A ^ V**' :aiiiaa^^Mi£^^'^'^^^^^^*"''^'^^^'^ ■Q^ ^ . '0 J -- ■ ^ - /f - THE SKETCH BOOK BY WASHmGTOIsr lEVII^G NEW YORK: HURST & CO., PUBLISHERS, NO. 122 NASSAU STREET. ARGYLE PRESS, Printing and Bookbinding, 24 & es WOOSTER ST., N. Y. EXCHANGE JUN 12 1944 Serial p— ■"" ■-•ion CONTENTS PAttE The Voyage 9 RoscoE 14 The Wife i 19 Rip Van Winkle 25 English Writers on America 37 Rural Life in England 44 Broken Heart, The « 49 Art of Book-making 53 A Royal Poet 58 Country Church, The 69 Widow and her Son, The 73 Boar's Head Tavern, Eastcheap 78 Mutability op Literature 86 Rural Funerals. 94 The Inn Kitchen 103 Specter Bridegroom, The 105 Westminster Abbey 116 Christmas 124 Stage Coach, The 128 Christmas Eve 133 Cheistmas Day 141 Christmas Dinner, The 151 Little Britain 163 Stratford-on-Avon 173 Traits op L^idian Character 187 Philip op Pokanoket 195 John Bull 207 Pride op the Village 215 Angler, The.. , 223 Sleepy Hollow, The Legend of 339 (iii) TO Sir WALTER SCOTT, Bart., THIS WORK IS DEDICATED IN TESTIMONY OF THE ADMIRATION AND AFFECTION ■ OF THE AUTHOR. ADVERTISEMENT TO THE FIRST AMERICAN EDITION. The following writings are publistied on experiment ; should they please, they may be followed by others. The writer will have to con- tend with some disadvantages. He is unsettled in his abode, subject to interruptions, and has his share of cares and vicissitudes. He cannot, therefore, Droniise a regular plan, nor regular periods of piublication. Should he be encouraged to proceed, much time may elapse between the appearance of his numbers ; and their size will depend on the materials he may have on hand. His writings will partake of the fluctuations of his own thoughts and feelings ; some- thnes treating of scenes before him, sometimes of others purely imaginary, and sometimes wandering back with his recollections to his native country. He will not be able to give them that tranquil attention necessary to finished composition ; and as they must be transmitted across the Atlantic for publication, he will have to trust to others to correct the frequent errors of the press. Should his writings, however, with all their imperfections, be well received, he cannot conceal that it would be a source of the purest gratification ; for though he does not aspire to those high honors which are the re- wards of loftier intellects ; yet it is the dearesr^ wish of his heart to have a secure and cherished, though humble cornei in the good opin- ions and kind feelings of his countrymen. London, 1819. ADVERTISEMENT TO THE FIRST ENGLISH EDITION. The following desultory papers are part of a series written in this eoariffy, but published in America. The author is aware of the au- sterity with which the writings of his countrymen have hitherto been treated by British critics ; he is conscious, too, that much of the con- tents of his papers can be interesting only in the eyes of American readers. It was not his intention, therefore, to have them reprinted in this country. He has, however, observed several of them from time to time inserted in periodical works of merit, and has under- stood that it was probable they would be republished in a collective form. He has been induced, therefore, to revise and bring them for- waid himself, that they may at least come correctly before the public. Should they be deemed of sufficient importance to attract the atten- tion of critics, he solicits for them that courtesy and candor which a stranger has some right to claim who presents himself at the thresh- old of a hospitable nation. February, 1830. > ' , (vi) THE AUTHOR'S ACCOUNT OF HIMSELF. I am of this mind with Homer, that as the snaile that crept out of her shel was turned eftsoones into a toad, and thereby was forced to make a stoole to sit on j so the traveller that stragleth from his owne countrjr is in a short time transformed into BO monstrous a shape, that he is faine to alter his mansion with his manners, and to live where he can, not where he would— Zi/^y's Euphues. I WAS always fond of visiting new scenes and observing strange cliaracters and manners. Even when a mere cliild I began my travels, and made many tours of discovery into foreign parts and unknown regions of my native city, to the frequent alarm of my parents, and tlie emolument of the town crier. As I grew into boyhood, I extended the range of my observations. My holiday afternoons were spent in rambles about the surrounding country. I made myself familiar with all its places, famous in history or fable. I knew every spot where a murder or robbery had been committed, or a ghost seen. I visited the neighboring villages, and added greatly to my stock of knowl- edge by noting their habits and customs, and conversing with their sages and great men. 1 even journeyed one long summer's day to the summit of the most distant hill, from whence I stretched my eye over many a mile of terra incognita, and was astonished to find how vast a globe I inhabited. This rambling propensity strengthened with my years. Books of voyages and travels became my passion, and in de souring their con- tents, I neglected the regular exercises of the school. How wistfully would I wander about the pier heads in fine weather, and watch the parting ships, bound to distant climes — with what longing eyes would I gaze after their lessening sails, and waft myself in imagination to the ends of the earth ! Farther reading and thinking, though they brought this vague in- clination into more reasonable bounds, only served to make it more decided. I visited various parts of my own country ; and had I been merely influenced by a love of fine scenery, I should have felt little desire to seek elsewhere its gratification ; for on no country have the charms of nature been more prodigally lavished. Her mighty lakes, like oceans of liquid silver ; her mountains, with their bright aerial tints ; her valleys, teeming with wild fertility ; her tremendous cata- racts, thundering in their solitudes ; her boundless plains, waving with spontaneous verdure ; her broad deep rivers, rolling in solemn silence to the ocean ; her trackless forests, where vegetation puts forth all its magnificence ; her skies, kindling with the magic of summer clouds and glorious sunshine : — no, never need an American look beyond his own country for the sublime and beautiful of natural scenery. But Europe held forth all the charms of storied and poetical asso- ciation. There were to be seen the jnasterpieces of art, the refine- Cviii viii THE AUTHORS ACCOUNT OF HIMSELF. ments of liiglilj cultivated society, tlie quaint peculiarities of ancient and local custom. My native country was full of youthful promise ; Europe was rich in the accumulated treasures of age. Her very ruins told the history of times gone by, and every moldering stone was a chronicle. I longed to wander over the scenes of renowned achieve- ment — to tread, as it were, in the footsteps of antiquity — to loiter about the ruined castle — to meditate on the falling tower — to escape, in short, from the commonplace realities of the present, and lose my- self among the shadowy grandeurs of the past. I had, beside all this, an earnest desire to see the great men of the earth. We have, it is true, our great men in America ; not a city but) has an ample share of them. I have mingled among them in my time, and been almost withered by the shade into which they cast me ; for there is nothing so baleful to a small man as the shade of a great one, particularly the great man of a city. But I was anxious to see the great men of Europe ; for I had read in the works of vari- ous philosophers that all animals degenerated in America, and man among the number. A great man of Europe, thought I, must there- fore be as superior to a great man of America, as a peak of the Alps to a highland of the Hudson ; and in this idea I was confirmed by observing the comparative importance and swelling magnitude of many English travelers among us, who, I was assured, were verj little people in their own country. ' I will visit this land of wonders, thought I, and see the gigantic race from which I am degenerated. It has been either my good or evil lot to have my roving passion gratified. I have wandered through different countries, and wit- nessed many of the shifting scenes of life. I cannot say that I have studied them with the eye of a philosopher, but rather with the saun- tering gaze with which humble lovers of the picturesque stroll from the window of one print-shop to another ; caught sometimes by the delineations of beauty, sometimes by the distortions of caricature, and sometimes by the loveliness of landscape. As it is the fashion for modem tourists to travel pencil in hand, and bring home their portfolios filled with sketches, I am disposed to get up a few for the entertainment of my friends. When, however, I look over the hints and memorandums I have taken down for the purpose, my heart almost fails me, at finding how my idle humor has led me aside from the great objects studied by every regular traveler who would make a book. I fear I shall give equal disappointment with an unlucky landscape-painter, who had traveled on the continent, but following the bent of his vagrant inclination , had sketched in nooks and cor- ners and by-places. His sketch-book was accordingly crowded with cottages, and landscapes, and obscure ruins ; but he had neglected to paint St. Peter's, or the Coliseum ; the cascade of Terni, or the bay of Naples ; and had nob a single glacier or volcjano in his whole collection. I'HE SKETCH-BOOK. By Washington Irving. I have no wife nor children, good or bad, to provide for. A mere spectator of other men's fortunes and adventures, and how they play their parts ; which, methinks, are diversely presented unto me, as from a common theater or scene. BUKTON. THE VOYAGE. Ships, ships, I will descry yoQ Ainidst the main, I will come and try yoa, What you are protecting, And projecting. What's your end and aim. One goes abroad for merchandise and trading, Another stays to keep his country from invading, A third is coming home with rich and wealthy lading, Hallo I my fancy, whither wUt thou go ?— Old Poem. To an American visiting Europe, the long voyage lie has to make is an excellent preparative. The temporary absence of worldly scenes and employments produces a state of mind peculiarly fitted to receive new and vivid impressions. The vast space of waters that separates the hemispheres is like a blank page in existence. There is no grad- ual transition by which, as in Europe, the features and population of one country blend almost imperceptibly with those of another. From the moment you lose sight of the land you have left all is vacancy, until you step on the opposite shore, and are launched at once into the bustle and novelties of another world. In traveling by land there is a continuity of scene, and a connected succession of persons and incidents, that carry on the story of life, and lessen the effect of absence and separation. We drag, it is true, " a lengthening chain " at each remove of our pilgrimage : but the chain is unbroken ; we can trace it back link by link ; and we feel that the last of them still grapples us to home. But a wide sea voy- age severs us at once. It makes us conscious of being cast loose from 10 SKETCH-BOOS:. the secure ancnorage of settled life, and sent adrift upon a doubtful world. It interposes a gulf, not merely imaginary, but real, between us and our homes — a gulf, subject to tempest, and fear, and uncer- tainty, that makes distance palpable, and return precarious. Such, at least, was the case with myself. As I saw the last blue line of my native land fade away like a cloud in the horizon, it seemed as if I had closed one volume of the world and its concerns, and had time for meditation, before I opened another. That land, too, now vanishing from my view, which contained all that was most dear to me in life ; wliat vicissitudes might occur in it — what changes might take place in me, before I should visit it again ! Who can tell, when he sets forth to wander, whither he may be driven by the uncertain currents of existence ; or when he may return ; or whether it may be ever his lot to revisit the scenes of his childhood? I said, that at sea all is vacancy ; I should correct the expression. To one given to day dreaming, and fond of losing himself in reveries, a sea voyage is full of subjects for meditation ; but then they are the wonders of the deep and of the air, and rather tend to abstract the mind from worldly themes. I delighted to loll over the quarter-rail- ing or climb to the main-top, of a calm day, and muse for hours to- gether on the tranquil bosom of a summer's sea ; — to gaze upon the piles of golden clouds just peering above the horizon ; fancy them some fairy realms, and people them with a creation of my own ; — to watch the gentle undulating billows, rolling their silver volumes, as if to die away on those happy shores. There was a delicious sensation of mingled security and awe with which I looked down from my giddy height on the monsters of the deep at their uncouth gambols : shoals of porpoises tumbling about tUe bow of the ship ; the grampus, slowly heaving his huge form above the surface ; or the ravenous shark, darting, like a specter, through the blue waters. My imagination would conjure up all that " had heard or read of the watery world beneath me ; of the finny herds that roam Its fathomless valleys ; of the shapeless monsters that lurk among the very foundations of the earth, and of those wild phantasms that swell the tales of fishermen and sailors. Sometimes a distant sail, gliding along the edge of the ocean, would be another theme of idle speculation. How interesting this fragment of a world, hastening to rejoin the great mass of existence! What a glorious monument of human invention, that has thus triumphed over wind and wave ; has brought the ends of the world into communion ; has established an interchange of blessings, pour- ing into the sterile regions of the nortli all the luxuries of the South ; has diffused the light of knowledge and the charities of cultivated life ; and has thus bound together those scattered portions of the human race between which nature seemed to have thrown an insur- mounta jle barrier. TEE VOYAGE. 11 We one day descried some sliapeless object drifting at a distance. At sea, everything that breaks the monotony of the surrounding ex- panse attracts attention. It proved to be the mast of a ship that must have been completely wrecked ; for there were the remains of hand- kerchiefs by which some of the crew had fastened themselves to this spar, to prevent their being washed off by the waves. There was no trace by which the name of the ship could be ascertained. The wreck had evidently drifted about for many months ; clusters of shell-fish had fastened about it, and long sea- weeds flaunted at its sides. But where, thought 1, is the crew? Their struggle has long been over — they have gone down amidst the roar of the tempest — their bones lay whitening among the caverns of the deep. Silence, oblivion, like the waves, have closed over them, and no one can tell the story of their end. What sighs have been wafted after that ship ; what pray- ers offered up at the deserted fireside of home ! How often has the mistress, the wife, the mother, pored over the daily news, to catch some casual intelligence of this rover of the deep ! How has expec- tation darkened into anxiety — anxiety into dread — and dread into de- spair ! Alas ! not one memento shall ever return for love to cherish. All that shall ever be known is that she sailed from her port, " and was never heard of more ! " The sight of this wreck, as usual, gave rise to many dismal anec- dotes. This was particularly the case in the evening, when the weather, which had hitherto been fair, began to look Avild and threat- ening, and gave indications of one of those sudden storms that will sometimes break in upon the serenity of a summer voyage. As we sat round the dull light of a lamp in the cabin, that made the gloom more ghastly, every one had his tale of shipwreck and disaster. I was particularly struck with a short one related by the captain : " As I was once sailing,'- said he, " in a fine stout ship across iAe banks of Newfoundland, one of tliose heavy fogs that prevail in those parts rendered it impossible for us to see far ahead , even in the daytime , but at night the weather was so thick that we could not distinguish any object at twice the length of the ship, I kept lights at the mast- head, and a constant watch forward to look out for fishing smacks, which are accustomed to lie at anchor on the banks. The wind was blowing a smacking breeze, and we were going at a great rate through the water. Suddenly the watch gave the alarm of ' a sail ahead ! ' — -, it was scarcely uttered before we were upon her. She was a small) schooner, at anchor, with a broadside toward us. The crew were alE asleep, and had neglected to hoist a light. We struck her just amid- ships. The force, the size, the weight of our vessel, bore her down below the waves ; we passed over her and were hurried on our course. As the crashing wreck was sinking beneath us, I had a glimpse of two or three half-naked wretches, rushing from her cabin ; they j ^ started from their beds to be swallowed shrieking by the waves. \ 12 SKETCH-BOOK heard tlieir drowning cry mingling witli tlie wind. The blast that bore it to our ears swept us out of all farther hearing. I shall never forget that cry ! It was some time before we could put the ship about, she was under such headway. We returned as nearly as we could guess to the place where the smack had anchored. We cruised about for several hours in the dense feg. We fired signal- guns, and listened if we might hear the halloo of any survivors ; but all was silent — we never saw or heard anytbiDg of them more." I confess these stories for a time put an end to all my fine fan- cies. The storm increased with the night. The sea was lashecj into tremendous confusion. There was a fearful, sullen sound of rushing waves and broken surges. Deep called unto deep. At times the black volume of clouds overhead seemed rent asunder by flashes of lightning tbat quivered along the foaming billows, and made the succeeding darkness doubly terrible. The thunders bellowed over tbe wild waste of waters, and were echoed and prolonged by the mountain waves. As I saw the ship staggering and plunging among these roaring caverns, it seemed miraculous that she regained her bal- ance, or preserved her buoyancy. Her yards would dip into the water ; her bow was almost buried beneath the waves. Sometimes an impending surge appeared ready to overwhelm her, and nothing but a dexterous movement of the helm preserved her from the shock. When I retired to my cabin, the awful scene still followed me. The whistling of the wind through the rigging sounded like funereal wailings. The creaking of the masts, the straining and groaning of bulkheads, as the ship labored in the weltering sea, were frightful. As I heard the waves rushing along the side of the ship, and roaring in my very ear, it seemed as if Death were raging round this floating prison, seeking for his prey : the mere starting of a nail, the yawning of a seam, might give him entrance. A fine day, however, with a tranquil sea and favoring breeze, soon put all these dismal reflections to flight. It is impossible to resist the gladdening influence of fine weather and fair wind at sea. When the ship is decked out in all her canvas, every sail swelled, and careering gayly over the curling waves, how lofty, how gallant, she appears — how she seems to lord it over the deep ! I might fill a volume with the reveries of a sea voyage ; for with me it is almost a continual reverie — but it is time to get to shore. It was a fine sunny morning when the thrilling cry of "land \" was given from the mast-head. None but those who have experi' enced it can form an idea of the delicious throng of sensations which rush into an American's bosom when he first comes in sight of Europe. There is a volume of associations with the very name. It is the land , of promise, teeming of everything of which his childhood has heard, or on which his studious years bav«^ pondered. From that time until the mofl^ent of arrival it was ;^ feverish ex- THE VOYAGE. 13 citement. The ships of war that prowled like guardian giants along the coast ; the headlands of Ireland, stretching out into the channel ; the Welsh mountains, towering into the clouds ; all were objects of intense interest. As we sailed up the Mersey I reconnoitered the shores with a telescope. My eye dwelt with delight on neat cottages, with their trim shrubberies and green grass plots. I saw the mold- ering ruins of an abbey overrun with ivy, and the taper spire of a village church rising from the brow of a neighboring hill — all were characteristic of England. The tide and wind were so favorable that the ship was enabled to •eome at once to the pier. It was thronged with people ; some idle lookers-on, others eager expectants of friends or relatives. I could tlistinguish the merchant to whom the ship was consigned. I knew him by his calculating brow and restless air. His hands were thrust into his pockets ; he was whistling thoughtfully, and walking to and fro, a small space having been accorded him by the crowd, in defer- ence to his temporary importance. There were repeated cheerings and salutations interchanged between the shore and the ship, as friends happened to recognize each other. I particularly noticed one young woman of humble dress, but interesting demeanor. She was leaning forward from among the crowd ; her eye hurried over the ship as it neared the shore, to catch some wished-for countenance. She seemed disappointed and agitated ; when I heard a faint voice call her name. — It was from a poor sailor who had been ill all the voyage, and had excited the sympathy of every one on board. When the weather was fine, his messmates had spread a mattress for him on deck in the shade, but of late his illness had so increased that he had taken to his hammock, and only breathed a wish that he might see his wife before he died. He had been helped on deck as we came up the river, and was now leaning against the shrouds, with a coun- tenance so wasted, so pale, so ghastly, that it was no wonder even the eye of affection did not recognize him. But at the sound of his voice, her eye darted on his features ; it read at once a whole volume of sorrow ; she clasped her hands, uttered a faint shriek, and stood wringing them in silent agony. All now was hurry and bustle. The meetings of acquaintances^ the greetings of friends — the consultations of men of business. 1 alone was solitary and idle. I had no friend to meet, no cheering to receive. I stepped upon the land of my forefathers — but felt that \ was a stranger in the land. U BKEWH-BOOK. ROSCOE. •^— In the service of mankind to be A guardian god below ; still to emijloy The mind's brave ardor in heroic aims, Such as may raise us o'er the groveling herd, And make us shine for ever— that is life. Thomsomt. . One of tlie first places to which, a stranger is taken in Liverpool is (the Athenaeum. It is established on a liberal and judicious plan ; it contains a good library and spacious reading-room, and is the great literary resort of the place. Go there at what hour you may, you are sure to find it filled with grave-looking personages, deeply absorbed in the study of newspapers. As I was once visiting this haunt of the learned, my attention was attracted to a person just entering the room. He was advanced in life, tall, and of a form that might once have been commanding, but it was a little bowed by time — perhaps by care. He had a noble Ro- man style of countenance ; a head that would have pleased a painter ; and though some slight furrows on his brow showed that wasting thought had been busy there, yet his eye still beamed with the fire of a poetic soul. There was something in his whole appearance that indicated a being of a different order from the bustling race around him. I inquired his name, and was informed that it was RoscOE. I drew back with an involuntary feeling of veneration. This, then, was an author of celebrity ; this was one one of those men whose voices have gone forth to the ends of the eaith ; with whose minds I have com- muned even in the solitudes of America. Accustomed, as we are in our country, to know European writers only by their works, we can- not conceive of them, as of other men, engrossed by trivial or sordid pursuits, and jostling with the crowd of common minds in the dusty paths of life. They pass before our imaginations like superior be- ings, radiant with the emanations of their own genius, and sur- rounded by a halo of literary glory. To find, therefore, the elegant historian of the Medici mingling among the busy sons of traffic, at first shocked my poetical ideas ; but it is from the very circumstances and situation in which he has been placed, that Mr. Roscoe derives his highest claims to admiration. ,/ It is interesting to notice how some minds seem almost to create them- selves ; springing up under every disadvantage, and working their solitary but irresistible way through a thousand obstacles. Nature seems to delight in disappointing the assiduities of art, with which it would rear legitimate dullness to maturity ; and to glory in the vigor ard luxuriance of her chance productions. She scatters the seeds of genius to the winds, and though some may perish among the stony ROSGOE. 15 places of the world, and some be choked by the thorns and brambles of early adversity, yet others will now and then strike root even in the cleftd of the rock, struggle bravely up into sunshine, and spread over their sterile birth-place all the beauties of vegetation. Such has been the case with Mr, Roscoe. Born in a place appar- ently ungenial to the growth of literary talent ; in the very market- place of trade ; without fortune, family connections or patronage, self- prompted, self-sustained, and almost self-taught, he has conquered every obstacle, achieved his way to eminence, and having become one of the ornaments of the nation, has turned the whole force of his talents and influence to advance and embellish his native town. Indeed, it is this last trait in his character which has given him the greatest interest In my eyes, and induced me particularly to point him out to my countrymen. Eminent as are his literary merits, he is but one among the many distinguished authors of this intellectual nation. They, however, in general, live but for their own fame or their own pleasures. Their private history presents no lesson to the world, or, perhaps, a humiliating one of human frailty and inconsis- tency. At best, they are prone to steal away from the bustle and commonplace of busy existence ; to indulge in the selfishness of let- tered ease ; and to revel in scenes of mental but exclusive enjoy- ment. Mr. Roscoe, on tbe contrary, has claimed none of the accorded priv- ileges of talent. He has shut himself up in no garden of thought, nor elysium of fancy ; but has gone forth into the highways and thorougfares of life, he has planted bowers by the way-side, for the refreshment of the pilgrim and the sojourner, and has opened pure fountains, where the laboring man may turn aside from the dust and heat of the day, and drink of the living streams of knowledge. There is a " daily beauty in his life," on which mankind may meditate and grow better. It exhibits no lofty and almost useless, because inimit- able example of excellence, but presents a picture of active yet simple and inimitable virtues, which are within every man's reach, but which, unfortunately, are not exercised by many, or this world would be a paradise. But his private life is peculiarly worthy the attention of the citizens of our young and busy country, where literature and the elegant arts must grow up side by side with the coarser plants of daily necessity ; and niust depend for their culture not on the exclusive devotion of time and wealth ; nor the quickening rays of titled patronage ; but on hours and seasons snatched from the pursuit of worldly interests, by intelligent and public-spirited individuals. He has shown how much may be done for a place in hours of lei- sure by one master spirit, and how completely it can give its own impress to surrounding objects. Like his own Lorenzo De Medici, on whom he seems to have fixed lus eye, as on a pure model of antiquity, 16 8EBTGH-B00K lie lias interwoven the Mstory of Ms life vr tli the history of his native town, and has made the foundations of its fame the monuments of his virtues. Wherever you go, in Liverpool, you perceive traces of his footsteps in all that is elegant and liberal. He found the tide of wealth flowing merely in the channels of traflBc ; he has diverted from it invigorating rills to refresh the gardens of literature. By his own example and constant exertions he has effected that union of com- merce and the intellectual pursuits, so eloquently recommended in one of his latest writings ;* and has practically proved how beauti- fully they may be brought to harmonize and to benefit each other. The noble institutions for literary and scientific purposes, which re- flect such credit on Liverpool, and are giving such an impulse to the public mind, have mostly been originated, and have all been effect- ively promoted by Mr, Roscoe ; and when we consider the rapidly increasing opulence and magnitude of that town, which promises to vie in commercial importance with the metropolis, it will be per- ceived that in awakening an ambition of mental improvement among its inhabitants, he has effected a great benefit to the cause of British literature. In America, we know Mr. Roscoe only as the author — in Liverpool, he is spoken of as the banker ; and I was told of his having been un- fortunate in business. I could not pity him, as I heard some rich men do. I consider him far above the reach of my pity. Those who live only for the world, and in the world, may be cast down by the frowns of adversity ; but a man like Roscoe is not to be overcome by the reverses of fortune. They do but drive him in upon the resour- ces of his own mind ; to the superior society of his own thoughts ; • which the best of men are apt sometimes to neglect, and to roam abroad in search of less worthy associates. He is independent of the world around him. . He lives with antiquity, and with posterity : with antiquity, in the sweet communion of studious retirement ; and with posterity, in the generous aspirings after future renown. The solitude of such a mind is its state of highest enjoyment. It is then visited by those elevated meditations which are the proper aliment of noble souls, and are, like manna, sent from heaven, in the wilderness of this world. / While my feelings were yet alive on the subject, it was my fortune to light on "further traces of Mr. Roscoe. I was riding out with a gen- tleman to view the environs of Liverpool, when he turned off, through a gate, into some ornamented grounds. After riding a short distance, we came to a spacious mansion of freestone, built in the Grecian style. It was not in the purest taste, yet it had an air of ele- gance, and the situation was delightful. A fine lawn sloped away from it, studded with clumps of trees, so disposed as to break a soft * Address on the opening of the Liv«rpool Institution. MOSCOW. A7 fertile country into a variety of landscapes. The Mei'sey was seen winding a broad quiet sheet of water through an expanse of green meadowland ; while the Welsh mountains, blending with clouds, and melting into distance, bordered the horizon. This was Roscoe's favorite residence during the days of his pros- perity. It had been the seat of elegant hospitality and literary refine- ment. The house was now silent and deserted. I saw the windows of the study, which looked out upon the soft scenery I have mention- ed. The windows were closed — the library was gone. Two or threej ill-favored beings were loitering about the place, whom my fancy pictured into retainers of the law. It was like visiting some classic fountain that had once welled its pure waters in a sacred shade, but finding it dry and dusty, with the lizard and the toad brooding over the shattered marbles. I inquired after the fate of Mr. Roscoe's library, which had consist- ed of scarce and foreign books, from many of which he had drawn the materials for his Italian histories. It had passed under the hammer of the auctioneer, and was dispersed about the country. The good people of the vicinity thronged like wreckers to get some part of the noble vessel that had been driven on shore. Did such a scene admit of ludicrous associations, we might imagine something whimsical in this strange irruption into the regions of learning. Pig- mies rummaging the armory of a giant, and contending for the pos- sessions of weapons which they could not wield. We might picture to ourselves some knot of speculators, debating with calculaing brow over the quaint binding and illuminated margin of an obsolete author; or the air of intense but bafiled sagacity with which some successful purchaser attempted to dive into the black-letter bargain he had se- cured. It is a beautiful incident in the story of Mr. Roscoe's misfortunes, and one which cannot fail to interest the studious mind, that the parting with his books seems to have touched upon his tenderest feel- ings, and to have been the only circumstance that could provoke the notice of his muse. The scholar only knows how dear these silent yet eloquent companions of pure thoughts and innocent hours boi* come in the season of adversity. When all that is worldly turns to dross around us, these only retain their steady value. When friends grow cold, and the converse of intimates languishes into vapid civil- ity and commonplace, these only continue the unaltered countenance of happier hays, and cheer us with that true friendship which never deceived hope, nor deserted sorrow. I do not wish to censure ; but, surely, if the people of Liverpool had been properly sensible of what was due to Mr. Roscoe and to themselves, his library would never have been sold. Good worldly reasons may, doubtless, be given for the circumstance, which it would be difficult to combat with others that might seem merely fanciful ; 18 BKETCE^BOOK, but it certainly appears to me sucli an opportunity as seldom occuft*, of cheering a noble mind struggling under misfortunes by one of the m.ost delicate, but most expressive tokens of public sympathy. It is difficult, however, to estimate a man of genius properly who is daily before our eyes. He becomes mingled and confounded with other men. His great qualities lose their novelty, and we become too fa- miliar with the common materials which form the basis even of the loftiest character. Some of Mr. Roscoe's townsmen may regard him merely as a man of business ; others as a politician ; all find him en- gaged like themselves in ordinary occupations, and surpassed, per- haps, by themselves on some points of worldly wisdom. Even that amiable and unostentatious simplicity of character, which gives the name less grace to real excellence, may cause him to be undervalued by some coarse minds who do not know that true worth is always void of glare and pretension. But the man of letters who speaks of Liverpool, speaks of it as the residence of Roscoe. — The intelligent traveler who visits it inquires where Roscoe is to be seen. — He is the literary landmark of the place, indicating its existence to the distant scholar. — He is like Pompey's column at Alexandria, towering alone in classic dignity. The following sonnet, addressed by Mr. Roscoe to his books, on parting with them, is alluded to in the preceding article. If anj*- thing can add effect to the pure feeling and elevated thought here displayed, it is the conviction that the whole is no effusion of fancy, but a faithful transcript from the writer's heart : TO MY BOOKS. As one, who, destined from his friends to part, Regrets his loss, but hopes again erewhUe To share their converse, and enjoy their smile, And tempers, as he may, affliction's dart ; Thus, loved associates, chiefs of elder art, Teachers of wisdom, who could once beguile My tedious hours, and lighten every toil, I now resign you : nor with faintmg heart ; For pass a few short years, or days, or hours. And happier seasons may their dawn unfold. And all your sacred fellowship restore ; When freed from earth, unlimited its powers. Mind shall with mind direct communion hold, ,&ad kindred spirits meet to part no more. TEE WIFE. W THE WIFE. He treasures of the deep are not so precioiM As are the concealed comforts of a man Lock'd up in woman's love. I scent the air Of blessinffs, when I come but near the house. What a delicious breath marriage sends forth— The violet bed's not sweeter 1 MlDDLETOK, I HAVE often had occasion to remark the fortitude with which wo- men sustain the most overwhelming reverses of fortune. Those dis- asters which break down the spirit of a man, and prostrate him in the dust, seem to call forth all the energies of the softer sex, and give such intrepidity and elevation to their character, that at times it ap- proaches to sublimity. Nothing can be more touching, than to be- hold a soft and tender female, who had been all weakness and de- pendence, and alive to every trivial roughness, while threading thfl prosperous paths of life, suddenly rising in mental force to be the comforter and supporter of her husband under misfortune, and abid- ing with unshrinking firmness, the bitterest blasts of adversity. As the vine, which has long twined its graceful foliage about the oak, and been lifted by it into sunshine, will, when the hardy plant is rifted by the thunderbolt, cling i-ound it with its caressing tendrils, and bind up its shattered boughs ; so is it beautifully ordered by Prov idence, that woman, who is the mere dependant and ornament of man in his happier hours, should be his stay and solace when smit- ten with sudden calamity ; winding herself into the rugged recesses of his nature, tenderly supporting the drooping head, and binding up the broken heart. I was once congratulating a friend, who had around him a bloom- ing family, knit together in the strongest affection. " I can wish you no better lot," said he, with enthusiasm, "than to have a wife and children. If you are prosperous, there they are to share your pros- perity ; if otherwise, there they are to comfort you." And, indeed, I have observed that a married man, falling into misfortune, is more apt to retrieve his situation in the world than a single one ; partly because he is more stimulated to exertion by the necessities of the helpless alid beloved beings who depend upon him for subsistence ; but chiefly because his spirits are soothed and relieved by domestic endearments, and his self-respect kept alive by finding, that though all abroad is darkness and humiliation, yet there is still a little worl(5 of love at home, of which he is the monarch. Whereas, a single man is apt to run to waste and self -neglect , to fancy himself lonely and abandoned, and his heart to fall to ruin, like some deserted mansion, for want of an inhabitant. 30 SKETCH-BOOK. These observations call to mind a little domestic story, of wMcli I was once a witness. My intimate friend, Leslie; liad married a beau- tiful and accomplisbed girl, who had been brought up in the midst of fashionable life. She had, it is true, no fortune, but that of my friend was ample ; and he delighted in the anticipation of indulging her in every elegant pursuit, and administering to those delicate tastes and fancies that spread a kind of witchery about the sex. — " Her life," said he, " shall be life a fairy tale." The very difference in their characters produced a harmonious com- bination ; he was of a romantic and somewhat serious cast ; she was ill life and gladness. I have often noticed the mute rapture with which he would gaze upon her in company, of which her sprightly powers made her the delight ; and how, in the midst of applause, hel eye would still turn to him, as if there alone she sought favor and ac- ceptance. When leaning on his arm, her slender form contrasted finely with his tall., manly person. The fond confiding air with which she looked up to him seemed to call forth a flush of triumphant pride and cherishing tenderness, as if he doated on his lovely burthen for its very helplessness. Never did a cou]3le set forward on a flowery path of early and well-suited marriage with a fairer prospect of feli- city. It was the misfortune of my friend, however, to have embarked his property in large speculations ; and he had not been married many months* when, by a succession of sudden disasters, it was swept from him, and he fouud himself reduced to almost penury. For a time he kept his situation +.0 Mmself, and went about with a haggard counte- nance and a breaking heart. His life was but a protracted agony ; and what rendered it more insupportable was the necessity of keep- ing up a smile in the prf^sonce of his wife ; for he could not bring himself to overwhelm her with the news. She saw, however, with the quick eyes of affection, that all was not well with him. She marked his altered looks and stifled sighs, and was not to be deceived by his sickly and vapid attempts at cheerfulness. She tasked all her sprightly powers and tender blandishments to win him back to hap piness ; but she only drove the arrow deeper into his soul. The more he saw cause to love her, the more torturing was the thought that ha was soon to make her wretched. A little while, thought he, and the smile will vanish from that cheek —the song will die away from thos€ lips — the luster of those eyes will he quenched with sorrow — and the happy heart which now beats lightly fn that bosom will be weighed down, like mine, by the cares and miser^s of the world. At length he came to me one day, and related his whole situation in a tone of the deepest despair. When I had heard him through, I inquired, " Does your wife know all this?" A^thequee^t'on he burst into an agony of tears. " For God's sake I " cred he, " ?f you have any pity on me, don't mention my wife ; it is the ihouji.Ui ©f her thht drives me almost to madness '. " TBE WIFR ^1 ** And wliy not ? " said I. " Slie must know it sooner or later : you cannot keep it long from lier, and the intelligence may break upon her in a more startling manner than if imparted by yourself ; for the accents of those we love soften the harshest tidings. Besides, you ar wife, so that he was fain to draw off his forces, and take to the y itside of the bouse — the only side which, in truth, belongs to a honpecked lius- band. Rip's sole domestic adherent was his dog Wolf, wlr. Fvas as muoh henpecked as his master ; for Dame Van Winkle regarded them as companions in idleness, and even looked upon Wolf with an evil eye- as the cause of his master's going so often astray. True it is, in all points of spirit befitting an honorable dog, he was as courageous an animal as ever scoured the woods — but what courage can withstand the ever-during and all-besetting terrors of a woman's tongue ? The moment Wolf entered the h^^^s^ ^^'^% crest fell, his tail drooped to the 28 8KETCB-B00K ground or curled between liis legs, lie sneaked about witli a gallows air, casting many a sidelong glance at Dame Van Winkle, and at the least flourish of a broomstick or ladle he would fly to the door with yelping precipitation. Times grew worse and worse with Rip Van Winkle, as years of matrimony rolled on : a tart temper never mellows with age, and a sharp tongue is the only edge tool that grows keener with constant use. For a long while he used to console himself, when driven from home, by frequenting a kind of perpetual club of the sages, philos- ;ophers, and other idle personages of the village, which neld its ses- ,sions on a bench before a small inn, designated by a rubicund por- trait of his majesty George the Third. Here they used to sit in the shade, of a long lazy summer's day, talking listlessly over village gossip, or telling endless sleepy stories about nothing. But it would have been worth any statesman's money to have heard the profound discussions which sometimes took place, when by chance an old news- paper fell into their hands from some passing traveler. How solemnly they would listen to the contents, as drawled out by Derrick Van Bummel, the schoolmaster, a dapper, learned little man, who was not to be daunted by the most gigantic word in the dictionary ; and how sagely they would deliberate upon public events some months after they had taken place. The opinions of this junto were completely controlled by Nicholas Vedder, a patriarch of the village, and landlord of the inn, at the door of which he took his seat from morning till night, just moving sufficiently to avoid the sun, and keep in the shade of a large tree ; so that the neighbors could tell the hour by his movements as accu- rately as by a sun-dial. It is true, he was rarely heard to speak, but smoked his pipe incessantly. His adherents, however (for every great man has his adherents), perfectly understood him, and knew how to ■ gather his opinions. When anything that was read or related dis- pleased him, he was observed to smoke his pipe vehemently, and to send forth short, frequent, and angry puffs ; but when pleased, he would inhale the smoke slowly and tranquilly, and emit it in light and placid clouds, and sometimes taking the pipe from his mouth, and letting the fragrant vapor curl about his nose, would gravely nod his head in token of perfect approbation. From even this stronghold the unlucky Rip was at length routed by his termagant wife, who would suddenly break in upon the tran- quillity of the assemblage, and call the members all to nought ; nor was that august personage, Nicholas Vedder himself, sacred from the daring tongue of this terrible virago, who charge-:; him outright with encouraging her husband in habits of idleness. Poor Rip was at last reduced almost to despair, i..^d his only alter- native to escape from the labor of the farm and the clamor of his "wife was to take gun in hand and stroll away into the woods. Here RIP TAN WmKLE 39 R© would sometimes seat himself at the foot of a t^^e, anc! sTiar© the eontents of his wallet with Wolf, with whom he sympathized as a fellow-sufferer in persecution. *'Poor Wolf," he would say, ** thy mistress leads thee a dog's life of it ; but never mind, my lad, whilst 'i live, thou shalt never want a friend to stand by thee I " Wolf would wag his tail, look wistfully in his master's face, and if dogs can feel pity, I verily believe he reciprocated the sentiment with all his heart. In a long ramble of the kind, on a fine autumnal day. Rip had un consciously scrambled to one of the highest parts of the Kaatskill mountains. He was after his favorite sport of squirrel -shooting, and the still solitudes had echoed and re-echoed with the reports of his jun. Panting and fatigued, he threw himself, late in the afternoon, on a green knoll covered with mo:.ntain herbage, that crowned the brow of a precipice. From an opening between the trees he could overlook all the lower country for many a mile of rich woodland. He Baw at a distance the lordly Hudson, far, far below him, moving on its silent but majestic course, with the reflection of a purple cloud, or the sail of a lagging bark, here and there sleeping on its glassy bosom, and at last losing itself in the blue highlands. On the other side he looked down into a deep mountain glen, wild, lonely, and shagged, the bottom filled with fragments from the Im pending cliffs, and scarcely lighted by the refiected rays of the set^ ting sun. For some time Rip lay musing on this scene , evening was gradually advancing ; the mountains began to throw their long blue shadows over the valleys ; he saw that it would be dark long before he could reach the village ; and he heaved a heavy sigh when h«? thought of encountering the terrors of Dame Van Winkle. As he was about to descend, he heard a voice from a distance hallo ing, ' * Rip Van Winkle I Rip Van Winkle I " He looked around, but could see nothing but a crow winging its solitary fiiglit across the mountain. He thought his fancy must have deceived him, and turned again to descend, when he heard the same cry ring through the still evening air, " Rip Van Winkle I Rip Van Winkle I " — at the same time Wolf bristled up his back, and giving a low growl, skulked! to his master's side, looking fearfully down into the glen. Rip now felt a vague apprehension stealing over him : he looked anxiously in' the same direction, and perceived a strange figure slowly toiling up the rocks, and bending under the weight of something he carried on his back. He was surprised to see any human being in this lonely and unfrequented place, but supposing it to be some one of the neigh- borhood in need of his assistance, he hastened down to yield it. On nearer approach he was still more surprised at the singularity of the stranger's appearance. He was a short square-built old fellow, with thick bushy hair, and a grizzled beard. His dress wai^ of the antique Dutch fashion— a cloth jerkin strapped round t!uo waist— «0 ^ SKETCH BOOK. several ^ir^i ui^eclics, the outer one of ample volume, decorateu witli rows of buttons down the sides, and bunches at the knees. He bore on his shoulders a stout keg, that seemed full of liquor, and made signs for Rip to approach and assist him with the load. Though rather shy and distrustful of this new acquaintance, Rip complied with his usual alacrity, and mutually relieving each other they clam bered up a narrow gully > apparently the dry bed of a mountain tor rent. As they ascended. Rip every now and then heard long rolling peals, like distant thunder, that seemed to issue out of a deep ravine, or rather cleft between lofty rocks, toward which their rugged path conducted. He paused for an instant, but supposing it to be the mut- tering of one of those transient thunder showers which often take place in mountain heights, he proceeded. Passing through the ravine, they came to a hollow, like a small amphitheater, surrounded by per- pendicular precipices, over the brinks of which impending trees shot their branches, so that you only caught glimpses of the azure sky and the bright evening cloud. During the whole time, Rip and hia companion had labored on in silence ; for though the former marveled greatly what could be the object of carrying a keg of liquor up this wild mountain, yet there was something strange and incompre- hensible about the unknown that inspired awe and checked famil- iarity. On entering the amphitheater, new objects of wonder presented themselves. On a level spot in the center was a company of odd ■ looking personages playing at nine-pins. They w^ere dressed in a quaint outlandish fashion , some wore short doublets, others jerkins, with long knives in their belts, and most of them had enormous breeches, of similar style with that of the guide's. Their visages, too, were peculiar ; one had a large head, broad face, and small pig- gish eyes ; the face of another seemed to consist entirely of nose, and was surmounted by a white sugar loaf hat, set off with a little red cock's tail. They all had beards, of various shapes and colors. There was one who seemed to be the commander. He was a stout old gen-- tleman, with a weather beaten countenance; he wore a laced doubletj ibroad belt and hanger, high crowned hat and feather, red stockings, jand high-heeled shoes, with roses in them. The whole group re- .minded Rip of the figures in an old Flemish painting in the parlor of Dominie Van Schaick, the village parson, and which had been brought over from Holland at the time of the settlement. What seemed particularly odd to Rip was, that though these folka were evidently amusing themselves, yet they maintained the gravest faces, the most mysterious silence, and were, withal, the most mel- ancholy party of pleasure he had ever witnessed. Nothing inter- rupted the stillness of the scene but the noise of the balls, which, whenever they were rolled, echoed along the mountains lika rumbling peals of thunder. BIP VAN WINKLE, dl As Rip and Ws companion approached them, they suddenly desisted from their play, and stareilat him with such a fixed statue-like gaze, and suci strange, uncouth, lack-luster countenances, that his heart turned within him, and his knees smote together. His companion now emptied the contents of the keg into large flagons, and made signs to him to wait upon the company. He obeyed with fear and trembling ; they quaffed the liquor in profound silence, and then returned to their game. By degrees Rip's awe and apprehension subsided. He even ven- tured, when no eye was fixed upon him, to taste the beverage, which he found had much of the flavor of excellent Hollands. He was naturally a thirsty soul, and was soon tempted to repeat the draught. One taste provoked another, and he reiterated his visits to the flagon so often that at length his senses were overpowered, his eyes swam in his head, his head gradually declined, and he fell into a deep sleep. On waking, he found himself on the green knoll from whence he had first seen the old man of the glen. He rubbed his eyes — it was a bright sunny morning. The birds were hopping and twitter- ing among the bushes, aud the eagle was wheeling aloft, and breast- ing the pure mountain breeze. " Surely," thought Rip, " I have not slept here all night." He recalled the occurrences before he fell asleep The strange man with the keg of liquor — the mountain ravine — the wild retreat among the rocks — the woe-begone party at nine-pins — the flagon — " Oh! that wicked flagon !" thought Rip — " what excuse shall I make to Dame Van Winkle ? " He looked round for his gun, but in place of the clean well-oiled fowling-piece, he found an old fire lock lying by him, the barrel in- crusted with rust, the lock falling off, and the stock worm-eaten. He now suspected that the grave roysters of the mountain had put a trick upon him, and having dosed him with liquor, had robbed him of his gun. Wolf, too, had disappeared, but he might have strayed away after a squirrel or partridge. He whistled after him, and shouted his name, but all in vain ; the echoes repeated his whistle and shout, bu* no dog was to be seen. He determined to revisit the scene of the last evening's gambol, and tf he met with any of the party, to demand his dog and gun. As he rose to walk, he found himself stiff in the joints, and wanting in his usual activity. "These mountain beds do not agree with me," thought Rip, " and if this frolic should lay me up with a fit of the rheumatism, I shall have a blessed time with Dame Van Winkle. " With some difficulty he got down into Ihe glen ; he found the gully up which he and his companion had ascended the preceding evening ; but to his astonishment a mountain stream was now foaming down it, leaping from rock to rock, and filling the glen wiih babbling mur- murs. He, however, made shift to scramble up its sides, working his toilsome way through thicket* of birch, sassafras, and witch hajsel | ^" ' -K! 33 SKETCn-BOOK, and sometimes tripped up or entangled by the wild grape-vines tuu- twisted their coils i\ud tendrils from tree to tree, and spread a kind of network in his path. At length he reached to where the ravine had opened through the cliffs to the amphitheater ; but no traces of such opening remained. The rocks presented a high impenetrable wall, over which the torrent came tumbling in a sheet of featliery foam, and fell into a broad deep basin, black from the shadows of the surrounding forest. Here, then, poor Kip was brought to a stand. He again called and whistled after his dog ; he was only answered by the cawing of a flock of idle crows, sporting high m air about a dry tree that overhung a sunny preci- pice ; and who, secure in their elevation, seemed to look down and 3coff at the poor man's perplexities. What was to be done? The :iiorning was passing away, and Kip felt famished for want of his breakfast. He grieved to give up his dog and gun ; he dreaded to meet his wife : but it would not do to starve among the mountains. He shook his head, shouldered his rusty firelock, and with a heart full of trouble and anxiety turned his steps homeward- xVs he approached the village, he met a number of people, but none whom he knew, which somewhat surprised him, for he had thought himself acquainted Avitli every one in the country round. Their dress, too, was of a different fashion from that to which he was accustomed. They all stared at him with equal marks of surprise, and whenever they cast eyes upon him, invariably stroked their chins. The con- stant recurrence of this gesture induced Kip, involuntarily, to do the same, when to his astonishment he found his beard had grown a foot long I He had now entered the skirts of the village. A troop of strang« children ran at his heels, hooting after him, and pointing at his gray beard. The dogs, too, not one of which he recognized for an old acquaintance, barked at him as lie passed. The very village was altered ; it was larger and more populous. There were rows of houses which he had never seen before, and those which had been his famil- iar haunts had disappeared. Strange names were over the doors — strange faces at the windows — everything was strange. His mind now misgave him • he began to doubt whether both he and the world around him were not bewitched. Surely this was his native village,' which he had left but a day before. There stood the Kaatskill mountains — there ran the silver Hudson at a distance — there was every hill and dale precisely as it had always been. — Kip was sorely perplexed. — "That flagon last nigh* " thought he, "has addled my ^oor head sadly ! " It was with some difficulty that he found the way to his own house, which he approached with silent awe, expecting every mon»ent to hear the shrill voice of Dame Van Winkle He found the house gone to decay — the roof fallen in, the windows shattered, and the door* BIP VAN WINKLE. 83 flff the Llpges. A half starved dog, that looked like Wolf, wa« skulk- ing about it. Piip called Ulm by name, but the cur snarled, showed his ifJiih, and passed on. This was an unkind out indeed. — " My verj do^," Higlied poor Rip, "has forgotten me I" He entered the house, which, trj tell the truth, Dame Van Winkle liad always kept in neat order. It was empty, forlorn, and appar- ently abandoned. Tlas desolatenf:«s overcame all his connubial fears — he calh;d loudly for his wife and cliildren— the lonely chambers rang for a moment with his voice, and then all again was silence. lie now hiirrjed forth, and hastened to liis old resort, the village Inn — but it too was gone. A large rickety wooden building st^xxl in Its plaw, with great gaping windows, some of them broken, and mended with old hats and petticoats, and over the door was painteolitical experiments in the his- tory of the world is now performing, and which presents the most profound and momentous studies to the statesman and the philosopher. That such men should give prejudiced accounts of America is not a matter of surprise. The themes it offers for contemplation are too vast and elevated for their capacities. The national character is yet in a state of fermentation ; 'it may have its f rothiness and sediment, but its ingredients are sound and wholesome ; it has already given proofs of powerful and generous qualities ; and the whole promises to settle down into sometliing substantially excellent. But the causes vv^hich are operating to strengthen and ennoble it, and its daily indica- tions of admirable properties, are all lost upon these purblind observ- ers, who are only affected by the little asperities incident to its present situation. They are capable of judging only of the surface of things ; of those matters which ^ome in contact with their private interests and personal gratifications. They miss some of the snug conveniences and petty comforts which belong to an old. highly- finished, and over-pop^ ENGLISH WRITERS ON AMERICA. . 89 ulous state of society ; where tlie ranks of useful labor are crowded, and manj earn a painful and servile subsistence, by studying the very caprices of appetite and self-indulgence. These minor comforts, how- ever, are all-important in the estimation of narrow minds, which either do not perceive or will not acknowledge that they are more than coun- terbalanced among us by great and generally diffused blessings. They may, perhaps, have been disappointed in some unreasonable expectation of sudden gain. They may have pictured America to themselves an El Dorado, where gold and silver abounded^ and the natives were lacking in sagacity, and where they were to become strangely and suddenly rich, in some unforeseen but easy manner. The same weakness of mind that indulges absurd expectations pro- duces petulance in disappointment. Such persons become embittered against the country on finding that there, as everywhere else, a man must sow before he can reap ; must win wealth by industry and talent ; and must contend with the common difficulties of nature and the shrewdness of an intelligent and enterprising people. Perhaps, through mistaken or ill-directed hospitality, or from the prompt disposition to cheer and countenance the stranger, prevalent among my countrymen, they may have been treated with unwonted respect in America ; and, having been accustomed all their lives to consider themselves below the surface of good society, and brought up in a servile feeling of inferiority, they become arrogant on the common boon of civility ; they attribute to the lowliness of others their own elevation, and underrate a society where there are no arti- ficial distinctions, and where by any chance such individuals as them- selves can rise to consequence. One would suppose, however, that information coming from such sources, on a subject where the truth is so desirable, would be received with caution by the censors of the press ; that the motives of these men, their veracity, their opportunities of inquiry and observation, and their capacities for judging correctly, would be rigorously scru- tinized, before their evidence was admitted, in such sweeping extent, against a kindred nation. The very reverse, however, is the case, and it furnishes a striking instance of human inconsistency. Nothing can surpass the vigilance with which English critics will examine the credibility of the traveler who publishes an account of some distant and comparatively unimportant country. How warily will they com- pare the measurements of a pyramid, or the description of a ruin ; and how sternly will they censure any inaccuracy in these contributions of merely curious knowledge ; while they will receive, with eagerness and unhesitating faith, the gross misrepresentations of coarse and ob- scure writers, concerning a country with which their own is placed in the most important and delicate relations. Nay, they will G^^n make these apocryphal volumes text-books, on which to enlarge, '^ith a zeaj and an ability worthy of a more generous cause. 40 SKETCH-BOOK. I sliall not, liowever, dwell on this irksome and hackneyed topic ; nor should I have adverted to it but for the undue interest apparently ,aken in it by my countrymen, and certain injurious effects which I apprehend it might produce upon the national feeling. We attach too much consequence to these attacks. They cannot do us any essen- tial injury. The tissue of misrepresentations attempted to be woven round us are like cobwebs woven round the limbs of an infant giant. Oar country continually outgrows them. One falsehood after another falls off of itself. We have but to live on, and every day we live a whole volume of refutation. All the writers of England united, if we could for a moment suppose their great minds stooping to so unworthy a combination, could not conceal our rapidly growing importance and matchless prosperity. They could not conceal that these are owing, not merely to physical and local, bat also to moral causes ; to the po- litical liberty, the general diffusion of knowledge, the prevalence of sound, moral, and religious principles, which give force and sustained energy to the character of a people ; and which, in fact, have been the acknowledged and wonderful supporters of their own national power and glory. But why are we so exquisitely alive to the aspersions of England t Why do we suffer ourselves to be so affected by the contumely she has endeavored to cast upon us ? It is not in the opinion of England alone that honor lives, and reputation has its being. The world at large is the arbiter of a nation's fame ; with its thousand eyes it wit- nesses a nation's deeds, and from their collective testimony is national glory or national disgrace established. For ourselves, therefore, it is comparatively of but little importance whether England does us justice or not ; it is, perhaps, of far more importance to herself. She is instilling anger and resentment into the bosom of a youthful nation, to grow with its growth and strengthen with its strength. If in America, as some of her writers are laboring to convince her, she is hereafter to find an invidious rival and a gi- gantic foe, she may thank those very writers for having provoked rivalship and irritated hostility. Every one knows the all-pervading influence of literature at the present day, and how much the opinions and passions of mankind are under its control. The mere contests of the sword are temporary ; their wounds are but in the flesh, and it is the pride of the generous to forgive and forget them ; but the slan- ders of the pen pierce to the heart ; they rankle longest in the noblest spirits ; they dwell ever present in the mind, and render it morbidly sensitive to the most trifling collision. It is but seldom that any one overt act produces hostilities between two nations ; there exists, most c»'mmon''v, a previous jealousy and ill-will, a predisposition to take offense, i'race these to their cause, and how often will they be found to originate in the mischievous effusions of mercenary writers, who, secure in their closets, and for ignominious bread, concoct and circu- late the venom that is to inflame tii© generous and the brava ENGLISH WBITEBS ON AMERICA. 4t I am not laying too much stress upon this point ; for it applies most emphatically to our particular case. Over no nation does the press hold a more absolute control than over the people of America ; for the universal education of the poorest classes makes every individ- ual a reader. There is nothing published in England on the subject of our country that does not circulate through every part of it. There is not a calumny dropped from an English pen, nor an unworthy sar- casm uttered by an English statesman, that does not go to blight good- will, and add to the mass of latent resentment. Possessing, then, as England does, the fountain-head from whence the literature of the language flows, how completely is it in her power, and how truly is it her duty, to make it the medium of amiable and magnanimous feel- ing — a stream where the two nations might meet together, and drink in peace and kindness. Should she, however, persist in turning it to waters of bitterness, the time may come when she may repent her folly. The present friendship of America may be of but little mo- ment to her ; but the future destinies of that country do not admit of a doubt : over those of England there lower some shadows of uncer- tainty. Should, then, a day of gloom arrive — should those reverses overtake her from which the proudest empires have not been exempt — she may look back with regret at her infatuation, in repulsing from her side a nation she might have grappled to her bosom, and thus de- stroying her only chance for real friendship beyond the boundaries of her own dominions. There is a general impression in England that the people of the United States are inimical to the parent country. It is one of the errors which has been diligently propagated by designing writers. There is, doubtless, considerable political hostility and a general soreness at the illiberality cf the English press ; but, collectively speaking, the prepossessions of the people are strongly in favor of England. Indeed, at one time they amounted, in many parts of the Union, to an absurd degree of bigotry. The bare name of English. man was a passport to the «)nfidence and hospitality of every family, and too often gave a transient currency to the worthless and th^ ungrateful. Throughout the country there was something of enthu> siasm connected with the idea of England. We looked to it with a hallowed feeling of tenderness and veneration, as the land of our fore, fathers — the august repository of the monuments and antiquities oJ our race — the birth-place and mausoleum of the sages and heroes of our paternal history. After our own country, there was none in whose glory we more delighted — none whose good opinion we were more anxious to possess — none toward which our hearts yearned with such throbbings of warm consanguinity. Even during the late war, when- ever there was the least opportunity for kind feelings to spring forth, it was the delight of the generous spirits of our country to show that in the midst of hostilities they still kept alive the sparks of future friendship. 42 SKETCH-BOOK Is all his to be at an end ? Is this golden band of kindred sym- pathies, so rare between nations, to be broken forever ?— Perhaps it is for the best — it may dispel an illusion which might have kept us in mental vassalage ; which might have interfered occasionally with our true interests, and prevented the growth of proper national pride. But it is hard to give up the kindred tie ! — and there are feelings dearer than interest — closer to the heart than pride — that will still make us cast back a look of regret as we wander farther and farther from the paternal roof, and lament the waywardness of the parent that would repel the affections of the child. Short-sighted and injudicious, however, as the conduct of England may be in this system of aspersion, recrimination on our part would be equally ill-judged. I speak not of a prompt and spirited vindica- tion of our country, or the keenest castigation of her slanderers — but I allude to a disposition to retaliate in kind, to retort sarcasm and in- spire prejudice, which seems to be spreading widely among our wri. ters. Let us guard particularly against such a temper ; for it v/ould double the evil instead of redressing the wrong. Nothing is so easy and inviting as the retort of abuse and sarcasm ; but it is a paltry and unprofitable contest. It is the alternative of a morbid mind, fretted into petulance rather than warmed into indignation. If England is willing to permit the mean jealousies of trade, or the rancorous ani- mosities of politics, to deprave the integrity uf her press, and poison the fountain of public opinion, let us beware of her example. She may deem it her interest to diffuse error and engender antipathy, for the purpose of checking emigration ; we have no purpose of the kind to serve. Neither have we any spirit of national jealousy to gratify ; for as yet, in all our rivalships with England, we are the rising and the gaining party. There can be no end to answer, therefore, but the gratification of resentment — a mere spirit of retaliation ; and even that is impotent. Our retorts are never republished in England ; they fall short, therefore, of their aim ; but they foster a querulous and peev- ish temper among our writers ; they sour the sweet flow of our early literature, and sow thorns and brambles among its blossoms. What is still worse, they circulate through our own country, and, as far as they have effect, excite virulent national prejudices. This last is the evil most especially to be deprecated. Governed, as we are, entirely by public opinion, the utmost care should be taken to preserve the purity of the public mind. Knowledge is power, and truth is knowh edge'; whoever, therefore, knowingly propagates a prejudice, will, fully saps the foundation of his country's strength. The members of a republic, above all other men, should be candid and dispassionate. They are, individually, portions of the sovereign mind and sovereign will, and should be enabled to come to all ques- tions of national concern with calm and unbiased judgments. From the peculiar nature of our relations with England, we must have jsnglisb: writers on AMEHigA. 43 more frequent questions of a difficult and delicate character, with her, than with any other nation ; questions that affect the most acute and excitable feelings ; and as, in the adjusting of these, our national measures must ultimately be determined by popular sentiment, we cannot be too anxiously attentive to purify it from all latent passion or prepossession. Opening, too, as we do, an asylum for strangers from every portion of the earth, we should receive all with impartiality. It should be our pride to exhibit an example of one nation, at least, destitute of national antipathies, and exercising, not merely the overt acts of hos- pitality, but those more rare and noble courtesies which spring from liberality of opinion. What have we to do with national prejudices ? They are the in- veterate diseases of old countries, contracted in rude and ignorant ages, when nations knew bufPlittle of each other, and looked beyond tlieir own boundaries with distrust and hostility. We, on the con- trary, have sprang into national existence in an enlightened and phil- osophic age, when the different parts of the habitable world, and the various branches of the human family, have been indefatigably stud- ied and made known to each other ; and we forego the advantages of our birth, if we do not shake off the national prejudices, as we would the local superstitions, of the old world. But, above all, let us not be influenced by any angry feelings, so far as to shut our eyes to the perception of what is really excellent and amiable in the English character. We are a young people, necessa- rily an imitative one, and must take our examples and models, in a great degree, from the existing nations of Europe. There is no coun- try more worthy of our study than England. The spirit of her con- stitution is most analogous to ours. The manners of her people — their intellectual activity — their freedom of opinion — their habits of thinking on those subjects which concern the dearest interests and most sacred charities of private life, are all congenial to the American character ; and, in fact, are all intrinsically excellent : for it is in tlie moral feeling of the people that the deep foundations of British pros- perity are laid ; and however the superstructure may be time-worn, or overrun by abuses, there must be something solid in the basis, admir- able in the materials, and stable in the structure of an edifice that so long has towered unshaken amid the tempests of the world. Let it be the pride of onr writers, therefore, discarding all feelings of irritation, and disdaining to retaliate the illiberality of British au- thors, to speak of the English nation without prejudice and with determined candor. While they rebuke the indiscriminating bigotry with which some of our countrymen admire and imitate everything Pinglish, merely because it is English^ let them frankly point out what is really worthy of approbation. We may thus place England before us as a perpetual volume of reference, wherein are recorded sound 44 BKETGR-BOOK. deductions from ages of experience ; and wliile we avoid tlie errors and absurdities wlncli may have crept into the page, we may draw thence golden maxims of practical wisdom, wherewith to strengthen, and to embellish oux national character. RURAL LIFE IN ENGLAND. Oh ! friendly to the best pursuits of man, ■ Friendly to thought, to virtue, and to peace, / Domestic life in rural pleasures past 1 ' COWPEK. The stranger who would form a correct opinion of the English character must not confine his observations to the metropolis. He must go forth into the country ; he must sojourn in villages and ham- lets ; he must visit castles, villas, farm-houses, cottages ; he must wan- der through parks and gardens, along hedges and green lanes ; he must loiter about country churches, attend wakes and fairs and other rural festivals ; and cope with the people in all their conditions and all their habits and humors„ In some countries, the large cities absorb the wealth and fashion of the nation ; they are the only fixed abodes of elegant and intelligent . society, and the country is inhabited almost entirely by boorish peas- antry. In England, on the contrary, the metropolis is a mere gather- ing place, or general rendezvous, of the polite classes, where they devote a small portion of the year to a hurry of gayetyand dissipation, and having indulged this kind of carnival, return again to the appar- ently more congenial habits of rural life. The various orders of society are therefore diffused over the whole surface of the kingdom, and the most, retired neighborhoods afford specimens of the different rptuks. The English,, in fact, are strongly gifted with the rural feeling. They possess a quick sensibility to the beauties of nature and a keen relish for the pleasures and employments of the country. This pas- sion seems inherent in them. Even the inhabitants of cities, born and brought up among brick walls and bustling streets, enter with facility into rural habits, and evince a tact for rural occupation. The merchant has his snug retreat in the vicinity of the metrop- olis, where he often displays as much pride and zeal in. the culti- vation of his flower garden and the maturing of his fruits, as he does in the conduct ofi his business and the success of a commer- cial enterprise. ' Even those less fortunate individuals who are doomed to pass their lives in the midst of din and tratfic, contrive to have something that shall remind tkem of the green aspect of nature In the most dark and dingy quaxteie^ ©f the city, the drawing-room RURAL LIFE IN ENGLAND. 48 '»^^ndow resembles frequently a bank of flowers ; everj spot capable of veg-etation lias "its grass-plot and flower-bed ; and every square its mimic park, laid out with picturesque taste, and gleaming with re- freshing verdure. ... Those who see the Englishman only in to\Yn ,ar^ apt to form an. unfavorable opinion of .his social character-. He is either absorbed in business or distracted by the thousand engagements that dissi- pate time, thought, and feeling, in this huge metropolis. He' has, therefore, too commonly, a look of hurry and abstraction. Wherever he happens to be, he is on the point of going somewhere else ; at the moment he is talking on one subject, his mind is wandering to an- another ; and while paying a friendly visit, he is calculating how he shall economize time so as to pay the other visits allotted to the morn- ing. An immense metropolis like London is calculated to malvo men selfish and uninteresting. In their casual and transient meetings, they can but deal briefly in commonplaces. They present but the cold superficies of character— -its, rich and genial qualities have no time to be warmed into a flow. ; ' - It is in the country that the Englishman gives scope to his nat- ural feelings. He breaks loose gladly from the cold formalities and negative civilities of town ; throws off his habits of shy reserve, and becomes joyous and free-hearted. He manages to collect round him all the conveniences and elegances of polite life, and to banish its restraints. His country-seat abounds with every requisite, either for studious retirement, tasteful gratification, or rural exercise. Books, paintings, music, horses, dogs, and sporting implements of all kinds are at hand. He puts no constraint either upon his guests or himself, but, in the true spirit of hospitality, provides the nieans of enjoy- ment, and leaves every one to partake according to his inclination. The taste of the English in the cultivation of land, and in what is called landscape gardening, is unrivaled. They have studied Nature intently, and discovered an exquisite sense of her beautiful forms and harmonious combinations. Those charms which, in other countries, she lavishes in wild solitudes, are here assembled round the haunts of domestic life. They seem to have caught her coy and furtive graces; and spread them, like witchery, about their rural abodes. Nothing can be more imposing than the magnificence of English park scenery. Vast lawns that extend lilie sheets of vivid green, with here and there clumps of gigantic trees, heaping up rich piles of foli- age. The solemn pomp of g,-roves and woodland glades, with the deer trooping in. silent herds across them ; the hare, bounding away to the covert ; or the pheasant, suddenly bursting upon the wing. The brook, taught to- wind in natural meanderings or expand into a glassy lake — the sequestered pool, reflecting the quivering trees, with the yellow leaf sleeping on its bosom, and the trout ofoaming fear- lessly about its limpid waters : while some rustic temple or sylvan 46 SKETCH-BOOK. statue, grown green and dank witli age, gives^ an air of classic sane- tity to the seclusion. These are but a few of the features of park scenery ; but what most delights me is the creative talent *with which the English dec- orate the unostentatious abodes of middle life. The rudest habita- tion, the most unpromising and scanty portion of land, in the hands of an Englishman of taste, becomes a little paradise. With a nicely discriminating eye, he seizes at once upon its capabilities, and pic- tures in his mind the future landscape. The sterile spot grows into loveliness under his hand ; and yet the operations of art which pro- duce the effect are scarcely to be perceived. The cherishing and training of some trees ; the cautious pruning of others ; the nice dis tribution of flowers and plants of tender and graceful foliage ; the introduction of a green slope of velvet turf ; the partial opening to a peep of blue distance, or silver gleam of water — all these are man- aged with a delicate tact,"^a pervading yet quiet assiduity, like the magic touchings with which a painter finishes up a favorite picture. The residence of people of fortune and refinement in the country has diffused a degree of taste and elegance in rural economy that descends to the lowest class. The very laborer, with his thatched cottage and narrow slip of ground, attends to their embellishment. The trim hedge, the grass-plot before the door, the little flower-bed bordered with snug box, the woodbine trained up against the wall, and hanging its blossoms about the lattice ; the pot of flowers in the window ; the holly, providently planted about the house, to cheat winter of its dreariness, and to throw in a semblance of green sum- mer to cheer the fireside : — all these bespeak the influence of taste, flowing down from high sources, and pervading the lowest levels of the public mind. If ever Love, as poets sing, delights to visit a cot- tage, it must be the cottage of an English peasant. The fondness for rural life among the higher classes of the Eng- lish has had a great and salutary effect upon the national cliaracter. I do not know a finer race of men than the English gentlemen. In- stead of the softness and effeminacy which characterize the men of Irank in most countries, they exhibit an union of elegance and strength, fa robustness X)f frame and freshness of complexion, which I am in. I clined to attribute to their living so liiUch in -the open air, and pur- suing so eagerly the invigorating recreations of the country. Tha hardy exercises produce also a healthful tone of mind and spirits, and a manliness and simplicity of manners, which even th«^ follies and dissipations of the town cannot easily prevert, and can never en- tirely destroy. In the country, too, the different orders of society seem to approach more freely, to be more disposed to blend and ope- rate favorably upon each other. The distinctions between them do not appear to be so marked and impassable as in the cities. The manner in which property has been distributed into small estates and RURAL LIFE IN ENGLAND. 47 farms, lias establislied a regular gradation from tlie noblemen, through the classes of gentry, small landed proprietors, and substantial farmers, down to the laboring peasantry ; and while it has thus banded the extremes of society together, has infused into each inter- mediate rank a spirit of independence. This, it must be confessed, is not so universally the case at present as it was formerly ; the larger estates having, in late years of distress, absorbed the smaller, and, in some parts of the country, almost annihilated the sturdy race of small farmers. These, however, I believe, are but casual breaks in the general system I have mentioned. In rural occupation there is nothing mean and debasing. It leads a man forth among scenes of natural grandeur and beauty ; it leaves him to the workings of his own mind, operated upon by the purest and most elevating of external influences. Such a man may be simple and rough, but he cannot be vulgar. ' The man of refine- ment, therefore, finds nothing revolting in an intercourse with the lower orders in rural life, as he does when he casually mingles with the lower orders of cities. He lays aside his distance and reserve, and is glad to waive the distinctions of rank, and to enter into the honest, heart-felt enjoyments of common life. Indeed, the very amusements of the country bring men more and more together ; and the sound of hound and horn blend all feelings into harmony. I believe this is one great reason why the nobility and gentry are more popular among the inferior orders in England than they are in any other country ; and why the latter have endured so many ex:cessive pressures and extremities, without repining more generally at the unequal distribution of fortune and privilege. To this mingling of cultivated and rustic society may also be at- tributed the rural feeling that runs through British literature ; the frequent use of illustrations from rural life ; those incomparable de- scriptions of Nature tliat abound in the British poets — that have con- tinued down from " The Flower and the Leaf," of Chaucer, and have brought into our closets all the freshness and fragrance of the dewy landscape. The pastoral writers of other countries appear as if they had paid Nature an occasional visit, and become acquainted with her general charms ; but the British poets have lived and reveled with her — they have' wooed her in her most secret haunts — they lisiva watched her minutest caprices. A spray could not tremble in the breeze — a leaf could not rustle to the ground — a diamond drop could not patter in the stream — a fragrance could not exhale from the hum- ble violet, nor a daisy unfold its crimson tints to the morning, but it has been noticed by these impassionate and delicate observers, and wrought up into some beautiful morality. Theeifect of this devotion of elegant minds to rural occupations Las been wonderful on the face of the country. A great part of the island is rather level, and would be monotonous were it not for the 48 SKETUH-BOOK. cliarms of culture ; but it is studded and gemmed, as it were, with castles and palaces, and embroidered with parks and gardens. It does not abound in grand and sublime prospects, but rather in little home scenes of rural repose and sheltered quiet. Every antique farm-house and moss-grown cottage is a picture ; and as the roads are continually winding, and the view is shut in by groves and hedges, tlie eye is delighted by a continual succession of small landscapes of captivating loveliness. The great charm, however, of English scenery is the moral feel- ing that seems to pervade it. It is associated in the mind with ideas of order, of quiet, of sober well-established principles, of hoary usage and reverend custom. Everything seems to be the growth of ages of regular and peaceful existence. The old church, of remote architec- ture, with its low massive portal ; its gotliic tower ; its windows, rich with tracery and painted glass, in scrupulous preservation — its stately monuments of warriors and worthies of the olden time, an- cestors of the present lords of the soil — its tombstones, recording suc- cessive generations of sturdy yeomanry, whose progeny still plow the same fields, and kneel at the same altar — the parsonage, a quaint irregular pile, partly antiquated, but repaired and altered in the tastes of various ages and occupants — the stile and footpath leading from the church- yard, across pleasant fields and along shady hedge-rows, according to an immemorable right of way — the neighboring village, with its venerable cottages, its public green, sheltered by trees, under which the forefathers of the present race have sported — the antique family mansion, standing apart in some little rural domain, but look- ing down with a protecting air on the surrounding scene — all the se common features of English landscape evince a calm and settled se- curity, a hereditary transmission of home-bred virtues and local attach- ments, that speak deeply and touchingly for the moral character of the nation. It is a pleasing sight, of a Sunday morning, when the bell is send- ing its sober melody across tbe quiet fields, to behold the peasantry in their best finery, with ruddy faces, and modest cheerfulness, throng- ing tranquilly along the green lanes to chixrch ; but it is still more pleasing to see them in the evenings, gathering about their cottage doors, and appearing to exult in the humble comforts and embellish- ments which their own hands have spread around them. It is this sweet home feeling, this settled repose of affection in the domestic scene, that is, after all, the parent of the steadiest virtues and purest enjoyments ; and I cannot close these desultory remarks better than by quoting the words of a modern English poet, who has depicted it with remarkable felicity. Through each gradation, from the castled hall, The city dome, the villa crowned with shade, But chief from modest mansions numberless, THE BROKEN HEART. 49 In town or hamlet, shelt'ring middle life, Down to the cottaged vale, and straw-roof d shed. This western isle has long been famed for scenes Where bliss domestic finds a dwelling-place : Domestic bliss, that like a harmless dove (Honor and sweet endearment keeping guard), Can center in a little quiet nest All that desire would fly for through the earth ; That can, the world eluding, be itself A world enjoyed -, that wants no witnesses But its owb sharers and approving Heavea. That, like a flower deep hid in rocky cleft, Smiles, though 't is looking at the sky.* THE BROKEN HEART. I never heard Of any true affection, but 't was nipped With care, that, like the caterpillar, eats The leaves of the spring's sweetest book, the rose. Mtddleton. It is a common practice with those who have outlived the suscep- tibility of early feeling, or have been brought up in the gay heartlessness of dissipated life, to laugh at all love stories, and to treat the tales of romantic passion as mere fictions of novelists and poets. My observations on human nature have induced me to tliinlt otherwise. They have convinced me that, however the surface of the character may be chilled and frozen by the cares of the world, or cultivated into mere smiles by the arts of society, still there are dor- mant fires lurking in the depths of the coldest bosom, which, when once enkindled, become impetuous, and are sometimes desolating in their effects. Indeed, I am a true believer in the blind deity, and go to the full extent of his doctrines. Shall I confess it ?-|-I believe in broken hearts,;^ and the possibility of dying of disappointed love ! I do not, however, consider it a malady often fatal to my own sex ; buO I firmly believe that it withers down many a lovely woman into an early grave. Man is the creature of interest and ambition. His nature leads him forth into the struggle and bustle of the world. Love is but the em bellishment of his early life, or a song piped in the intervals of the acts. He seeks for fame, for fortune, for space in the world's thought, and dominion over his fellow-men. But a woman's whole life is a Iiistory of the affections. The heart is her world ; it is there her anv * From a poem on the death of the Princess Charlotte, by the Reverend Rann Kennedy, A, M. 50 SKETCH-BOOK bition strives for empire — it is there lier avarice seeks for hidden treasures. She sends forth her sympathies on adventure ; she em- barks her whole soul in the traffic of afEection ; and if shipwrecked, her case is hopeless — for it is a bankruptcy of the heart. To a man the disappointment of love may occasion some bitter pangs ; it wounds some feelings of tenderness — it blasts some pros- pects of felicity ; but he is an active being ; he may dissipate his thoughts in the whirl of varied occupation, or may plunge into the tide of pleasure ; or, if the scene of disappohitment be too full of painful associations, he can shift his abode at will, and taking, as it were, the wings of the morning, can ''fly to the uttermost parts of the earth, and be at rest." But woman's is comparatively a fixed, a secluded, and a meditative life. She is more the companion of her own thoughts and feelings ; and if they are turned to ministers of sorrow, where shall she look for consolation ? Her lot is to be wooed and won ; and if unhappy in her love, her heart is like some fortress that has been captured, and sacked, and abandoned, and left desolate. How many bright eyes grow dim — how many soft cheeks grow pale — how many lovely forms fade away into the tomb , and none can tell the cause that blighted their loveliness ! As the dove w ill clasp its wings to its side, and cover and conceal the arrow that is preymg on its vitals — so it is the nature of woman to hide from the world the pangs of wounded affection. The love of a delicate female is always shy and silent. Even when fortunate, she scarcely breathes it to herself ; but when otherwise, she buries it in the recesses of her bosom, and there lets it cower and brood among the ruins of her peace. With her, the desire of her heart has failed — the great charm of existence is at an end. She neglects all the cheerful exercises ' which gladden the spirits, quicken the pulses, and send the tide of life in healthful currents through the veins. Her rest is broken — the sweet refreshment of sleep is poisoned by melancholy dreams — " dry sorrow drinks her blood," until her enfeebled frame sinks under the slightest external injury. Look for her, after a little while, and you find friendship weeping over her untimely grave, and wondering that one, who but lately glowed with all the radiance of health and beauty, > should so speedily be brought down to "darkness and the worm." You will be told of some wintry chill, some casual indisposition, that laid her low — but no one knows the mental malady that previously sapped her strength, and made her so easy a prey to the spoiler. She is like some tender tree, the pride and beauty of the grove : graceful in its form, bright in its foliage, but with the worm preying at its heart. We find it suddenly withering, when it should be mo&t fresh and luxuriant. We see it drooping its branches to the earth, and shedding leaf by leaf ; until, wasted and perished away, it falls «ven in the stillness of the forest ; and as we muse over the beauti- THE BROKEN HEART. &i ful ruin, we strive in vain to recollect tlie blast or thunderbolt that could have smitten it vfith. decay. I have seen many instances of women running to waste and self- neglect, and disappearing gradually from the earth, almost as if they had been exhaled to heaven ; and have repeatedly fancied that I could trace their deatlis through the various declensions of consump- tion, cold, debility, languor, melancholy, until I reached the firi=t .symptom of disappointed love. But an instance of the kind waj lately told to me ; the circumstances are well known in the country where they happened, and I shall but give them in the manner in which they were related. Every one must recollect the tragical story of young E , the Irish patriot : it was too touching to be soon forgotten. During the troubles in Ireland he was tried, condemned, and executed on a charge of treason. His fate made a deep imj)ression on public sympathy. He was so young — so intelligent — so generous — so brave — so every- thing that we are apt to lil^e in a young man. His conduct under trial, too, was so lofty and intrepid The noble indignation with w^hich he repelled the charge of treason against his country — the elo- quent vindication of his name — and his pathetic appeal to posterity, in the hopeless hour of condemnation — all these entered deeply into every generous bosom, and even his enemies lamented the stern pol- icy that dictated his execution. But there was one heart, whose anguish it would be impossible to describe. In happier days and fairer fortunes, he had won the affec- tions of a beautiful and interesting girl, the daughter of a late cele- brated Irish barrister. She loved him with the disinterested fervor of a woman's first and early love. When every worldly maxim arrayed itself against him ; when blasted in fortune, and disgrace and danger darkened around his name, she loved him the more ardently for his very sufferings. If, then, his fate could awaken the sym- pathy even of his foes, what must have been the agony of her, whose 'whole soul was occupied by his image ? Let those tell who have had the portals of the tomb suddenly closed between them and the being they most loved on earth — who have sat at its threshold, as one shut out in a cold and lonely world, from whence all that was most lovely j and loving had departed. But then the horrors of such a grave ! — so frightful, so dishonored ! There was nothing for memory to dwell on that could soothe the pang of separation — none of those tender though melancholy circum- stances that endear the parting scence — nothing to mrelt sorrow into ihose blessed tears, sent like the dews of heaven, to revive the heart in the parting hour of anguish. To render her widowed situation more desolate, she had incurred her father's displeasure by her unfortunate attachment, and was an exile from the paternal roof. But could the sympathy and kind oflSlces 52 SKBTCS-BOO^. of friends have readied a spirit so shocked and driven in by horror, she would have experienced no want of consolation, for the Irish are a people of quick and generous sensibilities. The most delicate and cherishing attentions were paid her by families of wealth and dis- tinction. She was led into society, and they tried by all kinds of occupation and amusement to dissipate her grief and wean her from the tragical story of her loves. But it was all in vain. There are some strokes of calamity that scathe and scorch the soul — that pene- trate to the vital seat of happiness — and blast it, never again to put forth bud or blossom. She never objected to frequent the haunts of pleasure, but she was as much alone there as in the depths of soli- tude. She walked about in a sad reverie, apparently unconscious of the world around her. She carried with her an inward woe that mocked at all the blandishments of friendship, and " heeded not the song of the charmer, charm he never so wisely." The person who told me her story had seen her at a masquerade. There can be no exhibition of fargone wretchedness more striking and painful than to meet it in such a scene. To find it wandering like a specter, lonely and joyless, where all around is gay — to see it dressed out in the trappings of mirth, and looking so wan and woebegone, as if it had tried in vain to cheat the poor heart into a momentary for- getfulness of sorrow. After strolling through the splendid rooms and giddy crowd with an air of utter abstraction, she sat herself down on the steps of an orchestra, and looking about for some time with a vacant air, that showed her insensibility to the garish scene, she be- gan with the capriciousness of a sickly heart to warble a little plain- tive air. She had an exquisite voice ; but on this occasion is was so simple, so touching — it breathed forth such a soul of wretchedness — that she drew a crowd, mute and silent, around her, and melted every one into tears. The story of one so true and tender could not but excite great in- terest in a country remarkable for enthusiasm. It completely won ! lie heart of a brave officer, who paid his addresses to her, and thought that one so true to the dead could not but prove affectionate to the living. She declined his attentions, for her thoughts were irrecover- ably engrossed by the memory of her former lover. He, however, persisted in his suit. He solicited not her tenderness, but her esteem. He was assisted by her conviction of his worth, and her sense of her own destitute and dependent situation, for she was existing on the kindness of friends. In a word, he at length succeeded in gaining her hand, though with the solemn assurance that her heart was unalter- ably another's. He took her with him to Sicily, hoping that a change of scene might v/ear out the remembrance of early woes. She was an amiable and exemplary wife, and made an effort to be a happpy one ; but nothing could cur© the silent and devouring melancholy that had ea f&E ART OF BOOK-MAKING. sa tered into her very soal. She wasted away, in a slow but "hopeless decline, and at length sunk into the grave, the victim of a broken heart. It was on her that Moore, the distinguished Irish poet, composed the following lines : She is far from the land where her yonng hero sleeps, And lovers around her are sighing ; But coldly she turns from their gaze, and weeps. For her heart in his grave is lying. She sings the wild song of her dear native plains, Erery note which he loved awakina: — Ah 1 little they think who delight in her strains, ^ How the heart of the minstrel is breaking 1 He had lived for his love — for his country he died, They were all that to life had entwined him— Nor soon shall the tears of his country be dried, Nor long will his love stay behind him ! Oh I make her a grave where the sunbeams rest. When they promise a glorious morrow : They'll shine o'er her sleep, like a smile from the west From her own loved island of sorrow 1 THE ART OF BOOK-MAKINa. " If that severe doom of Synesius be true — ' it is a greater offense to steal deail men's labors than their clothes '—what shall become of most writers ? '' Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy. I HAVE often wondered at the extreme fecundity of the press, and how it comes to pass that so many heads, on which Nature seems to have inflicted the curse of barrenness, yet teem with voluminous pro- ductions. As a man travels on, however, in the journey of life, his objects of wonder daily diminish, and he is continually finding out some very simple cause for some great matter of marvel. Thus have I chanced, in my peregrinations about this great metropolis, to blunder upon a scene which unfolded to me some of the mysteries of the book-making craft and at once put an end to my astonishment. I was one summer's day loitering through the great saloons of the Brit- ish Museum, with that listlessness with which one is apt to saunter about a room in warm weather ; sometimes lolling over the glass cases of minerals, sometime studying the hieroglyphics on an Egyptian mum- my, and sometimes trying, with nearly equal success, to comprehend the allegorical paintings on the lofty ceilings. While I was gazing 54 SKETCH-BOOS:. about in this idle way, my attention was attracted to a distant floor, at the end of a suit of apartments. It was closed, but every now and then it would open, and some strange-favored being, generally clothed in black, would steal forth and glide through the rooms, without noticing any of the surrounding objects. There was an air of mys- tery about this that piqued my languid curiosity, and I determined to attempt the passage of that strait, and to explore the unknown regions that lay beyond. The door yielded to my hand, with all that facility with which the portals of enchanted castles yield to the ad- venturous knight- errant, I found myself in a spacious chamber, surrounded with great cases of venerable books. Above the cases and just under the cornice were arranged a great number of quaint black- looking portraits of ancient authors. About the room were placed long tables, with stands for reading and writing, at which sat many pale, cadaverous personages, poring intently over dusty volumes, rummaging among moldy manuscripts, and taking copious notes of their contents. The most hushed stillness reigned through this mys- terious apartment; excepting that you might hear the racing of pens over sheets of paper, or, occasionally, the deep sigh of one of these sages, as be shifted his position to turn over the pages of an old folio ; doubtless arising from that hollowness and flatulency incident to learned research. Now and then one of these personages would write something on a small slip of paper, and ring a bell, whereupon a familiar would appear, take the paper in profound silence, glide out of the room, and return shortly loaded with ponderous tomes, upon which the other would fall, tooth and nail, with famished voracity. I had no longer a doubt that I had happened upon a body of magi, deeply en- gaged in the study of occult sciences. The scene reminded me of an old Arabian tale, of a philosopher who was shut up in an enchanted library, in the bosom of a mountain, that opened only once a year; where lie made the spirits of the place obey his commands, and bring him books of all kinds of dark knowledge, so that at the end of the year, when the magic portal once more swung open on its hinges, he issued forth so versed in forbidden lore as to be able to soar above the heads of the multitude, and to control the powers of Nature. My curiosity being now fully aroused, I whispered to one of the familiars, as he was about to leave the room, and begged an interpre- tation of the strange scene before me. A few words were sufficient for the purpose : — I found that these mysterious personages whom I had mistaken for magi, were principally authors, and were in the very act of manufacturing books. I was, in fact, in the reading-room of the great ."'a-itish Library, an immense collection of volumes of all ages and languages, many of which are now forgotten, and most of which are seldom read. To these sequestered pools of obsolete litera- ture, therefore, do many modera aut^rs repair, and draw bucket* THE ART OF BOOE-MAEmG. 55 full of classic lore, or " pure Englisli, undefiled," wherewith to swell their own scanty rills of thought. Being now in possession of the secret, I sat down in a corner and watched the process of this book manufactory. I noticed one lean, bilious -looking wight, who sought none but the most worm-eaten volumes, printed in black-letter. He was evidently constructing some work of profound erudition, that would be purchased by every man who wished to be thought learned, placed upon a conspicuous shelf of his library, or laid open upon his table — but never read. I observed him, now and then, draw a large fragment of biscuit out of his pocket, and gnaw ; whether it was his dinner or whether he was endeavoring to keep ofE that exhaustion of the stomach, produced by uiiich pondering over dry works, I leave to harder students than my- self to determine. There was one dapper little gentleman in bright colored clothes, with a chirping gossiping expression of countenance, who had all the appearance of an author on good terms with his bookseller. After considering him attentively, I recognized in him a diligent getter-up of miscellaneous works, which bustled off well with the trade. I was curious to see how he manufactured his wares. He made more stir and show of business than any of the others : dipping into various books, fluttering over the leaves of manuscripts, taking a morsel out of one, a morsel out of another, "line upon line, precept upon pre- cept, here a little and there a little." The contents of his book seemed to be as heterogeneous as those of the witches' caldron in Macbeth. It was here a finger and there a thumb, toe of frog and blind worm's sting, with his own gossip poured in like "baboon's blood," to make the medley ^' slab and good." After all, thought I, may not this pilfering disposition be implanted in authors for wise purposes ? May it not be the way in which Provi- dence has taken care that the seeds of knowledge and wisdom shall be preserved from age to age, in spite of the inevitable deCay of ilie works in which they were first produced ? We see that Nature has wisely though whimsically provided for the conveyance of seeds from clime to clime, in the maws of certain birds ; so that animals, which, in themselves, are little better than carrion, and apparently the law- less plunderers of the orchard and the corn-field, are, in fact. Nature's carriers to disperse and perpetuate her blessings. In like manner, the beauties and fine thoughts of ancient and obsolete writers are caught up by these flights of predatory authors, and cast forth, again to flourish and bear fruit in a remote and distant tract of time. Many of their works, also, undergo a khid of metempsychosis, and spring up under new forms. What was formerly a ponderous history revives in the shape of a romance — an old legend changes into a modern play — and a sober philosophical treatise f ur ~ ishes the body for a whole series of bouncing and sparkling easayg* Tb^iS it is in the clearing of 56 SKETCH-BOOK. our American woodlands ; where we burn down a forest of Btately pines, a progeny of dwarf oaks start up in tlieir place ; and w« never see the prostrate trunk of a tree, moldering into soil, but it gives birth to a whole tribe of fungi. Let us not, then, lament over the decay and oblivion into which ancient writers descend ; they do but submit to the great law of Nature, which declares that all sublunary shapes of matter shall be limited in their duration, but which decrees, also, that their elements shall never perish. Generation after generation, both in animal and vegetable life, passes away, but the vital principle is transmitted to posterity, and the species continue to flourish Thus, also, do authors beget authors, and having produced a numerous progeny, in a good old age they sleep with their fathers ; that is to say, with the authors who preceded them — and from whom they had stolen. While 1 was indulging in these rambling fancies I had leaned my head against a pile of reverend folios. Whether it was owing to the soporific emanations from these works ; or to the profound quiet of the room ; or to the lassitude arising from much wandering ; or to an unlucky habit of napping at improper times and places, with which I am grievously afflicted, so it was, that I fell into a doze. Still, however, my imagination continued busy, and indeed the same scene remained before my mind's eye, only a little changed in some of the details. I dreamed that the chamber was still decorated with the por- traits of ancient authors, but the number was increased. The long tables had disappeared, and iu place of the sage magi, I beheld a ragged, threadbare throng, such as may be seen plying about the great repository of cast-off clothes, Monmouth street. Whenever they seized upon a book, by one of those incongruities common to dreams, methought it turned into a garment of foreign or antique fashion, with which they proceeded to equip themselves. I noticed , however, that no one pretended to clothe himself from any particular suit, but took a sleeve from one, a cape from another, a skirt from a third, thus decking himself out piecemeal, while some of his original rags would peep out from among his borrowed finery. There was a portly, rosy, well-fed parson, whom I observed ogling several moldy polemical writers through an eye-glass. He soon con- trived to slip on the voluminous mantle of one of the old fathers, and having purloined the gray beard of another, endeavored to look ex- ceedingly wise ; but the smirking commonplace of his countenance set at nought all the trappings of wisdom. One sickly-looking gen- tleman was busied embroidering a very flimsy garment with gold thread drawn out of several old court-dresses of the reign of Queen Elizabeth. Another had trimmed himself magnificently from an illuminated manuscript. Lad stuck a nosegay in his bosom, culled from " The Paradise of Dainty Devices," and having put Sir Philip Sidney's hat on one side of his head stiutted off with an exquis- TEE ABT OF BOOK-MAKING. 57 ite &vt of vulgar elegance. A tliird, who was but o'f puny dimen- sions, liad bolstered himself out bravely with the spoils from sev- eral obscure tracts of philosophy, so that he had a very imposing front, but he was lamentably tattered in rear, and I perceived that he had patched his small-clothes with scraps of parchment from a Latin author. There were some well-dressed gentlemen, it is true, who only helped themselves to a gem or so, which sparkled among their own ornaments without eclipsing them. Some, too, seemed to con-' template the costumes of the old writers, merely to imbibe their prhi- ciples of taste, and to catch their air and spirit ; but I grieve to say that too many were apt to array themselves, from top to toe, in the patch- work manner I have mentioned. I should not omit to speak of one genius, in drab breeches and giifcers, and an Arcadian hat, who had a violent propensity to the pastoral, but whose rural wanderings had been confined to the classic haunts of Primrose Hill and the soli- tudes of the Regent's Park. He had decked himself in wreaths and ribbons from all the old pastoral poets, and hanging his head on one side, went about with a fantastical, lack-a-daisical air, "babbling about green fields." Bat the personage that most struck my atten- tion was a pragmatical old gentleman, in clerical robes, with a re- markably large and square but bald head. He entered the room wheezing and puffing, elbowed his way through the throng, with a look of sturdy self-confidence, and having laid hands upon a thick Greek quarto, clapped it upon his head, and swept majestically away in a formidable frizzled wig. In the height of this literary masquerade, a cry suddenly resound- ed from every side, of "thieves ! thieves !" I looked, and lo ! the portraits about the wall became animated ! The old authors thrust out first a head, then a shoulder, from the canvas, looked down curi- ously, for an instant, upon the motley throng, and then descended, with fury in their eyes, to claim their rifled property. The scene of scampering and hubbub that ensued batfles all description. The un- happy culprits endeavored in vain to escape with their plunder. On one side might be seen half a dozen old monks, stripping a modern professor ; on another, there was sad devastation carried into the ranks of modern dramatic writers. Beaumont and Fletcher, side by side, raged round the field like Castor and Pollux, and sturdy Ben Jonson enacted more wonders than when a volunteer with the army in Flan- ders. As to the dapper little compiler of farragos, mentioned some time since, he had arrayed himself in as many patches and colors as Harlequin, and there was as fierce a contention of claimants about him as about the dead body of Patroclus. I was grieved to see many men, whom I had been accustomed to look upon with awe and rev- erence, fain to steal, off with scarce a rag to cover their nakedness. Just then my eye was caught by the py^-^atical old gentleman in the 58 SKETCH-BOOK Greek grizzled wig, wlio was scrambling away in sore affright with half a score of authors in full cry ,af ter him. They were close upou his haunches ; in a twinkling off went his wig ; at every turn some strip of raiment was peeled away ; until in a few moments, from his domineering pomp, he shrunk into a little pursy, ' ' chopp'd bald shot," and made his exit with only a few tags and rags fluttering at his back. There was something so ludicrous in the catastrophe of this learned Theban that I burst into an immoderate fit of laughter, which broke the whole illusion. The tumult and the scuffle were at an end. The chamber resumed its usual appearance. The old authors shrunk back into their picture-frames, and hung in shadowy solemnity along the walls. In short, I found myself wide awake in my corner, with the whole assemblage of bookworms gazing at me with astonishment. Nothing of the dream had been real but my burst of laughter, a sound never before heard in that grave sanctuary, and so abhorrent to the ears of wisdom as to electrify the fraternity. The librarian now stepped up to me, and demanded whether I had a card of admission. At first I did not comprehend him, but I soon found that the library was a kind of literary " preserve," subject to game laws, and that no one must presume to hunt there without spe- cial license and permission. In a word, I stood convicted of being an arrant poacher, and was glad to make a precipitate retreat, l^t I should have a whole pack of authors let loose upon me. A EOYAL POET. Though your body be confined And soft love a prisoner bound, Yet the beauty of your mind Neither cheek nor chain hath found. Look out nobly, then, and dare Even the fetters that you wear. fl-ETCHER. vated period of the arts. As an amatory poem it is edifying, in these days of coarser think- ing, to notice the nature, refinement, and exquisite delicacy which pervade it, banishing every gross thought or immodest expression, and presenting female loveliness clothed in all its chivalrous attributes of almost supernatural purity and grace. ' James flourished nearly about the time of Chaucer and Gower, and was evidently an admirer and studier of their writings. Indeed, in one of his stanzas he acknowledges them as his masters, and in some parts of his poem we find traces of similarity to their produc- tions, more especially to those of Chaucer. There are always, how- ever, general features of resemblance in the works of contemporary authors, which are not so much borrowed from each other as from the times. Writers, like bees, toll their sweets in the wide world ; they incorporate with their own conceptions the anecdotes and thoughts which are current in society, and thus each generation has some fea- tures in common, characteristic of the age in which it lives. James in fact belongs to one of the most brilliant eras of our literary history, and establishes the claims of his country to a participation in its prim- itive honors. While a small cluster of English writers are con- stantly cited as the fathers of our verse, the name of their great Scot- tish compeer is apt to be passed over in silence ; but he is evidently worthy of being enrolled in that little constellation of remote but never-failing luminaries who shine in the highest firmament of lit- erature, and who, like morning stars, sang together at the bright dawning of British poesy. Such of my readers as may not be familiar with Scottish history (though the manner in which it has of late been woven with captivat- ing fiction has made it a universal study) may be curious to learn something of the subsequent history of James and the fortunes of his love. His passion for the Lady Jane, as it was the solace of his captivity, so it facilitated his release, it being imagined by the Court that a connection with the blood-royal of England would attach him to its own interests. He was ultimately restored to his liberty and crown, having previously espoused the Lady Jane, who accompanied him to Scotland, and made him a most tender and devoted wife. He found his kingdom in great confusion, the feudal chieftains hav- ing taken advantage of the troubles and irregularities of a long inter- regnum, to strengthen themselves in their possessions, and place them- selves above the power of the laws. James sought to found the basis of his power in the affection of his people. He attached the lower orders to him by the reformation of abuses, the temperate and equa- A ROYAL POET. 67 ble administration of justice, the encouragement of tlie arts of peace, and the promotion of everytliing that could diffuse comfort, compe- tency, and innocent enjoyment, through the liumblest ranks of so- ciety. He mingled occasionally among the common people in disguise; visited their firesides ; entered into their cares, their pursuits, and their amusements ; informed himself of the mechanical arts, and how they could best to patronized and improved ; and was thus an all-pervading spirit, watching with a benevolent eye over the meanest of his subjects. Having in this 2"enerous manner made himself strongl in the hearts of the common* people, he turned himself to curb th^ power of the factious nobility ; to strip them of those dangerous im- munities which they had usurped ; to punish such as had been guilty of flagrant offenses ; and to bring the whole into proper obedience to the crown. For some time they bore this with outward submission, but with secret impatience and brooding resentment. A conspiracy was at length formed against his life, at the head of which was his own uncle, Robert Stewart, Earl of Athol, who, being too old himself for the perpetration of the deed of blood, instigated his grandson. Sir Robert Stewart, together with Sir Robert Graham and others of less note, to commit the deed. They broke into his bed-chamber at the Dominican convent near Perth, v/here he was residing, and barbar- ously murdered him by oft-repeated wounds. His faithful queen, rushing to throw her tender body between him and the sword, was twice wounded in the ineffectual attempt to shield him from the as- sassin ; and it was not until she had been forcibly torn from his per- son that the murder was accomplished. It was the recollection of t^is romantic tale of former times, and of the golden little poem, which had its birth-place in this tower, that made me visit the old pile wilh more than common interest. The suit of armor hanging up in the hall, richly gilt and embellished, as if to figure in the tournay, brought the image of the gallant and ro- mantic prince vividly before my imagination. I paced the deserted chambers where he had composed his poem ; I leaned upon the win- dow and endeavored to. persuade myself it was the very one where he had been visited by his vision ; I looked out upon the spot where he had first seen the Lady Jane. It was the same genial and joyous month ; the birds were again vying with each other in strains of liquid melody : everytliing was bursting into vegetation, and budding forth the tender promise of the year. Time, which delights to obliterate the sterner memorials of human pride, seems to have passed lightly over this little scene of poetry and love, and to have withheld his desolating hand. Several centuries have gone by, yet the garden still flourishes at the foot of the tower. It occupies what was once the moat of the keep, and though some parts have been separated by dividing walls, yet others have still their arbors and shaded walks, as in the days of James ; and the whole is sheltered, blooming, and 68 SKETCH-BOOK. retired. There is a cliarm about tlie spot that has been printed by the footsteps of departed beauty, and consecrated by the inspirations of the poet, which is heightened rather than impaired by the lapse of ages. It is, indeed, the gift of poetry, to hallow every place in which it moves ; to breathe round nature an odor more exquisite than the perfume of the rose, and to shed over it a tint more magical than the blush of morning. Others may dwell on the illustrious deeds of James as a warrior and a legislator ; but I have delighted to view him merely as the com- panion of his fellow-men, the benefactor of the human heart, stoop- ing from his high estate to sow the sweet flowers of poetry and song in the paths of common life. He was the first to cultivate the vigor- ous and hardy plant of Scottish genius, which has since been so pro- lific of the most wholesome and highly-flavored fruit. He carried with him into the sterner regions of the north all the fertilizing arts of southern refinement. He did everything in his power to win his countrymen to the gay, the elegant, and gentle arts which soften and refine the character of a people, and wreathe a grace round the lofti- ness of a proud and warlike spirit. He wrote many poems, which, unfortunately for the fullness of his fame, are now lost to the world ; one, which is still preserved, called " Christ's Kirk of the Green," shows how diligently he had made himself acquainted with the rustic sports and pastimes which constitute such a source of kind and so- cial feeling among the Scottish peasantry ; and with what simple and happy humor he could enter into their enjoyments. He contributed greatly to improve the national music ; and traces of his tender sen- timent and elegant taste arc said to exist in those witching airs, still piped among the wild mountains and lonely glens of Scotland. He has thus connected his image with whatever is most gracious and en- dearing in the national character ; he has embalmed his memory in song, and floated his name down to after-ages in the rich stream of Scottish melody. The recollection of these things was kindling at my heart, as I paced the silent scene of his imprisonment. I have visited Vaucluse with as much enthusiasm as a pilgrim would visit the shrine at Loretto ; but I have never felt more poetical devotion than when contemplating the old tower and the little garden at Windsor, and musing over the romantic loves of the Lady Jane and the Royal Poet of Scotland. THE COTTNTRT CHVECM. THE COUNTRY CHURCH. A gentleman ! What o' the woolpack ? or the sugar-chest ? Or lists of velvet ? which is't, pound, or yard, You vend your gentry by ? Beggae's Bush. There are few plsCces more favorable to tlie study of cliaracter tlian an Englisli country church. I was once passing a few weeks at the seat of a friend, who resided in the vicinity of one, the appear- ance of which particularly struck my fancy. It was one of those rich morsels of quaint antiquity which give such a peculiar charm to English landscape. It stood in the midst of a county filled with an- cient families, and contained, within its cold and silent aisles, the con- gregated dust of many noble generations. The interior walls were encrusted with monuments of every age and style. The light streamed through windows dimmed with armorial bearings, richly emblazoned in stained glass. In various parts of the church were tombs of knights, and high-born dames, of gorgeous workmanship, with their ejBBgies in colored marble. On every side, the eye was struck with some instance of aspiring mortality ; some haughty memorial which human pride had erected over its kindred dust, in this temple of the most humble of all religions. The congregation was composed of the neighboring people of rank, who sat in pews sumptuously lined and cushioned, furnished with richly-gilded prayer-books, and decorated with their arms upon the pew doors ; of the villagers and peasantry, who filled the back seats, and a small gallery beside the organ ; and of the poor of the parish, who were ranged on benches in the aisles. The service was performed by a snuffling, well-fed vicar, who had a snug dwelling near the church. He was a privileged guest at all the tables of the neighborhood, and had been the keenest fox -hunter in the country, until age and good living had disabled him from doing anything more than ride to see the hounds throw off, and make one at the hunting dinner. ^ Under the ministry of such a pastor I found it impossible to get into the train of thought suitable to the time and place ; so having, like many other feeble Christians, compromised with my conscience, by laying the sin of my own delinquency at another person's threshold, I occupied myself b^ making observations on my neigh- bors. * I was as yet a stmnger in England, and curious to notice the man- ners of its fashionable classes. I found, as usual, that there was the least pretension where there was the most acknowledged title to re- spect. I was particularly struck, for instance, with the family of a 70 BKETCE-BOOK. nobleman of high rank, consisting of several sons and daughters. Nothing could be more simple and unassuming than their appearance. They generally came to church in the plainest equipage, and often on foot. The young ladies would stop and converse in the kindest man- ner with the peasantry, caress the children, and listen to the stories of the humble cottagers. Their countenances were open and beauti- fully fair, with an expression of high refinement, but at the same time a frank cheerfulness and engaging affability. Their brothers were tall and elegantly formed. They were dressed fashionably, but sim. ply ; with strict neatness and propriety, but without any mannerism or foppishness. Their whole demeanor was easy and natural, with that lofty grace and noble frankness which bespeak free-born souls that have never been ciiecked in their growth by feelings of inferior- ity. There is a healthful hardiness about real dignity that never dreads contact and communion with others, however humble. It is only spurious pride that is morbid and sensitive and shrinks from every touch. I was pleased to see the manner in which they would converse with the peasantry about those rural concerns and field sports in which the gentlemen of this country so much delight. In these conversations there was neither haughtiness on the one part nor servility on the other ; and you were only reminded of the differ- ence of rank by the habitual respect of the peasant. In contrast to these was the family of a wealthy citizen who had amassed a vast fortune, and having purchased the estate and m-ansion of a ruined nobleman in the neighborhood, was endeavoring to assume all the style and dignity of a hereditary lord of the soil. The family always came to church en prince. They were rolled majestically along in a carriage emblazoned with arms. The crest glittered in silver radiance from every part of the harness where a crest could possibly be placed. A fat coachman in a three-cornered hat, richly laced, and a flaxen wig, curling close round his rosy face, was seated on the box, with a sleek Danish dog beside him. Two footmen in gor- geous liveries, with huge bouquets and gold-headed canes, lolled be- hind. The carriage rose and sunk on its long springs with a peculiar stateliness of motion. The very horses champed their bits, arched their necks, and glanced their eyes more proudly than <^ommon horses ; either because they had got a little of the family fc3jir»g or were reined up more tightly than ordinary. I could not but admire the style with which this splendia pageant was brought up to the gate of the churchyard. There was a vast effect produced at the turning of an angle of the wall ; — a great smacking of the whip ; straining and scrambling of the horses; glist- ening of harness, and flashing of wheels through gravel. This was the moment of triumph and vain-glory to the coachman. The horses were urged and checked, until they were fretted into a foam. They threw out their feet in a prancing trot, dashing about pebbles at every THE COUNTRY CHUBGH. 71 step. The crowd of villagers, sauntering quietly to ctiurcli, opened precipitately to the right and left, gaping in vacant admiration. On reaching the gate, the horses were pulled up with a suddenness that produced an immediate stop, and almost threw them on their haunches. There was an extraordinary hurry of the footmen to alight, open the door, pull down the steps, and prepare everything for the descent on earth of this august family. The old citizen first emerged his lound red face from out the door, looking about him with the pomp- ous air of a man accustomed to rule on 'change, and shake the stock- market with a nod. His consort, a fine, fleshy, comfortable dame, followed him. There seemed, I must confess, but little pride in her composition. She was the picture of broad, honest, vulgar enjoy- ment. The world went well with her ; and she liked the world. She had fine clothes, a fine house, a fine carriage, fine children, everything was fine about her : it was nothing but driving about and visiting and feasting. Life was to her a perpetual revel ; it was one long Lord Mayor's day. Two daughters succeeded to this goodly couple. They certainly were handsome ; but had a supercilious air that chilled admiration, and disposed the spectator to be critical. They were ultra-fashion- ables in dress, and though no one could deny the richness of their decorations, yet their appropriateness might be questioned amid the simplicity of a country church. They descended loftily from the carriage, and moved up the line of peasantry with a step that seemed dainty of the soil it trod on. They cast an excursive glance around, that passed coldly over the burly faces of the peasantry, until they met the eyes of the nobleman's family, when their countenances im- mediately brightened into smiles, and they made the most profound and elegant courtesies, which were returned in a manner that showed they were but slight acquaintances. I must not forget the two sons of this aspiring citizen, who came to church in a dashing curricle, with outriders. They were arrayed in the extremity of the mode, with all that pedantry of dress which marks the man of questionable pretensions to style. They kept entirely by themselves, eying every one askance that came near them, as if measuring his claims to respectability ; yet they were without con- versation, except the exchange of an occasional cant phrase. They even moved artificially, for their bodies, in compliance with the caprice of the day, had been disciplined into the absence of all ease and free- dom. Art had done everything to accomplish them as men of fashion, but Nature had denied them the nameless grace. They were vul- garly shaped, like men formed for the common purposes of life, and had that air of supercilious assumption which is never seen in the true gentleman. \ have been rather minute in drawing the pictures of these two 72 SEETGH^BOOK families, because I considered them specimens of what is often to be met with in this country — the unpretending great, and the arrogant little. I have no respect for titled rank, unless it be accompanied by true nobility of soul ; but I have remarked, in all countries where these artificial distinctions exist, that the very highest classes are al- ways the most courteous and unassuming. Those who are well as- sured of their own standing are least apt to trespass on that of others : whereas, nothing is so offensive as the aspirings of vulgarity, which thinks to elevate itself by humiliating its neighbor. As I have brought these families into contrast, I must notice their behavior in church. That of the nobleman's family was quiet, serious, and attentive. Not that they appeared to have any fervor of devo- tion, but rather a respect for sacred things and sacred places insep- arable from good -breeding. The others, on the contrary, were in a perpetual flutter and whisper ; they betrayed a continual conscious- ness of finery, and the sorry ambition of being the wonders of a rural congregation. The old gentleman was the only one really attentive to the service. He took the whole burden of family devotion upon himself ; standing bolt upright, and uttering the responses with a loud voice that might be heard all over the church. It was evident that he was one of these thorough church and king men, who connect the idea of devotion and loyalty ; who consider the Deity, some how or other, of the govern- ment party, and religion ' ' a very excellent sort of thing, that ought to be countenanced and kept up." When he joined so loudly in the service, it seemed more by way o$ 3xample to the lower orders, to show them that though so great and wealthy, he was not above being religious ; as I have seen a turtle- fed alderman swallow publicly a basin of charity soup, smacking his lips at every mouthful, and pronouncing it "excellent food for the poor." When the service was at an end, I was curious to witness the sev- eral exits of my groups. The young noblemen and their sisters, as the day was fine, preferred strolling home across the fields, chatting with the country people as they went. The others departed as they came, in grand parade. Again were the equipages wheeled up to the gate. There was again the smacking of whips, the clattering of hoofs, and the glittering of harness. The norses started off at almost a bound : tho villagers again hurried to right and left ; the wheels threw up a cloud of dust, and ^)ic aspiring family was wrapped out of si^hi in a Vvhiriwind. THE WIDOW AND HER SOm 75 THE WIDOW AND HER SON. P'tt^e olde age, within whose siverhaires Honor and reverence evermore have raign'd. Marlowe's Tamburlaine. During my resl(ience in the country I used frequently to attend ai the old village church. Its shadowy aisles, its moldering monuments, its dark oaken panell^jg, all reverend with the gloom of departed years, seemed to fit it for the haunt of solemn meditation. A Sun- day, too, in the country, is so holy in its repose — such a pensive quiet reigns over the face of Nature, that every restless passion is charmed down, and we feel all the natural religion of the soul gently spring- ing up within us. Sweet day, so pure, so cpini, so bright, The bridal of the earth and sky 1 I cannot lay claim to the merit of heing a devout man ; but there are feelings that visit me in a country church, amid the beautiful serenity of Nature, which I experience nowhere else ; and if not a more religious, I think I am a better man on Sunday, than on any other day of the seven. But in this church I felt myself continually thrown back upon the world, by the frigidity and pomp of the poor worms around me. The only being that seemed thoroughly to feel the humble and pros- trate piety of a true Christian was a poor decrepit old woman, bend- ing under the weight of years and infirmities. She bore the traces of something better than abject poverty. The lingerings of decent pride were visible in her appearance. Her dress, though humble in the extreme, was scrupulously clean. Some trivial respect, too, had been awarded her, for she did not take her seat among the village poor, but sat alone on the steps of the altar. She seemed to have survived all love, all friendship, all society ; and to have nothing left her but the hopes of heaven. When I saw her feebly rising and bending her aged form in prayer ; habitually conning her prayer-book, which her palsied hand and failing eyes could not permit her to read, but which she evidently knew by heart ; I felt persuaded that the faltering voice of that poor woman rose to heaven far before the responses of the clerk, the swell of the organ, or the chanting of the choir. I am fond of loitering about country churches ; and this was so delightfully situated that it frequently attracted me. It stood on a knoll, round which a small stream made a beautiful bend, and then wound its way through a long reach of soft meadow scenery. The church was surrounded by yew trees, which seemed almost coeval With itself Its tall Gothic &pire shot up lightly from among them, 74 '^^ BKETCE-BOOK witli rooltg and crows generally wheeling about it. I was seated there one still sunny morning, watching two laborers who were digging a grave. They had chosen one of the most remote and neglected cor- ners of the churchyard, where, by the number of nameless graves around, it would appear that tlie indigent and friendless were huddled into the earth. I was told that the new-made grave was for the only son of a poor widow. While I was meditating upon the distinctions of worldly rank, which extend thus down into the very dust, the toll of the bell announced the approach of the funeral. They were the obsequies of poverty, with which pride had nothing to do, A coffin of the plainest materials, without pall or other covering, was borne by some of the villagers. The sexton walked before with an air of cold indifference. There were no mock mourners in the trappings of affected woe, but there was one real mourner who feebly tottered after the corpse. It was the aged mother of the deceased — the poor old woman whom I had seen seated on the steps of the altar. She was supported by an humble friend, who was endeavoring to comfort her. A few of the neighboring poor had joined the train, and some children of the village were running hand in hand, now shouting with unthinking mirth, and now pausing to gaze with childish curiosity, on the grief of the mourner As the funeral train approached the grave, the parson issued from the church-porch, arrayed in the surplice, with prayer-book in hand, Rnd attended by the clerk. The service, however, was a mere act of charity. The deceased had been destitute, and the survivor was pen- niless. It was shuffled through, therefore, in form, but coldly and unfeelingly. The well-fed priest moved but a few steps from the church door ; his voice could scarcely be heard at the grave ; and never did I hear the funeral service, that sublime and touching cere- mony, turned into such a frigid mummery of words. I approached the grave. The coffin was placed on the ground. On it were inscribed the name and age of the deceased — " George Somers, aged 26 years," The poor mother had been assisted to kneel down at the head of it. Her withered hands were clasped, as if in prayer ; but I could perceive, by a feeble rocking of the body, and a convul- sive motion of the lips, that she was gazing on the last i'elics of hei^ son with the yearnings of a mother's heart. Preparations were made to deposit the coffin in the eartn. j^ere was that bustling stir which breaks so harshly on the feelings of grief and affection ; directions given in the cold tones of business ; the striking of spades into sand and gravel : which, at the grave of those we love, is of all sounds the most withering. The bustle around seemed to waken the mother from a wa-etched reverie. She raised her glazed eyes, and looked about wdth a faint wildness. As the men approached with cords to lower the coffin into the grave, she wrung her hands, and broke into an agony of grief. The poor woman who TEE WIDOW AND HER SOX 7S attended lier took her by the arm and endeavored to raise her from the earth, and to whisper something like consolation — "Nay, nay — nay, now — don't take it so sorely to heart." She could only shake her head, and wring her hands as one not to be comforted. As they lowered the body into the earth , the creaking of the cords seemed to agonize her ; but when, on some accidental obstruction, there was a jostling of the coffin, all the tenderness of the mother burst forth ; as if any harm could come to him who was far beyond the reach of worldly suffering. I could see no more — my heart swelled into my throat — my eyes filled with tears — I felt as if I were acting a barbarous part in stand- ing by and gazing idly on thi« scene of maternal anguish. I wandered to another part of the churchyard, where I remained until the funeraj train had dispersed. When I saw the mother slowly and painf ally quitting the grave, leaving behind her the remains of all that was dear to her on earth, and returning to silence and destitution, my heart ached for her. What, thought I, are the distresses of the rich? They have friends to soothe — pleasures to beguile-^a world to divert and dissipate their griefs. What are the sorrows of the young? Their growing minds soon close above the wound — their elastic spirits soon rise beneath the pressure — their green and ductile affections soon twine around new objects. But the sorrows of the poor, who have no outward appli- ances to soothe — the sorrows of the aged, with whom life at best is but a wintry day, and who can look for no after-growth of joy — the sor- lows of a widow, aged, solitary, destitute, mourning over an only son, the last solace of her years ; — these are indeed sorrows which make us feel the impotency of consolation. It was some time before I left the churchyard. On my way home- ward, I met with the woman who had acted as comforter ; she was just returning from accompanying the mother to her lonely habita- tion, and I drew from her some particulars connected with the affect- ing scene I had witnessed. The parents of the deceased had resided in the village frdm child- hood. They had inhabited one of the neatest cottages, and by various rural occupations, and the assistance of a small garden, had supported themselves creditably and comfo-rtably, and led a happy and blame- less life. They had one son who had grown up to be the staff and pride of their age. — " Oh, sir ! " said the good woman, '• he was such a comely lad, so sweet-tempered, so kind to every one around him, so dutiful to his parents ! It did one's heart good to see him of a Sun- day, dressed out in his best, so tall, so straight, so cheery, supporting his old mother to church — for she was always fonder of leaning on George's arm than on her good man's ; and, poor soul, she might well be prs?ad of him, for a ^finer lad there was not in the country rou»4." 76 . bks:tch-booe. Unfortunately the son was tempted, during a year of scarcity and agricultural hardship, to enter into the service of one of the small craft that plied on a neighboring river. He had not been long in this employ when he was entrapped by a press-gang, and carried off to sea. His parents received tidings of his seizure, but beyond that they could learn nothing. It was the loss of their main prop. The father, who was already infirm, grew heartless and melancholy, and sunk into his grave. The widow, left lonely in her age and feebleness, could no longer support herself, and came upon the parish. Still there was a kind of feeling toward her throughout the village, and a cer- tain respect as being one of the oldest inhabitants. As no one applied for the cottage in which she had passed so many happy days, she was permitted to remain in it, where she lived solitary and almost help- less. The few wants of nature were chiefly supplied from the scanty productions of her little garden, which the neighbors would now and then cultivate for her. It was but a few days before the time at which these circumstances were told me, that she was gathering some vege- tales for her repast, when she heard the cottage-door which faced the garden suddenly opened. A stranger came out, and seemed to be looking eagerly and wildly around. He was dressed in seamen's clothes, was emaciated and ghastly pale, and bore the air of one broken by sickness and hardships. He saw her, and hastened toward her, but his steps were faint and faltering ; he sank on his knees before her, and sobbed like a child. The poor woman gazed upon Mm with a vacant and wandering eye — '* Oh, my dear, dear mother ! don't you know your son ! your poor boy George ? " It was, indeed, the wreck of her once noble lad ; who, shattered by wounds, by sickness, and foreign imprisonment, had at length dragged his wasted limbs home- ward, to repose among the scenes of his childhood. I will not attempt to detail the particulars of such a meeting, where sorrow and joy were so completely blended : still he was alive ! — he was come home ! — he might yet live to comfort and cherish her old age 1 Nature, however, was exhausted in him ; and if anything had been wanting to finish the work of fate, the desolation of his native cottage would have been sufficient. He stretched himself on the pal- let on which his widowed mother had passed many a sleepless night, and he never rose from it again. The villagers, when they heard that George Somers had returned, crowded to see him, offering every comfort and assistance that their humble means afforded. He was too weak, however, to talk — he could only look his thanks. His mother was his constant attendant •, and he seemed unwilling to be helped by any other hand. There is something in sickness that breaks down the pride in man- hood ; t\At softens the heart and brings it back to the feelings of in- fancy Who that has languished, even in advanced life, in sickness and despondency ; who that has pined on a weary bed in the neglect THE WIDOW AND EEIt SON. 77 and loneliness of a foreign land ; but has thought on the mother " that looked on his childhood," that smoothed his pillow, and admin- istered to his helplessness ? Oh ! there is an enduring tenderness in the love of a mother to a son, that transcends all other affections of the heart. It is neither to be chilled by selfishness, nor daunted by danger, nor weakened by worthlessness, nor stifled by ingratitude. She will sacrifice every comfort to his convenience; she will surrender every pleasure to his enjoyment ; she will glory in his fame and exult in his prosperity ; — and if misfortune overtake him, he will be the dearer to her from misfortune ; and if disgrace settle upon his name, she will still love and cherish him in spite of his disgrace ; and if all the world beside cast him off, she will be all the world to him. Poor George Somers had known what it was to be in sickness, and none to soothe — lonely and in prison, and none to visit him. He could not endure his mother from his sight ; if she moved away, his eye would follow her. She would sit for hours by his bed, watching him as he slept. Sometimes he would start from a feverish dream, and looking anxiously up until he saw her bending over him, when he would take her hand, lay it on his bosom, and fall asleep with the tranquillity of a child. In this way he died. My first impulse, on hearing this humble tale of affliction, was to visit the cottage of the mourner, and administer pecuniary assistance, and, if possible, comfort. I found, however, on inquiry, that the good feelings of the villagers had prompted them to do everything that the case admitted ; and as the poor know best how to console each other's sorrows, I did not venture to intrude. The next Sunday I was at the village church ; when, to my sur- prise, I saw the poor old woman tottering down the aisle to her accus- tomed seat on the steps of the altar. She had made an effort to put on something like mourning for her son ; and nothing could be more touching than this struggle between pious affection and utter poverty : a black ribbon or so — a faded black handkerchief — and one or two more such humble attempts to express by outward signs that grief which passes show, — When I looked round upon the storied monuments, the stately hatchments, the cold marble pomp, with which grandeur mourned magnificently over de- parted pride, and turned to this poor widow, bowed down by age and sorrow at the altar of her God, and offering up the prayers and praises of a pious, though a broken heart, I felt that this living monument of real grief was worth them all. I related her story to some of the wealthy members of the congre- gation, and they were moved by it. They exerted themselves to render her situation more comfortable, and to lighten her afflictions. It was, however, but smoothing a few steps to the grave. In the course of a Sunday or two after, she was missed from her usual seat at church, and bef«r« I left the neighborhood I heard, with a feeling 78 BKETGE-BOOK, of satisfaction, that slie had quietly breathed her last, and had gone to rejoin those she loved, in that world where sorrow is never known, and friends are never parted. THE BOAR'S HEAD TAVERN, EASTCHEAP. A SHAKESPEAREAN RESEARCH. A tavern is the rendezvous, the exchange, the staple of good fellows. I have heard my great-grandfather tell, how his great-great-grandfather should say, that it was an old proverh when his great-grandfather was a child, tiiat "it was a good wind that blew a man to the wine." Mother Bombib. It is a pious custom in some Catholic countries to honor the mem- ory of saints by votive lights burned before their pictures. The popularity of a saint, therefore, may be known by the number- oi these offerings. One, perhaps, is left to molder in the darkness of his little chapel ; another may have a solitary lamp to throw its blinking rays athwart his effigy ; while the whole blaze of adoration is lavished at the shrine of some beatified father of renown. The wealthy devotee brings his huge luminary of wax ; the eager zealot, his seven-branched candlestick ; and even the mendicant pilgrim is by no means satisfied that sufficient light is thrown upon the deceased, unless he hangs up his little lamp of smoking oil. The consequence is, in the eagerness to enlighten, they are often apt to obscure ; and I have occasionally seen an unlucky saint almost smoked out of coun- tenance by the officiousness of his followers. In like manner has it fared with the immortal Shakespeare. Every writer considers it his bounden duty to light up some portion of his character or works, and to rescue some merit from oblivion. The commentator, opulent in words, produces vast tomes of dissertations ; the common herd of editors send up mists of obscurity from their notes at the bottom of each page ; and every casual scribbler brings 'his farthing rush-light of eulogy or research, to swell the cloud of j incense and of smoke. As I honor all established usages of my brethren of the quill, I thought it but proper to contribute my mite of homage to the mem- ory of the illustrious bard. I was for some time, however, sorely puzzled in what way I should discharge this duty. I found myself anticipated in every attempt at a new reading ; every doubtful line had been explained a dozen different ways, and perplexed beyond the reach of elucidation ; and as to fine passages they had all been amply praised by previous admirers : nay^ so completely had the bard, of laie, been overlarded with panegyric by a great German critic, that i* TEE BOARS HEAD TAVEEIT, EASTUREAP, 79 was difficult now to find even a fault that had not been argued into a beauty. In this perplexity I was one morning turning over his pages, when I casually opened upon the comic scenes of Henry IV., and was in a moment completely lost in the madcap revelry of the Boar's Head Tavern. So vividly and naturally are these scenes of humor depicted, and with such force and consistency are the characters sustained, that they become mingled up in the mind with the facts and personages of real life. To few readers does it occur that these are all ideal crea-j tions of a poet's brain, and that, in sober truth, no such knot of) merry roysters ever enlivened the dull neighborhood of Eastcheap. For my part I love to give myself up to the illusions of poetry. A hero of fiction that never existed is just as valuable to me as a hero of history that existed a thousand years since : and if I may be ex- cused such an insensibility to the common ties of human nature, I would not give up fat Jack for half the great men of ancient chron- icle. What have the heroes of yore done for me, or men like me? They have conquered countries of which I do not enjoy an acre ; or they have gained laurels of which I do not inherit a leaf ; or they have furnished examples of hair-brained prowess, which I have neither the opportunity nor the inclination to follow. But old Jack Falstaif ! — kind Jack Falstaff ! — sweet Jack Falstaff ! has enlarged the boundaries of human enjoyment : he has added vast regions of wit and good-humor, in which the poorest man may revel ; and has be- queathed a never-failing inheritance of jolly laughter, to make man- kind merrier and better to the latest posterity. A thought suddenly struck me: "I will make a pilgrimage to Eastcheap," said I, closing the book, " and see if the old Boar's Head Tavern still exists. Who knows but I may light upon some legend- ary traces of Dame Quickly and her guests ; at any rate, there will be a kindred pleasure in treading the halls once vocal with their mirth, to that the toper enjoys in smelling of the empty cask, once filled with generous wine," The resolution was no sooner formed than put in execution. I for- bear to treat of the various adventures and wonders I encountered in my travels, of the haunted regions of Cock lane ; of the faded glories of Little Britain and the parts adjacent ; what perils I ran in Catea- ton street and Old Jewry ; of the renowned Guildhall and its two stunted giants, the pride and wonder of the city and the terror of all unlucky urchins ; and how I visited London Stone and struck my staff upon it, in imitation of that arch-rebel. Jack Cade. Let it suffice to say that I at length arrived in merry Eastcheap, that ancient region of wit and wassail, where the very names of the streets relished of good cheer, as Pudding lane bears testimony even at the present day. For Eastcheap, says old Stow, " was always famous for its convivial doings. The cookes cried hot ribbes of beef 80 SKETCH-BOOK, roasted, pies well baked, and other victuals ; tliere was clattering of pewter pots, liarpe, pipe, and sawtrie." Alas ! how sadly is the scene changed since the roaring days of Falstaff and old Stow ! The madcap royster has given place to the plodding tradesman ; the clat- tering of pots and the sound of " harpe and sawtrie," to the din of carts and the accursed dinging of the dustman's bell ; and no song is heard, save haply the strain of some syren from Billingsgate, chant- ing the eulogy of deceased mackerel. I sought in vain for the ancient abode of Dame Quickly. The only relict of it is a boar's head, carved in relief stone, which formerly served as the sign, but at present is built into the parting line of two houses which stand on the site of the renowned old tavern. For the history of this little empire of good fellowship I was re- ferred to a tallow-chandler's widow, opposite, who had been born and brought up on the spot, and was looked up to as the indisputable chronicler of the neighborhood. I found her seated in a little back parlor, the window of which looked out upon a yard about eight feet square, laid out as a flower-garden ; while a glass door opposite af- forded a distant peep of the street, through a vista of soap and tallow candles ; the two views, which comprised in all probability her pros- pects in life, and the little world in which she had lived, and moved, and had her being, for the better part of a century. To be versed in the history of Eastcheap, great and little, from London Stone even unto the Monument, was doubtless, in her opin- ion, to be acquainted with the history of the universe. Yet, with all this, she possessed the simplicity of true wisdom and that liberal com- municative disposition which I have generally remarked in intelligent old ladies, knowing in the concerns of their neighborhood. Her information, however, did not extend far back into antiquity. She could throw no light upon the history of the Boar's Head, from the time that Dame Quickly espoused the valiant Pistol until the great fire of London, when it was unfortunately burned down. It was soon rebuilt, and continued to flourish under the old name and sign, until a dying landlord, struck with remorse for double scores, bad measures, and other iniquities which are incident to the sinful race of publicans, endeavored to make his peace with Heaven by be- queathing the tavern to St. Michael's cLurch, Crooked lane, toward the supporting of a chaplain. For some time the vestry meetings were regularly held there ; bat it was observed that the old Boar ne^er held up his head under church government. He gradually de- clined, and finally gave his last gasp about thirty years since. The tavern was then turned into shops ; but she informed me that a pic- ture of it was still preserved in St. Michael's church, which stood just in the rear. To get a sight of this picture was now my deter- mination ; so, having informed myself of the abode of the sexton, I took my leave of the venerable chroaicler of Eastcheap, my visit THE BOAM'S HEAD TA VERN, EA8TCHEAP. 81 having doubtless raised greatly her opinion of her legendary lore, and furnished an important incident in the history of her life. It cost me some difficulty and much curious inquiry to ferret out the humble hanger-on to the church. I had to explore Crooked lane, and divers little alleys, and elbows, and dark passages, witli w^hich this old city is perforated, like an ancient cheese, or a worm-eaten chest of drawers. At length I traced him to a corner of a small court, surrounded by lofty houses, where the inhabitants enjoy about as much of the face of heaven as a community of frogs at the bot-i tom of a well. The sexton was a meek , acquiescing little man, of a bowing, lowly habit ; yet he had a pleasant twinkling in his eye, and, if encouraged, would now and then venture a small pleasantry, such' as a man of his low estate might venture to make in the company of high church wardens, and other mighty men of the earth, I found him in company with the deputy organist, seated apart, like Milton's angels ; discoursing, no doubt, on high doctrinal points, and settling the affairs of the church over a friendly pot of ale ; for the lower classes of English seldom deliberate on any weighty matter without the assistance of a cool tankard to clear their understandings, I ar- rived at the moment when they had finished their ale and their argu- ment, and were about to repair to the church to put it in order ; so, having made known my wishes, I received their gracious permission to accompany them. The church of St, Michael's, Crooked lane, standing a short dis- tance from Billingsgate, is enriched with the tombs of many fish- mongers of renown ; and as every profession has its galaxy of glory, and its constellation of great men, I presume the monument of a mighty fishmonger of the olden time is regarded with as much rever- ence by succeeding generations of the craft, as poets feel on contem- plating the tomb of Virgil, or soldiers the monument of a Marlbor- ough or Turenne. I cannot but turn aside while thus speaking of illustrious men, to observe that St, Michael's, Crooked lane, contains also the ashes of that doughty champion, William Walworth, knight, who so man- /fully clove down the sturdy wight, Wat Tyler, in Smithfield ; a hera worthy of honorable blazon, as almost the only Lord Mayor on record famous for deeds of arms ; the sovereigns of Cockney being generally renowned as the most pacific of all potentates.* * The following was the ancient inscription on the monument of this worthy, whic2j, unhappily, was destroyed in the great conflagration. Hereunder lyth a man of fame, William "VTalworth callyd by name ; Fishmonger he was in lyfEtlme here, And twise Lord Maior, as in books appeare ; Who, with courage stout and manly myght, ipiew Jacl? Straw in Kyng Richard's sight, 83 ~ SEETCE-BOOK. Adjoining tlie cliurch, in a small cemetery, immediately under the back windows of what was once the Boar's Head, stands the tomb- stone of Robert Preston, whilome drawer at the tavern. It is jnovc nearly a century since this trusty drawer of good liquor closed his bustling career, and was thus quietly deposited within call of his cus- tomers. As I was clearing away the weeds from his epitaph, the little sexton drew me on one side with a mysterious air, and informed me, in a low voice, that once upon a time, on a dark wintry night, when the wind was unruly, howling and whistling, banging about doors and windows, and twirling weathercocks, so that the living were frightened out of their beds, and even the dead coiild not sleep quietly in their graves, the ghost of honest Preston, which happened to be airing itself in the churchyard, was attracted by the well-known call of " waiter," from the Boar's Head, and made its sudden appear- ance in the midst of a roaring club, just as the parish clerk was sing- ing a stave from the "mirrie garland of Captain Death" ; to the dis- comfiture of sundry train-band captains, and the conversion of an infidel attorney, who became a zealous Christian on the spot, and was never known to twist the truth afterward, except in the way of business. I beg it may be remembered that I do not pledge myself for the authenticity of this anecdote ; though it is well known that the churchyards and by-corners of this old metropolis are very much in- fested with perturbed spirits ; and every one must have heard of the Cock lane ghost, and the apparition that guards the regalia in the Tower, which has frightened so many bold sentinels almost out of their wits. Be all this as it may, this Robert Preston seems to have been a worthy successor to the nimble- tongued Francis, who attended upon the revels of Prince Hal ; to have been equally prompt with his " anon, anon, sir," and to have transcended his predecessor in honesty ; for Falstaff, the veracity of whose taste no man will venture to impeach, flatly accuses Francis of putting lime in his sack ; whereas, honest Preston's epitaph lauds him for the sobriety of his conduct, the sound- For which act done, and trew entent, The Kyng made him knyght incontinent ; ' And gave him armes, as here you see. To declare his fact and chivaldrie : He left this lyfl the year of our God Thirteen hondred fourscore and three odd. An error in the foregoing inscription has been corrected by the venerable Stow : **Whereas," said he, " It n at h been far spread abroad by vulgar opinion that the rebel smitten down so manfully by Sir William Walworth, the then worthy Lord Maior, was named Jack Straw, and not Wat Tyler, I thought good to reconcile this rash conceived doubt by such testimony as I find in ancient and good records. The principal leaders, or captains, of the commons, were Wat Tyler, as the first man; the second was John, or Jack, Straw, etc., etc." Stow's London. THE BOARS HEAD TAYEUN, EASTCHEAP, 83 ness of his wine, and the fairness of his measure.* The worthy dig- nitaries of the church, however, did not appear much captivated by the sober virtues of the tapster ; the deputy organist, who had a moist look out of the eye, made some shrewd remark on the abstemiousness of a man brought up among full hogsheads ; and the little sexton corroborated his opinion by a significant wink and a dubious shake of the head. Thus far my researches, though they threw much light on the his- tory of tapsters, fishmongers, and lord mayors, yet disappointed me in the great object of my quest, the picture of the Boar's Head Tav- ern, No such painting was to be found in the church of St. Michael's. " Marry and amen ! " said I, " here endeth my research ! " So I was giving the matter up, with the air of a bafiled antiquary, when my friend the sexton, perceiving me to be curious in everything relative to the old tavern, offered to show me the choice vessels of the vestry, which had been handed down from remote times, when the parish meetings had been held at the Boar's Head. These were deposited in the parish club-room, which had been transferred, on the decline of the ancient establishment, to a tavern in the neighborhood. A few steps brought us to the house, which stands No. 12 Mile lane, bearing the title of The Mason's Arms, and is kept by Mastei Edward Honeyball, the "bully-rock'' of the establishment. It is one of those little taverns which abound in the heart of the city, and form the center of gossip and intelligence of the neighborhood. We entered the bar-room, which was narrow and darkling ; for in these close lanes but few rays of reflected light are enabled to struggle down to the inhabitants, whose broad day is at best but a tolerable twilight. The room was partitioned into boxes, each containing a table spread with a clean white cloth, ready for dinner. This showed that the guests were of the good old stamp, and divided their day equally, for it was but just one o'clock. At the lower end of the room was a clear coal fire, before which a breast of lamb was roasting, A row of bright brass candlesticks and pewter mugs glistened along the mantelpiece, and an old-fashioned clock ticked in one corner. There was something primitive in this medley of kitchen, parlor, and * As this inscription is rife with excellent morality, I transcribe it for the admoni- tion of delinquent tapsters. It is no doubt the production of some choice spidt^ who once frequented the Boar's Head. Bacchus, to give the toping world suiT)rise, Produced one sober son, and here he lies. Though rear'd among full hogsheads, he defied The charms of wine, and every one beside. O reader, if to justice thou'rt inclined. Keep honest Preston daily in thy mind. He drew good wine, took care to fill his pots. Had sundry virtues that excused his faults. You that on Bacchus have the like dependena^ Fray copy Bob, in mieaeure and atteudanfie. 84 BKETCE-BOO&. hall, that carried me back to earlier times, and pleased me. "The place, indeed, was humble, but everything had that look of order and neatness which bespeaks the superintendence of a notable Eng- lish housewife. A group of amphibious-looking beings, who might be either fishermen or sailors, were regaling themselves in one of the boxes. As I was a visitor of rather higher pretensions, I was ushered into a little misshapen back room, having at least nine corners. It was lighted by a sky-light, furnished with antiquated leathern chairs, and ornamented with the portrait of a fat pig. It was evidently appropriated to particular customers, and I found a shabby gentle- man, in a red nose and oil-cloth hat, seated in one corner, meditating on a half -empty pot of porter. The old sexton had taken the landlady aside, and with an air of profound importance imparted to her my errand. Dame Honeyball was a likely, plump, bustling little woman, and no bad substitute for that paragon of hostesses. Dame Quickly. She seemed delighted with an opportunity to oblige ; and hurrying up-stairs to the archives of her house, where the precious vessels of the parish-club were de- posited, she returned, smiling and courtesying, with them in her hands. The first she presented me was a japanned iron tobacco-box, of gigantic size, out of which, I was told, the vestry had smoked at their stated meetings, since time immemorial ; and which was never suf- fered to be profaned by vulgar hands or used on common occasions. I received it with becoming reverence ; but what was my delight at beholding on its cover the identical painting of which I was in quest ! There was displayed the outside of the Boar's Head Tavern, and be- fore the door was to be seen the whole convivial group, at table in full revel, pictured with that wonderful fidelity and force with which the portraits of renowned generals and commodores are illustrated on tobacco boxes for the benefit of posterity. Lest, however, there should be any mistake, the cunning limner had warily inscribed the names of Prince Hal and Falstaff on the bottoms of their chairs. On the inside of the cover was an inscription, nearly obliterated, recording that this box was the gift of Sir Richard Gore, for the use of the vestry meetings at the Boar's Head Tavern, and that it was "re- paired and beautified by his successor, Mr. John Packard, 1767." Such is a faithful description of this august and venerable relic, and I question whether the learned Scriblerius contemplated his Roman shield, or the Knights of the Round Table the long-sought sangreal, with more exultation. While I was meditating on it with enraptured gaze, Dame Honey- ball, who was highly gratified by the interest it excited, put in my hands a drinking cup or goblet which also belonged to the vestry, and was descended from the old Boar's Head. It bore the inscription of having been the gift of Francis Wytkers, knight, and was held, THE NOAM'S SEAD tavern, EASTCHEAP. 8§ she told me, in exceeding great value, being considered very " antyke." This last opinion was strengthened by the shabby gentleman with the red nose and oil-cloth hat, and whom 1 strongly suspected of being a lineal descendant from the valiant Bardolph. He suddenly aroused from his meditation on the pot of porter, and casting a knowing look at the goblet, exclaimed, " Ay, ay, the head don't ache now that made that there article." The great importance attached to this memento of ancient revelry by modern churchwardens at first puzzled me ; but there is nothing sharpens the apprehension so much as antiquarian research ; for I immediately perceived that this could be no other than the identical "parcel-gilt goblet" on which FalstafE made his loving but faithless vow to Dame Quickly ; and which would, of course, be treasured up with care among the regalia of her domains, as a testimony of that solemn contract.* Mine hostess, indeed, gave me a long history how the goblet had been handed down from generation to generation. She also enter- tained me with many particulars concerning the worthy vestrymen who have seated themselves thus quietly on the stools of the ancient roysters of Eastcheap, and, like so many commentators, utter clouds of smoke in honor of Shakespeare. These I forbear to relate, lest my readers should not be as curious in these matters as myself. Suf- fice it to say, the neighbors, one and all, about Eastcheap believe that FalstafE and his merry crew actually lived and reveled there. Nay, there are several legendary anecdotes concerning him still extant among the oldest frequenters of the Mason's Arms, which they give as transmitted down from their forefathers ; and Mr. M'Kasli, an Irish hair-dresser, whose shop stands on the site of the old Boar's Head, has several dry jokes of Fat Jack's not laid down in the bool«, with which he makes his customers ready to die of laughter. I now turned to my friend the sexton to make some farther inqui- ries, but I found him sunk in pensive meditation. His head had de- clined a little on one side ; a deep sigh heaved from the very bottom of his stomach, and, though I could not see a tear trembling in his eye, yet a moisture was evidently stealing from the corner of his mouth. I followed the direction of his eye through the door which stood open, and found it fixed wistfully on the savory breast of lamb, roasting in dripping richness before the fire. I now called to mind that in the eagerness of my recondite investi- gation, I was keeping the poor man from his dinner. My bowels yearned with sympathy, and putting in his hand a small token of my *Thou didst swear to me upon a parcel-gilt goblet, sitting in my Dolphin Chamber, at the round-table, by a sea-coal fire, on Wednesday in Whitsun-week, when the Prince broke thy head for likening his father to a singing man of Windsor ; thou didst swear to me then, as I was washing thy wound, to marry me, and make me my lady, thy wife. Canet thou deny it ?— ., fliew/^ /F.,P^utsweetened not thy breath. There is tter+alnly sometliing more affecting in these prompt and ipontaneous offerings of nature than in the most costly monuments of art ; the hand strews the flower while the heart is warm, and thoj tear falls on the grav«^ as affection is binding the osier round the sod; ( but pathos expires undt./ the slow labor of the chisel, and is chilled among the cold conceits oi" struiptured marble. It is greatly to be regretted that a custom so truly elegant and touching has disappeared from general use, and exists only in the most remote and insignificant villages. But it seems as if poetical custom always shuns the walks of cultivated society. In proportion as peo- ple grow polite, they cease to be puexical. They talk of poetry, but they have learned to check its free iinpulses, to distrust its sallying emotions, and to s apply its most affecting and picturesque usages by studied form and pompous ceremonial. Pew pageants can be more stately and frigid than an English funeral in town. It is made up of show and gloomy parade : mourning carriages, mourning horses, mourning plumes, and hireling mourners, who make a mockery of grief. "There is a grave digged," says Jeremy Taylor, ''and a solemn mourning, and a great talk in the neighborhood, and when the dales are finished, they shall be, and they shall be remembered no more. " The associate in the gay and crowded city is soon forgotten ; the hurrying succession of new intimates and new pleasures effaces him from our minds, and the very scenes and circles in which he moved are incessantly fluctuating. But funerals in the country are solemnly impressive. The stroke of death makes a wider space in the village circle, and is an awful event in the tranquil uniformity of rural life. The passing bell tolls its knell in every ear ; it steals with its pervading melancholy over hill and vale, and saddens all the land- scape. The fixed and unchanging features of the country, also, perpetuate the memory of the friend with whom we once enjoyed them : who was the companion of our most retired walks, and gave animation to evory lonely scene. His idea is associated with every charm of nature ; we hear his voice in the echo which he once delighted to awaken ; his spirit haunts the grove which he once frequented ; we think of him in the wild upland solitude or amid the pensive beauty of the valley. In the freshness of joyous morning we remember his beam- ing smiles and bounding gayety ; and when sober evening returns, with its gathering shadows and subduing quiet, we call to mind many a twilight hour of gentle talk and sweet-souled melanclioly. m BKETGH-BOOK Each lonely place shall him restore. For him the tear be duly shed, Beloved, till life can charm no more. And mourn 'd till pity's self be dead. Another cause that perpetuates tlie memory of the deceased in the country is that the grave is more immediately in sight of the sur- vivors. They pass it on their way to prayer ; it meets their eyes when their hearts are softened by the exercise of devotion ; they lin- ger about it on the Sabbath, when the mind is disengaged from worldly cares, and most disposed to turn aside from present pleasures and present loves, and to sit down among the solemn mementos of the past. In North Wales, the peasantry kneel and pray over the graves of their deceased friends for several Sundays after the interment ; and where the tender rite of strewing and planting flowers is still prac- ticed, it is always renewed on Easter, Whitsuntide, and other festi- vals, when the season brings the companion of former festivity more vividly to the mind. It is also invariably performed by the nearest relatives and friends ; no menials nor hirelings are employed, and if a neighbor yields assistance, it would be deemed an insult to offer com- pensation. I have dwelt upon this beautiful raral custom, because, as it is one of the last, so is it one of the holiest ofiices of love. The grave is the ordeal of true afiection. It is there that the divine passion of the soul manifests its superiority to the instinctive impulse of mere ani- mal attachment. The latter must be continually refreshed and kept alive by the presence of its object ; but the love that is seated in the soul can live on long remembrance. The mere inclinations of sense languish and decline with the charms which excited them, and turn with shuddering and disgust from the dismal precincts of the tomb ; but it is thence that truly spiritual affection rises, purified from every sensual desire, and returns, like a holy flame, to illumine and sanctify the heart of the survivor. The sorrow for the dead is the only sorrow from which we refuse to be divorced. Every other wound we seek to heal — every other afllic- tion to forget ; but this wound we consider it a duty to keep open — this affliction we cherish and brood over in solitude. Where .is the mother who would willingly forget the infant that perished like a blossom from her arms, though every recollection is a pang ? Where is the child that would willingly forget the most tender of parents, though to remember be but to lament ? Who, even in the hour of agony, would forget the friend over whom he mourns ? Who, even when the tomb is closing upon the remains of her he most loved — when he feels his heart, as it were, crushed in the closing of its por- tal — would accept of consolation that must be bought by forgetful- ness? — No, the love which survives the tomb is one of the noblest attributes of the soul. If it has its woes, it has likewise its delights; nVBAL FUNERALS. 161 and wlien the overwhelming burst of grief is calmed into the gentle tear of recollection — when the sudden anguish and the convulsive agony over the present ruins of all that we most loved is softened away into pensive meditation on all that it was in the days of its loveliness — who would root out such a sorrow from the heart ? Though it may sometimes throw a passing cloud over the bright hour of gayety, or spread a deeper sadness over the hour of gloom ; yet who would exchange it even for the song of pleasure or the burst of revelry ? No, there is a voice from the tomb sweeter than song. There is a remembrance of the dead, to which we turn even from the charms of the living. Oh, the grave ! — the grave ! — It buries every error — covers every defect — extinguishes every resentment ! From its peaceful bosom spring none but fond regrets and tender recollec- tions. Who can look down upon the grave even of an enemy and not feel a compunctious throb, that he should ever have warred with the poor handful of earth that lies moldering before him ? But the grave of those we loved — what a place for meditation' There it is that we call up in long review the whole history of virtue and gentleness, and the thousand endearments lavished upon us almost unheeded in the daily intercoui'se of intimacy ; — there it is that we dwell upon the tenderness, the solemn, awful tenderness of the parting scene. The bed of death, with all its stifled griefs — its noiseless attendance — its mute, watchful assiduities. The last testi- monies of expiring love ! The feeble, flattering, thrilling — oh ! how thrilling ! — pressure of the hand. The last fond look of the glazing eye, turning upon us even from the threshold of existence. The faint, faltering accents, struggling in death to give one more assur- ance of affection ! Ay, go to the grave of buried love, and meditate ! There settle the account with thy conscience for every past benefit unrequited, every past endearment unregarded, of that departed being, who can never — never — never return to be soothed by thy contrition ! If thou art a child,^ and hast ever added a sorrow to the soul or a furrow to the silvered brow of an affectionate parent — if thou art a husband, and hast ever caused the fond bosom that ventured its whole happiness in thy arms, to doubt one moment of thy kindness or thy truth — if thou art a friend, and hast ever wronged in thought, or word, or deed, the spirit that generously confided in thee — if thou art a lover, and hast ever given one unmerited pang to that true heart which now lies cold and still beneath thy feet ; then be sure that every un- kind look, every ungracious word, every ungentle action, will come thronging back upon thy memory, and knocking dolefully at thy soul — ^then be sure that thou wilt lie down sorrowing and repentant on the grave, and utter the unheard groan, and pour the unavailin '^ tear — more deep, more bitter, because unheard and unavailing. Then Weave thy chaplet of flowers, and strew the beauties of na- lei SKETCE-BOOK. ture about tlie grave ; console thy broken spirit If thon canst Tritli these tender, yet futile tributes of regret ; — but take warning by the bitterness of this thy contrite affliction over the dead, and henceforth be more faithful and affectionate in the discharge of thy duties to the living. In writing the preceding article, it was not intended to give a full detail of the funeral customs of the English peasantry, but merely to furnish a few hints and quotations illustrative of particular rites, to be appended, by way of note, to another paper, which has been with- held. The article swelled insensibly into its present form, and this is mentioned as an apology for so brief and casual a notice of these usages, after they have been amply and learnedly investigated in other works. I must observe, also, that I am well aware that this custom of adorning graves with flowers prevails in other countries besides England. Indeed, in some it is much more general, and is observed even by the rich and fashionable ; but it is then apt to lose its sim- plicity, and to degenerate into affectation. Bright, in his travels in Lower Hungary, tells of monuments in marble, and recesses formed for retirement, with seats placed among bowers of green-house plants ; and that the graves generally are covered with the gayest flowers of the season. He gives a casual picture of final piety, which I cannot but describe, for I trust it is as useful as it is delightful to illustrate the amiable virtues of the sex, " When I was at Berlin," says he, " I fol- lowed the celebrated Iffland to the grave. Mingled with some pomp, you might trace much real feeling. In the midst of the ceremony, my attention was attracted by a young woman who stood on a mound of earth, newly covered with turf, which she anxiously protected from the feet of the passing crowd. It was the tomb of her parent ; and the figure of this affectionate daughter presented a monument more striking than the most costly work of art." I will barely add an instance of sepulchral decoration that I on^j met with among the mountains of Switzerland. It was at the village" of Gersau, which stands on the borders of the lake of I^uzerne, at the foot of Mount Eigi. It was once the capital of a miuiaLiire republic, shut up between the Alps and the lake, and accessible on the land side only by foot-paths. The whole force of the republic did notex- d upon as a prodigy of book-kuowl CHRISTMAS DAT. 145 edge by all tlie grooms, tuntsmen, and small sportsmen of tlie neigh- borhood. While we were talking, we heard the distant toll of the village bell, and I was told that the 'Squire was a little particular in having his household at church on a Christmas morning ; considering it a day of pouring out of thanks and rejoicing ; for, as old Tusser ob- served,— At Christmas be merry, and thankful withal, And feast thy poor neighbors, the great with the small. *'If you are disposed to go to church," said Frank Bracebridge, " 1/ can promise you a specimen of my cousin Simon's musical achieve- - ments. As the church is destitute of an organ, he has formed a band -from the village amateurs, and established a musical club for their improvement ; he has also sorted a choir, as he sorted my father's pack of hounds, according to the directions of Jervaise Mark- ham, in his Country Contentments ; for the bass he has sought out all the ' deep, solemn mouths,' and for the tenor the ' loud ringing mouths,' among the country bumpkins ; and for ' sweet mouths,' he has culled with curious taste among the prettiest lasses in the neigh- borhood ; though these last, he affirms, are the most difficult to' keep m tune ; your pretty female singer being exceedingly wayward and capricious, and very liable to accident." As the morning , though frosty, was remarkably fine and clear, the most of the family walked to the church, which was a very old building of gray stone, and stood near a village, about half a mile from tlie park gate. Adjoining it was a low snug parsonage, which seemed coeval with the church. The front of it was perfectly matted with a yew tree, that had been trained against its walls, through the dense foliage of which apertures had been formed to admit light into the small antique lattices. As we passed this sheltered nest, the parson issued forth and preceded us. I had expected to see a sleek, well-conditioned pastor, such as is often found in a snug living in the vicinity of a rich patron's table, but I was disappointed. The parson was a little, meager, black-look- ing man, with a grizzled wig that was too wide, and stood off from each ear ; so that his head seemed to have shrunk away within it, like a dried filbert in its shell. He wore a rusty coat, with great skirts, and pockets that would have held the church Bible and prayer- book : and his small legs seemed still smaller, from being planted in large shoes, decorated with enormous buckles. I was informed by Frank Bracebridge that the parson had been a chum of his father's at Oxford, and had received this living shortly after the latter had come to his estate. He was a complete black- letter hunter, and would scarcely read a work printed in the Roman character. The editions of Caxton and W^nkiu de Worde were his 146 &KETOH-BOOK deliglit ; and lie was indefatigable in his researches after such old English writers as have fallen into oblivion from their worthlessness. In deference, perhaps, to the notions of Mr, Bracebridge, he had made diligent investigations into the festive rites and holiday cus- toms of former times ; and had been as zealous in the inquiry as if he had been a boon companion ; but it was merely with that plod- ding spirit with which men of adust temperament follow up any track of study, merely because it is denominated learning ; indiffer- ent to its intrinsic nature, whether it be the illustration of the wis- dom, or of the ribaldry and obscenity of antiquity. He had pored over these old volumes so intensely that they seemed to have been reflected into his countenance ; which, if the face be indeed an index of the mind, might be compared to a title-page of black-letter. On reaching the church-porch, we found the parson rebuking the gray-headed sexton for having used mistletoe among the greens with which the church was decorated. It was, he observed, an un- holy plant, profaned by having been used by the ©ruidsin their mys- tic ceremonies ; and though it might be innocently employed in the festive ornamenting of halls and kitchens, yet it had been deemed by the fathers of the church as unhallowed, and totally unfit for sacred purposes. So tenacious was he on this point, that the poor sexton was obliged to strip down a great part of the humble trophies of his taste before the parson would consent to enter upon the service of the day. The interior of the church was venerable but simple ; on the walls were several mural monuments of the Bracebridges, and just beside the altar was a tomb of ancient workmanship, on which lay the eflBgy of a warrior in armor, with his legs crossed, a sign of his having been a crusader. I was told it was one of the family who had signalized himself in the Holy Land, and the same whose picture hung over the fire-place in the hall. During service Master Simon stood up in the pew, and repeated the responses very audibly ; evincing that kind of ceremonious devo- tion punctually observed by a gentleman of the old school and a man of old family connections. I observed, too, that he turned over the leaves of a folio prayer-book with something of a flourish, possibly to show off an enormous seal-ring which enriched one of his fingers, and which had the look of a family relic. But he was evidently most solicitous about the musical part of the service, keeping his eye fixec intently on the choir, and beating time with much gesticulation and emphasis. The orchestra was in a small gallery, and presented a most whim- sical grouping of heads, piled one above the other, among which I particularly noticed that of the village tailor, a pale fellow with a retreating forehead and chin, who played on the clarionet, and seemed to have blown his face to a point ; and there was another, a shois* CHBI8TMA8 DAT, 147 pnrsy man, stooping and laboring at a bass viol, so as to show nothing but the top of a round bald head, like the egg of an ostrich. There were two or three pretty faces among the female singers, to which the keen air of a frosty morning had given a bright rosy tint ; but the gentlemen choristers had evidently been chosen, like old Cremona fiddles, more for tone than looks ; and as several had to sing from the same book, there were clusterings of odd physiognomies, not unlike those groups of cherubs we sometimes see on country tombstones. The usual services of the choir were managed tolerably well, the vocal parts generally lagging a little behind the instrumental, and some loitering fiddler now and then making up for lost time by trav- eling over a passage with prodigious celerity, and clearing more bars than the keenest fox-hunter, to be in at the death. But the great trial was an anthem that had been prepared and arranged by Master Simon, and on which he had founded great expectation. Unluckily there was a blunder at tne very outset — the musicians became flurried; Master Simon was in a fever ; everything went on lamely and irregu- larly, until they came to a chorus beginning, ' ' Now let us sing with one accord," which seemed to be a signal for parting company ; all became discord and confusion ; each shifted for himself, and got to the end as well, or rather, as soon as he could ; excepting one old chorister, in a pair of horn spectacles bestriding and pinching a long sonorous nose, who, happening to stand a little apart, and being wrapped up in his own melody, kept on a quavering course, wriggling his head, ogling his book, and winding all up by a nasal solo of at least three bars' duration. The parson gave us a most erudite sermon on the rites and ceremo- nies of Christmas and the propriety of observing it, not merely as a day of thanksgiving, but of rejoicing ; supporting the correctness of his opinions by the earliest usages of the church, and enforcing them by the authorities of Theophilus of Cesarea, St. Cyprian, St. Chrysos- tom, St. Augustine, and a cloud more of saints and fathers from whom he made copious quotations. I was a little at a loss to perceive the necessity of such a mighty array of forces to maintain a point which no one present seemed inclined to dispute ; but I soon found that the good man had a legion of ideal adversaries to contend with ; having, in the course of his researches on the subject of Christmas, got com- pletely embroiled in the sectarian controversies of the revolution, when the Puritans made such a fierce assault upon the ceremonies of the church, and poor old Christmas was driven out of the land by proc- lamation of Parliament.* The worthy parson lived but with times past and knew but little of the present. * From the Flying^ Eagle, a small gazette published December 24, 1652—" Th6 House spent much time this day about the business of the navy, for settling the affairs at sea, and before they rose were presented with a terrible remonstrance against Christmas day, grounded upon divine Scriptures, 2 Cor. v. 16 ; 1 Cor. xv. \\ 148 BEETCH-BOOK Shut tip among worm-eaten tomes in the retirement of his anti. quated little study, the pages of old times were to him as the gazettes of the day, while the era of the revolution was mere modern history. He forgot that nearly two centuries had elapsed since the fiery perse- cution of poor mince-pie throughout the land ; when plum porridge was denounced as " mere popery," and roast beef as anti-Christian ; and that Christmas had been brought in again triumphantly with the merry court of King Charles at the restoration. He kindled into warmth with the ardor of his contest, and the host of imaginary foes with whom he had to combat ; he had a stubborn conflict with old Prynne and two or three other forgotten champions of the Round Heads on the subject of Christmas festivity ; and concluded by urging his hearers, in the most solemn and affecting manner, to stand to the traditional customs of their fathers, and feast and make merry on this joyful anniversary of the church. I have seldom known a sermon attended apparently with more im- mediate eifects ; for on leaving the church, the congregation seemed one and all possessed with the gayety of spirit so earnestly enjoined by their pastor. The elder folks gathered in knots in the churchyard, greeting and shaking hands : and the children ran about crying, " Ule ! Ule !" and repeating some uncouth rhymes,* which the par- don, who had joined us, informed me had been handed down from days of yore. The villagers doffed their hats to tho 'Squire as he passed, giving him the good wishes of the season with every appear- ance of heartfelt sincerity, and were invited by him to the Hall, to take something to keep out the cold of the weather ; and I heard blessings uttered by several of the poor, which convinced me that, in the midst of his enjoyments, the worthy old cavalier had not forgotten the true Christmas virtue of charity. On our way homeward his heart seemed overflowing with generous and happy feelings. As we passed over a rising ground which com- manded something of a prospect, the sounds of rustic merriment now and then reached our ears ; the 'Squire paused for a few moments, and looked arouiid with an air of inexpressible benignity. The beauty of the day was, of itself, suflBcient to inspire philanthropy. Notwith- standing the frostiness of the morning the sun in his cloudless jour- ney had acquired sufficiont power to melt away the thin covering of snow from every southern declivity, and to bring out the living green 17 ; and in honor of the Lord's Day, grounded upon these Scriptures, John xx. 1; Bev. i. 10 ; Psalms cxviii. 24 ; Lev. xxiii. 7, 11 ; Mark xv. 8 : Psalms Ixxxiv. 10 ; in which Christmas is called Acti-christ's masse, and those Masse-mongers and Papists who observe it, etc. In consequence of which Parliament spent some time in con- sultation about the abolition of Christmas day, passed orders to that effect, and resolved to sit on the following day, which was commonly called Christmas day." *Ule! Ule! Three puddings in a pule ; Crack aut3 aud cry ule I Christmas day. u^ which adorns an Englisli landscape even in midwinter. Large tracts of smiling verdure, contrasted with the dazzling whiteness of the shaded slopes and hollows. Every sheltered bank, on which the broad rays rested, yielded its silver rill of cold and limpid water, glit- tering through the dripping grass ; and sent up slight exhalations to contribute to the thin haze that hung just above the surface of the earth. There was something truly cheering in this triumph of warmth and verdure over the frosty thraldom of winter ; it was, as the 'Squire observed, an emblem of Christmas hospitality, breaking through the chills of ceremony and selfishness, and thawing every heart into a flow. He pointed with pleasure to the indications of good cheer reeking from the chimneys of the comfortable farm-houses and low-tLatched cot- tages. "I love," said he, "to see this day well kept by rich and poor ; it is a great thing to have one day in the year, at least, when you are sure of being welcome wherever you go, and of having, as it were, the world all thrown open to you ; and I am almost disposed to join with poor Robin, in his malediction on every churlish enemy to this honest festival : Those who at Christmas do repine, And would fain hence despatch him, May they with old Duke Humphry dine, Or else may 'Squire Ketch catch him. The 'Squire went on to lament the deplorable decay of the games and amusements which were once prevalent at this season among the lower orders, and countenanced by the higher ; when the old halls of castles and manor-houses were thrown open at day-light ; when the tables were covered wiih brawn, and beef, and humming ale ; when the harp and the carol resounded all day long, and when rich and poor were alike welcome to enter and make merry.* " Our old games and local customs," said he, "had a great effect in making the peasant fond of his home, and the promotion of them by the gentry made him fond of his lord. They made the times merrier, and kinder, and better, and I can truly say with one of our old poets, I like them well— the curious preciseness And all-pretended gravity of those That seek to banish hence these harmless sports, Have thrust away much ancient honesty. ** The nation," continued he, " is altered ; we have almost lost our simple true-hearted peasantry. They have broken asunder from the * An English gentleman at the opening of the great day, i. e. on Christmas day in the morning, had all his tenants and neighbors entered his hall by day-break. The strong beer was broached, and the black jacks went plentifully about with toast, sugar, and nutmeg, and good Cheshire cheese. The Hackin (the great sau- sage) must be boiled by daybreak, or else two young men must take the maiden (i. e. the cook) by the arms and run her round the market place till she is shame (J ^ ber laziness. Hound about our Sea- Coal Fire. 156 SKETCH-BOOK. higher chasses, and seem to think their interests are separate. They have become too knowing, and begin to read newspapers, listen to alehouse politicians, and talk of reform. I think one mode to keep them in good-humor in these hard times would be for the nobility and gentry to pass more time on their estates, mingle more am( ng the country people, and set the merry old English games going again." Such was the good 'Squire's project for mitigating public discon- tent : and, indeed, ho had once attempted to put his doctrine in practice, and a few years before had kept open house during the holidays in the old style. The country people, however, did not understand how to play their parts in the scene of hospitality ; many uncouth circumstances occurred ; the manor was overrun by all the vagrants of the country, and more beggars drawn into the neighbor- hood in one week than the parish officers could get rid of in a year. Since then, he had contented himself with inviting the decent part of the neighboring peasantry to call at the Hall on Christmas day, and with distributing boef, and bread, and ale among the poor, that they might make merry in their own dwellings. We had not been long home when the sound of music was heard from a distance. A bund of country lads, without coats, their shirt- sleeves fancifully tied with ribbons, their hats decorated with greens, and clubs in their hands, were seen advancing up the avenue, fol- lowed by a large number of villagers and peasantry. They stopped before the hall door, where the music struck up a peculiar air, and the lads performed a curious and intricate dance, advancing, retreat- ing, and striking their clubs together, keeping exact time to the music ; while one, wliimsically crowned with a fox's skin, the tail of whicli Haunted down his back, kept capering round the skirts of the dance, and rattling a Christmas-box with many antic gesticulations. The 'Squire eyed this fanciful exhibition with great interest and delight, and gave me a full account of its origin, which he traced to the times when the Romans held possession of the island ; plainly proving that this was a lineal descendant of the sword-dance of the ancients. "It was now," he said, "nearly extinct, but he had acci- dentally met with traces of it in the neighborhood, and had encour- aged its revival ; though, to tell the truth, it was too apt to be fol- lowed up by rough cudgel-play and broken heads in the evening." After the dance was concluded, the whole party was entertained with brawn and beef and stout home-brewed. The 'Squire himself mingled among the rustics, and was received with awkward demon- strations of deference and regard. It is true, I perceived two or three of the younger peasants, as they were raising their tankards to their mouths, when the 'Squire's back was turned, malting something of a grimace, and giving each other the wink ; but the moment they caught my eye they pulled grave faces, and were exceedingly de- TEE CHRISTMAS DINNER. 151 mure. With Master Simon, however, they all seemed more at their ease. His varied occupations and amusements had made him well known throughout the neighborhood. He was a visitor at every farm-house and cottage ; gossiped with the farmers and their wives ; romped with their daughters ; and, like that type of a vagrant bach- elor, the humble-bee, tolled the sweets from all the rosy lips of the country round. The bashfulness of the guests soon gave way before good cheer and affability. There is something genuine and affectionate in the gayety of the lower orders, when it is excited by the bounty and familiarity of those- above them ; the warm glow of gratitude enters into their mirth, and a kind word or a small pleasantry frankly uttered by a patron gladdens the heart of the dependent more than oil and wine. When the 'Squire had retired, the merriment in- creased, and there was much joking and laughter, particularly be- tween Master Simon and a hale, ruddy-faced, white-headed farmer, who appeared to be the wit of the village ; for I observed all his companions to wait with open mouths for his retorts, and burst into a gratuitous laugh before tiiey could well understand them. The whole house indeed seemed abandoned to merriment : as 1 passed to my room to dress for dinner, I heard the sound of music in a small court, and looking through a window tiiat commanded it, I perceived a band of wandering musicians, with pandean pipes and tambourine ; a pretty coquettish housemaid was dancing a jig with a smart country lad, while several of the other servants were looking on. In the midst of her sport, the girl caught a glimpse of my face at the window, and coloring up, ran off with an air of roguish affected eonfusion. THE CHRISTMAS DINNER. Lo, now is come our joyful'st feast I Let every man be jolly, Each roome with yvie leaves is drest, And every post with holly, Now all our neighbors' chimneys smoke, And Christmas blocks are burning ; Their ovens they with bak't meats choke, And all their spits are turning, Without the door let sorrow lie, And if, for cold, it hap to die, Wee '1 bury 't in a Christmas pye, And evermore be merry. WiTHEEs's Juvenilia, I HAD finished my toilet, and was loitering with Frank Bracebridge in the library, when we heard a distant thwacking sound, which ho 153 SKBTGB-BOOK. informed me was a signal for the serving up of the dinner. The 'Squire kept up old customs in kitchen as well as hall ; and the rolling-pin struck upon the dresser by the cook summoned the servants to carry in the meats. Just in this nick the cook knock'd thrice, And all the waiters in a trice, His summons did obey ; Each serving man, with dish in hand- Marched boldly up, like our train band. Presented, and away.* The dinner was served up in the great hall, where the 'Squire always held his Christmas banquet. A blazing crackling fire of logs had been heaped on to warm the spacious apartment, and the flame went sparkling and wreathing up the wide-mouthed chimney. The great picture of the crusader and his white horse had been profusely decorated with greens for the occasion ; and holly and ivf had likewise been wreathed round the helmet and weapons on the opposite wall, which I understood were the arms of the same warrior. I must own, by-tlie-by, I had strong doubts about the authenticity of the painting and armor as having belonged to the crusader, they certainly having the stamp of more recent days ; but I was told that the painting had been so considered time out of mind ; and that, as to the armor, it had been found in a lumber-room, and elevated to its present situation by the 'Squire, who at once determined it to be the armor of the family hero ; and as he was absolute authority on all such subjects in his own household, the matter had passed into current acceptation. A sideboard was set out just under this chivalric trophy, on which was a display of plate that might have vied (at least in variety) with Bel- shazzar's parade of the vessels of the temj-le ; "flagons, cans, cups, beakers, goblets, basins, and ewers ; " the rjorgeous utensils of good companionship that had gradually accumulated through many genera- tions of jovial housekeepers. Before these stood the two yule candles, beaming like two stars of the f\ 4 magnitude ; other lights were dis- tributed in branches, and the whole array glittered like a firmament of silver. "■ We were ushered into this banqueting scene with the sound of min. strelsy ; the old harper being seated on a stool beside the fireplace, and twanging his instrument with a vast deal more power than mel- ody. Never did Christmas board display a more goodly and gracious assemblage of countenances ; those who were not handsome were, at least, happy ; and happiness is a rare improver of your hard-favored visage. I aways consider an old English family as well worth study- ing as a collection of Holbein's portraits or Albert Durer's prints. There is much antiquarian lore to be acquired ; much knowledge of the physiognomies of former times. Perhaps it may b« from having * 3ir John Suckling, THE CEBI8TMAS DINNER. 153 continually before tlieir eyes those rows of old family portraits with which the mansions of this country are stocked ; certain it is that the quaint features of antiquity are often most faithfully perpetuated in these ancient lines ; and I have traced an old family nose through a whole picture-gallery, legitimately handed down from generation to generation, almost from the time of the Conquest. Something of the kind was to be observed in the worthy company around me. Many of their faces had evidently originated in a Gothic age, and been merely copied by succeeding generations ; and there was one little girl, in particular, of staid demeanor, with a high Roman nose, and an an- tique vinegar aspect, who was a great favorite of the 'Squire's, being, as he said, a Bracebridge all over, and the very counterpart of one of his ancestors who figured in the court of Henry VIII. The parson said grace, which was not a short familiar one, such as is commonly addressed to the deity in these unceremonious days ; but a long, courtly, well- worded one of the ancient school. There was now a pause, as if something was expected ; when suddenly the but- ler entered the ball with some degree of bustle ; he was attended by a servant on each side with a large wax-light, and bore a silver dish on which was an enormous pig's head, decorated with rosemary, witli a lemon in its mouth, which was placed with great formality at the head of the table. The moment this pageant made its appearance, the harper struck up a flourish ; at the conclusion of which the young Oxonian, on receiving a hint from the 'Squire, gave, with an air of the most comic gravity, an old carol, the first verse of which was as follows Caput apri def ero Reddens laudes Domino. The boar's head in hand bring I, W^ith garlands gay and rosemary. \pray you all synge merily Qui estis in convivio. Though preparecf to witness many of these little eccentricities, from being apprized of the peculiar hobby of mine host ; yet I confess the parade with which so odd a dish was introduced somewhat perplexed me, until I gathered from the conversation of the 'Squire and the par- son that it was meant to represent the bringing in of the boar's head — a dish formerly served up with much ceremony and the sound of minstrelsy and song at great tables on Christmas day. "I like the old custom," said the 'Squire, " not merely because it is stately and pleasing in itself, but because it was observed at the college at Oxford, at which I was educated. When I hear the old song chanted, it brings to mind the time when I was young and gamesome — and the noble old college hall — and my fellow-students loitering about in their black gowns ; many of whom, poor lads, are now in their graves ! " The parson, however, whose mind was not haunted by such ass^ 154 SKETCH-BOOK ciations, and wlio was always more taken up with tlie text tlian the sentiment, objected to the Oxonian's version of the carol ; which he aflBrmed was different from that sung at college. He went on, with the dry perseverance of a commentator, to give the college reading, accompanied by sundry annotations ; addressing himself at first to the company at large ; but finding their attention gradually diverted to other talk and other objects, he lowered his tone as his number of auditors diminished, until he concluded his remarks in an under voice, to a fat- headed old gentleman next him, who was silently en- gaged in the discussion of a huge plate-full of turkey.* The table was literally loaded with good cheer, and presented an epitome of country abundance in this season of overflowing larders. A distinguished post was allotted to " ancient sirloin," as mine host termed it ; being, as he added, " the standard of old English hospi- tality, and a joint of goodly presence, and full of expectation." There were several dishes quaintly decorated, and which had evi- dently something traditional in their embellishments ' but about which, as I did not like to appear over- curious, I asked no questions. I could not, however, but notice a pie, magnificently decorated with peacock's feathers, in imitation of the tail of that bird, which overshadowed a considerable tract of the table. This, the 'Squire confessed, with some little hesitation, was a pheasant pie, though a peacock pie was certainly the most autlientical ; but there had been such a mortality among the peacocks this season that he could not prevail upon himself to have one killed; f * The old ceremony of serving up the boar's head on Christmas day is still ob- served in the hall of Queen's College, Oxford. 1 was favored by the parson with a copy of the carol as now sung, and as it may be acceptable to such of my i^^da^flL are curious in these grave and learned matters, I give it entire : The boar's head in hand bear I, Bedeck'd with bays and rosemary ; And I pray you, my masters, be merry, Quot estis in convivio, Caput apri defero. Reddens laudes Domino. The boar's head, as I understand, Is the rarest dish in all this land, Which thus deck'd with a gay garland Let us eervire cantico. Caput apri defero, etc. Our steward hath provided this In honor of the King of Bliss, Which on this day to be served is In Eeginensi Atrio. Caput apri defero, etc., etc., etc. + The peacock was anciently in great demand for stately entertainments. Some- times it was made into a pie, at one end of which the head appeared above the crust in all its plumage, with the beak richly gilt ; at the other end the tail was displaye' I- Then doth shee trowle to me the bowle, Even as a maulte-worme sholde, And saj^th, sweete harte, I tooke my parte, Of this joly good ale and olde. Chorus. Back and syde go bare, go bare, etc. Now let them drynke, tyll they nod and winke, Even as goode fellowes sholde doe, They shall not mysse to have the blisse, Good ale doth bring men to. And all poor soules that have scowred bowleg Or have them lustily trolde, God aave the ly ves of them and their wives, Whether they be j-ounge or olde. fs0rm. Back and syde go bare, go hsae, etc LITTLE BRITAIN. 169 knowing what might he the consequence. The man in armor who rides before the Lord Mayor, and is the city champion, has orders to cut down everybody that offends against the dignity of the city ; and tlien there is the little man with a velvet porringer on his head, who sits at the window of the state coach and holds the city sword, as long as a pike-staff — Od's blood ! if he once draws that sword, majesty itself IS not safe ! Under the protection of this mighty potentate, therefore, the good people of Little Britain sleep in peace. Temple Bar is an effectual barrier against all internal foes ; and as to foreign invasion, the Lord Mayor has but to throw himself into the tower, call in the train bands, and put the standing army of beef -eaters under arms, and he may bid defiance to the world ! Thus wrapped up in its own concerns, its own habits, and its own opinions. Little Britain has long flourished as a sound heart to this great fungus metropolis. I have pleased myself with considering it as a chosen spot, where the principles of sturdy John Bullism were garnered up, like seed-corn, to renew the national character, when it had run to waste and degeneracy. I have rejoiced also in the gen- eral spirit of harmony that prevailed throughout it ; for though there might now and then be a few clashes of opinion between the adhe- rents of the cheesemonger and the apothecary, and an occasional feud between the burial societies, yet these were but transient clouds, and soon passed away. The neighbors met with good- will, parted with a shake of the hand, and never abused each other except behind their backs. I could give rare descriptions of snug junketing parties at which I have been present ; where we played at All-Fours, Pope-Joan, I'om- come-tickle-me, and other choice old games : and where we some- times had a good old English country dance, to the tune of Sir Roger de Coverly. Once a year also the neighbors would gather together, and go on a gypsy party to Epping Forest. It would have 'lone any man's heart good to see the merriment that took place h-^re, as we banqueted on the grass under the trees. How we made the woods ring with hurts of laughter at the songs of little WagSiaff and the merry undertaker ! After dinner, too, the young folkg would play at blindman's-buff and hide-and-seek ; and it was aoiusing to see them tangled among the briers, and to hear a fine roT^ping girl now and then squeak from among the bushes. The eider folks would gather round the cheesemonger and the apothe^ry, to hear them talk politics ; for they generally brought out a newspaper in their pockets, to pass away time in the country. "iTiey wo aid now and then, to be sure, get a little warm in argument ; but their disputes were always adjusted by reference to a worihy old umbrella-maker in a double chin, who, never exactly comprehending the subject, managed, somehow or other, to decide in favor of both parties. 170 SKETGE-BOOK. All empires, however, says some pliilosoplier or historian, are doomed to changes and revolutions. Luxury and innovation creep in, factions arise, and families now and then spring up whose ambition and intrigues throw the whole system into confusion. Thus in latter days has the tranquillity of Little Britain been grievously disturbed, and its golden simplicity of manners threatened with total Bubversion, by the aspiring family of a retired butcher. The family of the Lambs had long been among the most thriving and popular in the neighborhood : the Miss Lambs were the belles of Little Britain, and everybody was pleased when old Lamb had made money enough to shut up shop, and put his name on a brass plate on his door. In an evil hour, however, one of the Miss Lambs had the honor of being a lady in attendance on the Lady Mayoress, at her grand annual ball, on which occasion she wore three towering ostrich feathers on her head. The family never got over it ; they were im- mediately smitten wiA a passion for high life ; set up a one-horse carriage, put a bit of gold lace round the errand-boy's hat, and have been the talk and detestation of the whole neighborhood ever since. They could no longer be induced to play at Pope- Joan or blindman's- buff ; they could endure no dances but quadrilles, which nobody had ever heard of in Little Britain ; and they took to reading novels, talk- ing bad French, and playing upon the piano. Their brother, too, who had been articled to an attorney, set up for a dandy and a critic, characters hitherto unknown in these parts ; and he confounded the worthy folks exceedingly by talking about Kean, the Opera, and the Edinbro' Review. What was still worse, the Lambs gave a grand ball, to which they neglected to invite any of their old neighbors ; but they had a great deal of genteel company from Theobald's road Red-lion square, and other parts toward the west. There were several beaux of their brother's acquaintance from Gray's- Inn lane and Hatton Garden ; and not less than three Aldermen's ladies with their daughters. This was net to be forgotten or forgiven. All Little Britain was in an up- roar with the smacking of whips, the lashing of miserable horses, and the rattling and jingling of hackney-coaches. The gossips of the neighborhood might be seen popping their night-caps out at every window, watching the crazy vehicles rumble by ; and there was a knot of virulent old cronies, that kept a look-out from a house just opposite the retired butcher's, and scanned and criticised every one that knocked at the door. This dance was a cause of almost open war, and the whole neigh- borhood declared they would have nothing more to say to the Lambs. It is true that Mrs. Lamb, when she had no engagements with her quality acquaintance, would give little humdrum tea junketings to some of her old cronies, " quite," as she would say, " in a friendly way ; " and it is eguallj true that her invitations were always ao LITTLE BBITAm. Ill eepted, in spite of all previous vows to the contrarj. Nay, tlie good ladies would sit and be delighted with the music of the Miss Lambs, who would condescend to thrum an Irish melody for them on the piano ; and they would listen with wonderful interest to Mrs. Lamb's anecdotes of Alderman Plunket's family of Portsokenward, and the Miss Timberlakes, the rich heiresses of Crutched-Friars ; but then they relieved their consciences, and averted the reproaches of their confederates, by canvassing at the next gossiping convocation every- thing that had passed, and pulling the Lambs and their rout all to pieces. The only one of the family that could not be made fashionable was the retired butcher himself. Honest Lamb, in spi1>e of the meekness of his name, was a rough hearty old fellow, with the voice of a lion, a head of black hair like a shoe-brush, and a broad face mottled like his own beef. It was in vain that the daughters always spoke of him as the "old gentleman," addressed him as " papa," in tones of infinite softness, and endeavored to coax him into a dressing- gown and slippers, and other gentlemanly habits. Do what, they might, there was no keeping down the butcher. His sturdy nature would break through all their glozings. He had a hearty vulgar good-humor, that was irrepressible. His very jokes made his sensi- tive daughters shudder ; and he persisted in wearing his blue cotton coat of a morning, dining at two o'clock, and having a " bit of sau- sage with his tea." He was doomed, however, to share the unpopularity of his family. He found his old comrades gradually growing cold and civil to him ; no longer laughing at his jokes ; and now and then throwing out a fling at " some people," and a hint at " quality binding." This both nettled and perplexed the honest butcher ; and his wife and daugh- ters, with the consummate policy of the shrewder sex taking advan- tage of the circumstances, at length prevailed upon him to give up his afternoon pipe and tankard at WagstaS's ; to sit after dinner by himself, and take his pint of port — a liquor he detested — and to nod in his chair, in solitary and dismal gentility. The Miss Lambs might now be seen flaunting along the streets in French bonnets, with unknown beaux ; and talking and laughing so loud that it distressed the nerves of every good lady within hearing. They even went so far as to attempt patronage, and actually induced a French dancing-master to set up in the neighborhood ; but the wor- thy folks of Little Britain took fire at it, and did ,">& persecute the poor Gaul that he was fain to pack up fiddle and dancing-pumps, and decamp with such precipitation that he absolutely f or£ ot to pay for his lodgings. I had flattered myself, at first, with the idea that all this fiery in* dignation on the part of the community was merely the overflowing of their zeal for good old English manners, and their horror of imio* in 8KETGH-B00K. vation, and I applauded the silent contempt they were so vociferous in expressing for upstart pride, French fashions, and the Miss Lambs. . But I grieve to say that I soon perceived the infection had taken hold, and that my neighbors, after condemning, were begin- ning to'follow their example. I overheard my landlady importuning her husband to let their daughters have one quarter at French and music, and that they might take a few lessons in quadrille ; I even saw, in^the course of a few Sundays, no less than five French bon- nets, precisely like those of the Miss Lambs, parading about Little Britain. I still had my hopes that all this folly would gradually die away ; that the Lambs might move out of the neighborhood ; might die, or might run away with attorney's apprentices ; and that quiet and sim- plicity might be again restored to the community. But unluckily a rival power arose. An opulent oil-man died, and left a widow with a large jointure and a family of buxom daughters. The young ladies had long been repining in secret at the parsimony of a prudent father, which kept down all their elegant aspirings. Their ambition, being now no longer restrained, broke out into a blaze, and they openly took the field against the family of the butcher. It is true that the Lambs, having had the first start, had naturally an advan- tage of them in the fashionable career. They could speak a little bad French, play the piano, dance quadrilles, and had formed high acquaintances, but the Trotters were not to be distanced. When the Lambs appeared with two feathers in their hats, the Miss Trotters mounted four, and of twice as fine colors. If the Lambs gave a dance, the Trotters were sure not to be behindhand ; and though they might not boast of as good company, yet they had double the number, and were twice as merry. The whole community has at length divided itself into fashionable factions, under the banners of these two families. The old games of Pope-Joan and Tom-come-tickle-me are entirely discarded ; there is no such thing as getting up an honest country-dance ; and on my attempting to kiss a young lady under the mistletoe last Christmas, I was indignantly repulsed ; the Miss Lambs having pronounced it "shocking vulgar." Bitter rivalry has also broken out as to the most fashionable part of Little Britain ; the Lambs standing up for the dignity of Cross- Keys' square, and the Trotters for the vicinity of St. Bartholomew's. Thus is this little territory torn by factions and internal dissensions, like the great empire whose name it bears ; and what will be the re- sult would puzzle the apothecary himself, with all his talent at prog- nostics, to determine ; though I apprehend that it will terminate in the total downfall of genuine John Bullism. The immediate effects are extremely unvjleasant to me. Being a single man, and, as I observed before, rather an idle good-for-notliing BTitA TFOBD-ON-A VON. ItS personage, I have been considered the only gentleman by profession in the place. I stand therefore in high favor with both parties, and have to hear all their cabinet councils and mutual backbitings. As I am too civil not to agree with the ladies on all occasions, I have com- mitted myself most horribly with both parties, by abusing their op- ponents. I might manage to reconcile this to my conscience, which is a truly accommodating one, but I cannot to my apprehensions — if the Lambs and Trotters ever come to a reconciliation, and compare notes, I am ruined ! ** I have determined, therefore, to beat a retreat in time, and am act- ually looking out for some other nest in this great city, where old English manners are still kept up ; where French is neither eaten, drunk, danced, nor spoken ; and where there are no fashionable fam- ilies of retired tradesmen. This found, I will, like a veteran rat, hasten away before I have an old house about my ears — bid a long though a sorrowful adieu to my present abode — and leave the rival factions of the Lambs and the Trotters to divide the distracted empire of Little Britain. STRATFORD-ON-AVON. Thou soft flowing Avon, by thy silver stream Of things more than mortal sweet Shakespeare would dream ; The fairies by moonlight dance round his ^een bed, For hallowed the turf is which pillowed his head. Gakbick. To a homeless man, who has no spot on this wide world which he can truly call his own, there is a momentary feeling of something like independence and territorial consequence when, after a weary day's travel, he kicks off his boots, thrusts his feet into slippers, and stretches himself before an inn fire. Let the world without go as it may ; let kingdoms rise and fall, so long as he has the wherewithal to pay his bill, he is, for the time being, the very monarch of all he surveys. The arm-chair is his throne, the poker his scepter, and the little parlor of some twelve feet square his undisputed empire. It is a morsel of certainty, snatched from the midst of the uncertainties of life ; it is a sunny moment gleaming out kindly on a cloudy day ; and he who has advanced some way on the pilgrimage of existence knows the importance of husbanding even morsels and moments of enjoy- ment. * ' Shall I not take mine ease in mine inn 1 " thought I, as I gave the fire a stir, lolled back in my elbow-chair, and cast a compla- cent look about the little parlor of the Red Horse, at Stratford-on- Avon. The words of sweet Shakespeare were just passing through my mind 11-4 SKETCH-BOOK. as the clock struck midniglit from the tower of the church in which he lies buried. There was a gentle tap at the door, and a pretty chambermaid, putting in her smiling face, inquired, with a hesitating air, whether I had rung. I understood it as a modest hint tht-.t it was time to retire. My dream of absolute dominion was at an end ; so abdicating my throne, like a prudent potentate, to avoid being deposed, and putting the Stratford Guide Book under my arm, as a pillow companion, I went to bed, and dreamed all night of Shake- speare, and Jubilee, and David Garrick. The next morning was one of those quickening mornings which we sometimes have in early spring ; for it was about the middle of March. The chills of a long winter had suddenly given way ; the north wind had spent its last gasp ; and a mild air came stealing from the west, breathing the breath of life into nature, and wooing every bud and flower to burst forth into fragrance and beauty, I had come to Stratford on a poetical pilgrimage. My first visit was to the house where Shakespeare was born, and where, according to tradition, he was brought up to his father's craft of wool combing. It is a small mean looking edifice of wood and plaster, a true nestling- place of genius, which seems to delight in hatching its offspring in by-corners. The walls of its squalid chambers are covered with names and inscriptions in every language, by pilgrims of all nations, ranks, and conditions, from the prince to the peasant ; and present a simple but strildng instance of the spontaneous and universal homage of mankind to the great poet of nature. The house is shown by a garrulous old lady, in a frosty red face, lighted up by a cold blue anxious eye, and garnished with artificial locks of flaxen hair, curling from under an exceedingly dirty cap. She was peculiarly assiduous in exhibiting the relics with which this, like all other celebrated shrines, abounds. There was the shattered stock of the very matchlock with which Shakespeare shot the deer, on his poaching exploits. There, too, was his tobacco-box ; which proves that he was a rival smoker of Sir Walter Raleigh ; the sword also with which he played Hamlet ; and the identical lantern with which Friar Laurence discovered Romeo and Juliet at the tomb ! There was an ample supply also of Shakespeare's mulberry tree, which seems to have as extraordinary powers of self-multiplication as the wood of the true cross, of which there is enough extant to build a ship of the line. The most favorite object of curiosity, however, is Shakespeare's chair. It stands in the chimney-nook of a small gloomy chamber, just behind what was his father's shop. Here he may many a time have sat when a boy, watching the slowly revolving spit, with all the longing of an urchin ; or of an evening, listening to the crones and gossips of Stratford, dealing forth churchyard tales and legendary anecdotes of the troublesome times of England. In this chair it is stuatford-on-avon. 175 the custom of every one who visits the house to sit : whether this be done with the hope of imbibing any of the inspiration of the bard, I am at a loss to say ; I merely mention the fact ; and mine hostess privately assured me that, though built of solid oak, such was the fervent zeal of devotees, that the chair had to be new bottomed at least once in three years. It is worthy of notice also, in the history of this extraordinary chair, that it partakes something of the volatile nature of the Santa Casa of Loretto or the flying chair of the Arabian enchanter ; for though sold some few years since to a northern prin- cess, yet, strange to tell, it has found its way back again to the old chimney-corner. I am always of easy faith in such matters, and am very willing to be deceived, where the deceit is pleasant and costs nothing. I am therefore a ready believer in relics, legends, and local anecdotes of goblins and great men ; and would advise all travelers who travel for their gratification to do the same. What is it to us whether these stories be true or false so long as we can persuade ourselves into the belief of them and enjoy all the charm of the reality? There is nothing like resolute good-humored credulity in these matters ; and on this occasion I went even so far as willingly to believe the claims of mine hostess to a lineal descent from the poet, when, unluckily for my faith, she put into my hands a play of her own composition, which set all belief in her consanguinity at defiance. From the birth-place of Shakespeare a few paces brought me to his grave. He lies buried in the chancel of the parish church, a large and venerable pile, moldering with age, but richly ornamented. It Stands on the banks of the Avon, on an embowered point, and sepa- rated by adjoining gardens from the suburbs of the town. Its situa- tion is quiet and retired : the river runs murmuring at the foot of the churchyard, and the elms which grow upon its banks droop their branches into its clear bosom. An avenue of lines, the boughs of which are curiously interlaced, so as to form in summer an arched way of foliage, leads up from the gate of the yard to the church porch. The graves are overgrown with grass ; the gray tombstones, some of them nearly sunk into the earth, are half covered with moss, which has likewise tinted the reverend old building. Small birds have built their nests among the cornices and fissures of the walls, and keep up a continual flutter and chirping ; and rooks are sailing and cawing about its lofty gray spire. In the course of my rambles I met with the grayheaded sexton, and accompanied him home to get the key of the church. He had lived in Stratford, man and boy, for eighty years, and seemed still to consider himself a vigorous man, with the trivial exception that he had nearly lost the use of his legs for a few years past. Hia dwelling was a cottage, looking out upon the Avon and its border- ing meadows ; and was a picture of that neatness, order, and com- 176 ' SKETCH-BOOK fort vvhicli pervade tlie humblest dwellings iii this country. A low white-waslied room, with a stone floor carefully scrubbed, served for parlor, kitchen, and hall. Rows of pewter and earthern dishes glittered along the dresser. On an old oaken table, well rubbed and polished, lay the family Bible and prayer book, and the drawer con- tained the family library, composed of about half a score of well- thumbed volumes. An ancient clock, that important article of cot- tage furniture, ticked on the opposite side of the room, with a bright warming-pan hanging on one side of it, and the old man's horn-han- dled Sunday cane on the otlier. The fireplace, as usual, was wide and deep enough to admit a gossip knot within its jambs. In one corner sat the old man's grand-daughter sewing, a pretty blue-eyed girl, and in the opposite corner was a superannuated crony, whom he addressed by the name of John Ange, and who I found had been bis companion from childhood. They had played together in infancy ; they had worked together in manhood ; they were now tottering about and gossiping away the evening of life ; and in a short time they will probably be buried together in the neighboring churchyard. It is not often that we see two streams of existence running thus evenly and tranquilly side by side ; it is only in such quiet " bosom scenes" of life that they are to be met with. I had hoped to gather some traditionary anecdotes of the bard from these ancient chroniclers ; but they had nothing new to impart. The long interval during which Shakespeare's writings- lay in comparative neglect has spread its shadow over history ; and it is his good or evil lot that scarcely anything remains to his biographers but a scanty handful of conjectures. The sexton and his companion had been employed as carpenters, on the preparations for the celebrated Stratford jubilee, and they re- membered Garrick, the prime mover of the fete, who superintended the arrangements, and who, according to the sexton, was "a short punch man, very lively and bustling." John Ange had assisted also in cutting down Shakespeare's mulberry tree, of which he had a mor- sel in his pocket for sale ; no doubt a sovereign quickener of literary conception. I was grieved to hear these cwo wort/;7 wights speak very dubiously of the eloquent dame who shows the Snakespeare house. John Ange shook his head when I mentioned her valuable and inexhaustible col- lection of relics, particularly her remains of the mulberry tree ; and the old sexton even expressed a doubt as to Shakesi3eare having been born in her house. I soon discovered that he looked upon her man- sion with an evil eye, as a rival to the poet's tomb ; the latter having comparatively but few visitors. Thus it is that historians differ at the very outset, and mere pebbles make the stream of truth diverge into different channels, even at the fountain-head. We approacJ"5d the church through +he p venue of limes, and entered iSTMA TFORD-ON-A VOIT. 177 by a Gothic porch, highly ornamented with carved doors of massive oak. The interior is spacious, and the architecture and embellish- ments superior to those of most country churches. There are several ancient monuments of nobility and gentry, over some of which hang funeral escutcheons, and banners dropping piecemeal from the walls. The tomb of Shakespeare is in the chancel. The place is solemn and sepulchral. Tall elms wave before the pointed windows, and the Avon, which runs at a short distance from the walls, keeps up a low Eerpetual murmur. A flat stone marks the spot where the bard is uried. There are four lines inscribed on it, said to have been writ- ten by himself, and which have in them something extremely awful, ' If they are indeed his own, they show that solicitude about the quiet. of the grave which seems natural to fine sensibilities and thoughtful minds : Good friend, for Jesus' sake, forbeare To dig the dust inclosed tiere. Blessed be he that spares these stones, And curst be he that moves my bones. Just over the grave, in a niche of the wall, is a bust of Shakespeare, put up shortly after his death, and considered as a resemblance. The aspect is pleasant and serene, with a finely arched forehead ; and I thought I could read in it clear indications of that cheerful, social disposition, by which he was as much characterized among his con- temporaries as by the vastness of his genius. The inscription men- tions his age at the time of his decease — fifty-three years ; an untimely death for the world : for what fruit might not have been expected from the golden autumn of such a mind, sheltered as it was from the stormy vicissitudes of life, and flourishing in the sunshine of popular and royal favor ! The inscription on the tombstone has not been without its effect. It has prevented the removal of his remains from the bosom of his native place to Westminster Abbey, which was at one time contem- plated. A few years since also, as some laborers were digging to make an adjoining vault, the earth caved in, so as to leave a vacant space almost like an arch, through which one might have reached into his grave. No one, however, presumed to meddle with the re- mains so awfully guarded by a malediction ; and lest any of the idle or the curious, or any collector of relics should be tempted to commit depredations, the old sexton kept watch over the place for two days, until the vault was finished and the aperture closed again. He told me that he had made bold to look in at the hole, but could see neither coffin nor bones ; nothing but dust. It was something, I thought, to have seen the dust of Shakespeare. Next to this grave are those of his wife, his favorite daughter, Mrs. Hall, and others of his family. On a tomb close by, also, is a full- length eJOSgy of his old friend John Combe, of usurious memory ; oa 178 8KETGR-B00K. whom lie is said to have written a ludicrous epitaph. There are other monuments around, but the mind refuses to dwell on anything that is not connected with Shakespeare. His idea pervades the place — the whole pile seems but as his mausoleum. The feelings, no longer checked and thwarted by doubt, here indulge in perfect confidence ; other traces of him may be false or dubious, but here is palpable evidence and absolute certainty. As I trod the sounding pavement, there was something intense and thrilling in the idea, tliat, in very truth, the remains of Shakespeare were moldering beneath my feet. It was a long time before I could prevail upon myself to leave the place ; and as I passed through the churchyard I plucked a branch from one of the yew-trees, the only relic that I have brought from Stratford. I had now visited the usual objects of a pilgrim's devotion, but I had a desire to see the old family seat of the Lucys at Charlecot, and to ramble through the park where Shakespeare, in company with some of the roysters of Stratford, committed his youthful offense of deer- stealing. In this hairbrained exploit we are told that he was taken prisoner, and carried to the keeper's lodge, where he remained all night in doleful captivity. When brought into the presence of Sir Thomas Lucy, his treatment must have been galling and humiliating ; for it so wrought upon his spirit as to produce a rough pasquinade, which was affixed to the park gate at Charlecot.* This flagitious attack upon the dignity of the Knight so incensed him that he applied to a lawyer at Warwick to put the severity of the laws in force against the rhyming deer-stalker. Shakespeare did not wait to brave the united puissance of a Knight of the Shire and a country attorney. He forthwith abandoned the pleasant banks of the Avon and his paternal trade ; wandered away to London ; became a hanger-on to the theaters ; then an actor ; and finally wrote for the stage ; and thus, through the persecution of Sir Thomas Lucy, Stratford lost an indifferent wool-comber and the world gained an immortal poet. He retained, however, for a long time, a sense of the harsh treatment of the Lord of Charlecot, and revenged himself in his writings ; but in the sportive way of a good-natured mind. Sir Thomas is said to be the original of Justice Shallow, and the satire Is slyly fixed upon him by the Justice's armorial bearings, which, like those o f the Knight, had white lucesf in the quartering^ * The following is the only stanza extant of this lampoon : A parliament member, a justice of peace, At home a poor scarecrow, at London an asse, If lowsie as Lucy, as some volke miscalle it, Then Lucy is lowsie, whatever befall it. He thinks himself great ; Yet an asse in his state, We all«w by his ears with but asses to mate. If Lucy is lowsie, as some volke miscalle it, Then sing lowsie Lucy, whatever befall it. tThe lace is a pike or jack, and abounds in the Avon, about Charl«eol. 8TBATF0BD-0N-AV0K. 179 Various attempts have been made by his biographers to soften and explain away this early transgression of the poet ; but I look upon it as one of those thoughtless exploits natural to his situation and turn of mind. Shakespeare, when young, had doubtless all the wildness and irregularity of an ardent, undisciplined, and undirected genius. The poetic temperament has naturally something in it of the vaga- bond. When left to itself, it runs loosely and wildly, and delights in everything eccentric and licentious. It is often a turn-up of a die, in the gambling freaks of fate, whether a natural genius shall turn out a great rogue or a great poet ; and had not Shakespeare's mind for- tunately taken a literary bias, he might have as daringly transcended all civil as he has all dramatic laws. I have little doubt that, in early life, when running, like an un- broken colt, about the neighborhood of Stratford, he was to be found in the company of all kinds of odd and anomalous characters ; that he associated with all the madcaps of the place, and was one of those unlucky urchins at mention of whom old men shake their heads and predict that they will one day come to the gallows. To him the poaching in Sir Thomas Lucy's park was doubtless like a foray to a Scottish knight, and struck his eager, and as yet untamed, imagina- tion, as something delightfully adventurous.* The old mansion of Charlecot and its surrounding park still re- main in the possession of the Lucy family, and are peculiarly inter- esting from being connected with this whimsical but eventful cir- cumstance in the scanty history of the bard. As the house stood at * A proof of Shakespeare's random habits and associates in his youthful days maybe found in a traditionary anecdote, picked up at Stratford by the elder Ireland and mentioned in his " Picturesque Views on the Avon." ' About seven miles from Stratford lies the thirsty little market town of Bedford famous for its ale. Two societies of the village yeomanry used to meet, under the appellation of the Bedford topers, and to challenge the lovers of good ale of the neighboring villages to a contest of drinking. Among others, the people of Strat- ford were called out to prove the strength of their heads ; and in the number of the champions was Shakespeare, who, in spite of the proverb that " they who drink beer will think beer," was as true to his ale as Falstaff to his sack. The chivalry of Stratford was staggered at the first onset and sounded a retreat while they had yet legs to carry them off the field. They had scarcely marched a mile when, their legs falling them, they were forced to lie down under a crab-tree, where they passed tn« night. It is still standing and goes by the name of Shakespeare's tree. In the morning his companions awaked the bard and proposed returning to Bed- ford, but he declined, saying he had had enough, having drunk with Piping Pebworth, Dancing Marston, Haunted Hilbro', Hungry Grafton, Drudging Exhall, Papist Wicksford, Beggarly Broom, and drunken Bedford. •• The villages here alluded to," says Ireland, " still bear the epithets thus givea them : the people of Pebworth are still famed for their skill on the pipe and tS&or ; Hillborough is now called Haunted Hillborough ; and Grafton is famous for tlio poverty of its soil." im SKETCff-BOOJt. little more than tliree miles' distance from Stratford, I resolved to pay it a pedestrian visit, that T might stroll leisurely through some of those scenes from which Shakespeare must have derived his ear. liest ideas of rural imagery. The country was yet naked and leafless ; but English scenery is always verdant, and the sudden change in the temperature of the weather was surprising in its quickening effects upon the landscape. It was inspiring and animating to witness this first awakening of spring ; to feel its warm breath stealing over the senses ; to see the moist mellow earth beginning to put forth the green sprout and the tender blade ; and the trees and shrubs, in their reviving tints and bursting buds, giving the promise of returning foliage and flower. The cold snow-drop, that little borderer on the skirts of winter, was to be seen with its chaste white blossoms in the small gardens before the cottages. The bleating of the new- dropped lambs was faintly heard from the fields. The sparrow twittered about the thatched eaves and budding hedges ; the robin threw a livelier note into his late querulous wintry strain ; and the lark, springing up from the reeking bosom of the meadow, towered away into the bright fleecy cloud, pouring forth torrents of melody. As I watched the little songster, mounting up higher and higher, until his body was a mere speck on the white bosom of the cloud, while the ear was still filled with his music, it called to mind Shakespeare's exquisite little song in Cymbeline : Hark I hark ! the lark at heav'n's gate sings, And Phogbus 'gins arise, His steeds to water at those springs, On chaliced flowers that lies. And winking mary-bnd s begin . To ope their golden eyes ; With everything that pretty bin, My lady sweet, arise I Indeed, the whole country about here is poetic ground : everything is associated with the idea of Shakespeare. Every old cottage that I saw I fancied into some resort of his boyhood, where he had acquired his intimate knowledge of rustic life and manners and heard those legendary tales and wild superstitions which he has woven like witchcraft into his dramas. For in his time, we are told, it was a popular amusement in winter evenings " to sit round the fire and tell merry tales of errant knights, queens, lovers, lords, ladies, giants, dwarfs, thieves, cheaters, witches, fairies, gobl ins, and friars."* * Scot, in his "Discoverie of Witchcraft," enumerates a host of these fireside fancies. " And they have so fraid us with bull-beggars, spirits, witches, urchins, elves, hags, fairies, satyrs, pans, faunes, syrens, kit with the can sticke,_ tritons, centaurs, dwarfes, giantes, imps, calcars, conjurors, nymphes, changelings, incubus, Robin-good-fellow, the sporne, the mare, the man in the oke, the hellwaine, the fier drake, the puckle, Tom Thombe, hobgoblins, Tom Tumbler, boneless, and P'^cJi other bugs, that we were afraid of our own shadowes." STB A TFOBD-ON-A VOUfT. 181 My route for a part of tlie way lay in sight of the Avon, which made a variety of the most fanciful doublings and windings through a wide and fertile valley ; sometimes glittering from among willows, which fringed its borders ; sometimes disappearing among groves or beneath green banks ; and sometimes rambling out into full view and making an azure sweep round a slope of meadow land. This beautiful bosom of country is called the Vale of the Red Horse. A distant line of undulating blue hills seems to be its boundary, while all the soft intervening landscape lies in a manner enchained in the silver links of the Avon. After pursuing the road for about three miles I turned off into a foot-path which led along the borders of fields and under hedge-row£ to a private gate of the park ; there was a stile, however, for th© benefit of the pedestrian ; there being a public right of way through the grounds. I delight in these hospitable estates in which every one has a kind of property — at least as far as the foot-path is concerned. It in some measure reconciles a poor man to his lot, and what is more, to the better lot of his neighbor, thus to have parks and pleasure-grounds thrown open for his recreation. He breathes the pure air as freely and lolls as luxuriously under the shade as the lord of the soil ; and if he has not the privilege of calling all that he sees his own, he has not, at the same time, the trouble of paying for it and keeping it in order. I now found myself among noble avenues of oaks and elms, whose vast size bespoke the growth of centuries. The wind sounded sol- emnly among their branches, and the rooks cawed from their heredi- tary nests in the tree tops. The eye ranged through a long lessening vista, with nothing to interrupt the view but a distant statue ; and a vagrant deer stalking like a shadow across the opening. There is something about these stately old avenues that has the effect of Gothic architecture, not merely from the pretended similar- ity of form, but from their bearing the evidence of long duration and of having had their origin in a period of time with which we asso- ciate ideas of romantic grandeur. They betoken also the long-settled dignity and proudly concentrated independence of an ancient family; and I have heard a worthy but aristocratic old friend observe, when speaking of the sumptuous palaces of modern gentry, that "money could do much with stone and mortar, but, thank Heaven, there was no such thing as suddenly building up an avenue of oaks." It was from wandering in early life among this rich scenery and about the romantic solitudes of the adjoining park of Fullbroke, which then formed a part of the Lucy estate, that some of Shake- speare's commentators have supposed he derived his noble forest med- itations of Jacques, and the enchanting woodland pictures in "Aa you like it." It is in lonely wanderings through such scenes that the mind drinks deep but quiet draughts of inspiration, and becomes in- 180 SKBTCE-BOOK. tensely sensible of tlie beauty and majesty of nature. Tlie imagina- tion kindles into reverie and rapture ; vague but exquisite images and ideas keep breaking upon it ; and we revel in a mute and almost incommunicable luxury of thought. It was in some such mood, and perhaps under one of those very trees before me which threw their broad shades over the grassy banks and quivering waters of the Avon, that the poet's fancy may have sallied forth into that little song which breathes the very soul of a rural voluptuary. Under tke green- wood tree, Who loves to lie with me, And tune his merry tliroat Unto the sweet bird's note, Come hither, come hither, come hither, Here shall he see No enemy But winter and rough weather. I had now come in sight of the house. It is a large building of brick with stone quoins, and is in the Gothic style of Queen Eliza- beth's day, having been built in the first year of her reign. The exterior remains very nearly in its original state, and may be consid- ered a fair specimen of the residence of a wealthy country gentleman of those days. A great gateway opens from the park into a kind of court-yard in front of the house, ornamented with a grass-plot, shrubs, and flower-beds. The gateway is in imitation of the ancient barbi- can ; being a kind of outpost and flanked by towers ; though evi- dently for mere ornament instead of defense ; The front of the house is completely in the old style ; with stone-shafted casements, a great bow-window of heavy stonework, and a portal with armorial bear- ings over it, carved in stone. At each corner of the building is an octagon tower, surmounted by a gilt ball and weathercock. The Avon, which winds through the park, makes a bend just at the foot of a gently sloping bank which sweeps down from the rear of the house. Large herds of deer were feeding or reposing upon its borders, and swans were sailing majestically upon its bosom. As I contemplated the venerable old mansion I called to mind Falstaff's encomium on Justice Shallow's abode, and the affected indifference and real vanity of the latter : Falstaff. You have here a goodly dwelling and a rich. Shallow. Barren, barren, barren; beggars all, beggars all, Sir John:— marry, jfood air. Whatever may have been the joviality of the old mansion in the days of Shakespeare, it had now an air of stillness and solitude. The great iron gateway that opened into the court-yard was locked ; there was no show of servants bustling about the place ; the deer gazed quietly at me as I passed, being no longer harried by the mosS' STMA TFOBD-ON-A VON. 183 troopers of Stratford, The only sign of domestic life that I met with was a white cat, stealing with wary look and stealthy pace toward the stables, as if on some nefarious expedition. I must not omit to men- tion the carcass of a scoundrel crow which I saw suspended against the barn wall, as it shows that the Lucys still inherit that lordly abhorrence of poachers and maintain that rigorous exercise of territorial power which was so strenuously manifested in the case of the bard. After prowling about for some time I at length found my way to a lateral portal, which was the every-day entrance to the mansion. I was courteously received by a worthy old housekeeper, who, with the civility and communicativeness of her order, showed me the interior of the house. The greater part has undergone alterations and been adapted to modern tastes and modes of living : there is a fine old oaken staircase ; and the great hall, that noble feature in an ancient manor-house, still retains much of the appearance it must have had in the days of Shakespeare. The ceiling is arched and lofty ; and at one end is a gallery in which stands an organ. The weapons and trophies of the chase, which formerly adorned the hall of a country gentleman, have made way for family portraits. There is a wide hospitable fireplace, calculated for an ample old-fashioned wood fire, formerly the rallying place of winter festivity. On the opposite side of the hall is the huge Gothic bow- window, with stone shafts, which looks out upon the court-yard. Here are emblazoned in stained glass the armorial bearings of the Lucy family for many generations, some being dated in 1558. I was delighted to observe in the quarterings the three white luces by which the character of Sir Thomas was first identified with that of Justice Shallow. They are mentioned in the first scene of the Merry Wives of Windsor, where the Justice is in a rage with Falstaff for having "beaten his men, killed his deer, and broken into his lodge." The poet had no doubt the offenses of himself and his comrades in mind at the time, and we may suppose the family pride and vindictive threads of the puissant Shallow to be ft caricature of the pompous indignation of Sir Thomas, Shallow. Sir Hugli, persuade me not ; I will make a Star-Chamber matter of it ; if he were twenty Sir John Falstaffs, he shall not abuse Robert Shallow, Esq, Slender. In the county of Gloster, justice of peace, and coram. Shallow. Ay, cousin Slender, and custalorum. Slender. Ay, and ratalotnim too, and a gentleman born, master parson ; who ■writes himself Armigero in any bill, warrant, quittance, or obligation, Armigero. Shallow. Ay, that I do, and have done any time these three hundred years. Slender. All his successors gone before him have done 't, and all his ancestors that come after him may ; they may give the dozen white luces in their coat. Shallow. The council shall hear it ; it is a riot. Evans. It is not meet the council hear of a riot ; there is no fear of GrOt in a riot ; the council, hear you, shall desire to to hear the fear of Got, and not to hear a riot ; take your vizaments in that. Shailow. Ha I o' my life, if I were young again, the sword should end it I Near the window thus emblazoned hung a portrait by &ii Pet@; 184 SKETCH-BOOK. Lely, of one of tlie Lucy family, a great beauty of tlie time of Charles tlie Second ; the old housekeeper shook her head as she pointed to the picture, and informed me that this lady had been sadly addicted to cards, and had gambled away a great portion of the family estate, among which was that part of the park where Shakespeare and his comrades had killed the deer. The lands thus lost have not been en- tirely regained by the family, even at the present day. It is but jus- tice to this recreant dame to confess that she had a surpassingly fine hand and arm. The picture which most attracted my attention was a great painting over the fireplace, containing likenesses of Sir Thomas Lucy and his - family, who inhabited the hall in the latter part of Shakespeare's life- time. I at first thought that it was the vindictive knighfc himself, ' but the housekeeper assured me that it was his son ; the only likeness extant of the former being an efl3.gy upon his tomb in the church of the neighboring hamlet of Charlecot. The picture gives a lively idea of the costume and manners of the time. Sir Thomas is dressed in ruff and doublet ; white shoes with roses in them ; and has a peaked yellow, or, as Master Slender would say, " a cane-colored beard.'' His lady is seated on the opposite side of the picture in wide ruff and long stomacher, and the children have a most venerable stiffness and formality of dress. Hounds and spaniels are mingled in the family group ; a hawk is seated on his perch in the foreground, and one of the children holds a bow ; — all intimating the knight's skill in hunt- ing, hawking, and archery — so indispensable to an accomplished gentleman in those days.* I regretted to find that the ancient furniture of the hall had dis- appeared ; for I had hoped to meet with the stately elbow-chair of carved oak, in which the country 'Squire of former days was wont to swaj the scepter of empire over his rural domains ; and in which it might be presumed the redoubted Sir Thomas sat enthroned in awful state, when the recreant Shakespeare was brought before him. As I like to deck out pictures for my own entertainment, I pleased myself with the idea that this very hall had been the scene of the unlucky bard's examination on the morning after his captivity in the lodge. I fancied to myself the rural potentate, surrounded by his body-guard of butler, pages, and blue-coated serving men with their badges ; while the luckless culprit was brought in, forlorn and cliopf alien, in * Bishop Earle, speaking of the country gentleman of his time, observes, " His housekeeping is seen much in the different families of dogs, and strving-men atten- dant on their kennels ; and the deepness of their throats is the depth of his dis- course. J* hawk he esteems the true burden of nobility, and is exceedingly ambi- tious to seem delighted with the sport, and have his fist gloved with his jesses." And Gilpin, in his description of a Mr. Hastings, remarks, "He kept all sorts of hounds that run buck, fos,hare, otter, and bads^er ; and had hawks of all kinds both long and short winged. Hia great hall was commonly strewed with marrow-bones, and full of hawk perches, hounds, spaniels, and terriers. On a broad h*Vtli, parea \ntli brick, lay eome of the choicest terriers, hounds, and spaniels." 8TRA TFOBD-ON'-A VON", 185 the custody of ^me-keepers, huntsmen, and whippers-in, and followed by a rabble rout of country clowns. I fancied bright faces of curious housemaids peeping from the half -opened doors ; while from the gal- lery the fair daughters of the Knight leaned gracefully forward, eye- ing the youthful prisoner with that pity, ' ' that dwells in woman- hood." — Who would have thought that this poor varlet, thus trembling before the brief authority of a country 'Squire, and the sport of rus- tic boors, was soon to become the delight of princes ; the theme of all tongues and ages ; the dictator to the human mind ; and was to con- fer immortality on his oppressor by a caricature and a lampoon ! I was now invited by the butler to walk into the garden, and I felt inclined to visit the orchard and arbor where the Justice treated Sir John Falstaff and Cousin Silence " to a last year's pippen of his own graffing, with a dish of carraways ; " but I had already spent so much of the day in my rambling, that I was obliged to give up any farther investigations. When about to take my leave, I was gratified by the civil entreaties of the housekeeper and butler, that I would take some refreshment — an instance of good old hospitality which I grieve to say we castle-hunters seldom meet with in modern days. I make no doubt it is a virtue which the present representative of the Lucys in- herits from his ancestors ; for Shakespeare, even in his caricature, makes Justice Shallow importunate in this respect, as witness his pressing instances to Falstaff. By cock and pye, Sir, you shall not awayto-ni^ht * * * *, I will not excuse you ; you shall not be excused ; excuses shall not be admitted ; there Is no excuse shall serve ; you shall not be excused * * * *, Some pigeons, Davy ; a couple of short-legged hens ; a ioiut of mutton ; and any pretty little tiay kickshaws, tell " William Cook." I now bade a reluctant farewell to the old hall. My mind had be- come so completely possessed by the imaginary scenes and characters connected with it, that I seemed to be actually living among them. Everything brought them as it were before my eyes ; and as the door of the dining-room opened, I almost expected to hear the feeble voice of Master Silence quavering forth his favorite ditty : 'Tis merry in hall, when beards wag all, And welcome merry Shrove-tlde I On returning to my inn, I could not but reflect on the singular gift of the poet : to be able thus to spread the magic of his mind over the very face of nature ; to give to things and places a charm and charac- ter not their own, and to turn this " working-day world" into a perfect fairyland. He is indeed the true enchanter, whose spell operates, not upon the senses, but upon the imagination and the heart. Under the wizard influence of Shakespeare I had been walking all day in a com- plete delusion, I had surveyed the landscapes through the prism of 186 SKETCH-BOOK. poetry, whicli tinged every object with fhe hues of the rainbow, I had been surrounded with fancied beings ; with mere airy nothings, conjured up by poetic power ; yet which, to me, had all the charm of reality. I had heard Jacques soliloquize beneath his oak ; had be- held the fair Rosalind and her companion adventuring through the woodlands ; and, above all, had been once more present in spirit with fat Jack FalstafE and his comtemporaries, from the August Justice Shallow down to the gentle Master Slender and the sweet Anne Page. Ten thousand honors and blessings on the bard who has thus gilded the dull realities of life with innocent illusions, who has spread exquisite and unbought pleasures in my checkered path, and be- guiled my spirit in many a lonely hour with all the cordial and cheer- ful sympathies of social life ! As I crossed the bridge over the Avon on my return, I paused to contemplate the distant church in which the poet lies buried, and could not but exult in the malediction which has kept his ashes un- disturbed in its quiet and hallowed vaults. What honor could his name have derived from being mingled in dusty companionship with the epitaphs and escutcheons and venal eulogiums of a titled multi- tude ? What would a crowded corner in Westminster Abbey have been, compared with this reverend pile, which seems to stand in beautiful loneliness as his sole mausoleum ! The solicitude about the grave may be but the offspring of an overwrought sensibility ; but human nature is made up of foibles and prejudices ; and its best and tenderest affec- tions are mingled with these factitious feelings. He who has sought renown about the world, and has reaped a full harvest of worldly favor will find, after all, that there is no love, no admiration, no ap- plause so sweet to the soul as that which springs up in his native place. It is there that he seeks to be gathered in peace and honor, among his kindred and his early friends. And when the weary heart and failing head begin to warn him that the evening of life is draw- ing on, he turns as fondly as does the infant to the mother's arms, to sink to sleep in the bosom of the scene of his childhood. How would it have cheered the spirit of the youthful bard, when, wandering forth in disgrace upon a doubtful world, he cast back a heavy look upon his paternal home, could he have foreseen that, be- fore many years, he should return to it covered with renown ; that his name should become the boast and glory of his native place ; that his ashes should be religiously guarded as its most precious treasure ; and that its lessening spire, on which his eyes were fixed in tearful contemplation, should one day become the beacon towering amid the gentle landscape, to guide the literary pilgrim of every nation to h^ tomb 1 TRAITS OF INDIAN CBARACTEM. 18t TRAITS OF INDIAN CHARACTER. I appeal to any white man if ever he entered Logan's cabin hnngry, and he gave him not to eat ; if ever he came cold and naked, ana he clothed htm not.— Speech of an Indian Chief. There is sometliing in tlie character and habits of the North American savage, taken in connection with the scenery over which he is accustomed to range, its vast lakes, boundless forests, majestic rivers, and trackless plains, that is to my mind wonderfully striking and sublime. He is formed for the wilderness, as the Arab is for the desert. His nature is stern, simple, and enduring ; fitted to grapple with diificulties and to support privations. There seems but little soil in his heart for the growth of the kindly virtues ; and yet, if we would but take the trouble to penetrate through that proud stoicism and habitual taciturnity which look up his character from casual observation, we should find him linked to his fellow-man of civilized life by more of those sympathies and affections than are usually ascribed to him. It has been the lot of the unfortunate aborigines of America, in the early periods of colonization, to be doubly wronged by the white man. They have been dispossessed of their hereditary possessions by mercenary and frequently wanton warfare, and their characters have been traduced by bigoted and interested writers. The colonist has often treated them like beasts of the forest, and the author has en- deavored to justify him in his outrages. The former found it easier to exterminate than to civilize — the latter to vilify than to discriminate. The appellations of savage and pagan were deemed sufficient to sanc- tion the hostilities of both ; and thus the poor wanderers of the forest were persecuted and defamed, not because they were guilty, but be- cause they were ignorant. The rights of the savage have seldom been properly appreciated or respected by the white man. In peace, he has too often been the dupe of artful traffic ; in war, h^e has been regarded as a ferocious' animal, whose life or death was a question of mere precaution and convenience. Man is cruelly wasteful of life when his own safety is endangered," and he is sheltered by impunity ; and little mercy is to be expected from him when he feels the sting of the reptile, and is conscious of the power to destroy. The same prejudices which were indulged thus early exist in common circulation at the present day. Certain learned societies have, it is true, with laudable diligence, endeavored to investigate and record the real characters and manners of the Indian tribes ; the American govern- ment, too, has wisely and humanely exerted itself to inculcate a friendly 188 SKETCH-BOOS. and forbearing spirit toward tliem, and to protect them from fraud and injustice.* The current opinion of the Indian character, however, is too apt to be formed from the miserable hordes which infest the frontiers and hang on the skirts of the settlements. These are too com- monly composed of degenerate beings, corrupted and enfeebled by the vices of society, without being benefited by its civilization. That proud independence which formed the main pillar of savage virtue has been shaken down, and the whole moral fabric lies in ruins. Their spirits are humiliated and debased by a sense of inferiority, and their native courage cowed and daunted by the superior knowledge and power of their enlightened neighbors. Society has advanced upon them like one of those v/ithering airs that will sometimes breathe desolation over a whole region of fertility. It has enervated their strength, multiplied their diseases, and superinduced upon their original barbarity the low vices of artificial life. It has given them a thousand superfluous wants, while it has diminished their means of mere existence. It has driven before it the animals of the chase, who fly from the sound of the axe and the smoke of the settlement, and seek refuge in the depths of remoter forests and yet untrodden wilds. Thus do we too often find the Indians on our frontiers to be mere wrecks and remnants of once powerful tribes, who have lingered in the vicinity of the settlements, and sunk into precarious and vaga- bond existence. Poverty, repining and hopeless poverty, a canker of the mind unknown in savage life, corrodes tlieir spirits aud blights every free and noble quality of their natures. They become drunken, indolent, feeble, thievish, and pusillanimous. They loiter like vagrants about the settlements among spacious dwellings, replete with elaborate comforts, which only render them sensible of the com- parative wretchedness of their own condition. Luxury spreads its ample board before their eyes ; but they are excluded from the ban- quet. Plenty revels over the fields ; tsut they are starving in the midst of its abundance : the whole wilderness has blossomed into a garden ; but they feel as reptiles that infest it. How different was their state while yet the undisputed lords of the soil ! Their wants were few, and the means of gratification within their reach. They saw every one round them sharing the same lot, enduring the same hardships, feeding on the same aliments, arrayed in the same rude garments. No roof then rose, but was open to the homeless stranger ; no smoke curled among the trees, but he was welcome to sit down by its fire and join the hunter in his * The American govemmeBt has been indefatigable in its exertions to meliorate the situation of the Indians, and to introduce among them the arts of civilization and civil and religious knowledge. To protect them from the frauds of the white traders, no purchase of land from them by individuals is permitted ; nor is any per- son allowed!^to receive lands from them as a present vnthout the express eanction of goyenuneat. These precautious are strictly enforced. TRAITS OF mDIAJt CEABACTEB. 189 repast. " For," says an old historian of New England, *' tlieir life is so void of care, and they are so loving also that they make use of those things they enjoy as common goods, and are therein so compas- sionate, that rather than one should starve through want, they would starve all ; thus do they pass their time merrily, not regarding our pomp, but are better content with their own, which some men esteem so meanly of." Such were the Indians, while in the pride and energy of their primitive natures ; they resemble those wild plants which thrive best in the shades of the forest, but shrink from the hand of cultivation, and perish beneath the influence of the sun. In discussing the savage character, writers have been too prone to indulge in vulgar prejudice and passionate exaggeration, instead of the candid temper of true philosophy. They have not sufficiently considered the peculiar circumstances in which the Indians have been placed, and the peculiar principles under which they have been edu- cated. No being acts more rigidly from rule than the Indian. His whole conduct is regulated according to some general maxims early implanted in his mind. The moral laws that govern him are, to be sure, but few ; but then he conforms to them all ; — the white man abounds in laws of religion, morals, and manners, but how many does he violate ! A frequent ground of accusation against the Indians is their disre- gard of treaties, and the treachery and wantonness with which, in time of apparent peace, they will suddenly fly to hostilities. The in- tercourse of the white men with the Indians, however, is too apt to be cold, distrustful, oppressive, and insulting. They seldom treat them with that confidence and frankness which are indispensable to real friendship ; nor /is sufficient caution observed not to offend against those feelings of pride or superstition, which often prompt the Indian to hostility quicker than mere considerations of interest. The solitary savage feels silently, but acutely. His sensibilities are not diffused over so wide a surface as those of th^ white man ; but they run in steadier and deeper channels. His pride, his affections, his superstitions, are all directed toward fewer objects ; but the wounds inflicted on them are proportionably severe, and furnish mo- tives of hostility which we cannot sufficiently appreciate. Where a community is also limited in number, and forms one great patriarchal family, as in an Indian tribe, the injury of an individual is the injury of the whole ; and the sentiment of vengeance is almost instantane- ously diffused. One council-fire is sufficient for the discussion and arrangement of a plan of hostilities. Here all the fighting men and sages assemble. Eloquence and superstition combine to inflame the minds of the warriors. The orator awakens their martial ardor, and they are wrought up to a kind of religious desperation by the visions of the prophet and the dreamer. An instance of one of those sudden exasperations, arising from a 190 SKETCH-BOOK. motive peculiar to the Indian cliaracter, is extant in an old record oi the early settlement of Massachusetts. The planters of Plymouth had defaced the monuments of the dead at Passonagessit, and had plundered the grave of the Sachem's mother of some skins with which it had been decorated. The Indians are remarkable for the reverence with which they entertain for the sepulchers of their kin- dred. Tribes that have passed generations exiled from the abodes of their ancestors, when by chance they have been traveling in the vicinity, have been known to turn aside from the highway, and, guided by wonderfully accurate tradition, have crossed the country for miles to some tumulus, buried perhaps in woods, where the bones of their tribe were anciently deposited ; and there have passed hours in silent meditation. Influenced by this sublime and holy feeling, the Sachem, whose mother's tomb had been violated, gathered his men together, and addressed them in the following beautifully sim- ple and pathetic harangue ; a curious specimen of Indian eloquence and an affecting instance of filial piety in a savage. " When last the glorious light of all the sky was underneath this globe, and birds grew silent, I began to settle, as my custom is, to take repose. Before mine eyes were fast closed, methought I saw a vision, at which my spirit was much troubled : and trembling at that doleful sight, a spirit cried aloud, ' Behold, my son, whom I liave cherished, see the breasts that gave thee suck, the hands that lapped thee warm, and fed thee oft. Canst thou forget to take revenge of those wild people, who have defaced my monument in a despiteful manner, disdaining our antiquities and honorable customs ? See, now, the Sachem's grave lies like the common people, defaced by an ignoble race. Thy mother doth complain, and implores thy aid against this thievish people, who have newly intruded on our land. If this be suffered, I shall not rest quiet in my everlasting habitation.' This said, the spirit vanished, and I, all in a sweat, not able scarce to speak, began to get some strength, and recollected my spirits that were fled, and determined to demand your counsel and assistance." I have adduced this anecdote at some length, as it tends to show how these sudden acts of hostility, which have been attributed to caprice and perfidy, may often arise from deep and generous motives, which our inattention to Indian character and customs prevents our properly appreciating. Another ground of violent outcry against the Indians is their bar- barity to the vanquished. This had its origin partly in policy and partly in superstition. The tribes, though sometimes called nations, were never so formidable in their numbers, but that the loss of seve- ral warriors was sensibly felt ; this was particularly the case when they had been frequently engaged in warfare ; and many an instance occurs in Indian history where a tribe that had long been formida- ble to its neighbors has been broken up and driven away by th« TBAIT8 OF INDIAN CffABACTJSB. 191 capture and massacre of its principal fighting men. There was a strong temptation, therefore, to the victor to be merciless ; not so much to gratify any cruel revenge, as to provide for future security. The Indians had also the superstitious belief, frequent among bar- barous nations, and prevalent also among the ancients, that the manes of their friends who had fallen in battle, were soothed by the blood of the captives. The prisoners, however, who are not thug sacrificed, are adopted into their families in the place of the slain, and are treated with the confidence and affection of relatives and friends ; nay, so hospitable and tender is their entertainment, that when the alternative is offered them, they will often prefer to remain with their adopted brethren, rather than return to the home and th« friends of their youth. The cruelty of the Indians toward their prisoners has been height- ened since tlie colonization of the whites. What was formerly a compliance with policy and superstition has been exasperated into a gratification of vengeance. They cannot but be sensible that the white men are the usurpers of their ancient dominion, the cause of their degradation, and the gradual destroj^ers of their race. They go forth to battle, smarting with injuries and indignities which they have individually suffered, and they are driven to madness and de- spair by the wide-spreading desolation and the overwhelming ruin of European warfare. The whites have too frequently set them an example of violence by burning their villages and laying waste their slender means of subsistence ; and yet they wonder that savages do not show moderation and magnanimity toward those who have left them nothing but mere existence and wretchedness. We stigmatize the Indians also as cowardly and treacherous be- cause they use stratagem in warfare in preference to open force ; but in this they are fully justified by their rude code of honor. They are early taught that statagem is praiseworthy : the bravest warrior thinks it no disgrace to lurk in silence, and take every advantage of his foe : he triumphs in the superior craft and sagacity by which he has been enabled to surprise and destroy an enemy. Indeed, man is naturally more prone to subtilty than open valor, owing to his phys- ical weakness in comparison with other animals. TLey are endowed with natural weapons of defense : with horns, with tusks, with hoofs, and talons ; but man has to depend on his superior sagacity. In all his encounters with these, his proper enemies, he resorts to stratagem ; and when he perversely turns his hostility against his fellow man, he at first continues the same subtile mode of warfare. The natural principle of war is to do the most harm to our enemy, with the least harm to ourselves ; and this of course is to be effected by stratagem. That chivalrous courage which induces us to despise the suggestions of prudence, and to rush in the face of certain dan- ger, is the offspring of isociety, and produced by education. It is 193 SKETCH-BOOK honorable, because it is in fact the triumpb of lofty sentiment over an instinctive repugnance to pain, and over those yearnings after personal ease and security which society has condemned as ignoble. It is kept alive by pride and the fear of shame ; and thus the dread of real evil is overcome by the superior dread of an evil which exists but in the imagination. It has been cherished and stimulated also by various means. It has been the theme of spirit-stirring song and chiv- alrous story. The poet and minstrel have delighted to shed round it the splendors of fiction ; and even the historian has forgotten the sober gravity of narration, and broken forth into enthusiasm and rhapsody in its praise. Triumphs and gorgeous pageants have been its reward : monuments, on which art has exhausted its skill, and opulence its treasures, have been erected to perpetuate a nation's gratitude and admiration. Thus artificially excited, courage has risen to an extraordinary and factitious degree of heroism ; and, arrayed in all the glorious "pomp and circumstance of war," this turbulent quality has even been able to eclipse many of those quiet but invaluable virtues which silently ennoble the human character and swell the tide of human happiness. But if courage intrinsically consists in the defiance of danger and pain, the life of the Indian "is a continual exhibition of it. He lives in a state of perpetual hostility and risk. Peril and adventure are congenial to his nature ; or rather seem necessary to arouse his facul- ties and to give an interest to his existence. Surrounded by hostile tribes, whose mode of warfare is by ambush and surprisal, he is always prepared for fight, and lives with his weapons in his hands. As the ship careers in fearful singleness through the solitudes of ocean, as the bird mingles among clouds and storms, and wings its way, a mere speck, across the pathless fields of air, so the Indian holds his course, silent, solitary, but undaunted, through the bound- less bosom of the wilderness. ' His expeditions may vie in distance and danger with the pilgrimage of the devotee or the crusade of the knight-errant. He traverses vast forests, exposed to the hazards of lonely sickness, of lurking enemies, and pining famine. Stormy lakes, those great inland seas, are no obstacles to his wanderings ; in his light canoe of bark, he sports like a feather on their waves, and darts with the swiftness of an arrow down the roaring rapids of the rivers. His very subsistence is snatched from the midst of toil and peril. He gains his food by the hardships and dangers of the chase ; he wraps himself in the spoils of the bear, the panther, and the buf- falo, and sleeps among the thunders of the cataract. No hero of ancient or modern days can surpass the Indian in his lofty contempt of death, aixd the fortitude with which he sustains its cruelest affliction. Indeed, we here behold him rising superior to the white man, in consequence of his peculiar education. The latter rushM to glorious death at the cannon's mouth ; the former calml/ TBAIT8 OF mniAJSr CHARACTER, 193 contemplates its approacli, and triumphantly endures it, amid tli<^ varied torments of surrounding foes and the protracted agonies of fire. He even takes a pride in taunting his persecutors and provok- ing their ingenuity of torture ; and as the devouring flames prey on his very vitals, and the flesh shrinks from the sinews, he raises his last song of triumph, breathing the defiance of an unconquered heart, and invoking the spirits of his fathers to witness that he dies with- out a groan. Notwithstanding the obloquy with which the early historians have overshadowed the characters of the unfortunate natives, some bright gleams occasionally break through, which throw a degree of melan- choly luster on their memories. Facts are occasionally to be met with in the rude annals of the eastern provinces, which, thongli recorded with the coloring of prejudice and bigotry, yet speak for themselves, and will be dwelt on with applause and sympathy when prejudice shall have passed away. In one of the homely narratives of the Indian wars in New England, there is a touching account of the desolation carried into the tribe of the Pequod Indians. Humanity shrinks from the cold-blooded detail of indiscriminate butchery. In one place we read of the surprisal of an Indian fort in the night, when the wigwams were wrapped in flames, and the miserable inhabitants shot down and slain in attempt- ing to escape, "all being dispatched and ended in the course of an hour." After a series of similar transactions, " our soldiers," as the historian piously observes, " being resolved by God's assistance to make a final destruction of them," the unhappy savages being hunted from their homes and fortresses, and pursued with fire and sword, a scanty but gallant band, the sad remnant of the Pequod warriors, with their wives and children, took refuge in a swamp. Burning with indignation and rendered sullen by despair, with hearts bursting with grief at the destruction of their tribe, and spirits galled and sore at the fancied ignominy of their defeat, they refused to ask their lives at the hands of an insulting foe, and pre- ferred death to submission. As the night drew on they were surrounded in their dismal retreat,' so as to render escape impracticable. Thus situated, their enemy " plied them with shot all the time, by which means many were killed and buried in the mire." In the darkness and fog that pre- ceded the dawn of day, some few broke through the besiegers and escaped into the woods : "the rest were left to the conquerors, of which many were killed in the swamp, like sullen dogs who would rather, in their self-willedness and madness, sit still and be? shot through, or cut to pieces," than implore for mercy. When the day broke upon this handful of forlorn but dauntless spirits, the soldiers, we are told, entering the swamp, " saw several heaps of them sitting close together, upon whom they discharged their pieces, IRTINa I—? 194 SKETCH-BOOK. laden witli ten or twelve pistol-bullets at a time ; putting the muzzles of the pieces under the boughs, within a few yards of them ; so as, besides those that were found dead, many more were killed and sunk into the mire, and never were minded more by friend or foe." Can any one read this plain unvarnished tale without admiring the stern resolution, the unbending pride, the loftiness of spirit, that seemed to nerve the hearts of these self-taught heroes and to raise them above the instinctive feelings of human nature ? When the Gauls laid waste the city of Rome they found the senators clothed in their robes and seated with stern tranquillity in their curule chairs ; in this manner they suffered death without resistance or even suppli- cation. Such conduct was, in them, applauded as noble and magnan- imous — in the hapless Indians it was reviled as obstinate and sullen. How truly are we the dupes of show and circumstance ! How differ- ent is virtue clothed in purple and enthroned in state from virtue naked and destitute, and perishing obscurely in the Vv^ilderness ! But I forbear to dwell on these gloomy pictures. The eastern tribes have long since disappeared ; the forests that sheltered them have been laid low, and scarce any traces remain of them in the thickly- settled states of New England, excepting here and there the Indian name of a village or a stream. And such must sooner or later be the fate of those other tribes which skirt the frontiers, and have occasionally been inveigled from their forests to mingle in the wars of white men. In a little while, and they will go the way that their brethren have gone before. The few hordes which still linger •bout the shores of Huron and Superior and the tributary streams of the Mississippi will share the fate of those tribes that once spread over Massachusetts and Connecticut and lorded it along the proud banks of the Hudson ; of that gigantic race said to have existed on the borders of the Susquehanna ; and of those various nations that flourished about the Patowmac and the Rappahanoc, and that peopled the forests of the vast valley of Shenandoah. They will vanish like a vapor from the face of the earth ; their very history will be lost in forgetfulness ; and " the places that now know them will know them no more for ever." Or if, perchance, some dubious memorial of them should survive, it may be in the romantic dreams of the poet, to people in imagination his glades and groves, like the fauns and satyrs and sylvan deities of antiquity. But should he venture upon the dark story of their wrongs and wretchedness : should he tell how they were invaded, corrupted, despoiled ; driven from their native abodes and the sepulchers of their fathers ; hunted like wild beasts ■about the earth ; and sent down with violence and butchery to the grave — posterity will either turn with horror and incredulity from the tale, or blush with indignation at the inhumanity of their fore- fathers. •* We are driven back/' said an old warrior, " until we can PEILIP OF POKANOKET. 195 retreat no farther — our "hatcliets are broken, our bows are snapped, our fires are nearly extinguished — a little longer and the white man will cease to persecute us — for we shall cease to exist." PHILIP OF POKANOKET. AN INDIAN MEMOIR. As monumental bronze unchanged Ms look ; A soul that pity touch'd, but never shook : Trained, from his tree-rock'd cradle to his bier, The fierce extremes of good and ill to brook ; Impassive — fearing but the shame of fear — A stoic of the woods— a man without a tear. Campbell. tn Js ii \e regretted that those early writers who treated of the disiccvery ertd i^ett^'ement of America have not given us more particu- lar and candid accoants of the remarkable characters that flourished in savage life. The scanty anecdotes which have reached us are full of peculiarity and interest ; they furnish us with nearer glimpses of human nature and shjw what man is in a comparatively primitive state and what he owes to civilization. There is something of the charm of discovery in lio^iiting upon these wild and unexplored tracts of human nature ; in witnessing, as it were, the native growth of moral sentiment ; and perceiving those generous and romantic quali- ties which have been artificially cultivated by society, vegetating in spontaneous hardihood and rude magnificence. In civilized life, where the happiness and indeed almost the exist- ence of man depends so much upoix the opinion of his fellow men, he is constantly acting a studied part. The bold and peculiar traits of native character are refined away cy softened down by the leveling influence of what is termed good breeding ; and he practices so many petty deceptions and affects so many generous sentiments for the purposes of popularity, that it is difficult to distinguish his real from his artificial character. The Indian, on tho contrary, free from the restraints and refinements of polished life, and in a great degree a solitary and independent being, obeys the impulses of his inclination or the dictates of his judgment ; and thus th.3 attributes of his na- ture, being freely indulged, grow singly great and striking. Society is like a lawn, where every roughness is smoothed, every bramble eradicated, and where the eye is delighted by the smiling verdure of a velvet surface ; he, however, who would study nature in its wild- ness and variety must plunge into the forest, must explore the glen, must stem the torrent, and dare the precipice. 106 SKETCH-BOOK. These reflections arose on casually looking througli a volume of early colonial history, wherein are recorded, with great bitterness, the outrages of the Indians and their wars with the settlers of New England. It is painful to perceive, even from these partial narra- tives, how the footsteps of civilization may be traced in the blood of the aborigines ; how easily the colonists were moved to hostility by the lust of conquest ; how merciless and exterminating was their warfare. The imagination shrinks at the idea how many intellectual beings were hunted from the earth — how many brave and noble hearts, of Nature's sterling coinage, were broken down and trampled in the dust ! Such was the fate of Philip of Pokanoket, an Indian warrior, whose name was once a terror throughout Massachusetts and Connec- ticut. He was the most distinguished of a number of contemporary Sachems who reigned over the Pequods, the Narrhagansets, the Wampanoags, and the other eastern tribes, at the time of the first settlement of New England : a band of native untaught heroes, who made the most generous struggle of which human nature is capable, fighting to the last gasp in the cause of their country, without a hope of victory or a thought of renown. Worthy of an age of poe- try and fit subjects for local story and romantic fiction, they have left scarcely any authentic traces on the page of history, but stalk, like gigantic shadows, in the dim twilight of tradition.* When the pilgrims, as the Plymouth settlers are called by their descendants, first took refuge on the shores of the New World from the religious persecutions of the Old, their situation was to the last degree gloomy and disheartening. Few in number, and that number rapidly perishing away through sickness and hardships ; surrounded by a howling wilderness and savage tribes ; exposed to the rigors of an almost Arctic winter and the vicissitudes of an ever-shifting cli- mate, their minds were filled with doleful forebodings, and nothing preserved them from sinking into despondency but the strong excite- ment of religious enthusiasm. In this forlorn situation they were visited by Massasoit, chief Sagamore of the Wampanoags, a power- ful chief, who reigned over a great extent of country. Instead of taking advantage of the scanty number of the strangers and expel- ling tiiem from his territories into which they had intruded, he seemed at once to conceive for them a generous friendship, and extended toward them the rites of primitive hospitality. He came early in the spring to their settlement of New Plymouth attended by a mere handful of followers ; entered into a solemn league of peace and amity ; sold tliem a portion of the soil, and promised to secure for them the good- will of his savage allies. Whatever may be said of ♦ While correcting the proof-sheets of this article, the author is informed that a celebrated Englislj poet has nearly finished a heroic poem on the story of Philip of JPokanoket. PHILIP OF POKANOKET. 191 Indian perfidy, it is certain tliat tlie integrity and good faith of Mas- sasoit have never been impeached. He continued a firm and magnan- imous friend of the wliite men ; suffering them to extend their pos- sessions and to strengthen themselves in the land ; and betraying no jealousy of their increasing power and prosperity. Shortly before his death he came once more to New Plymouth with his son Alex- ander for the purpose of renewing the covenant of peace and of se- curing it to his posterity. At this conference he endeavored to protect the religion of his fore- fathers from the encroaching zeal of the missionaries ; and stipulated that no farther attempt should be made to draw off his people from their ancient faith ; bat finding the English obstinately opposed to any such condition, he mildly relinquished the demand. Almost the last act of his life was to bring his two sons, Alexander and Philip (as they had been named by the English) to the residence of a prin- cipal settler, recommending mutual kindness and confidence, and entreating that the same love and amity which had existed between the white men and himself might be continued afterward with his children. The good old Sachem died in peace and was happily gath- ered to his fathers before sorrow came upon his tribe ; his children remained behind to experience the ingratitude of white men. His eldest son, Alexander, succeeded him. He was of a quick and impetuous temper, and proudly tenacious of his hereditary rights and dignity. The intrusive policy and dictatorial conduct of the strangers excited his indignation : and he beheld with uneasiness their exterminating wars with the neighboring tribes. He was doomed soon to incur their hostility, being accused of plotting with the Narr- hagansets to rise against the English and drive them from the land. It is impossible to say whether this accusation was warranted by facts or was grounded on mere suspicions. It is evident, however, by the violent and overbearing measures of the settlers that they had !>y this time begun to feel conscious of the rapid increase of their power, and to grow harsh and inconsiderate in their treatment of the natives. They dispatched an armed force to seize upon Alexander and to bring him before their court. He was traced to his woodland haunts and surprised at a hunting house where he was reposing with a band of his followers, unarmed, after the toils of the chase. The suddenness of his arrest and the outrage offered to his sovereign dig- nity so preyed upon the irascible feelings of this proud savage as to throw him into a raging fever ; he was permitted to return home on condition of sending his son as a pledge for his reappearance ; but the blow he had received was fatal, and before he reached his home he fell a victim to the agonies of a wounded spirit. The successor of Alexander was Metamocet, or King Philip, as he was called by the settlers on account of his lofty spirit and ambitious temper. Thess, together with his well-kuown energy and enterprijse, 19S 8KETCB-B00S. Lad i'endered him an object of great jealousy and appreliension, and lie was accused of having always cherished a secret and implacable hostility toward the whites. Such may very probably and very nat- urally have been the case. He considered them as originally but mere intruders into the country, who had presumed upon indulgence, and were extending an influence baneful to savage life. He saw the whole race of his countrymen melting before them from the face of the earth ; their territories slipping from their hands and their tribes becoming feeble, scattered, and dependent. It may be said that the soil was originally purchased by the settlers ; but who does not know the nature of Indian purchases in the early periods of colonization ? The Europeans always made thrifty bargains through their superior adroitness in traffic ; and they gained vast accessions of territory by easily-provoked hostilities. An uncultivated savage is never a nice inquirer into the refinements of law, by which an injury may be gradually and legally inflicted. Leading facts are all by which he judges ; and it was enough for Philip to know that before the intru- sion of the Europeans his countrymen were lords of the soil, and that now they were becoming vagabonds in the land of their fathers. Bat whatever may have been his feelings of general hostility and his particular indignation at the treatment of his brother, he sup- pressed them for the present ; renewed the contract with the settlers; and resided peaceably for many years at Pokanoket, or, as it was called by the English, Mount Hope,* the ancient seat of dominion of his tribe. Suspicions, however, which were at first but vague and indefinite, began to acquire form and substance ; and he was at length charged with attempting to instigate the various eastern tribes to rise at once, and, by a simultaneous effort, to throw off the yoke of their oppressors. It is difficult at this distant period to assign the proper credit due to these early accusations against the Indians. There was a proneness to suspicion, and an aptness to acts of violence on the part of the whites, that gave weight and importance to every idle tale. Informers abounded where tale-bearing met with countenance and reward ; and the sword was readily unsheathed when its success was certain and it carved out empire. The only positive evidence on record against Philip is the accusa- tion of one Sausaman, a renegado Indian, whose natural cunning had been quickened by a partial education which he had received among the settlers. He changed his faith and his allegiance two or three times, with a facility that evinced the looseness of his principles. He had acted for some time as Philip's confidential secretary and counselor, and had enjoyed his bounty and protection. Finding, however, that the clouds of adversity were gathering round his patron, he abandoned his service and went over to the whites, and, in ordel * l>fow Bristol, Bhode Island. PHILIP OF POKANOKET. 109 to gain their favor, charged his former benefactor with plotting against their safety. A rigorous investigation took place. Philip and several of his subjects submitted to be examined, but nothing was proved against them. The settlers, however, had now gone too far to re- tract ; they had previously determined that Philip was a dangerous neighbor ; they had publicly evinced their distrust ; and had done enough to insure his hostility : according, therefore, to the usual mode of reasoning in these cases, his destruction had become neces- sary to their security. Sausaman, the treacherous informer, was shortly after found dead in a pond, having fallen a victim to the ven- geance of his tribe. Three Indians, one of whom was a friend and counselor of Philip, were apprehended and tried, and, on the testi- mony of one very questionable witness, were ccndemned and executed as murderers. This treatment of his subjects and ignominious punishment of his friend outraged the pride and exasperated the passions of Philip. The bolt which had fallen thus at his very feet awakened him to the gathering storm, and he determined to trust himself no longer in the power of the white men. The fate of his insulted and broken-hearted brother still rankled in his mind ; and he had a farther warning in the tragical story of Miantonimo, a great Sachem of the Narrhagan- sets, who, after manfully facing his accusers before a tribunal of the colonists, exculpating himself from a charge of conspiracy, and re- ceiving assurances of amity, had been perfidiously dispatched at their instigation. Philip, therefore, gathered his fighting men about him ; persuaded all strangers that he could to join his cause; sent the women and children to the Narrhagansets for safety ; and wherever he appeared was continually surrounded by armed warriors. When the two parties were thus in a state of distrust and irrita- tion, the least spark was sufficient to set them in a flame. The In- dians having weapons in their hands grew mischievous, and committed various petty depredations. In one of their maraudings a warrior was fired upon and killed by a settler. This was the signal for open hostilities ; the Indians pressed to revenge the death of their comrade, and the alarm of war resounded through the Plymouth colony. In the early chronicles of these dark and melancholy times, we meet with many indications of the diseased state of the public mind. Thq gloom of religious abstraction, and the wildness of their situation, among trackless forests and savage tribes, had disposed the colonists to superstitious fancies, and had filled their imaginations with the frightful chimeras of witchcraft and spectrology. They were much given also to a belief in omens. The troubles with Philip and hii Indians were preceded, we are told, by a variety of those awful warn ings which forerun great and pul:)lic calamities. The perfect arm o! an Indian bow appeared in the air at New Plymouth, which was looked upon by the inhabitants as a "prodigious apparition." At Hadley^ 200 SKETCE-BOOK Northampton, and otter towns in their neighborhood, " was heard the report of a great piece of ordnance, with the shaking of the earth and a considerable echo."* Others were alarmed, on a still sunshiny morning, by the discharge of guns and muskets ; bullets seemed to whistle past them, and the noise of drums resounded in the air, seem- ing to pass away to the westward ; others fancied that they heard the galloping of horses over their heads ; and certain monstrous births which took place about the time filled the superstitious in some towns with doleful forebodings. Many of these portentous sights and sounds may be ascribed to natural phenomena, to the northern lights which occur vividly in those latitudes, the meteors which ex- plode in the air, the casual rushing of a blast through the to]r branches of the forest, the crash of falling trees or disrupted rocks, and to those other uncouth sounds and echoes, which will sometimes strike the ear so strangely amid the profound stillness of woodland solitudes. These may have startled some melancholy imaginations, may have been exaggerated by the love for the marvelous, and listened to with that avidity with which, we devour whatever is fearful and mysterious. The universal currency of these superstitious fancies, and the grave record made of them by one of the learned men of the day, are strongly characteristic of the times. The nature of the contest that ensued was such as too often distin- guishes the warfare between civilized men and savages^ On the part of the whites it was conducted wi th superior skill and success, but with a wastefulness of the blood and a disregard of the natural rights of their antagonists ; on the part of the Indians it was waged with the desperation of men fearless of death, and who had nothing to expect troni j)eace but humiliation, dependence, and decay. The events of the war are transmitted to us by a worthy clergyman -)f the time, who dwells with horror and indignation on every hostile act of the Indians, however justifiable, while he mentions with applause the most sanguinary atrocities of the whites. Philip is reviled as a murderer and a traitor, without considering that he was a true-born prince, gallantly fighting at the head of his subjects to avenge the wrongs of his family, to retrieve the tottering power of his line, and to deliver his native land from the oppression of usurping strangers. , The project of a wide and simultaneous revolt, if such had really been formed, was worthy of a capacious mind, and had it not been prematurely discovered, might have been overwhelming in its conse- quences. The war that actually broke out was but a war of detail ; a mere succession of casual exploits and unconnected enterprises. Still it sets forth the military genius and daring prowess of Philip ; and wherever, in the prejudiced and passionate narrations that have been given of it, we can arrive at simple facts, we find him disj^lay- The Bey. Increase Mather^e History. PHILIP OF POKANOKET. 201 ing a vigorous mind ; a fertility in expedients, a contempt of suffer- ing and hardship, and an unconquerable resolution that command our sympathy and applause. Driven from his paternal domains at Mount Hope, he threw him- self into the depths of those vast and trackless forests that skirted the settlements and were almost impervious to anything but a wild beast or an Indian. Here he gathered together his forces, like the storm accumulating its stores of mischief in the bosom of the thunder-cloud, and would suddenly emerge at a time and place least expected, carrying havoc and dismay into the villages. There were now and then indications of these impending ravages that filled the minds of the colonists with awe and apprehension. The report of a distant gun would perhaps be heard from the solitary woodland, where there was known to be no white man ; the cattle which had been wandering in the woods would sometimes return home wound- ed ; or an Indian or two would be seen lurking about the skirts of the forests, and suddenly disappearing, as the lightning will some- times be seen playing silently about the edge of the cloud that is brewing up the tempest. Though sometimes pursued and even surrounded by the settlers, yet Philip as often escaped almost miraculously from their toils ; and plunging into the wilderness, would be lost to all search or inquiry until he again emerged at some far distant quarter, laying the coun- try desolate. Among his strongholds were the great swamps or morasses, which extend in some parts of New England ; composed of loose bogs of deep black mud ; perplexed with thickets, brambles, rank weeds, the shattered and moldering trunks of fallen trees, overshadowed by lugubrious hemlocks. The uncertain footing and the tangled mazes of these shaggy wilds rendered them almost im- practicable to the white man, though the Indian could thread their labyrinths with the agility of a deer. Into one of these, the great swamp of Pocasset Neck, was Philip once driven with a band of his followers. The English did not dare to pursue him, fearing to ven- ture iato these dark and frightful recesses, where they might perish in fens and miry pits, or be shot down by lurking foes. They there- fore invested the entrance of the neck, and began to build a fort, with the thought of starving out the foe ; but Philip and his warriors wafted themselves on a raft over an arm of the sea, in the dead of night, leaving the women and children behind, and escaped away to the westward, kindling the flames of war among the tribes of Mas- sachusetts and the Nipmuck country, and threatening the colony of Connecticut^ In this way Philip became a theme of universal apprehension. The mystery in ■'.7l\ich he was enveloped exaggerated his real terrors. He was an evil that A.alked in darkness ; whose coming none could fore- see, and against which none knew when to be on the alert. The 203 SKETCH-BOOK. whole country abounded witli rumors and alarms. Philip seemed almost possessed of ubiquity ; for, in whatever part of the widely extended frontier an irruption from the forest took place, Philip was said to belts leader. Many superstitious notions also were circulated concerning him. He was said to deal in necromancy, and to be at- tended by an old Indian witch or prophetess, whom he consulted, and who assisted him by her charms and incantations. This indeed was frequently the case with Indian chiefs, either through their own credulity, or to act upon that of their followers, and the influence of the prophet and the dreamer over Indian superstition has been fully evidenced in recent instances of savage warfare. At the time that Philip effected his escape from Pocasset, his for- tunes were in a desperate condition. His forces had been thinned by repeated fights, and he had lost almost the whole of his resources. In this time of adversity he found a faithful friend in Canonchet, CMef Sachem of all the Narrhagansets. He was the son and heir of Miantonimo, the great Sachem, who, as already mentioned, after an honorable acquittal of the charge of conspiracy, had been privately put to death at the perfidious instigations of the settlers. " He was the heir," says the old chronicler, '' of all his father's pride and inso- lence, as well as of his malice toward the English ; " he certainly was the heir of his insults and injuries, and the legitimate avenger of his murder. Though he had forborne to take an active part in this hopeless war, yet he received Philip and his broken forces with open arms, and gave them the most generous countenance and sup- port. This at once drew upon him the h<^stility of the English ; and it was determined to strike a signal blow, that should involve both the Sachems in one common rain. A great force was therefore gathered together from Massachusetts, Plymouth and Connecticut, and was sent into the Narrhaganset country in the depth of winter, when the swamps, being frozen and leafless, could be traversed with comparative facility, and would no longer afford dark and impenetra- ble fastnesses to the Indians. Apprehensive of attack, Canonchet had conveyed the greater part of his stores, together with the old, the infirm, the women and chil- dren of his tribe, to a strong fortress, where he and Philip had like- wise drawn up the flower of their forces. This fortress, deemed by the Indians impregnable, was situated upon a rising mound or kind of island, of five or six acres, in the midst of a swamp ; it was con- structed with a degree of judgment and skill vastly superior to what is usually displayed in Indian fortifications, and indicative of the mar- tial genius of these two chieftains. Guided by a renegade Indian, the English penetrated, through De- cember snows, to this stronghold, and came upon the garrison by surprise. The fight was fierce and tumultuous. The assailants were repulsed in their fijst attack, and sevexal of their bravest officers wer« PHILIP OF POKANOKET. Bhot down in tlie act of storming the fortress, sword in hand. The assault was renewed with greater success. A lodgment was effected. The Indians were driven from one post to another. They disputed their ground inch by inch, fighting with the fury of despair. Most of their veterans were cut to pieces ; and after a long and bloody battle, Philip and Canonchet, with a handful of surviving warriors, retreated from the fort, and took refuge in the thickets of the sur- rounding forest. The victors set fire to the wigwams and the fort ; the whole was soon in a blaze ; many of the old men, the women and the children, perished in the flames. This last outrage overcame even the stoicism of the savage. The neighboring woods resounded with the yells of rage and despair uttered by the fugitive warriors as they beheld the destruction of their dwellings, and heard the agonizing cries of their wives and offspring. " The burning of the wigwams,'' says a contem- porary writer, " the shrieks and cries of the women and children, and the yelling of the warriors, exhibited a most horrible and affecting scene, so that it greatly moved some of the soldiers." The same writer cautiously adds, ''they were in much doubt then, and after- ward seriously inquired, whether burning their enemies alive could be consistent with humanity and the benevolent principles of the Gospel."* The fate of the brave and generous Canonchet is worthy of particu-* lar mention ; the last scene of his life is one of the noblest instances on record of Indian magnanimity. Broken down in his power and resources by this signal defeat, yet faithful to his ally and to the hapless cause which he had espoused, he rejected all overtures of peace, offered on condition of betraying Philip and his followers, and declared that "he would fight it out to the last man rather than become a servant to the English." His home being destroyed, his country harassed and laid waste by the incursions of the conquerors, he was obliged to wander away to the banks of the Connecticut, where he formed a rallying point to the whole body of western Indians, and laid waste several of theE]nglish settlements. Early in the spring, he departed on a hazardous expedition, with only thirty chosen men, to penetrate to Seaconck, in the vicinity of Mount Hope, and to procure seed-corn to plant for the sustenance of his troops. This little band of adventurers had passed safely through the Pequod country, and were in the center of the Narrhaganset, resting a^ oome wigwams near Pautucket river, when an alarm was given of an approaching enemy. Having but seven men by him at the time, Canonchet dispatched two of them to the t»p of a neigh- boring hill to bring intelligence of the foe. MS. of tlxeRev. W. Rugglea. g04 8KETCB-B00E Panic-struck by the appearance of a troop of English and Indians rapidly advancing, they fled in breathless terror past their chieftain, without stopping to inform him of the danger. Canonchet sent an- other scout, who did the same. He then sent two more, one of whom, harrying back in confusion and affright, told him that the whole British army was at hand. Canonchet saw there was no choice but immediate flight. He attempted to escape round the hill, but was perceived and hotly pursued by the hostile Indians and a few of the fleetest of the English. Finding the swiftest pursuer close upon his heels, he threw off, first his blanket, then his silver-laced coat and belt of peag, by which his enemies knew him to be Canonchet, -and redoubled the eagerness of pursuit. At length, in dashing through the river, his foot slipped upon a stone, and he fell so deep as to wet his gun. This accident so struck him with despair that, as he afterward confessed, * ' his heart and his bowels turned within him, and he became like a rotten stick, void of strength." T'o such a degree was he unnerved that, being seized by a Pequod Indian within a short distance of the river, he made no resistance, though a man of great vigor of body and boldness of heart. But on being made prisoner the whole pride of his spirit arose within him ; and from that moment we find in the anecdotes given by his ene- mies nothing but repeated flashes of elevated and prince-like hero- ism. Being questioned by one of the English who first came up with him, and who had not attained his twenty-second year, the proud- hearted warrior, looking with lofty contempt upon his youthful countenance, replied, " You are a child — you cannot understand mat- ters of war — let your brother or your chief come — him will I an- swer." Though repeated offers were made to him of his life, on condition of submitting with his nation to the English, yet he rejected them with disdain, and refused to send any proposals of the kind to the great body of his subjects ; saying that he knew none of them would comply. Being reproached with his breach of faith toward the whites, his boast that he would not deliver up a Wampanoag, nor the parings of a Wampanoag's nail, and liis threat that he would burn the English alive in their houses, he disdained to justify him- self, haughtily answering that others were as forward for the war as himself, ' ' and he desired to hear no more thereof. " So noble and unshaken a spirit, so true a fidelity to his cause and his friend, might have touched the feelings of the generous and the brave ; but Canonchet was an Indian, a being toward whom war had no courtesy, humanity no law, religion no compassion — he was condemned to die. The last words of his that are recorded are worthy the greatness of his soul. When sentence of death was passed upon him, he observed, *' that he liked it well, for lie should die before his HP*--- PHILIP OF POKANOKET. 205 heart was soft, or lie had spoken anything unwortliy of himself." His enemies gave him the death of a soldier, for he was shot at Stoningham by three j'oung sachems of his own rank. The defeat of the Narrhaganset fortress and the death of Canon- chet were fatal blows to the fortunes of King Philip. He made an ineffectual attempt to raise a head of war, by stirring up the Mohawks to take arms ; but though possessed of the native talents of a states- man, his arts were counteracted by the superior arts of his enlight- ened enemies, and the terror of their warlike skill began to subdue the resolution of the neighboring tribes. The unfortunate chieftain saw himself daily stripped of power, and his ranks rapialy thinning around him. Some were suborned by the whites ; others fell victims to hunger and fatigue, and to the frequent attacks by which they were harassed. His stores were all captured ; his chosen friends were swept away from before his eyes ; his uncle was shot down by his side ; his sister Avas carried into captivity ; and in one of his nar- row escapes he was compelled to leave his beloved wife and only son to the mercy of the enemy. " His ruin," says the historian, "being thus gradually carried on, his misery was not prevented, but aug- mented thereby ; being himself made acquainted with the sense and experimental feeling of the captivity of his children, loss of friends, slaughter of his subjects, bereavement of all family relations, and being stripped of all outward comforts, before his own life should be taken away." To fill up the measure of his misfortunes, his own followers began to plot against his life, that by sacrificing him they might purchase dishonorable safety. Through treachery, a number of his faithful adherents, the subjects of Wetamoe, an Indian princess of Pocasset, a near kinswoman and confederate of Philip, were betrayed into the hands of the enemy. Wetamoe was among them at the time, and attempted to make her escape by crossing a neighboring river ; either exhausted by swimming, or starved with cold and hunger, she was found dead and naked near the water side. But persecution ceased not at the grave ; even death, the refuge of the wretched, where the wicked commonly cease from troubling, was no protection to this out- cast female, whose great crime was affectionate fidelity to her kins- man and her friend. Her corpse was the object of unmanly and das- tardly vengeance ; the head was severed from the body and set upon a pole, and was thus exposed, at Taunton, to the view of her captive subjects. They immediately recognized the features of their unfor- tunate queen, and were so affected at this barbarous spectacle, that we are told they broke forth into the " most horrid and diabolical lamentations." However Philip had borne up against the complicated miseries and misfortunes that surrounded him, the treachery of his followers seemed to wring his heart and reduce him to despondency. It is said 206 SKETCH-BOO]^. that "lie never rejoiced afterward, nor liad success in any of his de- signs." The spring of hope was broken — the ardor of enterprise was extinguished : he looked around, and all was danger and darkness ; there was no eye to pity, nor any arm that could bring deliverance, With a scanty band of followers, who still remained true to his des perate fortunes, the unhappy Philip wandered back to the vicinity ot Mount Hope, the ancient dwelling of Lis fathers. Here he lurked about, like a specter, among the scenes of former power and pros- perity, now bereft of home, of family, and friend. There needs no better picture of his destitute and piteous situation than that fur- nished by the homely pen of the chronicler, who is unwarily enlisting the feelings of the reader in favor of the hapless warrior whom he reviles. ** Philip," he says, " like a savage wild beast, having been hunted by the English forces through the woods above a hundred miles backward and forward, at last was driven to his own den upon Mount Hope, where he retired, with a few of his best friends, into a swamp, which proved but a prison to keep him fast till the messengers of death came by divine permission to execute vengeance upon him." Even at this last refuge of desperation and despair, a sullen grandeur gathers round his memory. We picture him to ourselves seated among his care-worn followers, brooding in silence over his blasted fortunes, and acquiring a savage sublimity from the wildness and dreariness of his lurking-place. Defeated, l3ut not dismayed — crushed to the earth, but not humiliated — he seemed to grow more haughty beneath disaster, and to experience a fierce satisfaction in draining the last dregs of bitterness. Little minds are tamed and subdued by misfortune ; but great minds rise above it. The very idea of submission awakened the fury of Philip, and he smote to death one of hi§ followers, who proposed an expedient of peace. The brother of the victim made his escape, and in revenge betrayed the retreat of his chieftain. A body of white men and Indians were im- mediately dispatched to the swamp where Philip lay crouched, glar- ing with fury and despair. Before he was aware of their approach they had begun to surround him. In a little while he saw five of his trustiest followers laid dead at his feet ; all resistance was vain ; he rushed forth from his covert and made a headlong attempt at escape, but was shot through the heart by a renegade Indian of his own nation. Such is the scanty story of the brave but unfortunate King Philip ; persecuted while living, slandered and dishonored when dead. If, however, we consider even the prejudiced anecdotes furnished us by his enemies, we may perceive in them traces of amiable and lofty character, sufiicient to awaken sympathy for his fate and respect for his memory. We find that amid all the harassing cares and fero- cious passions of constant warfare he was alive to the softer feelings of connubial love and paternal tenderness and to the generous senti* ~ -"^ - JOHN BULL. 207 ment of friendship. Tlie captivity of his "beloved wife and only son " is mentioned with exultation, as causing him poignant misery : the death of any near friend is triumphantly recorded as a new blow on his sensibilities ; but the treachery and desertion of many of his followers, in whose affections he had confided, is said to have deso- lated his heart and to have bereaved him of all farther comfort. He was a patriot, attaclied to his native soil — a prince true to his sub- jects, and indignant of their wrongs — a soldier, daring in battle, firm in adversity, patient of fatigue, of hunger, of every variety of bodily suffering, and ready to perish in the cause he had espoused. Proud of heart and with an untamable love of natural liberty, he preferred to enjoy it among the beasts of the forests, or in the dismal and fam- ished recesses of swamps and morasses, rather than bow his haughty spirit to submission and live dependent and despised in the ease and luxury of the settlements. With heroic qualities and bold achieve- ments that would have graced a civilized warrior and have rendered him the theme of the poet and the historian, he lived a wanderer and a fugitive in his native land, and went down, like a lonely bark, foundering amid darkness and tempest — without a pitying eye to weep his fall or a friendly hand to record his struggle. JOHN BULL. An old song, made by an aged old pate, Of an old worshipful gentleman who had a great estate, That kept a brave old house at a bountiful rate, And an old porter to relieve the poor at his gate. Witb an old study fill'd full of learned old books, With an old reverend chaplain, you might know him by his looks, With an old buttery-hatch worn quite off the hooks, And an old kitchen that m-aintained half a dozen old cooks. Like an old courtier, etc. Old Song. There is no species of humor in which the English more excel than that which consists in caricaturing and giving ludicrous appella- tions or nicknames. In this way they have whimsically designated not merely individuals but nations ; and in their fondness for push- ing a joke they have not spared even themselves. One would think that in personifying itself, a nation would be *apt to picture some- thing grand, heroic, anc imposing ; but it is characteristic of the peculiar humor of the English, and .of their love for what is blunt, comic, and familiar, that they have embodied their national oddities in the figure of a sturdy, corpulent old fellow, with a three-cornered 208 SKETCH-BOOK, hat, red waistcoat, leather breeches, and stout oaken cudgel. Thus they have taken a singular delight in exhibiting their most private foibles in a laughable point of view ; and have been so successful in their delineation that there is scarcely a being in actual existence more absolutely present to the public mind than that eccentric per- sonage, John Bull. Perhaps the continual contemplation of the character thus drawn of them has contributed to fix it upon the nation, and thus to give reality to what at first may have been painted in a great measure from the imagination. Men are apt to acquire peculiarities that are con- tinually ascribed to them. The common orders of English seem wonderfully captivated with the beau ideal which they have formed of John Bull, and endeavor to act up to the broad caricature that is perpetually before their eyes. Unluckily, they sometimes make their boasted BuUism an apology for their prejudice or grossness ; and this I have especially noticed among those truly home-bred and genuine sons of the soil who have never migrated beyond the sound of Bow- bells. If one of these should be a little uncouth in speech, and apt to utter impertinent trutiis, he confesses that he is a real John Bull, and always speaks his mind. If he now and then flies into an un. reasonable burst of passion about trifles, he observes that John Bull is a choleric old blade, but then his passion is over in a moment, and he bears no malice. If he betrays a coarseness of taste and an insen- sibility to foreign refinements, he thanks Heaven for his ignorance — he is a plain John Bull, and has no relish for frippery and knicknacks. His very proneness to be gulled by strangers and to pay extravagantly for absurdities is excused under the plea of munificence — for John is always more generous than wise. Thus, under the name of John Bull, he will contrive to argue every fault into a merit, and will frankly convict himself of being the honestest fellow in existence. However little, therefore, the character may have suited in the first instance, it has gradually adapted itself to the nation, or rather they have adapted themselves to each other ; and a stranger who wishes to study English peculiarities may gather much valuable information from the innumerable portraits of John Bull, as exhibited in the windows of the caricature-shops. Still, however, he is one of those fertile humorists that are continually throwing out new portraits and presenting different aspects from different points of view ; and, often as he has been described, I cannot resist the temptation to gi^g a slight sketch of him, such as he has met my eye. John Bull, to all appearances, is a plain downright r:i£.tter-of-fact fellow, with much less of poetry about him than rich prose. There is little of romance in his nature, but a vast deal of strong natural feeling. He excels in humor more than in wit ; is jolly rather than gay ; n^elancholy rather than morose ; can easily be moved to a sad JOHN BULL. 209 den tear, or surprised into a broad laugli ; but be loatbes sentiment, and has no turn for ligbt pleasantry. lie is a boon companion, if you allow him to have his humor and to talk about himself ; and he will . stand by a friend in a quarrel, with life and purse, however soundly he may be cudgeled. In this last respect, to tell the truth, he has a propensity to be somewhat too ready. He is a busy-minded personage, who thinks not merely for himself and family, but for all the country round, and is most gene- rally disposed to be everybody's champion. He is continually volun.' teering his services to settle his neighbor's affairs, and takes it in great dudgeon if they engage in any matter of consequence without ask-.' ing his advice ; though he seldom engages in any friendly office of tlio, kind without finishing by getting into a squabble with all parties, and then railing bitterly at their ingratitude. He unluckily took lessons in his youth in the noble science of defense, and having accomplished himself in the use of his limbs and his weapons, and become a per- fect master at boxing and cudgel play, he has had a troublesome life of it ever since. He cannot hear of a quarrel between the most dis- tant of his neighbors, but he begins incontinently to fumble with the head of his cudgel, and consider whether his interest or honor does not require that he should meddle in the broil. Indeed he has ex- tended his relations of pride and policy so completely over the whole country that no event can take place without infringing some of his finely-spun rights and dignities. Couched in his little domain, with these filaments stretching forth in every direction, he is like some choleric, bottle-bellied old spider, who has woven his web over a whole chamber, so that a fly cannot buzz nor a breeze blow without startling his repose and causing him to sally forth wrathfully from his den. Though really a good-hearted, good-tempered old fellow at bottom, yet he is singularly fond of being in the midst of contention. It is one of his peculiarities, however, that he only relishes the beginning of an affray ; he always goes into a fight with alacrity, bat comes out of it grumbling even when victorious : and though no one fights with more obstinacy to carry a contested point, yet, when the battle is over, and he comes to the reconciliation, he is so much taken up with the mere shaking of hands that he is apt to let his antagonist pocket all that they have been quarreling about. It is not, therefore, fightino- that he ought so much to be on his guard against as making friendst It is difficult to cudgel him out of a farthing ; but put him in a good humor and you may bargain him out of all the money in his pocket. He is like a stout ship, which will weather the roughest storm unin- jured, but roll its masts overboard in the succeeding calm. He is a little fond of playing the magnifico abroad ; of pulling out a long purse ; flinging his money bravely about at boxing-matches, Ijorse-rjices, cock-fights, aad carrj^ngahi^h head amon|f *' gentlemen 210 SKETCH-BOOK. of fhe fancy " ; but immediately after one of these jfits of extravagance he will be taken with violent qualms of economy ; stop short at the most trivial expenditure ; talk desperately of being ruined and brought upon the parish ; and in such moods will not pay the smallest trade* man's bill without violent altercation. He is, in fact, the most punc- tual and discontented paymaster in the world ; drawing his coin out of his breeches pocket with infinite reluctance ; paying to the utter- most farthing, but accompanying every guinea with a growl. With all his talk of economy, however, he is a bountiful provider and a hospitable housekeeper. His economy is of a whimsicaj kind, its chief object being to devise how he may afford to be ex- travagant ; for he will begrudge himself a beef steak and pint of port one day, that he may roast an ox whole, broach a liogshead of ale, and treat all his neighbors on the next. His domestic establishment is enormously expensive ; not so much from any great outward parade as from the great consumption of solid beef and pudding, the vast number of followers he feeds and clothes, and his singular disposition to pay hugely for small services. He is a most kind and indulgent master, and, provided his servants humor his peculiarities, flatter his vanity a little now and then, and do not peculate grossly on him before his face, they may manage him to per- fection. Everything that lives on him seems to thrive and grow fat. His house servants are well paid alid pampered, and have little to do. His horses are sleek and lazy, and prance slowly before his state car- riage ; and his house-dogs sleep quietly about the door, and will hardly bark at a house-breaker. His family mansion is an old castellated manor-house, gray with age, and of a most venerable though weather-beaten appearance. It has been built upon no regular plan, but is a vast accumulation of parts, erected in various tastes and ages. The center bears evident traces of Saxon architecture, and is as solid as ponderous stone and old English oak can make it. Like all the relics of that style it is full of obscure passages, intricate mazes, and dusty chambers ; and though these have been partially lighted up in modern days, yet there are many places where you must still grope in the dark. Additions have been made to the original edifice from time to time, and great altera- tions have taken place ; towers and battlements have been erected during wars and tumults ; wings built in time of peace ; and out- houses, lodges, and offices run up according to. the whim or con- venience of different generations, until it has become one of the most spacious, rambling" tenements imaginable. An entire wing is taken up with a family chapel — a reverend pile, that must once have been exceedingly sumptuous, and indeed, in spite of having been altered and simplified at various periods, has still a look of solemn religious pomp. Its walls within are storied with the monuments of John's ancestors ; and it is snugly fitted up with soft cushions and well-lined JOHN BULL, 811 ehairs, where sucli of liis family as are inclined to cliarcll services may doze comfortably in the discharge of their duties. To keep up this chapel has cost John much money ; but he is staunch in his religion, and piqued in his zeal, from the circumstance that many dissenting chapels have been erected in his vicinity, and several of his neighbors with whom he has had quarrels are strong Papists. To do the duties of the chapel he maintains, at a large expense, a pious and portly family chaplain. He is a most learned and decorous personage, and a truly well-bred Christian, who always backs the old gentleman in his opinions, winks discreetly at his little peccadilloes, rebukes the children when refractory, and is of great use in exhorting the tenants to read their Bibles, say their prayers, and, above all, to pay their rents punctually and without grumbling. The family apartments are in a very antiquated taste, somewhat heavy, and often inconvenient, but full of the solemn magnificence of former times ; fitted up with rich though faded tapestry, unwieldy furniture, and loads of massy, gorgeous old plate. The vast fire, places, ample kitchens, extensive cellars, and sumptuous banqueting halls, all speak of the roaring hospitality of days of yore, of which the modern festivity at the manor-house is but a shadow. There are, however, complete suites of rooms apparently deserted and time- worn, and towers and turrets that are tottering to decay, so that in high winds there is danger of their tumbling about the ears of the household. John has frequently been advised to have the old 'edifice thoroughly overhauled, and to have some of the useless parts pulled down, and the others strengthened with their materials ; but the old gentleman always grows testy on this subject. He swears the house is an excel- lent house — -that it is tight and weather-proof, and not to be shaken by tempests — that it has stood for several hundred years, and therefore is not likely to tumble down now — that as to its being inconvenient, his family is accustomed to the inconveniences and would not be ccan- fortable without them — that as to its unwieldy size and irregular con- struction, these result from its being the growth of centuries, and being improved by the wisdom of every generation — that an old family like his requires a large house to dwell in ; new upstart families may live in modern cottages and snug boxes, but an old English family should inhabit an old English manor-house. If you point out any part of the building as superfluous, he insists that it is material to the strength or decoration of the rest and the harmony of the whole and swears that the parts are so built into each other that, if you pull down one, you run the risk of having the whole about your ears. The secret of the matter is that John has a great disposition to protect and patronize. He thinks it indispensable to the dignity of an ancient and honorable family to be bounteous in its appointments 2li SEETCH-BOO^ and to be eaten np by dependents ; and so, partly from pride and partly from kind-heartedness, he makes it a rule always to give shel- ter and maintenance to his superannuated servants. The consequence is that, like many other venerable family estab- Tshments, his manor is encumbered by old retainers whom he cannot ' urn off, and an old style which he cannot lay down, Ifis mansion is like a great hospital of invalids, and, with all its magnitude, is not a whit too large for its inhabitants. Not a nook or corner but is of use in housing some useless personage. Groups of veteran beef -eaters, gouty pensioners, and retired heroes of the buttery and the larder are seen lolling about its walls, crawling over its lawns, dozing under its trees, or sunning themselves upon the benches at its doors. Every ©ffice and out-house is garrisoned by these supernumeraries and their families ; for they are amazingly prolific, and when they die off are sure to leave John a legacy of hungry mouths to be provided for. A mattock cannot be struck against the most moldering tumble-down tower, but out pops, from some cranny or loophole, the gray pate of some superannuated hanger-on, who has lived at John's expense all his life, and makes the most grievous outcry at their pulling down the roof from over the head of a worn-out servant of the family. This is an appeal that John's honest heart never can withstand ; so that a man who Jias faithfully eaten his beef and pudding all his life is sure to be rewarded with a pipe and tankard in his old days. A great part of his park also is turned into paddocks, where his broken down chargers are turned loose to graze undisturbed for the remainder of their existence — a worthy example of grateful recollec- tion, which, if some of his neighbors were to imitate, would not be to their discredit. Indeed, it is one of his great pleasures to point out these old steeds to his visitors, to dwell on their good qualities, extol their past services, and boast, with some little vainglory, of the perilous adventures and hardy exploits through which they have car- ried him. He is given, however, to indulge his veneration for family usages and family encumbrances to a whimsical extent. His manor is in- fested by gangs of gypsies ; yet he will not suffer them to be driven off, because they have infested the place time out of mind, and have been regular poachers upon every generation of the family. He will scarcely permit a dry branch to be lopped from the great trees that surround the house, lest it should molest the rooks that have bred there for centuries. Owls have taken possession of the dovecote ; but they are hereditary owls, and must not be disturbed Swallows have nearly choked up every chimney with their nests ; martins build in every frieze and cornice ; crows flutter about the towers and perch on every weathercock ; and old gray-headed rats may be seen in every quarter of the house, running in and out of their holes undauntedly in broad daylight. In short, John has sucb, a reverence for eyerj< jOBN BtfLL, 21S ^hing that has been long in the family that he will not hear even of abuses being reformed, because they are good old family abuses. All these whims and habits have concurred woefully to drain the old gentleman's purse ; and as he prides himself on punctuality in money matters, aud'wishes to maintain his credit iu the neighborhood, they have caused him great perplexity in meeting his engagements. This too has been increased by the altercations and heartburnings which are contmually taking place in his family. His cliildren have been brought up to different callings, and are of different ways of think- ing ; and as they have always been allowed to speak their minds freely, thev do not fail to exercise the privilege most clamorously in the present posture of his affairs. Some stand up for the honor of the race, and are clear that the old establishment should be kept up in all its state, whatever may be the cost ; others, who are more pru- dent and considerate, entreat the old gentleman to retrench his ex- penses and to put his whole system of housekeeping on a more mode- rate footing. He has indeed', at times, seemed inclined to listen to their opinions, but their wholesome advice has been completely de. feated by the obstreperous conduct of one of his sons. This is a noisy rattle-pated fellow of rather low habits, who neglects his business to frequent ale-houses— is the orator of village clubs, and a complete oracle among the poorest of his father's tenants. No sooner does he hear anv of his brothers mention reform or retrenchment than up he jumps, takes the words out of their mouths, and roars out for an overturn. When his tongue is once going, nothing can stop it. He mnts about the room, hectors the old man about his spendthrift prac- tices, ridicules his tastes and pursuits ; insists that he shall turn the old servants out of doors, give the broken-down horses to the hounds, send the fat chaplain packing, and take a field-preacher in his place — nay, that the whole family mansion shall be leveled with the ground, and a plain one of brick and mortar built in its place. He rails at every social entertainment and family festivity, and skulks away growling to the ale-house whenever an equipage drives up to the door. Though constantly complaining of the emptiness of his purse, yet he scruples not to spend all his pocket-money in these tavern convocations, and even runs up scores for the liquor over which he preaches about his father's extravagance. It may readily be imagined how little such thwarting agrees with the old 'cavalier's fiery temperament. He has become so irritable from repeated crossings that the mere mention of retrenchment or reform is a signal for a brawl between him and the tavern oracle. As the latter is too sturdy and refractory for paternal discipline, hav- ing grown out of all fear of the cudgel, they have frequent scenes of wordy warfare, which at times run so high that John is fain to call in the aid of his son Tom, an officer who has served abroad, but is at present living at home on half pay. This last is sure to «tand by th© S14 SKETCH-BOOK old gentleman, riglit or wrong ; likes nothing so mucli as a racketing, roistering life ; and is ready at a wink or nod to out saber, and floarisli it over the orator's head, if he dares to array himself against paternal authority. These family dissensions, as usual, have got abroad, and are rare food for scandal in John's neighborhood. People begin to look wise and shake their heads whenever his affairs are mentioned. They all " hope that matters are not so bad with him as represented ; but when a man's own children begin to rail at his extravagance, things must be badly managed. They understand he is mortgaged over head and ears, and is continually dabbling with money-lenders. He is certainly an open-handed old gentleman, but they fear he has lived too fast ; indeed, they never knew any good come of this fondness for hunting, racing, reveling, and prize-fight. In short, Mr. Bull's estate is a very fine one, and has been in the family a long while ; but for all that, they have known many finer estates come to the hammer." What is worst of all is the effect which these pecuniary embar- rassments and domestic feuds have had on the poor man himself. Instead of that jolly round corporation and smug rosy face which he used to present, he has of late become as shriveled and shrunk as a frost-bitten apple. His scarlet gold-laced waistcoat, which bellied out so bravely in those prosperous days when he sailed before the wind, now hangs loosely about him like a mainsail in a calm. His leather breeches are all in folds and wrinkles, and apparently have much ado to hold up the boots that yawn on both sides of his once sturdy legs. Instead of strutting about as formerly, with his three-cornered hat on one side ; flourishing his cudgel, and bringing it down every mo< ment with a hearty thump upon the ground ; looking every one stur- dily in the face, and trolling out a stavc of a catch or a drinking song ; he now goes about whistling thoughtfully to himself, with his head drooping down, his cudgel tucked under his arm, and his hands thrust to the bottom of his breeches pockets, which are evidenily empty. Such is the plight of honest John Bull at present ; yet for all this, the old fellow's spirit is as tall and as gallant as ever. If you drop the least expression of sympathy or concern, he takes fire in an in- stant ; swears that he is the richest and stoutest fellow in the coun- try ; talks of laying out large sums to adorn his house or to buy another estate ; and, with a valiant swagger and grasping of his cudgel, longs exceedingly to have another bout at quarterstaff. Though there may be something rather Avhimsical in all this, yet I confess I cannot look upon John's si^ation without strong feelings of interest. Vith all his odd humors and obstinate prejudices, he is a sterling-hearted old blade. He may not be so wonderfully fine a fellow as he thinks himself, but he is at least twice as good as hig TEE PRIDE OF THE VILLAGE, 215 neiglibors represent him. His virtues are all his own ; all plain, homebred, and unaffected. His very faults smack of the raciness of his good qualities. His extravagance savors of his generosity, liis quarrelsomeness of his courage, his credulity of his open faith, his vanity of his pride, and his bluntness of his sincerity. They are all the redundancies of a rich and liberal character. He is like his own oak ; rough without, but sound and solid within ; whose bark abounds with excrescences in proportion to the growth and grandeur of the timber ; and whose branches make a fearful groan- ing and murmuring in the least storm, from their very magnitude and luxuriance. There is something, too, in the appearance of his old family mansion that is extremely poetical and picturesque ; and, as long as it can be rendered comfortably habitable, I should almost tremble to see it meddled with, during the present conflict of tastes and opinions. Some of his advisers are no doubt good architects, that might be of service j but many, I fear, are mere levelers, who, when they had cnce got to work with their mattocks on the venerable edifice, would never stop until they had brought it to the ground, and perhaps buried themselves among the ruins. All that I wish is that John's present troubles may teach him more prudence in future ; ihat he may cease to distress his mind about other people's affairs ; that he may give up the fruitless attempt to promote the good of his neighbors and the peace and happiness of the world by dint of the cudgel .; "^hat he may remain quietly at home ; gradually get his house into repair • cultivate bis rich estate according to his fancy ; husband his income — if he thinks proper ; bring his unruly vjhildren into order — if he can ; renew the jovial scenes of ancient prosperity ; and long enjoy, on his paternal lands, a green, an honorable, and a merry old age. THE PRIDE OF THE VILLAGE. May no wolf howie : no screech-owle stir / A wing about thy sepulchre ! No boysterous winds or storm ;s come hither, 'i'o starve cr wi'^her Thy soft sweet earth ! but, like a spring, Love keep it ever flourishing. Hereick. Tit the course of an excursion through one of the remote counties of England, I had struck into one of those cross-roads that lead through the more secluded parts of the country, and stopped one afternoon at a village, the situation of which was beautifully rural and retired. There was an air of primitive simplicity about its inhabitants not to 216 SKETCH-BOOK, be found in fhe villages wliich lie on the great coach roads. I deter, mined to pass the night there, and having taken an early dinner, strolled out to enjoy the neighboring scenery. My ramble, as is usually the case with travelers, soon led me to the church, which stood at a little distance from the village. Indeed, it was an object of some curiosity, its oid tower being completely over- run with ivy, so that only liere and there a ^^utting buttress, an angle of gi:'ay wall, or a fantastically carved ornament peered through the verdant covering. It was u lovely evening. V^ie early part of the day had been dark and showery, buu in 'he afternoon it had cleared up ; and though sullen clouds still Iiung over head, yet there was a broad tract of golden sky in the west, from which the setting sun gleamed through the dripping leaves, and lit up all natura into a melancholy smile. It seemed like the parting hour of a good Chris- tian smiling on the sins and sorrows of the world, and giving, in the serenity of his decline, an assurance that he will rise again in glory. I had seated myself on a half -sunken tombstone, and was musing, as one is apt to do at this sober-thoughted hour, on past scenes and early friends — on thos^ who were distant, and those who were dead —and indulghig in thr/G kind of melancholy fancying which has in it something sweeter even than pleasure. Every now and then the stroke of a bell from the neighboring tower fell on my ear ; its tones were in unison with the scene, and, instead of jarring, chimed in with my feelings ; and it was some time before I recollected that it must be tolling the knell A some new tenant of the tomb. Presently I saw c funeral train moving across the village green ; it wound slowly along the lane ; was lost, and reappeared through the breaks of the hedges, until it passed the place where I was sitting. The pall was supported by young girls dressed in white ; and another about the age ol seventeen walked before, bearing a chaplet of white flowers ; a token that the deceased was a young and unmarried female. The corpse was followed by the parents. They were a ven- erable couple, of the better order of peasantry. The father seemed to repress his feelings ; but his fixed eye, contracted brow, and deeply-furrowed face showed the struggle that was passing within. His wife hung on his arm, and wept aloud with the convulsive bursts of a mother's sorrow. I followed the funeral into the church. The bier was placed in the center aisle, and the chaplet of white flowers, with a pair of white gloves, were hung over the seat which the deceased had occupied. Every one knows the soul-subduing pathos ot the funeral service : for who is so fortunate as never to have followed some one he ha& loved to the tomb ? but when performed over the remains of inno- cence and beauty, thus laid low in the bloom of existence — what can be more affecting ? At that simple but most solemn consignment of the body to the grave—" Earth to earth — ashes to ashes — dast tp THIS PBIDE OF TEE VILLAGE 217 dust ! " the tears of the youthful companions of the deceased flowed unrestrained. The father still seemed to struggle with his feelings, and to comfort himself with the assurance that the dead are blessed which die in the Lord ; but the mother only thought of her child as a flower of the field, cut down and withered in the midst of its sweet- ness : she was like Rachel, " mourning over her children, and would not be comforted." On returning to the inn, I learned the whole story of the deceased. It was a simple one, and such as has often been told. She had been the beauty and pride of the village. Her father had once been an opulent farmer, but was reduced in circumstances. This was an only child, and brought up entirely at home, in the simplicity of rural life She had been the pupil of the village pastor, the favorite lamb of hi- little flock. The good man watched over her education with paternal care ; it was limited, and suitable to the sphere in which she was to move ; for he only sought to make her an ornament to her station in life, not to raise her above it. The tenderness and indulgence of her parents, and the exemption from all ordinary occupations, had fos- tered a natural grace and delicacy of character that accorded with the fragile loveliness of her form. She appeared like some tender plant of the garden, blooming accidentally amid the hardier natives of the fields. The superiority of her charms was felt and acknowledged by her companions, but without envy ; for it was surpassed by the unas suming gentleness and winning kindness of her manners. It might be truly said of her, — This is the prettiest low-born lass that ever Ean on the greensward : nothing she does or seems But smacks of something greater than herself ; Too noble for this place. luc! \dllage was one of those sequestered spots which still retain some vestiges of old English customs. It had its rural festivals and holiday pastimes, and still kept up some faint observance of the once popular rites of May. These, indeed, had been promoted by its present pastor, who was a lover of old customs, and one of those simple Christians that think their mission fulfilled by promoting jpy on earth and good-will among mankind. Under his auspices the May-pole stood from year to year in the center of the village green : on May-day it was decorated with garlands and streamers ; and a queen or lady of the May was appointed, as in former times, to pre- side at the sports and distribute the prizes and rewards. The pic- turesque situation of the village and the fancifulness of its rustic fetes would often attract the notice of casual visitors. Among these on one May -day was a young oflBcer, whose regiment had been re- cently quartered in the neighborhood. He was charmed with thp 218 8KETGE-B00K native taste that pervaded tliis village pageant ; but, above all, with the dawning loveliness of the queen of May. It was the village favorite who was crowned with flowers, and blushing and smiling in all the beautiful confusion of girlish difhdence and delight. The art- lessness of rural habits enabled him readily to make her acquaintance ; he gradually won his way into her intimacy, and paid his court to her in that unthinking way in which young officers are too apt to trifle with rustic simplicity. There was nothing in his advances to startle or alarm. He never even talked of love ; but there are modes of making it more eloquent than language, and which convey it subtilely and irresistibly to the lieart. The beam of the eye, the tone of the voice, the thousand tendernesses which emanate from every word, and look, and action — these form the true eloquence of love, and can always be felt and un- derstood, but never described. Can we wonder that they should readily win a heart young, guileless, and susceptible? As to her, she loved almost unconsciously ; she scarceJy inquired what was the growing passion that was absorbing every thought and feeling, or what were to be its consequences. She, indeed, looked not to the future. When present, his looks and words occupied her whole at- tention ; when absent, she thought but of what had passed at their recent interview. She would wander with him tlirough the green lanes and rural scenes of the vicinity. He taught her to see new beauties in nature ; he talk*^d in the language of polite and cultivated life, and breathed into her jar the witcheries of romance and poetry. Perhaps there could not have been a passion between the sexes more pure than this innocent girl's. The gallant figure of her youth- ful admirer and the splendor of his military attire might at first have charmed her eye ; but it was not these that had c ptivated her heart. Her attachment had something in it of idolatry ; she looked up to him as to a being of a superior order. She felt in his society the enthusiasm of a mind naturally delicate and poetical, and now first awakened to a keen perception of the beautiful and grand. Of the sordid distinctions of rank and fortune she thought nothing ; it was the difference of intellect, of demeanor, of manners, from those of the rustic society to which she liad been accustomed, that elevated him in her opinion. She would listen to him with charmed ear and downcast look of mute delight, and her cheek would mantle with en- thusiasm ; or if ever she ventured a shy glance of timid admiration, it was quickly withdrawn, and she would sigh and blush at the idea of her comparative unworthiness. Her lover was equally impassioned ; but his passion was mingled with feelings of a coarser nature. He had begun the connection in levity ; for he had often heard his brother officers boast of their vil- lage conquests, and thought some triumph of the kind necessary to his reputation as a ujan of spirit, ^iit he was too full of youthfui TBE PRIDB OF TBE YILLAGK 219 fervor. His heart had not yet been rendered sufficiently cold and selfish by a wandering and ditjsipated life : it caught fire from the very flame it sought to kindle ; and before he was aware of the na- ture of his situation, he became really in love. What was he to do ? There were the old obstacles which so ince?^-- santly occur in these heedless attachments. His rank in life — tii prejudices of titled connections — his dependence upon a proud an. > unyielding father — all forbade him to think of matrimony ; — but when he looked down upon this innocent being, so tender and con- fiding, there was a purity in her manners, a blamelessness in her life, and a bewitching modesty in" her looks, that awed down every licentious feeling. In vaivi did he try to fortify himself by a thou- sand heartless examples of men of fashion, and to chill the glow of generous sentiment with that cold derisive levity with which he had ueard them talk of female virtue ; whenever he came into her pres- ence, she was still surrounded by that mysterious but impassive charm of virgin purity, in whose hallowed sphere no guilty thought taji live. The sudden arrival of orders for the regiment to repair to the con- tinent completed the confusion of his mind. He remained for a «hort time in a state of the most painful irresolution ; he hesitated to tommunicate the tidings, until the day for marching was at hand ; tvhen he gave her the intelligence in the course of an evening ram- ble. The idea of parting had never before occurred to her. It broke in it once upon her dream of felicity ; she looked upon it as a sudden ■ind insurmountable evil, and wept with the guileless simplicity of a child. He drew her to his bosom and kissed the tears from her soft cheek, nor did he meet with a repulse, for there are moments of mingled sorrow and tenderness which hallow the caresses of affec tion. He was naturally impetuous, and the sight of beauty appai- cntly yielding in his arms, the confidence of his power over her, an; the dread of losing her forever, all conspired to overwhelm his bet- ter feelings — he ventured to propose that she should leave her home and be the companion of his fortunes. He was quite a novice in seduction, and blushed and faltered at ais own baseness ; but, so innocent of mind was his intended victim, that she was at first at a loss to comprehend his meaning ; — and why she should leave her native village and the humble roof of her parents. When at last the nature of his proposals flashed upon her pure mind, the effect was withering. She did not weep — she did not break forth into reproaches — she said not a word — but she shrunk back aghast as from a viper, gave him a look of anguish that pierced to his very soul, and clasping her hands in agony, fled, as if for refuge, to her father's cottage. The oflSicer retired, confounded, humiliate as they break in upon his rarely-invaded liaant ; the kingfisher watching them sus- piciously from his dry tree that overhangs the deep black mill-pond, in the gorge of the hills ; the tortoise letting himself slip sideways from oS the stone or log on which he is sunning himself ; and the panic-struck frog plumping in headlong as they approach, and spreading an alarm throughout the watery world around. I recollect also that, after toiling and watching and creeping about for the greater part of a day with scarcely any success, in spite of all tU 8EETGE-B00K our admirable apparatus, a lubberly country urcbin came down from tbe bills witb a rod made from, a brancb of a tree, a few yards of twine, and, as beaven sball belp me ! I believe a crooked pin for a book, baited witb a vile eartb-worm — and in balf an bour cauglit more fisb tban we bad nibbles tbrougbout tbe day. But above all I recollect tbe ' ' good, bonest, wbolesome, bungry " repast, wbicb we made under a beacb-tree just by a spring of pure sweet water tbat stole out of tbe side of a bill ; and bow, wlien it was over, one of tbe party read old Izaak Walton's scene witb tbe milk-maid, wliile I lay on tbe grass and built castles in a briglit pile of clouds, until I fell asleep. All tbis may appear like mere egotism; yet I cannot refrain from uttering tbese recollections, wbicb are pass- ing like a strain of music over my mind, and bave been called up by an agroeable scene wbicb I witnessed not long since. In a morning's stroll along tbe banks of tbe Alun, a beautiful little stream wbicb flows down from tbe Welsb bills and tbrows itself into tbe Dee, my attention was attracted to a group seated on tbe margin. On approacbing, I found it to consist of a veteran angler and two rustic disciples. Tbe former was an old fellow witb a wooden leg, witb clotbes very mucb but very carefully patcbed, betokening pov- erty, bonestly come by, and decently maintained. His face bore tbe marks of former storms but present fair weatber ; its furrows bad been worn into a babitual smile ; bis iion-gray locks bung about bis ears, and be bad altogetber tbe good-bumored air of a constitutional pbilosopber wbo was disposed to take tbe world as it went. One of bis companions was a ragged wigbt, witb tbe skulking look of an arrant poacber, and I'll warrant could find bis way to any gentleman's fisb-pond in tbe ueigbborbood in tbe darkest nigbt. Tbe otlier was a tall, awkward country lad, witb a lounging gait, and apparently Bomewbat of a rustic beau. Tbe old man was busied examining tbe maw of a trout wbicb be bad just killed, to discover by its contents Wbat insects were seasonable for bait ; and was lecturing on tbe sub- ject to bis companions, wbo appeared to listen witb infinite deference. I have a kind feeling toward all " brotbers of tbe angle," ever since I read Izaak Walton. Tliey are men, be afiirms, of a "mild, sweet, and peaceable spirit ; " and my esteem for tliem lias been increased since I met witb an old ''Tretyse of fisbing witb tbe Angle," in wbicb are set fortb many of tbe maxims of tlieir inoffensive fraternity. " Take goode bede," saytb tbis bonest little tretyse, "tbat in going about your disportes ye open no man's gates but tbat ye sbet tbem again. Also ye sball not use tbis foresaid crafti disport for no cove- tousness to tbe increasing and sparing of your money only, but prin- cipally for your solace and to cause tbe beltb of your body and specyally of your soul<^"* ■•From this same treatise it would appear that angling is a more industrious and oevout employment than it is generally considered. " For when ye purpose to go THE ANGLER. S35 I thought that I could perceive in the veteran angler before me an exemplification of what I had read ; and there was a cheerful con- tentedness in his looks that quite drew me toward him. I could not but remark the gallant manner in which he stumped from one part of the brook to another, waving his rod in the air, to keep the line from dragging on the ground or catching among the bushes, and the adroitness with which he would throw his fly to any particular places sometimes skimming it lightly along a little rapid, sometimes casting it into one of those dark holes made by a twisted root or overhanging bank, in which the large trout are apt to lurk. In the meanwhile he was giving instructions to his two disciples : showing them the man- ner in which they should handle their rods, fix their flies, and play them along the surface of the stream. The scene brought to my mind the instructions of the sage Piscator to his scholar. The country around was of that pastoral kind which Walton is fond of describing. It was a part of the great plain of Cheshire, close by the beautiful vale of Gessford, and just where the inferior Welsh hills begin to swell up from among fresh-smelling meadows. The day too, like that recorded in his work, was mild and sunshiny ; with now and then a soft drooping shower, that sowed the whole earth with dia- monds. I soon fell into conversation with the old angler, and was so much entertained that, under pretext of receiving instructions in his art, I kept company with him almost the whole day, wandering along the banks of the stream and listening to his talk. He was very commun- icative, having all the easy garrulity of cheerful old age ; and I fancy was a little flattered by having an opportunity of displaying his piscatory lore ; for who does not like now and then to play the sage? He had been much of a rambler in his day, and had passed some years of his youth in America, particularly in Savannah, where he had entered into trade and had been ruined by the indiscretion of a partner. He had afterward experienced many ups and downs in life until he got into the navy, where his leg was carried away by a cannon-ball at the battle of Camperdown. This was the only stroke) of real good fortune he had ever experienced, for it got him a pension, which, together with some small paternal property, brought him in a revenue of nearly forty pounds. On this he retired to his native village, where he lived quietly and independently, and devoted the remainder of his life to the " noble art of angling." I found that he had read Izaak Walton attentively, and he seemed ' r on your disportes in fishynge, ye will not desyre greatlye many persons with you, wluch might let you of your game. And that ye may serve God devoutly in sayinge effectually your customable prayers. And thus doying, ye shall eschew and also avoyde many vices, as ydleness, which is a principall cause to induce man to many (Uher vices, as it is right well known." IRVING 1—8 226 SKETCH-BOOK. to have imbibed all Ms simple frankness and prevalent good humor. Though he had been sorely buffeted about the world, he was satisfied that the world in itself was good and beautiful. Though he had been as roughly used in different countries as a poor sheep that is fleeced by every hedge and thicket, yet he spoke of every nation with candor and kindness, appearing to look only on the good side of things ; and above all, he was almost the only man I had ever met with who had been an unfortunate adventurer in America, and had honesty and magnanimity enough to take the fault to his own door, and not to curse the country. The lad that was receiving his instructions I learned was the son and heir apparent of a fat old widow, who kept the village inn, and of course a youth of some expectation, and much courted by the idle, gentleman-like personages of the place. In taking him under his care, therefore, the old man had probably an eye to a privileged cor- ner in the tap-room and an occasional cup of cheerful ale free of ex- pense. There is certainly something in angling if we could forget, which anglers are apt to do, the cruelties and tortures inflicted on worms and insects, that tends to produce a gentleness of spirit and a pure serenity of mind. As the English are methodical even in their rec- reations and are the most scientific of sportsmen, it has been reduced among them to perfect rule and system. Indeed, it is an amusement peculiarly adapted to the mild and cultivated scenery of England, where every roughness has been softened away from the landscape. It is delightful to saunter along those limpid streams which wander, like veins of silver, through the bosom of this beautiful country ; leading one through a diversity of small home scenery, sometimes winding through ornamented grounds, sometimes brimming along through rich pasturage, where the fresh green is mingled with sweet- smelling flowers, sometimes venturing in sight of villages and ham- lets, and then running capriciously away into shady retirements. The sweetness and serenity of nature and the quiet watchfulness of the sport gradually bring on pleasant fits of musing, which are now and then agreeably interrupted by the song of a bird, the distant whistle of the peasant, or perhaps the vagary of some fish, leaping out of the still water and skimming transiently about its glassy sur- face. "When I would beget content," says Isaak Walton, "and in- crease confidence in the power and wisdom and providence of Al- mighty God, I will walk the meadows by some gliding stream and there contemplate the lilies that take no care, and those very many other little living creatures that are not only created, but fed (man knows not how) by the goodness of the God of nature, and therefore trust in him." I cannot forbear to give another quotation from one of tho??^ •»- cient champions of angling, which breathes the same innocent aod happy Bpirit : TBE ANOLEB. 827 Let me live harmlessly, and near the brink Of Trent or Avon have a dwelling-place ; Where I may see my quill, or cork down sink, With eager bite of Pike, or Bleak, or Dace. And on the world and my creator think ; While some men strive ill-gotten goods t' embrace' And others spend their time in base excess Of wine, or worse, in war of wantonness. Let them that will these pastimes still pursue. And on such pleasing fancies feed their filV So I the fields and meadows green may view, And daily by fresh rivers walk at will, Among the daisies and the violets blue, Red hyacinth and yellow daffodil.* On parting witli the old angler I inquired after his place of abode, and happening to be in the neighborhood of the village a few even- ings afterward I had the curiosity to seek him out. I found him living in a small cottage containing only one room, but a perfect curi- osity in its method and arrangement. It was on tlie skirts of the village, on a green bank, a little back from the road, with a small garden in front, stocked with kitchen-herbs and adorned with a few Sowers. The whole front of the cottage was overrun with a honey- suckle. On the top was a ship for a weathercock. The interior was fitted up in a truly nautical style, his ideas of comfort and conveni- ence having been acquired on the berth- deck of a man-of-war. A hammock was slung from the ceiling, which in the day-time was lashed up so as to take but little room. From the center of the cham- ber hung a model of a ship, of his own workmanship. Two or three chairs, a table, and a large sea-chest, formed the principal mov- ables. About the wall were stuck up naval ballads, such as. Admiral Hosier's Ghost, All in the Downs, and Tom Bowling, intermingled with pictures of sea-fights, among which the battle of Camperdown held a distinguished place. The mantelpiece was decorated with sea- shells, over which hung a quadrant, flanked by two wood-cuts of most bitter-looking naval commanders. His implements for angling were carefully disposed on nails and hooks about the room. On a shelf was arranged his library, containing a work on angling, much worn ; a Bible covered with canvass, an odd volume or two of voy- ages, a nautical almanac, and a book of songs. His family consisted of a large black cat with one eye and a parrot which he had caught and tamed and educated himself in the course of one of his voyages, and which uttered a variety of sea phrases with the hoarse rattling tone of a veteran boatswain. The establish- ment reminded me of that of the renowned Robinson Crusoe ; it was kept in neat order, everything being " stowed away " with the regu- * J. Davors. SSS BKETGH-BOOK. larity of a sMp of war ; and lie informed me fhat he "scoured the deck every morning and swept it between meals." I found him seated on a bench before the door, smoking his pipe in the soft evening sunshine. His cat was purring soberly on the threshold, and his parrot describing some strange evolutions in an iron ring that swung in the center of his cage. He had been angling all day, and gave me a history of his sport with as much minuteness as a general would talk over a campaign ; being particularly ani- mated in relating the manner in which he had taken a large trout, which had completely tasked all his skill and wariness, and which he had sent as a trophy to mine hostess of the inn. How comforting it is to see a cheerful and contented old age, and to behold a poor fellow like this, after being tempest-tossed through life, safely moored in a snug and quiet harbor in the evening of his days ! His happiness, however, sprung from within himself and was independent of external circumstances, for he had that inexhaus- tible good nature which is the most precious gift of Heaven ; spread- ing itself like oil over the troubled sea of thought and keeping the mind smooth and equable in the roughest weather. On inquiring farther about him I learned that he was a universal favorite in the village and the oracle of the tap-room ; where he de- lighted the rustics with his songs, and, like Sindbad, astonished them with his stories of strange lands, and shipwrecks, and sea-fights. He was much noticed too by gentlemen sportsmen of the neighbor- hood ; had taught several of them the art of angling, and was a privileged visitor to their kitchens. The whole tenor of his life was quiet and inoffensive, being principally passed about the neighboring streams when the weather and season were favorable, and at other times he employed himself at home, preparing his fishing tackle for the next campaign, or manufacturing rods, nets, and flies, for his pa- trons and pupils among the gentry. He was a regular attendant at church on Sundays, though he gen- erally fell asleep during the sermon. He had made it his particular request that when he died he should be buried in a green spot which he could see from his seat in church, and which he had marked out ever since he was a boy, and had thought of when far from home on the raging sea, in danger of being food for the fishes — it was the spot where his father and mother had been buried. I have done, for I fear that my reader is growing weary ; but I could not refrain from drawing the picture of this worthy " brother of the angle," who has made me more than ever in love with the theory, though I fear I shall never be adroit in the practice of his art ; and I will conclude this rambling sketch in the words of honest Izaak Walton, by craving the blessing of St. Peter's master upon my reader, ** and upon all that are true lovers of virtue, and dare trust in his providence and be quiet, and go a angling." THE LEGEND OF BlEBl^T HOLLOW. 229 THE LEGEND OF SLEEPY HOLLOW. (found among the papers of the late DIEDRICH KNICKER- BOCKER.) A pleasing land of drowsy head it was, Of dreams that wave before the half-shut eye ; And of gay castles in the clouds that pass, For ever flushing round a summer sky. Castle of Indolence. In tlie bosom of one of those spacious coves wliicli indent tlie east- ern shore of the Hudson, at that broad expansion of the river de- nominated by the ancient Dutch navigators the Tappaan Zee, and where they always prudently shortened sail and implored the protection of St. Nicholas when they crossed, there lies a small market town or rural port, which by some is called Greensburg, but which is more generally and properly known by the name of Tarry Town. This name was given it, we are told, in former days by the good house- wives of the adjacent qountry, from the -inveterate propensity of their husbands to linger about the village tavern on market days. Be that as it may, I do not vouch for the fact, but merely advert to it for the sake of being precise and authentic. Not far from this village, perhaps about three miles, there is a little valley, or rather lap of land among high hills, which is one of the quietest places in the whole world. A small brook glides through it, with just murmur enough to lull one to repose ; and the occasional whistle of a quail or tapping of a woodpecker is almost the only sound that ever breaks in upon the uniform tranquillity. I recollect that, when a stripling, my first exploit in squirrel- shoot- ing was in a grove of tall walnut trees that shaded one side of the valley. I had wandered into it at noon-time, when all nature is pecu- liarly quiet, and was startled by the roar of my own gun as it broke the Sabbath stillness around, and was prolonged and reverberated by the angry echoes. If ever I should wish for a retreat whither I might steal from the world and its distractions, and dream quietly away the remnant of a troubled life, I know of none more promising than this little valley. From the listless repose of the place, and the peculiar character of its inhabitants, who are descendants from the original Dutch settlers, this sequestered glen has long been known by the name of Sleepy Hollow, and its rastic lads are called the Sleepy Hollow Boys throughout all the neighboring country. A drowsy, dreamy influ- ence seems to hang over the land, and to pervade the very atmos- phere. Some say that the place was bewitched by a high German doctor during the early days of the settlement ; others, that an. old 1^80 SKETCH-BOOK. - Indian chief, tlie prophet or wizard of his tribe, held his powwows there before the country was discovered by Master Hendrick Hudson. Certain it is, the place still continues under the sway of some witch- ing power, that holds a spell over the minds of the good people, causing them to walk in a continual revery. They are given to alj kinds of marvelous beliefs ; are subject to trances and visions, and frequently see strange sights, and hear music and voices in the air. The whole neighborhood abounds with local tales, haunted spots, and twilight superstitions ; stars shoot and meteors glare oftener across the valley than in any other part of the country, and the night-mar© with her whole nine fold seems to make it the favorite scene of her gambols. The dominant spirit, however, that haunts this enchanted region, and seems to be commander-in-chief of all the powers of the air, is the apparition of a figure on horseback without a head. It is said by some to be the ghost of a Hessian trooper, whose head had been car- ried away by a cannon-ball in some nameless battle during the Revo- lutionary war, and who is ever and anon seen by the country folk hurrying along in the gloom of night as if on the wings of the wind. His haunts are not confined to the valley, but extend at times to the adjacent roads, and especially to the vicinity of a church that is at no great distance. Indeed, certain of the most authentic historians of those parts, who have been careful in collecting and collating the loating facts concerning this specter, allege that the body of the trooper having been buried in the churchyard, the ghost rides forth to the scene of battle in nightly quest of his head, and that the rush- ing speed with which he sometimes passes along the hollow, like a midnight blast, is owing to his being belated and in a hurry to get back to the churchyard before daybreak. Such is the general purport of this legendary superstition, which has furnished materials for many a wild story in that region of shad- ows ; and the specter is known at all the country firesides by the name of The Headless Horseman of Sleepy Hollow. It is remarkable that the visionary propensity I have mentioned is not confined to the native inhabitants of the valley, but is uncon- sciously imbibed by every one who resides there for a time. How- ever wideawake they may have been before they entered that sleepy region, they are sure in a little time to inhale the witching influence of the air, and begin to grow imaginative — to dream dreams and see apparitions. I mention this peaceful spot with all possible laud ; for it is in such little retired Dutch valleys, found here and there embosomed in the great State of New York, that population, manners, and customs re- main fixed, while the great torrent of migration and improvement, which is making such incessant charges in other parts of this restless country, sweeps by them unobserved. They are like those little TEE LEGEND OF SLEEPY HOLLOW. 331 nooks of still Water which border a rapid stream, where we may see the straw and bubble riding quietly at anchor, or slowly revolving in their mimic harbor, undisturbed by the rush of the passing current. Though many years have elapsed since I trod the drowsy shades of Sleepy Hollow, yet I question whether I should not sti'Jl find the same trees and the same families vegetating in its sheltered bosom. In this by-place of nature there abode, in a remote period of Ameri- can history, that is to say, some thirty years since, a worthy wight of the name of Ichabod Crane, who sojourned, or, as he expressed it, " tarried " in Sleepy Hollow for the purpose of instructing the chil- dren of the vicinity He was a native of Connecticut, a state which supplies the Union with pioneers for the mind as well as for the forest, and sends forth yearly its legions of frontier woodmen and country schoolmasters. The cognomen of Crane was not inapplicable to his person. He was tall but exceedingly lank, with narrow shoul- ders, long arms and legs, hands that dangled a mile out of his sleeves, feet tliat might have served for shovels, and his whole frame most loosely hung together. His head was small and flat at top, with huge ears, large green glassy eyes, and a long snipe nose, so that it looked like a weathercock perched upon his spindle neck, to tell which way the wind blew. To see him striding along the profile of a hill on a windy day, with his clothes bagging and fluttering about him, one might have mistaken him for the genius of famine descend- ing upon the earth, or some scarecrow eloped from a cornfield. His school-house was a low building of one large room, rudely con- structed of logs ; the windows partly glazed and partly patched with leaves of copy-books. It was most ingeniously secured at vacant hours, by a withe twisted in the handle of the door, and stakes set against the window-shutters ; so that though a thief might get in with perfect ease, he would find some embarrassment in getting out ; — an idea most probably borrowed by the architect, Yost Van Houten, from the mystery of an eelpot. The school-house stood in a rather lonely but pleasant situation, just at the foot of a woody hill, with a brook run- ning close by, and a formidable birch-tree growing at one end of it. From hence the low murmur of his pupils' voices, conning over their lessons, might be heard of a drowsy summer's day, like the hum of a beehive ; interrupted now and then by the authoritative voice of the master, in the tone of menace or command ; or, peradventure, by the appalling sound of the birch, as he urged some tardy loiterer along the flowery path of knowledge. Truth to say, he was a conscientious man, that ever bore in mind the golden maxim, " Spare the rod and spoil the child." — Ichabod Crane's scholars certainly were not spoiled. I would not have it imagined, however, that he was one of those cruel potentates of the school, who joy in the smart of their subjects ; on the contrary, he administered justice with discrimination rather than severity ; t^iag the burden off the backs of tlie weak and laying ii 232 SKETCH-BOOK on those of the strong. Your mere puny stripling that winced at the least flourish of the rod was passed by with indulgence ; but the claims of justice were satisfied by inflicting a double portion on some little, tough, wrong-headed, broad- skirted Dutch urchin, who sulked and swelled and grew dogged and sullen beneath the birch. All this he called " doing his duty by their parents ; " and he never inflicted a chastisement without following it by the assurance, so consolatory to the smarting urchin, that '' he would remember it and thank him for it the longest day he had to live. " When school hours were over, he was ever the companion and playmate of the larger boys ; and on holiday afternoons would convoy some of the smaller ones home, who happened to have pretty sisters or good house wifes for mothers, noted for the comforts of the cup- board. Indeed, it behooved him to keep on good terms with his pupils. The revenue arising from his school was small, and would have been scarcely sufllcient to furnish him with daily bread, for he was a huge feeder, and though lank, had the dilating powers, of an anaconda ; but to help out his maintenance, he was, according to country custom in those parts, boarded and lodged at the houses of the farmers whose children he instructed. With these he lived suc- cessively a week at a time, thus going the rounds of the neighbor- hood with all his worldly effects tied up in a cotton handkerchief. That all this might not be too onerous on the purses of his rustic patrons, who are apt to consider the cost of schooling a grievous bur- den, and schoolmasters as mere drones, he had various ways of ren- dering himself both useful and agreeable. He assisted the farmers occasionally in the lighter labors of their farms ; helped to make hay ; mended the fences ; took the horses to water ; drove the cows from pasture ; and cut wood for the winter fire. He laid aside, too, all the dominant dignity and absolute sway with which he lorded it in his little empire, the school, and became wonderfully gentle and ingratiat- ing. He found favor in the eyes of the mothers by petting the chil- dren, particularly the youngest ; and like the lion bold, which whilome so magnanimously the lamb did hold, he would sit with a child on one knee and rock a cradle with his foot for whole hours together. In addition to his other vocations, he was the singing-master of the neighborhood, and picked up many bright shillings by instracting the young folks in psalmody. It was a matter of no little vanity to him on Sundays to take his station in front of the church gallery with a band of chosen singers ; where, in his own mind, he com- pletely carried away the palm from the parson. Certain it is, his voice resounded far above all the rest of the congregation, and there are peculiar quavers still to be heard in that church , and which may even be heard half a mile off, quite to the opposite side of the mill- pond, on a still Sunday morning, which •\re said to be legitimately TEE LEGEND OF SLEEPY HOLLOW. 233 descended from the nose of Ichabod Crane. Thus, by divers littla make-shifts, in that ingenious way which is commonly denominated ' ' by hook and by crook," the worthy pedagogue got on tolerably enough, and was thought by all who understood nothing of the labor of head-work to have a wonderful easy life of it. The schoolmaster is generally a man of some importance in the female circle of a raral neighborhood ; being considered a kind of idle, gentlemanlike personage, of vastly superior tastes and accomplish- ments to the rough country swains, and, indeed, inferior only in learn- ing to the parson. His appearance, therefore, is apt to occasion some little stir at the tea-table of a farmhouse, and the addition of a super numerary dish of cakes or ^sweetmeats, or, peradventure, the parade of a silver tea-pot. Our man of letters, therefore, was peculiarly happy in the smiles of all the country damsels. How he would figure among them in the churchyard, between services on Sundays ! gather- ing grapes for them from the wild vines that overrun the surround- ing trees ; reciting for their amusement all the epitaphs on the tomb- stones ; or sauntering with a whole bevy of them along the banks of the adjacent millpond ; while the more bashful country bumpkins hung sheepishly back, envying his superior elegance and address. From his half itinerant life, also, he was a kind of traveling gazette, carrying the whole budget of local gossip from house to house ; so that his appearance was always greeted with satisfaction. He was moreover esteemed by the women as a man of great erudition, for he had read several books quite through, and was a perfect master of Cotton Mather's History of New England Witchcraft, in which, by the way, he most firmly and potently believed. He was, in fact, an odd mixture of small shrewdness and simple credulity. His appetite for the marvelous and his powers of digest- ing it were equally extraordinary ; and both had been increased by his residence in this spellbound region. No tale was too gross or monstrous for his capacious swallow. It was often his delight, after hia school was dismissed in the afternoon, to stretch himself on the rich bed of clover bordering the little brook that whimpered by his schoolhouse, and there con over old Mather's direful tales, until the gathering dusk of evening made the printed page a mere mist before his eyes. Then, as he wended his way, by swamp and stream and awful woodland, to the farmhouse where he happened to be quartered, every sound of nature at that witching hour fluttered his excited imagination : the moan of the whip-poor-will * from the hill-side ; the boding cry of the tree-toad^ that harbinger of storm ; the dreary hooting ©f the screech-owl ; or the sudden rustling in the thicket of birds frightened from their roost. The fire-flies, too, which sparkled m ost vividly in the darkest places, now and then * The whip-poor-will is a bird which is onlrheard at night. It receives its nama £rom its note, which is thought to ressmble those words. 234 SKETCH-BOOK startled him, as one of uncommon brightness would stream across his path ; and if, by chance, a huge blockhead of a beetle came winging his blundering flight against him, the poor varlet was ready to give up the ghost, with the idea that he was struck with a witch's token. His only resource on such occasions either to drown thought or drive away evil spirits, was to sing psalm tunes ; — and the good people of Sleepy Hollow, as they sat by their doors of an evening, were often filled with awe at hearing his nasal melody, " in linked sweetness long drawn out," floating from the distant hill, or along the dusky road. Another of his sources of fearful pleasure was to pass long winter evenings with the old Dutch wives, as they sat spinning by the fire, with a row of apples roasting and sputtering along the hearth, and listen to their marvelous tales of ghosts, and goblins, and haunted fields and haunted brooks, and haunted bridges and haunted houses, and particularly of the headless horseman, or galloping Hessian of the Hollow, as they sometimes called him. He would delight them equally by his anecdotes of witchcraft and of the direful omens and potentous sights and sounds in the air, which prevailed in the earlier times of Connecticut ; and would frighten them woefully with specu- lations upon comets and shooting stars, and with the alarming fact that the world did absolutely turn round, and that they were half the time topsy-turvy ! But if there was a pleasure in all this, while snugly cuddling in the chimney corner of a chamber that was all of a ruddy glow from the crackling wood fire, and where, of course, no specter dared to show its face, it was dea/ly purchased by the terrors of his subsequent walk homeward. What fearful shapes and shadows beset his path, amid the dim and ghastly glare of a snowy night ! — With what wist- ful look did he eye every trembling ray of light streaming across the waste fields from some distant window ! — How often was he appalled by some shrub covered with snow, which like a sheeted specter beset his very path ! — How often did he shrink with curdling awe at the sound of his own steps on the frosty crust beneath his feet, and dread to look over his shoulder, lest he should behold some uncouth being tramping close behind him ! — and how often was he thrown into com- plete dismay by some rushing blast howling among the trees, in the idea that it was the galloping Hessian on one of his nightly scourings ! All these, however, were mere terrors of the night, phantoms of the mind, that walk in darkness : and though he had seen many specters in his time, and been more than once beset by Satan in divers shapes, in his lonely perambulations, yet daylight put an end to all these evils ; and he would have passed a pleasant life of it, in despite of the Devil and all his works, if his path had not been crossed by a being that causes more perplexity to mortal man than ghosts, gob- lins, and the whole race of witches put together ; and that was — a woman. .„>^ TBE LEGEND OF SLEEPY HOLLOW. 285 Among the musical disciples who assembled, one evening in each week, to receive his instructions in psalmody, was Katrina Van Tas- sel, the daughter and only child of a substantial Dutch farmer. She was a blooming lass of fresh eighteen ; plump as a partridge ; ripe and melting and rosy-cheeked as one of her father's peaches, and universally famed, not merely for her beauty, but her vast expecta- tions. She was withal a little of a coquette, as might be perceived even in her dress, which was a mixture of ancient and modern fash- ions, as most suited to set off her charms. She wore the ornaments ®f pure yellow gold which her great-great-grandmother had brought over from Saardam ; the tempting stomacher of the olden time, and withal a provokingly short petticoat, to display the prettiest foot and ankle in the country round. Ichabod Crane had a soft and foolish heart toward the sex ; and it is not to be wondered at that so tempting a morsel soon found favor in his eyes, more especially after he had visited her in her paternal mansion. Old Baltus Van Tassel was a perfect picture of a thriving, contented, liberal-hearted farmer. He seldom, it is true, sent either his eyes or his thoughts beyond the boundaries of his own farm ; but within these everything was snug, happy, and well-conditioned. He was satisfied with his wealth, but not proud of it ; and piqued himself npon the hearty abundance rather than the style in which he lived. His stronghold was situated on the banks of the Hudson, in one Of those green, sheltered, fertile nooks, in which the Dutch farmers are so fond of nestling. A great elm tree spread its broad branches over it, at the foot of which bubbled np a spring of the softest and sweetest water, in a little well formed of a barrel, and then stole sparkling away through the grass to a neighboring brook, that babbled along among alders and dwarf willows. Hard by the farmhouse was a vast barn, that might have served for a church, every window and crevice of which seemed bursting forth with the treasures of the farm ; the flail was busily resounding within it from morning to night ; swallows and martins skimmed twittering about the eaves ; and rows of pigeons, some with one eye turned up, as if watching the weather, some with their heads under their wings, or buried in their bosoms, and others, swelling, and cooing, and bowing about their dames, were enjoying the sunshine on the roof. Sleek, unwieldy porkers were grunting in the repose and abundance of their pens, from whence sallied forth, now and then, troops of sucking pigs, as if to snuff the air. A stately squadron of snowy geese were riding in an adjoining pond, convoying whole fleets of ducks ; regiments of turkeys were gobbling through the farmyard, and guinea-fowls fret- ting about it like ill-tempered housewives, with their peevish, dia- eontented cry. Before the barn door strutted the gallant cock, that pattern of a husband, a warrior, and a fine gentleman ; clapping his Wrnislied wings aad crowi^ig ip ^3^ pride and gladi^ss of lus heart m 8KETCE-B00K. — sometimes tearing up the earth with his feet, and then generously calling Ills ever-hungry family of wives and children to enjoy the rich morsel which he had discovered. The pedagogue's mruth watered as he looked upon this sumptuous promise of luxurious winter fare. In his devouring mind's eye, he pictured to himself every roasting pig running about, with a pudding in its belly and an apple in its mouth ; the pigeons were snugly put to bed in a comfortable pie, and tucked in with a coverlet of crust ; the geese were swimming in their own gravy ; and the ducks pairing cosily in dishes, like snug married couples, with a decent competency of onion sauce. In the porkers he saw carved out the future sleek Bide of bacon and juicy, relishing ham ; not a turkey but he beheld daintily trussed up, with its gizzard under its wing, and, peradven- ture, a necklace of savory sausages ; and even bright chanticleer liimself lay sprawling on his back, in a side dish, with uplifted claws, as if craving that quarter which his chivalrous spirit disdained to ask while living. As the enraptured Ichabod fancied all this, and as he rolled his great green eyes over the fat meadow lands, the rich fields of wheat, of rye, of buckwheat, and Indian corn, and the orchards burdened with ruddy fruit, which surrounded the warm tenement of Van Tas- sel, his heart yearned after the damsel who was to inherit these do- mains, and his imagination expanded with the idea how they might be readily turned into cash, and the money invested in immense tracts of wild land and shingle palaces in the wilderness. Nay, his busy fancy already realized his hopes, and presented to him the blooming Katrina, with a whole family of children, mounted on the top of a wagon loaded with household trumpery, with pots and kettles dang- ling beneath ; and he beheld himself bestriding a pacing mare, with a colt at her heels, setting out for Kentucky, Tennessee — or the Lord knows where ! When he entered the house, the conquest of his heart was com- plete. It was one of those spacious farmhouses, with high-ridged but lowly-sloping roofs, built in the style handed down from the first Dutch settlers. The low projecting eaves forming a piazza along the front, capable of being closed up in bad weather. Under this were hung flails, harness, various utensils of husbandry, and nets for fishing in the neighboring river. Benches were built along the sides for summer use ; and a great spinning-wheel at one end, and a churn at the other, showed the various uses to which this important porch might be devoted. From this piazza the wonderful Ichabod entered the hall, which formed the center of the mansion and the place of usual residence. Here rows of resplendent pewter, ranged on a long dresser, dazzled his eyes. In one corner stood a huge bag of wool, ready to be spun ; in another, a quantity of linsey-woolsey just from the loom ; ears of Indian corn and strings of dried apples and TME LEGEND OF SLEEPY HOLLOW. ^S? peaches hung in gay festoons along the walls, mingled with the gaud of red peppers ; and a door left ajar gave him a peep into the best parlor, where the claw-footed chairs and dark mahogany tables shone like mirrors ; andirons, with their accompanying shovel and tongs, glistened from their covert of asparagus tops ; mock-oranges and conch shells decorated the mantelpiece ; strings of various colored birds' eggs were suspended above it ; a great ostrich egg was hung from the center of the room, and a corner cupboard, knowingly left open, displayed immense treasures of old silver and well-mended china. From the moment Ichabod laid his eyes upon these regions of de- light, the peace of his mind was at an end, an<-/ his only study was how to gain the affections of the peerless daughter of Van Tassel. In this enterprise, however, he had more real difficulties than generally fell to the lot of a knight- errant of yore, who seldom had anything but giants, enchanters, fiery dragons, and such like easily conquered adversaries, to contend with ; and had to make his way merely through gates of iron and brass and walls of adamant to the castle- keep, where the lady of his heart was confined ; all which he achieved as easily as a man would carve his way to the center of a Christmas pie, and then the lady gave him her hand as a matter of course. Ichabod, on the contrary, had to win his way to the heart of a coun- try coquette, beset with a labyrinth of whims and caprices, which were forever presenting new difficulties and impediments, and he had to encounter a host of fearful adversaries of real flesh and blood, the numerous rustic admirers who beset every portal to her heart, keeping a watchful and angry eye upon each other, but ready to fly out in the common 3ause against any new competitor. Among these, the most formidable was a burly, roaring, roystering blade, of the name of Abraham, or, according to the Dutch abbrevia- tion, Brom Van Brunt, the hero of the country round, which rung with his feats of strength and hardihood. He was broad-shouldered and double-jointed, with short curly black hair, and a bluff but not unpleasant countenance, having a mingled air of fun and arrogance. From his Herculean frame and great powers of limb, he had received the nickname of Brom Bones, by which he was universally known. He was famed for great knowledge and skill in horsemanship, being as dexterous on horseback as a Tartar. He was foremost at all races and cock-fights, and with the ascendancy which bodily strength always acquires in rustic life, was the umpire in all disputes, setting his hat on one side, and giving his decisions with an air and tone that ad- mitted of no gainsay or appeal. He was always ready for either a fight or a frolic ; had more mischief than ill-will in his composition ; and with all his overbearing roughness, there was a strong dash of waggish good-humor at bottom. He had three or four boon compan- ions of his own stamp, who regarded him as their model, and at tb© 23a SKETCH-BOO^. head of wliom lie scoured the country, attending every scene of feud or merriment for miles round. In cold weather he was distinguished by a fur cap, surmounted with a flaunting fox's tail ; and when the folks at a country gathering descried this well-known crest at a dis- tance, whisking about among a squad of hard riders, they always stood by for a squall. Sometimes his crew would be heard dashing along past the farmhouses at midnight, with whoop and halloo, like a troop of Don Cossacks, and the old dames, startled out of their sleep, would listen for a moment till the hurry-scurry had clattered ,by, and then exclaim, " Ay, there goes Brom Bones and his gang ! " The neighbors looked upon him with a mixture of awe, admiration, and good- will ; and when any madcap prank or rustic brawl occurred in the vicinity, always shook their heads and warranted Brom Bones was at the bottom of it. This rantipole hero had for some time singled out the blooming Katrina for the object of his uncouth gallantries, and though his amorous toyings were something like the gentle caresses and endear- ments of a bear, yet it was whispered that she did not altogether dis- courage his hopes. Certain it is, his advances were signals for rival candidates to retire, who felt no inclination to cross a lion in his amours ; insomuch that when his horse was seen tied to Van Tassel's paling, on a Sunday night, a sure sign that his master was courting, or, as it is termed, " sparking," within, all other suitors passed by in despair, and carried the war into other quarters. Such was the formidable rival with whom Ichabod Crane had to contend, and considering all things a stouter man than he would have shrunk from the competition, and a wiser man would have despaired. He had, however, a happy mixture of pliability and perseverance iu his nature ; he was in form and spirit like a supple-jack — yielding, but tough ; though be bent, he never broke ; and though he bowed beneath the slightest pressure, yet, the moment it was away — jerk ! — he was as erect, and carried his head as high as ever. To have taken the field openly against his rival would have been madness, for he was not a man to be thwarted in his amours any more than that stormy lover, Achilles. Ichabod, therefore, made his^ advances in a quiet and gently insinuating manner. Under cover of his character of singing-master he made frequent visits at the farm- house ; not that he had anything to apprehend from the meddlesome interference of parents, which is so often a stumbling-block in the path of lovers. Bait Van Tassel was an easy indulgent soul ; he loved his daughter better even than his pipe, and like a reasonable man and an excellent father, let her have her way in everything. His notable little wife, too, had enough to do to attend to her house- keeping and manage the poultry ; for, as she sagely observed, ducks and geese are foolish things and must be looked after, but girls can take care of themselves. Thus, while the busy dame bustled about THE LEGEND OF SLEEPY HOLLOW. 239 tte house or plied lier spinning- wheel at one end of tlie piazza, hon- est Bait would sit smoking his evening pipe at the other, watching the achievements of a little wooden warrior, who, armed with a sword in each hand, was most valiantly fighting the Avind on the pin- nacle of the barn. In the meantime Ichabod would carry on his suit with the daughter by the side of the spring under the great elm, or sauntering along in the twilight, that hour so favorable to the lover's eloquence, I profess not to know how women's hearts are wooed and won. To me they have always been matters of riddle and admiration. Some seem to have but one vulnerable point or door of access, while others have a thousand avenues, and may be captured in a thousand differ- ent ways. It is a great triumph of skill to gain the former, but a still greater proof of generalship to maintain possession of the latter, for a man must battle for his fortress at every door and window. He that wins a thousand common hearts is therefore entitled to some re- nown ; but he who keeps undisputed sway over the heart of a co- quette is indeed a hero. Certain it is, this was not the case with the redoubtable Brom Bones ; and from the moment Ichabod Crane made his advances, the interests of the former evidently declined ; his horse was no longer seen tied at the palings on Sunday nights, and a deadly feud gradually arose between him and the preceptor of Sleepy Hollow. Brom, who had a degree of rough chivalry in his nature, would fain have carried matters to open warfare and settled their pretensions to the lady according to the mode of those most concise and simple reasoners, the knights-errant of yore — by single combat ; but Ichabod was too conscious of the superior might of his adversary to enter the lists against him; he had overheard the boast of Bones, that he would "double the schoolmaster up and put him on a shelf" ; and he was too wary to give him an opportunity. There was something ex- tremely provoking in this obstinately pacific system ; it left Brom no alternative but to draw upon the funds of rustic waggery in his dis- position, and to play off boorish practical jokes upon his rival. Icha- bod became the object of whimsical persecution to Bones and his gang of rough riders. They harried his hitherto peaceful domains, smoked out his singing-school by stopping up the chimney, broke into the school-house at night in spite of its formidable fastenings of withe and window-stakes, and turned everything topsy-turvy, so that the poor schoolmaster began to think all the witches in the country held their meetings there. But what was still more annoying, Brom took all opportunities of turning him into ridicule in prese ze of his mistress, and had a scoundrel dog whom he taught to whiae in the most ludicrous manner and introduced as a rival of Ichabod's, to in- struct her in psalmody. In this way matters went on for some time without producing any 940 SKETCH-BOOK, - ~ material effect on the relative situations of the contending" powers. On a fine autumnal afternoon Icliabod, in pensive mood, sat enthroned on the lofty stool from whence he usually watched all the concerns of his little literary realm. In his hand he swayed a ferule, that scepter of despotic power ; the birch of justice reposed on three nails behind the throne, a constant terror to evil doers ; while on the desk before him might be seen sundry contraband articles and pro- hibited weapons, detected upon the persons of idle urchins, such as half-munched apples, popguns, whirligigs, fly-cages, and whole le- gions of rampant little paper game-cocks. Apparently there had been some appalling act of justice recently inflicted, for his scholars were all busily intent upon their books, or slyly whispering behind them with one eye kept upon the master, and a kind of buzzing stillness reigned throaghout the schoolroom. It was suddenly interrupted by the appearance of a negro in tow-cloth jacket and trowsers, a round crowned fragment of a hat, like the cap of Mercury, and mounted on the back of a ragged, wild, half-broken colt, which he managed with a rope by way of halter. He came clattering up to the school-door with an invitation to Ichabod to attend a merry-mak- ing, or " quilting frolic," to be held that evening at Mynheer Van Tassel's ; and having delivered his message with that air of import- ance and effort at fine language which a negro is apt to display on petty embassies of the kind, he dashed over the brook and was seen scampering away up the hollow, full of the importance and hurry of his mission. All was now bustle and hubbub in the late quiet school-room. The scholars were hurried through their lessons without stopping at trifles; those who were nimble skipped ov^r half with impunity, and those who were tardy had a smart application now and then in the rear, to quicken their speed or help them over a tall word. Books were flung aside, without being put away on the shelves ; inkstands were overturned, benches thrown down, and the whole school was turned loose an hour before the usual time ; bursting forth like a legion of young imps, yelping and racketing about the green, in joy at their early emancipation. The gallant Ichabod now spent at least an extra half hour at his t-oilet, brushing and furbishing up his best, and indeed only suit of rusty black, and arranging his looks by a bit of broken looking-glass that hung up in the school-house. That he might make his appear- ance before his mistress in the true style of a cavalier, he borrowed a horse from the farmer with whom he was domiciliated, a choleric old Dutchman of the name of Hans Van Eipper, and, thus gallantly mounted, issued forth like a knight-errant in quest of adventures. But it is meet I should, in the true spirit of romantic story, give some account of the looks and equipments of my hero and his steed. The anim|^ he bestrode was a broken-down plow-horse that h?d ovt THE LEGEND OF SLEEPY HOLLOW. 241 lived almost everything but his viciousness. He was gaunt and shagged, with a ewe neck and a head like a hammer ; his rusty mane and tail were tangled and knotted with burrs ; one eve had lost its pupil and was glaring and spectral, but the other had the gleam of a genuine devil in it. Still he must have had fire and mettle in his day, if we may judge from his name, which was Gunpowder. He had, in fact, been a favorite steed of his master's, the choleric Van Ripper, who was a furious rider, and had infused, very probably, some of his own spirit into the animal ; for, old and broken-down as he looked, there was more of the lurking devil in him than in any young filly in the country Ichabod was a suitable figure for such a steed. He rode with short stirrups, which brought his knees nearly up to the pommel of the saddle ; his sharp elbows stuck out like grasshoppers' ; he carried his whip perpendicularly in his hand, like a scepter, and as the horse jogged on the motion of his arms was not unlike the flapping of a pair of wings. A small wool hat rested on the top of his nose, for so his scanty strip of forehead might be called, and the skirts of his black coat fluttered out almost to the horse's tail. Such was the ap- pearance of Ichabod and his steed as they shambled out of the gate of Hans Van Ripper, and it was altogether such an apparition as is seldom to be met with in broad daylight. It was, as I have said, a flne autumnal day ; the sky was clear and serene, and nature wore that rich and golden livery which we always associate with the idea of abundance. The forests had put on their sober brown and yellow, while some trees of the tenderer kind had been nipped by the frosts into brilliant dyes of orange, purple, and scarlet. Streaming files of wild ducks began to make their appear- ance high in the air ; the bark of the squirrel might be heard from the groves of beech and hickory-nuts, and the pensive whistle of the quail at intervals from the neighboring stubble field. The small birds were taking their farewell banquets. In the full- ness of their revelry they fluttered, chirping and frolicking, from bush to bush, and tree to tree, capricious from the very profusion and variety around them. There was the honest cockrobin, the favorite game of stripling sportsmen, with its loud querulous note, and the twittering blackbirds flying in sable clouds ; and the golden- winged woodpecker, with his crimson crest, his broad black gorget, and splendid plumage ; and the cedar-bird, with its red-tipped wings and yellow-tipped tail, and its little monteiro cap of feathers ; and the blue jay, that noisy coxcomb, in his gay light blue coat and white underclothes, screaming and chattering, nodding, and bobbing, and bowing, and pretending to be on good terms with every songster of the grove. As Ichabod jogged slowly on his way, his eye, ever open to every symptom of culinary abundance, ranged with delight over the treaa* m BKBTGH-BOOJ^. Tires, of jolly autumn. On all sides he beheld vast stores of apples, some hanging- in opp?'>^sive opulence on the trees, some gathered into baskets and barrels for the market, others heaped up in rich piles for the cider-press. Farther on he beheld great fields of Indian corn, with its golden ears peeping from their leafy coverts, and holding out the promise of cakes and hasty-pudding ; and the yellow pumpkins lying beneath them, turning up their fair round bellies to the sun, and giving ample prospects of the most luxurious of pies ; and anon he passed the fragrant buckwheat fields, breathing the odor of the bee-hive, and as he beheld them, soft anticipations stole over his mind of dainty slap-jacks, well buttered, and garnished with honey or treacle, b/ the delicate little dimpled hand of Katrina Van Tassel. Thus feeding his mind with many sweet thoughts and ' ' sugared suppositions," he journeyed along the sides of a range of hills which look out upon some of the goodliest scenes of the mighty Hudson. The sun gradually wheeled his broad disk down into the west. The wide bosom of the Tappaan Zee lay motionless and glassy, excepting that here and there a gentle undulation waved and prolonged the blue shadow of the distant mountain. A few amber clouds floated in the 8ky without a breath of air to move them. The horizon was of a fine golden tint, changing gradually into a pure apple green, and from that into the deep blue of the mid-heaven. A slanting ray lingered on the woody crests of the precipices that overhung some parts of the river, giving greater depth to the dark gray and purple of their rocky sides. A sloop was loitering in the distance, dropping slowly down with the tide, her sail hanging uselessly against the mast ; and as the reflection of the sky gleamed along the still water, it seemed as if the vessel was suspended in the air. It was toward evening that Ichabod arrived at the castle of the Herr Van Tassel, which he found thronged with the pride and flower of the adjacent country : old farmers, a spare leathern-faced race, in home-spun coats and breeches, blue stockings, huge shoes, and magnificent pewter buckles ; their brisk, withered little dames, in close crimped caps, long-waisted gowns, homespun petticoats, with scissors and pin-cushions, and gay calico pockets hanging on the out- ,side ; buxom lasses, almost as antiquated as their mothers, except- ijjg where a straw hat, a fine ribbon, or perhaps a white frock, gave symptoms of city innovations ; the sons, in short square-skirted coats, with rows of stupendous brass buttons, and their hair generally queued in the fashion of the times, especially if they could procure an eelskin for the purpose, it being esteemed throughout the country aa a potent nourisher and strengthener of the hair. Brom Bones, however, was the hero of the scene, having come to the gathering on his favorite steed Daredevil, a creature, like himself, full of mettle and mischief, and which no one but himself could THE LEGEND OF SLEEPY HOLLOW. 243 manage. He was, in fact, noted for preferring vicious animals, given to all kinds of tricks wMch. kept the rider in constant risk of Ms neck, for he held a tractable well- broken horse as unworthy of a lad of spirit. Fain would I pause to dwell upon the world of charms that burst upon the enraptured gaze of my hero, as he entered the state parlor of Van Tassel's mansion. Not those of the bevy of buxom lasses, with their luxurious display of red and white, but the ample charms of a genuine Dutch country tea-table, in the sumptuous time of au- tumn. Such heaped-up platters of cakes of various and almost inde- scribable kinds, known only to experienced Dutch housewives ! There was the doughty dough-nut, the tender oly-koek, and the crisp and ■ crumbling cruller ; sweet cakes and short cakes, ginger cakes and honey cakes, and the whole family of cakes. And then there were apple pies, and peach pies, and pumpkin pies, besides slices of ham and smoked beef, and moreover delectable dishes of preserved plums and peaches, and pears and quinces ; not to mention broiled shad and roasted chickens, together with bowls of milk and cream, all mingled higgledy-piggledy pretty much as I have enumerated them, with the motherly tea-pot sending up its clouds of vapor from the midst — Heaven bless the mark ! I want breath and time to discuss this banquet as it deserves, and am too eager to get on with my story. Happily, Ichabod Crane was not in so great a hurry as his historian, but did ample justice to every dainty. He was a kind and thankful creature, whose heart dilated in pro- portion as his skin was filled with good cheer, and whose spirits rose with eating, as some men's do with drink. He could not help, too, rolling his large eyes round him as he ate, and chuckling with the possibility that he might one day be lord of all this scene of almost unimaginable luxury and splendor. Then, he thought, how soon he'd turn his back upon the old school-house ; snap his fingers in the face of Hans Van Ripper, and every other niggardly patron, and kick any itinerant pedagogue out of doors that should dare to call him comrade ! Old Baltus Van Tassel moved about among his guests with a face dilated with content and good humor, round and jolly as the harvest moon. His hospitable attentions were brief but expressive, being confined to a shaike of the hand, a slap on the shoulder, a loud laugh, and a pressing invitation to " fall to and help themselves." And now the sound of the music from the common room, or hall, summoned to the dance. The musician was an old gray-headed negro, who had been the itinerant orchestra of the neighborhood for more than half a century. His instrument was as old and battered as himself. The greater part of the time he scraped away on two or three strings, accompanying every movement of the bow with a mo- tion of the head ; bowing almost to the ground and stamping with bis foot whoever a fresh couple were to i^u^. 244 SKETCH-BOOK. Icliabod prided himself upon his dancing as much as upon his vocal powers. Not a limb, not a fiber about him was idle ; and to have seen his loosely hung frame in full motion, and clattering about the room, you would have thought St. Vitus himself, that blessed patron of the dance, was figuring before you in person. He was the admiration of all the negroes ; who, having gathered, of all ages and sizes, from the farm and the neighborhood, stood forming a pyramid of shining black faces at every door and window ; gazing with de- light at the scene ; rolling their white eye-balls, and showing grin- ning rows of ivory from ear to ear. How could the flogger of urcliins be otherwise than animated and joyous ? the lady of his heart was his partner in the dance, and smiling graciously in reply to all his amorous oglings ; while Brom Bones, sorely smitten with love and jealousy, sat brooding by himself in one corner. When the dance was at an end, Icliabod was attracted to a knot of the sager folks, who, with old Van Tassel, sat smoking at one end of the piazza, gossiping over former times, and drawling out long stories about the war. This neighborhood, at the time of which I am speaking, was one of those highly favored places which abound with chronicle and great men. The British and American line had run near it during the war ; it had, therefore, been the scene of marauding, and infest- ed with refugees, cow-boys, and all kind of border chivalry. Just sufficient time had elapsed to enable each story-teller to dress up his tale with a little becoming fiction, and, in the indistinctness of his recollection, to make himself the hero of every exploit. There was the story of Doffue Martling, a large blue-bearded Dutchman, who had nearly taken a British frigate with an old iron nine-pounder from a mud breastwork, only that his gun burst at the sixth discharge. And there was an old gentleman who shall be nameless, being too rich a mynheer to be lightly mentioned, who, in the battle of Whiteplains, being an excellent master of defense, parried a musket-ball with a small-sword, insomuch that he abso- lutely felt it whiz round the blade and glance off at the hilt, in proof of which he was ready at any time to show the sword, with the hilt a little bent. There were several more that had been equally great in the field, not one of whom but was persuaded that he had a considerable hand in bringing the war to a happy termination. But all these were nothing to the tales of ghosts and apparitions that succeeded. The neighborhood is rich in legendary treasures of the kind. Local tales and superstitions thrive best in these shel- tered, long-settled retreats, but are trampled under foot by the shifting throng that forms the population of most of our country places. Besides, there is no encouragement for ghosts in most of our villages, for they have scarcely had time to finish their first nap and turn themselves in their graves, before their surviving TEE LEGEJS'D OF SLEEPY HOLLOW. 245 friends liave traveled away from the neigliborliood : so tliat wlien they turn out at night to walk their rounds, they have no acquaint- ance left to call upon. This is perhaps the reason why we so sel- dom hear of ghosts except in our long-established Dutch com- munities. The immediate cause, however, of the prevalence of supernatural stories in these parts, was doubtless owing to the vicinity of Sleepy Hollow. There was a contagion in the very air that blue from that haunted region ; it breathed forth an atmosphere of dreams and fan- cies infecting all the land. Several of the Sleepy Hollow people were present at Van Tassel's, and, as usual, were doling out their wild and wonderful legends. Many dismal tales were told about funeral trains, and mourning cries and wailings heard and seen about the great tree where the unfortunate Major. Andre was taken, and which stood in the neighborhood. Some mention was made also of the woman in white, that haunted the dark glen at Raven Rock, and was often heard to shriek on Aviuter nights before a storm, hav- ing perished there in the snow. The chief part of the stories, how. ever, turned upon the favorite specter of Sleepy Hollow, the head- less horseman, who had been heard several times of late, patroling the country, and, it is said, tethered his horse nightly among the graves in the churchyard. The sequestered situation of this church seems always to have made it a favorite haunt of troubled spirits. It stands on a knoll, surrounded by locust-trees and lofty elms, from among which its decent, whitewashed walls shine modestly forth, like Christian pur- ity, beaming through the shades of retirement. A gentle slope de- scends from it to a silver sheet of water, bordered by high trees, between which peeps may be caught at the blue hills of the Hud- son. To look upon its grass-grown yard, where the sunbeams seem to sleep so quietly, one would think that there at least the dead might rest in peace. On one side of the church extends a wide woody dell, along which raves a large brook among broken rocks and trunks of fallen trees. Over a deep black part of the stream, not far from the church, was formerly thrown a wooden bridge ; the road that led to it and the bridge itself were thickly shaded by overhanging trees, which cast a gloom about it, even in the day- time, but occasioned a fearful darkness at night. Such was one of the favorite haunts of the headless horseman, and the place where he was most frequently encountered. The tale was told of old Brouwer, a most heretical disbeliever in ghosts, how he met the horseman returning from his foray into Sleepy Hollew, and was obliged to get up behind him ; how they galloped over bush and brake, over hill and swamp, until they reached the bridge, when the horseman suddenly turned into a skeleton, threw old Brouwer into tiie brook, and sprang away over the tree-tops with a clap of thunder. 246 SKETCH-BOOK, This story was immediately matched by a tlirice marvelous adven- ture of Brom Bones, who made light of the galloping Hessian as an arrant jockey. He aflfirmed that on returning one night from the neighboring village of Sing Sing, he had been overtaken by this midnight trooper ; that he had offered to race with him for a bowl of punch, and should have won it too, for Daredevil beat the goblin horse all hollow, but just as they came to the church bridge, the Hessian bolted and vanished, in a flash of fire. All these tales, told in that drowsy undertone with which men «i;alk in the dark, the countenances of the listeners only now and ihen receiving a casual gleam from the glare of a pipe, sunk deep in the mind of Ichabod. He repaid them in kind with large extracts from his invaluable author, Cotton Mather, and added many mar-~ velous events that had taken place in his native State of Connecticut, and fearful sights which he had seen in his nightly walks about Sleepy Hollow. The revel now gradually broke up. The old farmers gathered together their families in their wagons, and were heard for some time rattling along the hollow roads and over the distant hills. Some of the damsels mounted on pillions behind their favorite swains, and their light-hearted laughter, mingling with the clatter of hoofs, echoed along the silent woodlands, sounding fainter and fainter, until they gradually died away — and the late scene of noise and frolic was all silent and deserted. Ichabod only lingered be- hind, according to the custom of country lovers, to have a tete-a-tet© with the heiress, fully convinced that he was now on the high road to success. What passed at this interview I will not pretend to say, for in fact I do not know. Something, however, I fear me, must have gone wrong, for he certainly sallied forth, after no very great interval, with an air quite desolate and chapfallen — Oh, these women! these women'. Could that girl have been playing off any of her coquettish tricks ? — Was her encouragement of the poor ped- agogue all a mere sham to secure her conquest of his rival ? — Heaven only knows, not I ! — Let it suffice to say, Ichabod stole forth with the air of one who had been sacking a hen-roost rather than a fair lady's heart. Without looking to the right or left to notice the scene of rural wealth, on which he had so often gloated, he went straight to the stable, and with several hearty cuffs and kicks, roused his steed most uncourteously from the comfortable quarters in which he was soundly sleeping, dreaming of mountains of com and oats and whole valleys of timothy and clover. It was the very witching time of night th'<^6- Ichabod, heavy- hearted and crest-fallen, pursued his travel homeward, along the sides of the lofty hills which rise above Tarry Town, and which he had traversed so cheerily in the afternoon. The hour was jv^ dismal ag himself. F^r below him the Tappaan Z^e spread its dusky and THE LBGENlf OF SLEEP T HOLLOW. 'A1 indistinct waste of waters, with liere and tliere tlie tall mast of a sloop, riding quietly at anchor under the land. In the dead hush of midnight he CQuld even hear the barking of the watch-dog from the opposite shore of the Hudson ; but it was so vague and faint as only to give an idea of his distance from this faithful companion of man. Now and then, too, the long-drawn crowing of a cock, accidentally awakened, would sound far, far off, from some farmhouse away among the hills — but it was like a dreaming sound in his ear. No signs of life occurred near him, but occasionally the melancholy chirp of a cricket, or perhaps the gutteral twang of a bull-frog from a neighboring marsh, as if sleeping uncomfortably, and turning sud- denly in his bed. All the stories of ghosts and goblins that he had heard in the after- noon now came crowding upon his recollection. The night grew darker and darker ; the stars seemed to sink deeper in the sky, and driving clouds occasionally hid them from his sight. He had never felt so lonely and dismal. He was, moreover, approaching the very place where many of the scenes of the ghost stories had been laid. In tbe center of the road stood an enormous tulip-tree, which towered like a giant above all the other trees of the neighborhood and form- ed a kind of landmark. Its limbs were gnarled and fantastic, large enough to form trunks for ordinary trees, twisting down almost to the earth, and rising again into the air. It was connected with the tragical story of the unfortunate Andre, who had been taken pris- oner hard by, and was universally known by the name of Major Andre's tree. The common people regarded it with a mixture of respect and superstiton, partly out of sympathy for the fate of its ill- starred namesake, and partly from the tales of strange sights and dole- ful lamentations told concerning it. As Ichabod approached this fearf ui tree, he began to whistle ; he thought his whistle was answered : it was but a blast sweeping sharply through the dry branches. As he approached a little nearer, he thought he saw something white hanging in the midst of the tree : he paused, and ceased whistling ; but on looking more narrow- ly, perceived that it was a place where the tree had been scathed by lightning and the white wood laid bare. Suddenly he heard a groan — his teeth chattered, and his knees smote against the saddle : it was but the rubbing of one huge bow upon another, as they were swayed about by the breeze. He passed the tree in safety, but new perils lay before him. About two hundred yards from the tree a small brook crossed the road, and ran into a marshy and thickly- wooded glen, known by the name of Wiley's Swamp. A few rough logs, laid side by side, served for a bridge over this stream. On that side of the road where the brook entered the wood, a group of oaks and chestnuts, matted thick with wild grape-vines, threw a cavernous gloom over it. Ta 248 SKETCH-BOOK. pass tMs bridge was the severest trial. It was at tliis identical spot that the unfortunate Andre was captured, and under the covert of those chestnuts and vin^es rvere the sturdy yeomen concealed who surprised him. This has ever since been considered a haunted stream, and fearful are the feelings of a school-boy who has to pass it alone after dark. As he approached the stream, his heart began to thump ; he sum- moned up, however, all his resolution, gave his horse half a score of kicks in the ribs, and attempted to dash briskly across the bridge ; but instead of starting forward, the perverse old animal made a lateral movement, and ran broadside against the fence. Ich- abod, whose fears increased with the delay, jerked the reins on the other side, and kicked lustily with the contrary foot : it was all in vain ; his steed started, it is true, but it was only to plunge to th© opposite side of the road into a thicket of brambles and alder-bushes. The schoolmaster now bestowed both whip and heel upon the starv- eling ribs of old Gunpowder, who dashed forward, snuMng and snorting, but came to a stand just by the bridge, with a suddenness that had nearly sent his rider sprawling over his head. Just at this moment a plashy tramp by the side of the bridge caught the sensi- tive ear of Ichabod. In the dark shadow of the grove, on the mar- gin of the brook, he beheld something huge, misshapen, black and towering. It stirred not, but seemed gathered up in the gloom, like some gigantic monster ready to spring upon the traveler. The hair of the affrighted pedagogue rose upon his head with ter- ror. What was to be done ? To turn and fly was now too late ; and besides, what cliance was there of escaping ghost or goblin, if such it was, which could ride upon the wings of the wind ? Summoning up, therefore, a show of courage, he demanded in stammering ac- cents — "Who are you?" He received no reply. He repeated his demand in a still more agitated voice. Still there was no answer. Once more he cudgeled the sides of the inflexible Gunpowder, and shutting his eyes broke forth with involuntary fervor into a psalm tune. Just then the shadowy object of alarm put itself in motion, and with a scramble and a bound stood at once in the middle of the road. Though the night was dark and dismal, yet the form of the unknown might now in some degree be ascertained. He appeared to be a horseman of large dimension, and mounted on a black horse of powerful frame. He made no offer of molestation or sociability, but kept aloof on one side of the road, jogging along on the blind side of old Gunpowder, who had now got over his fright and waywardness. Ichabod, who had no relish for this strange midnight companion, and bethought himself of the adventure of Brom Bones with the gal loping Hessian, now quickened his steed, in hopes of leaving him be- hind The stranger, however, quickened his horse to an equal pace. Ichabod pulled up and fell into a walk, thinking to lag behind — the TEE LEGEND OF SLEEPY HOLLOW. 249 other did the same. His heart began to sink within him ; he endeav- ored to resume his psalm tune, but his parched tongue clove to the roof of his mouth, and he could not utter a stave. There was some- thing in the moody and dogged silence of this pertinacious compan- ion that was mysterious and appalling. It was soon fearfully ac- counted for. On mounting a rising ground, which brought the figure of his fellow-traveler in relief against the sky, gigantic in height, and muffled in a cloak, Ichabod was horror-struck on perceiving that he was headless ! but his horror was still more increased on observing that the head, which should have rested on his shoulders, was carried before him on the pommel of his saddle ! His terror rose to despera- tion ; he rained a shower of kicks and blows upon Gunpowder, hop- ing, by a sudden movement, to give his companion the slip — but the specter started full jump with him. Away, then, they dashed through thick and thin ; stones flying and sparks flashing at every bound. Ichabod's flimsy garments fluttered in the air, as he stretched his long lank body away over his horse's head, in the eagerness of his flight. They had now reached the road which turns off to Sleepy Hollow ; but Gunpowder, who seemed possessed with a demon, instead of keeping up it, made an opposite turn, and plunged headlong down hill to the left. This road leads through a sandy hollow, shaded by trees for about a quarter of a mile, where it crosses the bridge famous in goblin story, and just beyond swells the green knoll on which stands the whitewashed church. As yet the panic of the steed had given his unskillful rider an ap- parent advantage in the chase ; but just as he had got half-way through the hollow, the girths of the saddle gave way, and he felt it slipping from under him. He seized it by the pommel, and endeav- ored to hold it firm, but in vain ; and had just time to save himself by clasping old Gunpowder round the neck, when the saddle fell to the earth and he heard it trampled under foot by his pursuer. For a moment the terror of Hans Van Ripper's wrath passed across his mind — for it was his Sunday saddle ; but this was no time for petty fears : the goblin was hard on his haunches ; and (unskillful rider that he was !) he had much ado to maintain his seat ; sometimes slip- ping on one side, sometimes on another, and sometimes jolted on the high ridge of his horse's backbone, with a violence that he verily feared would cleave him asunder. An opening in the trees now cheered him with the hopes that the church bridge was at hand. The wavering reflection of a silver star in the bosom of the brook told him that he was not mistaken. He saw the walls of the church dimly glaring under the trees beyond. He recollected the place where Brom Bones's ghostly competitor had disappeared. "If I can but reach that bridge," thought Ichabod, " I am safe.'- Just then he heard the black steed panting and blowing 25d BKETGS-BOOK. close behind liim ; lie even fancied that he felt his hat breath. An- other convulsive kick in the ribs, and old Gunpowder sprung upon the bridge ; he thundered over the resounding planks ; he gained the op- posite side, and now Ichabod cast a look behind to see if his pursuer should vanish, according to rule, in a flash of fire and brimstone, Just then he saw the goblin rising in his stirrups and in the very act of hurling his head at him. Ichabod endeavored to dodge the horri ble missile, but too late. It encountered his cranium with a tremen- dous crash — he was tumbled headlong into the dust, and Gunpowder, the black steed, and the goblin rider, passed by like a whirlwind. The next morning the old horse was found without his saddle, and with the bridle under his feet, soberly cropping the grass at his master's gate. Ichabod did not make his appearance at breakfast — dinner-hour came, but no Ichabod. The boys assembled at the school- house, and strolled idly about the banks of the brook, but no school- master. Hans Van Kipper now began to feel some uneasiness about the fate of poor Ichabod- and his saddle. An inquiry was set on foot, and after diligent investigation they came upon his traces. In one part of the road leading to the church, was found the saddle trampled in the dirt ; the tracks of horses' hoofs deeply dented in the road, and evidently at furious speed, were traced to the bridge, beyond which, on the bank of a broad part of the brook, where the water ran deep and black, was found the hat of the unfortunate Ichabod, and close beside it a shattered pumpkin. The brook was searched, but the body of the schoolmaster was not to be discovered. Hans Van Ripper, as executor of his estate, ex- amined the bundle which contained all his worldly effects. They consisted of two shirts and a half, two stocks for the neck, a pair or two of worsted stockings, an old pair of corduroy small-clothes, a rusty razor, a book of psalm tunes full of dog's ears, and a broken pitch-pipe. As to the books and furniture of the school-house, they belonged to the community, excepting Cotton Mather's History of Witchcraft, a New England Almanac, and a book of dreams and for- tune-telling, in which last was a sheet of foolscap much scribbled and blotted, by several fruitless attempts to make a copy of verses in .honor of the heiress of Van Tassel. These magic books and the poetic scrawl were forthwith consigned to the flames by Hans Van Ripper, who, from that time forward, determined to send his chil- dren no more to school, observing that he never knew any good come of this same reading and writing. Whatever money the schoolmas- ter possessed, and he had received his quarter's pay but a day or two before, he must have had about his person at the time of his disap- pearance. The mysterious event caused much speculation at the church on the following Sunday. Knots of gazers and gossips were collected in the churchyard, at the bridge, and at the spot where the hat and THE LEGEND OF SLEEPY HOLLOW. 251 pumpkin liad been found. Tlie stories of Brouwer, of Bones, and a whole budget of others were called to mind ; and when they had diligently considered them all, and compared them with the symptoms of the present case, they shook their heads, and came to the conclu- sion that Ichabod had been carried off by the galloping Hessian. As he was a bachelor, and in nobody's debt, nobody troubled his head any more about him ; the school was removed to a different quarter of the Hollow, and another pedagogue reigned in his stead. It is true, an old farmer, who had been down to New York on a visit several years after, and from whom this account of the ghostly adventure was received, brought home the intelligence that Ichabod Crane was still alive ; that he had left the neighborhood partly through fear of the goblin and Hans Van Ripper, and partly in mor- tification at having been suddenly dismissed by the heiress ; that he had changed his quarters to a distant part of the country ; had kept school and studied law at the same time ; had been admitted to the bar ; turned politician ; electioneered ; written for the newspapers : and finally had been made a Justice of the Ten Pound Court. Brom Bones too, who, shortly after his rival's disappearance, conducted the blooming Katrina in triumph to the altar, was observed to look ex- ceedingly knowing whenever the story of Ichabod was related, and always burst into a hearty laugh at the mention of the pumpkin ; which led some to suspect that he knew more about the matter than he chose to tell. The old country wives, however, who are the best Judges of these matters, maintain to this day that Ichabod was spirited away by supernatural means ; and it is a favorite story often told about the neighborhood round the winter evening fire. The bridge bocame more than ever an object of superstitious awe ; and that may be the reason why the road has been altered of late years, so as to approach the church by the border of the mill pond. The school-house, being deserted, soon fell to decay, and was reported to be haunted by the ghost of the unfortunate pedagogue ; and the plow-boy, loitering homeward of a still summer evening, has often fancied his voice at a distance, chanting a melancholy psalm tune among the tranquil soli- tudes of Sleepy HoUow, POSTSCEIPT, POIJin> IN THE HA]SrDWKITING OF MK. KNICKERBOCKER. The preceding Tale is given almost in the precise words in which I heard it related at a Corporation meeting of the ancient city of the Manhattoes,* at which were present many of its sagest and most illus- * JTew York* ^"^ ' m "^ " ~ V BKETGM-BOOk. trions burners. The narrator was a pleasant, shabby, gentlemanly old fellow in pepper-and-salt clothes, with a sadly humorous face, and one whom I strongly suspected of being poor — he made such efforts to be entertaining. When his story was concluded there was much laughter and approbation, particularly from two or three deputy aldermen, who had been asleep the greater part of the time. There was, however, one tall, dry-looking old gentleman, with beetling eye- brows, who maintained a grave and rather severe face throughout ; now and then folding his arms, inclining his head, and looking down upon the floor, as if turning a doubt over in his mind. He was one of your wary men who never laugh but upon good grounds — when they have reason and the law on their side. When the mirth of the rest of the company had subsided and silence was restored, he leaned one arm on the elbow of his chair, and sticking the other a-kimbo, demanded, with a slight but exceedingly sage motion of the head, and contraction of the brow, what was the moral of the story, and what it went to prove. The story-teller, who was just putting a glass of wine to his lips, as a refreshment after his toils, paused for a moment, looked at his inquirer with an air of infinite deference, and lowering the glass slowly to the table, observed that the story was intended most logi- cally to prove : — " That there is no situation in life but has its advantages and pleas- ures — provided we will but take a joke as we find it : " That, therefore, he that runs races with goblin troopers, is likely to have rough riding of it : " Ergo, for a country schoolmaster to be refused the hand of a Dutch heiress is a certain step to high preferment in the state." The cautious old gentleman knit his brows tenfold closer after this explanation, being sorely puzzled by the ratiocination of the syllo* gism ; while, methought, the one in pepper-and-salt eyed him with something of a triumphant leer. At length he observed that all this was very well, but still he thought the story a little on the extrava- gant—there were one or two points on which he had his doubts : " Faith, sir," replied the story-teller, **as to that matter, I don't keliev* ©ne half of it myself." D. IL LEl^TOL 25S L'ENVOI. CrO, little booke, God send thee good passage, And specially let this be thy pray ere, Unto them all that thee will read or hear, Where thou art wrong, after their help to call, Thee to correct, in any part or all. Chatjcbr's Bell Dame sans Mercie. In concluding a second volume of the Sketcli-Book, the Author cannot but express his deep sense of the indulgence wiih which his first has been received, and of the liberal disposition that has been evinced to treat him with kindness as a stranger. Even the critics, whatever may be said of them by others, he has found to be a singu- larly gentle and good-natured race ; it is true that each has in turn objected to some one or two articles, and that these individual excep- tions, taken in the aggregate, would amount almost to a total con- demnation of his work ; but then he has been consoled by observing, that what one has particularly censured another has as particularly praised : and thus, the encomiums being set off against the objections, he finds his work, upon the whole, commended far beyond its deserts. He is aware that he runs a risk of forfeiting much of this kind favor by not following the counsel that has been liberally bestowed upon him ; for where abundance of valuable advice is given gratis, it may seem a man's own fault if he should go astray. He only can say, in his vindication, that he faithfully determined, for a time, to govern himself in his second volume by the opinions passed upon his first ; but he was soon brought to a stand by the contrariety of excel- lent counsel. One kindly advised him to avoid the ludicrous ; an- other to shun the pathetic ; a third assured him that he was tolera- ble at description, but cautioned him to leave narrative alone ; while a fourth declared that he had a very pretty knack at turning a story, and was really entertaining when in a pensive mood, but was griev- ously mistaken if he imagined himself to possess a spark of humor. Thus perplexed by the advice of his friends, who each in turn closed some particular path, but left him all the world beside to range in, he found that to follow all their counsels would, in fact, be to stand still. He remained for a time sadly embarrassed, when, all at onc^, the thought struck him to ramble on as he had begun ; that his work being miscellaneous, and written for different humors, it could not be expected that any one would be pleased with the whole ; but that if it should contain something to suit each reader, his end would be comnletely answered. Few guests sit down to a varied table with an equal appetite for every dish. One has an elegant horror of a roasted pig ; another holds a curry or a devil in utter abomination ; a third eannot tolerate the ancient flavor of venison and wild fowl ; and a ^4 SKETCH-BOOK. f ourtli, of truV masculine stomach, looks with sovereign contempt on those knicknacks here and there dished up for the ladies. Thus each article is condemned in its turn ; and yet, amid this variety of appetites, seldom does a dish go away from tlie table without being tasted and relished by some one or other of the guests. With these considerations he ventures to serve up this second vol- ume in the same heterogeneous way with his first ; simply request- (/ng the reader, if he should find here and there something to please him, to rest assured that it was written expressly for intelligent readers like himself ; but entreating him, should he find anything to dislike, to tolerate it, as one of those articles which the Author has been obliged to write for readers of a less refined taste. To be serious. — The Author is conscious of the numerous faults and imperfections of his work, and well aware how little he is disciplined and accomplished in the arts of authorship. His deficiencies are also increased by a diflB.dence arising from his peculiar situation. He finds himself writing in a strange land, and appearing before a public which he has, been accustomed from childhood to regard with the highest feelings of awe and reverence. He is full of solicitude to deserve their approbation, yet finds that very solicitude continually em- barrassing his powers, and depriving him of that ease and confidence which are necessary to successful exertion. Still the kindness with which he is treated encourages him to go on, hoping that in time he may acquire a steadier footing ; and thus he proceeds, half venturing, half shrinking, surprised at his own good fortune, and wondering at his own temerity. nSTRDllEIITAl HUSIC HADE EAST. INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC SELP-mSTEUCTOES. Music Witfiout a Teacher, Eacli of the following Books for teaching Instrumental Music is perfect in every way, and from them anyone with a taste for 'Concord of Sweet Sounds" can become an accomplished Musician in a short time on any of the Instal- ments enumerated. Piano Without a Teaclier. Full instruction is given not only as to the keys, but everything is explained as V> the fingering, position, use of pedals, etc. Price 2 5 cents* CABINET OUGAN WITHOUT A TEACHER. The playing of this Household Instrument is made quite easy, A little daily ap- plication with this book wiU enable anyone to play with correctness and ease, f^ice 25 cents. Violin Without a Teacher. Every rule that could be learned from an Ole Bull, or Paganini can be gained from these prges. The management of the fingers to produce every note, slide and shake is clearly explained. Price 25 cents. German Accordeon Without a Teacher. All the sweet melodies of this Instrument can be easily rendered by an applica- tion of the plain rules so weUlaid down in this book. Price 25 cents. Banjo Without a Teacher. This lively Instrument can be learnt just as well from the plain rules of this book, as from the lips of a master. Every point and little trick of the famous players are explained. Price 25 cents. Cornet Without a Teacher. By close attention to these rules one can become as great a prolcient as an Ar- buckle or a Levy. All about the keys and the valves, tongueing and double tongue- ing, etc., are clearly explained. Price 25 cents. So plain, practical and perfect are the lessons §riTen, that the acquiring of the art of playing any of the ahOTe Instruments Is quite simple and easy. Heart Songs and Home Tunes Contains COMPLETE MUSIC OF NEABIiY lOO PIECES, by such com- posers as Abt, GlOTcr, Sloan, Gatty and Balfe. Including a vast range of Songs, Bounds, Duetts and Choruses, arranged for the Piano and Organ. Price 15 cents. _ — . K: . Copies of fhe above "books, sent by mail postpaid to any Address on receipt of price. ARLINGTON EDITION. Elegant in Style. Moderate in Price. TypeLa^^^, Paper Fine. Binding Excell^T-s • <«p» ■ ROBINSON CRUSOE; His Life and Adventures. A New, Complete and Unabridged Edition. 480 pp. 12 mo. 10 full page illustra- tions, by Thwaites and others. Everything is first -class — the print very plain, the paper good, the bindingstrong and handsome. Cloth, Black and Gold. , fall gilt back. Price One JDoUar. Every language written by man, it is said, has been enriched by a translation of this immortal work. Every boy — aye, and man tpo — has felt a thrill of pleasure as Robinson safely reached shore on his rudely built raft; has watched the solitary man in his walks, as attended by his tamed goats and his wonderful " Poll," he marched, gun in hand, to view the shores of his island home — monarch of all he surveyed; and felt his heart bound, as Crusoe at last espied the bark that was to bear him to his native land. ARABIAN NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENTS; Or, the Thousand and One Nights. New and Complete Edition. 480 pp. 12 mo. 6 full page lUus. Cloth, Black and Gold. Price One Dollar. These wonderful Stories have outlived the palaces of the Caliphs, and thousands •f the fair slaves of the Harem have turned to dust in the Valley of Sweet Waters, iince these strange t^iles were first told. Yet they are as fresh to-day as the ever blooming roses of Cashmere. No child is too simple, no man too wise, to feel his heart glow with admiration or chill with fear as he follows the fortunes and mis- fortunes of the vast number of characters that figure in these entrancing pages. BUNYAN'S PILGRIM'S PROGRESS. The Pilgrim's Progress from this World to that Which is to Come, By John Bun- YAN. 4 ->. pp. large 12" mo. 10 full page Illustrations. Ey J. D. Watson. Cloth, k jck and Gold. Price One Dollar. Next to the Bible this is the book dear to every Christian heart. If ever in later times a ladder reached to and from heaven, surely one reached from the prison oi^ : poor John Bunyan to the throne of Grace. His book is not merely religious, it is * religion MOORE'S WORKS, The Poetical Works of Thomas Moore, Complete and Unabridged. Reprinted from the original ec'ition, with Explanatory Notes. 800 pp.. large 12 mo. Cloth, Black and Gold. Price One Dollar. Every person with one note ot music in his soul should own a copy of this book. Though in one respect Moore is a universal poet, in that his works are household treasures in almost every home; yet is he, par excellence, the Poet of the Emerald Isle. DANTE. The Vision of Hell, Purgatory and Paradise. Translated into English Verse, by H. T. Cary, a. M. With copious Explanatory Notes, and a Chronological View of the Age of Dante. 400 pp. large 12 mo. Cloth, Black and Gold. Price One Dollar. This is the best English translation ever made of this marvellous creation. The author was one of the most learned as well as one of the most original writers the World has known, and it needed a man like Cary — a prodigy of wisdom — to properly [translate and elucidate this world famous book — Miltonic in its grandeur of con- ception. BURN'S POETICAL WORKS. The Complete Works of Robert Burns. A New Edition, Unabridged, with Ex- planatory and Glossarial Notes, and a Memoir of the Author. 500 pp. Large • 12 mo. Cloth, Black and Gold. Price One Dollar. As long as the daisy blossoirs and the heather blooms in Bonnie Scotland, the memory of her '' peasant poet " will endure. Aye, and should endure. He has not only sung of the witching hour " When Coming through the Rye," of " Mary in Heaven,'' of the "■ Banks and Braes o' Bonnie Dooi?/' " Scots wa hae wi' Wallace Bled " — but he has enforced grand truths that " Rank is but the Guinea'* Stamp, a Man's a Man for a' that;" and in his best lines has produced a reverence for the Bible and a love of virtue.