as to obtain a distinct view of my breast. The surcingle enveloped my limbs and body close in all directions save in the path of the destroying crescent. Scarcely had I dropped my head back into its original position when there flashed upon ray mind what I cannot better describe than as the unformed half of that idea of deliverance to which I have previously alluded, and of which a moiety only floated indeterminately through my brain when I raised my food to my burning lips. The whole thought was now present — feeble, scarcely sane, scarcely definite, but still entire. I proceeded at once, with the nervous energy of despair, to attempt its execution. For many hours the immediate vicinity of the low frame- work upon which I lay had been literally swarming with rats. They were wild, bold, ravenous, their red eyes glaring upon me as if they waited but for motionlessness on my part to make me their prey. "To what food," I thought, " have they been accustomed in the well ? " They had devoured, in spite of all my efforts to prevent them, all but a small remnant of the contents of the dish. I had fallen into an habitual see-saw or wave of the hand about the platter ; and at length the unconscious uniformity of the movement deprived it of effect. In their voracity the vermin frequently fastened their sharp fangs in my fingers. 116 AMERICAN LITERATURE. With the particles of the oily and spicy viand which now remained, I thoroughly rubbed the bandage wherever I could reach it ; then, raising my hand from the floor, I lay breathlessly still. At first the ravenous animals were startled and terrified at the change — at the cessation of movement. They shrank alarmedly back ; many sought the well. But this was only for a moment. I had not counted in vain upon their vora- city. Observing that I remained without motion, one or two of the boldest leaped upon the framework and smelt at the surcingle. This seemed the signal for a general rush. Forth from the well they hurried in fresh troops. They clung to the wood, they overran it, and leaped in hundreds upon my person. The measured movement of the pendulum disturbed them not at all. Avoiding its strokes, they busied themselves with the anointed bandage. They pressed, they swarmed upon me in ever accumulating heaps. They writhed upon my throat ; their cold lips sought my own; I was half stifled by their thronging pres- sure; disgust, for which the world has no name, swelled my bosom, and chilled with heavy clamminess my heart. Yet one minute and I felt that the struggle would be over. Plainly I perceived the loosening of the bandage. I knew that in more than one place it must be already severed. With more than human resolution I lay still. Nor had I erred in my calculations, nor had I endured in vain. I at length felt that I was free. The surcingle hung in ribands from my body. But the stroke of the pendulum already pressed upon my bosom. It had divided the serge of the robe. It had cut through the linen beneath. Twice again it swung and a sharp sense of pain shot through every nerve. But the moment of escape had arrived. At a wave of my hand my deliverers hurried tumultuously away. With a steady movement, cautious, sidelong, shrinking, and slow, I slid from the embrace of the bandage and beyond the reach of the scimitar. For the moment, at least, I was free. RICHARD HENRY DANA. 117 i^icjarti i?ntr2 ©ana, [b. Cambridge, Massachusetts, November 15, 1787. d. February 2, 1879.] THE MOSS SUPPLICATETH FOR THE POET. Though I am humble, slight me not, But love me for the poet's sake ; Forget me not till he's forgot ; I care or slight with him would take. For oft he passed the blossoms by, And gazed on me with kindly look ; Left flaunting flowers and open sky, And woo'd me by the shady brook. And like the brook his voice was low : So soft, so sad the words he spoke, That with the stream they seemed to flow : They told me that his heart was broke ; — They said, the world he fain would shun. And seek the still and twilight wood, — His spirit, weary of the sun. In humblest things found chiefest good ; — That I was of a lowly frame. And far more constant than the flower, Which, vain, with many a boastful name. But fluttered out its idle hour ; That I was kind to old decay. And wrapt it softly round in green, On naked root and trunk of gray Spread out a garniture and screen : — 118 AMERICAN LITERATURE. They said that he was withering fast, Without a sheltering friend like me ; That on his manhood fell a blast, And left him bare, like yonder tree ; That spring would clothe his boughs no more, Nor ring his boughs Avith song of bird, — Sounds like the melancholy shore Alone were through his branches heard. Methought, as then he stood to trace The wither 'd stems, there stole a tear, That I could read in his sad face, — Brothers ! our sorrows make us near. And then he stretch'd him all along, And laid his head upon my breast, Listening the water's peaceful song. How glad was I to tend his rest ! Then happier grew his soothed soul. He turned and watched the sunlight play Upon my face, as in it stole. Whispering — " Above is brighter day ! '^ He praised my varied hues, — the green, The silver hoar, the golden brown ; Said, — Lovelier hues were never seen ; Then gently press'd my tender down. And where I sent up little shoots. He call'd them trees, in fond conceit : Like silly lovers in their suits We talk'd, his care awhile to cheat. I said, I'd deck me in the dews. Could I but chase aAvay his care, BICIIARD HENRY DANA. And clothe me in a thousand hues, To bring him joys that I might share. He answered, earth no blessing had To cure his lone and aching heart ; That I was one, when he was sad, Oft stole him from his pain, in part. But e'en from thee, he said, I go To meet the world, its care and strife, No more to watch this quiet flow. Or spend with thee a gentle life. And yet the brook is gliding on. And I, without a care, at rest ; While back to toiling life he's gone, Where finds his head no faithful breast. Deal gently with him. World ! I pray ; Ye cares ! like soften'd shadows come ; His spirit, well-nigh worn away. Asks with ye but awhile a home. 0, may I live, and when he dies Be at his feet a humble sod ; 0, may I lay me where he lies. To die when he awakes in God ! THE LITTLE BEACH BIRD. Thou little bird ! thou dweller by the sea Why takest thou its melancholy voice, And with that boding cry O'er the waves dost thou fly ? ! rather, bird ! with me Through the fair land rejoice ! 119 120 AMERICAN LITERATURE. Thy flitting form comes ghostly dim and pale, As driven by the beating storm at sea; Thy cry is weak and scared, As if thy mates had shared The doom of us. They wail — What does it bring to me ? Thou call'st along the sand, and haunt'st the surge, Restless and sad ; as if, in strange accord With the motion and the roar Of waves that drive to shore. One spirit did ye urge, — The Mystery — the Word. Of thousands thou both sepulchre and pall. Old Ocean, art ! A requiem o'er the dead From out thy gloomy cells A tale of mourning tells, — Tells of man's woe and fall, His sinless glory fled. Then turn thee, little bird ! and take thy flight Where the complaining sea shall sadness bring Thy spirit never more ! Come, quit with me the shore For gladness, and the light Where birds of summer sina: ! GEORGE TICKNOR. 121 (George Eickttor. [b. Boston, MasBacliuaetts, August 1, 1791. d. January 26, 1871.] CERVANTES. Cervantes, in truth, came at last to love these creatures of his marvellous power, as if they were real, familiar per- sonages, and to speak of them and treat them History of with an earnestness and interest that tend much Spanish to the illusion of his readers. Both Don Quixote Literature, and Sancho are thus brought before us like such living reali- ties, that, at this moment, the figures of the crazed, gaunt, dignified knight and of his round, selfish, and most amusing esquire dwell bodied forth in the imaginations of more, among all conditions of men throughout Christendom, than any other of the creations of human talent. The greatest of the great poets — Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, Milton — have no doubt risen to loftier heights, and placed them- selves in more imposing relations with the noblest attributes of our nature ; but Cervantes — always writing under the unchecked impulse of his own genius, and instinctively con- centrating in his fiction whatever was peculiar to the char- acter of his nation — has shown himself of kindred to all times and all lands ; to the humblest degrees of cultivation as well as to the highest ; and has thus, beyond all other writers, received in return a tribute of sympathy and admiration from the universal spirit of humanity. It is not easy to believe, that, when he had finished such a work, he was insensible to what he had done. Indeed, there are passages in the Don Quixote itself which prove a consciousness of his own genius, its aspirations, and its power. And yet there are, on the other hand, carelessnesses, blemishes, and contradictions scattered through it, which seem to show 122 AMERICAN LITERATURE. him to have been almost indifferent to contemporary suc- cess or posthumous fame. His plan, which he seems to have modified, more than once while engaged in the com- position of the work, is loose and disjointed ; his style, though full of the richest idiomatic beauties, abounds with inaccuracies ; and the facts and incidents that make up his fiction are full of anachronisms-. . . . The romance, however, which he threw so carelessly from him, and which I am persuaded he regarded rather as a bold effort to break up the absurd taste of his time for the fan- cies of chivalry than as anything of more serious import, has been established by an uninterrupted, and, it may be said, an unquestioned, success ever since, both as the oldest classical specimen of romantic fiction, and as one of the most remarkable monuments of modern genius. But though this may be enough to fill the measure of human fame and glory, it is not all to which Cervantes is entitled ; for, if we would do him the justice that would have been most wel- come to his own spirit, and even if we would ourselves fully comprehend and enjoy the whole of his Don Quixote, we should, as we read it, bear in mind, that this delightful romance was not the result of a youthful exuberance of feeling and a happy external condition, nor composed in his best years, when the spirits of its author were light and his hopes high ; but that — with all its unquenchable and irre- sistible humor, with its bright views of the world, and its cheerful trust in goodness and virtue — it was Avritten in his old age, at the conclusion of a life nearly every stej) of which had been marked with disappointed expectations, disheartening struggles, and sore calamities ; that he began it in a prison, and that it was finished when he felt the hand of death pressing heavy and cold upon his heart. If this be remembered as we read, we may feel, as we ought to feel, what admiration and reverence are due, not only to the living power of Don Quixote, but to the character and genius of Cervantes ; — if it be forgotten or underrated, Ave shall fail in regard to both. WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 123 gEilltam Cullen 33rsant> [b. Cummington, Massachusetts, November 3, 1794. d. June 12, 1878. TO THE FRINGED GENTIAN. Thou blossom bright with autumn clew, And colored with the heaven's own blue, That openest when the quiet light Succeeds the keen and frosty night. Thou comest not when violets lean O'er wandering brooks and springs unseen, Or columbines, in purple dressed. Nod o'er the ground-bird's hidden nest. Thou waitest late and coms't alone, When woods are bare and birds are flown, And frosts and shortening days portend The aged year is near his end. Then doth thy sweet and quiet eye Look through its fringes to the sky. Blue — bkie — as if that sky let fall A flower from its cerulean wall. I would that thus, when I shall see The hour of death draw near to me, Hope, blossoming within my heart, May look to heaven as I depart. 124 AMERICAN LITERATURE. TO A WATER-FOWL. Whither, midst falling dew, While glow the heavens with the last steps of day, Far, through their rosy depths, dost thou pursue Thy solitary way ? Vainly the fowler's eye Might mark thy distant flight to do thee wrong. As, darkly painted on the crimson sky. Thy figure floats along. Seek'st thou the plashy brink Of weedy lake, or marge of river wide. Or where the rocking billows rise and sink On the chafed ocean-side ? There is a Power Avhose care Teaches thy way along that pathless coast — The desert and illimitable air — Lone wandering, but not lost. All day thy wings have fanned. At that far height, the cold, thin atmosphere, Yet stoop not, weary, to the welcome land, Though the dark night is near. And soon that toil shall end; Soon shalt thou find a summer home, and rest, And scream among thy fellows ; reeds shall bend. Soon, o'er thy sheltered nest. Thou'rt gone, the abyss of heaven Hath swallowed up thy form ; yet, on my heart Deeply has sunk the lesson thou hast given. And shall not soon depart. WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 125 He who, from zone to zone, Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight, In the long way that I must tread alone. Will lead my steps aright. 'OH FAIREST OF THE RURAL MAIDS." Oh fairest of the rural maids ! Thy birth was in the forest shades ; Green boughs, and glimpses of the sky. Were all that met thine infant eye. Thy sports, thy wanderings when a child, Were ever in the sylvan wild ; And all the beauty of the place Is in thy heart and on thy face. The twilight of the trees and rocks Is in the light shade of thy locks ; Thy step is as the wind, that weaves Its playful way among the leaves. Thine eyes are springs, in whose serene And silent waters heaven is seen ; Their lashes are the herbs that look On their young figures in the brook. The forest depths, by foot unpressed. Are not more sinless than thy breast ; The holy peace that fills the air Of those calm solitudes, is there. 126 AMERICAN LITERATURE. THE PLANTING OF THE APPLE-TREE. Come, let us plant the apple-tree. Cleave the tough greensward with the spade ; Wide let its hollow bed be made ; There gently lay the roots, and there Sift the dark mould with kindly care. And press it o'er them tenderly, As, round the sleeping infant's feet. We softly fold the cradle-sheet ; So plant we the apple-tree. What plant we in this apple-tree ? Buds, which the breath of summer days Shall lengthen into leafy sprays ; Boughs where the thrush, with crimson breast. Shall haunt and sing and hide her nest ; We plant, upon the sunny lea, A shadow for the noontide hour, A shelter from the summer shower, When we plant the apple-tree. What plant we in this apple-tree ? Sweets for a hundred flowery springs To load the May-wind's restless wings. When, from the orchard-row, he pours Its fragrance through our open doors ; A world of blossoms for the bee. Flowers for the sick girl's silent room. For the glad infant sprigs of bloom. We plant with the apple-tree. What plant we in this apple-tree ? Fruits that shall swell in sunny June, And redden in the August noon, WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 127 And drop when gentle airs come by, That fan the blue September sky, While children come, with cries of glee, And seek them where the fragrant grass Betrays their bed to those who pass, At the foot of the apple-tree. And when, above this apple-tree, The winter stars are quivering bright, And winds go howling through the night. Girls, whose young eyes o'erflow with mirth. Shall peel its fruit by cottage-hearth. And guests in prouder homes shall see. Heaped with the grape of Cintra's vine And golden orange of the line, The fruit of the apple-tree. The fruitage of this apple-tree Winds and our flag of stripe and star Shall bear to coasts that lie afar. Where men shall wonder at the view, And ask in what fair groves they grew ; And sojourners beyond the sea Shall think of childhood's careless day. And long, long hours of summer play. In the shade of the apple-tree. Each year shall give this apple-tree A broader flush of roseate bloom, A deeper maze of verdurovis gloom, And loosen, when the frost-clouds lower, The crisp brown leaves in thicker shower. The years shall come and pass, but we Shall hear no longer, where we lie, The summer's songs, the autumn's sigh, In the boughs of the apple-tree. 128 AMERICAN LITERATURE. And time shall waste this apple-tree. Oh, when its aged branches throw Thin shadows on the ground below, Shall fraud and force and iron will Oppress the weak and helpless still ? What shall the tasks of mercy be, Amid the toils, the strifes, the tears Of those who live when length of years Is wasting this little apple-tree ? " Who planted this old apple-tree ? " The children of that distant day Thus to some aged man shall say ; And, gazing on its mossy stem. The gray -haired man shall answer them : " A poet of the land was he. Born in the rude but good old times ; 'Tis said he made some quaint old rhymes. On planting the apple-tree." THE THIRD OF NOVEMBER, 1861. Softly breathes the west-wind beside the ruddy forest, Taking leaf by leaf from the branches where he flies. Sweetly streams the sunshine, this third day of November, Through the golden haze of the quiet autumn skies. Tenderly the season has spared the grassy meadows, Spared the petted flowers that the old world gave the new, Spared the autumn-rose and the garden's group of pansies. Late-bloom dandelions and periwinkles blue. On my cornice linger the ripe black grapes ungathered ; Children fill the groves with the echoes of their glee. Gathering tawny chestnuts, and shouting when beside them Drops the heavy fruit of the tall black-walnut tree. WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 129 Glorious are the woods in their latest gold and crimson, Yet our full-leaved willows are in their freshest green. Siich a kindly autumn, so mercifully dealing With the growths of summer, I never yet have seen. Like this kindly season may life's decline come o'er me ; Past is manhood's summer, the frosty months are here ; Yet be genial airs and a pleasant sunshine left me. Leaf, and fruit, and blossom, to mark the closing year ! Dreary is the time when the flowers of earth are withered; Dreary is the time when the woodland leaves are cast — ■ When, upon the hillside, all hardened into iron, Howling, like a wolf, flies the amished northern blast. Dreary are the years when the eye can look no longer With delight on Nature, or hope on human kind ; Oh ! may those that whiten my temples as they pass me, Leave the heart unfrozen, and spare the cheerful mind ! 130 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 3o!)n €^ori)am palfreg. [b. Boston, Massachusetts, May 2, 1796. d. April 26, 1881.] THE "WITCHCRAFT TRAGEDY. It was not to be expected of the colonists of New Eng- land that they should be the first to see through a delusion which befooled the whole civilized world, and the History gravest and most knowing persons in it. Men of New , • • J. • -i. Enffland ^^® ^^^ Omniscient, nor is it common, any more than just, to blame them for not being so. We do not find fault with Aristotle for being ignorant of the law which directs the movements at once of an apple falling from a tree, and of a comet in the distant realms of space. We do not pronounce Galileo incapable because he did not know the weight of the planet Jupiter, nor Franklin because he did not invent the magnetic telegraph. It is rash to say that men should rise above their age. They should strive to do it; but, after all, what better is it possible for them to seize than what is within their reach ? A sober consideration of the tenor of human affairs ex- pects occasional disturbances of them from "fears of the brave and follies of the wise." Nor was the condition of the people of New England in the seventeenth century at all favorable to that immunity from a superstitious panic and madness of the sort in question, which in the most propitious circumstances would then have been no easy attainment. If any may be specially excused for being led astray by gloomy superstitions, it is they who are sur- rounded by circumstances, and pressed by griefs and anxie- ties, such as incline to sad and unhealthy meditation. The experience of the three heroic generations of English exiles in Massachusetts had been hard and sorrowful. Of those JOHN GORE AM PALFREY. 131 who were living when the provincial charter came into effect, the memory of the oldest went back to the primitive times of want and misery ; the middle-aged men had been out in arms in the most dreadful of the Indian wars, and the middle-aged women had passed years of mourning for the husbands, lovers, and brothers whom it had swept away. The generation just entered upon the stage had been born and reared in melancholy homes. The present was full of troubles and forebodings. The venerated char- ter had been lost. Social ties had been weakened. Social order was insecure. The paths of enterprise were obstructed. Industry had little impulse. Poverty was already felt. There was danger of destitution. A powerful foreign enemy threatened, and the capacity for defence was crippled by penury. A people in the mood to which such surroundings naturally lead could scarcely be expected to set the example of a release from gloomy fancies which ensnared the rest of mankind. Nor would it be preposterous to ascribe some influence on the spirits and the imagination to the loneli- ness of the homes of the settlers, and the harsh aspects of the scenery amid which their temper had been educated and their daily life was passed. But, with or without peculiar exposure to delusion, the people of New England believed what the wisest men of the world believed at the end of the seventeenth century, and never was a people in whom honest conviction of what- ever kind was surer to shape itself in act. They read in the Bible the command, "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live," and, instead of understanding the Hebrew legis- lator as denouncing in these words a ■ class of juggling impostors, whose tricks were connected with that idolatry which in every form was a capital crime under the Mosaic polity, they understood him to recognize the existence of practitioners really possessing supernatural powers, derived from the Prince of the power of the air, and using them for purposes mischievous to men and hateful to God. Oracles of their faith from the other side of the water had taught 132 AMEBIC AN LITERATURE. that on tlie good Christians of ISTew England God had pecu- liarly imposed the responsibility of defeating the Devil, in the place where he could " show most malice," because there " he is hated and hateth most." That the Devil, with all the vast and malignant power which they ascribed to him, was their enemy, was an unquestioned fact, which to them carried not an overmastering but an arousing terror. They must give him battle bravely, and abide the issue, for they were the Lord's soldiers ; and since the adversary did not wear a bodily shape for them to strike at, they must make his nefarious instruments feel their unsparing blows. Nor, as an independent influence, is the naked fact to be overlooked that witchcraft was a felony by statute. There is no denying that a vital, constitutional, ingrained rever- ence for law as such, additional to and even irrespective of considerations of the equity or wisdom of any of its provis- ions at a given tiane, has been in all times a characteristic of the people of New England ; and the hanging of witches was the form which a fanatical devotion to law took in Essex County at the end of the seventeenth century. Witch- craft stood on the books as a capital offence ; and when the authorized expounders of the law were seen to take part against the accused, the mighty conservative element in the community was summoned to the oppressor's side. In the judgment of an important class among the people, to interpose for the sufferers was to speak evil of dignities, and associate one's self with those who sought to unsettle the foundations of society. In such circumstances, the more enlightened lovers of Law and Order — of Order, which can never be permanently dissociated from humanity — of LaAV, which justice always ought to underlie and inform — were forced into a false position. To manifest their loyalty many felt themselves bound, in conscience and duty, to do violence to their sentiments of justice, human- ity, and honor. They were placed at a great disadvantage for any useful interference, when they could only attempt JOHN GORHAM PALFREY. 133 it at the cost of seeming to take a factious part, which in truth they loathed. When they echoed the maxims of Stougliton and his set, they were in much the same state of mind as were the loyal citizens of the same community who, a hundred and sixty years later, presented their thanks to the champion of the Fugitive Slave Bill for refreshing their sense of obligation in respect to the demands of that enactment. Happily for the present age, it understands the laws of the divine economy and of the human mind otherwise than as they were understood in the time of the Dutch King of England. By reason of convictions now outgrown, twenty innocent persons — not hundreds and thousands of inno- cent persons, as elsewhere under the same charge — were pvit to death in Massachusetts in that age. The madness of which they were the victims raged for about half a year in a part of that province, mostly in a part of one county, instead of the long periods of time, and the large districts of country, in which it has done its dreadful work else- where. Unoffending men and Avomen were pat out of the pale of sympathy; were put in gaol, were put in chains, were put to death. And this was sad enoitgh, and l)ad enough. But they were not burned to death, nor Avere they tortured upon the rack, nor in the boots, nor by the thumb- screw, as for the same supposed offence others by superior barbarity have been tortured and killed elsewhere. There is a difference — and this the deluded people of Massachusetts in the worst access of their frenzy knew — between doing what is thought needful for security, and making the agonies of the helpless feed the rage of the inhuman and strong. Nor among the many communities in which at different times this shocking infatuation has gained a foothold, is it possible to name one in which rea- son, courage, and humanity have so soon resumed their sway as in Massachusetts, and so Avell done their proper office. Nor is it possible to avoid considering of what stuff some 134 AMERICAN LITERATURE. men aud women of tliat stock were made, when twenty of them went to the gallows rather than soil their consciences by the lie of a confession. Nor can even the conduct of the blinded magistrates be set down as merely brutal fury, when they uniformly pardoned such as acknowledged their offence and promised blameless lives for the future. EDWARD CO ATE PINKNEY. 135 [b. London, England, October 1, 1802. d. April 11, 1828.] A HEALTH. I FILL this cup to one made up Of loveliness alone, — A woman, of lier gentle sex The seeming paragon ; To whom the better elements And kindly stars have given A form so fair, that like the air, 'Tis less of earth than heaven. Her every tone is music's own, Like those of morning birds ; And something more than melody Dwells ever in her words ; The coinage of her heart are they, And from her lips each flows As one may see the burden'd bee Forth issue from the rose. Affections are as thoughts to her. The measures of her hours ; Her feelings have the fragrancy, The freshness of young flowers ; And lovely passions, changing oft, So fill her, she appears The image of themselves by turns, — The idol of past years ! 136 AMERICAN LITERATURE. Of her bright face one glance will trace A picture on the brain ; And of her voice in echoing hearts A sound must long remain ; But memory, such as mine of her, So very much endears, When death is nigh, my latest sigh Will not be life's, but hers. I fill this cup to one made up Of loveliness alone, — A woman, of her gentle sex The seeming paragon. Her health ! and would on earth there stood Some more of such a frame. That life might be all poetry, And weariness a name. RUFUS CHOATE. l37 IXufus €\imtt. [b. Essex, Massachusetts, October 1, 1799. d. July 13, 1859.] PRIVATE CHARACTER OF WEBSTER. To appreciate the variety and accuracy of his knowledge, and even the true compass of his mind, you must have had some familiarity with his friendly written corre- n^^^ ^ _ spondence, and you must have conversed witli him ration Dis- with some degree of freedom. There, more than course, July in senatorial or forensic debate, gleamed the true ^'''' ^^^'^' riches of his genius, as well as the goodness of his large heart, and the kindness of his noble nature. There, with no longer a great part to discharge, no longer compelled to weigh and measure propositions, to tread the dizzy heights which part the antagonisms of the Constitution, to put aside allusions and illustrations which crowded on his mind in action, but which the dignity of a public appearance had to reject ; in the confidence of hospitality, (which ever he dis- pensed as a prince who also was a friend,) his memory — one of his most extraordinary faculties, quite in propor- tion to all the rest — swept free over the readings and labors of more than half a century ; and then, allusions, direct and ready quotations, a passing mature criticism, sometimes only a recollection of the mere emotions which a glorious pas- sage or interesting event had once excited, darkening for a moment the face and filling the eye, often an instructive exposition of a current maxim of philosophy or politics, the history of an invention, the recital of some incident casting a new light on some transaction or some institution, — this flow of unstudied conversation, quite as remarkable as any other exhibition of his mind, better than any other, perhaps, at once opened an unexpected glimpse of his vari- 138 AMERICAN LITERATURE. ous acquirements, and gave you to experience, delightedly, that the "■ mild sentiments have their eloquence as well as the stormy passions." There must be added, next, the element of an impressive character, inspiring regard, trust, and admiration, not unmin- gled with love. It had, I think, intrinsically a charm such as belongs only to a good, noble, and beautiful nature. In its combination with so much fame, so much force of will, and so much intellect, it filled and fascinated the imagina- tion and heart. It was affectionate in childhood and youth, and it was more than ever so in the few last months of his long life. It is the universal testimony that he gave to his parents in largest measure, honor, love, obedience ; that he eagerly appropriated the first means which he could command to relieve the father from the debts contracted to educate his brother and himself; that he selected his first place of pro- fessional practice that he might soothe the coming on of his old age ; that all through life he neglected no occasion — sometimes when leaning on the arm of a friend, alone, with faltering voice, sometimes in the presence of great assem- blies, where the tide of general emotion made it graceful — to express his " affectionate veneration of him who reared and defended the log cabin in which his elder brothers and sisters were born, against savage violence and destruction, cherished all the domestic virtues beneath its roof, and through the fire and blood of some years of revolutionary war, shrank from no danger, no toil, no sacrifice, to serve his country, and to raise his children to a condition better than his own." Equally beautiful was his love of all his kindred and all his friends. When I hear him accused of selfishness, and a cold, bad nature, I recall him lying sleepless all night, not without tears of boyhood, conferring with Ezekiel how the darling desire of both hearts should be compassed, and he, too, admitted to the precious privileges of education; courageously pleading the cause of both brothers in the RUFUS CHOATE. 139 morning ; prevailing by the wise and discerning affection of the mother ; suspending his studies of the law, and register- ing deeds and teaching school to earn the means, for both, of availing themselves of the opportunity which the paren- tal self-sacrifice had placed within their reach ; loving him through life, mourning him when dead, with a love and a sorrow very wonderful, passing the sorrow of woman; I recall the husband, the father of the living and of the early departed, the friend, the counsellor of many years, and my heart grows too full and liquid for the refutation of words. His affectionate nature, craving ever friendship, as well as the presence of kindred blood, diffused itself through all his private life, gave sincerity to all his hospitalities, kind- ness to his eye, warmth to the pressure of his hand ; made his greatness and genius unbend themselves to the playful- ness of childhood, flowed out in graceful memories indulged of the past or the dead, of incidents when life was young and promised to be happy, — gave generous sketches of his rivals, — the high contention now hidden by the handful of earth, — hours passed fifty years ago with great authors, recalled for the vernal emotions which then they made to live and revel in the soul. And from these conversations of friendship, no man — no man, old or young — went away to remember one word of profaneness, one allusion of indeli- cacy, one impure thought, one unbelieving suggestion, one doubt cast on the reality of virtue, of patriotism, of enthu- siasm, of the progress of man, — one doubt cast on righteous- ness, or temperance, or judgment to come. Every one of his tastes and recreations announced the same type of character. His love of agriculture, of sports in the open air, of the outward world in starlight and storms, and sea and boundless wilderness, — partly a result of the influences of the first fourteen years of his life, perpetiiated like its other affections and its other lessons of a mother's love, — the Psalms, the Bible, the stories of the wars, — partly the return of an unsophisticated and healthful nature, tiring for a space of the idle business of political life, its 140 AMERICAN LITERATURE. distinctions, its artificialities, to employments, to sensations which interest without agitating the universal race alike, as God has framed it, in which one feels himself only a man, fashioned from the earth, set to till it, appointed to return to it, yet made in the image of his Maker, and with a spirit that shall not die, — all displayed a man whom the most various intercourse with the world, the longest career of strife and honors, the consciousness of intellectual suprem- acy, the coming in of a wide fame, constantly enlarging, left, as he was at first, natural, simple, manly, genial, kind. NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 141 Natfjaniel |^atot!}ontr. [b. Salem, MasBachuBetts, July 4, 1804. d. May 18, 1864.] LITTLE PEARL IN THE FOREST. Pearl had not found the hour pass wearisomely, while her mother sat talking with the clergyman. The great black forest — stern as it showed itself to those who brought the guilt and troubles of the world Lettfj.*^^"^^^* into its bosom — became the playmate of the lonely infant, as well as it knew how. Sombre as it was, it put on the kindliest of its moods to welcome her. It offered her the partridge-berries, the growth of the pre- ceding autumn, but ripening only in the spring, and now red as drops of blood upon the withered leaves. These Pearl gathered, and was pleased with their wild flavor. The small denizens of the wilderness hardly took pains to move out of her path. A partridge, indeed, with a brood of ten behind her, ran forward threateningly, but soon re- pented of her fierceness, and clucked to her young ones not to be afraid. A pigeon, alone on an old branch, allowed Pearl to come beneath, and uttered a sound as much of greeting as alarm. A squirrel, from the lofty depths of his domestic tree, chattered either in anger or merriment, — for a squirrel is such a choleric and humorous little personage, that it is hard to distinguish between his moods, — so he chattered at the child, and flung down a nut upon her head. It was a last year's nut, and already gnawed by his sharp tooth. A fox, startled from his sleep by her light footstep on the leaves, looked inquisitively at Pearl, as doubting Avhether it were better to steal off, or renew his nap on the same spot. A wolf, it is said, — but here the tale has surely lapsed into the improbable, — came up, and 142 AMERICAN LITERATURE. smelt of Pearl's robe, and offered his savage head to be patted by her hand. The truth seems to be, however, that the mother-forest, and these wild things which it nourished, all recognized a kindred wildness in the human child. And she was gentler here than in the quarry-margined streets of the settlement, or in her mother's cottage. The flowers appeared to know it ; and one and another whispered as she passed, " Adorn thyself with me ! thou beautiful child, adorn thyself with me ! " — and, to please them, Pearl gathered the violets, and anemones, and columbines, and some twigs of the freshest green, which the old trees held down before her eyes. With these she decorated her hair, and her young waist, and became a nymph-child, or an infant dryad, or whatever else was in closest sympathy with the antique wood. In such guise had Pearl adorned herself, when she heard her mother's voice, and came slowly back. THE JUDGE'S VIGIL. Meanwhile the twilight is glooming upward out of the corners of the room. The shadows of the tall furniture grow deeper, and at first become more definite ; of the then, spreading wider, they lose their distinctness Seven of outline in the dark gray tide of oblivion, as it Gables. were, that creeps slowly over the various objects, and the one human figure sitting in the midst of them. The gloom has not entered from without ; it has brooded here all day, and now, taking its own inevitable time, will possess itself of everything. The judge's face, indeed, rigid, and singularly white, refuses to melt into this univer- sal solvent. Fainter and fainter grows the light. It is as if another double-handful of darkness had been scattered through the air. Now it is no longer gray, but sable. There is still a faint appearance at the window ; neither a glow, nor a gleam, nor a glimmer, — any phase of light would express something far brighter than this doubtful NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 143 perception, or sense, rather, that there is a window there. Has it yet vanished ? Ko ! — yes ! — not quite ! And there is still the swarthy whiteness, — we shall venture to marry these ill-agreeing words, — the swarthy whiteness of Judge Pyncheon's face. The features are all gone ; there is only the paleness of them left. And how looks it now ? There is no window ! There is no face ! An infinite, inscrutable blackness has annihilated sight ! Where is our universe ? All crumbled away from us ; and we, adrift in chaos, may hearken to the gusts of homeless wind, that go sighing and murmuring about, in quest of what was once a world ! Is there no other sound ? One other, and a fearful one. It is the ticking of the judge's watch, which, ever since Hepzibah left the room in search of Clifford, he has been holding in his hand. Be the cause what it may, this little, quiet, never-ceasing throb of Time's pulse, repeating its small strokes with such busy regularity, in Judge Pyn- cheon's motionless hand, has an effect of terror, which we do not find in any other accompaniment of the scene. But listen ! that puff of the breeze was louder ; it had a tone unlike the dreary and sullen one which has bemoaned itself, and afilicted all mankind with miserable sympathy, for five days past. The wind has veered about ! It now comes boisterously from the northwest, and, taking hold of the aged frame-work of the seven gables, gives it a shake, like a wrestler that would try strength with his antagonist. Another and another sturdy tussle with the blast ! The old house creaks again, and makes a vociferous but some- what unintelligible bellowing in its sooty throat — (the big flue, we mean, of its wide chimney) — partly in complaint at the rude wind, but rather, as befits their century and a half of hostile intimacy, in tough defiance. A rumbling kind of bluster roars behind the fire-board. A door has slammed above-stairs. A window, perhaps, has been left open, or else is driven in by an unruly gust. It is not to be conceived, beforehand, what wonderful wind-instruments are these old timber mansions, and how haunted with the 144 AMEBIC AN LITERATURE. strangest noises, which immediately begin to sing, and sigh, and sob, and shriek, — and to smite with sledge-hammers, airy, but ponderous, iu some distant chamber, — and to tread along the entries as with stately foot-steps, and rustle up and down the stair-case, as with silks miraculously stiff, — whenever the gale catches the house with a window open, and gets fairly into it. Would that we were not an attendant spirit here ! It is too awful ! this clamor of the wind through the lonely house ; the judge's quietude, as he sits invisible ; and that pertinacious ticking of his watch ! THE SKEPTIC'S DOOM. Meanwhile, Ethan Brand had resumed his seat upon the log, and moved, it might be by a perception of some remote analogy between his own case and that of this * ^^ self-pursuing cur, he broke into the awful laugh, which, more than any other token, expressed the condition of his inward being. From that moment, the merriment of the party was at an end ; they stood aghast, dreading lest the inauspicious sound should be reverberated around the horizon, and that mountain would thunder it to mountain, and so the horror be prolonged upon their ears. Then, whispering one to another that it was late, — that the moon was almost down, — that the August night was growing chill, — they hurried homewards, leaving the lime- burner and little Joe to deal as they might with their unwelcome guest. Save for these three human beings, the open space on the hill-side was a solitude, set in a vast gloom of forest. Beyond that darksome verge, the fire- light glimmered on the stately trunks and almost black foliage of pines, intermixed with the lighter verdure of sapling oaks, maples, and poplars, while here and there lay the gigantic corpses of dead trees, decaying on the leaf- strewn soil. And it seemed to little Joe — a timorous and NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 145 imaginative child — that the silent forest was holding its breath until some fearful thing should happen. Ethan Brand thrust more wood into the fire, and closed the door of the kiln ; then looking over his shoulder at the lime-l)urner and his son, he bade, rather than advised, them to retire to rest. " For myself, I cannot sleep," said he. " I have matters that it concerns me to meditate upon. I will watch the fire, as I used to do in the old time." " And call the devil out of the furnace to keep you com- pany, I suppose," muttered Bartram, who had been making intimate acquaintance with the black bottle above men- tioned. "But watch, if you like, and call as many devils as you like ! For my part, I shall be all the better for a snooze. Come, Joe ! " As the boy followed his father into the hut, he looked back at the wayfarer, and the tears came into his eyes, for his tender spirit had an intuition of the bleak and terrible loneliness in which this man had enveloped himself. When they had gone, Ethan Brand sat listening to the crackling of the kindled wood, and looking at the little spirts of fire that issued throvigh the chinks of the door. These trifles, however, once so familiar, had but the slight- est hold of his attention, while deep within his mind he was reviewing the gradual but marvellous change that had been wrought upon him by the search to which he had de- voted himself. He remembered how the night dew had fallen upon him, — how the dark forest had whispered to him, — how the stars had gleamed upon him, — a simple and loving man, watching his fire in the years gone by, and ever musing as it burned. He remembered with what ten- derness, with what love and sympathy for mankind, and what pity for human guilt and woe, he had first begun to contemplate those ideas which afterwards became the inspiration of his life ; with what reverence he had then looked into the heart of man, viewing it as a temple origi- nally divine, and, however desecrated, still to be held sacred 146 AMERICAN LITERATURE. by a brother ; with what awful fear he had deprecated the success of his pursuit, and prayed the Unpardonable Sin might never be revealed to him. Then ensued that vast intellectual development, which, in its progress, disturbed the counterpoise between his mind and heart. The idea that possessed his life had operated as a means of education ; it had gone on cultivating his powers to the highest point of which they were susceptible ; it had raised him from the level of an unlettered laborer to stand on a starlit eminence, whither the philosophers of the earth, laden with the lore of universities, might vainly strive to clamber after him. So much for the intellect ! But where was the heart ? That, indeed, had withered — had contracted — had hardened — had perished ! It had ceased to partake of the universal throb. He had lost his hold of the magnetic chain of human- ity. He was no longer a brother-man, opening the chambers or the dungeons of our common nature by the key of holy sympathy, which gave him a right to share in all its secrets ; he was now a cold observer, looking on mankind as the sub- ject of his experiment, and, at length, converting man and woman to be his puppets, and pulling the wires that moved them to such degrees of crime as were demanded for his study. Thus Ethan Brand began to be a fiend. He began to be so from the moment that his moral nature had ceased to keep the pace of improvement with his intellect. And now, as his highest effort and inevitable development, — as the bright and gorgeous flower, and rich, delicious fruit of his life's labor, — he had produced the Unpardonable Sin ! " What more have I to seek ? What more to achieve ? " said Ethan Brand to himself. " My task is done, and well done ! " Starting from the log with a certain alacrity in his gait, and ascending the hillock of earth that was raised against the stone circumference of the lime-kiln, he thus reached the top of the structure. It was a space of perhaps ten feet, across from edge to edge, presenting a view of the upper sur- NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 147 face of the immense mass of burning marble with which the kiln was heaped. All these innumerable blocks and frag- ments of marble were red-hot and vividly on fire, sending up great spouts of blue flame, which quivered aloft and danced madly, as within a magic circle, and sank and rose again, with continual and multitudinous activity. As the lonely man bent forward over this terrible body of fire, the blasting heat smote up against his person with a breath that, it might be supposed, would have scorched and shriv- elled him up in a moment. Ethan Brand stood erect, and raised his arms on high. The blue flames played upon his face, and imparted the wild and ghastly light which alone could have suited its expression ; it was that of a fiend on the verge of plunging into his gulf of intensest torment. " Mother Earth," cried he, '' who art no more my Mother, and into whose bosom this frame shall never be resolved ! mankind, whose brotherhood I have cast off, and trampled thy great heart beneath my feet ! stars of heaven, that shone on me of old, as if to light me onward and upward ! — farewell all, and forever. Come, deadly ele- ment of Fire, — henceforth my familiar friend! Embrace me, as I do thee ! " That night the sound of a fearful peal of laughter rolled heavily through the sleep of the lime-burner and his little son ; dim shapes of horror and anguish haunted their dreams, and seemed still present in the rude hovel when they opened their eyes to the daylight. '' (Jp, boy, up ! " cried the lime-burner, staring about him. '' Thank Heaven, the night is gone, at last ; and rather than pass such another, I would watch my lime-kiln wide awake for a twelvemonth. This Ethan Brand, with his humbug of an unpardonable sin, has done me no such mighty favor in taking my place ! " He issued from the hut, followed by little Joe, who kept fast hold of his father's hand. The early sunshine was already pouring its gold upon the mountain-tops ; and though 148 AMERICAN LITERATURE. the valleys were still in shadow, they smiled cheerfully in the promise of the bright day that was hastening onward. The village, completely shut in by hills, which swelled away gently about it, looked as if it had rested peacefully in the hollow of the great hand of Providence. Every dwelling was distinctly visible ; the little spires of the two churches pointed upwards, and caught a fore-glimmering of brightness from the sun-gilt skies upon their gilded weath- ercocks. The tavern was astir, and the figure of the old, smoke-dried stage-agent, cigar in mouth, was seen beneath the stoop. Old Graylock was glorified with a golden crown upon his head. Scattered likewise over the breasts of the surrounding mountains, there were heaps of hoary mist or cloud, hovering in the gold radiance of the upper atmos- phere. Stepping from one to another of the clouds that rested on the hills, and thence to the loftier brotherhood that sailed in the air, it seemed almost as if a mortal man might thus ascend into the heavenly regions. Earth was so mingled with sky that it was a day-dream to look at it. To supply that charm of the familiar and homely which nature so readily adopts into a scene like this, the stage- coach was rattling down the mountain-road, and the driver sounded his horn, while echo caught up the notes, and intertwined them into a rich and varied and elaborate har- mony, of which the original performer could lay claim to little share. The great hills played a concert among them- selves, each contributing a strain of airy sweetness. Little Joe's face brightened at once. "Dear father," cried he, skipping cheerily to and fro, " that strange man is gone, and the sky and the mountains all seem glad of it ! " "Yes," growled the lime-burner, with an oath, "but he has let the fire go down, and no thanks to him if five hun- dred bushels of lime are not spoiled. If I catch the fellow hereabouts again, I shall feel like tossing him into the furnace ! " NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 149 With his long pole in his hand, he ascended to the top of the kiln. After a moment's panse, he called to his son. . " Come np here, Joe ! " said he. So little Joe ran up the hillock, and stood by his father's side. The marble was all burnt into perfect, snow-white lime. But on the surface, in the midst of the circle, — snow-white too, and thoroughly converted into lime, — lay a human skeleton, in the attitude of a person who, after long toil, lies down to long repose. Within the ribs — strange to say — was the shape of a human heart. " Was the fellow's heart made of marble ? " cried Bar- tram, in some perplexity at this phenomenon. ''At any rate, it is burnt into what looks like special good lime ; and, taking all the bones together, my kiln is half a bushel the richer for him." So saying, the rude lime-burner lifted his pole, and, letting it fall upon the skeleton, the relics of Ethan Brand were crumbled into fragments. 150 AMERICAN LITERATURE. iairi)arti Hiltircti). [b. Deerfield, Massachusetts, June 22, 1807. d. July 11, 1865.] ABORIGINAL AMERICA. The Indians applied all their sagacity to the knowledge of wood-craft, which they carried to a high degree of per- fection. They could trace their game or their History of gnemy by the slightest indication — grass bent, States leaves trampled, or twigs broken. Inferior to Europeans in strength and in capacity to perform regular labor to which they were unaccustomed, their activ- ity, powers of endurance, and acuteness of sight and hear- ing were extraordinary. Guided by the stars and sun, and supported by a little parched corn pounded and moistened with water, they performed, with unerring sagacity, im- mense journeys through the woody or grassy wilderness. The habits of almost all the tribes were more or less migra- tory. They knew little or nothing of the comforts of a settled habitation. They seemed always uneasy, always on the point of going somewhere else. Their frequent jour- neys had traced, in many places, trails or foot-paths through the woods or across the prairies. It was their custom to kindle annual fires, by which the grass and underwood were consumed. Except among the swamps and rocky hills, the forests thus acquired an open and park-like appearance. Trees, remarkable for height and beauty of foliage, and varying in species with every variety of soil and climate, overspread, in vast forests, all the eastern portion of North America, from the Gulf of Mexico to Hudson's Bay. Be- yond the mountains, in the neighborhood of the Mississippi, the open prairies commenced, and, on the western side of that river, gradually usurped almost the whole country. RICHARD IIILDRETH. 151 Besides oaks, and pines, and other Avell-known genera of Europe, the American forests contained many trees, and a "^ great variety of shrubs and plants, entirely new. Even such as seemed most familiar to visitors from Europe, were specifically different from those of the Old World. The same was true of birds, fish, and forest animals. The ani- mated nature of North America was peculiar to itself. Beasts of prey, the wolf, and several varieties of the cat tribe, were few in number and comparatively diminutive in size and strength. The black bear, a favorite article of food with the Indians, could hardly be reckoned of that class. It was, however, upon several varieties of the deer that the tribes of the forest region chiefly depended for meat. The more northern forests seem to have furnished the best hunt- ing grounds ; it was there only that the moose and the elk were found. These northern regions abounded also with beaver and other valuable fur-bearing animals ; but, till a regular trade and intercourse were opened with Europeans, these animals remained comparatively undisturbed. The northern rivers — those, at least, of the Atlantic slope — annually swarmed, at certain seasons, with salmon, bass, shad, herring, sturgeon. The northern lakes were also full of fish. The shell-fish of the sea-coast furnished an impor- tant resource to some tribes. Water-fowl were abundant ; wild turkey traversed all the American forests. The vast grassy plains of central North America, with their immense herds of bison, or buffalo, might seem to invite a pastoral life ; but nothing of that sort was known. Till the southwestern tribes obtained horses from the Span- iards, the Indians had no domestic animals except a few small dogs. Besides hunting and fishing, they supported themselves in part, especially the more Southern confedera- cies, among whom game was comparatively scarce, by culti- vating patches of maize or Indian corn, that remarkable grain so widely diffused, in many varieties, over the whole of America, though nowhere found in a wild state. They cultivated, also, several sorts of beans and pease, besides 152 AMERICAN LITERATURE. squashes, pumpkins, watcv-inelons, and a number of edible roots, of wliicli, among the Southern tribes, the sweet-potato seems to have been one. They had orchards of native phims ; and wikl berries, gathered and dried, constituted a part of their winter store. Among the Southern tribes the peach was early introduced, and the apple among the Northern. Their agricultural instruments were of the rudest sort, large shells, fiat stones, or stakes sharpened by fire. They could only fell trees by burning round them. NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS, 153 Natijanifl ^arfttr SEillts. [b. Portland, Maine, Jamiaiy 20, 1800. d. January 20, 1867.] TWO WOMEN. The shadows lay along Broadway, 'Twas near the twilight-tide, And slowly there a lady fair Was walking in her pride. Alone walk'd she ; but, viewlessly, Walk'd spirits at her side. Peace charm'd the street beneath her feet. And Honor charm'd the air ; And all astir look'd kind on her, And called her good as fair, — For all God ever gave to her She kept with chary care. She kept with care her beauties rare From lovers warm and true. For her heart was cold to all but gold. And the rich come not to woo, — But honor'd well are charms to sell If priests the selling do. Now walking there was one more fair, — A slight girl, lily -pale ; And she had unseen company To make the spirit quail, — 'Twixt Want and Scorn she walk'd forlorn. And nothing could avail. 154 AMERICAN LITERATURE. No mercy now can clear her brow For this world's peace to pray ; For, as love's wild prayer dissolved in air, Her woman's heart gave way ! — But the sin forgiven by Christ in heaven By man is cursed alway ! SATURDAY AFTERNOON. I love to look on a scene like this, Of wild and careless play. And persuade myself that I am not old. And my locks are not yet gray ; For it stirs the blood in an old man's heart. And makes his pulses fly. To catch the thrill of a happy voice And the light of a pleasant eye. I have walk'd the world for fourscore years, And they say that I am old — That my heart is ripe for the reaper Death, And my years are well-nigh told. It is very true — it is very true — I am old, and I " bide my time " ; But my heart will leap at a scene like this. And I half renew my prime. Play on ! play on ! I am with you there. In the midst of your merry ring ; I can feel the thrill of the daring jump, And the rush of the breathless swing, I hide with you in the fragrant hay. And I whoop the smother'd call, And my feet slip up on the seedy floor, And I care not for the fall. NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 155 I am willing to die when my time shall come, And I shall be glad to go — For the world, at best, is a weary place, And my pulse is getting low ; But the grave is dark, and the heart will fail In treading its gloomy way ; And it wiles my heart from its dreariness To see the young so gay. 156 AMEBIC AX LITERATURE. [b. Florida, New York, May 16, 1801. d. October 10, 1872.] THE SOURCE OF PUBLIC VIRTUE. We see only the rising of the sun of empire — only the fair seeds and beginnings of a great nation. Whether that glowing orb shall attain to a meridian height, or True Great- f^n suddenly from its glorious sphere — whether „ . those prolific seeds shall mature into autumnal ripeness, or shall perish, yielding no harvest — depends on God's will and providence. But God's will and providence operate not by casualty or caprice, but by fixed and revealed laws. If we would secure the greatness set before us, we must find the way which those laws indicate, and keep within it. That way is new and all untried. We departed early — we departed at the beginning — from the beaten track of national ambition. Our lot was cast in an age of revolution — a revolution which was to bring all mankind from a state of servitude to the exercise of self- government — from under the tyranny of physical force to the gentle sway of opinion — from under subjection to mat- ter to dominion over nature. It was ours to lead the way, to take up the cross of repub- licanism and bear it before the nations, to fight its earliest battles, to enjoy its earliest triumphs, to illustrate its puri- fying and elevating virtues, and by our courage and resolu- tion, our moderation and our magnanimity, to cheer and sustain its future followers through the baptism of blood and the martyrdom of fire. A mission so noble and benev- olent demands a generous and self-denying enthusiasm. Our greatness is to be won by beneficence without ambi- tion. We are in danger of losing that holy zeal. We are WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 157 surrounded by temptations. Our dwellings become palaces, and our villages are transformed, as if by magic, into great cities. Fugitives froin famine and oppression and the sword crowd our shores, and jiroclaini to us that we alone are free, and great, and happy. Ambition for martial fame and the lust of conquest have entered the warm, living, youthful heart of the republic. Our empire enlarges. The castles of enemies fall before our advancing armies ; the gates of cities open to receive them. The continent and its islands seem ready to fall within our grasp, and more than even fabulous wealth opens under our feet. No public virtue can withstand, none ever encountered, such seduc- tions as these. Our own virtue and moderation must be renewed and fortified under circumstances so new and peculiar. Where shall we seek the influence adequate to a task so arduous as this ? Shall we invoke the press and the desk ? They only reflect the actual condition of the public morals, and cannot change them. Shall we resort to the executive authority? The time has passed when it could compose and modify the political elements around it. Shall we go to the Senate ? Conspira- cies, seditions, and corruptions, in all free countries, have begun there. Where, then, shall we go, to find an agency that can uphold and renovate declining public virtue? Where should we go, but there, where all republican virtue begins and must end — where the Promethean fire is ever to be rekindled, until it shall finally expire — where motives are formed and passions disciplined? — to the domestic fire- side and humble school, where the American citizen is trained. Instruct him there, that it will not be enough that he can claim for his country Lacedaemonian heroism, or even the Italian's boast, — " Terra potens atque ubere glebse," — but that more than Spartan valor and more than Eoman magnificence is required of her. Go, then, ye laborers in a 158 AMERICAN' LITERATURE. noble cause, gather the young Catholic and the young Prot- estant alike into the nursery of freedom ; and teach them there that, although religion has many and different shrines on which may be made the offering of a " broken spirit," which God will not despise, yet that their country has appointed only one altar and one sacrifice for all her sons, and that ambition and avarice must be slain on that altar, for it is consecrated to humanity. GEORGE PERKINS MARSH. 159 George ^Perkins lEarsJ), [b. ■Woodstock, Vermont, March 15, 1801. d. July 23, 1882.] LIMITS OF HUMAN POWER. It is, on the one hand, rash and unphilosophical to at- tempt to set limits to the ultimate power of man over inor- ganic nature, and it is unprofitable, on the other, to speculate on what may be accomplished by the The Earth discovery of now unknown and uniraagined natural f'^ ° ' ® forces, or even by the invention of new arts and Action, new processes. But since we have seen aerosta- tion, the motive power of elastic vapors, the wonders of modern telegraphy, the destructive explosiveness of gun- powder, of nitro-glycerine, and even of a substance so harm- less, unresisting, and inert as cotton, there is little in the way of mechanical achievement which seems hopelessly impossible, and it is hard to restrain the imagination from wandering forward a couple of generations to an epoch when our descendants shall have advanced so far beyond us in physical conquest, as we have marched beyond the trophies erected by our grandfathers. There are, nevertheless, in actual practice, limits to the efficiency of the forces which we are now able to bring into the field, and we must admit that, for the present, the agencies known to man and con- trolled by him are inadequate to the reducing of great Alpine precipices to such slopes as would enable them to support a vegetable clothing, or to the covering of large extents of denuded rock with earth, and planting upon them a forest growth. Yet among the mysteries, which science is hereafter to reveal, there may be still undiscov- ered methods of accomplishing even grander wonders than these. Mechanical philosophers have suggested the possi- 160 AMERICAN LITERATURE. bility of accumulating and treasuring up for human use some of the greater natural forces which the action of the elements puts forth with such astonishing energy. Could we gather, and bind, and make subservient to our control, the power which a West Indian hurricane exerts through a small area in one continuous blast, or the momentum ex- pended by the waves, in a tempestuous winter, upon the breakwater at Cherbourg, or the lifting power of the tide, for a month, at the head of the Bay of Fundy, or the pres- sure of a square mile of sea-water at the depth of five thou- sand fathoms, or a moment of the might of an earthquake or a volcano, our age — which moves no mountains and casts them into the sea by faith alone — might hope to scarp the rugged walls of the Alps and Pyrenees and Mount Taurus, robe them once more in a vegetation as rich as that of their pristine woods, and turn their wasting torrents into refresh- ing streams. Could this old world, which man has overthrown, be re- builded, could human cunning rescue its wasted hillsides and its deserted plains from solitude or mere nomade occu- pation, from barrenness, from nakedness, and from insalu- brity, and restore the ancient fertility and healthfulness of the Etruscan sea-coast, the Campagna and the Pontine marshes, of Calabria, of Sicily, of the Peloponnesus and insular and continental Greece, of Asia Minor, of the slopes of Lebanon and Hermon, of Palestine, of the Syrian desert, of Mesopotamia and the delta of the Euphrates, of the Cyrenaica, of Africa jjroper, Numidia, and Mauritania, the thronging millions of Europe might still find room on the Eastern continent, and the main current of emigration be turned towards the rising instead of the setting sun. But changes like these must await not only great politi- cal and moral revolutions in the governments and peoples by whom those regions are now possessed, but, especially, a command of pecuniary and mechanical means not at present enjoyed by those nations, and a more advanced and generally diffused knowledge of the processes by which the ameliora- GEORGE PERKINS MARSH. 161 tion of soil and climate is possible than now anywhere exists. Until such circumstances shall conspire to favor the work of geographical regeneration, the countries I have mentioned, with here and there a local exception, will con- tinue to sink into yet deeper desolation, and in the mean- time the American continent, Southern Africa, Australia, New Zealand, and the smaller oceanic islands, will be almost the only theatres where man is engaged, on a great scale, in transforming the face of nature. 162 AMERICAN LITERATURE. Ealpi) Maltio (JHmrrson* [b. Boston, Massachusetts, May 25, 1803. d. April 27, 1882.] INDIVIDUALITY. Young men of the fairest promise, who begin life upon our shores, inflated by the mountain winds, shined upon by- all the stars of God, find the earth below not in ■^ ® , unison with these, but are hindered from action by Scholar. ^^® disgust which the principles on which busi- ness is managed inspire, and turn drudges, or die of disgust, some of them suicides. What is the remedy ? They did not yet see, and thou- sands of young men as hopeful now crowding to the barriers for the career do not yet see, that if the single man plant himself indomitably on his instincts, and there abide, the huge world will come round to him. Patience, — patience ; with the shades of all the good and great for company ; and for solace the perspective of your own infinite life ; and for work the study and the communication of principles, the making those instincts prevalent, the conversion of the world. Is it not the chief disgrace in the world, not to be an unit ; — not to be reckoned one character ; — not to yield that peculiar fruit which each man was created to bear, but to be reckoned in the gross, in the hundred, or the thou- sand, of the party, the section, to which we belong ; and our opinion predicted geographically, as the north, or the south ? Not so, brothers and friends, — please God, ours shall not be so. We will walk on our own feet ; we will work with our own hands, we will speak our own minds. The study of letters shall be no longer a name for pity, for doubt, and for sensual indulgence. The dread of man and the love of man shall be a wall of defence and a Avreath of joy RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 163 around all. A nation of men will for the first time exist, because each believes himself inspired by the Divine Soul, which also inspires all men. OPPORTUNITY. One of the illusions is that the present hour is not the critical, decisive hour. Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year. No man has learned anything rightly until he knows that every -^^ day is Doomsday. 'Tis the old secret of the gods that they come in low disguises. 'Tis the vulgar great who come dizened with gold and jewels. Keal kings hide away their crowns in their wardrobes, and affect a j)lain and poor exterior. In the Norse legend of our ancestors, Odin dwells in a fisher's hut and patches a boat. In the Hindoo legends, Hari dwells a peasant among peasants. In the Greek legend, Apollo lodges with the shepherds of Admetus, and Jove liked to rusticate among the poor Ethiopians. So, in our history, Jesus is born in a barn, and his twelve peers are fishermen. 'Tis the very principle of science that Nature shows herself best in beasts ; it was the maxim of Aristotle and Lucretius; and, in modern times, of Swedenborg, and of Hahnemann. The order of changes in the o.^^ determines the age of fossil strata. So it was the rule of our poets, in the legends of fairy lore, that the fairies largest in power were the least in size. In the Christian graces, humility stands highest of all in the form of the Madonna; and in life, this is the secret of the wise. We owe to genius always the same debt, of lifting the curtain from the com- mon, and showing us that divinities are sitting disguised in the seeming gang of gypsies and pedlers. In daily life, what distinguishes the master is the using those materials he has, instead of looking about for what are more renowned, or what others have used well. " A general," said Bona- 164 AMERICAN LITERATURE. parte, " always has troops enough, if he only knows how to employ those he has, and. bivouacs with them." Do not refuse the employment which the hour brings you, for one more ambitious. The highest heaven of wisdom is alike near from every point, and thou must find it, if at all, by methods native to thyself alone. OBEDIENCE. A little consideration of what takes place around us every day, would show us that a higher law than that of our will regulates events ; that our painful labors are un- Spiritual necessary and fruitless, that only in our easy, sim- ple, spontaneous action are we strong, and by con- tenting ourselves with obedience we become divine. Belief and love, — a believing love will relieve us of a vast load of care. my brothers, God exists. There is a soul at the centre of nature and over the will of every man, so that none of us can wrong the universe. It has so infused its strong enchantment into nature that we prosper when we accept its advice, and when we struggle to wound its crea- tures our hands are glued to our sides, or they beat our own breasts. The whole course of things goes to teach us faith. We need only obey. There is guidance for each of us, and by lowly listening we shall hear the right word. Why need you choose so painfully your place and occupation and asso- ciates and mode of action and of entertainment ? Certainly there is a possible right for you that precludes the need of balance and wilful election. For you there is a reality, a fit place and congenial duties. Place yourself in the middle of the stream of power and wisdom which animates all whom it floats, and you are without effort impelled to truth, to right, and a perfect contentment. Then you put all gain- sayers in the wrong. Then you are the world, the measure of right, of truth, of beauty. If we would not be marplots RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 165 with our miserable interferences, the work, the society, let- ters, arts, science, religion of men would go on far better than now, and the heaven predicted from the beginning of the world, and still predicted from the bottom of the heart, Avould organize iteelf, as do now the rose and the air and the sun. THE MORAL LAW IN NATURE. It has already been illustrated that every natural process is a version of a moral sentence. The moral law lies at the centre of nature and radiates to the circumference. It is the pith and marrow of every substance, every relation, and every process. All things with which we deal preach to us. What is a farm but a mute gospel ? The chaff and the wheat, weeds and plants, blight, rain, insects, sun, — it is a sacred emblem from the first furrow of spring to the last stack which the snow of winter overtakes in the fields. But the sailor, the shepherd, the miner, the merchant, in their several resorts, have each an experience precisely parallel, and leading to the same conclusion : because all organizations are radically alike. Nor can it be doubted that this moral sentiment which thus scents the air, grows in the grain, and impregnates the waters of the world, is caught by man and sinks into his soul. The moral influ- ence of nature upon every individual is that amount of truth which it illustrates to him. Who can estimate this ? Who can guess how much firm- ness the sea-beaten rock has taught the fisherman ? how much tranquillity has been reflected to man from the azure sky, over whose unspotted deeps the winds forevermore drive flocks of stormy clouds, and leave no wrinkle or stain ? how much industry and providence and affection we have caught from the pantomime of brutes ? What a searching preacher of self-command is the varying phe- nomenon of Health ! 166 AMERICAN LITERATURE. EACH AND ALL. Little thinks, in the fiekl, yon red-cloaked clown Of thee from the hill-top looking down ; The heifer that lows in the upland farm, Far-heard, lows not thine ear to charm ; The sexton, tolling his bell at noon, Deems not that great Napoleon Stops his horse, and lists with delight, Whilst his files sweep round yon Alpine height; Nor knowest thou what argument Thy life to thy neighbor's creed has lent. All are needed by each one ; Nothing is fair or good alone. I thought the sparrow's note from heaven. Singing at dawn on the alder bough ; I brought him home, in his nest, at even ; He sings the song, but it cheers not now, For I did not bring home the river and sky ; — He sang to my ear, — they sang to my eye. The delicate shells lay on the shore ; The bubbles of the latest wave Fresh pearls to their enamel gave, And the bellowing of the savage sea Greeted their safe escape to me. I wiped away the weeds and foam, I fetched my sea-born treasures home ; But the poor, unsightly, noisome things Had left their beauty on the shore With the sun and the sand and the wild uproar. The lover watched his graceful maid. As 'mid the virgin train she strayed. Nor knew her beauty's best attire Was woven still by the snow-white choir. At last she came to his hermitage. Like the bird from the woodlands to the cage : — RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 167 The gay encliantment was undone, A gentle wife, but fairy none. Then I said, " I covet truth ; Beau.ty is unripe chiklhood's cheat ; I leave it behind with the games of youth " : — As I spoke, beneath my feet The ground-pine curled its pretty wreath, Eunning over the club-moss burrs ; I inhaled the violet's breath ; Around me stood the oaks and firs ; Pine-cones and acorns lay on the ground ; Over me soared the eternal sky, Full of light and of deity ; Again I saw, again I heard. The rolling river, the morning bird : — Beauty through my senses stole ; I yielded myself to the perfect whole. THE WORLD-SOUL. Thanks to the morning light. Thanks to the foaming sea. To the uplands of New Hampshire, To the green-haired forest-tree ; Thanks to each man of courage. To the maids of holy mind, To the boy with his games undaunted Who never looks behind. Cities of proud hotels, Houses of rich and great, Vice nestles in your chambers. Beneath your roofs of slate. It cannot conquer folly, — Time-and-space-conquering steam, — 168 AMERICAN LITERATURE. And the light-out-speediug telegraph Bears nothing on its beam. The politics are base ; The letters do not cheer ; And 'tis far in the deeps of history, The voice that speaketh clear. Trade and the streets ensnare us, Our bodies are weak and worn ; We plot and corrupt each other. And we despoil the unborn. Yet there in the parlor sits Some figure of noble guise, — Our angel, in a stranger's form. Or woman's pleading eyes ; Or only a flashing sunbeam In at the window-pane ; Or music pours on mortals Its beautiful disdain. The inevitable morning Finds them who in cellars be ; And be sure the all-loving Nature Will smile in a factory. Yon ridge of purple landscape. Yon sky between the walls. Hold all the hidden wonders In scanty intervals. Alas ! the Sprite that haunts us Deceives our rash desire ; It whispers of the glorious gods, And leaves us in the mire. We cannot learn the cipher That's writ upon our cell ; Stars taunt us by a mystery Which we could never spell. RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 169 If but one hero knew it, The world would blush in flame ; The sage, till he hit the secret, Would hang his head for shame. Our brothers have not read it, Not one has found the key ; And henceforth we are comforted,— We are but such as they. Still, still the secret presses ; The nearing clouds draw down ; The crimson morning flames into The fopperies of the town. Within, without the idle earth. Stars weave eternal rings ; The sun himself shines heartily, And shares the joy he brings. And what if Trade sow cities Like shells along the shore, And thatch with towns the prairie broad With railways ironed o'er ? — They are but sailing foam-bells Along Thought's causing stream. And take their shape and sun-color From him that sends the dream. For Destiny never swerves. Nor yields to men the helm ; He shoots his thought, by hidden nerves, Throughout the solid realm. The patient Daemon sits. With roses and a shroud; He has his way, and deals his gifts,— But ours is not allowed. 170 AMERICAN LITERATURE. He is no churl nor trifler, And his viceroy is none, — Love without weakness, — Of Genuis sire and son. And his will is not thwarted ; The seeds of land and sea Are the atoms of his body bright, And his behest obey. He serveth the servant, The brave he loves amain ; He kills the cripple and the sick, And straight begins again ; For gods delight in gods, And thrust the weak aside ; To him who scorns iheir charities, Their arms fly open wide. When the old world is sterile And the ages are effete, He will from wrecks and sediment The fairer world complete. He forbids to despair ; His cheeks mantle with mirth ; And the unimagined good of men Is yearning at the birth. Spring still makes spring in the mind When sixty years are told ; Love wakes anew this throbbing heart, And we are never old. Over the winter glaciers I see the summer glow, And through the wild-piled snow-drift. The warm rosebuds below. RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 171 FORERUNNERS. Long I followed happy guides, I could never reach their sides ; Their step is forth, and, ere the day Breaks up their leaguer, and away. Keen my sense, my heart was young, Right good-will my sinews strung. But no speed of mine avails To hunt upon their shining trails. On and away, their hasting feet Make the morning proud and sweet ; Flowers they strew, — I catch the scent ; Or tone of silver instrument Leaves on the wind melodious trace ; Yet I could never see their face. On eastern hills I see their smokes. Mixed with mist by distant locks. I met many travellers Who the road had surely kept ; They saw not my fine revellers, — These had crossed them while they slept. Some had heard their fair report. In the county or the court. Fleetest couriers alive Never yet could once arrive. As they went or they returned. At the house where these sojourned. Sometimes their strong speed they slacken, Though they are not overtaken; In sleep their jubilant troop is near, — I tuneful voices overhear ; It may be in wood or waste, — At unawares 'tis come and past. Their near camp my spirit knows By signs gracious as rainbows. 172 AMERICAN LITERATURE. I thenceforward and long after Listen for their harp-like laughter, And carry in my heart for days Peace that hallows rudest Avays. CONCORD HYMN. By the rude bridge that arched the flood, Their flag to Aj^ril's breeze unfurled, Here once the embattled farmers stood, And fired the shot heard round the world. The foe long since in silence slept ; Alike the conqueror silent sleeps ; And Time the ruined bridge has swept Down the dark stream which seaward creeps. On this green bank, by this soft stream. We set to-day a votive stone ; That memory may their deed redeem, When, like our sires, our sons are gone. Spirit, that made those heroes dare To die, and leave their children free, Bid Time and Nature gently spare The shaft we raise to them and thee. TWO RIVERS. Thy summer voice, Musketaquit, Repeats the music of the rain ; But sweeter rivers pulsing flit Through thee, as thou through Concord Plain. RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 173 Thou in thy narrow banks art pent : The stream I love unbounded goes Through flood and sea and firmament ; Through light, through life, it forward flows. I see the inundation sweet, I hear the spending of the stream Through years, through men, through nature fleet, Through love and thought, through power and dream. Musketaquit, a goblin strong, Of shard and flint makes jewels gay ; They lose their grief who hear his song. And where he winds is the day of day. So forth and brighter fares my stream, — Who drink it shall not thirst again ; No darkness stains its equal gleam, And ages drop in it like rain. 174 AMERICAN LITERATURE. Cfjarlrs JFmno f^offman. [b. New York, New York, 1806. d. June 7, 1884. j THE BOB-O-LINKUM. Thou vocal sprite — thou feather'd troubadour ! In pilgrim weeds through many a clime a ranger, Coms't thou to doff thy russet suit once more, And play in foppish trim the masquing stranger ? Philosophers may teach thy whereabouts and nature, But wise, as all of us, perforce, must think 'em. The school-boy best hath fix'd thy nomenclature, And poets, too, must call thee Bob-0-Linkum. Say ! art thou, long mid forest glooms benighted. So glad to skim our laughing meadows over — With our gay orchards here so much delighted, It makes thee musical, thou airy rover ? Or are those buoyant notes the pilfer'd treasure Of fairy isles, which thou hast learn'd to ravish Of all their sweetest minstrelsy at pleasure, And Ariel-like, again on men to lavish ? They tell sad stories of thy mad-cap freaks Wherever o'er the land thy pathway ranges ; And even in a brace of wandering weeks, They say, alike thy song and plumage changes : Here both are gay ; and when the buds put forth, And leafy June is shading rock and river, Thou art unmatch'd, blithe warbler of the North, While through the balmy air thy clear notes quiver. CHARLES FENNO HOFFMAN. 175 Joyous, yet tender — was that gvish of song Caught from the brooks, where mid its wild flowers smiling The silent prairie listens all day long. The only captive to such sweet beguiling ; Or didst thou, flitting through the verdurous halls And column'd isles of western groves symphonious, Learn from the tuneful woods rare madrigals, To make our flowering pastures here harmonious ? Caught'st thou thy carol from Ottawa maid, Where through the liquid fields of wild rice plashing Brushing the ears from off the burden'd blade, Her birch canoe o'er some lone lake is flashing ? Or did the reeds of some Savannah South, Detain thee while thy northern flight pursuing, To place those melodies in thy sweet mouth. The spice-fed winds had taught them in their wooing ? Unthrifty prodigal ! is no thought of ill Thy ceaseless roundelay disturbing ever ? Or doth each pulse in choiring cadence still Throb on in music till at rest for ever ? Yet now in wilder'd maze of concord floating, 'Twould seem that glorious hymning to prolong, Old Time in hearing thee might fall a-doating And pause to listen to thy rapturous song ! TO AN AUTUMN ROSE. Tell her I love her — love her for those eyes Now soft with feeling, radiant now with mirth, Which, like a lake reflecting autumn skies, Eeveal two heavens here to us on earth — The one in which their soulful beauty lies. And that Avherein such soulfulness has birth : 176 AMERICAN LITERATURE. Go to my lady ere the season flies, And the rude winter comes thy bloom to blast — Go ! and with all of eloquence thou hast. The burning story of my love discover, And if the theme should fail, alas ! to move her, Tell her when youth's gay budding-time is past, And summer's gaudy flowering is over, Like thee, my love will blossom to the last ! HENR Y WADS WOR TH L ONGFELL OW. 177 Ifttrjj SEatisbJort!) lEongfrllobj. [b. Portland, Maine, February 27, 1807. d. March 24, 1882.] FOOTPRINTS OF ANGELS. And now the sun was growing high and warm. A little chapel, whose door stood open, seemed to invite Flemming to enter and enjoy the grateful coolness. He went in. There was no one there. The walls Hyperion, were covered with paintings and sculpture of the rudest kind, and with a few funeral tablets. There was nothing there to move the heart to devotion ; but in that hour the heart of Flemming was weak, — weak as a child's. He bowed his stubborn knees, and wept. And, 0, how many disappointed hopes, how many bitter recollections, how much of wounded pride and unrequited love, were in those tears through which he read, on a marble tablet in the chapel wall opposite, this singular inscription : — " Look not mournfully into the Past. It comes not back. Wisely improve the Present. It is thine. Go forth to meet the shadowy Future, without fear, and with a manly heart." It seemed to him as if the unknown tenant of that grave had oj)ened his lips of dust, and spoken to him the words of consolation which his soul needed, and which no friend had yet spoken. In a moment the anguish of his thoughts was still. The stone was rolled away from the door of his heart ; death Avas no longer there, but an angel clothed in white. He stood up, and his eyes were no more bleared with tears ; and, looking into the bright morning heaven, he said : — " I will be strong ! " Men sometimes go down into tombs, with painful long- 1 < b AMERICAN LITER A TURE. ings to behold once more the faces of their departed friends ; and as they gaze tipon them, lying there so peacefully with the semblance that they wore on earth, the sweet breath of heaven touches them, and the features crumble and fall together, and are but dust. So did his soul then descend for the last time into the great tomb of the Past, with pain- fid longings to behold once more the dear faces of those he had loved ; and the sweet breath of heaven touched them, and they would not stay, but crumbled away and perished as he gazed. They, too, were dust. And thus, far-sounding, he heard the great gate of the Past shut behind him, as the divine poet did the gate of Paradise, when the angel pointed him the way up the Holy Mountain; and to him likewise was it forbidden to look back. In the life of every man there are sudden transitions of feeling, which seem almost miraculous. At once, as if some magician had touched the heavens and the earth, the dark clouds melt into the air, the wind falls, and serenity succeeds the storm. The causes which produce these sud- den changes may have been long at work within us ; but the changes themselves are instantaneous, and apparently without sufficient cause. It was so with Plemming; and from that hour forth he resolved that he would no longer veer with every shifting wind of circumstance, — no longer be a childis plaything in the hands of Pate, which we our- selves do make or mar. He resolved henceforward not to lean on others ; but to walk self-confident and self-pos- sessed, — no longer to waste his years in vain regrets, nor wait the fulfilment of boundless hopes and indiscreet desires ; but to live in the Present wisely, alike forgetful of the Past, and careless of what the mysterious Future might bring. And from that moment he was calm and strong; he was reconciled with himself. His thoughts turned to his distant home beyond the sea. An indescriba- ble sweet feeling rose within him. "Thither will I turn my wandering footsteps," said he, "and be a man among men, and no longer a dreamer among HENRY WADS WORTH LONGFELLOW. 179 shadows. Henceforth be mine a life of action and reality ! I will work in my own sphere, nor wish it other than it is. This alone is health and happiness." THE ARROW AND THE SONG. I shot an arrow into the air, It fell to earth, I knew not where ; For, so swiftly it flew, the sight Could not follow it in its flight. I breathed a song into the air, It fell to earth, I knew not where ; For who has sight so keen and strong, That it can follow the flight of song? Long, long afterward, in an oak I found the arrow, still unbroke ; And the song, from beginning to end, I found again in the heart of a friend. THE BRIDGE. I stood on the bridge at midnight, As the clocks were striking the hour, And the moon rose o'er the city Behind the dark church-tower. I saw her bright reflection In the waters under me, Like a golden goblet falling And sinking into the sea. 180 AMERICAN LITERATURE. And far in the hazy distance Of that lovely night in June, The blaze of the flaming furnace Gleamed redder than the moon. Among the long, black rafters The wavering shadows lay, And the current that came from the ocean Seemed to lift and bear them away ; As, sweeping and eddying through them, Eose the belated tide. And, streaming into the moonlight, The sea-weed floated wide. And like those waters rushing Among the wooden piers, A flood of thoughts came o'er me That filled my eyes with tears. How often, how often, In the days that had gone by, I had stood on that bridge at midnight. And gazed on that wave and sky ! How often, how often, I had wished that the ebbing tide Would bear me away on its bosom O'er the ocean wild and wide ! For my heart was hot and restless, And my life was full of care. And the burden laid upon me Seemed greater than I could bear. But now it has fallen from me. It is buried in the sea ; And only the sorrow of others Throws its shadow over me. HENRY WADS WORTH LONGFELLOW. 181 Yet whenever I cross the river On its bridge with wooden piers, Like the odor of brine from the ocean Conies the thought of other years. And I think how many thousands Of care-encumbered men, Each bearing his burden of sorrow, Have crossed the bridge since then. I see the long procession Still passing to and fro. The young heart hot and restless, And the old subdued and slow ! And forever and forever. As long as the river flows, As long as the heart has passions, As long as life has woes ; The moon and its broken reflection And its shadows shall appear. As the symbol of love in heaven. And its wavering image here. SUNSET. [From " Evangeline."] Softly the evening came. The sun from the western horizon Like a magician extended his golden wand o'er the land- scape ; Twinkling vapors arose ; and sky and water and forest Seemed all on fire at the touch, and melted and mingled together. Hanging between two skies, a cloud with edges of silver, Floated the boat, with its dripping oars, on the motionless water. 182 AMERICAN LITERATURE. Filled was Evangeline's heart with inexpressible sweetness. Touched by the magic spell, the sacred fountains of feeling Glowed with the light of love, as the skies and waters around her. Then from a neighboring thicket the mocking-bird, wildest of singers. Swinging aloft on a willow spray that hung o'er the water. Shook from his little throat such floods of delirious music, That the whole air and the woods and the waves seemed silent to listen. Plaintive at first were the tones and sad ; then soaring to madness Seemed they to follow or guide the revel of frenzied Bac- chantes. Single notes were then heard, in sorrowful, low lamentation; Till, having gathered them all, he flung them abroad in derision. As when, after a storm, a gust of wind through the tree-tops Shakes down the rattling rain in a crystal shower on the branches. LAUNCHING THE SHIP. Then the Master, With a gesture of command, Waved his hand ; And at the word. Loud and sudden there was heard, All around them and below. The sound of hammers, blow on blow. Knocking away the shores and spurs. And see ! she stirs ! She starts, — she moves, — she seems to feel The thrill of life along her keel, And, spurning with her foot the ground. With one exulting, joyous bound, She leaps into the Ocean's arms ! HENRY WADSWORTII LONGFELLOW. 183 And lo ! from the assembled crowd There rose a shout, prolonged and loud, That to the Ocean seemed to say, " Take her, bridegroom, old and gray. Take her to thy protecting arms, With all her youth and all her charms ! " How beautiful she is ! How fair She lies within those arms that press Her form with many a soft caress Of tenderness and watchful care ! Sail forth into the sea, ship ! Through wind and wave, right onward steer ! The moistened eye, the trembling lip, Are not the signs of doubt or fear. Sail forth into the sea of life, 0, gentle, loving, trusting wife. And safe from all adversity Upon the bosom of that sea Thy comings and thy goings be ! For gentleness and love and trust Prevail o'er angry wave and gust ; And in the wreck of noble lives Something immortal still survives ! Thou, too, sail on, Ship of State ! Sail on, Union, strong and great ! Humanity with all its fears, With all the hopes of future years, Is hanging breathless on thy fate ! We know what Master laid thy keel. What Workmen wrought thy ribs of steel. Who made each mast, and sail, and rope. What anvils rang, what hammers beat. In what a forge and what a heat Were shaped the anchors of thy hope ! 184 AMERICAN LITERATURE. Fear not each sudden sound and shock, 'Tis of the wave and not the rock ; 'Tis but the flapping of the sail, And not a rent made by the gale ! In spite of rock and tempest's roar, In spite of false lights on the shore. Sail on, nor fear to breast the sea ! Our hearts, our hopes are all with thee, Our hearts, our hopes, our prayers, our tears, Our faith triumphant o'er our fears, Are all with thee, — are all with thee ! HIAWATHA'S WOOING. She was thinking of a hunter. From another tribe and country, Young and tall and very handsome, Who one morning, in the spring-time. Came to buy her father's arrows. Sat and rested in the wigwam, Lingered long about the doorway, Looking back as he departed. She had heard her father praise him. Praise his courage and his wisdom; Would he come again for arrows To the Falls of Minnehaha ? On the mat her hands lay idle. And her eyes were very dreamy. Through their thoughts they heard a footstep, Heard a rustling in the branches. And with glowing cheek and forehead. With the deer upon his shoulders, Suddenly from out the woodlands Hiawatha stood before them. HENRY WADSWORTII LONGFELLOW. 185 Straight the ancient arrow-maker Looked up gravely from his labor, Laid aside the unfinished arrow, Bade him enter at the doorway, Saying, as he rose to meet him, " Hiawatha, you are welcome ! " At the feet of Laughing Water Hiawatha laid his burden. Threw the red deer from his shoulders ; And the maiden looked up at him, Looked up from her mat of rushes. Said with gentle look and accent, " You are welcome, Hiawatha ! " Very spacious was the wigwam, Made of deer-skin dressed and whitened, With the gods of the Dacotahs Drawn and painted on its curtains. And so tall the doorway, hardly Hiawatha stooped to enter, Hardly touched his eagle feathers As he entered at the doorway. Then uprose the Laughing Water, From the ground fair Minnehaha, Laid aside her mat unfinished. Brought forth food and set before them. Water brought them from the brooklet. Gave them food in earthen vessels. Gave them drink in bowls of bass-wood. Listened while the guest was speaking. Listened while her father answered. But not once her lips she opened, Not a single word she uttered. Yes, as in a dream she listened To the words of Hiawatha, As he talked of old Nokomis, Who had nursed him in his childhood. 186 AMERICAN LITERATURE. As lie told of his companions, Cliibiabos, tlie musician, And the very strong man, Kwasind, And of happiness and j)lenty In the land of the Ojibways, In the pleasant land and peaceful. " After many years of warfare, Many years of strife and bloodshed. There is peace between the Ojibways And the tribe of the Dacotahs." Thus continued Hiawatha, And then added, speaking slowly, ^' That this peace may last forever. And our hands be clasped more closely. And our hearts be more united, Give me as my wife this maiden, Minnehaha, Laughing Water, Loveliest of Dacotah women ! " And the ancient arrow-maker Paused a moment ere he answered, Smoked a little while in silence, Looked at Hiawatha proudly, Fondly looked at Laughing Water, And made answer very gravely : " Yes, if Minnehaha wishes ; Let your heart speak, Minnehaha ! " And the lovely Laughing Water Seemed more lovely, as she stood there, Neither willing nor reluctant. As she went to Hiawatha, Softly took the seat beside him, While she said, and blushed to say it, " I will follow you, my husband ! " This was Hiawatha's wooing! Thus it was he won the daughter Of the ancient arrow-maker, In the land of the Dacotahs ! t:Y WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. 187 NATURE. As a fond mothf^r, when the day is o'er, Leads by tht- hand her little child to bed, Half willing, half reluctant to be led, And leave his Inoken playthings on the floor, Still gazing at them through the open door, Nor wholly reassured and comforted By promises of others in their stead, Which, though riore splendid, may not please him more : So N"atuTe deals with us, and takes away Our playthings one by one, and by the hand Leads us to rest so gently, that we go Scarce knowing if we wish to go or stay, "Being too full of sleep to understand How far the unknown transcends the what we know. 188 AMERICAN LITERATUhE. [b. Westhampton, Massachusetts, July 23, 1813. c January 26, IS.ia.l A MIDWINTER WALl Chili ON demanded attention ; his foot pained him ; it grew swollen and inflamed. Margaret bathed and poulticed it, she held it in her lap and soothed it with her Margaret, hand. A preparation of the Widow's was sug- gested. Hash would not go for it, Pluck and his wife could not, and Margaret must go. Bull could not go with her and she must go alone. She was equipped with a warm hood, martin-skin tippet, ami a pair of stiow- shoes. She mounted the high, white, flufi'y plain, and went on with a soft, yielding, yet light step, aliuost as noiseless as if she were walking the clouds. There was no guide but the trees ; ditches by the way-side, knolls, stones, were all a uniform level. She saw a slightly raised mound, indi- cating a large rock she clambered over in summer. lUack spikes and seed-heads or dead golden-rods and muJeins dotted the way. Here was a grape-vine that seemed to have had a skirmish with the storm and both to have con- quered, for the vine was crushed, and the snow lay in tat- ters upon it. About the trunk of some of the largo trees was a hollow pit reaching quite to the ground, whi're the snow had waltzed round and round till it grew tired, and left. Wherever there was a fence, thither had tho storm betaken itself, and planted alongside mountain-like embank- ments, impenetrable dikes, and inaccessible bluffs. Entering thicker woods Margaret saw tbe deep, unalloy. 1 beauty of the season; the large moist flak.-s that fell in tin; morning had furred and mossed every lim l> and twig, each minute process and filament, each aglet and threr;-' "^ ^^ SYLVESTER JUDD. 189 the pure spirits of the air had undertaken to frost the trees for the marriage festival of their Prince. The slender white birches, with silver bark and ebon boughs, that grew along the path, were bent over ; their arms met intertwin- ingly; and thus was formed a perfect arch, voluptuous, dream-like, glittering, under which she went. All was silent as the moon ; there was no sound of birds, or cows, sheep, dinner-horns, axes, or wind. There was no life, but only this white, shining, still-life wrought in boreal ivory. No life ? From the dusky woods darted out those birds that bide a New England winter ; dove-colored nuthatches quank-quanked among the hemlocks ; a whole troop of tit- mice and woodpeckers came bustling and whirring across the way, shaking a shower of fine tiny raylets of snow on the child's head ; she saw the graceful snowbirds, our com- mon bird, with ivory bill, slate-colored back, and white breast, perched on the top of the mulleins and picking out the seeds. Above all, far above the forest and the snow- capped hills, caw-cawed the great black crow. All at once, too, darted up from the middle of a snow drift by the side of the road, a little red squirrel, who sat bolt upright on his hind legs, gravely folded his paws and surveyed her for a moment, as much as to say, " How do you do ? " then in a trice, with a squeak, he dove back into his hole. . . . When Margaret left for home the sun had gone down, and the moon rose full, to run its high circuit in these win- ter heavens. The snow that had melted on the trees during the day, as the cool air of evening came on descended in long wavy icicles from the branches, and the woods in their entire perspective were tricked with these pendants. It was magic land to the child, almost as beautiful as her dream, and she looked for welcome faces up among the glit- tering trees, and far off in the white clouds. It was still as her dream, too, and her own voice as she went singing along, echoing in the dark forest, was all she could hear. The moon tinged the icicles with a bright silver lustre, and the same pure radiancy was reflected from the snow. Anon 190 AMERICAN LITERATURE. she fell into the shade of the moon on her left ; while at her right, through the dark boughs of the evergreens, she saw the planet Venus, large and brilliant, just setting on the verge of the horizon in the impearled pathway of the sun. She thought of her other dream at the still, of Beauty, fair sister of three fair sisters, and she might have gone off in waking dreams among the fantasies of real existence, when she was drawn back by the recollection of her brother, to whose assistance she hastened. It was very cold, her breath showed like smoke in the clear atmosphere, and the dew from her mouth froze on her tippet. All at once there was a glare of red light about her ; the silver icicles were transformed to rubies, and the snow-fields seemed to bloom with glowing sorrel flowers. It was the Northern Lights that shot up their shafts, snapped their sheets, unfurled their flaming pennons, and poured their rich crimson dyes upon the enamelled earth. She thought the winter and the world were beautiful, her way became more bright, and she hurried on to Chilion, for whom, day by day, hour by hour, she labored and watched, assiduously, tenderly; till his foot mended apace, though it never got entirely well. WILLIAM GILMORE SIMMS. 191 SEilUam 0ilmorc .Simms:* [b. Charleston, South Carolina, April 17, 1806. d. June 11, 1870.] A SUDDEN HURRICANE. The evening, which had been beautiful before, had under- gone a change. The moon was obscured, and gigantic shadows, dense and winged, hurried with deep- toned cries along the heavens, as if in angry pur- p ° . suit. Occasionally, in sudden gusts, the winds moaned heavily among the pines ; a cooling freshness im- pregnated the atmosphere, and repeated flashes of sharpest lightning imparted to the prospect a splendor which illumi- nated, while increasing the perils of that path which our adventurers were now pursuing. Large drops, at moments, fell from the driving clouds, and everything promised the coming on of one of those sudden and severe thunder- storms, so common to the early summer of the South. Singleton looked up anxiously at the wild confusion of sky and forest around him. The woods seemed to appre- hend the danger, and the melancholy sighing of their branches appeared to indicate an instinctive consciousness, which had its moral likeness to the feeling in the bosom of the observer. How many of these mighty pines were to be prostrated under that approaching tempest ! how many beautiful vines, which had clung to them like affections that only desire an object to fasten upon, would share in their ruin ! How could Singleton overlook the analogy between the fortune of his family and friends, and that which his imagination depicted as the probable destiny of the forest ? "We shall have it before long, Humphries, for you see the black horns yonder in the break before us. I begin to feel 192 AMERICAN LITERATURE. the warm breath of the hurricane already, and we must look out for some smaller woods. I like not these high pines in a storm like this, so use your memory, man, and lead on to some thicket of scrubby oaks — if you can think of one near at hand. Ha ! — we must speed — we have lingered too long. Why did you not hurry me ? You should have known how difficult it was for me to hurry myself in such a situation." This was spoken by Singleton, at moments when the gusts permitted him to be heard, and when the irregularity of the route suffered his companion to keep beside him. The lieutenant answered promptly : — " That was the very reason why I did not wish to hurry you, major. I knew you hadn't seen your folks for a mighty long spell, and so I couldn't find it in my heart to break in upon you, though I felt dub'ous that the storm would be soon upon us." "A bad reason for a soldier. Friends and family are scarcely desirable at such a time as this, since we can sel- dom see them, or only see their suffering. Ha ! — that was sharp ! " " Yes, sir, but at some distance. We are coming to the stunted oaks now, which are rather squat, and not so likely to give as the pines. There ain't so much of 'em, you see. Keep a look out, sir, or the branches will pull you from your horse. The road here is pretty much overgroAvn, and the vines crowd thick upon it." " A Avord in season ! " exclaimed Singleton, as he drew back before an overhanging branch which had been bent by the wind, and was thrust entirely across his path. A few moments were spent in rounding the obstruction, and the storm grew heavier ; the winds no longer labored among the trees, but rushed along with a force which flattened their elastic tops, so that it either swept clean through tliem or laid them prostrate forever. A stronger hold, a positive straining in their effort, became necessary now, with both riders, in order to secure themselves firmly in their saddles ; WILLIAM GILMOIiE SIMMS. 193 while their horses, with uplifted ears, and an occasional snort, in this manner, not less than by the shiver of their whole frames, betrayed their own apprehensions, and, as it were, appealed to their masters for protection. " The dumb beast knows where to look, after all, major ; he knows that man is most able, you see, to take care of him, though man wants his keeper too. But the beast don't know that. He's like the good soldier that minds his own captain, and looks to him only, though the captain himself has a general from whom he gets his orders. Now, say what you will, major, there's reason in the horse — the good horse, I mean, for some horses that I've straddled in my time have shown themselves mighty foolish and unreason- able." Humphries stroked the neck of his steed fondly, and coaxed him by an affectionate word, as he uttered himself- thus, with no very profound philosophy. He seemed desir- ous of assuring the steed that he held him of the better class, and favored him accordingly. Singleton assented to the notion of his companion, who did not, however, see the smile which accompanied his answer. "Yes, yes, Humphries, the horse knows his master, and is the least able or willing of all animals to do without him. I would we had our nags in safety now : I would these five miles were well over." " It's a tough ride ; but that's so much the better, major, the less apt we are to be troubled with the tories." "■ I should rather plunge through a crowd of them, now, in a. charge against superior cavalry, than take it in such a night as this, when the wind lifts you, at every bound, half out of your saddle, and, but for the lightning, which comes quite too nigh to be at all times pleasant, your face would make momentary acquaintance with boughs and branches, vines and thorns, that give no notice and leave their mark at every brush. A charge were far less difficult." "Almost as safe, sir, that's certain, and not more unpleas- ant. But let us hold up, major, for a while, and push for 194 AMERICAN LITERATURE. the thicket. We shall now have the worst of the hurricane. See the edge of it yonder — how black ! and now — only hear the roaring ! " " Yes, it comes. I feel it on my cheek. It sends a breath like fire before it, sultry and thick, as if it had been sweep- ing all day over beds of the hottest sand. Lead the way, Humphries." "Here, sir, — follow close and quick. There's a clump of forest, with nothing but small trees, lying to the left — now, sir, that flash will show it to you — there we can be snug till the storm passes over. It has a long body and it shakes mightily, but it goes too fast to stay long in its jour- ney, and a few minutes, sir — a few minutes is all we want. Mind the vine there, sir ; and there, to your left, is a gully, where an old tree's roots have come up. Now, major, the sooner we dismount and squat with our horses the better." They had now reached the spot to which Humphries had directed his course — a thick undergrowth of small timber — of field pine, the stunted oak, black-jack, and hickory — few of sufficient size to feel the force of the tempest, or prove very conspicuous conductors of the lightning. Obeying the suggestion and following the example of his companion. Singleton dismounted, and the two placed themselves and their horses as much upon the sheltered side of the clump as possible, yet sufficiently far to escape any danger from its overthrow. Here they awaited the coming of the tempest. The experienced woodman alone could have spoken for its ap- proach. A moment's pause had intervened, when the sud- denly aroused elements seemed as suddenly to have sunk into grim repose. A slight sighing of the wind only, as it wound sluggishly along the distant wood, had its warning, and the dense blackness of the embodied storm was only evident at moments when the occasional rush of the light- ning made visible its gloomy terrors. "It's making ready for a charge, major: it's just like a good captain, sir, that calls in his scouts and sentries, and WILLIAM GILMORE SIMMS. 195 orders all things to keep quiet, and Avitliout beat of drum gets all fixed to spring (Jut from the bush upon them that's coming. It won't be long now, sir, before we get it ; but just now it's still as the grave. It's waiting for its out- riders — them long streaky white clouds it sent out an hour ago, like so many scouts. They're a-coming up now, and when they all get up together — then look out for the squall. Quiet now, Mossf oot — quiet now, creature — don't be fright- ened — it's not a-going to hurt you, old fellow — not a bit." Humphries patted his favorite while speaking, and strove to soothe and quiet the impatience which both horses ex- hibited. This was in that strange pause of the storm which is its most remarkable feature in the South — that singular interregnum of the winds, when, after giving repeated notice of their most terrific action, they seem almost to forget their purpose, and for a few moments appear to slumber in their inactivity. But the pause was only momentary, and was now at an end. In another instant, they heard the rush and the roar, as of a thousand wild steeds of the desert ploughing the sands ; then followed the mournful howling of the trees — the shrieking of the lashed winds, as if, under the influence of some fierce demon who enjoyed his triumph, they j)lunged through the forest, wailing at their own destructive prog- ress, yet compelled unswervingly to hurry forward. They twisted the pine from its place, snapping it as a reed, while its heavy fall to the ground which it had so long sheltered, called up, even amid the roar of the tempest, a thousand echoes from the forest. The branches of the wood were prostrated like so much heather, wrested and swept from the tree which yielded them without a struggle to the blast ; and the crouching horses and riders below were in an instant covered with a cloud of fragments. These were the precursors merely; then came the arrowy flight and form of the hurricane itself — its actual bulk — its em- bodied power, pressing along through the forest in a gyratory progress, not fifty yards wide, never distending in 196 AMERICAN LITERATURE. width, yet capriciously winding from right to left, and left to right, in a zigzag direction, as 'if a playful spirit thus strove to mix with all the terrors of destruction the spor- tive mood of the most idle fancy. In this progress, the whole wood in its path underwent prostration — the tall, proud pine, the deep-rooted and unbending oak, the small cedar and the pliant shrub, torn, dismembered of their fine proportions ; some, only by a timely yielding to the pres- sure, passed over with little injury, as if too much scorned by the assailant for his wrath. The larger trees in the neighborhood of the spot where our partisans had taken shelter, shared the harsher fortune generally, for they were in the very track of the tempest. Too sturdy and massive to yield, they withheld their homage, and were either snapped off relentlessly and short, or were torn and twisted up from their very roots. The poor horses, with eyes star- ing in the direction of the storm, with ears erect, and manes flying in the wind, stood trembling in every joint, too much terrified, or too conscious of their helplessness, to attempt to fly. All around the crouching party the woods for several seconds absolutely flattened. Huge trees were prostrated, and their branches were clustering thickly, and almost forming a prison around them ; leaving it doubtful, as the huge terror rolled over their heads, whether they could ever make their escape from the enclosure. Rush after rush of the trooping winds went over them, keeping them immovable in their crowded shelter and position — each, succeeding troop wilder and weightier than the last, until at length a sullen, bellowing murmur, which before they had not heard, announced the greater weight of the hurricane to be overthrowing the forests in the distance. The chief danger had overblown. Gradually the warm, oppressive breath passed off ; the air again grew suddenly cool, and a gush of heavy drops came falling from the heavens, as if they too had been just released from the intolerable pressure which had burdened earth. Moaning pitifully, the prostrated trees and shrubs, those which had WILLIAM GILMORE SIMMS. 197 survived the storm, though shorn by its scythes, gradually and seemingly with painful effort, once more elevated them- selves to their old position. Their sighings, as they did so, were almost human to the ears of our crouching warriors, whom their movement in part released. Far and near, the moaning of the forest around them was strangely, but not unpleasantly, heightened in its effect upon their senses, by the distant and declining roar of the past and far-travelling hurricane, as ploughing the deep woods and laying waste all in its progress, it rushed on to a meeting with the kin- dred storms that gather about the gloomy Cape Hatteras, and stir and foam along the waters of the Atlantic. THE LOST PLEIAD. Not in the sky, Where it was seen So long in eminence of light serene, — Nor on the white tops of the glistering wave. Nor down, in mansions of the hidden deep, Though beautiful in green And crystal, its great caves of mystery, — Shall the bright watcher have Her place, and, as of old, high station keep ! Gone ! gone ! Oh ! never more, to cheer The mariner, who holds his course alone On the Atlantic, through the weary night, When the stars turn to watchers, and do sleej Shall it again appear. With the sweet-loving certainty of light, Down shining on the shut eyes of the deep ! The upward looking shepherd on the hills Of Chaldea, night returning, with his flocks, 198 AMERICAN LITERATURE. He wonders why his beauty doth not blaze, Gladding his gaze, — And, from his dreary watch along the rocks, Guiding him homeward o'er the perilous ways ! How stands he waiting still, in a sad maze, Much wondering, while the drowsy silence fills The sorrowful vault ! — how lingers, in the hope that night May yet renew the expected and sweet light, So natural to his sight ! A.nd lone, Where, at the first, in smiling love she shone. Brood the once happy circle of bright stars : How should they dream, until her fate was known, That they were ever confiscate to death ? That dark oblivion the pure beauty mars. And, like the earth, its common bloom and breath. That they should fall from high, Their lights grow blasted by a touch, and die, — All their concerted springs of harmony Snapt rudely, and the generous music gone ! Ah ! still the strain Of wailing sweetness fills the saddening sky : The sister stars, lamenting in their pain That one of the selectest ones must die, — Must vanish, Avhen most lovely, from the rest ! Alas ! 'tis ever thus the destiny. Even Rapture's song hath evermore a tone Of wailing, as for bliss too quickly gone. The hope most precious is the soonest lost. The flower most sweet is first to feel the frost. Are not all short-lived things the loveliest ? And, like the pale star, shooting down the sky, Look they not ever brightest, as they fly From the lone sphere they blest ? THEODORE PARKER. 199 Ei}cotiorc ^arfter* [b. Lexington, Massachusetts, August '34, 1810. d. May 10, I860.] DEGREES OF GREATNESS. In general, greatness is eminence of ability ; so there are as many different forms thereof as there are qualities wherein a man may be eminent. These various q^ ^-^^ forms of greatness should be distinctly marked, Death of that, when Ave say a man is great, we may know Daniel exactly what we mean. Webster. In the rudest ages, when the body is man's only tool for work or war, eminent strength of body is the thing most coveted. Then, and so long as human affairs are controlled by brute force, the giant is thought to be the great man, — is had in honor for his eminent brute strength. When men have a little outgrown that period of force, cunning is the quality most prized. The nimble brain out- wits the heavy arm, and brings the circumvented giant to the ground. He who can overreach his antagonist, plotting more subtly, winning with more deceitful skill ; who can turn and double on his unseen track, "can smile and smile, and be a villain," — he is the great man. Brute force is merely animal ; cunning is the animalism of the intellect, — ; the mind's least intellectual element. As men go on in their development, finding qualities more valuable than the strength of the lion or the subtlety of the fox, they come to value higher intellectual faculties, — great understanding, great imagination, great reason. Power to think is then the faculty men value most; ability to devise means for attaining ends desired ; the power to origi- nate ideas, to express them in speech, to organize them into institutions ; to organize things into a machine, men into an 200 AMERICAN LITERATURE. army or a state, or a gang of operatives ; to administer these various organizations. He who is eminent in this ability is thought the great man. But there are qualities nobler than the mere intellect, — the moral, the affeetional, the religious faculties, — the power of justice, of love, of holiness, of trust in God, and of obedience to his law, — the eternal right. These are the highest qualities of man : whoso is most eminent therein is the greatest of great men. He is as much above the merely intellectual great men, as they above the men of mere cun- ning or force. Thus, then, we have four different kinds of greatness. Let me name them bodily greatness, crafty greatness, intel- lectual greatness, religious greatness. Men in different degrees of development will value the different kinds of greatness. Belial cannot yet honor Christ. How can the little girl appreciate Aristotle and Kant ? The child thinks as a child. You must have manhood in you to honor it in others, even to see it. Yet how we love to honor men eminent in such modes of greatness as we can understand ! Indeed, we must do so. Soon as we really see a real great man, his magnetism draws us, will we or no. Do any of you remember when, for the first time in adult years, you stood beside the ocean, or some great mountain of New Hampshire, or Virginia, or Pennsylvania, or the mighty mounts that rise in Switzer- land? Do you remember what emotions came upon you at the awful presence? But if you are confronted by a man of vast genius, of colossal history and achievements, immense personal power of wisdom, justice, philanthropy, religion, of mighty power of will and mighty act ; if you feel him as you feel the mountain and the sea, what grander emotions spring up ! It is like making the acquaintance of one of the elementary forces of the earth, — like associating with gravitation itself ! The stillest neck bends over ; down go the democratic knees ; human nature is loyal then ! A New-England shipmaster, wrecked on an island in the THEODORE PARKER. 201 Indian Sea, was seized by his conquerors, and made their chief. Their captive became their king. After years of rule, he managed to escape. When he once more visited his former realm, he found that the savages had carried him to heaven, and worshipped him as a god greater than their fancied deities : he had revolutionized divinity, and was himself enthroned as a god. Why so? In intellectual qualities, in religious qualities, he was superior to their idea of God, and so they worshipped him. Thus loyal is human nature to its great men. Talk of Democracy ! — we are all looking for a master ; a man manlier than we. We are always looking for a great man to solve the difficulty too hard for us, to break the rock which lies in our way, — to represent the possibility of human nature as an ideal, and then to realize that ideal in his life. Little boys in the country, working against time, with stints to do, long for the passing-by of some tall brother, who in a few minutes shall achieve what the smaller boy took hours to do. And we are all of us but little boys, looking for some great brother to come and help us end our tasks. But it is not quite so easy to recognize the greatest kind of greatness. A Nootka-Sound Indian would not see much in Leibnitz, Newton, Socrates, or Dante ; and if a great man were to come as much before us as we are before the Nootka- Sounders, what should we say of him ? Why, the worst names we could devise. Blasphemer, Hypocrite, Infidel, Atheist. Perhaps we should dig up the old cross, and make a new martyr of the man posterity will worship as a deity. It is the men who are up that see the rising sun, not the- sluggards. It takes greatness to see greatness, and know it at the first ; I mean to see greatness of the highest kind. Bulk anybody can see ; bulk of body or mind. The loftiest form of greatness is never popular in its time. Men cannot understand or receive it. Guinea negroes would think a juggler a greater man than Franklin. What would be thought of Martin Luther at Kome, of Washington at St. 202 AMERICAN LITERATURE. Petersburgh, of Fenelon among the Sacs and Foxes ? Herod and Pilate were popular in their day, — men of property and standing. They got nominations and honor enough, Jesus of Nazareth got no nomination, got a cross between two thieves, was crowned with thorns, and, when he died, eleven Galileans gathered together to lament their Lord. Any man can measure a walking-stick, — so many hands long, and so many nails beside; but it takes a mountain intellect to measure the Andes and Altai, HENRY DAVID THOREAU. 203 P?enr2 ©aijiti Cljoreau* [b. Concord, Massachusetts, July 12, 1817. d. May 6, 1862.] SOLITUDE. There can be no very black melancholy to him who lives in the midst of Nature, and has his senses still. There was never yet such a storm but it was J^olian music to a healthy and innocent ear. Nothing can Walden. rightly compel a simple and brave man to a vul- gar sadness. While I enjoy the friendship of the seasons I trust that nothing can make life a burden to me. The gentle rain which waters my beans and keeps me in the house to-day is not drear and melancholy, but good for me too. Though it prevents my hoeing them, it is of far more worth than my hoeing. If it should continue so long as to cause the seeds to rot in the ground and destroy the potatoes in the lowlands, it would still be good for the grass on the uplands, and, being good for the grass, it would be good for me. Sometimes, when I compare myself with other men, it seems as if I were more favored by the gods than they, beyond any deserts that I am conscious of; as if I had a warrant and surety at their hands which my fellows have not, and were especially guided and guarded. I do not flatter myself, but if it be possible they flatter me. I have never felt lonesome, or in the least oppressed by a sense of solitude, but once, and that was a few weeks after I came to the woods, when, for an hour, I doubted if the near neighborhood of man was not essential to a serene and healthy life. To be alone was something unpleasant. But I was at the same time conscious of a slight insanity in my mood, and seemed to foresee my recovery. In the midst of a gentle rain, while these thoughts prevailed, I was suddenly 204 AMERICAN LITERATURE. sensible of such sweet and beueficeut society in Nature, in the very pattering of the drops, and in every sound and sight around my house, an infinite and unaccountable friend- liness all at once like an atmosphere sustaining me, as made the fancied advantages of human neighborhood insignifi- cant, and I have never thought of them since. Every little pine-needle expanded and swelled with sympathy and be- friended me. I was so distinctly made aware of the pres- ence of something kindred to me, even in scenes which we are accustomed to call wild and dreary, and also that the nearest of blood to me and humanest was not a person nor a villager, that I thought no place could ever be strange to me again. MORNING AIR. What is the pill which will keep us well, serene, con- tented? Not my or thy great-grandfather's, but our great- grandmother Nature's universal, vegetable, botanic Walden. medicines, by which she has kept herself young always, outlived so many old Parrs in her day, and fed her health with their decaying fatness. For my panacea, instead of one of those quack vials dipped from Acheron and the Dead Sea, which came out of those long, shallow, black, schooner-looking wagons which we sometimes see made to carry bottles, let me have a draught of undiluted morning air. Morning air ! If men will not drink of this at the fountain-head of the day, why, then, we must even bottle up some and sell it in the shops, for the benefit of those who have lost their subscription ticket to morning time in this world. But remember, it will not keep quite till noon-day even in the coolest cellar, but drive out the stopples long ere that and follow westward the steps of Aurora. I am no worshipper of Hygiea, who was the daughter of that old herb-doctor ^sculapius, and who is represented on monuments holding a serpent in one hand, HENRY DAVID THOREAU. 205 and in the other a cup out of which the serpent sometimes drinks ; but rather of Hebe, cup-bearer to Jupiter, who was the daughter of Juno and wild lettuce, and who had the power of restoring gods and men to the vigor of youth. She was probably the only thoroughly sound-conditioned, healthy, and robust young lady that ever walked the globe, and wherever she came it was spring. WALDEN POND. It is a soothing employment on one of those fine days in the fall when all the warmth of the sun is fully appreciated, to sit on a stump on such a height as this, over- looking the pond, and study the dimpling circles "Walden. which are incessantly inscribed on its otherwise invisible surface amid the reflected skies and trees. Over this great expanse there is no distubance but it is thus at once gently smoothed away and assuaged, as, when a vase of water is jarred, the trembling circles seek the shore and all is smooth again. Not a fish can leap or an insect fall on the pond but it is thus reported in circling dimples, in lines of beauty, as it were the constant welling up of its fountain, the gentle pulsing of its life, the heav- ing of its breast. The thrills of joy and thrills of pain are undistinguishable. How peaceful the phenomena of the lake ! Again the works of man shine as in the spring. Ay, every leaf and twig and stone and cobweb sparkles now at mid-afternoon as when covered with dew in a spring morn- ing. Every motion of an oar or an insect produces a flash of light ; and if an oar falls, how sweet the echo ! In such a day, in September or October, Walden is a per- fect forest mirror, set around with stones as precious to my eye as if fewer or rarer. Nothing so fair, so pure, and at the same time so large, as a lake, perchance, lies on the sur- face of the earth. Sky water. It needs no fence. Nations come and go without defiling it. It is a mirror which no 206 AMERICAN LITERATURE. stone can crack, whose quicksilver will never wear off, whose gilding Nature continually repairs; no storms, no dust, can dim its surface ever fresh; — a mirror in which all impurity presented to it sinks, swept and dusted by the sun's hazy brush, — this the light dust-cloth, — which retains no breath that is breathed on it, but sends its own to float as clouds high above its surface, and be reflected in its bosom still. SPRING PROSPECTS. We talk about spring as at hand before the end of Feb- ruary, and yet it will be two good months, one-sixth part J, . of the whole year, before we can go a-Maying. Spring in There may be a whole month of solid and unin- Massachu- terrupted winter yet, plenty of ice, and good setts. sleighing. We may not even see the bare ground, and hardly the water ; and yet we sit down and warm our spirits annually with the distant prospect of spring. As if a man were to warm his hands by stretching them towards the rising sun, and rubbing them. We listen to the Feb- ruary cock-crowing and turkey-gobbling as to a first course or prelude. The bluebird, which some wood-chopper or inspired walker is said to have seen in that sunny interval between the snow-storms, is like a speck of clear blue sky seen near the end of a storm, reminding us of an ethereal region, and a heaven which we had forgotten. Princes and magistrates are often styled serene ; but what is their turbid serenity to that ethereal serenity which the bluebird em- bodies. His most serene Birdship ! His soft warble melts in the ear as the snow is melting in the valleys around. The bluebird comes, and with his warble drills the ice, and sets free the rivers and ponds and frozen ground. As the sand flows down the slopes a little way, assuming the forms of foliage when the frost comes out of the ground, so this little rill of melody flows a short way down the concave of the sky. HENRY DAVID THOREAU. 207 INSPIRATION, If with light head erect I sing, Though all the muses lend their force, From my poor love of anything, The verse is weak and shallow as its source. But if with bended neck I grope. Listening behind me for my wit. With faith superior to hope, More anxious to keep back than forward it ; Making my soul accomplice there Unto the flame my heart hath lit. Then will the verse forever wear, — Time cannot bend the line which God has writ, I hearing get, who had but ears. And sight, who had but eyes before ; I moments live, who lived but years, And truth discern, who knew but learning's lore. Now chiefly is my natal hour. And only now my prime of life ; Of manhood's strength it is the flower, 'Tis peace's end, and war's beginning strife. It comes in summer's broadest noon. By a gray wall, or some chance place, Unseasoning time, insulting June, And vexing day with its presuming face. I will not doubt the love untold Which not my worth nor want hath bought, Which woo'd me young, and woo'd me old, And to this evening hath me brought. 208 AMERICAN LITERATURE. ^braf)am 1Ltncolu» [b. Hardin County, Kentucky, February 12, 1809. d. April 15, 1865.] THE GETTYSBURG ADDRESS. Fourscore aud seven years ago our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are °^®™ " created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But in a larger sense we cannot dedicate, we cannot conse- crate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here ; but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining be- fore us, that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion ; that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that govern- ment of the people, by the people, aud for the people, shall not perish from the earth. GEORGE BANCROFT. 209 (Kforge Bancroft [b. Worcester, Massachusetts, October 3, 1800.] THE NEW ENGLAND PURITANS. There are some who love to enumerate the singularities of the early Puritans. They were opposed to wigs ; they could preach against veils ; they denounced long hair ; they disliked the cross in the banner, as History of much as the people of Paris disliked the lilies of g^ the Bourbons. They would not allow Christmas to be kept sacred ; they called neither months, nor days, nor seasons, nor churches, nor inns, by the names common in England ; they revived scripture names at christenings. The grave Komans legislated on the costume of men, and their senate could even stoop to interfere with the triumphs of the sex to which civic honors were denied ; the fathers of New England prohibited frivolous fashions in their own dress ; and their austerity, checking extravagance even in woman, frowned on her hoods of silk and her scarfs of tiffany, extended her sleeve to the wrist, and limited its greatest width to half an ell. The Puritans were formal and precise in their manners ; singular in the forms of their leg- islation. Every topic of the day found a place in their extemJ3oraneous prayers, and infused a stirring interest into their long and frequent sermons. The courts of Massachu- setts respected in practice the code of Moses ; in New Haven the members of the constituent committee were called the seven pillars, hewn out for the house of wisdom. But these are only forms, which gave to the new faith a marked exte- rior. If from the outside peculiarities we look to the genius of the sect itself, Puritanism had two cardinal principles : Faith in the absolute sovereignty of God, whose will is per- 210 AMERICAN LITERATURE. feet right ; and the Equality of all who believe that his will is to be done. It was Eeligion struggling in, with, and for the People ; a war against tyranny and superstition. " Its absurdities," says one of its scoffers, " were the shelter for the noble prin- ciples of liberty." It was its office to engraft the new insti- tutions of popular energy upon the old European system of a feudal aristocracy and popular servitude ; the good was permanent ; the outward emblems, which were the signs of the party, were of transient duration, like the clay and liga- ments which hold the graft in its place, and are brushed away as soon as the scion is firmly united. The principles of Puritanism proclaimed the civil mag- istrate subordinate to the authority of religion ; and its haughtiness in this respect has been compared to " the infat- uated arrogance " of a Eoman pontiff. In the firmness with Avhich their conviction was held, the Puritans did not yield to the Catholics ; and, if the will of God is the criterion of justice, both were, in one sense, in the right. The question arises. Who shall be the interpreter of that will ? In the Roman Catholic Church, the office was claimed by the infal- lible pontiff, who, as the self-constituted guardian of the oppressed, insisted on the power of dethroning kings, reveal- ing laws, and subverting dynasties. The principle thus asserted could not but become subservient to the temporal ambition of the clergy. Puritanism conceded no such power to its spiritual guides ; the church existed independent of its pastor, who owed his office to its free choice ; the will of the majority was its law; and each one of the brethren pos- sessed equal rights Avith the elders. The right, exercised by each congregation, of electing its OAvn ministers was in itself a moral revolution ; religion was now with the people, not over the people. Puritanism exalted the laity. Every individual who had experienced the raptures of devotion, every believer, who in moments of ecstacy had felt the assurance of the favor of God, was in his own eyes a con- secrated person, chosen to do the noblest and godliest deeds. GEORGE BANCROFT. 211 For him the wonderful counsels of the Almighty had ap- pointed a Saviour ; for him the laws of nature had been suspended and controlled, the heavens had opened, earth had quaked, the sun had veiled his face, and Christ had died and had risen again; for him prophets and apostles had revealed to the world the oracles and the will of God. Before Heaven he prostrated himself in the dust ; looking out upon mankind, how could he but respect himself, whom God had chosen and redeemed ? He cherished hope ; he possessed faith; as he walked the earth, his heart was in the skies. Angels hovered round his path, charged to minis- ter to his soul ; spirits of darkness vainly leagued together to tempt him from his allegiance. His burning piety could use no liturgy ; his penitence revealed itself to no confessor. He knew no superior in holiness. He could as little become the slave of priestcraft as of a despot. He was himself a judge of the orthodoxy of the elders ; and, if he feared the invisible powers of the air, of darkness, and of hell, he feared nothing on earth. Puritanism constituted not the Christian clergy, but the Christian people, the interpreter of the divine will ; and the issue of Puritanism was popular sovereignty. . . . Of all contemporary sects, the Puritans were the most free from credulity, and, in their zeal for reform, pushed their regvilations to what some would consider a skeptical extreme. So many superstitions had been bundled up with every venerable institution of Europe that ages have not yet dislodged them all. The Puritans at once emancipated themselves from the thraldom to observances. They estab- lished a worship purely spiritual. They stood in prayer. To them the elements remained but wine and bread, and in communing they would not kneel. They invoked no saints ; they raised no altar ; they adored no crucifix ; they kissed no book ; they asked no absolution ; they paid no tithes ; they saw in the priest nothing more sacred than a man ; ordination was no more than an approbation of the officer, which might be expressed by the brethren just as 212 AMERICAN LITERATURE. well as by other ministers ; the church, as a place of wor- ship, was to them hut a meeting-hovise ; they dug no graves in consecrated earth ; unlike their posterity they married without a minister, and buried the dead without a prayer. Witchcraft had not been made the subject of skeptical con- sideration ; and in the years in which Scotland sacrificed hecatombs to the delusion, there were three victims in New England. Dark crimes, that seemed without a motive, may have been pursued under that name ; I find one record of a trial for witchcraft where the prisoner was proved a mur- deress. . . . Historians have loved to eulogize the manners and virtues, the glory and the benefits, of chivalry. Puritanism accom- plished for mankind far more. If it had the sectarian crime of intolerance, chivalry had the vices of dissoluteness. The knights were brave from gallantry of spirit ; the Puri- tans, from the fear of God. The knights obeyed the law of honor ; the Puritans hearkened to the voice of duty. The knights were proud of loyalty ; the Puritans, of liberty. The knights did homage to monarchs, in whose smile they beheld honor, whose rebuke was disgrace ; the Puritans, in their disdain of ceremony, would not bow at the name of Jesus, nor bend the knee to the King of kings. Chivalry delighted in outward show, favored pleasure, miiltiplied amusements, and degraded the human race by an exclusive respect for the privileged classes ; Puritanism bridled the passions, commanded the virtues of self-denial, and rescued the name of man from dishonor. The former valued cour- tesy ; the latter, justice. The former adorned society by graceful refinements ; the latter founded national grandeur on universal education. The institutions of chivalry were subverted by the gradually increasing weight and knowl- edge and opulence of the industrious classes ; the Puritans, rallying upon those classes, planted in their hearts the undying principles of democratic liberty. ALFRED BILLINGS STREET. 213 ^Ifretr Billings Street* [b. Poughkeepsie, New York, December 18, 1811. d. June 2, 1881.] A FOREST WALK. A LOVKLY sky, a cloudless sun, A wind that breathes of leaves and flowers O'er hill, through dale, my steps have won, To the cool forest's shadowy bowers ; One of the paths all round that wind, Traced by the browsing herds, I choose And sights and sounds of human kind In nature's lone recesses lose ; The beech displays its marbled bark. The spruce its green tent stretches wide, While scowls the hemlock, grim and dark, The maple's scallop'd dome beside : All weave on high a verdant roof, That keeps the very sun aloof, Making a twilight soft and green, Within the column' d, vaulted scene. Sweet forest odors have their birth From the clothed boughs and teeming earth : Where pine-cones dropped, leaves piled and dead. Long tufts of grass, and stars of fern, With many a wild flower's fairy urn, A thick, elastic carpet spread ; Here, with its mossy pall, the trunk. Resolving into soil, is sunk ; There wrench'd but lately from its throne, By some fierce whirlwind circling past. Its huge roots mass'd with earth and stone, One of the woodland kings is cast. 214 AMERICAN LITERATURE. Above, the forest tops are bright, With the broad blaze of sunny light, But now a fitful air-gust parts The screening branches, and a glow Of dazzling, startling radiance darts Down the dark stems, and breaks below ; The mingled shadows off are roll'd. The sylvan floor is bathed in gold: Low sprouts and herbs, before unseen, Display their shades of brown and green : Tints brighten o'er the velvet moss, Gleams twinkle on the laurel's gloss The robin, brooding in her nest. Chirps as the quick ray strikes her breast ; And, as my shadow prints the ground, I see the rabbit upward bound, With pointed ears an instant look, Then scamper to the darkest nook. Where, with crouch'd limb, and staring eye, He watches while I saunter by. A narrow vista, carpeted With rich green grass, invites my tread ; Here showers the light in golden dots, There sleeps the shade in ebon spots, So blended, that the very air Seems network as I enter there ; The partridge, whose deep-rolling drum Afar has sounded on my ear, Ceases his beatings as I come, Whirrs to the sheltering branches near ; The little milk-snake glides away, The brindled marmot dives from day. And now, between the boughs, a space Of the blue laughing sky I trace ; On each side shrinks the bowery shade ; Before me spreads an emerald glade ; ALFRED BILLINGS STREET. 215 The sunshine steeps its grass and moss, That couch my footsteps as I cross ; Merrily hums the tawny bee, The glittering humming-bird I see ; Floats the bright butterfly along, The insect choir is loud in song ; A spot of light and life it seems, A fairy haunt for fancy dreams. Here stretch'd, the pleasant turf I press, In luxury of idleness ; Sun-streaks and glancing wings, and sky, Spotted with cloud-shapes, charm my eye, While murmuring grass, and waving trees Their leaf-harps sounding to the breeze. And water tones that tinkle near. Blend their sweet music to my ear ; And by the changing shades alone The passage of the hours is known. 216 AMERICAN LITERATURE. [b. near Cincinnati, Ohio, April 20, 1820. d. February 12, 1871.] THE LITTLE HOUSE ON THE HILL. Memory, be sweet to me, — Take, take all else at will, So thou but leave me safe and sound, Without a token my heart to wound, The little house on the hill. Take all of best from east to west. So thou but leave me still The chamber where, in the starry light, 1 used to lie awake at night, And list to the whip-poor-will. Take violet-bed, and rose-tree red. And the purple flag by the mill. The meadow gay, and the garden-ground, But leave, oh, leave me safe and sound, The little house on the hill. The daisy lane, and the dove's low plain. And the cuckoo's tender bill. Take one and all, but leave the dreams That turned the rafters to golden beams, In the little house on the hill ! The gables brown, they have tumbled down, And dry is the brook by the mill ; The sheets I used with care to keep Have wrapt my dead for the last long sleep, In the valley, low and still. ALICE GARY. 217 But, Memory, be sweet to me, And build the walls, at will, Of the chamber where I used to mark, So softly rippling over the dark. The song of the whip-poor-will ! Ah ! Memory, be sweet to me ! All other fountains chill ; But leave that song so weird and wild, Dear as its life to the heart of the child. In the little house on the hill ! WINTER AND SUMMER. The winter goes and the summer comes, And the cloud descends in warm, wet showers ; The grass grows green where the frost has been. And waste and wayside are fringed with flowers. The winter goes and the summer comes. And the merry bluebirds twitter and trill. And the swallow swings on his steel-blue wings. This way and that way, at wildest will. The winter goes and the summer comes, And the swallow he swingeth no more aloft, And the bluebird's breast swells out of her nest. And the horniest bill of them all grows soft. The summer goes and the winter comes. And the daisy dies, and the daffodil dies, And the softest bill grows horny and still, And the days set dimly, and dimly rise. 218 AMERICAN LITERATURE. The summer goes and tlie winter comes, And the red fire fades from the heart o' th' rose, And the snow lies white where the grass was bright, And the wild wind bitterly blows and blows. The winter comes and the winter stays, Aye, cold and long, and long and cold. And the pulses beat to the weary feet, And the head feels sick, and the heart grows cold. The winter comes and the winter stays, And all the glory behind us lies, The cheery light drops into the night. And the snow drifts over our sightless eyes. PHCEBE CARY. 219 [b. near Cincinnati, Oliio, September 24, 1824. d. July 31, 1871.] A PRAYER. I ASK not Avealth, but power to take And use the things I have aright, Not years, but wisdom that shall make My life a profit and delight. I ask not, that for me, the plan Of good and ill be set aside ; But that the common lot of man Be nobly borne and glorified. I know I may not always keexJ My steps in places green and sweet, Nor find the pathway of the deep A path of safety for my feet ; But pray, that when the tempest's breath Shall fiercely sweep my way about, I make not shipwreck of my faith In the unbottomed sea of doubt ; And that, though it be mine to know How hard the stoniest pillow seems, Good angels still may come and go. About the places of my dreams. I do not ask for love below, That friends shall never be estranged : 220 AMEBIC AN LITERATURE. But for the power of loving, so My heart may keep its youth unchanged- Youth, joy, wealth — Fate, I give thee these: Leave faith and hope till life is past ; And leave my heart's best impulses Fresh and unfailing to the last. MARCH CROCUSES. fickle and uncertain March ! How could you have the heart To make the tender crocuses From their beds untimely start ? Those foolish, unsuspecting flowers, Too credulous to see That the sweetest promises of March Are not May's certainty. When you smiled a few short hours ago, What said your whisper light. That made them lift their pretty heads So hopeful and so bright ? 1 could not catch a single word, But I saw your light caress ; And heard your rough voice softened down To a lover's tenderness. cruel and perfidious month ! It makes me sick and sad. To think how yesterday your smile Made all the blossoms glad. PHCEBE CARY. 221 trustful, unsuspecting flowers ! It breaks my heart to know That all your golden heads to-day Are underneath the snow. TRUE LOVE. I think true love is never blind, But rather brings an added light ; An inner vision, quick to find The beauties hid from common sight. No soul can ever clearly see Another's highest, noblest part ; Save through the sweet philosophy And loving wisdom of the heart. Your unanointed eyes shall fall On him who fills my world with light ; You do not see my friend at all. You see what hides him from your sight. I see the feet that fain would climb, You, but the steps that turn astray : I see the soul unharmed, sublime, You, but the garment and the clay. You see a mortal, weak, misled. Dwarfed ever by the earthly clod ; I see how manhood, perfected. May reach the stature of a god. Blinded I stood, as now you stand. Till on mine eyes, with touches sweet, Love, the deliverer, laid his hand. And, lo ! I worship at his feet ! 222 AMERICAN LITERATURE. [b. Providence, Rhode Island, February 6, 1820. d. October 31, 1872.] THE BURIAL OF THE DANE. Blue gulf all around us, Blue sky overhead — Muster all on the quarter, We must bury our dead ! It is but a Danish sailor, Eugged of front and form ; A common son of the forecastle, Grizzled with sun and storm. His name and the strand he hailed from We know, — and there's nothing more ! But perhaps his mother is waiting In the lonely Island of Fohr. Still, as he lay there dying, Eeason drifting a-wreck, " 'Tis my watch," he would mutter ; " I must go upon deck ! " Aye, on deck — by the foremast ! — But watch and lookout are done ; The Union-Jack laid o'er him, — How quiet he lies in the sun ! Slow the ponderous engine. Stay the hurrying shaft ! HENRY HOWARD BROWNELL. 223 Let the roll of the ocean Cradle our giant craft — Gather around the grating, Carry your messmate aft ! Stand in order, and listen To the holiest page of prayer ! Let every foot be quiet, Every head be bare — The soft trade-wind is lifting A hundred locks of hair. Our captain reads the service (A little spray on his cheeks), The grand old words of burial. And the trust a true heart seeks — " We therefore commit his body To the deep," — and as he speaks, Launched from the weather-railing, Swift as the eye can mark. The ghastly shotted hammock Plunges, away from the shark, Down, a thousand fathoms, Down into the dark ! A thousand summers and winters The stormy Gulf shall roll High o'er his canvas coffin, — But, silence to doubt and dole ! There's a quiet harbor somewhere For the poor, a-Aveary soul. Free the fettered engine, Speed the tireless shaft ! Loose to'gallant and topsail, The breeze is fair abaft ! 224 AMERICAN LITERATURE. Blue sea all around us, Blue sky bright o'erliead — Every man to his duty ! We have buried our dead. ALONE. A sad old house by the sea, — Were we happy, I and thou. In the days that used to be ? There is nothing left me now But to lie and think of thee. With folded hands on my breast, And list to the weary sea Sobbing itself to rest. HENRY JAMES. 225 [b. Albany, New York, June 3, 1811. d. December 18, 1882.] SPIRITUAL EMANCIPATION. The current scepticism in regard to the tendencies of human nature proceeds upon the fallacy that a man's true wealth, the wealth he covets or prizes, is external to himself, consisting in the abundance of the Democracy things he possesses. The sceptic says that if you j^^^^^ leave men free from police restraint, hoAvever well you may educate them, there will be no security for prop- erty. Of course, then, he believes that man values these outward possessions which we call property, above all things. There is no sheerer fallacy current than this. For the undue value men set upon this sort of possession now grows out of its scarcity, grows out of the fact that so many are utterly destitute of it. Appetite is never exces- sive, never furious, save where it has been starved. The frantic hunger we see it so often exhibiting under every variety of criminal form, marks only the hideous starvation to which society subjects it. It is not a normal, but a morbid state of the appetite, growing exclusively out of the unnatural compression which is imposed upon it by the exigencies of our immature society. Every appetite and passion of man's nature is good and beautiful, and destined to be fully enjoyed, and a scientific society or fellowship among men would ensure this result, without allowing any compromise of the individual dignity, especially without allowing that fierce and disgusting abandonment to them which disfigures so many of our eminent names in church and state, and which infallibly attests the uncleanness of our present morality. 226 AMERICAN LITERATURE. Remove, then, the existing bondage of humanity, remove those factitious restraints which keep appetite and passion on the perpetual lookout for escape, like steam from an over-charged boiler, and their force would instantly become conservative instead of destructive. For man is destined by the very necessity of his creation, for nothing but the obedience of his inward and divine self- hood, for the obedience of God within him. Even while he is utterly unconscious of his true or inmost self-hood, the aim of his whole existence, the end of all his struggle and toil is to realize it ; and when it does dawn upon him, it sheds a complete calm upon the turbid sea of his outward relations. The effect is irresistible. You cannot arouse a man to self-respect, to a sense of his proper humanity, to a con- sciousness of the divinity which constitutes his being, without rendering him superior to outward accident. He is no longer the sport of passion, of conscience, or of ap- petite. The master of the house has come at last, and his servants render him a prompt and joyous obedience. No more in a mere symbolic, but in a very real sense, the Lord has entered his holy temple : all the earth, the entire realm of the outward and finite, spontaneously keeps silence be- fore Him. CHARLES ETIENNE ARTHUR GAYARRE. 227 Cljarles Etienne ^rtfjur ffiagarre* [b. New Orleans, Louisiana, January 9, 1S05.] THE LEGEND OF THE DATE TREE. In a lot situated at the corner of Orleans and Dauphine streets, in the city of New Orleans, there is a tree which. nobody looks at without curiosity and without wonderins? how it came there. For a lonar time ^^*,°yy °^ *^ . . . , Louisiana, it was the only one of its kind known m the state, and from its isolated position, it has always been cursed with sterility. It reminds one of the warm climes of Africa or Asia, and wears the aspect of a stranger of distinction driven from his native country. Indeed, with its sharp and thin foliage, sighing mournfully under the blast of one of our November northern winds, it looks as sorrowful as an exile. Its enormous trunk is nothing but an agglomeration of knots and bumps, which each passing year seems to have deposited there as a mark of age, and as a protection against the blows of time and of the world. Inquire for its origin, and every one will tell you that it has stood there from time immemorial. A sort of vague but impressive mystery is attached to it, and it is as superstitiously respected as one of the old oaks of Dodona. Bold would be the axe that should strike the first blow at that foreign patriarch ; and if it were prostrated to the ground by a profane hand, what native of the city would not mourn over its fall, and brand the act as an unnatural and criminal deed ? So, long live the date tree of Orleans Street — that time-honored descend- ant of Asiatic ancestors ! In the beginning of 1727, a French vessel of war landed at New Orleans a man of haughty mien, who wore the Turk- ish dress, and whose whole attendance was a single servant. 228 AMERICAN LITERATURE. He was received by the governor with the highest dis- tinction, and was conducted by him to a small but comforta- ble house with a pretty garden, then existing at the corner of Orleans and Dauphine streets, and which, from the cir- cumstance of its being so distant from other dwellings, might have been called a rural retreat, although situated in the limits of the city. There, the stranger, who was under- stood to be a prisoner of state, lived in the greatest seclu- sion ; and although neither he nor his attendant could be guilty of indiscretion, because none understood their lan- guage, and although Governor P^rier severely rebuked the slightest inquiry, yet it seemed to be the settled conviction in Louisiana, that the mysterious stranger was a brother of the Sultan, or some great personage of the Ottoman empire, who had fled from the anger of the viceregent of Mohammed, and who had taken refuge in France. The Sultan had per- emptorily demanded the fugitive, and the French govern- ment, thinking it derogatory to its dignity to comply with that request, but at the same time not wishing to expose its friendly relations with the Moslem monarch, and perhaps desiring, for political purposes, to keep in hostage the im- portant guest it had in its hands, had recourse to the ex- pedient of answering that he had fled to Louisiana, which was so distant a country that it might be looked upon as the grave, where, as it was suggested, the fugitive might be suffered to wait in peace for actual death, without danger or offence to the Sultan. Whether this story be true or not is now a matter of so little consequence, that it would not repay the trouble of a strict historical investigation. The year 1727 was drawing to its close, when on a dark, stormy night, the howling and barking of the numerous dogs in the streets of New Orleans were observed to be fiercer than usual, and some of that class of individuals who pretend to know everything, declared that, by the vivid flashes of the lightning, they had seen, swiftly and stealthily gliding toward the residence of the unknown, a body of men who Avore the scowling appearance of malefac- CHARLES ^TIENNE ARTHUR GAYARRE. 229 tors and ministers of blood. There afterward came also a report that a piratical-looking Turkish vessel had been hov- ering a few days previous in the bay of Barataria. Be it as it may, on the next morning the house of the stranger was deserted. There were no traces of mortal struggle to be seen; but in the garden, the earth had been dug, and there was the unmistakable indication of a recent grave. Soon, however, all doubts were removed by the finding of an inscription in Arabic characters, engraved on a marble tablet, which Avas subsequently sent to France. It ran thus : " The justice of heaven is satisfied, and the date tree shall grow on the traitor's tomb. The sublime Emperor of the faithful, the supporter of the faith, the omnipotent master and Sultan of the world, has redeemed his vow. Qod is great, and Mohammed is his prophet. Allah ! " Some time after this event, a foreign-looking tree was seen to peep out of the spot where a corpse must have been depos- ited in that stormy night, when the rage of the elements yielded to the pitiless fury of man, and it thus explained in some degree this part of the inscription, " the date tree shall grow on the traitor's grave." Who -v^as he, or what had he done, who had provoked such relentless and far-seeking revenge ? Ask Nemesis, or — at that hour when evil spirits are allowed to roam over the earth, and magical invocations are made — go, and in- terrogate the tree of the dead. 230 AMERICAN LITERATURE. ^jjomas 2Suc!}anan Ecati* [b. Chester County, Pennsylvania, March 12, 1822. d. May 11, 1872.] THE WAY-SIDE SPRING. Fair dweller by the dusty way — Bright saint within a mossy shrine, The tribute of a heart to-day Weary and worn is thine. The earliest blossoms of the year, The sweet-briar and the violet, The pious hand of Spring has here Upon thy altar set. And not alone to thee is given The homage of the pilgrim's knee — But oft the sweetest birds of heaven Glide down and sing to thee. Here daily from his beechen cell The hermit squirrel steals to drink, And flocks which cluster to their bell Recline along thy brink. And here the wagoner blocks his wheels, To quaff the cool and generous boon. Here from the sultry harvest fields The reapers rest at noon. And oft the beggar marked with tan. In rusty garments gray with dust. Here sits and dips his little can. And breaks his scanty crust ; THOMAS BUCHANAN READ. 231 And, lulled beside thy whispering stream, Oft drops to slumber unawares, And sees the angel of his dream Upon celestial stairs. Dear dweller by the dusty way, Thou saint within a mossy shrine, The tribute of a heart to-day Weary and worn is thine ! THE STRANGER ON THE SILL. Between broad fields of wheat and corn Is the lowly home where I was born ; The peach-tree leans against the wall, And the woodbine wanders over all ; There is the shaded doorway still, But a stranger's foot has crossed the sill. There is the barn — and, as of yore, I can smell the hay from the open door, And see the busy swallows throng. And hear the peewee's mournful song ; But the stranger conies — oh ! painful proof — His sheaves are piled to the heated roof. There is the orchard — the very trees Where my childhood knew long hours of ease, And watched the shadowy moments run Till my life imbibed more shade than sun : The swing from the bough still sweeps the air. But the stranger's children are swinging there. There bubbles the shady spring below. With its bulrush brook where the hazels grow ; 232 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 'Twas there I found the calamus root, And watched the minnows poise and shoot, And heard the robin lave his wing, But the stranger's bucket is at the spring. Oh, ye who daily cross the sill. Step lightly, for I love it still ; And when you crowd the old barn eaves. Then think what countless harvest sheaves Have passed within that scented door To gladden eyes that are no more. Deal kindly with these orchard trees ; And when your children crowd their knees, Their sweetest fruit they shall impart, As if old memories stirred their heart : To youthful sport still leave the swing. And in sweet reverence hold the spring. The barn, the trees, the brook, the birds, The meadows with their lowing herds. The woodbine on the cottage wall — My heart still lingers with them all. Ye strangers on my native sill. Step lightly, for I love it still ! THOMAS STARR KING. 233 Ebomas ^tarr Ittntj* [b. New York, New York, December 17, 1824. d. March 4, 1863.] SIGHT AND INSIGHT. There may be a meadow farm among the mountains. The heir to it gets a cabbage and a corn crop from it, sus- pecting no other latent fertility and produce. A man of science buys it, gets no less cabbages and hay, but reaps a geology-crop as well. An artist buys it, and lo ! a harvest of beauty and delight, budding even when the grain is garnered, dropping sweet into his eyes even from arctic dawns and blazing snows. A man of deepest insight lives on it, and the laws of his farm open to him the prudence and prodigality of Prov- idence. In the way the grain grows, the enemies it has, the friendships of all good forces to its advance, in the chemistry of his farming, in the peace that sleeps on the hills, in the gathering and retreat of storms, in the soft approach of spring, and the melancholy death, — he reads lessons that become inmost wisdom. He has a faculty that is the sickle of more subtle crop-sheaves of spiritual truth. . . . Just as there are spelling-classes for the youngest schol- ars ill our schools, in which the separate letters are the chief things they see, where the great problem is to com- bine them into words, and where the mental organs are not capable of configuring words into propositions, — so very few of us on the planet ever get able to handle the letters of nature easily, ever get beyond the power of spelling them into single words. Some are able to read off the aspects of creation into science. They can put the stars together into paragraphs that state laws and harmonies and grandeurs. 234 AMERICAN LITERATURE. Some go farther, and rhyme the mighty vocabulary of science into beauty ; but few get such command of the language that they see and rejoice in the highest, glorious truth which the volume holds. . . , Insight, therefore, opens the intellectual world of law and harmony beneath the world of physical shows ; within that, the world of beauty ; within that again, the realm of spiritual language. In the human world it shows, deep behind deep, law working in society, controlling politics and shaping the destiny of nations ; while, in the individual sphere, it unveils man as the epitome of the universe, clad continually in the electric vesture of his character. Every man, as every animal, has sight ; but just accord- ing to the scale of his insight is the world he lives in a deep one, an awful one, a mystic and glorious world. We see what is, only as we see into what appears. Out of three roots grows the great tree of nature, — truth, beauty, good. The man of science follows up its mighty stem, measures it, and sees its branches in the silver-leaved boughs of the firmament. The poet delights in the sym- metry of its strength, the grace of its arches, the flush of its fruit. Only to the man with finer eye than both is the secret glory of it unveiled ; for his vision discerns how it is fed and in what air it thrives. To him it is only an expan- sion of the burning bush on Horeb, seen by the solemn prophet, glowing continually with the presence of Infinite Law and Love, yet standing forever unconsumed. JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 235 [b. Haverhill, Massachusetts, December 17, 1807.] IN SCHOOL DAYS. Still sits the school-house by the road, A ragged beggar sunning ; Around it still the sumachs grow, And blackberry -vines are running. Within, the master's desk is seen, Deep scarred by raps official ; The warping floor, the battered seats. The jack-knife's carved initial; The charcoal frescoes on its wall ; Its door's worn sill, betraying The feet that, creeping slow to school, Went storming out to playing ! Long years ago, a winter sun Shone over it at setting : Lit up its western window-panes, And low eaves' icy fretting. It touched the tangled golden curls, And brown eyes full of grieving, Of one who still her steps delayed When all the school were leaving. For near her stood the little boy Her childish favor singled; His cap pulled low upon a face Where pride and shame were mingled. 236 AMERICAN LITERATURE. Pushing with restless feet the snow- To right and left, he lingered ; — As restlessly her tiny hands The blue-checked apron fingered. He saw her lift her eyes ; he felt The soft hand's light caressing, And heard the tremble of her voice, As if a fault confessing. " I'm sorry that I spelt the word ; I hate to go above you, Because," — the brown eyes lower fell, "Because, you see, I love you !" Still memory to a gray-haired man That sweet child-face is showing. Dear girl ! the grasses on her grave Have forty years been growing ! He lives to learn, in life's hard school. How few who pass above him Lament their triumph and his loss, Like her, — because they love him. ICHABOD! So fallen ! so lost ! the light withdrawn Which once he wore ! The glory from his gray hairs gone Forevermore ! Revile him not, — the Tempter hath A snare for all ; And pitying tears, not scorn and wrath. Befit his fall ! JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 237 O, dumb be passion's stormy rage, When he who might Have lighted up and led his age, Falls back in night. Scorn ! would the angels laugh, to mark A bright soul driven, Fiend-goaded, down the endless dark. From hope and heaven ! Let not the land once proud of him Insult him now, Nor brand with deeper shame his dim Dishonored brow. But let its humbled sons, instead. From sea to lake, A long lament, as for the dead. In sadness make. Of all we loved and honored, naught Save power remains, — A fallen angel's pride of thought. Still strong in chains. All else is gone ; from those great eyes The soul has fled : When faith is lost, when honor dies. The man is dead ! Then, pay the reverence of old days To his dead fame; Walk backward, with averted gaze, And hide the shame ! 238 AMERICAN LITERATURE, WORSHIP. The Pagan's myths through marble lips are spoken, And ghosts of old Beliefs still flit and moan Round fane and altar overthrown and broken, O'er tree-grown barrow and gray ring of stone. Blind Faith had martyrs in those old high places, The Syrian hill grove and the Druid's wood. With mother's offering, to the Fiend's embraces, Bone of their bone, and blood of their own blood. Red altars, kindling through that night of error. Smoked with warm blood beneath the cruel eye Of lawless Power and sanguinary Terror, Throned on the circle of a pitiless sky ; Beneath whose baleful shadow, overcasting All heaven above, and blighting earth below, The scourge grew red, the lip grew pale with fasting. And man's oblation was his fear and woe ! Then through great temples swelled the dismal moaning Of dirge-like music and sepulchral prayer ; Pale wizard priests, o'er occult symbols droning, Swung their white censers in the burdened air : As if the pomp of rituals, and the savor Of gums and spices could the Unseen One please ; As if his ear could bend, with childish favor, To the poor flattery of the organ keys ! Feet red from war-fields trod the church aisles holy, With trembling reverence : and the oppressor there, JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 239 Kneeling before liis priest, abased and lowly, Crushed human hearts beneath his knee of prayer. Not such the service the benignant Father Requireth at his earthly children's hands : Not the poor offering of vain rites, but rather The simple duty man from man demands. For Earth he asks it : the full joy of Heaven Knoweth no change of waning or increase ; The great heart of the Infinite beats even, Untroubled flows the river of his peace. He asks no taper lights, on high surrounding The priestly altar and the saintly grave, No dolorous chant nor organ music sounding, Nor incense clouding up the twilight nave. For he whom Jesus loved hath truly spoken : The holier worship which he deigns to bless. Restores the lost, and binds the sj)irit broken, And feeds the widow and the fatherless ! Types of our human weakness and our sorrow ! Who lives unhaunted by his loved ones dead ? Who, with vain longing, seeketh not to borrow From stranger eyes the home lights which have fled ? brother man ! fold to thy heart thy brother ; Where pity dwells the peace of God is there ; To worship rightly is to love each other, Each smile a hymn, each kindly deed a prayer. Follow with reverent steps the great example Of Him whose holy work was *' doing good " ; So shall the wide earth seem our Father's temple, Each loving life a psalm of gratitude. 240 AMERICAN LITERATURE. Then shall all shackles fall ; the stormy clangor Of wild war music o'er the earth shall cease ; Love shall tread out the baleful fire of anger, And in its ashes plant the tree of peace ! SNOW-BOUND. Shut in from all the world without, We sat the clean-winged hearth about. Content to let the north wind roar In baffled rage at pane and door. While the red logs before us beat The frost-line back with tropic heat ; And ever, when a louder blast Shook beam and rafter as it passed, The merrier up its roaring draught The great throat of the chimney laughed. The house-dog on his paws outspread Laid to the fire his drowsy head. The cat's dark silhouette on the wall A couchant tiger's seemed to fall ; And, for the winter fireside meet, Between the andirons' straddling feet. The mug of cider simmered slow. The apples sputtered in a row. And, close at hand, the basket stood With nuts from brown October's wood. What matter how the night behaved ? What matter how the north wind raved ? Blow high, blow low, not all its snow Could quench our hearth-fire's ruddy glow. Time and Change ! — Avith hair as gray As was my sire's that winter day. JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 241 How strange it seems, with so mucli gone Of life and love, to still live on ! Ah, brother ! only I and thou Are left of all that circle now : — The dear home faces whereupon That fitful firelight paled and shone, Henceforward, listen as we will, The voices of that hearth are still ; Look where we may, the wide earth o'ei*, Those lighted faces smile no more. We tread the paths their feet have worn, We sit beneath their orchard trees, We hear, like them, the hum of bees And rustle of the bladed corn ; We turn the pages that they read. Their written words we linger o'er, But in the sun they cast no shade, No voice is heard, no sign is made, No step is on the conscious floor ! Yet Love will dream, and Faith will trust, (Since He who knows our need is just,) That somehow, somewhere, meet we must. Alas for him who never sees The stars shine through his cypress-trees ! Who, hopeless, lays his dead away. Nor looks to see the breaking day Across the mournful marbles play! Who hath not learned, in hours of faith. The truth to flesh and sense unknown. That Life is ever lord of Death, And Love can never lose its own ! 242 AMERICAN LITERATURE. Albert pme. [b. Boston, Massachusetts, December 29, 1809.] TO CERES. Goddess of bounty ! at Avhose spring-time call, When on the dewy earth tliy first tones fall, Pierces the ground each young and tender blade, And wonders at the sun ; each dull, gray glade Is shining with new grass ; from each chill hole. Where they had lain enchain'd and dull of soul. The birds come forth, and sing for joy to thee Among the springing leaves ; and, fast and free. The rivers toss their chains up to the sun, And through their grassy banks leapingly run. When thou hast touch'd them : thou who ever art The goddess of all beauty : thou whose heart Is ever in the sunny meads and fields ; To whom the laughing earth looks up and yields Her waving treasures : thou that in thy car With winged dragons, when the morning star Sheds his cold light, touchest the morning trees Until they spread their blossoms to the breeze ; — 0, pour thy light Of truth and joy upon our souls this night. And grant to us all plenty and good ease ! 0, thou, the goddess of the rustling corn ! Thou to whom reapers sing, and on the lawn Pile up their baskets with the full-ear'd wheat ; While maidens come, with little dancing feet. And bring thee poppies, weaving thee a crown Of simple beauty, bending their heads down ALBERT PIKE. 243 To garland thy full baskets : at whose side, Among the sheaves of wheat, doth Bacchus ride With bright and sparkling eyes, and feet and mouth All wine-stain'd from the warm and sunny south : Perhaps one arm about thy neck he twines, While in his car ye ride among the vines. And with the other hand he gathers up The rich, full grapes, and holds the glowing cup Unto thy lips — and then he throws it by, And crowns thee with bright leaves to shade thine eye. So it may gaze with richer love and light Upon his beaming broAV : If thy swift flight Be on some hill Of vine-hung Thrace — 0, come, while night is still. And greet with heaping arms our gladden'd sight ! Lo ! the small stars, above the silver wave, Come wandering up the sky, and kindly lave The thin clouds with their light, like floating sparks Of diamonds in the air ; or spirit barks, With unseen riders, wheeling in the sky. Lo ! a soft mist of light is rising high. Like silver shining through a tint of red. And soon the queened moon her love will shed. Like pearl-mist, on the earth and on the sea. Where thou shalt cross to view our mystery. Lo ! we have torches here for thee, and urns, Where incense with a floating odor burns, And altars piled with various fruits and flowers. And ears of corn, gather'd at early hours. And odors fresh from India, with a heap Of many-color'd poppies : — Lo ! we keep Our silent watch for thee, sitting before Thy ready altars, till to our lone shore Thy chariot-wheels Shall come, while ocean to the burden reels. And utters to the sky a stifled roar. 244 AMEBIC AN LITERATURE. TO SPRING. thou delicious Spring ! Nursed in the lap of thin and subtle showers, Which fall from clouds that lift their snowy wing From odorous beds of light-enfolded flowers, And from enmassed bowers, That over grassy walks their greenness fling, Come, gentle Spring ! Thou lover of young wind, That conieth from the invisible upper sea Beneath the sky, which clouds its white foam bind, And, settling in the trees deliciously. Makes young leaves dance with glee, Even in the teeth of that old, sober hind, Winter unkind, Come to us ; for thou art Like the fine love of children, gentle Spring ! Touching the sacred feeling of the heart, Or, like a virgin's pleasant welcoming ; And thou dost ever bring A tide of gentle but resistless art Upon the heart. Red Autumn from the south Contends with thee ; alas ! what may he show ? What are his purple-stain'd and rosy mouth. And browned cheeks, to thy soft feet of snow, And timid, pleasant glow, Giving earth-piercing flowers their primal growth. And greenest youth ? Gay Summer conquers thee ; And yet he has no beauty such as thine ; ALBERT PIKE. 245 What is liis ever-streaming, fiery sea, To the pure glory that with thee doth shine ? Thou season most divine. What may his dull and lifeless minstrelsy Compare with thee ? Come, sit upon the hills. And bid the waking streams leap down their side, And green the vales with their slight-sounding rills ; And when the stars upon the sky shall glide, And crescent Dian ride, I, too, will breathe of thy delicious thrills, On grassy hills. Alas ! bright Spring, not long Shall I enjoy thy pleasant influence ; For thou shalt die the Summer heat among, Sublimed to vapor in his fire intense, And, gone forever hence, Exist no more : no more to earth belong. Except in song. So I who sing shall die : Worn unto death, perchance, by care and sorrow ; And, fainting thus, with an unconscious sigh. Bid unto this poor body a good-morrow. Which now sometimes I borrow, And breathe of joyance keener and more high, Ceasing to sigh ! 246 AMEBIC AN LITERATURE. [b. Boston, MaBSachusetts, May 12, 1809.] THE PILGRIM FATHERS. When I behold a feeble company of exiles, quitting the strange land to which persecution had forced them to flee ; entering with so many sighs and sobs and partings before the ^^^^ prayers on a voyage so full of perils at the New-Eng- best, but rendered a hundredfold more perilous by land Society, the unusual Severities of the season and the abso- lute unseaworthiness of their ship; arriving in the depth of winter on a coast to which even their pilot was a perfect stranger, and where " they had no friends to welcome them, no inns to entertain them, no houses, much less towns, to repair unto for succor," but Avhere, — instead of friends, shelter, or refreshment, — famine, exposure, the wolf, the savage, disease, and death, seemed waiting for them; and yet accomplishing an end which royalty and patronage, the love of dominion and of gold, individual adventure and corporate enterprise had so long essayed in vain, and founding a colony which was to defy alike the machinations and the menaces of tyranny, in all periods of its history, — it needs not that I should find the coral path- way of the sea laid bare, and its waves a wall on the right hand and on the left, and the crazed chariot-wheels of the oppressor floating in fragments upon its closing floods, to feel, to realize, that higher than human was the Power which presided over the Exodus of the Pilgrim Fathers ! Was it not something more than the ignorance or the self-will of our earthly and visible pilot, which, instead of conducting them to the spot which they had deliberately selected, — the very spot on which we are now assembled, ROBERT CHARLES WINTHROP. 247 the banks of your own beautiful Hudson, of which they had heard so much during their sojourn in Holland, but which was then swarming with a host of horrible savages, — guided them to a coast which, though bleaker and far less hospitable in its outward aspect, had yet, by an extraor- dinary epidemic, but a short time previous, been almost completely cleared of its barbarous tenants ? Was it not something more, also, than mere mortal error or human mistake, which, instead of bringing them within the limits prescribed in the patent they had procured in England, directed them to a shore on which they were to land upon their own responsibility and under their own authority, and thus compelled them to an act which has rendered Cape Cod more memorable than Kunnymede, and the cabin of the Mayflower than the proudest hall of ancient charter or modern constitution, — the execution of the first written original contract of Democratic Self-Goveniment which is found in the annals of the world ? But the Pilgrims, I have said, had a power within them also. If God was not seen among them in the fire of a Horeb, in the earthquake of a Sinai, or in the wind cleaving asunder the waves of the sea they were to cross. He was with them, at least, in the still, small voice. Conscience, conscience, was the nearest to an earthly power which the Pilgrims possessed, and the freedom of conscience the nearest to an earthly motive which prompted their career. It was conscience which "■ weaned them from the delicate milk of their mother country, and inured them to the difliculties of a strange land." It was conscience which made them not as other men, whom small things could discourage, or small discontentments cause to wish themselves at home again. It was conscience — that "robur et aes triplex cir- capectus " — which emboldened them to launch their fragile bark upon a merciless ocean, fearless of the fighting winds and lowering storms. It was conscience which stiffened them to brave the perils, endure the hardships, undergo the privations of a howling, houseless, hopeless desolation. 248 AMERICAN LITERATUKE. And thus, almost in the very age when the Great Master of human nature was putting into the mouth of one of his most interesting and philosophical characters that well- remembered conclusion of a celebrated soliloquy, — " Thus conscience does make cowards of us all ; And thus the native hue of resolution Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought; And enterprises of great pith and moment With this regard, their currents turn awry, And lose the name of action," — this very conscience, a clog, and an obstacle, indeed, to its foes, but the surest strength and sharpest spur of its friends, was inspiring a courage, confirming a resolution, and accom- plishing an enterprise, to which the records of the world will be searched in vain to find a parallel. Let it never be forgotten that it was conscience, and that not intrenched behind broad seals, but enshrined in brave souls, Avhich carried through and completed the long-baffled undertaking of settling the New England coast. OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. 249 (©Itijer SEentirll flolmes:. [b. Cambridge, Massachusetts, August 29, 1809.] OPINIONS. The old gentleman who sits opposite got his hand up, as a pointer lifts his forefoot, at the expression, " his rela- tions with truth as I understand truth," and when rj,jj . . I had done, sniffed audibly, and said I talked like crat of the a transcendentalist. For his part, common sense Breakfast was good enough for him. Precisely so, my dear sir, I replied ; common sense, as you understand it. We all have to assume a standard of judgment in our own minds, either of things or persons. A man who is willing to take another's opinion has to exercise his judgment in the choice of wliom to follow, which is often as nice a mat- ter as to judge of things for one's self. On the whole, I had rather judge men's minds by comparing their thoughts with my own, than judge of thoughts by knowing who utter them. I must do one or the other. It does not follow, of course, that I may not recognize another man's thoughts as broader and deeper than my own ; but that does not necessarily change my opinion, otherwise this would be at the mercy of every superior mind that held a different one. How many of our most cherished beliefs are like those drinking-glasses of the ancient pattern, that serve us well so long as we keep them in our hand, but spill all if we attempt to set them down ! I have sometimes compared conversation to the Italian game of mora, in which one player lifts his hand with so many fingers extended, and the other gives the number if he can. I show my thought, another his ; if they agree, well ; if they differ, we find the largest common factor, if we can, but at any rate avoid dis- 250 AMERICAN LITERATURE. putiiig about remainders and fractions, which is to real talk what tuning an instrument is to playing on it. TALK. I really believe soiiie people save their bright thoughts as being too precious for conversation. What do you think The Auto- ^^ admiring friend said the other day to one that crat of the was talking good things, — good enough to print ? Breakfast "Why," Said he, "you are wasting merchantable Table. literature, a cash article, at the rate, as nearly as I can tell, of fifty dollars an hour." The talker took him to the window, and asked him to look out and tell what he saw. '' ISTothing but a very dusty street," he said, " and a man driving a sprinkling-machine through it." " Why don't you tell the man he is wasting that water ? What would be the state of the highways of life, if we did not drive our thought-sprinklers through them with the valves open, sometimes ? " Besides, there is another thing about this talking, Avhich you forget. It shapes our thoughts for us ; — the waves of conversation roll them as the surf rolls the pebbles on the shore. Let me modify the image a little. I rough out my thoughts in talk as an artist models in clay. Spoken lan- guage is so plastic, — you can pat and coax, and spread and shave, and rub out, and fill up, and stick on so easily, when you Work that soft material, that there is nothing like it for modelling. Out of it come the shapes which you turn into marble or bronze in your immortal books, if you happen to write such. Or, to use another illustration, writing or printing is like shooting with a rifle ; you may hit your reader's mind, or miss it ; — but talking is like playing at a mark with the pipe of an engine ; if it is within reach, and you have time enough, you can't help hitting it. OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. 251 TRUTH AND FALSEHOOD. When we are as yet small children, long before the time when those two grown ladies offer us the choice of Hercules, there comes up to us a youthful angel, holding in his right hand cubes like dice, and in his left spheres like ^^^^ ^^^g. marbles. The cubes are of stainless ivory, and on crat of the each is written in letters of gold. Truth. The Breakfast spheres are veined and streaked and spotted be- ^ ®" neath, with a dark crimson flush above, where the light falls upon them, and in a certain aspect you can make out upon every one of them the three letters L, I, E. The child to whom they are offered very likely clutches at both. The spheres are the most convenient things in the world ; they roll with the least possible impulse just where the child would have them. The cubes will not roll at all ; they have a great talent for standing still, and always keep right side up. But very soon the young philosopher finds that things which roll so easily are very apt to roll into the wrong corner, and to get out of his way when he most wants them, while he always knows where to find the others, which stay where they are left. Thus he learns — thus we learn — to drop the streaked and speckled globes of falsehood, and to hold fast the white, angular blocks of truth. But then comes Timidity, and after her Good-nature, and last of all Polite-behavior, all insisting that truth must roll, or nobody can do anything with it ; and so the first with her coarse rasp, and the second with her broad file, and the third with her silken sleeve, do so round off and smooth and polish the snow-white cubes of truth, that, when they have got a little dingy by use, it becomes hard to tell them from the rolling spheres of falsehood. 252 AMERICAN- LITERATURE. THE LAST LEAF. I saw him once before, As he passed by the door, And again The pavement stones resound, As he totters o'er the ground With his cane. They say that in his prime, Ere the pruning-knife of Time Cut him down. Not a better man was found By the Crier on his round Through the town. But now he walks the streets, And he looks at all he meets Sad and wan. And he shakes his feeble head. That it seems as if he said, " They are gone." The mossy marbles rest On the lips that he has prest In their bloom, And the names he loved to hear Have been carved for many a year On the tomb. My grandmamma has said, — Poor old lady, she is dead Long ago, — That he had a Eonian nose. And his cheek was like a rose In the snow. OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. 253 But now his nose is thin, And it rests upon his chin Like a staff, And. a crook is in his back, And a melancholy crack In his laugh. I know it is a sin For me to sit and grin At him here ; But the old three-cornered hat, And the breeches, and all that, Are so queer ! And if I should live to be The last leaf upon the tree In the spring. Let them smile as I do now. At the old forsaken bough Where I cling. THE CHAMBERED NAUTILUS. This is the ship of pearl, which, poets feign. Sails the unshadowed main, — The venturous bark that flings On the sweet summer wind its purpled wings In gulfs enchanted, where the siren sings, And coral reefs lie bare. Where the cold sea-maids rise to sun their streaming hair. Its webs of living gauze no more unfurl ; Wrecked is this ship of pearl ! And every chambered cell, Where its dim dreaming life was wont to dwell. 254 AMERICAN LITERATURE. As the frail tenant shaped his growing shell, Before thee lies revealed, — Its irised ceiling rent, its sunless crypt unsealed ! Year after year beheld the silent toil That spread his lustrous coil ; Still, as the spiral grcAv, He left the past year's dwelling for the new. Stole with soft step its shining archway through, Built up its idle door, Stretched in his last-found home, and knew the old no more. Thanks for the heavenly message brought by thee. Child of the wandering sea. Cast from her lap, forlorn ! From thy dead lips a clearer note is born Than ever Triton blew from wreathed horn ! While on mine ear it rings. Through the deep caves of thought I hear a voice that sings : — Build thee more stately mansions, my soul. As the swift seasons roll ! Leave thy low-vaulted past ! Let each new temple, nobler than the last. Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast. Till thou at length art free. Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea ! UNDER THE VIOLETS. Her hands are cold ; her face is white ; No more her pulses come and go ; Her eyes are shut to life and light ; — Fold the white vesture, snow on snow. And lay her where the violets blow. OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. 255 But not beneath a graven stone, To plead for tears with alien eyes ; A slender cross of wood alone Shall say, that here a maiden lies In peace beneath the peaceful skies. And gray old trees of hugest limb Shall wheel their circling shadows round To make the scorching sunlight dim That drinks the greenness from the ground, And drop their dead leaves on J^r mound. When o'er their boughs the squirrels run, And through their leaves the robins call, And, ripening in the autumn sun, The acorns and the chestnuts fall, Doubt not that she will heed them all. For her the morning choir shall sing Its matins from the branches high, And every minstrel-voice of spring. That trills beneath the April sky. Shall greet her with its earliest cry. When, twining round their dial-track. Eastward the lengthening shadows pass, Her little mourners, clad in black. The crickets sliding through the grass. Shall pipe for her an evening mass. At last the rootlets of the trees Shall find the prison where she lies, And bear the buried dust they seize In leaves and blossoms to the skies. So may the soul that warmed it rise ! 256 AMERICAN LITERATURE. If any, bom of kindlier blood, Should ask, What maiden lies below ? Say only this : A tender bud, That tried to blossom in the snow, Lies withered where the violets blow. HARRIET BEECIIER STOWE. 257 f^arriet Beccfjer -Stoiwe, [b. Litchfield, Connecticut, June 14, 1812.] SAM MENDS THE CLOCK. '' Why, ye see, Miss Lois," lie would say, " clocks can't be druv ; that's jest what they can't. Some things can be druv, and then agin some things can't, and clocks is that kind. They's jest got to be humored. „ ,^°'^° Now this 'ere's a 'mazin' good clock ; give me my time on it, and I'll have it so t'will keep straight on to the Millennium." "Millennium !" says Aunt Lois, with a snort of infinite contempt. " Yes, the Millennium," says Sam, letting fall his work in a contemplative manner. " That 'ere's an inter- estin' topic. Now Parson Lothrop, he don't think the Mil- lennium will last a thousand years. What's your 'pinion on that pint. Miss Lois ? " "My opinion is," said Aunt Lois, in her most nipping tones, "that if folks don't mind their own business, and do with their might what their hand finds to do, the Millen- nium won't come at all." " Wal, you see. Miss Lois, it's just here, — one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day." " I should think you thought a day was a thousand years, the way you work," said Aunt Lois. " Wal," says Sam, sitting down with his back to his des- perate litter of wheels, weights, and pendulums, and medi- tatively caressing his knee as he watched the sailing clouds in abstract meditation, "ye see, ef a thing's ordained, why it's got to be, ef you don't lift a finger. That 'ere's so now, ain't it ? " 258 AMERICAN LITERATURE. " Sam Lawson, you are about the most aggravating crea- ture I ever had to do with. Here you've got our clock all to pieces, and have been keeping up a perfect hurrah's nest in our kitchen for three days, and there you sit maundering and talking with your back to your work, fussin' about the Millennium, which is none of your business, or mine, as I know of! Do either put that clock together or let it alone ! " " Don't you be a grain uneasy. Miss Lois. Why, I'll have your clock all right in the end, but I can't be druv. Wal, I guess I'll take another spell on't to-morrow or Friday." Poor Aunt Lois, horror-stricken, but seeing herself actvi- ally in the hands of the imperturbable enemy, now essayed the task of conciliation. " Now do, Lawson, just finish up this job, and I'll pay you down, right on the spot ; and you need the money." " I'd like to 'blige ye, Miss Lois ; but ye see money ain't everything in this world. Ef I work tew long on one thing, my mind kind o' gives out, ye see ; and besides, I've got some 'sponsibilities to 'tend to. There's Mrs. Captain Brown, she made me promise to come to-day and look at the nose o' that 'ere silver teapot o' hern ; it's kind o' sprung a leak. And then I 'greed to split a little oven-wood for the Widdah Pedee, that lives up on the Shelburn road. Must visit the widdahs in their affliction, Scriptur' says. And then there's Hepsy : she's allers a castin' it up at me that I don't do notliing for her and the chil'en; but then, lordy massy, Hepsy hain't no sort o' patience. Why, jest this mornin' I was a tellin' her to count up her marcies, and I 'clare for't if I didn't think she'd a throwed the tongs at me. That 'ere woman's temper railly makes me consarned. Wal, good day, Miss Lois. I'll be along again to-morrow or Friday or the first o' next week." And away he went with long loose strides down the village street, while the leisurely wail of an old fuguing tune floated back after him, — HARRIET BEECHER STOWE. 259 " Thy years are an Etarnal day, Thy years are an Etarnal day." "All eternal torment," said Aunt Lois, with a snap. "I'm sure, if there's a mortal creature on this earth that I pity, it's Hepsy Lawson. Folks talk about her scolding, — that Sam Lawson is enough to make the saints in Heaven fall from grace. And you can't do anything with him : it's like charging bayonet into a wool-sack." EVA AND TOPSY. "What's Eva going about, now ? " said St. Clare ; " I mean to see." And, advancing on tiptoe, he lifted up a curtain that covered the glass-door, and looked in. In a moment, laying his finger on his lips, he made a silent gesture to Miss Ophelia to come and look. There sat the two children on the floor, with their side faces towards them. Topsy, with her usual air of careless drol- lery and unconcern; but, opposite to her, Eva, her whole face fervent with feeling, and tears in her large eyes. " What does make you so bad, Topsy ? Why don't you try and be good ? Don't you love anybody, Topsy ? " " Dunno nothing 'bout love ; I loves candy and sich, that's all," said Topsy. " But you love your father and mother ? " " Never had none, ye know. I telled ye that, Miss Eva." "0, I know," said Eva, sadly; "but hadn't you any brother, or sister, or aunt, or " — " No, none on 'em, — never had nothing nor nobody." " But, Topsy, if you'd only try to be good, you might " — " Couldn't never be nothin' but a nigger, if I was ever so good," said Topsy. " If I could be skinned, and come white, I'd try then." Uncle Tom's Cabin, 260 AMERICAN LITERATURE. " But people can love you, if you are black, Topsy. Miss Ophelia would love you, if you were good." Topsy gave tlie short, blunt laugh that was her common mode of expressing incredulity. " Don't you think so ? " said Eva. " No ; she can't bar me, 'cause I'm a nigger ! — she'd's soon have a toad touch her ! There can't nobody love nig- gers, and niggers can't do nothin' ! / don't care," said Topsy, beginning to whistle. " 0, Topsy, poor child, / love you ! " said Eva, with a sudden burst of feeling, and laying her little, thin, white hand on Topsy's shoulder ; " I love you, because you haven't had any father, or mother, or friends ; — because you've been a poor, abused child ! I love you, and I want you to be good. I am very unwell, Topsy, and I think I shan't live a great while ; and it really grieves me, to have you be so naughty. I wish you would try to be good, for my sake ; — it's only a little while I shall be with you." The round, keen eyes of the black child were overcast with tears ; — large, bright drops rolled heavily down, one by one, and fell on the little white hand. Yes, in that moment, a ray of real belief, a ray of heavenly love, had penetrated the darkness of her heathen soul ! She laid her head down between her knees, and wept and sobbed, — while the beautiful child, bending over her, looked like the picture of some bright angel stooping to reclaim a sinner. " Poor Toj^sy ! " said Eva, " don't you know that Jesus loves all alike ? He is just as willing to love you as me. He loves you just as I do, — only more, because he is better. He will help you to be good ; and you can go to Heaven at last, and be an angel forever, just as much as if you were white. Only think of it, Topsy ! — you can be one of those spirits bright, Uncle Tom sings about." " 0, dear Miss Eva, dear Miss Eva ! " said the child ; " I will try, I will try ; I never did care nothin' about it before," St. Clare, at this instant, dropped the curtain. " It puts HARRIET BEECHER STOWE, 261 me in mind of mother," he said to Miss Ophelia. "It is true what she tokl me ; if we want to give sight to the blind, we must be willing to do as Christ did, — call them to us, and pitf oxLr hands on them.'" "I've always had a prejudice against negroes," said Miss Ophelia, "and it's a fact, I never could bear to have that child touch me ; but I didn't think she knew it." " Trust any child to find that out," said St. Clare ; " there's no keeping it from them. But I believe that all the trying in the world to benefit a child, and all the substantial favors you can do them, will never excite one emotion of gratitude while that feeling of repugnance remains in the heart ; — it's a queer kind of fact, — but so it is." "I don't know how I can help it," said Miss Ophelia; " they are disagreeable to me, — this child in particular ; — how can I help feeling so ? " "Eva does, it seems." " Well, she's so loving ! After all, though, she's no more than Christ-like," said Miss Ophelia ; " I wish I were like her. She might teach me a lesson." " It Avouldn't be the first time a little child had been used to instruct an old disciple, if it were so," said St. Clare. ROMANCE. All prosaic, and all bitter, disenchanted people talk as if novelists and poets made romance. They do, — just as much as craters make volcanoes, — no more. What is romance ? whence comes it ? Plato spoke to the . subject wisely, in his quaint way, some two thou- -^ooijig. sand years ago, when he said, "Man's soul, in a former state, was winged, and soared among the gods ; and so it comes to pass, that, in this life, when the soul, by the power of music or poetry, or the sight of beauty, hath her remembrance quickened, forthwith there is a struggling 262 AMERICAN LITERATURE. and a pricking pain as of wings tiying to come forth, — even as cliilclren in teething." And if an old heathen, two thousand years ago, discoursed thus gravely of the romantic part of our nature, whence comes it that in Christian lands we think in so pagan a way of it, and turn the whole care of it to ballad-makers, romancers, and opera-singers ? Let us look up in fear and reverence and say, " God is the great maker of romance. He, from whose hand came man and woman, — he, who strung the great harp of Exis- tence with all its wild and wonderful and manifold chords, and attuned them to one another, — he is the great Poet of life." Every impulse of beauty, of heroism, every craving for purer love, fairer perfection, nobler type and style of being than that which closes like a prison-house around us, in the dim, daily walk of life, is God's breath, God's impulse, God's reminder to the soul that there is something higher, sweeter, purer, yet to be attained. Therefore, man or woman, when thy ideal is shattered, — as shattered a thousand times it must be, — when the vision fades, the rapture burns out, turn not away in scepticism and bitterness, saying, "There is nothing better for a man than that he should eat and drink," but rather cherish the revelations of those hours as prophecies and foreshadow- ings of something real and possible, yet to be attained in the manhood of immortality. The scoffing spirit that laughs at romance is an apple of the Devil's own handing from the bitter tree of knowledge ; — it opens the eyes only to see eternal nakedness. If ever you have had a romantic, uncalculating friend- ship, — a boundless worship and belief in some hero of your soul, — if ever you have so loved, that all cold pru- dence, all selfish worldly considerations have gone down like driftwood before a river flooded with new rain from heaven, so that you even forgot yourself, and were ready to cast your whole being into the chasm of existence, as an offering before the feet of another, and all for nothing, — if you awoke bitterly betrayed and deceived, still give thanks HARRIET BEECHER STOWE. 263 to God that yoii have had one glimpse of heaven. The door now shut will open again. Rejoice that the noblest capability of your eternal inheritance has been made known to you ; treasure it as the highest honor of your being, that ever you could so feel, — that so divine a guest ever pos- sessed your soul. By such experiences are we taught the pathos, the sacred- ness of life ; and if we use them wisely, our eyes will ever after be anointed to see what poems, what sublime trage- dies lie around us in the daily walks of life, " written not with ink, but in fleshy tables of the heart." The dullest street of the most prosaic town has matter in it for more smiles, more tears, more intense excitement, than ever were written in story or sung in poem ; the reality is there, of which the romancer is the second-hand recorder. 264 AMERICAN LITERATURE. Sours Fers* [b. Salem, Massachusetts, August 28, 1813. d. May 8, 1880.] THE LOST. The fairest day tliat ever yet has shone Will be when thou the day within shalt see ; The fairest rose that ever yet has blown, When thou the flower thou lookest on shalt be ; But thou art far away amidst Time's toys ; Thyself the day thou lookest for in them, Thyself the flower that now thine eye enjoys ; But wilted now thou hang'st upon thy stem ; The bird thou hearest on the budding tree Thou hast made sing with thy forgotten voice ; But when it swells again to melody, The song is thine in which thou wilt rejoice ; And thou new risen 'midst these wonders, live, That now to them dost all thy substance give. TO THE HUMMING-BIRD. I cannot heal thy green gold breast. Where deep those cruel teeth have prest. Nor bid thee raise thy ruffled crest, And seek thy mate. Who sits alone within thy nest, Nor sees thy fate. No more with him in summer hours Thou'lt hum amid the leafy bowers, Nor hover round the dewy flowers, JONES VERY. 265 To feed thy young ; Nor seek, when evening darkly lowers, Thy nest high hung. No more thou'lt know a mother's care Thy honied spoils at eve to share. Nor teach thy tender brood to dare, With upward spring, Their path through lields of sunny air, On new-fledged wing. For thy return in vain shall wait Thy tender young, thy fond, fond mate. Till night's last stars beam forth full late On their sad eyes, — Unknown, alas ! thy cruel fate. Unheard thy cries ! 266 AMERICAN LITERATURE. SEilUam Eoss SEallace, [b. Lexington, Kentucky, 1819. d. May 5, 1881.] EL AMIN — THE FAITHFUL. Who is this that comes from Hara? not in kingly pomp and pride, But a great, free son of Nature, lion-soul'd and eagle-eyed : Who is this before whose presence idols tumble to the sod? While he cries out, '' Allah Akbar ! and there is no god but God ! " Wandering in the solemn desert, he has wonder'd like a child. Not as yet too proud to wonder, at the sun and star and wild. 0, thou Moon ! who made thy brightness ? Stars ! who hung ye there on high ? Answer ! so my soul may worship : I must worship, or I die. Then there fell the brooding silence that precedes the thun- der's roll : And the old Arabian Whirlwind called another Arab soul. Who is this that come from Hara ? not in kingly pomp and pride, But a great free son of Nature, lion-soul'd and eagle-eyed : He has stood and seen Mount Hara to the Awful Presence nod; He has heard from cloud and lightning, " Know there is no god but God ! " Call ye this man " an impostor " ? — He was called The Faithful, when A boy he wandered o'er the deserts, by the wild-eyed Arab men. WILLIAM ROSS WALLACE. 267 He was always call'd The Faithful. Truth he knew was Allah's breath ; But the Lie went darkly gnashing through the corridors of Death. " He was fierce ! " — Yes ! fierce at falsehood, — fierce at hideous bits of wood That the Koreish taught the people made the sun and solitude. But his heart was also gentle ; and affection's graceful palm, Waving in his tropic spirit, to the weary brought a balm. " Precepts ? " — Have on each compassion ! Lead the stranger to your door ! In your dealings keep uj) justice ! Give a tenth unto the poor ! " Yet, ambitious ! " — Yes ! ambitious — while he heard the calm and sweet Aidenn-voices sing — to trample conqner'd Hell beneath his feet. " Islam ? " — Yes ! submit to heaven ! — '' Prophet ? " — To the East thou art ! What are prophets but the trumpets blown by God to stir the heart ? And the great Heart of the Desert stirr'd unto that solemn strain Rolling from the trump at Hara, over Error's troubled main. And a hundred dusky millions honor still El Amin's rod. Daily chaunting — " Allah Akbar ! know there is no god but God ! " Call him, then, no more Impostor ! Mecca is the Choral Gate Where, till Zion's noon shall take them, nations in the morning wait. 268 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 3ol}n Hotljrop ilotlfg. [b. Dorchester, Massachusetts, April 15, 1814. d. May 29, 1877.] ABDICATION OF CHARLES THE FIFTH. The palace where the states-general were upon this occa- sion convened, had been the residence of the Dukes of Bra- bant since the days of John the Second, who had Else of the ^^^^^t it about the year 1300. It was a spacious Eepublic. ^^^^ convenient building, but not distinguished for the beauty of its architecture. In front Avas a large open square, enclosed by an iron railing ; in the rear an extensive and beautiful park, filled with forest trees, and containing gardens and labyrinths, fish-ponds and game preserves, fountains and promenades, race-courses and arch- ery grounds. The main entrance to this edifice opened upon a spacious hall, connected with a beautiful and symmetrical chapel. The hall was celebrated for its size, harmonious propor- tions, and the richness of its decorations. It was the place where the chapters of the famous order of the Golden Fleece were held. Its walls were hung with a magnificent tapestry of Arras, representing the life and achievements of Gideon, the Midianite, and giving particular prominence to the miracle of the " fleece of wool," vouchsafed to that renowned champion, the great patron of the Knights of the Fleece. On the present occasion there were various additional embellishments of flowers and votive garlands. At the western end a spacious platform or stage, with six or seven steps, had been constructed, below which was a range of benches for the deputies of the seventeen provinces. Upon the stage itself there were rows of seats, covered with tap- estry, upon the right hand and upon the left. JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY. 269 These were respectively to accommodate the knights of the order and the guests of high distinction. In the rear of these were other benches, for the members of the three great councils. In the centre of the stage was a splendid canopy, decorated with the arms of Burgundy, beneath which were placed three gilded arm-chairs. All the seats upon the platform were vacant; but the benches below, assigned to the deputies of the provinces, were already filled. Numerous representatives from all the states but two — Gelderland and Overyssel — had already taken their places. Grave magistrates, in chain and gown, and execu- tive officers in the splendid civic uniforms for which the Netherlands were celebrated, already filled every seat within the space allotted. The remainder of the hall was crowded with the more favored portion of the multitude Avhich had been fortunate enough to procure admission to the exhibition. The archers and halle-bardiers of the body-guard kept watch at all the doors. The theatre was filled — the audience was eager with expectation — the actors were yet to arrive. As the clock struck three, the hero of the scene appeared. Csesar, as he was always designated in the classic language of the day, entered, leaning on the shoulder of William of Orange. They came from the chapel, and were immediately followed by Philip the Second and Queen Mary of Hungary. The Archduke Maximilian, the Duke of Savoy, and other great person- ages came afterwards, accompanied by a glittering throng of warriors, councillors, governors, and Knights of the Fleece. Many individuals of existing or future historic celebrity in the Netherlands, whose names are so familiar to the stu- dent of the epoch, seemed to have been grouped, as if by premeditated design, upon this imposing platform, where the curtain was to fall forever upon the mightiest emperor since Charlemagne, and where the opening scene of the long and tremendous tragedy of Philip's reign was to be simulta- neously enacted. . . . 270 AMERICAN LITERATURE. All the company present had risen to their feet as the emperor entered. By his command, all immediately after- wards resumed their places. The benches at either end of the platform were accordingly filled with the royal and princely personages invited, with the Fleece Knights, wear- ing the insignia of their order, with the members of the three great councils, and with the governors. The Emperor, the King, and the Queen of Hungary, were left conspicuous in the centre of the scene. As the whole object of the ceremony was to present an impressive exhibition, it is worth our while to examine minutely the appearance of the two principal characters. Charles the Fifth was then fifty-five years and eight months old, but he was already decrepit with premature old age. He was of about the middle height, and had been ath- letic and well proportioned. Broad in the shoulders, deep in the chest, thin in the flank, very muscular in the arms and legs, he had been able to match himself with all competitors in the tourney and the ring, and to vanquish the bull with his own hand in the favorite national amusement of Spaiii. He had been able in the field to do the duty of captain and soldier, to endure fatigue and exposure, and every privation except fasting. These personal advantages were now de- parted. Crippled in hands, knees and legs, he supported himself with difficulty upon a crutch, with the aid of an at- tendant's shoulder. In face he had always been extremely ugly, and time had certainly not improved his physiognomy. His hair, once of a light color, was now white with age, close-clipped and bristling ; his beard was gray, coarse, and shaggy. His forehead was spacious and commanding ; the eye was dark-blue, with an expression both majestic and benignant. His nose was aquiline but crooked. The lower part of his face was famous for its deformity. The under lip, a Burgundian inheritance, as faithfully transmitted as the duchy and county, was heavy and hanging ; the lower jaw protruding so far beyond the upper, that it was impos- sible for him to bring together the few fragments of teeth JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY. 271 which still remained, or to speak a whole sentence in an intelligible voice. Eating and talking, occupations to which he was always much addicted, were becoming daily more arduous, in consequence of this original defect, which now seemed hardly human, but rather an original deformity. So much for the father. The son, Philip the Second, was a small, meagre man, much below the middle height, with thin legs, a narrow chest, and the shrinking, timid air of an habitual invalid. He seemed so little, upon his first visit to his aunts, the Queens Eleanor and Mary, accustomed to look upon proper men in Flanders and Germany, that he was fain to win their favor by making certain attempts in the tournament, in which his success was sufficiently prob- lematical. " His body," says his professed panegyrist, " was but a human cage, in which, however brief and narrow, dwelt a soul to whose flight the immeasurable expanse of heaven Avas too contracted." The same wholesale admirer adds, that "his aspect was so reverend, that rustics who met him alone in the wood, without knowing him, bowed down with instinctive veneration." In face, he was the liv- ing image of his father, having the same broad forehead, and blue eye, with the same aquiline, but better propor- tioned nose. In the lower part of the countenance, the remarkable Burgundian deformity was likewise reproduced. He had the same heavy hanging lip, with a vast mouth, and monstrously protruding lower jaw. His complexion was fair, his hair light and thin, his beard yellow, short, and pointed. He had the aspect of a Fleming, but the loftiness of a Spaniard. His demeanor in public was still, silent, almost sepulchral. He looked habitually on the ground when he conversed, was chary of speech, embarrassed, and even suffering in manner. This was ascribed partly to a natural haughtiness which he had occasionally endeavored to overcome, and partly to habitual pains in the stomach, occasioned by his inordinate fondness for pastry. Such was the personal appearance of the man who was about to receive into his single hand the destinies of half 272 AMERICAN LITERATURE. the world ; Avhose single will was, for the future, to shape the fortunes of every individual then present, of many mil- lions more in Europe, America, and at the ends of the earth, and of countless millions yet unborn. The three royal personages being seated upon chairs placed triangularly under the canopy, such of the audience as had seats provided for them, now took their places, and the proceedings commenced. Philibert de Bruxelles, a mem- ber of the privy council of the Netherlands, arose at the emperor's command, and made a long oration. . . . As De Bruxelles finished, there was a buzz of admiration throughout the assembly, mingled with murmurs of regret, that in the present great danger upon the frontiers from the belligerent King of France and his warlike and restless nation, the provinces should be left without their ancient and puissant defender. The emperor then arose to his feet. Leaning on his crutch, he beckoned from his seat the per- sonage upon whose arm he had leaned as he entered the hall. A tall handsome youth of twenty-two came forward — a man whose name from that time forward, and as long as history shall endure, has been, and will be, more familiar than any other in the mouths of Ketherlanders. At that day he had rather a southern than a German or Flemish appearance. He had a Spanish cast of features, dark, well chiselled, and symmetrical. His head was small and well placed upon his shoulders. His hair was dark- brown, as were also his moustache and peaked beard. His forehead was lofty, spacious, and already prematurely en- graved with the anxious lines of thought. His eyes were full, brown, well opened, and expressive of profound reflec- tion. He was dressed in the magnificent apparel for which the Netherlanders were celebrated above all other nations, and which the ceremony rendered necessary. His presence being considered indispensable at this great ceremony, he had been summoned but recently from the camp on the frontier, where, notwithstanding his youth, the emperor had JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY. 273 appointed him to command his army in chief against such antagonists as Admiral Coligny and the Due de Nevers. Thus supported upon his crutch and upon the shoulder of William of Orange, the emperor proceeded to address the states, by the aid of a closely-written brief which he held in his hand. He reviewed rapidly the progress of events from his seventeenth year up to that day. He spoke of his nine expeditions into Germany, six to Spain, seven to Italy, four to France, ten to the Netherlands, two to Eng- land, as many to Africa, and of his eleven voyages by sea. He sketched his various wars, victories, and treaties of peace, assuring his hearers that the welfare of his subjects and the security of the Roman Catholic religion had ever been the leading object of his life. As long as God had granted him health, he continued, only enemies could have regret- ted that Charles was living and reigning, but now that his strength was but vanity, and life fast ebbing away, his love for dominion, his affection for his subjects, and his regard for their interests, required his departure. Instead of a decrepit man with one foot in the grave, he presented them with a sovereign in the prime of life and the vigor of health. Turning toward Philip, he observed, that for a dying father to bequeath so magnificent an empire to his son was a deed worthy of gratitude, but that when the father thus descended to the grave before his time, and by an anticipated and living burial sought to provide for the welfare of his realms and the grandeur of his son, the benefit thus con- ferred was surely far greater. He added, that the debt would be paid to him and with usury, should Philip conduct himself in his administration of the province with a wise and affectionate regard to their true interests. Posterity would applaud his abdication, should his son prove worthy of his bounty ; and that could only be by living in the fear of God, and by maintaining law, justice, and the Catholic religion in all their purity, as the true foundation of the realm. In conclusion, he entreated the estates, and through 274 AMERICAN LITERATURE. them the nation, to render obedience to their new prince, to maintain concord, and to preserve inviolate the Catholic faith; begging them at the same time, to pardon him all errors or offences which he might have committed towards them during his reign, and assuring them that he should unceasingly remember their obedience and affection in his every prayer to that Being to whom the remainder of his life was to be dedicated. Such brave words as these, so many vigorous assevera- tions of attempted performance of duty, such fervent hopes expressed of a benign administration in behalf of the son, could not but affect the sensibilities of the audience, already excited and softened by the impressive character of the whole display. Sobs were heard throughout every portion of the hall, and tears poured profusely from every eye. The Fleece Knights on the platform and the burghers in the background were all melted with the same emotions. As for the emperor himself, he sank almost fainting upon his chair as he concluded his address. An ashy pale- ness overspread his countenance, and he wept like a child. Even the icy Philip was almost softened, as he rose to per- form his part of the ceremony. Dropping upon his knees before his father's feet, he reverently kissed his hand. Charles placed his hands solemnly upon his son's head, made the sign of the cross, and blessed him in the name of the Holy Trinity. Then raising him in his arms he ten- derly embraced him, saying, as he did so, to the great poten- tates around him, that he felt a sincere compassion for the son on whose shoulders so heavy a weight had just devolved, and which only a life-long labor would enable him to support. RICHARD HENRY DANA, JR. 275 Eidjarti ^twx^ ©ana, %x. [b, Cambridge, Massacbusetts, August 1, 1815. d. January 7, 1882.] FLOGGING. The crew and officers followed the captain np the hatch- way ; but it was not until after repeated orders that the mate laid hold of Sam, who made no resistance, and carried him to the £?am?way. "^^^ Yasji u^KU 4. • ^ fl ^1 ^ r Before the "What are you going to nog that man tor, j^^^^^^ sir ? " said John, the Swede, to the captain. Upon hearing this, the captain turned upon John ; but, knowing him to be quick and resolute, he ordered the steward to bring the irons, and calling upon Russell to help him, went up to John. "Let me alone," said John. "I'm willing to be put in irons. You need not use any force " ; and, putting out his hands, the captain slipped the irons on, and sent him aft to the quarter-deck. Sam, by this time, was seized up, as it is called, that is, placed against the shrouds, with his wrists made fast to them, his jacket off, and his back exposed. The captain stood on the break of the deck, a few feet from him, and a little raised, so as to have a good swing at him, and held in his hand the end of a thick, strong rope. The officers stood round, and the crew grouped together in the waist. All these preparations made me feel sick and almost faint, angry and excited as I was. A man — a human being, made in God's likeness — fastened up and flogged like a beast ! A man, too, whom I had lived with, eaten with, and stood watch with for months, and knew so well ! If a thought of resistance crossed the minds of any of the men, what was to be done ? Their time for it had gone by. Two men were fast, and there were left only two 276 AMERICAN LITERATURE. men besides Stimpson and myself, and a small boy of ten or twelve years of age ; and Stimpson and I would not have joined the men in a mutiny, as they knew. And then, on the other side, there were (beside the captain) three officers, steward, agent, and clerk, and the cabin supplied with weapons. But beside the numbers, what is there for sailors to do? If they resist, it is mutiny; and if they succeed, and take the vessel, it is piracy. If they ever yield again, their punishment must come ; and if they do not yield, what are they to be for the rest of their lives ? If a sailor resist his commander, he resists the law, and piracy or submission is his only alternative. Bad as it was, they saw it must be borne. It is what a sailor ships for. Swinging the rope over his head, and bending his body so as to give it full force, the captain brought it down upon the poor fellow's back. Once, twice, — six times. *' Will you ever give me any more of your jaw ? " The man writhed with pain, but said not a word. Three times more. This was too much, and he muttered something which I could not hear; this brought as many more as the man could stand, when the captain ordered him to be cut down, and to go forward. BAYARD TAYLOR. 277 Bagartr ^aglor. [b. Chester County, Pennsj'lvania, January 11, 1825. d. December 19, 1878.] LOVE RETURNED. He was a boy when first we met ; His eyes were mixed of dew and fire, And on his candid brow was set The sweetness of a chaste desire : But in his veins the pulses beat Of passion, waiting for its wing. As ardent veins of summer heat Throb througli the innocence of spring. As manhood came, his stature grew, And fiercer burned his restless eyes. Until I trembled, as he drew From wedded hearts their young disguise. Like wind-fed flame his ardor rose, And brought, like flame, a stormy rain : In tumult sweeter than repose, He tossed the souls of joy and pain. So many years of absence change ! I knew him not when he returned : His step was slow, his brow was strange. His quiet eye no longer burned. When at my heart I heard his knock, No voice within his right confessed ; I could not venture to unlock Its chambers to an alien guest. 278 AMEBIC AN LITERATURE. Then, at the threshold, spent and worn With fruitless travel, down he lay : And I beheld the gleams of morn On his reviving beauty play. I knelt and kissed his holy lips, I washed his feet with pious care ; And from my life the long eclipse Drew off, and left his sunshine there. He burns no more with youthful fire ; He melts no more in foolish tears ; Serene and sweet, his eyes inspire The steady faith of balanced years. His folded wings no longer thrill. But in some peaceful flight of prayer He nestles in my heart so still, I scarcely feel his presence there. Love, that stern probation o'er, Thy calmer blessing is secure ! Thy beauteous feet shall stray no more, Thy peace and patience shall endure ! The lightest wind deflowers the rose, The rainbow with the sun departs, But thovi art centred in repose. And rooted in my heart of hearts ! BEDOUIN SONG. From the Desert I come to thee On a stallion shod with fire : And the winds are left behind In the speed of my desire. Under thy window I stand, And the midnight hears my cry ; BAYARD TAYLOR. I love thee, I love but tliee, With a love that shall not die Till the sun grows cold, And the stars are old. And the leaves of the Judgment Book unfold ! Look from thy window and see My passion and my pain ; I lie on the sands below, And I faint in thy disdain. Let the night-winds touch thy brow With the heat of my burning sigh, And melt thee to hear the vow Of a love that shall not die Till the sun grows cold, And the stars are old. And the leaves of the Judgment Book unfold ! My steps are nightly driven. By the fever in my breast, To hear from thy lattice breathed The word that shall give me rest. Open the door of thy heart. And open thy chamber door. And my kisses shall teach thy lips The love that shall fade no more Till the sun grows cold. And the stars are old. And the leaves of the Judgment Book unfold ! 279 280 AMERICAN LITERATURE. THE .SONG OF THE CAMP. " Give us a song ! " the soldiers cried, The outer trenches guarding, When the heated guns of the camps allied Grew weary of bombarding. The dark Redan, in silent scoff. Lay grim and threatening under ; And the tawny mound of the Malakoff No longer belched its thunder. There was a pause. A guardsman said, "We storm the forts to-morrow. Sing while we may ; another day Will bring enough of sorrow." They lay along the battery's side. Below the smoking cannon : Brave hearts, from Severn and from Clyde, And from the banks of Shannon. They sang of love, and not of fame ; Forgot was Britain's glory : Each heart recalled a different name. But all sang " Annie Laurie." Voice after voice caught up the song, Until its tender passion Eose like an anthem, rich and strong, — Their battle-eve confession. Dear girl, her name he dared not speak, But, as the song grew louder. Something upon the soldier's cheek Washed off the stains of powder. BAYARD TAYLOR. 281 Beyond the darkening ocean burned The bloody sunset's embers, While the Crimean valleys learned How English love remembers. And once again a fire of hell Ramed on the Russian quarters, With scream of shot, and burst of shell, And bellowing of the mortars ! And Irish Nora's eyes are dim For a singer, dumb and gory ; And English Mary mourns for him Who sang of " Annie Laurie." Sleep, soldiers ! still in honored rest Your truth and valor wearing ; The bravest are the tenderest, — The loving are the daring. FROM "THE PINES." Ancient Pines, Ye bear no record of the years of man. Spring is your sole historian, — Spring that paints These savage shores with hues of Paradise ; That decks your branches with a fresher green, And through your lonely far canadas pours Her floods of bloom, rivers of opal dye That wander down to lakes and widening seas Of blossom and of fragrance, — laughing Spring, That with her wanton blood refills her veins, And weds ye to your juicy youth again With a new ring, the while your rifted bark Drops odorous tears. Your knotty fibres yield 282 AMERICAN LITERATURE. To the light touch of her unfailing pen, As freely as the lupin's violet cup. Ye keep, close-locked, the memories of her stay. As in their shells the avelon^s keep Morn's rosy flush and moonlight's pearly glow. The wild northwest that from Alaska sweeps To drown Point Lobos with the icy scud And white sea-foam, may rend your boughs and leave Their blasted antlers tossing in the gale ; Your steadfast hearts are mailed against the shock, And on their annual tablets naught inscribe Of such rude visitation. Ye are still The simple children of a guiltless soil. And in your natures show the sturdy grain That passion cannot jar, nor force relax. Nor aught but sweet and kindly airs compel To gentler mood. No disappointed heart Has sighed its bitterness beneath your shade, No angry spirit ever came to make Your silence its confessional ; no voice. Grown harsh in Crime's great market-place, the world, Tainted Avith blasphemy your evening hush. And aromatic air. The deer alone, — The ambushed hunter that brings down the deer, The fisher wandering on the misty shore To watch sea-lions wallow in the flood, — The shout, the sound of hoofs that chase and fly. When swift vaqueros, dashing through the herds, Eide down the angry bull, — perchance, the song Some Indian heired of long-forgotten sires, — Disturb your solemn chorus. WENDELL PIIILLIPH. 283 [b. Boston, Massachusetts, November 29, ISll. d. February 2, 1884.] THE DUTY OF SCHOLARSHIP. Fifty millions of men God gives us to mould; burning questions, keen debate, great interests trying to vindicate their right to be, sad wrongs brought to the bar of public judgment, — these are the people's schools. ^^^ ^^^^ Timid scholarship either shrinks from sharing in j^^^^iooi these agitations, or denounces them as vulgar and dangerous interference by incompetent hands with matters above them. A chronic distrust of the people pervades the book-educated class of the North; they shrink from the free speech which is God's normal school for educating men, throwing upon them the grave responsibility of de- ciding great questions, and so lifting them to a higher level of intellectual and moral life. Trust the people — the wise and the ignorant, the good and the bad — with the gravest questions, and in the end you educate the race ; while you secure, not perfect institutions, not necessarily good ones, but the best institutions possible while human nature is the basis and the only material to build with. Men are educated and the State uplifted by allowing all — every one — to broach all their mistakes and advocate all their errors. The community that will not protect its humblest, most ignorant, and most hated member in the free utterance of his opinions, no matter how false or hateful, is only a gang of slaves ! Anarcharsis went into the Archon's court at Athens, heard a case argued by the great men of that city, and saw the vote by five hundred men. Walking in the streets, 284 AMERICAN LITERATURE. some one asked liim, "What do you think of Athenian liberty ? " "I think/' said he, " wise men argue cases, and fools decide them." Just what that timid scholar, two thousand years ago, said in the streets of Athens, that which calls itself scholarship here says to-day of popular agitation, — that it lets wise men argue questions and fools decide them. But that Athens where fools decided the gravest questions of policy and of right and wrong, where property you had gathered wearily to-day might be wrung from you by the caprice of the mob to-morrow, — that very Athens probably secured the greatest amount of human hap- piness and nobleness of its era; invented art, and sounded for us the depths of philosophy. God lent to it the largest intellects, and it flashes to-day the torch that gilds yet the mountain-peaks of the Old World : while Egypt, the hunker conservative of antiquity, where nobody dared to differ from the priest, or to be wiser than his grandfather ; where men pretended to be alive, though swaddled in the grave-clothes of creed and custom as close as their mummies were in linen, — that Egypt is hid in the tomb it inhabited, and the in- tellect Athens has trained for us digs to-day those ashes to find out what buried and forgotten hunkerism knew and did Suppose that universal suffrage endangered peace and threatened property. There is something more valuable than wealth, there is something more sacred than peace. As Humboldt says, " The finest fruit earth holds up to its Maker is a man." To ripen, lift, and educate a man is the first duty. Trade, law, learning, science, and religion are only the scaffolding wherewith to build a man. Despotism looks down into the poor man's cradle, and knows it can crush resistance and curb ill will. Democracy sees the ballot in that baby hand; and selfishness bids her put in- tegrity on one side of those baby footsteps and intelligence on the other, lest her own hearth be in peril. Thank God for his method of taking bonds of wealth and culture to share all their blessin,