SITY LIBRARY 
 r OF CALIFORNIA 
 SAN DIEGO 
 
 in memory of 
 
 DR. FR/NZ /LEXANDER 
 ^7 
 
 MRS. ALEXANDER 
 
 - E .'." -'- 
 I
 
 .-. ' r- 
 m '
 
 y
 
 Mr. Whittier in 1876
 
 THE PROSE WORKS 
 
 OF 
 
 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 
 
 IN THREE VOLUMES 
 VOLUME II 
 
 OLD PORTRAITS AND MODERN SKETCHES 
 HISTORICAL PAPERS, ETC. 
 
 BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
 HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 
 Tambrfojje
 
 Copyright, 1866, 
 BY JOHN GREENLEAF WHTTTIEE. 
 
 Copyright, 1889, 
 
 BY JOHN GREENLEAF WHITHER, AND 
 HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. 
 
 Copyright, 1892, 
 BY HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. 
 
 All rights reserved. 
 
 The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A. 
 Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Company.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 OLD PORTRAITS AND MODERN" SKETCHES. PAGE 
 
 JOHN BUNYAN 9 
 
 THOMAS ELLWOOD 37 
 
 JAMES NAYLER 69 
 
 ANDREW MARVELL 87 
 
 JOHN ROBERTS 104 
 
 SAMUEL HOPKINS . . . . 130 
 
 RICHARD BAXTER ..',- . . . . . 146 
 
 WILLIAM LEGGETT 184 
 
 NATHANIEL PEABODY ROGERS 216 
 
 ROBERT DDTSMORE 245 
 
 PLACIDO, THE SLAVE POET 261 
 
 PERSONAL SKETCHES AND TRIBUTES. 
 
 THE FUNERAL OF TORREY 271 
 
 EDWARD EVERETT 274 
 
 LEWIS TAPPAN 278 
 
 BAYARD TAYLOR 281 
 
 WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING 283 
 
 DEATH OF PRESIDENT GARFIELD 284 
 
 LYDIA MARIA CHILD 286 
 
 OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 309 
 
 LONGFELLOW ........ 311 
 
 OLD NEWBURY . 312 
 
 SCHOOLDAY REMEMBRANCES ..... 316 
 EDWIN PERCY WHIPPLE ...... 318 
 
 HISTORICAL PAPERS. 
 
 DANIEL O'CONNELL 321
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 ENGLAND UNDER JAMES II 348 
 
 THE BORDER WAR OF 1708 368 
 
 THE GREAT IPSWICH FRIGHT 380 
 
 POPE NIGHT 389 
 
 THE BOY CAPTIVES 395 
 
 THE BLACK MEN IN THE REVOLUTION AND WAR OF 
 
 1812 . 406 
 
 THE SCOTTISH REFORMERS 417 
 
 THE PILGRIMS OF PLYMOUTH 431 
 
 GOVERNOR ENDICOTT 434 
 
 JOHN WINTHROP . 436
 
 PAGE 
 
 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER AT THE AGE OF 69. En- 
 graved on Steel, by F. T. Stuart Frontispiece 
 
 MR. WHITTIEK'S STUDY, OAK KNOLL, DANVERS l ... 66 
 
 SAMUEL HOPKINS 130 
 
 LYDIA MARIA CHILD 286 
 
 OLD NEWBURY J. Appleton Brown . . 312 
 
 THE BOY CAPTIVES Gilbert Gaul .... 400 
 
 1 From a photograph copyrighted by B. F. Mills, Cambridge, Mass.
 
 OLD PORTRAITS AND MODERN 
 SKETCHES 
 
 Inscribed as follows, when first collected in book-form : 
 To Dr. G. BAILEY, of the National Era, Washington, D. C., 
 these sketches, many of which originally appeared in the columns 
 of the paper under his editorial supervision, are, in their present 
 form, offered as a token of the esteem and confidence which years 
 of political and literary communion have justified and confirmed, 
 on the part of his friend and associate, 
 
 THE AUTHOB. 
 
 JOHN BUNYAN. 
 
 " Wouldst see 
 A man i' the clouds, and hear him speak to thee ? " 
 
 WHO has not read Pilgrim's Progress ? Who 
 has not, in childhood, followed the wandering 
 Christian on his way to the Celestial City ? Who 
 has not laid at night his young head on the pillow, 
 to paint on the walls of darkness pictures of the 
 Wicket Gate and the Archers, the Hill of Diffi- 
 culty, the Lions and Giants, Doubting Castle and 
 Vanity Fair, the sunny Delectable Mountains and 
 the Shepherds, the Black River and the wonderful 
 glory beyond it ; and at last fallen asleep, to dream 
 over the strange story, to hear the sweet welcom- 
 ings of the sisters at the House Beautiful, and the 
 song of birds from the window of that "upper 
 chamber which opened towards the sunrising ? " 
 And who, looking back to the green spots in his
 
 10 PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES 
 
 childish experiences, does not bless the good Tin- 
 ker of Elstow ? 
 
 And who, that has reperused the story of the 
 Pilgrim at a maturer age, and felt the plummet of 
 its truth sounding in the deep places of the soul, 
 has not reason to bless the author for some timely 
 warning or grateful encouragement ? Where is 
 the scholar, the poet, the man of taste and feeling, 
 who does not, with Cowper, 
 
 "Even in transitory life's late day, 
 Revere the man whose Pilgrim marks the road, 
 And guides the Progress of the soul to God ! ' ' 
 
 We have just been reading, with no slight de- 
 gree of interest, that simple but wonderful piece 
 of autobiography, entitled Grace abounding to 
 the Chief of Sinners, from the pen of the author 
 of Pilgrim's Progress. It is the record of a jour- 
 ney more terrible than that of the ideal Pilgrim ; 
 " truth stranger than fiction ; " the painful upward 
 struggling of a spirit from the blackness of despair 
 and blasphemy, into the high, pure air of Hope 
 and Faith. More earnest words were never writ- 
 ten. It is the entire unveiling of a human heart ; 
 the tearing off of the fig-leaf covering of its sin. 
 The voice which speaks to us from these old pages 
 seems not so much that of a denizen of the world 
 in which we live, as of a soul at the last solemn 
 confessional. Shorn of all ornament, simple and 
 direct as the contrition and prayer of childhood, 
 when for the first time the Spectre of Sin stands 
 by its bedside, the style is that of a man dead to 
 self-gratification, careless of the world's opinion, 
 and only desirous to convey to others, in all truth-
 
 JOHN BUNYAN 11 
 
 fulness and sincerity, the lesson of his inward 
 trials, temptations, sins, weaknesses, and dangers ; 
 and to give glory to Him who had mercifully led 
 him through all, and enabled him, like his own 
 Pilgrim, to leave behind the Valley of the Shadow 
 of Death, the snares of the Enchanted Ground, 
 and the terrors of Doubting Castle, and to reach 
 the land of Beulah, where the air was sweet and 
 pleasant, and the birds sang and the flowers sprang 
 up around him, and the Shining Ones walked in 
 the brightness of the not distant Heaven. In the 
 introductory pages he says : " I could have dipped 
 into a style higher than this in which I have dis- 
 coursed, and could have adorned all things more 
 than here I have seemed to do ; but I dared not. 
 God did not play in tempting me ; neither did I 
 play when I sunk, as it were, into a bottomless pit, 
 when the pangs of hell took hold on me ; where- 
 fore, I may not play in relating of them, but be 
 plain and simple, and lay down the thing as it 
 was." 
 
 This book, as well as Pilgrim's Progress, was 
 written in Bedford prison, and was designed es- 
 pecially for the comfort and edification of his 
 " children, whom God had counted him worthy to 
 beget in faith by his ministry." In his introduc- 
 tion he tells them, that, although taken from them, 
 and tied up, " sticking, as it were, between the 
 teeth of the lions of the wilderness," he once again, 
 as before, from the top of Shemer and Hermon, so 
 now, from the lion's den and the mountain of leop- 
 ards, would look after them with fatherly care and 
 desires for their everlasting welfare. " If," said
 
 12 PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES 
 
 he, " you have sinned against light ; if you are 
 tempted to blaspheme ; if you are drowned in de- 
 spair ; if you think God fights against you ; or 
 if Heaven is hidden from your eyes, remember it 
 was so with your father. But out of all the Lord 
 delivered me." 
 
 He gives no dates ; he affords scarcely a clue to 
 his localities ; of the man, as he worked, and ate, 
 and drank, and lodged, of his neighbors and con- 
 temporaries, of all he saw and heard of the world 
 about him, we have only an occasional glimpse, 
 here and there, in his narrative. It is the story of 
 his inward life only that he relates. What had 
 time and place to do with one who trembled al- 
 ways with the awful consciousness of an immortal 
 nature, and about whom fell alternately the shad- 
 ows of hell and the splendors of heaven ? We 
 gather, indeed, from his record, that he was not an 
 idle on-looker in the time of England's great strug- 
 gle for freedom, but a soldier of the Parliament, 
 in his young years, among the praying sworders 
 and psalm-singing pikemen, the Greathearts and 
 Holdfasts whom he has immortalized in his alle- 
 gory; but the only allusion which he makes to 
 this portion of his experience is by way of illustra- 
 tion of the goodness of God in preserving him on 
 occasions of peril. 
 
 He was born at Elstow, in Bedfordshire, in 
 1628 ; and, to use his own words, his " father's 
 house was of that rank which is the meanest and 
 most despised of all the families of the land." His 
 father was a tinker, and the son followed the same 
 calling, which necessarily brought him into asso-
 
 JOHN BUN Y AN 13 
 
 elation with the lowest and most depraved classes 
 of English societjr. The estimation in which the 
 tinker and his occupation were held, in the seven- 
 teenth century, may be learned from the quaint 
 and humorous description of Sir Thomas Over- 
 bury. "The tinker," saith he, "is a movable, for 
 he hath no abiding in one place ; he seems to be 
 devout, for his life is a continual pilgrimage, and 
 sometimes, in humility, goes barefoot, therein mak- 
 ing necessity a virtue ; he is a gallant, for he car- 
 ries all his wealth upon his back ; or a philosopher, 
 for he bears all his substance with him. He is al- 
 ways furnished with a song, to which his hammer, 
 keeping tune, proves that he was the first founder 
 of the kettle-drum ; where the best ale is, there 
 stands his music most upon crotchets. The com- 
 panion of his travel is some foul, sun-burnt quean, 
 that, since the terrible statute, has recanted gypsy- 
 ism, and is turned pedlaress. So marches he all 
 over England, with his bag and baggage ; his con- 
 versation is irreprovable, for he is always mending. 
 He observes truly the statutes, and therefore had 
 rather steal than beg. He is so strong an enemy 
 of idleness, that in mending one hole he would 
 rather make three than want work ; and when he 
 hath done, he throws the wallet of his faults be- 
 hind him. His tongue is very voluble, which, with 
 canting, proves him a linguist. He is entertained 
 in every place, yet enters no farther than the door, 
 to avoid suspicion. To conclude, if he escape Ty- 
 burn and Banbury, he dies a beggar." 
 
 Truly, but a poor beginning for a pious life was 
 the youth of John Bunyan. As might have been
 
 14 PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES 
 
 expected, he was a wild, reckless, swearing boy, as 
 his father doubtless was before him. " It was my 
 delight," says he, "to be taken captive by the 
 Devil. I had few equals, both for cursing and 
 swearing, lying and blaspheming." Yet, in his 
 ignorance and darkness, his powerful imagination 
 early lent terror to the reproaches of conscience. 
 He was scared, even in childhood, with dreams of 
 hell and apparitions of devils. Troubled with 
 fears of eternal fire, and the malignant demons 
 who fed it in the regions of despair, he says that 
 he often wished either that there was no hell, or 
 that he had been born a devil himself, that he 
 might be a tormentor rather than one of the tor- 
 mented. 
 
 At an early age he appears to have married. 
 His wife was as poor as himself, for he tells us 
 that they had not so much as a dish or spoon be- 
 tween them ; but she brought with her two books 
 on religious subjects, the reading of which seems 
 to have had no slight degree of influence on his 
 mind. He went to church regularly, adored the 
 priest and all things pertaining to his office, being, 
 as he says, " overrun with superstition." On one 
 occasion, a sermon was preached against the breach 
 of the Sabbath by sports or labor, which struck 
 him at the moment as especially designed for him- 
 self ; but by the time he had finished his dinner 
 he was prepared to " shake it out of his mind, and 
 return to his sports and gaming." 
 
 " But the same day," he continues, " as I was in 
 the midst of a game of cat, and having struck it 
 one blow from the hole, just as I was about to
 
 JOHN BUNYAN 15 
 
 strike it a second time, a voice did suddenly dart 
 from Heaven into my soul, which said, * Wilt thou 
 leave thy sins and go to heaven, or have thy sins 
 and go to hell ? ' At this, I was put to an exceed- 
 ing maze ; wherefore, leaving my cat upon the 
 ground, I looked up to Heaven, and it was as if I 
 had, with the eyes of my understanding, seen the 
 Lord Jesus look down upon me, as being very 
 hotly displeased with me, and as if He did severely 
 threaten me with some grievous punishment for 
 those and other ungodly practices. 
 
 " I had no sooner thus conceived in my mind, 
 but suddenly this conclusion fastened on my spirit, 
 (for the former hint did set my sins again before 
 my face,) that I had been a great and grievous 
 sinner, and that it was now too late for me to look 
 after Heaven ; for Christ would not forgive me 
 nor pardon my transgressions. Then, while I was 
 thinking of it, and fearing lest it should be DO, I 
 felt my heart sink in despair, concluding it was too 
 late ; and therefore I resolved in my mind to go 
 on in sin ; for, thought I, if the case be thus, my 
 state is surely miserable ; miserable if I leave my 
 sins, and but miserable if I follow them ; I can but 
 be damned ; and if I must be so, I had as good be 
 damned for many sins as be damned for few." 
 
 The reader of Pilgrim's Progress cannot fail 
 here to call to mind the wicked suggestions of the 
 Giant to Christian, in the dungeon of Doubting 
 Castle. 
 
 " I returned," he says, " desperately to my sport 
 again ; and I well remember, that presently this 
 kind of despair did so possess my soul, that I was
 
 16 PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES 
 
 persuaded I could never attain to other comfort 
 than what I should get in sin ; for Heaven was 
 gone already, so that on that I must not think ; 
 wherefore, I found within me great desire to take 
 my fill of sin, that I might taste the sweetness of 
 it ; and I made as much haste as I could to fill my 
 belly with its delicates, lest I should die before I 
 had my desires; for that I feared greatly. In 
 these things, I protest before God, I lie not, neither 
 do I frame this sort of speech ; these were really, 
 strongly, and with all my heart, my desires ; the 
 good Lord, whose mercy is unsearchable, forgive 
 my transgressions." 
 
 One day, while standing in the street, cursing 
 and blaspheming, he met with a reproof which 
 startled him. The woman of the house in front of 
 which the wicked young tinker was standing, her- 
 self, as he remarks, " a very loose, ungodly wretch," 
 protested that his horrible profanity made her 
 tremble ; that he was the ungodliest fellow for 
 swearing she had ever heard, and able to spoil all 
 the youth of the town who came in his company. 
 Struck by this wholly unexpected rebuke, he at 
 once abandoned the practice of swearing ; although 
 previously he tells us that " he had never known 
 how to speak, unless he put an oath before and 
 another behind." 
 
 The good name which he gained by this change 
 was now a temptation to him. " My neighbors," 
 he says, " were amazed at my great conversion 
 from prodigious profaneness to something like a 
 moral life and sober man. Now, therefore, they 
 began to praise, to commend, and to speak well of
 
 JOHN BUN Y AN 17 
 
 me, both to my face and behind my back. Now I 
 was, as they said, become godly ; now I was be- 
 come a right honest man. But oh ! when I under- 
 stood those were their words and opinions of me, 
 it pleased me mighty well ; for though as yet I 
 was nothing but a poor painted hypocrite, yet I 
 loved to be talked of as one that was truly godly. 
 I was proud of my godliness, and, indeed, I did all 
 I did either to be seen of or well spoken of by 
 men ; and thus I continued for about a twelve- 
 month or more." 
 
 The tyranny of his imagination at this period is 
 seen in the following relation of his abandonment 
 of one of his favorite sports. 
 
 " Now, you must know, that before this I had 
 taken much delight in ringing, but my conscience 
 beginning to be tender, I thought such practice 
 was but vain, and therefore forced myself to leave 
 it ; yet my mind hankered ; wherefore, I would go 
 to the steeple-house and look on, though I durst 
 not ring ; but I thought this did not become re- 
 ligion neither ; yet I forced myself, and would look 
 on still. But quickly after, I began to think, 
 * How if one of the bells should fall ? ' Then I 
 chose to stand under a main beam, that lay over- 
 thwart the steeple, from side to side, thinking here 
 I might stand sure ; but then I thought again, 
 should the bell fall with a swing, it migh^ first hit 
 the wall, and then, rebounding upon me, might kill 
 me for all this beam. This made me stand in the 
 steeple door; and now, thought I, I am safe 
 enough ; for if a bell should then fall, I can slip 
 out behind these thick walls, and so be preserved 
 notwithstanding.
 
 18 PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES 
 
 " So after this I would yet go to see them ring, 
 but would not go any farther than the steeple-door. 
 But then it came in my head, ' How if the steeple 
 itself should fall ? ' And this thought (it may, 
 for aught I know, when I stood and looked on) 
 did continually so shake my mind, that I durst not 
 stand at the steeple-door any longer, but was forced 
 to flee, for fear the steeple should fall upon my 
 head." 
 
 About this time, while wandering through Bed- 
 ford in pursuit of employment, he chanced to see 
 three or four poor old women sitting at a door, in 
 the evening sun, and, drawing near them, heard 
 them converse upon the things of God ; of His 
 work in their hearts ; of their natural depravity ; 
 of the temptations of the Adversary ; and of the 
 joy of believing, and of the peace of reconciliation. 
 The words of the aged women found a response in 
 the soul of the listener. " He felt his heart shake," 
 to use his own words ; he saw that he lacked the 
 true tokens of a Christian. He now forsook the 
 company of the profane and licentious, and sought 
 that of a poor man who had the reputation of piety, 
 but, to his grief, he found him " a devilish ranter, 
 given up to all manner of uncleanness ; he would 
 laugh at all exhortations to sobriety, and deny that 
 there was a God, an angel, or a spirit." 
 
 " Neither," he continues, " was this man only a 
 temptation to me, but, my calling lying in the coun- 
 try, I happened to come into several people's com- 
 pany, who, though strict in religion formerly, yet 
 were also drawn away by these ranters. These 
 would also talk with me of their ways, and con-
 
 JOHN BUNYAN 19 
 
 demn me as illegal and dark ; pretending that they 
 only had attained to perfection, that they could do 
 what they would, and not sin. Oh ! these tempta- 
 tions were suitable to my flesh, I being but a 
 young man, and my nature in its prime ; but God, 
 who had, as I hope, designed me for better things, 
 kept me in the fear of His name, and did not suffer 
 me to accept such cursed principles." 
 
 At this time he was sadly troubled to ascertain 
 whether or not he had that faith which the Scrip- 
 tures spake of. Travelling one day from Elstow to 
 Bedford, after a recent rain, which had left pools 
 of water in the path, he felt a strong desire to set- 
 tle the question, by commanding the pools to be- 
 come dry, and the dry places to become pools. 
 Going under the hedge, to pray for ability to work 
 the miracle, he was struck with the thought that 
 if he failed he should know, indeed, that he was 
 a castaway, and give himself up to despair. He 
 dared not attempt the experiment, and went on 
 his way, to use his own forcible language, " tossed 
 up and down between the Devil and his own igno- 
 rance." 
 
 Soon after, he had one of those visions which 
 foreshadowed the wonderful dream of his Pilgrim? s 
 Progress. He saw some holy people of Bedford 
 on the sunny side of an high mountain, refreshing 
 themselves in the pleasant air and sunlight, while 
 he was shivering in cold and darkness, amidst 
 snows and never-melting ices, like the victims of 
 the Scandinavian hell. A wall compassed the 
 mountain, separating him from the blessed, with 
 one small gap or doorway, through which, with
 
 20 PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES 
 
 great pain and effort, he was at last enabled to 
 work his way into the sunshine, and sit down with 
 the saints, in the light and warmth thereof. 
 
 But now a new trouble assailed him. Like Mil- 
 ton's metaphysical spirits, who sat apart, 
 
 "And reasoned of foreknowledge, will, and fate," 
 
 he grappled with one of those great questions which 
 have always perplexed and baffled human inquiry, 
 and upon which much has been written to little 
 purpose. He was tortured with anxiety to know 
 whether, according to the Westminster formula, he 
 was elected to salvation or damnation. His old 
 adversary vexed his soul with evil suggestions, and 
 even quoted Scripture to enforce them. " It may 
 be you are not elected," said the Tempter ; and the 
 poor tinker thought the supposition altogether too 
 probable. " Why, then," said Satan, " you had as 
 good leave off, and strive no farther; for if, indeed, 
 you should not be elected and chosen of God, 
 there is no hope of your being saved ; for it is 
 neither in him that willeth nor in him that runneth, 
 but in God who showeth mercy." At length, when, 
 as he says, he was about giving up the ghost of all 
 his hopes, this passage fell with weight upon his 
 spirit : " Look at the generations of old, and see ; 
 did ever any trust in God, and were confounded ? " 
 Comforted by these words, he opened his Bible 
 to note them, but the most diligent search and 
 inquiry of his neighbors failed to discover them. 
 At length his eye fell upon them in the Apocryphal 
 book of Ecclesiasticus. This, he says, somewhat 
 doubted him at first, as the book was not canon- 
 ical ; but in the end he took courage and comfort
 
 JOHN BUNYAN 21 
 
 from the passage. " I bless God," he says, " for 
 that word; it was good for me. That word doth 
 still oftentimes shine before my face." 
 
 A long and weary struggle was now before him. 
 " I cannot," he says, " express with what longings 
 and breathings of my soul I cried unto Christ to 
 call me. Gold ! could it have been gotten by 
 gold, what would I have given for it. Had I a 
 whole world, it had all gone ten thousand times 
 over for this, that my soul might have been in a 
 converted state. How lovely now was every one 
 in my eyes, that I thought to be converted men 
 and women. They shone, they walked like a peo- 
 ple who carried the broad seal of Heaven with 
 them." 
 
 With what force and intensity of language does 
 he portray in the following passage the reality and 
 earnestness of his agonizing experience : 
 
 " While I was thus afflicted with the fears of 
 my own damnation, there were two things would 
 make me wonder : the one was, when I saw old 
 people hunting after the things of this life, as if 
 they should live here always ; the other was, when 
 I found professors much distressed and cast down, 
 when they met with outward losses ; as of hus- 
 band, wife, or child. Lord, thought I, what seek- 
 ing after carnal things by some, and what grief in 
 others for the loss of them ! If they so much 
 labor after and shed so many tears for the things 
 of this present life, how am I to be bemoaned, pit- 
 ied, and prayed for ! My soul is dying, my soul 
 is damning. Were my soul but in a good con- 
 dition, and were I but sure of it, ah ! how rich
 
 22 PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES 
 
 should I esteem myself, though blessed but with 
 bread and water ! I should count these but small 
 afflictions, and should bear them as little burdens. 
 ' A wounded spirit who can bear ! ' ' 
 
 He looked with envy, as he wandered through 
 the country, upon the birds in the trees, the hares 
 in the preserves, and the fishes in the streams. 
 They were happy in their brief existence, and 
 their death was but a sleep. He felt himself alien- 
 ated from God, a discord in the harmonies of the 
 universe. The very rooks which fluttered around 
 the old church spire seemed more worthy of the 
 Creator's love and care than himself. A vision of 
 the infernal fire, like that glimpse of hell which was 
 afforded to Christian by the Shepherds, was con- 
 tinually before him, with its " rumbling noise, and 
 the cry of some tormented, and the scent of brim- 
 stone." Whithersoever he went, the glare of it 
 scorched him, and its dreadful sound was in his 
 ears. His vivid but disturbed imagination lent 
 new terrors to the awful figures by which the 
 sacred writers conveyed the idea of future retribu- 
 tion to the Oriental mind. Bunyan's World of 
 Woe, if it lacked the colossal architecture and 
 solemn vastness of Milton's Pandemonium, was 
 more clearly defined ; its agonies were within the 
 pale of human comprehension ; its victims were 
 men and women, with the same keen sense of cor- 
 poreal suffering which they possessed in life ; and 
 who, to use his own terrible description, had " all 
 the loathed variety of hell to grapple with ; fire 
 unquenchable, a lake of choking brimstone, eternal 
 chains, darkness more black than night, the ever-
 
 JOHN BUNYAN 23 
 
 lasting gnawing of the worm, the sight of devils, 
 and the yells and outcries of the damned." 
 
 His mind at this period was evidently shaken in 
 some degree from its balance. He was troubled 
 with strange, wicked thoughts, confused by doubts 
 and blasphemous suggestions, for which he could 
 only account by supposing himself possessed of the 
 Devil. He wanted to curse and swear, and had 
 to clap his hands on his mouth to prevent it. In 
 prayer, he felt, as he supposed, Satan behind him, 
 pulling his clothes, and telling him to have done, 
 and break off ; suggesting that he had better pray 
 to him, and calling up before his mind's eye the 
 figures of a bull, a tree, or some other object, in- 
 stead of the awful idea of God. 
 
 He notes here, as cause of thankfulness, that, 
 even in this dark and clouded state, he was en- 
 abled to see the " vile and abominable things 
 fomented by the Quakers," to be errors. Gradu- 
 ally, the shadow wherein he had so long 
 
 " Walked beneath the day's broad glare, 
 A darkened man," 
 
 passed from him, and for a season he was afforded 
 an " evidence of his salvation from Heaven, with 
 many golden seals thereon hanging in his sight." 
 But, ere long, other temptations assailed him. A 
 strange suggestion haunted him, to sell or part 
 with his Saviour. His own account of this hallu- 
 cination is too painfully vivid to awaken any other 
 feeling than that of sympathy and sadness. 
 
 " I could neither eat my food, stoop for a pin, 
 chop a stick, or cast mine eye to look on this or 
 that, but still the temptation would come, Sell
 
 24 PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES 
 
 Christ for this, or sell Christ for that ; sell him, 
 sell him. 
 
 " Sometimes it would run in my thoughts, not so 
 little as a hundred times together, Sell him, sell 
 him; against which, I may say, for whole hours 
 together, I have been forced to stand as continually 
 leaning and forcing my spirit against it, lest haply, 
 before I were aware, some wicked thought might 
 arise in my heart, that might consent thereto ; and 
 sometimes the tempter would make me believe I 
 had consented to it ; but then I should be as tor- 
 tured upon a rack, for whole days together. 
 
 " This temptation did put me to such scares, 
 lest I should at sometimes, I say, consent thereto, 
 and be overcome therewith, that, by the very force 
 of my mind, my very body would be put into action 
 or motion, by way of pushing or thrusting with 
 my hands or elbows ; still answering, as fast as the 
 destroyer said, Sell him, I will not, I will not, I 
 will not ; no, not for thousands, thousands, thou- 
 sands of worlds ; thus reckoning, lest I should set 
 too low a value on him, even until I scarce well 
 knew where I was, or how to be composed again. 
 
 " But to be brief : one morning, as I did lie in 
 my bed, I was, as at other times, most fiercely 
 assaulted with this temptation, to sell and part 
 with Christ ; the wicked suggestion still running 
 in my mind, Sell him, sell him, sell him, sell him, 
 sell him, as fast as a man could speak ; against 
 which, also, in my mind, as at other times, I an- 
 swered, No, no, not for thousands, thousands, 
 thousands, at least twenty times together ; but at 
 last, after much striving, I felt this thought pass
 
 JOHN BUN Y AN 25 
 
 through my heart, Let Mm go if Tie will ; and I 
 thought also, that I felt my heart freely consent 
 thereto. Oh, the diligence of Satan ! Oh, the des- 
 perateness of man's heart ! 
 
 " Now was the battle won, and down fell I, as 
 a bird that is shot from the top of a tree, into great 
 guilt, and fearful despair. Thus getting out of my 
 bed, I went moping into the field ; but God knows 
 with as heavy a heart as mortal man, I think, could 
 bear ; where, for the space of two hours, I was like 
 a man bereft of life ; and, as now, past all recov- 
 ery, and bound over to eternal punishment. 
 
 " And withal, that Scripture did seize upon my 
 soul : ' Or profane person, as Esau, who, for one 
 morsel of meat, sold his birthright ; for ye know, 
 how that afterward, when he would have inherited 
 the blessing, he was rejected ; for he found no 
 place for repentance, though he sought it carefully 
 with tears.' " 
 
 For two years and a half, as he informs us, that 
 awful Scripture sounded in his ears like the knell 
 of a lost soul. He believed that he had commit- 
 ted the unpardonable sin. His mental anguish 
 was united with bodily illness and suffering. His 
 nervous system became fearfully deranged ; his 
 limbs trembled ; and he supposed this visible trern- 
 ulousness and agitation to be the mark of Cain. 
 Troubled with pain and distressing sensations in 
 his chest, he began to fear that his breast-bone 
 would split open, and that he should perish like 
 Judas Iscariot. He feared that the tiles of the 
 houses would fall upon him as he walked in the 
 streets. He was like his own Man in the Cage at
 
 26 PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES 
 
 the House of the Interpreter, shut out from the 
 promises, and looking forward to certain judgment. 
 " Methought," he says, " the very sun that shineth 
 in heaven did grudge to give me light." And still 
 the dreadful words, " He found no place for re- 
 pentance, though he sought it carefully with tears," 
 sounded in the depths of his soul. They were, he 
 says, like fetters of brass to his legs, and their con- 
 tinual clanking followed him for months. Regard- 
 ing himself elected and predestined for damnation, 
 he thought that all things worked for his damage 
 and eternal overthrow, while all things wrought for 
 the best and to do good to the elect and called of 
 God unto salvation. God and all His universe 
 had, he thought, conspired against him ; the green 
 earth, the bright waters, the sky itself, were writ- 
 ten over with His irrevocable curse. 
 
 Well was it said by Bunyan's contemporary, the 
 excellent Cudworth, in his eloquent sermon before 
 the Long Parliament, that " We are nowhere com- 
 manded to pry into the secrets of God, but the 
 wholesome advice given us is this : ' To make our 
 calling and election sure.' We have no warrant 
 from Scripture to peep into the hidden rolls of 
 eternity, to spell out our names among the stars." 
 " Must we say that God sometimes, to exercise His 
 uncontrollable dominion, delights rather in plung- 
 ing wretched souls down into infernal night and 
 everlasting darkness ? What, then, shall we make 
 the God of the whole world ? Nothing but a cruel 
 and dreadful Erinnys, with curled fiery snakes 
 about His head, and firebrands in His hand ; thus 
 governing the world ! Surely, this will make us
 
 JOHN BUNYAN 27 
 
 either secretly think there is no God in the world, 
 if He must needs be such, or else to wish heartily 
 there were none." It was thus at times with Bun- 
 yan. He was tempted, in this season of despair, 
 to believe that there was no resurrection and no 
 judgment. 
 
 One day, he tells us, a sudden rushing sound, as 
 of wind or the wings of angels, came to him through 
 the window, wonderfully sweet and pleasant ; and 
 it was as if a voice spoke to him from heaven 
 words of encouragement and hope, which, to use 
 his language, commanded, for the time, " a silence 
 in his heart to all those tumultuous thoughts that 
 did use, like masterless hell-hounds, to roar and bel- 
 low and make a hideous noise within him." About 
 this time, also, some comforting passages of Scrip- 
 ture were called to mind ; but he remarks, that 
 whenever he strove to apply them to his case, 
 Satan would thrust the curse of Esau in his face, 
 and wrest the good word from him. The blessed 
 promise, " Him that cometh to me, I will in no 
 wise cast out," was the chief instrumentality in re- 
 storing his lost peace. He says of it : " If ever 
 Satan and I did strive for any word of God in all 
 my life, it was for this good word of Christ ; he at 
 one end, and I at the other. Oh, what work we 
 made ! It was for this in John, I say, that we did 
 so tug and strive ; he pulled, and I pulled, but, 
 God be praised ! I overcame him ; I got sweetness 
 from it. Oh, many a pull hath my heart had with 
 Satan for this blessed sixth chapter of John ! " 
 
 Who does not here call to mind the struggle 
 between Christian and Apollyon in the valley !
 
 28 PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES 
 
 That was no fancy sketch ; it was the narrative of 
 the author's own grapple with the Spirit of Evil. 
 Like his ideal Christian, he " conquered through 
 Him that loved him." Love wrought the victory : 
 the Scripture of Forgiveness overcame that of 
 Hatred. 
 
 He never afterwards relapsed into that state of 
 religious melancholy from which he so hardly es- 
 caped. He speaks of his deliverance as the wak- 
 ing out of a troublesome dream. His painful ex- 
 perience was not lost upon him ; for it gave him, 
 ever after, a tender sympathy for the weak, the sin- 
 ful, the ignorant, and desponding. In some meas- 
 ure, he had been " touched with the feeling of their 
 infirmities." He could feel for those in the bonds 
 of sin and despair, as bound with them. Hence 
 his power as a preacher ; hence the wonderful 
 adaptation of his great allegory to all the variety of 
 spiritual conditions. Like Fearing, he had lain a 
 month in the Slough of Despond, and had played, 
 like him, the long melancholy bass of spiritual 
 heaviness. With Feeble-mind, he had fallen into 
 the hands of Slay-good, of the nature of Man-eat- 
 ers : and had limped along his difficult way upon 
 the crutches of Ready-to-halt. Who better than 
 himself could describe the condition of Despond- 
 ency, and his daughter Much-afraid, in the dun- 
 geon of Doubting Castle ? Had he not also fallen 
 among thieves, like Little-faith ? 
 
 His account of his entering upon the solemn 
 duties of a preacher of the Gospel is at once curi- 
 ous and instructive. He deals honestly with him- 
 self, exposing all his various moods, weaknesses,
 
 JOHN BUN Y AN 29 
 
 doubts, and temptations. " I preached," he says, 
 " what I felt ; for the terrors of the law and the 
 guilt of transgression lay heavy on my conscience. 
 I have been as one sent to them from the dead. I 
 went, myself in chains, to preach to them in chains ; 
 and carried that fire in my conscience which I 
 persuaded them to beware of." At times, when 
 he stood up to preach, blasphemies and evil doubts 
 rushed into his mind, and he felt a strong desire 
 to utter them aloud to his congregation ; and at 
 other seasons, when he was about to apply to the 
 sinner some searching and fearful text of Scrip- 
 ture, he was tempted to withhold it, on the ground 
 that it condemned himself also ; but, withstand- 
 ing the suggestion of the Tempter, to use his own 
 simile, he bowed himself like Samson to condemn 
 sin wherever he found it, though he brought guilt 
 and condemnation upon himself thereby, choosing 
 rather to die with the Philistines than to deny the 
 truth. 
 
 Foreseeing the consequences of exposing himself 
 to the operation of the penal laws by holding con- 
 venticles and preaching, he was deeply afflicted at 
 the thought of the suffering and destitution to 
 which his wife and children might be exposed by 
 his death or imprisonment. Nothing can be more 
 touching than his simple and earnest words on this 
 point. They show how warm and deep were his 
 human affections, and what a tender and loving 
 heart he laid as a sacrifice on the altar of duty. 
 
 " I found myself a man compassed with infirmi- 
 ties ; the parting with my wife and poor children 
 hath often been to me in this place as the pulling
 
 30 PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES 
 
 the flesh from the bones ; and also it brought to 
 my mind the many hardships, miseries, and wants, 
 that my poor family was like to meet with, should 
 I be taken from them, especially my poor blind 
 child, who lay nearer my heart than all beside. 
 Oh, the thoughts of the hardships I thought my 
 poor blind one might go under would break my 
 heart to pieces. 
 
 " Poor child ! thought I, what sorrow art thou 
 like to have for thy portion in this world ! thou 
 must be beaten, must beg, suffer hunger, cold, na- 
 kedness, and a thousand calamities, though I can- 
 not now endure the wind should blow upon thee. 
 But yet, thought I, I must venture you all with 
 God, though it goeth to the quick to leave you : 
 oh ! I saw I was as a man who was pulling down 
 his house upon the heads of his wife and children ; 
 yet I thought on those ' two milch kine that were 
 to carry the ark of God into another country, and 
 to leave their calves behind them.' 
 
 " But that which helped me in this temptation 
 was divers considerations : the first was, the con- 
 sideration of those two Scriptures, ' Leave thy fa- 
 therless children, I will preserve them alive ; and 
 let thy widows trust in me ; ' and again, * The 
 Lord said, verily it shall go well with thy rem- 
 nant ; verily I will cause the enemy to entreat 
 them well in the time of evil.' " 
 
 He was arrested in 1660, charged with " devil- 
 ishly and perniciously abstaining from church," 
 and of being " a common upholder of conventicles." 
 At the Quarter Sessions, where his trial seems to 
 have been conducted somewhat like that of Faith-
 
 JOHN BUNYAN 31 
 
 ful at Vanity Fair, he was sentenced to perpetual 
 banishment. This sentence, however, was never 
 executed, but ho was remanded to Bedford jail, 
 where he lay a prisoner for twelve years. 
 
 Here, shut out from the world, with no other 
 books than the Bible and Fox's Martyrs^ he penned 
 that great work which has attained a wider and 
 more stable popularity than any other book in the 
 English tongue. It is alike the favorite of the 
 nursery and the study. Many experienced Chris- 
 tians hold it only second to the Bible ; the infidel 
 himself would not willingly let it die. Men of all 
 sects read it with delight, as in the main a truthful 
 representation of the Christian pilgrimage, without 
 indeed assenting to all the doctrines which the au- 
 thor puts in the mouth of his fighting sermonizer, 
 Great-heart, or which may be deduced from some 
 other portions of his allegory. A recollection of 
 his fearful sufferings, from misapprehension of a 
 single text in the Scriptures, relative to the ques- 
 tion of election, we may suppose gave a milder tone 
 to the theology of his Pilgrim than was altogether 
 consistent with the Calvinism of the seventeenth 
 century. " Keligion," says Macaulay, " has 
 scarcely ever worn a form so calm and soothing as 
 in Bunyan's allegory." In composing it, he seems 
 never to have altogether lost sight of the fact, that, 
 in his life-and-death struggle with Satan for the 
 blessed promise recorded by the Apostle of Love, 
 the adversary was generally found on the Genevan 
 side of the argument. 
 
 Little did the short-sighted persecutors of Bun- 
 yan dream, when they closed upon him the door
 
 32 
 
 of Bedford jail, that God would overrule their poor 
 spite and envy to His own glory and the world- 
 wide renown of their victim. In the solitude of his 
 prison, the ideal forms of beauty and sublimity, 
 which had long flitted before him vaguely, like the 
 vision of the Temanite, took shape and coloring ; 
 and he was endowed with power to reduce them to 
 order, and arrange them in harmonious groupings. 
 His powerful imagination, no longer self -torment- 
 ing, but under the direction of reason and grace, 
 expanded his narrow cell into a vast theatre, light- 
 ed up for the display of its wonders. To this 
 creative faculty of his mind might have been aptly 
 applied the language which George Wither, a con- 
 temporary prisoner, addressed to his Muse : 
 
 " The dull loneness, the black shade 
 Which these hanging vaults have made, 
 The rude portals that give light 
 More to terror than delight ; 
 This my chamber of neglect, 
 Walled about with disrespect, 
 From all these, and this dull air, 
 A fit object for despair, 
 She hath taught me by her might, 
 To draw comfort and delight." 
 
 That stony cell of his was to him like the rock 
 of Padan-aram to the wandering Patriarch. He 
 saw angels ascending and descending. The House 
 Beautiful rose up before him, and its holy sister- 
 hood welcomed him. He looked, with his Pilgrim, 
 from the Chamber of Peace. The Valley of Hu- 
 miliation lay stretched out beneath his eye, and he 
 heard " the curious, melodious note of the country 
 birds, who sing all the day long in the spring time,
 
 JOHN BUNYAN 33 
 
 when the flowers appear, and the sun shines warm, 
 and make the woods and groves and solitary places 
 glad." Side by side with the good Christiana and 
 the loving Mercy, he walked through the green and 
 lowly valley, " fruitful as any the crow flies over," 
 through "meadows beautiful with lilies ; " the song 
 of the poor but fresh-faced shepherd-boy, who lived 
 a merry life, and wore the herb heartsease in his 
 bosom, sounded through his cell : 
 " He that is down need fear no fall ; 
 He that is low no pride." 
 
 The broad and pleasant " river of the Water of 
 Life " glided peacefully before him, fringed " on 
 either side with green trees, with all manner of 
 fruit," and leaves of healing, with " meadows beau- 
 tified with lilies, and green all the year long ; " he 
 saw the Delectable Mountains, glorious with sun- 
 shine, overhung with gardens and orchards and 
 vineyards ; and beyond all, the Land of Beulah, 
 with its eternal sunshine, its song of birds, its 
 music of fountains, its purple clustered vines, and 
 groves through which walked the Shining Ones, 
 silver-winged and beautiful. 
 
 What were bars and bolts and prison-walls to 
 him, whose eyes were anointed to see, and whose 
 ears opened to hear, the glory and the rejoicing 
 of the City of God, when the pilgrims were con- 
 ducted to its golden gates, from the black and bit- 
 ter river, with the sounding trumpeters, the trans- 
 figured harpers with their crowns of gold, the 
 sweet voices of angels, the welcoming peal of bells 
 in the holy city, and the songs of the redeemed 
 ones? In reading the concluding pages of the
 
 34 PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES 
 
 first part of. Pilgrim's Progress, we feel as if the 
 mysterious glory of the Beatific Vision was un- 
 veiled before us. We are dazzled with the excess 
 of light. We are entranced with the mighty 
 melody ; overwhelmed by the great anthem of re- 
 joicing spirits. It can only be adequately de- 
 scribed in the language of Milton in respect to the 
 Apocalypse, as " a seven-fold chorus of hallelujahs 
 and harping symphonies." 
 
 Few who read Bunyan nowadays think of him 
 as one of the brave old English confessors, whose 
 steady and firm endurance of persecution baffled 
 and in the end overcame the tyranny of the Estab- 
 lished Church in the reign of Charles II. What 
 Milton and Penn and Locke wrote in defence of 
 Liberty, Bunyan lived out and acted. He made 
 no concessions to worldly rank. Dissolute lords 
 and proud bishops he counted less than the hum- 
 blest and poorest of his disciples at Bedford. When 
 first arrested and thrown into prison, he supposed 
 he should be called to suffer death for his faithful 
 testimony to the truth ; and his great fear was, 
 that he should not meet his fate with the requisite 
 firmness, and so dishonor the cause of his Master. 
 And when dark clouds came over him, and he 
 sought in vain for a sufficient evidence that in the 
 event of his death it would be well with him, he 
 girded up his soul with the reflection, that, as he 
 suffered for the word and way of God, he was en- 
 gaged not to shrink one hair's breadth from it. 
 " I will leap," he says, " off the ladder blindfold 
 into eternity, sink or swim, come heaven, come 
 hell. Lord Jesus, if thou wilt catch me, do ; if 
 not, I will venture in thy name ! "
 
 JOHN BUNYAN 35 
 
 The English revolution of the seventeenth cen- 
 tury, while it humbled the false and oppressive 
 aristocracy of rank and title, was prodigal in the 
 development of the real nobility of the mind and 
 heart. Its history is bright with the footprints of 
 men whose very names still stir the hearts of free- 
 men, the world over, like a trumpet peal. Say 
 what we may of its fanaticism, laugh as we may 
 at its extravagant enjoyment of newly acquired 
 religious and civil liberty, who shall now venture 
 to deny that it was the golden age of England ? 
 Who that regards freedom above slavery, will 
 now sympathize with the outcry and lamentation 
 of those interested in the continuance of the old 
 order of things, against the prevalence of sects 
 and schism, but who, at the same time, as Milton 
 shrewdly intimates, dreaded more the rending of 
 their pontifical sleeves than the rending of the 
 Church? Who shall now sneer at Puritanism, 
 with the Defence of Unlicensed Printing before 
 him ? Who scoff at Quakerism over the Journal 
 of George Fox ? Who shall join with debauched 
 lordlings and fat-witted prelates in ridicule of 
 Anabaptist levellers and dippers, after rising from 
 the perusal of Pilgrim's Progress ? " There were 
 giants in those days." And foremost amidst that 
 band of liberty-loving and God-fearing men, 
 
 " The slandered Calvinists of Charles's time, 
 Who fought, and won it, Freedom's holy fight," 
 
 stands the subject of our sketch, the Tinker of 
 Elstow. Of his high merit as an author there is 
 no longer any question. The Edinburgh Review
 
 36 PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES 
 
 expressed the common sentiment of the literary 
 world, when it declared that the two great crea- 
 tive minds of the seventeenth century were those 
 which produced Paradise Lost and the Pilgrim's 
 Progress.
 
 THOMAS ELL WOOD. 
 
 COMMEND us to autobiographies ! Give us the 
 veritable notchings of Robinson Crusoe on his 
 stick, the indubitable records of a life long since 
 swallowed up in the blackness of darkness, traced 
 by a hand the very dust of which has become un- 
 distinguishable. The foolishest egotist who ever 
 chronicled his daily experiences, his hopes and 
 fears, poor plans and vain Teachings after happi- 
 ness, speaking to us out of the Past, and thereby 
 giving us to understand that it was quite as real as 
 our Present, is in no mean sort our benefactor, and 
 commands our attention, in spite of his folly. We 
 are thankful for the very vanity which prompted 
 him to bottle up his poor records, and cast them 
 into the great sea of Time, for future voyagers to 
 pick up. We note, with the deepest interest, that 
 in him too was enacted that miracle of a conscious 
 existence, the reproduction of which in ourselves 
 awes and perplexes us. He, too, had a mother ; 
 he hated and loved ; the light from old-quenched 
 hearths shone over him ; he walked in the sunshine 
 over the dust of those who had gone before him, 
 just as we are now walking over his. These rec- 
 ords of him remain, the footmarks of a long-ex- 
 tinct life, not of mere animal organism, but of a 
 being like ourselves, enabling us, by studying their 
 hieroglyphic significance, to decipher and see clearly
 
 38 PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES 
 
 into the mystery of existence centuries ago. The 
 dead generations live again in these old self -biog- 
 raphies. Incidentally, unintentionally, yet in the 
 simplest and most natural manner, they make us 
 familiar with all the phenomena of life in the by- 
 gone ages. We are brought in contact with actual 
 flesh-and-blood men and women, not the ghostly 
 outline figures which pass for such, in what is 
 called History. The horn lantern of the biog- 
 rapher, by the aid of which, with painful minute- 
 ness, he chronicled, from day to day, his own out- 
 goings and incomings, making visible to us his piti- 
 ful wants, labors, trials, and tribulations of the 
 stomach and of the conscience, sheds, at times, a 
 strong clear light upon contemporaneous activities ; 
 what seemed before half fabulous, rises up in dis- 
 tinct and full proportions ; we look at statesmen, 
 philosophers, and poets, with the eyes of those who 
 lived perchance their next-door neighbors, and sold 
 them beer, and mutton, and household stuffs, had 
 access to their kitchens, and took note of the fashion 
 of their wigs and the color of their breeches. With- 
 out some such light, all history would be just about 
 as unintelligible and unreal as a dimly remembered 
 dream. 
 
 The journals of the early Friends or Quakers are 
 in this respect invaluable. Little, it is true, can be 
 said, as a general thing, of their literary merits. 
 Their authors were plain, earnest men and women, 
 chiefly intent upon the substance of things, and 
 having withal a strong testimony to bear against 
 carnal wit and outside show and ornament. Yet, 
 even the scholar may well admire the power of
 
 THOMAS ELL WOOD 39 
 
 certain portions of George Fox's Journal, where a 
 strong spirit clothes its utterance in simple, down- 
 right Saxon words ; the quiet and beautiful en- 
 thusiasm of Pennington ; the torrent energy of 
 Edward Burrough ; the serene wisdom of Penn ; 
 the logical acuteness of Barclay ; the honest truth- 
 fulness of Sewell ; the wit and humor of John 
 Roberts, (for even Quakerism had its apostolic 
 jokers and drab-coated Robert Halls ;) and last, 
 not least, the simple beauty of Woolman's Jour- 
 nal, the modest record of a life of good works and 
 love. 
 
 Let us look at the Life of Thomas Ellwood. 
 The book before us is a hardly used Philadelphia 
 reprint, bearing date of 1775. The original was 
 published some sixty years before. It is not a 
 book to be found in fashionable libraries, or noticed 
 in fashionable reviews, but is none the less deserv- 
 ing of attention. 
 
 Ellwood was born in 1639, in the little town of 
 Crowell, in Oxfordshire. Old Walter, his father, 
 was of "gentlemanly lineage, and held a com- 
 mission of the peace under Charles I. One of 
 his most intimate friends was Isaac Pennington, a 
 gentleman of estate and good reputation, whose 
 wife, the widow of Sir John Springette, was a 
 lady of superior endowments. Her only daughter, 
 Gulielma, was the playmate and companion of 
 Thomas. On making this family a visit, in 1658, 
 in company with his father, he was surprised to 
 find that they had united with the Quakers, a sect 
 then little known, and everywhere spoken against. 
 Passing through the vista of nearly two centuries,
 
 40 PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES 
 
 let us cross the threshold, and look with the eyes 
 of young Ellwood upon this Quaker family. It 
 will doubtless give us a good idea of the earnest 
 and solemn spirit of that age of religious awaken- 
 ing. 
 
 " So great a change from a free, debonair, and 
 courtly sort of behavior, which we had formerly 
 found there, into so strict a gravity as they now 
 received us with, did not a little amuse us, and 
 disappointed our expectations of such a pleasant 
 visit as we had promised ourselves. 
 
 " For my part, I sought, and at length found, 
 means to cast myself into the company of the 
 daughter, whom I found gathering flowers in the 
 garden, attended by her maid, also a Quaker. 
 But when I addressed her after my accustomed 
 manner, with intention to engage her in discourse 
 on the foot of our former acquaintance, though she 
 treated me with a courteous mien, yet, as young as 
 she was, the gravity of her looks and behavior 
 struck such an awe upon me, that I found myself 
 not so much master of myself as to pursue any 
 further converse with her. 
 
 "We staid dinner, which was very handsome, 
 and lacked nothing to recommend it to me but the 
 want of mirth and pleasant discourse, which we 
 could neither have with them, nor, by reason of 
 them, with one another ; the weightiness which 
 was upon their spirits and countenances keeping 
 down the lightness that would have been up in 
 ours." 
 
 Not long after, they made a second visit to their 
 sober friends, spending several days, during which
 
 THOMAS ELLWOOD 41 
 
 they attended a meeting, in a neighboring farm- 
 house, where we are introduced by Ellwood to 
 two remarkable personages, Edward Burrough, the 
 friend and fearless reprover of Cromwell, and by 
 far the most eloquent preacher of his sect ; and 
 James Nayler, whose melancholy after-history of 
 fanaticism, cruel sufferings, and beautiful repent- 
 ance, is so well known to the readers of English his- 
 tory under the Protectorate. Under the preaching 
 of these men, and the influence of the Pennington 
 family, young Ellwood was brought into fellow- 
 ship with the Quakers. Of the old Justice's sor- 
 row and indignation at this sudden blasting of his 
 hopes and wishes in respect to his son, and of the 
 trials and difficulties of the latter in his new voca- 
 tion, it is now scarcely worth while to speak. Let 
 us step forward a few years, to 1662, considering 
 meantime how matters, political and spiritual, are 
 changed in that brief period. Cromwell, the Mac- 
 cabeus of Puritanism, is no longer among men ; 
 Charles the Second sits in his place ; profane and 
 licentious cavaliers have thrust aside the sleek- 
 haired, painful-faced Independents, who used to 
 groan approval to the Scriptural illustrations of 
 Harrison and Fleetwood; men easy of virtue, 
 without sincerity, either in religion or politics, 
 occupying the places made honorable by the Mil- 
 tons, Whitlocks, and Vanes of the Commonwealth. 
 Having this change in view, the light which the 
 farthing candle of Ellwood sheds upon one of 
 these illustrious names will not be unwelcome. 
 In his intercourse with Penn, and other learned 
 Quakers, he had reason to lament his own de-
 
 42 PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES 
 
 ficiencies in scholarship, and his friend Penning, 
 ton undertook to put him in a way of remedying 
 the defect. 
 
 " He had," says Ellwood, " an intimate acquaint- 
 ance with Dr. Paget, a physician of note in Lon- 
 don, and he with John Milton, a gentleman of 
 great note for learning throughout the learned 
 world, for the accurate pieces he had written on 
 various subjects and occasions. 
 
 " This person, having filled a public station in 
 the former times, lived a private and retired life 
 in London, and, having lost his sight, kept always 
 a man to read for him, which usually was the son 
 of some gentleman of his acquaintance, whom, in 
 kindness, he took to improve in his learning. 
 
 "Thus, by the mediation of my friend Isaac 
 Pennington with Dr. Paget, and through him with 
 John Milton, was I admitted to come to him, not 
 as a servant to him, nor to be in the house with 
 him, but only to have the liberty of coming to his 
 house at certain hours when I would, and read to 
 him what books he should appoint, which was all 
 the favor I desired. 
 
 " He received me courteously, as well for the 
 sake of Dr. Paget, who introduced me, as of Isaac 
 Pennington, who recommended me, to both of 
 whom he bore a good respect. And, having in- 
 quired divers things of me, with respect to my 
 former progression in learning, he dismissed me, 
 to provide myself with such accommodations as 
 might be most suitable to my studies. 
 
 " I went, therefore, and took lodgings as near to 
 his house (which was then in Jewen Street} as I
 
 THOMAS ELL WOOD 43 
 
 conveniently could, and from thenceforward went 
 every day in the afternoon, except on the first day 
 of the week, and, sitting by him in his dining-room, 
 read to him such books in the Latin tongue as 
 he pleased to have me read. 
 
 "He perceiving with what earnest desire I had 
 pursued learning, gave me not only all the encour- 
 agement, but all the help he could. For, having 
 a curious ear, he understood by my tone when I 
 understood what I read and when I did not, and 
 accordingly would stop me, examine me, and open 
 the most difficult passages to me." 
 
 Thanks, worthy Thomas, for this glimpse into 
 John Milton's dining-room ! 
 
 He had been with " Master Milton," as he calls 
 him, only a few weeks, when, being one " first day 
 morning," at the Bull and Mouth meeting, Alders- 
 gate, the train-bands of the city, " with great noise 
 and clamor," headed by Major Rosewell, fell upon 
 him and his friends. The immediate cause of this 
 onslaught upon quiet worshippers was the famous 
 plot of the Fifth Monarchy men, grim old fanatics, 
 who (like the Millerites of the present day) had 
 been waiting long for the personal reign of Christ 
 and the saints upon earth, and in their zeal to 
 hasten such a consummation had sallied into Lon- 
 don streets with drawn swords and loaded match- 
 locks. The government took strong measures for 
 suppressing dissenters' meetings or " conventi- 
 cles ; " and the poor Quakers, although not at all im- 
 plicated in the disturbance, suffered more severely 
 than any others. Let us look at the " freedom of 
 conscience and worship " in England under that
 
 44 PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES 
 
 irreverent Defender of the Faith, Charles II. Ell- 
 wood says : " He that commanded the party gave 
 us first a general charge to come out of the room. 
 But we, who came thither at God's requiring to 
 worship Him, (like that good man of old, who 
 said, we ought to obey God rather than man,} 
 stirred not, but kept our places. Whereupon, he 
 sent some of his soldiers among us, with command 
 to drag or drive us out, which they did roughly 
 enough." Think of it : grave men and women, 
 and modest maidens, sitting there with calm, im- 
 passive countenances, motionless as death, the 
 pikes of the soldiery closing about them in a circle 
 of bristling steel ! Brave and true ones ! Not in 
 vain did ye thus oppose God's silence to the Devil's 
 uproar ; Christian endurance and calm persistence 
 in the exercise of your rights as Englishmen and 
 men to the hot fury of impatient tyranny ! From 
 your day down to this, the world has been the bet- 
 ter for your faithfulness. 
 
 Ellwood and some thirty of his friends were 
 marched off to prison in Old Bridewell, which, as 
 well as nearly all the other prisons, was already 
 crowded with Quaker prisoners. One of the rooms 
 of the prison was used as a torture chamber. " I 
 was almost affrighted," says Ellwood, " by the 
 dismalness of the place ; for, besides that the walls 
 were all laid over with black, from top to bottom, 
 there stood in the middle a great whipping-post. 
 
 " The manner of whipping there is, to strip the 
 party to the skin, from the waist upward, and, hav- 
 ing fastened him to the whipping-post, (so that he 
 can neither resist nor shun the strokes,) to lash his
 
 THOMAS ELLWOOD 45 
 
 naked body with long, slender twigs of holly, which 
 will bend almost like thongs around the body ; and 
 these, having little knots upon them, tear the skin 
 and flesh, and give extreme pain." 
 
 To this terrible punishment aged men and deli- 
 cately nurtured young females were often subjected, 
 during this season of hot persecution. 
 
 From the Bridewell, Ellwood was at length re- 
 moved to Newgate, and thrust in, with other 
 " Friends," amidst the common felons. He speaks 
 of this prison, with its thieves, murderers, and 
 prostitutes, its over-crowded apartments and loath- 
 some cells, as "a hell upon earth." In a closet, 
 adjoining the room where he was lodged, lay for 
 several days the quartered bodies of Phillips, 
 Tongue, and Gibbs, the leaders of the Fifth Mon- 
 archy rising, frightful and loathsome, as they came 
 from the bloody hands of the executioners ! These 
 ghastly remains were at length obtained by the 
 friends of the dead, and buried. The heads were 
 ordered to be prepared for setting up in different 
 parts of the city. Read this grim passage of de- 
 scription : 
 
 " I saw the heads when they were brought to be 
 boiled. The hangman fetched them in a dirty 
 basket, out of some by-place, and, setting them 
 down among the felons, he and they made sport of 
 them. They took them by the hair, flouting, jeer- 
 ing, and laughing at them ; and then giving them 
 some ill names, boxed them on their ears and 
 cheeks ; which done, the hangman put them into 
 his kettle, and parboiled them with bay-salt and 
 cummin-seed : that to keep them from putrefac-
 
 46 PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES 
 
 tion, and this to keep off the fowls from seizing 
 upon them. The whole sight, as well that of the 
 bloody quarters first as this of the heads after- 
 wards, was both frightful and loathsome, and be- 
 gat an abhorrence in my nature." 
 
 At the next session of the municipal court at the 
 Old Bailey, Ellwood obtained his discharge. After 
 paying a visit to " my Master Milton," he made 
 his way to Chalfont, the home of his friends the 
 Penningtons, where he was soon after engaged as 
 a Latin teacher. Here he seems to have had his 
 trials and temptations. Gulielma Springette, the 
 daughter of Pennington's wife, his old playmate, 
 had now grown to be " a fair woman of marriage- 
 able age," and, as he informs us, " very desirable, 
 whether regard was had to her outward person, 
 which wanted nothing to make her completely 
 comely, or to the endowments of her mind, which 
 were every way extraordinary, or to her outward 
 fortune, which was fair." From all which, we are 
 not surprised to learn that " she was secretly and 
 openly sought for by many of almost every rank 
 and condition." " To whom," continues Thomas, 
 " in their respective turns, (till he at length came 
 for whom she was reserved,) she carried herself 
 with so much evenness of temper, such courteous 
 freedom, guarded by the strictest modesty, that as 
 it gave encouragement or ground of hope to none, 
 so neither did it administer any matter of offence 
 or just cause of complaint to any." 
 
 Beautiful and noble maiden ! How the imagi- 
 nation fills up this outline limning by her friend, 
 and, if truth must be told, admirer! Serene,
 
 THOMAS ELL WOOD 47 
 
 courteous, healthful ; a ray of tenderest and bland- 
 est light, shining steadily in the sober gloom of 
 that old household ! Confirmed Quaker as she is, 
 shrinking from none of the responsibilities and 
 dangers of her profession, and therefore liable at 
 any time to the penalties of prison and whipping- 
 post, under that plain garb and in spite of that 
 "certain gravity of look and behavior," which, as 
 we have seen, on one occasion awed young Ellwood 
 into silence, youth, beauty, and refinement assert 
 their prerogatives ; love knows no creed ; the gay, 
 and titled, and wealthy crowd around her, suing in 
 vain for her favor. 
 
 " Followed, like the tided moon, 
 She moves as calmly on," 
 
 " until he at length comes for whom she was re- 
 served," and her name is united with that of one 
 worthy even of her, the world-renowned William 
 Penn. 
 
 Meantime, one cannot but feel a good degree of 
 sympathy with young Ellwood, her old schoolmate 
 and playmate, placed, as he was, in the same fam- 
 ily with her, enjoying her familiar conversation 
 and unreserved confidence, and, as he says, the 
 " advantageous opportunities of riding and walk- 
 ing abroad with her, by night as well as by day, 
 without any other company than her maid ; for 
 so great, indeed, was the confidence that her 
 mother had in me, that she thought her daughter 
 safe, if I was with her, even from the plots and de- 
 signs of others upon her." So near, and yet, alas ! 
 in truth, so distant ! The serene and gentle light 
 which shone upon him, in the sweet solitudes of
 
 48 PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES 
 
 Chalfont, was that of a star, itself unapproachable. 
 As he himself meekly intimates, she was reserved 
 for another. He seems to have fully understood 
 his own position in respect to her ; although, to use 
 his own words, " others, measuring him by the 
 propensity of their own inclinations, concluded he 
 would steal her, run away with her, and marry 
 her." Little did these jealous surmisers know of 
 the true and really heroic spirit of the young Latin 
 master. His own apology and defence of his con- 
 duct, under circumstances of temptation which St. 
 Anthony himself could have scarcely better re- 
 sisted, will not be amiss. 
 
 " I was not ignorant of the various fears which 
 filled the jealous heads of some concerning me, 
 neither was I so stupid nor so divested of all hu- 
 manity as not to be sensible of the real and innate 
 worth and virtue which adorned that excellent 
 dame, and attracted the eyes and hearts of so 
 many, with the greatest importunity, to seek and 
 solicit her ; nor was I so devoid of natural heat as 
 not to feel some sparklings of desire, as well as 
 others ; but the force of truth and sense of honor 
 suppressed whatever would have risen beyond the 
 bounds of fair and virtuous friendship. For I ea- 
 sily foresaw that, if I should have attempted any- 
 thing in a dishonorable way, by fraud or force, 
 upon her, I should have thereby brought a wound 
 upon mine own soul, a foul scandal upon my reli- 
 gious profession, and an infamous stain upon mine 
 honor, which was far more dear unto me than my 
 life. Wherefore, having observed how some oth- 
 ers had befooled themselves, by misconstruing her
 
 THOMAS ELL WOOD 49 
 
 common kindness (expressed in an innocent, open, 
 free, and familiar conversation, springing from the 
 abundant affability, courtesy, and sweetness of her 
 natural temper) to be the effect of a singular re- 
 gard and peculiar affection to them, I resolved to 
 shun the rock whereon they split ; and, remember- 
 ing the saying of the poet 
 
 ' Felix quern faciunt aliena Pericula cantum,' 
 
 I governed myself in a free yet respectful carriage 
 towards her, thereby preserving a fair reputation 
 with my friends, and enjoying as much of her favor 
 and kindness, in a virtuous and firm friendship, as 
 was fit for her to show or for me to seek." 
 
 Well and worthily said, poor Thomas ! What- 
 ever might be said of others, thou, at least, wast 
 no coxcomb. Thy distant and involuntary admira- 
 tion of " the fair Guli " needs, however, no excuse. 
 Poor human nature, guard it as one may, with 
 strictest discipline and painfully cramping environ- 
 ment, will sometimes act out itself; and, in thy 
 case, not even George Fox himself, knowing thy 
 beautiful young friend, (and doubtless admiring 
 her too, for he was one of the first to appreciate 
 and honor the worth and dignity of woman,) could 
 have found it in his heart to censure thee ! 
 
 At this period, as was indeed most natural, our 
 young teacher solaced himself with occasional ap- 
 peals to what he calls " the Muses." There is 
 reason to believe, however, that the Pagan sister- 
 hood whom he ventured to invoke seldom graced 
 his study with their personal attendance. In these 
 rhyming efforts, scattered up and down his Jour-
 
 50 PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES 
 
 nal, there are occasional sparkles of genuine wit, 
 and passages of keen sarcasm, tersely and fitly ex- 
 pressed. Others breathe a warm, devotional feel- 
 ing; in the following brief prayer, for instance, 
 the wants of the humble Christian are condensed 
 in a manner worthy of Quarles or Herbert : 
 
 " Oh ! that mine eye might closed be 
 To what concerns me not to see ; 
 That deafness might possess mine ear 
 To what concerns me not to hear ; 
 That Truth my tongue might always tie 
 From ever speaking foolishly ; 
 That no Tain thought might ever rest 
 Or be conceived in my breast ; 
 That by each word and deed and thought 
 Glory may to my God be brought ! 
 But what are wishes ? Lord, mine eye 
 On Thee is fixed, to Thee I cry : 
 Wash, Lord, and purify my heart, 
 And make it clean in every part ; 
 And when 't is clean, Lord, keep it too, 
 For that is more than I can do.' ' 
 
 The thought in the following extracts from a 
 poem written on the death of his friend Penning- 
 ton's son is trite, but not inaptly or inelegantly ex- 
 pressed : 
 
 " What ground, alas, has any man 
 
 To set his heart on things below, 
 Which, when they seem most like to stand, 
 
 Fly like the arrow from the bow ! 
 Who 's now atop erelong shall feel 
 The circling motion of the wheel ! 
 
 " The world cannot afford a thing 
 
 Which to a well-composed mind 
 Can any lasting pleasure bring, 
 
 But in itself its grave will find. 
 All things unto their centre tend 
 What had beginning must have end !
 
 THOMAS ELL WOOD 51 
 
 " No disappointment can befall 
 Us, having Him who 's all in all ! 
 What can of pleasure him prevent 
 Who hath the Fountain of Content ? " 
 
 In the year 1663 a severe law was enacted 
 against the " sect called Quakers," prohibiting 
 their meetings, with the penalty of banishment for 
 the third offence ! The burden of the prosecution 
 which followed fell upon the Quakers of the me- 
 tropolis, large numbers of whom were heavily fined, 
 imprisoned, and sentenced to be banished from 
 their native land. Yet, in time, our worthy friend 
 Ellwood came in for his own share of trouble, in 
 consequence of attending the funeral of one of his 
 friends. An evil-disposed justice of the county ob- 
 tained information of the Quaker gathering ; and, 
 while the body of the dead was " borne on Friends' 
 shoulders through the street, in order to be carried 
 to the burying-ground, which was at the town's 
 end," says Ellwood, " he rushed out upon us with 
 the constables and a rabble of rude fellows whom 
 he had gathered together, and, having his drawn 
 sword in his hand, struck one of the foremost of 
 the bearers with it, commanding them to set down 
 the coffin. But the Friend who was so stricken, 
 being more concerned for the safety of the dead 
 body than for his own, lest it should fall, and any 
 indecency thereupon follow, held the coffin fast; 
 which the justice observing, and being enraged 
 that his word was not forthwith obeyed, set his 
 hand to the coffin, and with a forcible thrust threw 
 it off from the bearers' shoulders, so that it fell to 
 the ground in the middle of the street, and there
 
 52 PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES 
 
 we were forced to leave it ; for the constables and 
 rabble fell upon us, and drew some and drove oth- 
 ers into the inn. Of those thus taken," continues 
 Ellwood, " I was one. They picked out ten of us, 
 and sent us to Aylesbury jail. 
 
 " They caused the body to lie in the open street 
 and cartway, so that all travellers that passed, 
 whether horsemen, coaches, carts, or wagons, were 
 fain to break out of the way to go by it, until it 
 was almost night. And then, having caused a 
 grave to be made in the unconsecrated part of what 
 is called the Churchyard, they forcibly took the 
 body from the widow, and buried it there." 
 
 He remained a prisoner only about two months, 
 during which period he comforted himself by such 
 verse-making as follows, reminding us of similar 
 enigmas in Bunyan's Pilgrim 's Progress : 
 
 " Lo ! a Riddle for the -wise, 
 In the which a Mystery lies. 
 
 RIDDLE. 
 
 " Some men are free whilst they in prison lie ; 
 Others who ne'er saw prison captives die. 
 
 CAUTION. 
 
 " He that can receive it may, 
 He that cannot, let him stay, 
 Not be hasty, bnt snspend 
 Judgment till he sees the end. 
 
 SOLUTION. 
 
 " He 's only free, indeed, who 's free from sin, 
 And he is fastest bound that 's bonnd therein." 
 
 In the mean time, where is our " Master Mil- 
 ton " ? We left him deprived of his young com- 
 panion and reader, sitting lonely in his small din- 
 ing-room, in Jewen Street. It is now the year
 
 THOMAS ELLWOOD 53 
 
 1665 ; is not the pestilence in London ? A sinful 
 and godless city, with its bloated bishops fawning 
 around the Nell Gwyns of a licentious and profane 
 Defender of the Faith ; its swaggering and drunken 
 cavaliers ; its ribald jesters ; its obscene ballad- 
 singers ; its loathsome prisons, crowded with God- 
 fearing men and women : is not the measure of its 
 iniquity already filled up ? Three years only have 
 passed since the terrible prayer of Vane went up- 
 ward from the scaffold on Tower Hill : " When 
 my blood is shed upon the block, let it, O God, 
 have a voice afterward ! " Audible to thy ear, 
 O bosom friend of the martyr ! has that blood 
 cried from earth; and now, how fearfully is it 
 answered ! Like the ashes which the Seer of the 
 Hebrews cast towards Heaven, it has returned in 
 boils and blains upon the proud and oppressive 
 city. John Milton, sitting blind in Jeweu Street, 
 has heard the toll of the death-bells, and the night- 
 long rumble of the burial-carts, and the terrible 
 summons, " Bring out your dead! " The Angel 
 of the Plague, in yellow mantle, purple-spotted, 
 walks the streets. Why should he tarry in a 
 doomed city, forsaken of God 1 Is not the com- 
 mand, even to him, " Arise ! and flee for thy life " ? 
 In some green nook of the quiet country, he may 
 finish the great work which his hands have found 
 to do. He bethinks him of his old friends, the 
 Penningtons, and his young Quaker companion, 
 the patient and gentle Ellwood. " Wherefore," 
 says the latter, " some little time before I went to 
 Aylesbury jail, I was desired by my quondam 
 Master Milton to take an house for him in the
 
 54 PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES 
 
 neighborhood where I dwelt, that he might go out 
 of the city for the safety of himself and his family, 
 the pestilence then growing hot in London. I took 
 a pretty box for him in Giles Chalfont, a mile 
 from me, of which I gave him notice, and in- 
 tended to have waited on him and seen him well 
 settled, but was prevented by that imprisonment. 
 But now being released and returned home, I soon 
 made a visit to him, to welcome him into the coun- 
 try. After some common discourse had passed be- 
 tween us, he called for a manuscript of his, which, 
 having brought, he delivered to me, bidding me 
 take it home with me and read it at my leisure, 
 and when I had so done return it to him, with my 
 judgment thereupon." 
 
 Now, what does the reader think young Ellwood 
 carried in his gray coat pocket across the dikes 
 and hedges and through the green lanes of Giles 
 Chalfont that autumn day ? Let us look farther : 
 "When I came home, and had set myself to read 
 it, I found it was that excellent poem which he en- 
 titled Paradise Lost. After I had, with the best 
 attention, read it through, I made him another 
 visit ; and, returning his book with due acknow- 
 ledgment of the favor he had done me in communi- 
 cating it to me, he asked me how I liked it and 
 what I thought of it, which I modestly but freely 
 told him ; and, after some farther discourse about 
 it, I pleasantly said to him, ' Thou hast said much 
 here of Paradise Lost ; what hast thou to say of 
 Paradise Found ? ' He made me no answer, but 
 sat some time in a muse ; then brake off that dis 
 course, and fell upon another subject."
 
 THOMAS ELLWOOD 55 
 
 " I modestly but freely told him what I thought " 
 of Paradise Lost ! What he told him remains a 
 mystery. One would like to know more precisely 
 what the first critical reader of that song " of 
 Man's first disobedience " thought of it. Fancy 
 the young Quaker and blind Milton sitting, some 
 pleasant afternoon of the autumn of that old year, 
 in " the pretty box " at Chalfont, the soft wind 
 through the open window lifting the thin hair of 
 the glorious old Poet ! Backslidden England, 
 plague-smitten, and accursed with her faithless 
 Church and libertine King, knows little of poor 
 " Master Milton," and takes small note of his Pu- 
 ritanic verse-making. Alone, with his- humble 
 friend, he sits there, conning over that poem which, 
 he fondly hoped, the world, which had grown all 
 dark and strange to the author, " would not will- 
 ingly let die." The suggestion in respect to Para- 
 dise Found, to which, as we have seen, " he made 
 no answer, but sat some time in a muse," seems 
 not to have been lost ; for, " after the sickness 
 was over," continues Ellwood, " and the city well 
 cleansed, and become safely habitable again, he re- 
 turned thither ; and when afterwards I waited on 
 him there, which I seldom failed of doing when- 
 ever my occasions drew me to London, he showed 
 me his second poem, called Paradise Gained; 
 and, in a pleasant tone, said to me, ' This is owing 
 to you, for you put it into my head by the question 
 you put to me at Chalfont, which before I had not 
 thought of.' " 
 
 Golden days were these for the young Latin 
 reader, even if it be true, as we suspect, that he
 
 56 PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES 
 
 was himself very far from appreciating the glori- 
 ous privilege which he enjoyed, of the familiar 
 friendship and confidence of Milton. But they 
 could not last. His amiable host, Isaac Penning- 
 ton, a blameless and quiet country gentleman, was 
 dragged from his house by a military force, and 
 lodged in Aylesbury jail ; his wife and family 
 forcibly ejected from their pleasant home, which 
 was seized upon by the government as security for 
 the fines imposed upon its owner. The plague was 
 in the village of Aylesbury, and in the very prison 
 itself ; but the noble-hearted Mary Pennington 
 followed her husband, sharing with him the dark 
 peril. Poor Ellwood, while attending a monthly 
 meeting at Hedgerly, with six others, (among 
 them one Morgan Watkins, a poor old Welshman, 
 who, painfully endeavoring to utter his testimony 
 in his own dialect, was suspected by the Dogberry 
 of a justice of being a Jesuit trolling over his 
 Latin,) was arrested, and committed to Wiccomb 
 House of Correction. 
 
 This was a time of severe trial for the sect with 
 which Ellwood had connected himself. In the 
 very midst of the pestilence, when thousands per- 
 ished weekly in London, fifty-four Quakers were 
 marched through the almost deserted streets, and 
 placed on board a ship, for the purpose of being 
 conveyed, according to their sentence of banish- 
 ment, to the West Indies. The ship lay for a long 
 time, with many others similarly situated, a help- 
 less prey to the pestilence. Through that terrible 
 autumn, the prisoners sat waiting for the summons 
 of the ghastly Destroyer ; and, from their floating 
 dungeon,
 
 THOMAS ELL WOOD 57 
 
 ' ' Heard the groan 
 
 Of agonizing ships from shore to shore ; 
 Heard nightly plunged beneath the sullen wave 
 The frequent corse.' ' 
 
 When the vessel at length set sail, of the fifty-four 
 who went on board, twenty-seven only were living. 
 A Dutch privateer captured her, when two days 
 out, and carried the prisoners to North Holland, 
 where they were set at liberty. The condition of 
 the jails in the city, where were large numbers of 
 Quakers, was dreadful in the extreme. Ill venti- 
 lated, crowded, and loathsome with the accumu- 
 lated filth of centuries, they invited the disease 
 which daily decimated their cells. " Go on ! " 
 says Pennington, writing to the King and bishops 
 from his plague-infected cell in the Aylesbury 
 prison : " try it out with the Spirit of the Lord ! 
 Come forth with your laws, and prisons, and spoil- 
 ing of goods, and banishment, and death, if the 
 Lord please, and see if ye can carry it ! Whom 
 the Lord loveth He can save at His pleasure. 
 Hath He begun to break our bonds and deliver us, 
 and shall we now distrust Him? Are we in a 
 worse condition than Israel was when the sea was 
 before them, the mountains on either side, and the 
 Egyptians behind, pursuing them ? " 
 
 Brave men and faithful! It is not necessary 
 that the present generation, now quietly reaping 
 the fruit of your heroic endurance, should see eye 
 to eye with you in respect to all your testimonies 
 and beliefs, in order to recognize your claim to 
 gratitude and admiration. For, in an age of hypo- 
 critical hollowness and mean self-seeking, when,
 
 58 PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES 
 
 with noble exceptions, the very Puritans of Crom- 
 well's Reign of the Saints were taking profane les- 
 sons from their old enemies, and putting on an 
 outside show of conformity, for the sake of place 
 or pardon, ye maintained the austere dignity of 
 virtue, and, with King and Church and Parlia- 
 ment arrayed against you, vindicated the Rights of 
 Conscience, at the cost of home, fortune, and life. 
 English liberty owes more to your unyielding firm- 
 ness than to the blows stricken for her at Worces- 
 ter and Naseby. 
 
 In 1667, we find the Latin teacher in attendance 
 at a great meeting of Friends, in London, convened 
 at the suggestion of George Fox, for the purpose 
 of settling a little difficulty which had arisen among 
 the Friends, even under the pressure of the sever- 
 est persecution, relative to the very important mat- 
 ter of " wearing the hat." George Fox, in his love 
 of truth and sincerity in word and action, had dis- 
 countenanced the fashionable doffing of the hat, 
 and other flattering obeisances towards men hold- 
 ing stations in Church or State, as savoring of 
 man-worship, giving to the creature the reverence 
 only due to the Creator, as undignified and want- 
 ing in due self-respect, and tending to support un- 
 natural and oppressive distinctions among those 
 equal in the sight of God. But some of his disci- 
 ples evidently made much more of this " hat tes- 
 timony " than their teacher. One John Perrott, 
 who had just returned from an unsuccessful at- 
 tempt to convert the Pope, at Rome, (where that 
 dignitary, after listening to his exhortations, and 
 finding him in no condition to be benefited by the
 
 THOMAS ELLWOOD 59 
 
 spiritual physicians of the Inquisition, had quietly 
 turned him over to the temporal ones of the Insane 
 Hospital,) had broached the doctrine that, in pub- 
 lic or private worship, the hat was not to be taken 
 off, without an immediate revelation or call to do 
 so ! Ellwood himself seems to have been on the 
 point of yielding to this notion, which appears to 
 have been the occasion of a good deal of dissension 
 and scandal. Under these circumstances, to save 
 truth from reproach, and an important testimony 
 to the essential equality of mankind from running 
 into sheer fanaticism, Fox summoned his tried and 
 faithful friends together, from all parts of the 
 United Kingdom, and, as it appears, with the hap- 
 piest result. Hat-revelations were discountenanced, 
 good order and harmony reestablished, and John 
 Perrott's beaver and the crazy head under it were 
 from thenceforth powerless for evil. Let those 
 who are disposed to laugh at this notable " Ecu- 
 menical Council of the Hat " consider that ecclesi- 
 astical history has brought down to us the records 
 of many larger and more imposing convocations, 
 wherein grave bishops and learned fathers took 
 each other by the beard upon matters of far less 
 practical importance. 
 
 In 1669, we find Ellwood engaged in escorting 
 his fair friend, Gulielma, to her uncle's residence 
 in Sussex. Passing through London, and taking 
 the Tunbridge road, they stopped at Seven Oak to 
 dine. The Duke of York was on the road, with 
 his guards and hangers-on, and the inn was filled 
 with a rude company. " Hastening," says Ell- 
 wood, " from a place where we found nothing but
 
 60 PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES 
 
 rudeness, the roysterers who swarmed there, be- 
 sides the damning oaths they belched out against 
 each other, looked very sourly upon us, as if they 
 grudged us the horses which we rode and the 
 clothes we wore." They had proceeded but a 
 little distance, when they were overtaken by some 
 half dozen drunken rough-riding cavaliers, of the 
 Wildrake stamp, in full pursuit after the beautiful 
 Quakeress. One of them impudently attempted 
 to pull her upon his horse before him, but was held 
 at bay by Ellwood, who seems, on this occasion, to 
 have relied somewhat upon his " stick," in defend- 
 ing his fair charge. Calling up Gulielma's servant, 
 he bade him ride on one side of his mistress, while 
 he guarded her on the other. " But he," says Ell- 
 wood, " not thinking it perhaps decent to ride so 
 near his mistress, left room enough for another to 
 ride between." In dashed the drunken retainer, 
 and Gulielma was once more in peril. It was 
 clearly no time for exhortations and expostulations, 
 " so," says Ellwood, " I chopped in upon him, by 
 a nimble turn, and kept him at bay. I told him 
 I had hitherto spared him, but wished him not 
 to provoke me further. This I spoke in such a 
 tone as bespoke an high resentment of the abuse 
 put upon us, and withal pressed him so hard with 
 my horse that I suffered him not to come up again 
 to Guli." By this time, it became evident to the 
 companions of the ruffianly assailant that the young 
 Quaker was in earnest, and they hastened to inter- 
 fere. " For they," says Ellwood, " se.eing the con- 
 test rise so high, and probably fearing it would 
 rise higher, not knowing where it might stop, came
 
 THOMAS ELLWOOD 61 
 
 in to part us ; which they did by taking him 
 away." 
 
 Escaping from these sons of Belial, Ellwood and 
 his fair companion rode on through Tunbridge 
 Wells, " the street thronged with men, who looked 
 very earnestly at them, but offered them no affront," 
 and arrived, late at night, in a driving rain, at the 
 mansion-house of Herbert Springette. The fiery 
 old gentleman was so indignant at the insult offered 
 to his niece, that he was with difficulty dissuaded 
 from demanding satisfaction at the hands of the 
 Duke of York. 
 
 This seems to have been his last ride with Guli- 
 elma. She was soon after married to William 
 Penn, and took up her abode at Worminghurst, in 
 Sussex. How blessed and beautiful was that union 
 may be understood from the following paragraph 
 of a letter, written by her husband, on the eve of 
 his departure for America to lay the foundations 
 of a Christian colony : 
 
 " My dear wife ! remember thou wast the love 
 of my youth, and much the joy of my life, the 
 most beloved as well as the most worthy of all my 
 earthly comforts ; and the reason of that love was 
 more thy inward than thy outward excellences, 
 which yet were many. God knows, and thou 
 knowest it, I can say it was a match of Provi- 
 dence's making ; and God's image in us both was 
 the first thing and the most amiable and engaging 
 ornament in our eyes." 
 
 About this time our friend Thomas, seeing that 
 his old playmate at Chalfont was destined for 
 another, turned his attention towards a " young
 
 62 PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES 
 
 Friend, named Mary Ellis." He had been for sev- 
 eral years acquainted with her, but now he " found 
 his heart secretly drawn and inclining towards her." 
 " At length," he tells us, " as I was sitting all 
 alone, waiting upon the Lord for counsel and 
 guidance in this, in itself and to me, important 
 affair, I felt a word sweetly arise in me, as if I had 
 heard a Voice which said, Go, and prevail I and 
 faith springing in my heart at the word, I imme- 
 diately rose and went, nothing doubting." On ar- 
 riving at her residence, he states that he " solemnly 
 opened his mind to her, which was a great surprisal 
 to her, for she had taken in an apprehension, as 
 others had also done," that his eye had been fixed 
 elsewhere and nearer home. "I used not many 
 words to her," he continues, " but I felt a Divine 
 Power went along with the words, and fixed the 
 matter expressed by them so fast in her breast, 
 that, as she afterwards acknowledged to me, she 
 could not shut it out." 
 
 " I continued," he says, " my visits to my best- 
 beloved Friend until we married, which was on the 
 28th day of the eighth month, 1669. We took 
 each other in a select meeting of the ancient and 
 grave Friends of that country. A very solemn 
 meeting it was, and in a weighty frame of spirit 
 we were." His wife seems to have had some estate ; 
 and Ellwood, with that nice sense of justice which 
 marked all his actions, immediately made his will, 
 securing to her, in case of his decease, all her own 
 goods and moneys, as well as all that he had him- 
 self acquired before marriage. " Which," he tells, 
 " was indeed but little, yet, by all that little, more
 
 THOMAS ELLWOOD 63 
 
 than I had ever given her ground to expect with 
 me." His father, who was yet unreconciled to the 
 son's religious views, found fault with his marriage, 
 on the ground that it was unlawful and unsanc- 
 tioned by priest or liturgy, and consequently re- 
 fused to render him any pecuniary assistance. Yet, 
 in spite of this and other trials, he seems to have 
 preserved his serenity of spirit. After an unpleas- 
 ant interview with his father, on one occasion, he 
 wrote, at his lodgings in an inn, in London, what 
 he calls A Song of Praise. An extract from it 
 will serve to show the spirit of the good man in 
 affliction : 
 
 " Unto the Glory of Thy Holy Name, 
 
 Eternal God ! whom I both love and fear, 
 
 I hereby do declare, I never came 
 
 Before Thy throne, and found Thee loath to hear, 
 But always ready with an open ear ; 
 
 And, though sometimes Thou seem'st Thy face to hide, 
 As one that had withdrawn his love from me, 
 
 'T is that my faith may to the full be tried, 
 And that I thereby may the better see 
 How weak I am when not upheld by Thee ! " 
 
 The next year, 1670, an act of Parliament, in 
 relation to " Conventicles," provided that any per- 
 son who should be present at any meeting, under 
 color or pretence of any exercise of religion, in 
 other manner than according to the liturgy and 
 practice of the Church of England, " should be 
 liable to fines of from five to ten shillings ; and 
 any person preaching at or giving his house for the 
 meeting, to a fine of twenty pounds : one third of 
 the fines being received by the informer or inform- 
 ers." As a natural consequence of such a law, the
 
 64 PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES 
 
 vilest scoundrels in the land set up the trade of in- 
 formers and heresy-hunters. Wherever a dissent- 
 ing meeting or burial took place, there was sure 
 to be a mercenary spy, ready to bring a complaint 
 against all in attendance. The Independents and 
 Baptists ceased, in a great measure, to hold public 
 meetings, yet even they did not escape prosecution,, 
 Bunyan, for instance, in these days, was dreaming, 
 like another Jacob, of angels ascending and de- 
 scending, in Bedford prison. But upon the poor 
 Quakers fell, as usual, the great force of the unjust 
 enactment. Some of these spies or informers, 
 men of sharp wit, close countenances, pliant tem- 
 pers, and skill in dissimulation, took the guise of 
 Quakers, Independents, or Baptists, as occasion re- 
 quired, thrusting themselves into the meetings of 
 the proscribed sects, ascertaining the number who 
 attended, their rank and condition, and then in- 
 forming against them. Ell wood, in his Journal for 
 1670, describes several of these emissaries of evil. 
 One of them came to a Friend's house, in Bucks, 
 professing to be a brother in the faith, but, over- 
 doing his counterfeit Quakerism, was detected and 
 dismissed by his host. Betaking himself to the 
 inn, he appeared in his true character, drank and 
 swore roundly, and confessed over his cups that he 
 had been sent forth on his mission by the Rev. Dr. 
 Mew, Vice-Chancellor of Oxford. Finding little 
 success in counterfeiting Quakerism, he turned to 
 the Baptists, where, for a time, he met with better 
 success. Ellwood, at this time, rendered good ser- 
 vice to his friends, by exposing the true character 
 of these wretches, and bringing them to justice for 
 theft, perjury, and other misdemeanors.
 
 THOMAS ELLWOOD 65 
 
 While this storm of persecution lasted, (a period 
 of two or three years,) the different dissenting sects 
 felt, in some measure, a common sympathy, and, 
 while guarding themselves against their common 
 foe, had little leisure for controversy with each 
 other ; but, as was natural, the abatement of their 
 mutual suffering and danger was the signal for re- 
 newing their suspended quarrels. The Baptists 
 fell upon the Quakers, with pamphlet and sermon ; 
 the latter replied in the same way. One of the 
 most conspicuous of the Baptist disputants was the 
 famous Jeremy Ives, with whom our friend Ell- 
 wood seems to have had a good deal of trouble. 
 " His name," says Ellwood, " was up for a top- 
 ping Disputant. He was well read in the fallacies 
 of logic, and was ready in framing syllogisms. His 
 chief art lay in tickling the humor of rude, un- 
 learned, and injudicious hearers." 
 
 The following piece of Ellwood's, entitled " An 
 Epitaph for Jeremy Ives," will serve to show that 
 wit and drollery were sometimes found even among 
 the proverbially sober Quakers of the seventeenth 
 century : 
 
 " Beneath this stone, depressed, doth lie 
 The Mirror of Hypocrisy 
 Ives, whose mercenary tongue 
 Like a Weathercock was hung, 
 And did this or that way play, 
 As Advantage led the way. 
 If well hired, he would dispute, 
 Otherwise he would he mute. 
 But he 'd bawl for half a day, 
 If he knew and liked his pay. 
 
 " For his person, let it pass ; 
 Only note his face was brass.
 
 66 PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES 
 
 His heart was like a pumice-stone, 
 And for Conscience he had none. 
 Of Earth and Air he was composed, 
 With Water round about enclosed. 
 Earth in him had greatest share, 
 Questionless, his life lay there ; 
 Thence his cankered Envy sprung, 
 Poisoning both his heart and tongue. 
 
 u Air made him frothy, light, and vain, 
 And puffed him with a proud disdain. 
 Into the Water oft he went, 
 And through the Water many sent : 
 That was, ye know, his element ! 
 The greatest odds that did appear 
 Was this, for aught that I can hear, 
 That he in cold did others dip, 
 But did himself hot water sip. 
 
 " And his cause he 'd never doubt, 
 If well soak'd o'er night in Stout ; 
 But, meanwhile, he must not lack 
 Brandy and a draught of Sack. 
 One dispute would shrink a bottle 
 Of three pints, if not a pottle. 
 One would think he fetched from thence 
 All his dreamy eloquence. 
 
 *' Let us now bring back the Sot 
 To his Aqua Vita pot, 
 And observe, with some content, 
 How he framed his argument. 
 That his whistle he might wet, 
 The bottle to his mouth he set, 
 And, being Master of that Art, 
 Thence he drew the Major part, 
 But left the Minor still behind ; 
 Good reason why, he wanted wind ; 
 If his breath would have held out, 
 He had Conclusion drawn, no doubt." 
 
 The residue of Ellwood's life seems to have
 
 Mr. Whittier's Stttdy, Oak Knoll, Danvers
 
 THOMAS ELL WOOD 67 
 
 glided on in serenity and peace. He wrote, at 
 intervals, many pamphlets in defence of his So- 
 ciety, and in favor of Liberty of Conscience. At 
 his hospitable residence, the leading spirits of the 
 sect were warmly welcomed. George Fox and 
 William Penn seem to have been frequent guests. 
 We find that, in 1683, he was arrested for seditious 
 publications, when on the eve of hastening to his 
 early friend, Gulielma, who, in the absence of her 
 husband, Governor Penn, had fallen dangerously 
 ill. On coming before the judge, " I told him," 
 says Ellwood, " that I had that morning received 
 an express out of Sussex, that William Penn's wife 
 (with whom I had an intimate acquaintance and 
 strict friendship, ab ipsis fere incunabilis, at least, 
 a teneris unguiculis) lay now ill, not without great 
 danger, and that she had expressed her desire that 
 I would come to her as soon as I could." The 
 judge said " he was very sorry for Madam Penn's 
 illness," of whose virtues he spoke very highly, but 
 not more than was her due. Then he told me, 
 " that, for her sake, he would do what he could to 
 further my visit to her." Escaping from the hands 
 of the law, he visited his friend, who was by this 
 time in a way of recovery, and, on his return, 
 learned that the prosecution had been abandoned. 
 At about this date his narrative ceases. We 
 learn, from other sources, that he continued to 
 write and print in defence of his religious views 
 up to the year of his death, which took place in 
 1713. One of his productions, a poetical version 
 of the Life of David, may be still met with, in the 
 old Quaker libraries. On the score of poetical
 
 68 PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES 
 
 merit, it is about on a level with Michael Drayton's 
 verses on the same subject. As the history of one 
 of the firm confessors of the old struggle for reli- 
 gious freedom, of a genial-hearted and pleasant 
 scholar, the friend of Penn and Milton, and the 
 suggester of Paradise Regained, we trust our 
 hurried sketch has not been altogether without 
 interest ; and that, whatever may be the religious 
 views of our readers, they have not failed to recog- 
 nize a good and true man in Thomas Ellwood.
 
 JAMES NAYLER. 
 
 "You will here read the true story of that much injured, ridi- 
 culed man, James Nayler ; what dreadful suiferings, with what 
 patience he endured, even to the boring of the tongue with hot 
 irons, without a murmur ; and with what strength of mind, when 
 the delusion he had fallen into, which they stigmatized as blas- 
 phemy, had given place to clearer thoughts, he could renounce 
 his error in a strain of the beautifullest humility." Essays of 
 Elia. 
 
 " WOULD that Carlyle could now try his hand 
 at the English Revolution ! " was our exclamation, 
 on laying down the last volume of his remark- 
 able History of the French Revolution with its 
 brilliant and startling word-pictures still flashing 
 before us. To some extent this wish has been 
 realized in the Letters and Speeches of Oliver 
 Cromwell. Yet we confess that the perusal of 
 these volumes has disappointed us. Instead of 
 giving himself free scope, as in his French Revolu- 
 tion, and transferring to his canvas all the wild and 
 ludicrous, the terrible and beautiful phases of that 
 moral phenomenon, he has here concentrated all 
 his artistic skill upon a single figure, whom he 
 seems to have regarded as the embodiment and 
 hero of the great event. All else on his canvas is 
 subordinated to the grim image of the colossal 
 Puritan. Intent upon presenting him as the fitting 
 object of that "hero-worship," which, in its blind 
 admiration and adoration of mere abstract Power,
 
 70 PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES 
 
 seems to us at times nothing less than devil-wor- 
 ship, he dwarfs, casts into the shadow, nay, in some 
 instances caricatures and distorts, the figures which 
 surround him. To excuse Cromwell in his usurpa- 
 tion, Henry Vane, one of those exalted and noble 
 characters, upon whose features the lights held by 
 historical friends or foes detect no blemish, is dis- 
 missed with a sneer and an utterly unfounded im- 
 putation of dishonesty. To reconcile, in some de- 
 gree, the discrepancy between the declarations of 
 Cromwell, in behalf of freedom of conscience, and 
 that mean and cruel persecution which the Quakers 
 suffered under the Protectorate, the generally harm- 
 less fanaticism of a few individuals bearing that 
 name is gravely urged. Nay, the fact that some 
 weak-brained enthusiasts undertook to bring about 
 the millennium, by associating together, cultivating 
 the earth, and " dibbling beans " for the New- 
 Jerusalem market, is regarded by our author as 
 the " germ of Quakerism ; " and furnishes an oc- 
 casion for sneering at "my poor friend Dryas- 
 dust, lamentably tearing his hair over the intoler- 
 ance of that old time to Quakerism and such 
 like." 
 
 The readers of this (with all its faults) powerfully 
 written Biography cannot fail to have been im- 
 pressed with the intensely graphic description 
 (Part I., vol. ii., pp. 184, 185) of the entry of the 
 poor fanatic, James Nayler, and his forlorn and 
 draggled companions into Bristol. Sadly ludicrous 
 is it ; affecting us like the actual sight of tragic in- 
 sanity enacting its involuntary comedy, and mak- 
 ing us smile through our tears.
 
 JAMES NAYLER 71 
 
 In another portion of the work, a brief account 
 is given of the trial and sentence of Nayler, also 
 in the serio-comic view; and the poor man is 
 dismissed with the simple intimation, that after his 
 punishment he "repented, and confessed himself 
 mad." It was no part of the author's business, we 
 are well aware, to waste time and words upon the 
 history of such a man as Nayler ; he was of no im- 
 portance to him, otherwise than as one of the dis- 
 turbing influences in the government of the Lord 
 Protector. But in our mind the story of James 
 Nayler has always been one of interest ; and in 
 the belief that it will prove so to others, who, like 
 Charles Lamb, can appreciate the beautiful humil- 
 ity of a forgiven spirit, we have taken some pains 
 to collect and embody the facts of it. 
 
 James Nayler was born in the parish of Ardes- 
 ley, in Yorkshire, 1616. His father was a sub- 
 stantial farmer, of good repute and competent 
 estate ; and he, in consequence, received a good 
 education. At the age of twenty-two, he married 
 and removed to Wakefield parish, which has since 
 been made classic ground by the pen of Goldsmith. 
 Here, an honest, God-fearing farmer, he tilled his 
 soil, and alternated between cattle-markets and 
 Independent conventicles. In 1641, he obeyed 
 the summons of " my Lord Fairfax " and the Par- 
 liament, and joined a troop of horse composed of 
 sturdy Independents, doing such signal service 
 against " the man of Belial, Charles Stuart," that 
 he was promoted to the rank of quartermaster, in 
 which capacity he served under General Lambert, 
 in his Scottish campaign. Disabled at length by
 
 72 PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES 
 
 sickness, he was honorably dismissed from the ser- 
 vice, and returned to his family in 1649. 
 
 For three or four years, he continued to attend 
 the meetings of the Independents, as a zealous 
 and devout member. But it so fell out, that in the 
 winter of 1651, George Fox, who had just been 
 released from a cruel imprisonment in Derby jail, 
 felt a call to set his face towards Yorkshire. " So 
 travelling," says Fox, in his Journal, " through the 
 countries, to several places, preaching Repentance 
 and the Word of Life, I came into the parts about 
 Wakefield, where James Nayler lived." The worn 
 and weary soldier, covered with the scars of out- 
 ward battle, received, as he believed, in the cause 
 of God and his people, against Antichrist and 
 oppression, welcomed with thankfulness the vet- 
 eran of another warfare ; who, in conflict with 
 " principalities and powers, and spiritual wicked- 
 ness in high places," had made his name a familiar 
 one in every English hamlet. " He and Thomas 
 Goodyear," says Fox, " came to me, and were both 
 convinced, and received the truth." He soon after 
 joined the Society of Friends. In the spring of 
 the next year he was in his field following his 
 plough, and meditating, as he was wont, on the 
 great questions of life and duty, when he seemed to 
 hear a voice bidding him go out from his kindred 
 and his father's house, with an assurance that the 
 Lord would be with him, while laboring in his ser- 
 vice. Deeply impressed, he left his employment, 
 and, returning to his house, made immediate prepa- 
 rations for a journey. But hesitation and doubt 
 followed ; he became sick from anxiety of mind, and
 
 JAMES NAYLER 73 
 
 his recovery, for a time, was exceedingly doubtful. 
 On his restoration to bodily health, he obeyed 
 what he regarded as a clear intimation of duty, 
 and went forth a preacher of the doctrines he had 
 embraced. The Independent minister of the so- 
 ciety to which he had formerly belonged sent after 
 him the story that he was the victim of sorcery ; 
 that George Fox carried with him a bottle, out of 
 which he made people drink ; and that the draught 
 had the power to change a Presbyterian or Inde- 
 pendent into a Quaker at once ; that, in short, the 
 Arch-Quaker, Fox, was a wizard, and could be seen 
 at the same moment of time riding on the same 
 black horse, in two places widely separated ! He 
 had scarcely commenced his exhortations, before 
 the mob, excited by such stories, assailed him. In 
 the early summer of the year we hear of him in 
 Appleby jail. On his release, he fell in company 
 with George Fox. At Walney Island, he was 
 furiously assaulted, and beaten with clubs and 
 stones ; the poor priest-led fishermen being fully 
 persuaded that they were dealing with a wizard. 
 The spirit of the man, under these circumstances, 
 may be seen in the following extract from a letter 
 to his friends, dated at " Killet, in Lancashire, the 
 30th of 8th Month, 1652 : " 
 
 " Dear friends ! Dwell in patience, and wait 
 upon the Lord, who will do his own work. Look 
 not at man who is in the work, nor at any man 
 opposing it ; but rest in the will of the Lord, that 
 so ye may be furnished with patience, both to do 
 and to suffer what ye shall be called unto, that 
 your end in all things may be His praise. Meet
 
 74 PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES 
 
 often together; take heed of what exalteth itself 
 above its brother ; but keep low, and serve one an- 
 other in love." 
 
 Laboring thus, interrupted only by persecution, 
 stripes, and imprisonment, he finally came to Lon- 
 don, and spoke with great power and eloquence in 
 the meetings of Friends in that city. Here he for 
 the first time found himself surrounded by admir- 
 ing and sympathizing friends. He saw and re- 
 joiced in the fruits of his ministry. Profane and 
 drunken cavaliers, intolerant Presbyters, and blind 
 Papists, owned the truths which he uttered, and 
 counted themselves his disciples. Women, too, in 
 their deep trustfulness and admiring reverence, 
 sat at the feet of the eloquent stranger. Devout 
 believers in the doctrine of the inward light and 
 manifestation of God in the heart of man, these 
 latter, at length, thought they saw such unmistak- 
 able evidences of the true life in James Nayler, 
 that they felt constrained to declare that Christ 
 was, in an especial manner, within him, and to call 
 upon all to recognize in reverent adoration this 
 new incarnation of the divine and heavenly. The 
 wild enthusiasm of his disciples had its effect on 
 the teacher. Weak in body, worn with sickness, 
 fasting, stripes, and prison-penance, and naturally 
 credulous and imaginative, is it strange that in 
 some measure he yielded to this miserable delu- 
 sion ? Let those who would harshly judge him, or 
 ascribe his fall to the peculiar doctrines of his sect, 
 think of Luther, engaged in personal combat with 
 the Devil, or conversing with him on points of 
 theology in his bed-chamber; or of Bunyan at actual
 
 JAMES NAYLER 75 
 
 fisticuffs with the adversary ; or of Fleetwood and 
 Vane and Harrison millennium-mad, and making 
 preparations for an earthly reign of King Jesus. 
 It was an age of intense religious excitement. 
 Fanaticism had become epidemic. Cromwell 
 swayed his Parliaments by "revelations" and 
 Scripture phrases in the painted chamber; stout 
 generals and sea-captains exterminated the Irish, 
 and swept Dutch navies from the ocean, with old 
 Jewish war-cries, and hymns of Deborah and Mir- 
 iam ; country justices charged juries in Hebraisms, 
 and cited the laws of Palestine oftener than those 
 of England. Poor Nayler found himself in the 
 very midst of this seething and confused moral 
 maelstrom. He struggled against it for a time, 
 but human nature was weak ; he became, to use 
 his own words, " bewildered and darkened," and 
 the floods went over him. 
 
 Leaving London with some of his more zealous 
 followers, not without solemn admonition and re- 
 buke from Francis Howgill and Edward Burrough, 
 who at that period were regarded as the most emi- 
 nent and gifted of the Society's ministers, he bent 
 his steps towards Exeter. Here, in consequence 
 of the extravagance of his language and that of his 
 disciples, he was arrested and thrown into prison. 
 Several infatuated women surrounded the jail, de- 
 claring that " Christ was in prison," and on being 
 admitted to see him, knelt down and kissed his 
 feet, exclaiming, "Thy name shall be no more 
 called James Nayler, but Jesus ! " Let us pity 
 him and them. They, full of grateful and extrav- 
 agant affection for the man whose voice had called
 
 76 PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES 
 
 them away from worldly vanities to what they re- 
 garded as eternal realities, whose hand they im- 
 agined had for them swung back the pearl gates 
 of the celestial city, and flooded their atmosphere 
 with light from heaven ; he, receiving their 
 homage (not as offered to a poor, weak, sinful 
 Yorkshire trooper, but rather to the hidden man of 
 the heart, the " Christ within " him) with that 
 self -deceiving humility which is but another name 
 for spiritual pride. Mournful, yet natural ; such 
 as is still in greater or less degree manifested be- 
 tween the Catholic enthusiast and her confessor ; 
 such as the careful observer may at times take 
 note of in our Protestant revivals and camp meet- 
 ings. 
 
 How Nayler was released from Exeter jail does 
 not appear, but the next we hear of him is at Bris- 
 tol, in the fall of the year. His entrance into that 
 city shows the progress which he and his followers 
 had made in the interval. Let us look at Carlyle's 
 description of it : "A procession of eight persons 
 one, a man on horseback riding single, the 
 others, men and women partly riding double, partly 
 on foot, in the muddiest highway in the wettest 
 weather; singing, all but the single rider, at 
 whose bridle walk and splash two women, ' Hosan- 
 nah ! Holy, holy ! Lord God of Sabaoth,' and 
 other things, ' in a buzzing tone,' which the im- 
 partial hearer could not make out. The single 
 rider is a raw-boned male figure, ' with lank hair 
 reaching below his cheeks,' hat drawn close over 
 his brows, ' nose rising slightly in the middle,' of 
 abstruse ' down look,' and large dangerous jaws
 
 JAMES NAYLER 77 
 
 strictly closed : he sings not, sits there covered, 
 and is sung to by the others bare. Amid pouring 
 deluges and mud knee-deep, * so that the rain ran 
 in at their necks and vented it at their hose and 
 breeches : ' a spectacle to the West of England and 
 posterity ! Singing as above ; answering no ques- 
 tion except in song. From Bedminster to Rat- 
 cliffgate, along the streets to the High Cross of 
 Bristol : at the High Cross they are laid hold of 
 by the authorities : turn out to be James Nayler 
 and Company." 
 
 Truly, a more pitiful example of " hero-worship " 
 is not well to be conceived of. Instead of taking 
 the rational view of it, however, and mercifully 
 shutting up the actors in a mad-house, the authori- 
 ties of that day, conceiving it to be a stupendous 
 blasphemy, and themselves God's avengers in the 
 matter, sent Nayler under strong guard up to Lon- 
 don, to be examined before the Parliament. After 
 long and tedious examinations and cross-question- 
 ings, and still more tedious debates, some portion 
 of which, not uninstructive to the reader, may still 
 be found in Burton's Diary, the following hor- 
 rible resolution was agreed upon : 
 
 " That James Nayler be set in the pillory, with 
 his head in the pillory in the Palace Yard, West- 
 minster, during the space of two hours on Thurs- 
 day next ; and be whipped by the hangman 
 through the streets from Westminster to the Old 
 Exchange, and there, likewise, be set in the pil- 
 lory, with his head in the pillory for the space of 
 two hours, between eleven and one, on Saturday 
 next, in each place wearing a paper containing a
 
 78 PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES 
 
 description of his crimes ; and that at the Old 
 Exchange his tongue be bored through with a hot 
 iron, and that he be there stigmatized on the fore- 
 head with the letter ' B ; ' and that he be after- 
 wards sent to Bristol, to be conveyed into and 
 through the said city on horseback with his face 
 backward, and there, also, publicly whipped the 
 next market-day after he comes thither ; that from 
 thence he be committed to prison in Bridewell, 
 London, and there restrained from the society of 
 all people, and there to labor hard until he shall 
 be released by Parliament ; and during that time 
 be debarred the use of pen, ink, and paper, and 
 have no relief except what he earns by his daily 
 labor." 
 
 Such, neither more nor less, was, in the opinion 
 of Parliament, required on their part to appease 
 the divine vengeance. The sentence was pro- 
 nounced on the 17th of the twelfth month ; the 
 entire time of the Parliament for the two months 
 previous having been occupied with the case. The 
 Presbyterians in that body were ready enough to 
 make the most of an offence committed by one 
 who had been an Independent ; the Independents, 
 to escape the stigma of extenuating the crimes of 
 one of their quondam brethren, vied with their an- 
 tagonists in shrieking over the atrocity of Nayler's 
 blasphemy, and in urging its severe punishment. 
 Here and there among both classes were men dis- 
 posed to leniency, and more than one earnest plea 
 was made for merciful dealing with a man whose 
 reason was evidently unsettled, and who was, there- 
 fore, a fitting object of compassion ; whose crime,
 
 JAMES NAYLER 79 
 
 if it could indeed be called one, was evidently the 
 result of a clouded intellect, and not of wilful in- 
 tention of evil. On the other hand, many were in 
 favor of putting him to death as a sort of peace- 
 offering to the clergy, who, as a matter of course, 
 were greatly scandalized by Nayler's blasphemy, 
 and still more by the refusal of his sect to pay 
 tithes, or recognize their divine commission. 
 
 Nayler was called into the Parliament-house to 
 receive his sentence. " I do not know mine 
 offence," he said mildly. "You shall know it," 
 said Sir Thomas Widrington, " by your sentence." 
 When the sentence was read, he attempted to 
 speak, but was silenced. " I pray God," said Nay- 
 ler, " that he may not lay this to your charge." 
 
 The next day, the 18th of the twelfth month, 
 he stood in the pillory two hours, in the chill win- 
 ter air, and was then stripped and scourged by the 
 hangman at the tail of a cart through the streets. 
 Three hundred and ten stripes were inflicted ; his 
 back and arms were horribly cut and mangled, and 
 his feet crushed and bruised by the feet of horses 
 treading on him in the crowd. He bore all with 
 uncomplaining patience ; but was so far exhausted 
 by his sufferings, that it was found necessary to 
 postpone the execution of the residue of the sen- 
 tence for one week. The terrible severity of his 
 sentence, and his meek endurance of it, had in the 
 mean time powerfully affected many of the humane 
 and generous of all classes in the city ; and a pe- 
 tition for the remission of the remaining part of 
 the penalty was numerously signed and presented 
 to Parliament. A debate ensued upon it, but its
 
 80 PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES 
 
 prayer was rejected. Application was then made 
 to Cromwell, who addressed a letter to the Speaker 
 of the House, inquiring into the affair, protesting 
 an " abhorrence and detestation of giving or occa- 
 sioning the least countenance to such opinions and 
 practices " as were imputed to Nayler ; " yet we, 
 being intrusted in the present government on be- 
 half of the people of these nations, and not know- 
 ing how far such proceeding entered into wholly 
 without us may extend in the consequence of it, 
 do hereby desire the House may let us know the 
 grounds and reasons whereon they have proceeded." 
 From this, it is not unlikely that the Protector 
 might have been disposed to clemency, and to look 
 with a degree of charity upon the weakness and 
 errors of one of his old and tried soldiers who had 
 striven like a brave man, as he was, for the rights 
 and liberties of Englishmen ; but the clergy here 
 interposed, and vehemently, in the name of God 
 and His. Church, demanded that the executioner 
 should finish his work. Five of the most eminent 
 of them, names well known in the Protectorate, 
 Caryl, Manton, Nye, Griffith, and Reynolds, were 
 deputed by Parliament to visit the mangled pris- 
 oner. A reasonable request was made, that some 
 impartial person might be present, that justice 
 might be done Nayler in the report of his answers. 
 This was refused. It was, however, agreed that 
 the conversation should be written down and a 
 copy of it left with the jailer. He was asked if 
 he was sorry for his blasphemies. He said he did 
 not know to what blasphemies they alluded ; that 
 he did believe in Jesus Christ ; that He had taken
 
 JAMES NAYLER 81 
 
 up His dwelling in his own heart, and for the tes- 
 timony of Him he now suffered. "I believe," 
 said one of the ministers, " in a Christ who was 
 never in any man's heart." " I know no such 
 Christ," rejoined the prisoner ; " the Christ I wit- 
 ness to fills Heaven and Earth, and dwells in the 
 hearts of all true believers." On being asked 
 why he allowed the women to adore and worship 
 him, he said he " denied bowing to the creature ; 
 but if they beheld the power of Christ, wherever 
 it was, and bowed to it, he could not resist it, or 
 say aught against it." 
 
 After some further parley, the reverend visitors 
 grew angry, threw the written record of the con- 
 versation in the fire, and left the prison, to report 
 the prisoner incorrigible. 
 
 On the 27th of the month, he was again led out 
 of his cell and placed upon the pillory. Thousands 
 of citizens were gathered around, many of them 
 earnestly protesting against the extreme cruelty of 
 his punishment. Robert Rich, an influential and 
 honorable merchant, followed him up to the pillory 
 with expressions of great sympathy, and held him 
 by the hand while the red-hot iron was pressed 
 through his tongue and the brand was placed on 
 his forehead. He was next sent to Bristol, and 
 publicly whipped through the principal streets of 
 that city ; and again brought back to the Bride- 
 well prison, where he remained about two years, 
 shut out from all intercourse with his fellow-beings. 
 At the expiration of this period, he was released 
 by order of Parliament. In the solitude of his 
 cell, the angel of patience had been with him.
 
 82 
 
 Through the cloud which had so long rested over 
 him, the clear light of truth shone in upon his 
 spirit ; the weltering chaos of a disordered intellect 
 settled into the calm peace of a reconciliation with 
 God and man. His first act on leaving prison was 
 to visit Bristol, the scene of his melancholy fall. 
 There he publicly confessed his errors, in the elo- 
 quent earnestness of a contrite spirit, humbled in 
 view of the past, yet full of thanksgiving and praise 
 for the great boon of forgiveness. A writer who 
 was present says, the " assembly was tendered, and 
 broken into tears ; there were few dry eyes, and 
 many were bowed in their minds." 
 
 In a paper which he published soon after, he 
 acknowledges his lamentable delusion. " Con- 
 demned forever," he says, " be all those false 
 worships with which any have idolized my person 
 in that Night of my Temptation, when the Power 
 of Darkness was above me ; all that did in any 
 way tend to dishonor the Lord, or draw the minds 
 of any from the measure of Christ Jesus in them- 
 selves, to look at flesh, which is as grass, or to 
 ascribe that to the visible which belongs to Him." 
 " Darkness came over me through want of watch- 
 fulness and obedience to the pure Eye of God. 
 I was taken captive from the true light ; I was 
 walking in the Night, as a wandering bird fit for 
 a prey. And if the Lord of all my mercies had 
 not rescued me, I had perished ; for I was as one 
 appointed to death and destruction, and there was 
 none to deliver me." "It is in my heart to con- 
 fess to God, and before men, my folly and offence 
 in that day ; yet there were many things formed
 
 JAMES NAYLER 83 
 
 against me in that day, to take away my life and 
 bring scandal upon the truth, of which I was not 
 guilty at all." " The provocation of that Time of 
 Temptation was exceeding great against the Lord, 
 yet He left me not ; for when Darkness was above, 
 and the Adversary so prevailed that all things 
 were turned and perverted against my right seeing, 
 hearing, or understanding, only a secret hope and 
 faith I had in my God, whom I had served, that 
 He would bring me through it and to the end of it, 
 and that I should again see the day of my redemp- 
 tion from under it all, this quieted my soul in its 
 greatest tribulation." He concludes his confession 
 with these words : " He who hath saved my soul 
 from death, who hath lifted my feet up out of the 
 pit, even to Him be glory forever ; and let every 
 troubled soul trust in Him, for his mercy endureth 
 forever ! " 
 
 Among his papers, written soon after his release, 
 is a remarkable prayer, or rather thanksgiving. 
 The limit I have prescribed to myself will only 
 allow me to copy an extract : 
 
 " It is in my heart to praise Thee, O my God ! 
 Let me never forget Thee, what Thou hast been to 
 me in the night, by Thy presence in my hour of 
 trial, when I was beset in darkness, when I was 
 cast out as a wandering bird ; when I was as- 
 saulted with strong temptations, then Thy pres- 
 ence, in secret, did preserve me, and in a low 
 state I felt Thee near me; when my way was 
 through the sea, when I passed under the moun- 
 tains, there wast Thou present with me ; when the 
 weight of the hills was upon me, Thou upheldest
 
 84 PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES 
 
 me. Thou didst fight, on my part, when I wres- 
 tled with death ; when darkness would have shut 
 me up, Thy light shone about me ; when my work 
 was in the furnace, and I passed through the fire, 
 by Thee I was not consumed ; when I beheld the 
 dreadful visions, and was among the fiery spirits, 
 Thy faith staid me, else through fear I had fallen. 
 I saw Thee, and believed, so that the enemy could 
 not prevail." After speaking of his humiliation 
 and sufferings, which Divine Mercy had overruled 
 for his spiritual good, he thus concludes : " Thou 
 didst lift me out from the pit, and set me forth in 
 the sight of my enemies ; Thou proclaimedst liberty 
 to the captive; Thou calledst my acquaintances 
 near me ; they to whom I had been a wonder 
 looked upon me ; and in Thy love I obtained 
 favor with those who had deserted me. Then did 
 gladness swallow up sorrow, and I forsook my 
 troubles ; and I said, How good is it that man be 
 proved in the night, that he may know his folly, 
 that every mouth may become silent, until Thou 
 makest man known unto himself, and has slain the 
 boaster, and shown him the vanity which vexeth 
 Thy spirit." 
 
 All honor to the Quakers of that day, that, at 
 the risk of misrepresentation and calumny, they 
 received back to their communion their greatly 
 erring, but deeply repentant, brother. His life, 
 ever after, was one of self-denial and jealous watch- 
 fulness over himself, blameless and beautiful in 
 its humility and lowly charity. 
 
 Thomas Ellwood, in his autobiography for the 
 year 1659, mentions Nayler, whom he met in com'
 
 JAMES NAYLER 85 
 
 pany with Edward Burrough at the house of Mil- 
 ton's friend, Pennington. Ellwood's father held a 
 discourse with the two Quakers on their doctrine 
 of free and universal grace. " James Nailer," 
 says Ellwood, " handled the subject with so much 
 perspicuity and clear demonstration, that his rea- 
 soning seemed to be irresistible. As for Edward 
 Burrough, he was a brisk young Man, of a ready 
 Tongue, and might have been for aught I then 
 knew, a Scholar, which made me less admire his 
 Way of Reasoning. But what dropt from James 
 Nailer had the greater Force upon me, because he 
 lookt like a simple Countryman, having the ap- 
 pearance of an Husbandman or Shepherd." 
 
 In the latter part of the eighth month, 1660, he 
 left London on foot, to visit his wife and children 
 in Wakefield. As he journeyed on, the sense of a 
 solemn change about to take place seemed with 
 him ; the shadow of the eternal world fell over 
 him. As he passed through Huntingdon, a friend 
 who saw him describes him as " in an awful and 
 weighty frame of mind, as if he had been redeemed 
 from earth, and a stranger on it, seeking a better 
 home and inheritance." A few miles beyond the 
 town, he was found, in the dusk of the evening, 
 very ill, and was taken to the house of a friend, 
 who lived not far distant. He died shortly after, 
 expressing his gratitude for the kindness of his 
 attendants, and invoking blessings upon them. 
 About two hours before his death, he spoke to the 
 friend at his bedside these remarkable words, sol- 
 emn as eternity, and beautiful as the love which 
 fills it:
 
 86 PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES 
 
 " There is a spirit which I feel which delights to 
 do no evil, nor to avenge any wrong ; but delights 
 to endure all things, in hope to enjoy its own in 
 the end ; its hope is to outlive all wrath and con- 
 tention, and to weary out all exultation and cruelty, 
 or whatever is of a nature contrary to itself. It 
 sees to the end of all temptations ; as it bears no 
 evil in itself, so it conceives none in thought to any 
 other : if it be betrayed, it bears it, for its ground 
 and spring is the mercy and forgiveness of God. 
 Its crown is meekness ; its life is everlasting love 
 unfeigned ; it takes its kingdom with entreaty, and 
 not with contention, and keeps it by lowliness of 
 mind. In God alone it can rejoice, though none 
 else regard it, or can own its life. It is conceived 
 in sorrow, and brought forth with none to pity it ; 
 nor doth it murmur at grief and oppression. It 
 never rejoiceth but through sufferings, for with the 
 world's joy it is murdered. I found it alone, being 
 forsaken. I have fellowship therein with them 
 who lived in dens and desolate places of the earth, 
 who through death obtained resurrection and eter- 
 nal Holy Life." 
 
 So died James Nayler. He was buried in 
 " Thomas Parnell's burying-ground, at King's Rip- 
 pon," in a green nook of rural England. Wrong 
 and violence, and temptation and sorrow, and evil- 
 speaking, could reach him no more. And in tak- 
 ing leave of him, let us say, with old Joseph Wyeth, 
 where he touches upon this case in his Anguis Fla- 
 gellatus : " Let none insult, but take heed lest they 
 also, in the hour of their temptation, do fall away."
 
 ANDREW MARVELL. 
 
 " They who with a good conscience and an npright heart do 
 their civil duties in the sight of God, and in their several places, 
 to resist tyranny and the violence of superstition banded both 
 against them, will never seek to be forgiven that which may 
 justly be attributed to their immortal praise." Answer to Eikon 
 Basilike. 
 
 AMONG the great names which adorned the Pro- 
 tectorate, that period of intense mental activity, 
 when political and religious rights and duties were 
 thoroughly discussed by strong and earnest states- 
 men and theologians, that of Andrew Marvel], 
 the friend of Milton, and Latin Secretary of Crom- 
 well, deserves honorable mention. The magnificent 
 prose of Milton, long neglected, is now perhaps as 
 frequently read as his great epic ; but the writings 
 of his friend and fellow secretary, devoted like his 
 own to the cause of freedom and the rights of the 
 people, are scarcely known to the present genera- 
 tion. It is true that Marvell's political pamphlets 
 were less elaborate and profound than those of the 
 author of the glorious Defence of Unlicensed Print- 
 ing. He was light, playful, witty, and sarcastic ; 
 he lacked the stern dignity, the terrible invective, 
 the bitter scorn, the crushing, annihilating retort, 
 the grand and solemn eloquence, and the devout 
 appeals, which render immortal the controversial 
 works of Milton. But he, too, has left his foot-
 
 88 PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES 
 
 prints on his age ; he, too, has written for posterity 
 that which they " will not willingly let die." As 
 one of the inflexible defenders of English liberty, 
 sowers of the seed, the fruits of which we are now 
 reaping, he has a higher claim on the kind regards 
 of this generation than his merits as a poet, by no 
 means inconsiderable, would warrant. 
 
 Andrew Marvell was born in Kingston-upon- 
 Hull, in 1620. At the age of eighteen he entered 
 Trinity College, whence he was enticed by the 
 Jesuits, then actively seeking proselytes. After 
 remaining with them a short time, his father found 
 him, and brought him back to his studies. On 
 leaving college, he travelled on the Continent. At 
 Rome he wrote his first satire, a humorous critique 
 upon Richard Flecknoe, an English Jesuit and 
 verse writer, whose lines on Silence Charles Lamb 
 quotes in one of his Essays. It is supposed that 
 he made his first acquaintance with Milton in Italy. 
 
 At Paris he made the Abbot de Manihan the 
 subject of another satire. The Abbot pretended to 
 skill in the arts of magic, and used to prognosti- 
 cate the fortunes of people from the character of 
 their handwriting. At what period he returned 
 from his travels we are not aware. It is stated, 
 by some of his biographers, that he was sent as 
 secretary of a Turkish mission. In 1653, he was 
 appointed the tutor of Cromwell's nephew ; and, 
 four years after, doubtless through the instrumen- 
 tality of his friend Milton, he received the honora- 
 ble appointment of Latin Secretary of the Com- 
 monwealth. In 1658, he was selected by his 
 townsmen of Hull to represent them in Parlia-
 
 ANDREW MARVELL 89 
 
 ment. In this service he continued until 1663, 
 when, notwithstanding his sturdy republican prin- 
 ciples, he was appointed secretary to the Russian 
 embassy. On his return, in 1665, he was again 
 elected to Parliament, and continued in the public 
 service until the prorogation of the Parliament of 
 1675. 
 
 The boldness, the uncompromising integrity and 
 irreproachable consistency of Marvell, as a states- 
 man, have secured for him the honorable appella- 
 tion of " the British Aristides." Unlike too many 
 of his old associates under the Protectorate, he did 
 not change with the times. He was a republican 
 in Cromwell's day, and neither threats of assassi- 
 nation, nor flatteries, nor proffered bribes, could 
 make him anything else in that of Charles II. He 
 advocated the rights of the people at a time when 
 patriotism was regarded as ridiculous folly ; when 
 a general corruption, spreading downwards from a 
 lewd and abominable Court, had made legislation 
 a mere scramble for place and emolument. Eng- 
 lish history presents no period so disgraceful as 
 the Restoration. To use the words of Macaulay, 
 it was " a day of servitude without loyalty and 
 sensuality without love, of dwarfish talents and 
 gigantic vices, the paradise of cold hearts and nar- 
 row minds, the golden age of the coward, the bigot, 
 and the slave. The principles of liberty were the 
 scoff of every grinning courtier, and the Anathema 
 Maranatha of every fawning dean." It is the pe- 
 culiar merit of Milton and Marvell, that in such 
 an age they held fast their integrity, standing up 
 in glorious contrast with clerical apostates and 
 traitors to the cause of England's liberty.
 
 90 PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES 
 
 In the discharge of his duties as a statesman 
 Marvell was as punctual and conscientious as our 
 own venerable Apostle of Freedom, John Quincy 
 Adams. He corresponded every post with his con- 
 stituents, keeping them fully apprised of all that 
 transpired at Court or in Parliament. He spoke 
 but seldom, but his great personal influence was 
 exerted privately upon the members of the Com- 
 mons as well as upon the Peers. His wit, accom- 
 plished manners, and literary eminence made him 
 a favorite at the Court itself. The voluptuous 
 and careless monarch laughed over the biting sat- 
 ire of the republican poet, and heartily enjoyed 
 his lively conversation. It is said that numerous 
 advances were made to him by the courtiers of 
 Charles II., but he was found to be incorruptible. 
 The personal compliments of the King, the enco- 
 miums of Rochester, the smiles and flatteries of the 
 frail but fair and high-born ladies of the Court ; 
 nay, even the golden offers of the King's treas- 
 urer, who, climbing with difficulty to his obscure 
 retreat on an upper floor of a court in the Strand, 
 laid a tempting bribe of <1,000 before him, on the 
 very day when he had been compelled to borrow a 
 guinea, were all lost upon the inflexible patriot. 
 He stood up manfully, in an age of persecution, for 
 religious liberty, opposed the oppressive excise, 
 and demanded frequent Parliaments and a fair 
 representation of the people. 
 
 In 1672, Marvell engaged in a controversy with 
 the famous High-Churchman, Dr. Parker, who had 
 taken the lead in urging the persecution of Non- 
 conformists. In one of the works of this arrogant
 
 ANDREW MARVELL 91 
 
 divine, he says that " it is absolutely necessary to 
 the peace and government of the world that the 
 supreme magistrate should be vested with power 
 to govern and conduct the consciences of subjects 
 in affairs of religion. Princes may with less haz- 
 ard give liberty to men's vices and debaucheries 
 than to their consciences." And, speaking of the 
 various sects of Non-conformists, he counsels princes 
 and legislators that "tenderness and indulgence 
 to such men is to nourish vipers in their own bow- 
 els, and the most sottish neglect of our quiet and 
 security." Mar veil replied to him in a severely 
 satirical pamphlet, which provoked a reply from 
 the Doctor. Marvell rejoined, with a rare combi- 
 nation of wit and argument. The effect of his 
 sarcasm on the Doctor and his supporters may be 
 inferred from an anonymous note sent him, in 
 which the writer threatens by the eternal God to 
 cut his throat, if he uttered any more libels upon 
 Dr. Parker. Bishop Burnet remarks that " Mar- 
 vell writ in a burlesque strain, but with so peculiar 
 and so entertaining a conduct that from the King 
 down to the tradesman his books were read with 
 great pleasure, and not only humbled Parker, but 
 his whole party, for Marvell had all the wits on 
 his side." The Bishop further remarks that Mar- 
 veil's satire " gave occasion to the only piece of 
 modesty with which Dr. Parker was ever charged, 
 namely, of withdrawing from town, and not impor- 
 tuning the press for some years, since even a face 
 of brass must grow red when it is burnt as his has 
 been." 
 
 Dean Swift, in commenting upon the usual fate
 
 92 PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES 
 
 of controversial pamphlets, which seldom live be- 
 yond their generation, says : " There is indeed 
 an exception, when a great genius undertakes to 
 expose a foolish piece ; so we still read Marvell's 
 answer to Parker with pleasure, though the book 
 it answers be sunk long ago." 
 
 Perhaps, in the entire compass of our language, 
 there is not to be found a finer piece of satirical 
 writing than Marvell's famous parody of the 
 speeches of Charles II., in which the private vices 
 and public inconsistencies of the King, and his 
 gross violations of his pledges on coming to the 
 throne, are exposed with the keenest wit and the 
 most laugh-provoking irony. Charles himself, al- 
 though doubtless annoyed by it, could not refrain 
 from joining in the mirth which it excited at his 
 expense. 
 
 The friendship between Marvell and Milton re- 
 mained firm and unbroken to the last. The former 
 exerted himself to save his illustrious friend from 
 persecution, and omitted no opportunity to defend 
 him as a politician and to eulogize him as a poet. 
 In 1654 he presented to Cromwell Milton's noble 
 tract in Defence of the People of England, and, in 
 writing to the author, says of the work, " When I 
 consider how equally it teems and rises with so 
 many figures, it seems to me a Trajan's column, in 
 whose winding ascent we see embossed the several 
 monuments of your learned victories." He was 
 one of the first to appreciate Paradise Lost, and to 
 commend it in some admirable lines. One couplet 
 is exceedingly beautiful, in its reference to the au- 
 thor's blindness :
 
 ANDREW MARVELL 93 
 
 " Just Heaven, thee like Tiresias to requite, 
 Rewards with prophecy thy loss of sight." 
 
 His poems, written in the " snatched leisure " of 
 an active political life, bear marks of haste, and 
 are very unequal. In the midst of passages of 
 pastoral description worthy of Milton himself, 
 feeble lines and hackneyed phrases occur. His 
 Nymph lamenting the Death of her Fawn is a 
 finished and elaborate piece, full of grace and ten- 
 derness. Thoughts in a Garden will be remem- 
 bered by the quotations of that exquisite critic, 
 Charles Lamb. How pleasant is this picture ! 
 
 " What wondrous life is this I lead ! 
 Ripe apples drop about my head ; 
 The luscious clusters of the vine 
 Upon my mouth do crush their wine ; 
 The nectarine and curious peach 
 Into my hands themselves do reach ; 
 Stumbling on melons as I pass, 
 Ensnared with flowers, I fall on grass. 
 
 " Here at this fountain's sliding foot, 
 Or at the fruit-tree's mossy root, 
 Casting the body's vest aside, 
 My soul into the boughs does glide. 
 There like a bird it sits and sings, 
 And whets and claps its silver wings ; 
 And, till prepared for longer flight, 
 Waves in its plumes the various light. 
 
 " How well the skilful gard'ner drew 
 Of flowers and herbs this dial true ! 
 Where, from above, the milder sun 
 Does through a fragrant zodiac run ; 
 And, as it works, the industrious bee 
 Computes his time as well as we. 
 How could such sweet and wholesome hours 
 Be reckoned but with herbs and flowers I "
 
 94 PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES 
 
 One of his longer poems, Appleton House, con- 
 tains passages of admirable description, and many 
 not unpleasing conceits. Witness the following : 
 
 " Thus I, an easy philosopher, 
 Among- the birds and trees confer, 
 And little now to make me wants, 
 Or of the fowl or of the plants. 
 Give me but wings, as they, and I 
 Straight floating on the air shall fly ; 
 Or turn me but, and you shall see 
 I am but an inverted tree. 
 Already I begin to call 
 In their most learned original ; 
 And, where I language want, my signs 
 The bird upon the bough divines. 
 No leaf does tremble in the wind, 
 Which I returning cannot find. 
 Out of these scattered SibyVs leaves, 
 Strange prophecies my fancy weaves: 
 What Rome, Greece, Palestine, e'er said, 
 I in this light Mosaic read. 
 Under this antic cope I move, 
 Like some great prelate of the grove ; 
 Then, languishing at ease, I toss 
 On pallets thick with velvet moss ; 
 While the wind, cooling through the boughs, 
 Flatters with air my panting brows. 
 Thanks for my rest, ye mossy banks ! 
 And unto you, cool zephyrs, thanks ! 
 Who, as my hair, my thoughts too shed, 
 And winnow from the chaff my head. 
 How safe, methinks, and strong behind 
 These trees have I encamped my mind ! " 
 
 Here is a picture of a piscatorial idler and his 
 trout stream, worthy of the pencil of Izaak Wal- 
 ton: 
 
 " See in what wanton harmless folds 
 It everywhere the meadow holds : 
 Where all things gaze themselves, and doubt 
 If they be in it or without;
 
 ANDREW MARVELL 95 
 
 And for this shade, which therein shines 
 Narcissus-like, the sun too pines. 
 Oh ! what a pleasure 't is to hedge 
 My temples here in heavy sedge ; 
 Abandoning my lazy side, 
 Stretched as a bank unto the tide ; 
 Or, to suspend my sliding foot 
 On the osier's undermining root, 
 And in its branches tough to hang, 
 While at my lines the fishes twang." 
 
 A little poem of Marvell's, which he calls Eyes 
 and Tears, has the following passages : 
 
 " How wisely Nature did agree 
 With the same eyes to weep and see ! 
 That having viewed the object vain, 
 They might be ready to complain. 
 And, since the self -deluding sight 
 In a false angle takes each height, 
 These tears, which better measure all, 
 Like watery lines and plummets fall." 
 
 " Happy are they whom grief doth bless, 
 That weep the more, and see the less ; 
 And, to preserve their sight more true, 
 Bathe still their eyes in their own dew ; 
 So Magdalen, in tears more wise, 
 Dissolved those captivating eyes, 
 Whose liquid chains could, flowing, meet 
 To fetter her Redeemer's feet. 
 The sparkling glance, that shoots desire, 
 Drenched in those tears, does lose its fire ; 
 Yea, oft the Thunderer pity takes, 
 And there his hissing lightning slakes. 
 The incense is to Heaven dear, 
 Not as a perfume, but a tear ; 
 And stars shine lovely in the night, 
 But as they seem the tears of light. 
 Ope, then, mine eyes, your double sluice, 
 And practise so your noblest use ; 
 For others, too, can see or sleep, 
 But only human eyes can weep."
 
 96 PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES 
 
 The Bermuda Emigrants has some happy lines, 
 as the following : 
 
 " He hangs in shade the orange bright, 
 Like golden lamps in a green night." 
 
 Or this, which doubtless suggested a couplet in 
 Moore's Canadian Boat Song : 
 
 " And all the way, to guide the chime, 
 With falling oars they kept the time." 
 
 His facetious and burlesque poetry was much 
 admired in his day ; but a great portion of it re- 
 ferred to persons and events no longer of general 
 interest. The satire on Holland is an exception. 
 There is nothing in its way superior to it in our 
 language. Many of his best pieces were originally 
 written in Latin, and afterwards translated by him- 
 self. There is a splendid Ode to Cromwell a 
 worthy companion of Milton's glorious sonnet 
 which is not generally known, and which we trans- 
 fer entire to our pages. Its simple dignity and 
 the melodious flow of its versification commend 
 themselves more to our feelings than its eulogy of 
 war. It is energetic and impassioned, and proba- 
 bly affords a better idea of the author, as an actor 
 in the stirring drama of his time, than the " soft 
 Lydian airs " of the poems that we have quoted : 
 
 AN HORATIAN ODE UPON CROMWELL'S RETURN 
 FROM IRELAND. 
 
 The forward youth that would appear 
 Must now forsake his Muses dear ; 
 
 Nor in the shadows sing 
 
 His numbers languishing. 
 
 'T is time to leave the books in dust, 
 And oil the unused armor's rust ;
 
 ANDREW MARVELL 97 
 
 Removing from the wall 
 The corslet of the hall. 
 
 So restless Cromwell could not cease 
 In the inglorious arts of peace, 
 
 But through adventurous war 
 
 Urged his active star. 
 
 And, like the three-forked lightning, first 
 Breaking the clouds wherein it nurst, 
 
 Did thorough his own side 
 
 His fiery way divide. 
 
 For 't is all one to courage high, 
 The emulous, or enemy ; 
 
 And with such to enclose 
 
 Is more than to oppose. 
 
 Then burning through the air he went, 
 
 And palaces and temples rent ; 
 And Caesar's head at last 
 Did through his laurels blast. 
 
 ' T is madness to resist or blame 
 The face of angry Heaven 1 s flame ; 
 
 And, if we would speak true, 
 
 Much to the man is due, 
 
 Who, from his private gardens, where 
 He lived reserved and austere, 
 
 (As if his highest plot 
 
 To plant the bergamot,) 
 
 Could by industrious valor climb 
 To ruin the great work of time, 
 
 And cast the kingdoms old 
 
 Into another mould ! 
 
 Though justice against fate complain, 
 And plead the ancient rights in vain, 
 
 But those do hold or break, 
 
 As men are strong or weak.
 
 98 PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES 
 
 Nature, that hateth emptiness, 
 
 Allows of penetration less, 
 
 And therefore must make room 
 Where greater spirits come. 
 
 What field of all the civil war, 
 Where his were not the deepest scar ? 
 
 And Hampton shows what part 
 
 He had of wiser art ; 
 
 Where, twining subtle fears with hope, 
 He wove a net of such a scope, 
 That Charles himself might chase 
 To Carisbrook's narrow case ; 
 
 That hence the royal actor borne, 
 The tragic scaffold might adorn, 
 While round the armed bands 
 Did clap their bloody hands. 
 
 HE nothing common did or mean 
 Upon that memorable scene, 
 
 But with his keener eye 
 
 The axe's edge did try : 
 
 Nor called the gods, with vulgar spite, 
 To vindicate his helpless right ! 
 
 But bowed his comely head, 
 
 Down, as upon a bed. 
 
 This was that memorable hour, 
 Which first assured the forced power; 
 
 So when they did design 
 
 The Capitol's first line, 
 
 A bleeding head, where they begun, 
 Did fright the architects to run ; 
 
 And yet in that the state 
 
 Foresaw its happy fate. 
 
 And now the Irish are ashamed 
 To see themselves in one year tamed ; 
 So much one man can do, 
 That does best act and know.
 
 ANDREW MAR VEIL 99 
 
 They can affirm his praises best, 
 And have, though overcome, conf est 
 
 How good he is, how just, 
 
 And fit for highest trust. 
 
 Nor yet grown stiffer by command, 
 But still in the Republic's hand, 
 
 How fit he is to sway 
 
 That can so well obey. 
 
 He to the Commons' feet presents 
 A kingdom for his first year's rents, 
 
 And, what he may, forbears 
 
 His fame to make it theirs. 
 
 And has his sword and spoils ungirt, 
 To lay them at the public's skirt ; 
 
 So when the falcon high 
 
 Falls heavy from the sky, 
 
 She, having killed, no more does search, 
 But on the next green bough to perch, 
 
 Where, when he first does lure, 
 
 The falconer has her sure. 
 
 What may not, then, our isle presume, 
 While Victory his crest does plume ? 
 
 What may not others fear, 
 
 If thus he crowns each year ? 
 
 As Ccesar, he, erelong, to Gaul; 
 To Italy as Hannibal, 
 
 And to all states not free 
 
 Shall climacteric be. 
 
 The Pict no shelter now shall find 
 Within his parti-contoured mind ; 
 
 But from his valor sad 
 
 Shrink underneath the plaid, 
 
 Happy if in the tufted brake 
 The English hunter him mistake, 
 
 Nor lay his hands a near 
 
 The Caledonian deer.
 
 100 PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES 
 
 But thou, the war's and fortune's son, 
 March indefatigably on ; 
 
 And, for the last effect, 
 
 Still keep the sword erect. 
 
 Besides the force, it has to fright 
 The spirits of the shady night : 
 
 The same arts that did gain 
 
 A power, must it maintain. 
 
 Marvell was never married. The modern critic, 
 who affirms that bachelors have done the most to 
 exalt women into a divinity, might have quoted his 
 extravagant panegyric of Maria Fairfax as an apt 
 illustration : 
 
 " 'T is she that to these gardens gave 
 The wondrous beauty which they have ; 
 She straitness on the woods bestows, 
 To her the meadow sweetness owes ; 
 Nothing could make the river be 
 So crystal pure but only she, 
 She, yet more pure, sweet, strait, and fair, 
 Than gardens, woods, meads, rivers are ! 
 Therefore, what first she on them spent 
 They gratefully again present : 
 The meadow carpets where to tread, 
 The garden flowers to crown her head, 
 And for a glass the limpid brook 
 Where she may all her beauties look ; 
 But, since she would not have them seen, 
 The wood about her draws a screen ; 
 For she, to higher beauty raised, 
 Disdains to be for lesser praised ; 
 She counts her beauty to converse 
 In all the languages as hers, 
 Nor yet in those herself employs, 
 But for the wisdom, not the noise, 
 Nor yet that wisdom could affect, 
 But as '< is Heaven's dialect." 
 
 It has been the fashion of a class of shallow
 
 ANDREW MARVELL 101 
 
 Church and State defenders to ridicule the great 
 men of the Commonwealth, the sturdy republicans 
 of England, as sour-featured, hard-hearted ascetics, 
 enemies of the fine arts and polite literature. The 
 works of Milton and Marvell, the prose-poem of 
 Harrington, and the admirable discourses of Alger- 
 non Sydney are a sufficient answer to this accusa- 
 tion. To none has it less application than to the 
 subject of our sketch. He was a genial, warm- 
 hearted man, an elegant scholar, a finished gentle- 
 man at home, and the life of every circle which he 
 entered, whether that of the gay court of Charles 
 II., amidst such men as Rochester and L'Estrange, 
 or that of the republican philosophers who assem- 
 bled at Miles's Coffee House, where he discussed 
 plans of a free representative government with 
 the author of Oceana, and Cyriack Skinner, that 
 friend of Milton, whom the bard has immortalized 
 in the sonnet which so pathetically, yet heroically, 
 alludes to his own blindness. Men of all parties 
 enjoyed his wit and graceful conversation. His per- 
 sonal appearance was altogether in his favor. A 
 clear, dark, Spanish complexion, long hair of jetty 
 blackness falling in graceful wreaths to his shoul- 
 ders, dark eyes, full of expression and fire, a finely 
 chiselled chin, and a mouth whose soft voluptuous- 
 ness scarcely gave token of the steady purpose and 
 firm will of the inflexible statesman : these, added 
 to the prestige of his genius, and the respect which 
 a lofty, self-sacrificing patriotism extorts even from 
 those who would fain corrupt and bribe it, gave 
 him a ready passport to the fashionable society of 
 the metropolis. He was one of the few who min-
 
 102 PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES 
 
 gled in that society, and escaped its contamination, 
 and who, 
 
 " Amidst the wavering days of sin, 
 Kept himself icy chaste and pure." 
 
 The tone and temper of his mind may be most 
 fitly expressed in his own paraphrase of Horace : 
 
 " Climb at Court for me that will, 
 Tottering Favor's pinnacle; 
 All I seek is to lie still ! 
 Settled in some secret nest, 
 In calm leisure let me rest ; 
 And, far off the public stage, 
 Pass away my silent age. 
 Thus, when, without noise, unknown, 
 
 I have lived out all my span, 
 I shall die without a groan, 
 
 An old, honest countryman. 
 Who, exposed to other's eyes, 
 Into his own heart ne'er pries, 
 Death 's to him a strange surprise." 
 
 He died suddenly in 1678, while in attendance at 
 a popular meeting of his old constituents at Hull. 
 His health had previously been remarkably good ; 
 and it was supposed by many that he was poisoned 
 by some of his political or clerical enemies. His 
 monument, erected by his grateful constituency, 
 bears the following inscription : 
 
 " Near this place lyeth the body of Andrew 
 Marvell, Esq., a man so endowed by Nature, so 
 improved by Education, Study, and Travel, so 
 consummated by Experience, that, joining the pecu- 
 liar graces of Wit and Learning, with a singular 
 penetration and strength of judgment ; and exer- 
 cising all these in the whole course of his life, with 
 an unutterable steadiness in the ways of Virtue,
 
 ANDREW MARVELL 103 
 
 he became the ornament and example of his age, 
 beloved by good men, feared by bad, admired by 
 all, though imitated by few ; and scarce paralleled 
 by any. But a Tombstone can neither contain his 
 character, nor is Marble necessary to transmit it 
 to posterity ; it is engraved in the minds of this 
 generation, and will be always legible in his inim- 
 itable writings, nevertheless. He having served 
 twenty years successfully in Parliament, and that 
 with such Wisdom, Dexterity, and Courage, as 
 becomes a true Patriot, the town of Kingston- 
 upon-Hull, from whence he was deputed to that 
 Assembly, lamenting in his death the public loss, 
 have erected this Monument of their Grief and 
 their Gratitude, 1688." 
 
 Thus lived and died Andrew Marvell. His 
 memory is the inheritance of Americans as well as 
 Englishmen. His example commends itself in an 
 especial manner to the legislators of our Republic. 
 Integrity and fidelity to principle are as greatly 
 needed at this time in our halls of Congress as in 
 the Parliaments of the Restoration ; men are re- 
 quired who can feel, with Milton, that " it is high 
 honor done them from God, and a special mark of 
 His favor, to have been selected to stand upright 
 and steadfast in His cause, dignified with the de- 
 fence of Truth and public liberty."
 
 JOHN ROBERTS. 
 
 THOMAS CARLYLE, in his history of the stout 
 and sagacious Monk of St. Edmunds, has given us 
 a fine picture of the actual life of Englishmen in 
 the middle centuries. The dim cell-lamp of the 
 somewhat apocryphal Jocelin of Brakelond becomes 
 in his hands a huge Drummond-light, shining over 
 the Dark Ages like the naphtha-fed cressets over 
 Pandemonium, proving, as he says in his own 
 quaint way, that " England in the year 1200 was 
 no dreamland, but a green, solid place, which grew 
 corn and several other things ; the sun shone on it ; 
 the vicissitudes of seasons and human fortunes 
 were there ; cloth was woven, ditches dug, fallow 
 fields ploughed, and houses built." And if, as the 
 writer just quoted insists, it is a matter of no small 
 importance to make it credible to the present gen- 
 eration that the Past is not a confused dream of 
 thrones and battle-fields, creeds and constitutions, 
 but a reality, substantial as hearth and home, har- 
 vest-field and smith-shop, merry-making and death, 
 could make it, we shall not wholly waste our time 
 and that of our readers in inviting them to look 
 with us at the rural life of England two centuries 
 ago, through the eyes of John Roberts and his 
 worthy son, Daniel, yeomen, of Siddington, near 
 Cirencester. 
 
 The Memoirs of John Roberts, alias Haywood,
 
 JOHN ROBERTS 105 
 
 6y his sow, Daniel Roberts, (the second edition, 
 printed verbatim from the original one, with its 
 picturesque array of italics and capital letters,) is 
 to be found only in a few of our old Quaker libra- 
 ries. It opens with some account of the family. 
 The father of the elder Roberts " lived reputably, 
 on a little estate of his own," and it is mentioned 
 as noteworthy that he married a sister of a gentle- 
 man in the Commission of the Peace. Coming of 
 age about the beginning of the civil wars, John 
 and one of his young neighbors enlisted in the ser- 
 vice of Parliament. Hearing that Cirencester had 
 been taken by the King's forces, they obtained 
 leave of absence to visit their friends, for whose 
 safety they naturally felt solicitous. The following 
 account of the reception they met with from the 
 drunken and ferocious troopers of Charles I., the 
 " bravos of Alsatia and the pages of Whitehall," 
 throws a ghastly light upon the horrors of civil 
 war : 
 
 " As they were passing by Cirencester, they 
 were discovered, and pursued by two soldiers of 
 the King's party, then in possession of the town. 
 Seeing themselves pursued, they quitted their 
 horses, and took to their heels ; but, by reason of 
 their accoutrements, could make little speed. They 
 came up with my father first ; and, though he 
 begged for quarter, none they would give him, but 
 laid on him with their swords, cutting and slashing 
 his hands and arms, which he held up to save his 
 head; as the marks upon them did long after 
 testify. At length it pleased the Almighty to put 
 it into his mind to fall down on his face ; which he
 
 106 PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES 
 
 did. Hereupon the soldiers, being on horseback, 
 cried to each other, Alight, and cut Ms throat! 
 but neither of them did ; yet continued to strike 
 and prick him about the jaws, till they thought 
 him dead. Then they left him, and pursued his 
 neighbor, whom they presently overtook and killed. 
 Soon after they had left my father, it was said in 
 his heart, Rise, and flee for thy life I which call 
 he obeyed ; and, starting upon his feet, his enemies 
 espied him in motion, and pursued him again. 
 He ran down a steep hill, and through a river 
 which ran at the bottom of it ; though with ex- 
 ceeding difficulty, his boots filling with water, and 
 his wounds bleeding very much. They followed 
 him to the top of the hill ; but, seeing he had got 
 over, pursued him no farther." 
 
 The surgeon who attended him was a Royalist, 
 and bluntly told his bleeding patient that if he 
 had met him in the street he would have killed 
 him himself, but now he was willing to cure him. 
 On his recovery, young Eoberts again entered the 
 army, and continued in it until the overthrow of 
 the Monarchy. On his return, he married "Lydia 
 Tindall, of the denomination of Puritans" A 
 majestic figure rises before us, on reading the 
 statement that Sir Matthew Hale, afterwards Lord 
 Chief Justice of England, the irreproachable jurist 
 and judicial saint, was "his wife's kinsman, and 
 drew her marriage settlement." 
 
 No stronger testimony to the high-toned morality 
 and austere virtue of the Puritan yeomanry of 
 England can be adduced than the fact that, of the 
 fifty thousand soldiers who were discharged on the
 
 JOHN ROBERTS 107 
 
 accession of Charles II., and left to shift for them- 
 selves, comparatively few, if any, became charge- 
 able to their parishes, although at that very time 
 one out of six of the English population were 
 unable to support themselves. They carried into 
 their farm-fields and workshops the strict habits of 
 Cromwell's discipline ; and, in toiling to repair 
 their wasted fortunes, they manifested the same 
 heroic fortitude and self-denial which in war had 
 made them such formidable and efficient " Soldiers 
 of the Lord." With few exceptions, they remained 
 steadfast in their uncompromising non-conformity, 
 abhorring Prelacy and Popery, and entertaining 
 no very orthodox notions with respect to the divine 
 right of Kings. From them the Quakers drew 
 their most zealous champions ; men who, in re- 
 nouncing the " carnal weapons " of their old ser- 
 vice, found employment for habitual combative- 
 ness in hot and wordy sectarian warfare. To 
 this day the vocabulary of Quakerism abounds 
 in the military phrases and figures which were in 
 use in the Commonwealth's time. Their old force 
 and significance are now in a great measure lost ; 
 but one can well imagine that, in the assemblies 
 of the primitive Quakers, such stirring battle-cries 
 and warlike tropes, even when employed in en- 
 forcing or illustrating the doctrines of peace, must 
 have made many a stout heart to beat quicker, 
 under its drab coloring, with recollections of 
 Naseby and Preston ; transporting many a listener 
 from the benches of his place of worship to the 
 ranks of Ireton and Lambert, and causing him to 
 hear, in the place of the solemn and nasal tones of
 
 108 PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES 
 
 the preacher, the blast of Eupert's bugles, and the 
 answering shout of Cromwell's pikemen : " Let 
 God arise, and let his enemies be scattered ! " 
 
 Of this class was John Roberts. He threw off 
 his knapsack, and went back to his small home- 
 stead, contented with the privilege of supporting 
 himself and family by daily toil, and grumbling in 
 concert with his old campaign brothers at the new 
 order of things in Church and State. To his ap- 
 prehension, the Golden Days of England ended 
 with the parade on Blackheath to receive the re- 
 stored King. He manifested no reverence for 
 Bishops and Lords, for he felt none. For the 
 Presbyterians he had no good will ; they had 
 brought in the King, and they denied the liberty 
 of prophesying. John Milton has expressed the 
 feeling of the Independents and Anabaptists to- 
 wards this latter class, in that famous line in which 
 he defines Presbyter as " old priest writ large." 
 Roberts was by no means a gloomy fanatic ; he 
 had a great deal of shrewdness and humor, loved 
 a quiet joke ; and every gambling priest and swear- 
 ing magistrate in the neighborhood stood in fear 
 of his sharp wit. It was quite in course for such 
 a man to fall in with the Quakers, and he appears 
 to have done so at the first opportunity. 
 
 In the year 1665, " it pleased the Lord to send 
 two women Friends out of the North to Cirences- 
 ter," who, inquiring after such as feared God, were 
 directed to the house of John Roberts. He re- 
 ceived them kindly, and, inviting in some of his 
 neighbors, sat down with them, whereupon " the 
 Friends spake a few words, which had a good ef-
 
 JOHN ROBERTS 109 
 
 feet." After the meeting was over, he was in- 
 duced to visit a " Friend " then confined in Ban- 
 bury jail, whom he found preaching through the 
 grates of his cell to the people in the street. On 
 seeing Roberts he called to mind the story of Zac- 
 cheus, and declared that the word was now to all 
 who were seeking Christ by climbing the tree of 
 knowledge, " Come down, come down ; for that 
 which is to be known of God is manifested within" 
 Returning home, he went soon after to the parish 
 meeting-house, and, entering with his hat on, the 
 priest noticed him, and, stopping short in his dis- 
 course, declared that he could not go on while one 
 of the congregation wore his hat. He was there- 
 upon led out of the house, and a rude fellow, steal- 
 ing up behind, struck him on the back with a 
 heavy stone. " Take that for God's sake," said the 
 ruffian. " So I do," answered Roberts, without 
 looking back to see his assailant, who the next day 
 came and asked his forgiveness for the injury, as 
 he could not sleep in consequence of it. 
 
 We next find him attending the Quarter Ses- 
 sions, where three " Friends " were arraigned for 
 entering Cireucester Church with their hats on. 
 Venturing to utter a word of remonstrance against 
 the summary proceedings of the Court, Justice 
 Stephens demanded his name, and, on being told, 
 exclaimed, in the very tone and temper of Jeffreys : 
 " I 've heard of you. I 'm glad I have you here. 
 You deserve a stone doublet. There 's many an 
 honester man than you hanged." " It may be so," 
 said Roberts, " but what becomes of such as hang 
 honest men ? " The Justice snatched a ball of wax
 
 110 PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES 
 
 and hurled it at the quiet questioner. " I '11 send 
 you to prison," said he ; " and if any insurrection 
 or tumult occurs, I '11 come and cut your throat 
 with my own sword." A warrant was made out, 
 and he was forthwith sent to the jail. In the even- 
 ing, Justice Sollis, his uncle, released him, on con- 
 dition of his promise to appear at the next Sessions. 
 He returned to his home, but in the night follow- 
 ing he was impressed with a belief that it was his 
 duty to visit Justice Stephens. Early in the morn- 
 ing, with a heavy heart, without eating or drink- 
 ing, he mounted his horse and rode towards the 
 residence of his enemy. When he came in sight 
 of the house, he felt strong misgivings that his 
 uncle, Justice Sollis, who had so kindly released 
 him, and his neighbors generally, would condemn 
 him for voluntarily running into danger, and draw- 
 ing down trouble upon himself and family. He 
 alighted from his horse, and sat on the ground in 
 great doubt and sorrow, when a voice seemed to 
 speak within him, " Go, and I will go with thee." 
 The Justice met him at the door. " I am come," 
 said Roberts, " in the fear and dread of Heaven, 
 to warn thee to repent of thy wickedness with 
 speed, lest the Lord send thee to the pit that is bot- 
 tomless ! " This terrible summons awed the Jus- 
 tice ; he made Eoberts sit down on his couch beside 
 him, declaring that he received the message from 
 God, and asked forgiveness for the wrong he had 
 done him. 
 
 The parish vicar of Siddington at this time was 
 George Bull, afterwards Bishop of St. David's, 
 whom Macaulay speaks of as the only rural parish
 
 JOHN ROBERTS 111 
 
 priest who, during the latter part of the seventeenth 
 century, was noted as a theologian, or who pos- 
 sessed a respectable library. Roberts refused to 
 pay the vicar his tithes, and the vicar sent him to 
 prison. It was the priest's " Short Method with 
 Dissenters." While the sturdy Non-conformist lay 
 in prison, he was visited by the great woman of 
 the neighborhood, Lady Dunch, of Down Amney. 
 " What do you lie in jail for ? " inquired the lady. 
 Roberts replied that it was because he could not 
 put bread into the mouth of a hireling priest. The 
 lady suggested that he might let somebody else sat- 
 isfy the demands of the priest ; and that she had a 
 mind to do this herself, as she wished to talk with 
 him on religious subjects. To this Roberts ob- 
 jected ; there were poor people who needed her 
 charities, which would be wasted on such devourers 
 as the priests, who, like Pharaoh's lean kine, were 
 eating up the fat and the goodly, without looking a 
 whit the better. But the lady, who seems to have 
 been pleased and amused by the obstinate prisoner, 
 paid the tithe and the jail fees, and set him at lib- 
 erty, making him fix a day when he would visit her. 
 At the time appointed he went to Down Amney, 
 and was overtaken on the way by the priest of 
 Cirencester, who had been sent for to meet the 
 Quaker. They found the lady ill in bed ; but she 
 had them brought to her chamber, being deter- 
 mined not to lose the amusement of hearing a the- 
 ological discussion, to which she at once urged 
 them, declaring that it would divert her and do her 
 good. The parson began by accusing the Quakers 
 of holding Popish doctrines. The Quaker retorted
 
 112 PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES 
 
 by telling him that if he would prove the Quakers 
 like the Papists in one thing, by the help of God, he 
 would prove him like them in ten. After a brief 
 and sharp dispute, the priest, finding his adversary's 
 wit too keen for his comfort, hastily took his leave. 
 
 The next we hear of Roberts he is in Gloucester 
 Castle, subjected to the brutal usage of a jailer, 
 who took a malicious satisfaction in thrusting de- 
 cent and respectable Dissenters, imprisoned for 
 matters of conscience, among felons and thieves. 
 A poor vagabond tinker was hired to play at night 
 on his hautboy, and prevent their sleeping; but 
 Roberts spoke to him in such a manner that the 
 instrument fell from his hand ; and he told the 
 jailer that he would play no more, though he should 
 hang him up at the door for it. 
 
 How he was released from jail does not appear ; 
 but the narrative tells us that some time after an 
 apparitor came to cite him to the Bishop's Court 
 at Gloucester. When he was brought before the 
 Court, Bishop Nicholson, a kind-hearted and easy- 
 natured prelate, asked him the number of his chil- 
 dren, and how many of them had been bisTioped f 
 
 " None, that I know of," said Roberts. 
 
 " What reason," asked the Bishop, " do you give 
 for this ? " 
 
 " A very good one," said the Quaker : " most of 
 my children were born in Oliver's days, when Bish- 
 ops were out of fashion." 
 
 The Bishop and the Court laughed at this sally, 
 and proceeded to question him touching his views 
 of baptism. Roberts admitted that John had a 
 Divine commission to baptize with water, but that
 
 JOHN ROBERTS 113 
 
 he never heard of anybody else that had. The 
 Bishop reminded him that Christ's disciples bap- 
 tized. " What 's that to me ? " responded Roberts. 
 " Paul says he was not sent to baptize, but to preach 
 the Gospel. And if he was not sent, who required 
 it at his hands ? Perhaps he had as little thanks 
 for his labor as thou hast for thine ; and I would 
 willingly know who sent thee to baptize ? " 
 
 The Bishop evaded this home question, and told 
 him he was there to answer for not coming to 
 church. Roberts denied the charge ; sometimes 
 he went to church, and sometimes it came to him. 
 " I don't call that a church which you do, which is 
 made of wood and stone." 
 
 " What do you call it ? " asked the Bishop. 
 
 " It might be properly called a mass-house," was 
 the reply ; " for it was built for that purpose." The 
 Bishop here told him he might go for the present ; 
 he would take another opportunity to convince him 
 of his errors. 
 
 The next person called was a Baptist minister, 
 who, seeing that Roberts refused to put off his hat, 
 kept on his also. The Bishop sternly reminded 
 him that he stood before the King's Court, and 
 the representative of the majesty of England ; and 
 that, while some regard might be had to the scru- 
 ples of men who made a conscience of putting off 
 the hat, such contempt could not be tolerated on 
 the part of one who could put it off to every me- 
 chanic he met. The Baptist pulled off his hat, and 
 apologized, on the ground of illness. 
 
 We find Roberts next following George Fox on 
 a visit to Bristol. On his return, reaching his house
 
 114 PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES 
 
 late in the evening, lie saw a man standing in the 
 moonlight at his door, and knew him to be a bailiff. 
 " Hast thou anything against me ? " asked Roberts. 
 " No," said the bailiff, " I 've wronged you enough, 
 God forgive me ! Those who lie in wait for you 
 are my Lord Bishop's bailiffs ; they are merciless 
 rogues. Ever, my master, while you live, please a 
 knave, for an honest man won't hurt you." 
 
 The next morning, having, as he thought, been 
 warned by a dream to do so, he went to the Bish- 
 op's house at Cleave, near Gloucester. Confront- 
 ing the Bishop in his own hall, he told him that he 
 had come to know why he was hunting after him 
 with his bailiffs, and why he was his adversary. 
 " The King is your adversary," said the Bishop ; 
 " you have broken the King's law." Roberts ven- 
 tured to deny the justice of the law. " What ! " 
 cried the Bishop, " do such men as you find fault 
 with the laws ? " " Yes," replied the other, stoutly ; 
 " and I tell thee plainly to thy face, it is high time 
 wiser men were chosen, to make better laws." 
 
 The discourse turning upon the Book of Com- 
 mon Prayer, Roberts asked the Bishop if the sin 
 of idolatry did not consist in worshipping the work 
 of men's hands. The Bishop admitted it, as in the 
 case of Nebuchadnezzar's image. 
 
 " Then," said Roberts, " whose hands made your 
 Prayer Book ? It could not make itself." 
 
 "Do you compare our Prayer Book to Nebu- 
 chadnezzar's image ? " cried the Bishop. 
 
 " Yes," returned Roberts, " that was his image ; 
 this is thine. I no more dare bow to thy Common- 
 Prayer Book than the Three Children to Nebuchad- 
 nezzar's image."
 
 JOHN ROBERTS 115 
 
 "Yours is a strange upstart religion," said the 
 Bishop. 
 
 Roberts told him it was older than his by several 
 hundred years. At this claim of antiquity the pre- 
 late was greatly amused, and told Roberts that if 
 he would make out his case, he should speed the 
 better for it. 
 
 " Let me ask thee," said Roberts, " where thy 
 religion was in Oliver's days, when thy Common- 
 Prayer Book was as little regarded as an old alma- 
 nac, and your priests, with a few honest exceptions, 
 turned with the tide, and if Oliver had put mass in 
 their mouths would have conformed to it for the 
 sake of their bellies." 
 
 "What would you have us do?" asked the 
 Bishop. " Would you have had Oliver cut our 
 throats ? " 
 
 " No," said Roberts ; " but what sort of religion 
 was that which you were afraid to venture your 
 throats for ? " 
 
 The Bishop interrupted him to say, that in Oli- 
 ver's days he had never owned any other religion 
 than his own, although he did not dare to openly 
 maintain it as he then did. 
 
 " Well," continued Roberts, " if thou didst not 
 think thy religion worth venturing thy throat for 
 then, I desire thee to consider that it is not worth 
 the cutting of other men's throats now for not con- 
 forming to it." 
 
 " You are right," responded the frank Bishop. 
 " I hope we shall have a care how we cut men's 
 throats." 
 
 The following colloquy throws some light on the
 
 116 PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES 
 
 condition and character of the rural clergy at this 
 period, and goes far to confirm the statements of 
 Macaulay, which many have supposed exaggerated. 
 Baxter's early religious teachers were more excep- 
 tionable than even the maudlin mummer whom 
 Roberts speaks of, one of them being " the excel- 
 lentest stage-player in all the country, and a good 
 gamester and goodfellow, who, having received 
 Holy Orders, forged the like for a neighbor's son, 
 who on the strength of that title officiated at the 
 desk and altar ; and after him came an attorney's 
 clerk, who had tippled himself into so great poverty 
 that he had no other way to live than to preach." 
 
 J. ROBERTS. I was bred up under a Common- 
 Prayer Priest ; and a poor drunken old Man he 
 was. Sometimes he was so drunk he could not say 
 his Prayers, and at best he could but say them ; 
 though I think he was by far a better Man than he 
 that is Priest there now. 
 
 BISHOP. Who is your Minister now ? 
 
 J. ROBERTS. My Minister is Christ Jesus, the 
 Minister of the everlasting Covenant ; but the pres- 
 ent Priest of the Parish is George Bull. 
 
 BISHOP. Do you say that drunken old Man was 
 better than Mr. Bull ? I tell you, I account Mr. 
 Bull as sound, able, and orthodox a Divine as any 
 we have among us. 
 
 J. ROBERTS. I am sorry for that; for if he be one 
 of the best of you, I believe the Lord will not suffer 
 you long ; for he is a proud, ambitious, ungodly 
 Man : he hath often sued me at Law, and brought 
 his Servants to swear against me wrongfully. His 
 Servants themselves have confessed to my Ser-
 
 JOHN ROBERTS 117 
 
 vants, that I might have their Ears ; for their Mas- 
 ter made them drunk, and then told them they were 
 set down in the List as Witnesses against me, and 
 they must swear to it : And so they did, and brought 
 treble Damages. They likewise owned they took 
 Tithes from my Servants, threshed them out, and 
 sold them for their Master. They have also several 
 Times took my Cattle out of my Grounds, drove 
 them to Fairs and Markets, and sold them, without 
 giving me any Account. 
 
 BISHOP. I do assure you I will inform Mr. Bull 
 of what you say. 
 
 J. EGBERTS. Very well. And if thou pleasest 
 to send for me to face him, I shall make much more 
 appear to his Face than I '11 say behind his Back. 
 
 After much more discourse, Roberts told the 
 Bishop that if it would do him any good to have 
 him in jail, he would voluntarily go and deliver him- 
 self up to the keeper of Gloucester Castle. The 
 good-natured prelate relented at this, and said he 
 should not be molested or injured, and further 
 manifested his good will by ordering refreshments. 
 One of the Bishop's friends who was present was 
 highly offended by the freedom of Roberts with his 
 Lordship, and undertook to rebuke him, but was 
 so readily answered that he flew into a rage. "If 
 all the Quakers in England," said he, "are not 
 hanged in a month's time, I '11 be hanged for them." 
 "Prithee, friend," quoth Roberts, "remember and 
 be as good as thy word ! " 
 
 Good old Bishop Nicholson, it would seem, really 
 liked his incorrigible Quaker neighbor, and could 
 enjoy heartily his wit and humor, even when exer-
 
 118 PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES 
 
 cised at the expense of his own ecclesiastical dig- 
 nity. He admired his blunt honesty and courage. 
 Surrounded by flatterers and self-seekers, he found 
 satisfaction in the company and conversation of 
 one who, setting aside all conventionalisms, saw 
 only in my Lord Bishop a poor fellow-probationer, 
 and addressed him on terms of conscious equality. 
 The indulgence which he extended to him naturally 
 enough provoked many of the inferior clergy, who 
 had been sorely annoyed by the sturdy Dissenter's 
 irreverent witticisms and unsparing ridicule. Vicar 
 Bull, of Siddington, and Priest Careless, of Ciren- 
 cester, in particular, urged the Bishop to deal sharp- 
 ly with him. The former accused him of dealing 
 in the Black Art, and filled the Bishop's ear with 
 certain marvellous stories of his preternatural sa- 
 gacity and discernment in discovering cattle which 
 were lost. The Bishop took occasion to inquire 
 into these stories ; and was told by Roberts that, 
 except in a single instance, the discoveries were 
 the result of his acquaintance with the habits of 
 animals and his knowledge of the localities where 
 they were lost. The circumstance alluded to, as 
 an exception, will be best related in his own words. 
 " I had a poor Neighbor, who had a Wife and 
 six Children, and whom the chief men about us 
 permitted to keep six or seven Cows upon the 
 Waste, which were the principal Support of the 
 Family, and preserved them from becoming charge- 
 able to the Parish. One very stormy night the 
 Cattle were left in the Yard as usual, but could not 
 be found in the morning. The Man and his Sons 
 had sought them to no purpose ; and, after they
 
 JOHN ROBERTS 119 
 
 had been lost four days, his Wife came to me, and, 
 in a great deal of grief, cried, ' O Lord ! Master 
 Hayward, we are undone ! My Husband and I 
 must go a begging in our old age ! We have lost 
 all our Cows. My Husband and the Boys have 
 been round the country, and can hear nothing of 
 them. I '11 down on my bare knees, if you '11 
 stand our Friend ! ' I desired she would not be in 
 such an agony, and told her she should not down 
 on her knees to me ; but I would gladly help them 
 in what I could. * I know,' said she, ' you are a 
 good Man, and God will hear your Prayers.' I 
 desire thee, said I, to be still and quiet in thy 
 mind ; perhaps thy Husband or Sons may hear of 
 them to-day ; if not, let thy Husband get a horse, 
 and come to me to-morrow morning as soon as he 
 will ; and I think, if it please God, to go with him 
 to seek them. The Woman seemed transported 
 with joy, crying, ' Then we shall have our Cows 
 again.' Her Faith being so strong, brought the 
 greater Exercise on me, with strong cries to the 
 Lord, that he would be pleased to make me instru- 
 mental in his Hand, for the help of the poor Fam- 
 ily. In the Morning early comes the old Man. 
 In the Name of God, says he, which Way shall 
 we go to seek them ? I, being deeply concerned in 
 my Mind, did not answer him till he had thrice 
 repeated it ; and then I answered, In the Name of 
 God, I would go to seek them ; and said (before I 
 was well aware) we will go to Malmsbury, and at 
 the Horse-Fair we shall find them. When I had 
 spoken the Words, I was much troubled lest they 
 should not prove true. It was very early, and the
 
 120 PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES 
 
 first Man we saw, I asked him if he had seen any 
 stray Milch Cows thereabouts. What manner of 
 Cattle are they ? said he. And the old Man de- 
 scribing their Mark and Number, he told us there 
 were some stood chewing their Cuds in the Horse- 
 Fair ; but thinking they belonged to some in the 
 Neighborhood, he did not take particular Notice of 
 them. When we came to the Place, the old Man 
 found them to be his ; but suffered his Transports 
 of Joy to rise so high, that I was ashamed of his 
 behavior ; for he fell a hallooing, and threw up his 
 Montier Cap in the Air several times, till he raised 
 the Neighbors out of their Beds to see what was 
 the Matter. ' O ! ' said he, ' I had lost my Cows 
 four or five days ago, and thought I should never 
 see them again ; and this honest Neighbor of mine 
 told me this Morning, by his own Fire's Side, nine 
 Miles off, that here I should find them, and here I 
 have them ! ' Then up goes his Cap again. I 
 begged of the poor Man to be quiet, and take his 
 Cows home, and be thankful ; as indeed I was, be- 
 ing reverently bowed in my Spirit before the Lord, 
 in that he was pleased to put the words of Truth 
 into my mouth. And the Man drove his Cattle 
 home, to the great Joy of his Family." 
 
 Not long after the interview with the Bishop at 
 his own palace, which has been related, that digni- 
 tary, with the Lord Chancellor, in their coaches, 
 and about twenty clergymen on horseback, made a 
 call at the humble dwelling of Roberts, on their 
 way to Tedbury, where the Bishop was to hold a 
 Visitation. " I could not go out of the country 
 without seeing you," said the prelate, as the farmer 
 came to his coach door and pressed him to alight.
 
 JOHN ROBERTS 121 
 
 " John," asked Priest Evans, the Bishop's kins- 
 man, " is your house free to entertain such men as 
 we are? " 
 
 " Yes, George," said Roberts ; " I entertain hon- 
 est men, and sometimes others." 
 
 " My Lord," said Evans, turning to the Bishop, 
 " John's friends are the honest men, and we are 
 the others." 
 
 The Bishop told Roberts that they could not then 
 alight, but would gladly drink with him ; where- 
 upon the good wife brought out her best beer. " I 
 commend you, John," quoth the Bishop, as he 
 paused from his hearty draught ; " you keep a cup 
 of good beer in your house. I have not drank any 
 that has pleased me better since I left home." The 
 cup passed next to the Chancellor, and finally came 
 to Priest Bull, who thrust it aside, declaring that 
 it was full of hops and heresy. As to hops, Rob- 
 erts replied, he could not say, but as for heresy, 
 he bade the priest take note that the Lord Bishop 
 had drank of it, and had found no heresy in the 
 cup. 
 
 The Bishop leaned over his coach door and whis- 
 pered : " John, I advise you to take care you don't 
 offend against the higher Powers. I have heard 
 great complaints against you, that you are the 
 Ringleader of the Quakers in this Country ; and 
 that, if you are not suppressed, all will signify 
 nothing. Therefore, pray, John, take care, for the 
 future, you don't offend any more." 
 
 " I like thy Counsel very well," answered Rob- 
 erts, " and intend to take it. But thou knowest 
 God is the higher Power; and you mortal Men,
 
 122 PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES 
 
 however advanced in this World, are but the lower 
 Power; and it is only because I endeavor to be 
 obedient to the will of the higher Powers, that the 
 lower Powers are angry with me. But I hope, 
 with the assistance of God, to take thy Counsel, 
 and be subject to the higher Powers, let the lower 
 Powers do with me as it may please God to suffer 
 them." 
 
 The Bishop then said he would like to talk with 
 him further, and requested him to meet him at 
 Tedbury the next day. At the time appointed, 
 Koberts went to the inn where the Bishop lodged, 
 and was invited to dine with him. After dinner 
 was over, the prelate told him that he must go to 
 church, and leave off holding conventicles at his 
 house, of which great complaint was made. This 
 he flatly refused to do; and the Bishop, losing 
 patience, ordered the constable to be sent for. 
 Roberts told him that if, after coming to his house 
 under the guise of friendship, he should betray 
 him and send him to prison, he, who had hitherto 
 commended him for his moderation, would put his 
 name in print, and cause it to stink before all 
 sober people. It was the priests, he told him, who 
 set him on ; but, instead of hearkening to them, 
 he should commend them to some honest vocation, 
 and not suffer them to rob their honest neighbors, 
 and feed on the fruits of other men's toil, like 
 caterpillars. 
 
 " Whom do you call caterpillars ? " cried Priest 
 Rich, of North Surrey. 
 
 " We farmers," said Roberts, " call those so 
 who live on other men's fields, and by the sweat
 
 JOHN ROBERTS 123 
 
 of other men's brows ; and if thou dost so, thou 
 mayst be one of them." 
 
 This reply so enraged the Bishop's attendants 
 that they could only be appeased by an order for 
 the constable to take him to jail. In fact, there 
 was some ground for complaint of a lack of cour- 
 tesy on the part of the blunt farmer ; and the 
 Christian virtue of forbearance, even in Bishops, 
 has its limits. 
 
 The constable, obeying the summons, came to the 
 inn, at the door of which the landlady met him. 
 " What do you here ! " cried the good woman, 
 " when honest John is going to be sent to prison ? 
 Here, come along with me." The constable, noth- 
 ing loath, followed her into a private room, where 
 she concealed him. Word was sent to the Bishop, 
 that the constable was not to be found ; and the 
 prelate, telling Roberts he could send him to jail 
 in the afternoon, dismissed him until evening. At 
 the hour appointed, the latter waited upon the 
 Bishop, and found with him only one priest and a 
 lay gentleman. The priest begged the Bishop to 
 be allowed to discourse with the prisoner ; and, 
 leave being granted, he began by telling Roberts 
 that the knowledge of the Scriptures had made 
 him mad, and that it was a great pity he had ever 
 seen them. 
 
 " Thou art an unworthy man," said the Quaker, 
 " and I '11 not dispute with thee. If the knowledge 
 of the Scriptures has made me mad, the knowledge 
 of the sack-pot hath almost made thee mad ; and if 
 we two madmen should dispute about religion, we 
 should make mad work of it."
 
 124 PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES 
 
 " An 't please you, my Lord," said the scandal- 
 ized priest, " he says I 'm drunk." 
 
 The Bishop asked Roberts to repeat his words ; 
 and, instead of reprimanding him, as the priest ex- 
 pected, was so much amused that he held up his 
 hands and laughed ; whereupon the offended in- 
 ferior took a hasty leave. The Bishop, who was 
 evidently glad to be rid of him, now turned to 
 Roberts, and complained that he had dealt hardly 
 with him, in telling him, before so many gentle- 
 men, that he had sought to betray him by profes- 
 sions of friendship, in order to send him to prison ; 
 and that, if he had not done as he did, people 
 would have reported him as an encourager of the 
 Quakers. "But now, John," said the good pre- 
 late, " I '11 burn the warrant against you before 
 your face." " You know, Mr. Burnet," he con- 
 tinued, addressing his attendant, " that a Ring of 
 Bells may be made of excellent metal, but they 
 may be out of tune ; so we may say of John : he 
 is a man of as good metal as I ever met with, but 
 quite out of tune." 
 
 " Thou mayst well say so," quoth Roberts, " for 
 I can't tune after thy pipe." 
 
 The inferior clergy were by no means so lenient 
 as the Bishop. They regarded Roberts as the 
 ringleader of Dissent, an impracticable, obstinate, 
 contumacious heretic, not only refusing to pay 
 them tithes himself, but encouraging others to the 
 same course. Hence, they thought it necessary to 
 visit upon him the full rigor of the law. His 
 crops were taken from his field, and his cattle from 
 his yard. He was often committed to the jail,
 
 JOHN ROBERTS 125 
 
 where, on one occasion, he was kept, with many 
 others, for a long time, through the malice of the 
 jailer, who refused to put the names of his prison- 
 ers in the Calendar, that they might have a hear- 
 ing. But the spirit of the old Commonwealth's 
 man remained steadfast. When Justice George, 
 at the Ram in Cirencester, told him he must con- 
 form, and go to church, or suffer the penalty of the 
 law, he replied that he had heard indeed that some 
 were formerly whipped out of the Temple, but he 
 had never heard of any being whipped in. The 
 Justice, pointing, through the open window of the 
 inn, at the church tower, asked him what that was. 
 " Thou mayst call it a daw-house," answered the 
 incorrigible Quaker. " Dost thou not see how the 
 jackdaws flock about it ? " 
 
 Sometimes it happened that the clergyman was 
 also a magistrate, and united in his own person 
 the authority of the State and the zeal of the 
 Church. Justice Parsons, of Gloucester, was a 
 functionary of this sort. He wielded the sword of 
 the Spirit on the Sabbath against Dissenters, and 
 on week days belabored them with the arm of 
 flesh and the constable's staff. At one time he 
 had between forty and fifty of them locked up in 
 Gloucester Castle, among them Roberts and his 
 sons, on the charge of attending conventicles. But 
 the troublesome prisoners baffled his vigilance, 
 and turned their prison into a meeting-house, and 
 held their conventicles in defiance of him. The 
 Reverend Justice pounced upon them on one oc- 
 casion, with his attendants. An old, gray-haired 
 man, formerly a strolling fencing-master, was
 
 126 PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES 
 
 preaching when he came in. The Justice laid 
 hold of him by his white locks, and strove to pull 
 him down, but the tail fencing-master stood firm 
 and spoke on ; he then tried to gag him, but failed 
 in that also. He demanded the names of the 
 prisoners, but no one answered him. A voice (we 
 fancy it was that of our old friend Roberts) called 
 out : " The Devil must be hard put to it to have 
 his drudgery done, when the Priests must leave 
 their pulpits to turn informers against poor pris- 
 oners." The Justice obtained a list of the names 
 of the prisoners, made out on their commitment, 
 and, taking it for granted that all were still pres- 
 ent, issued warrants for the collection of fines by 
 levies upon their estates. Among the names was 
 that of a poor widow, who had been discharged, 
 and was living, at the time the clerical magistrate 
 swore she was at the meeting, twenty miles distant 
 from the prison. 
 
 Soon after this event, our old friend fell sick. 
 He had been discharged from prison, but his sons 
 were still confined. The eldest had leave, how- 
 ever, to attend him in his illness, and he bears his 
 testimony that the Lord was pleased to favor his 
 father with His living presence in his last mo- 
 ments. In keeping with the sturdy Non-conform- 
 ist's life, he was interred at the foot of his own or- 
 chard, in Siddington, a spot he had selected for a 
 burial-ground long before, where neither the foot 
 of a priest nor the shadow of a steeple-house could 
 rest upon his grave. 
 
 In closing our notice of this pleasant old narra- 
 tive, we may remark that the light it sheds upon
 
 JOHN ROBERTS 127 
 
 the antagonistic religious parties of the time is cal- 
 culated to dissipate prejudices and correct misap- 
 prehensions, common alike to Churchmen and 
 Dissenters. The genial humor, sound sense, and 
 sterling virtues of the Quaker farmer should teach 
 the one class that poor James Nayler, in his crazi- 
 ness and folly, was not a fair representative of his 
 sect ; while the kind nature, the hearty apprecia- 
 tion of goodness, and the generosity and candor of 
 Bishop Nicholson should convince the other class 
 that a prelate is not necessarily, and by virtue of 
 his mitre, a Laud or a Bonner. The Dissenters 
 of the seventeenth century may well be forgiven 
 for the asperity of their language ; men whose ears 
 had been cropped because they would not recognize 
 Charles I. as a blessed martyr, and his scandalous 
 son as the head of the Church, could scarcely be 
 expected to make discriminations, or suggest palli- 
 ating circumstances, favorable to any class of their 
 adversaries. To use the homely but apt simile of 
 McFingal, 
 
 " The will 's confirmed by treatment horrid, 
 As hides grow harder when they 're curried." 
 
 They were wronged, and they told the world of it. 
 Unlike Shakespeare's cardinal, they did not die 
 without a sign. They branded, by their fierce epi- 
 thets, the foreheads of their persecutors more 
 deeply than the sheriff's hot iron did their own. 
 If they lost their ears, they enjoyed the satisfaction 
 of making those of their oppressors tingle. Know- 
 ing their persecutors to be in the wrong, they did 
 not always inquire whether they themselves had 
 been entirely right, and had done no unrequired
 
 128 PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES 
 
 works of supererogation by the way of " testimony " 
 against their neighbors' mode of worship. And so 
 from pillory and whipping-post, from prison and 
 scaffold, they sent forth their wail and execration, 
 their miserere and anathema, and the sound thereof 
 has reached down to our day. May it never 
 wholly die away until, the world over, the forcing 
 of conscience is regarded as a crime against human- 
 ity and a usurpation of God's prerogative. But 
 abhorring, as we must, persecution under whatever 
 pretext it is employed, we are not, therefore, to 
 conclude that all persecutors were bad and unfeel- 
 ing men. Many of their severities, upon which 
 we now look back with horror, were, beyond a 
 question, the result of an intense anxiety for the 
 well-being of immortal souls, endangered by the 
 poison which, in their view, heresy was casting into 
 the waters of life. Coleridge, in one of the moods 
 of a mind which traversed in imagination the vast 
 circle of human experience, reaches this point in 
 his Table -Talk. " It would require," says he, 
 " stronger arguments than any I have seen to con- 
 vince me that men in authority have not a right, 
 involved in an imperative duty, to deter those un- 
 der their control from teaching or countenancing 
 doctrines which they believe to be damnable, and 
 even to punish with death those who violate such 
 prohibition." It would not be very difficult for 
 us to imagine a tender-hearted Inquisitor of this 
 stamp, stifling his weak compassion for the shriek- 
 ing wretch under bodily torment by his strong pity 
 for souls in danger of perdition from the sufferer's 
 heresy. We all know with what satisfaction the
 
 JOHN ROBERTS 129 
 
 gentle-spirited Melancthon heard of the burning of 
 Servetus, and with what zeal he defended it. The 
 truth is, the notion that an intellectual recognition 
 of certain dogmas is the essential condition of sal- 
 vation lies at the bottom of all intolerance in mat- 
 ters of religion. Under this impression, men are 
 too apt to forget that the great end of Christianity 
 is love, and that charity is its crowning virtue ; 
 they overlook the beautiful significance of the par- 
 able of the heretic Samaritan and the orthodox 
 Pharisee : and thus, by suffering their speculative 
 opinions of the next world to make them unchari- 
 table and cruel in this, they are really the worse 
 for them, even admitting them to be true.
 
 SAMUEL HOPKINS. 
 
 THEEE quarters of a century ago, the name of 
 Samuel Hopkins was as familiar as a household 
 word throughout New England. It was a spell 
 wherewith to raise at once a storm of theological 
 controversy. The venerable minister who bore it 
 had his thousands of ardent young disciples, as well 
 as defenders and followers of mature age and ac- 
 knowledged talent ; a hundred pulpits propagated 
 the dogmas which he had engrafted on the stock of 
 Calvinism. Nor did he lack numerous and power- 
 ful antagonists. The sledge ecclesiastic, with more 
 or less effect, was unceasingly plied upon the 
 strong-linked chain of argument which he slowly 
 and painfully elaborated in the seclusion of his par- 
 ish. The press groaned under large volumes of 
 theological, metaphysical, and psychological disqui- 
 sition, the very thought of which is now " a weari- 
 ness to the flesh ; " in rapid succession pamphlet 
 encountered pamphlet, horned, beaked, and sharp 
 of talon, grappling with each other in mid-air, like 
 Milton's angels. That loud controversy, the sound 
 whereof went over Christendom, awakening re- 
 sponses from beyond the Atlantic, has now died 
 away ; its watchwords no longer stir the blood of 
 belligerent sermonizers ; its very terms and defini- 
 tions have wellnigh become obsolete and unintel- 
 ligible. The hands which wrote and the tongues
 
 Samuel Hopkins
 
 SAMUEL HOPKINS 131 
 
 which spoke in that day are now all cold arid si- 
 lent ; even Emmons, the brave old intellectual ath- 
 lete of Franklin, now sleeps with his fathers, the 
 last of the giants. Their fame is still in all the 
 churches ; effeminate clerical dandyism still affects 
 to do homage to their memories ; the earnest 
 young theologian, exploring with awe the moun- 
 tainous debris of their controversial lore, ponders 
 over the colossal thoughts entombed therein, as he 
 would over the gigantic fossils of an early creation, 
 and endeavors in vain to recall to the skeleton ab- 
 stractions before him the warm and vigorous life 
 wherewith they were once clothed ; but Hopkins- 
 ianism, as a distinct and living school of philos- 
 ophy, theology, and metaphysics, no longer exists. 
 It has no living oracles left ; and its memory sur- 
 vives only in the doctrinal treatises of the elder 
 and younger Edwards, Hopkins, Bellamy, and 
 Emmons. 
 
 It is no part of our present purpose to discuss 
 the merits of the system in question. Indeed, 
 looking at the great controversy which divided 
 New England Calvinism in the eighteenth century, 
 from a point of view which secures our impartiality 
 and freedom from prejudice, we find it exceedingly 
 difficult to get a precise idea of what was actually 
 at issue. To our poor comprehension, much of the 
 dispute hinges upon names rather than things ; on 
 the manner of reaching conclusions quite as much 
 as upon the conclusions themselves. Its origin 
 may be traced to the great religious awakening of 
 the middle of the past century, when the dogmas 
 of the Calvinistic faith were subjected to the in-
 
 132 PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES 
 
 quiry of acute and earnest minds, roused up from 
 the incurious ease and passive indifference of nom- 
 inal orthodoxy. Without intending it, it broke 
 down some of the barriers which separated Armin- 
 ianism and Calvinism ; its product, Hopkinsianism, 
 while it pushed the doctrine of the Genevan re- 
 former on the subject of the Divine decrees and 
 agency to that extreme point where it wellnigh 
 loses itself in Pantheism, held at the same time 
 that guilt could not be hereditary ; that man, being 
 responsible for his sinful acts, and not for his sin- 
 ful nature, can only be justified by a personal holi- 
 ness, consisting not so much in legal obedience as 
 in that disinterested benevolence which prefers the 
 glory of God and the welfare of universal being 
 above the happiness of self. It had the merit, 
 whatever it may be, of reducing the doctrines of 
 the Reformation to an ingenious and scholastic 
 form of theology ; of bringing them boldly to the 
 test of reason and philosophy. Its leading advo- 
 cates were not mere heartless reasoners and closet 
 speculators. They taught that sin was selfishness, 
 and holiness self-denying benevolence, and they en- 
 deavored to practise accordingly. Their lives rec- 
 ommended their doctrines. They were bold and 
 faithful in the discharge of what they regarded as 
 duty. In the midst of slaveholders, and in an age 
 of comparative darkness on the subject of human 
 rights, Hopkins and the younger Edwards lifted 
 up their voices for the slave. And twelve years 
 ago, when Abolitionism was everywhere spoken 
 against, and the whole land was convulsed with 
 mobs to suppress it, the venerable Emmons, bur-
 
 SAMUEL HOPKINS 133 
 
 dened with the weight of ninety years, made a 
 journey to New York, to attend a meeting of the 
 Anti-Slavery Society. Let those who condemn 
 the creed of these men see to it that they do not 
 fall behind them in practical righteousness and 
 faithfulness to the convictions of duty. 
 
 Samuel Hopkins, who gave his name to the re- 
 ligious system in question, was born in Waterbury, 
 Connecticut, in 1721. In his fifteenth year he was 
 placed under the care of a neighboring clergyman, 
 preparatory for college, which he entered about a 
 year after. In 1740, the celebrated "VVhitefield 
 visited New Haven, and awakened there, as else- 
 where, serious inquiry on religious subjects. He 
 was followed the succeeding spring by Gilbert 
 Tennent, the New Jersey revivalist, a stirring and 
 powerful preacher. A great change took place in 
 the college. All the phenomena which President 
 Edwards has described in his account of the North- 
 ampton awakening were reproduced among the 
 students. The excellent David Brainard, then a 
 member of the college, visited Hopkins in his 
 apartment, and, by a few plain and earnest words, 
 convinced him that he was a stranger to vital 
 Christianity. In his autobiographical sketch, he 
 describes in simple and affecting language the dark 
 and desolate state of his mind at this period, and 
 the particular exercise which finally afforded him 
 some degree of relief, and which he afterwards ap- 
 pears to have regarded as his conversion from spir- 
 itual death to life. When he first heard Tennent, 
 regarding him as the greatest as well as the best 
 of men, he made up his mind to study theology
 
 134 PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES 
 
 with him ; but just before the commencement at 
 which he was to take his degree, the elder Edwards 
 preached at New Haven. Struck by the power of 
 the great theologian, he at once resolved to make 
 him his spiritual father. In the winter following, 
 he left his father's house on horseback, on a jour- 
 ney of eighty miles to Northampton. Arriving at 
 the house of President Edwards, he was disap- 
 pointed by hearing that he was absent on a preach- 
 ing tour. But he was kindly received by the 
 gifted and accomplished lady of the mansion, and 
 encouraged to remain during the winter. Still 
 doubtful in respect to his own spiritual state, he 
 was, he says, " very gloomy, and retired most of 
 the time in his chamber." The kind heart of his 
 amiable hostess was touched by his evident afflic- 
 tion. After some days she came to his chamber, 
 and, with the gentleness and delicacy of a true 
 woman, inquired into the cause of his unhappiness. 
 The young student disclosed to her, without re- 
 serve, the state of his feelings and the extent of 
 his fears. " She told me," says the Doctor, " that 
 she had had peculiar exercises respecting me since 
 I had been in the family ; that she trusted I should 
 receive light and comfort, and doubted not that 
 God intended yet to do great things by me." 
 
 After pursuing his studies for some months with 
 the Puritan philosopher, young Hopkins com- 
 menced preaching, and, in 1743, was ordained at 
 Sheffield, (now Great Barrington,) in the western 
 part of Massachusetts. There were at the time 
 only about thirty families in the town. He says it 
 was a matter of great regret to him to be obliged
 
 SAMUEL HOPKINS 135 
 
 to settle so far from his spiritual guide and tutor ; 
 but seven years after he was relieved and gratified 
 by the removal of Edwards to Stockbridge, as the 
 Indian missionary at that station, seven miles only 
 from his own residence ; and for several years the 
 great metaphysician and his favorite pupil enjoyed 
 the privilege of familiar intercourse with each 
 other. The removal of the former in 1758 to 
 Princeton, New Jersey, and his death, which soon 
 followed, are mentioned in the diary of Hopkins 
 as sore trials and afflictive dispensations. 
 
 Obtaining a dismissal from his society in Great 
 Barrington in 1769, he was installed at Newport 
 the next year, as minister of the first Congrega- 
 tional church in that place. Newport, at this 
 period, was, in size, wealth, and commercial impor- 
 tance, the second town in New England. It was 
 the great slave mart of the North. Vessels loaded 
 with stolen men and women and children, con- 
 signed to its merchant princes, lay at its wharves ; 
 immortal beings were sold daily in its market, like 
 cattle at a fair. The soul of Hopkins was moved 
 by the appalling spectacle. A strong conviction 
 of the great wrong of slavery, and of its utter in- 
 compatibility with the Christian profession, seized 
 upon his mind. While at Great Barrington, he 
 had himself owned a slave, whom he had sold on 
 leaving the place, without compunction or suspicion 
 in regard to the rightfulness of the transaction. 
 He now saw the origin of the system in its true 
 light ; he heard the seamen engaged in the African 
 trade tell of the horrible scenes of fire and blood 
 which they had witnessed, and in which they had
 
 136 PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES 
 
 been actors ; he saw the half-suffocated wretches 
 brought up from their noisome and narrow prison, 
 their squalid countenances and skeleton forms bear- 
 ing fearful evidence of the suffering attendant upon 
 the transportation from their native homes. The 
 demoralizing effects of slaveholding everywhere 
 forced themselves upon his attention, for the evil 
 had struck its roots deeply in the community, and 
 there were few families into which it had not pen- 
 etrated. The right to deal in slaves, and use them 
 as articles of property, was questioned by no one ; 
 men of all professions, clergymen and church-mem- 
 bers, consulted only their interest and convenience 
 as to their purchase or sale. The magnitude of 
 the evil at first appalled him ; he felt it to be his 
 duty to condemn it, but for a time even his strong 
 spirit faltered and turned pale in contemplation of 
 the consequences to be apprehended from an attack 
 upon it. Slavery and slavetrading were at that 
 time the principal source of wealth to the island ; 
 his own church and congregation were personally 
 interested in the traffic ; all were implicated in its 
 guilt. He stood alone, as it were, in its condem- 
 nation ; with here and there an exception, all Chris- 
 tendom maintained the rightf ulness of slavery. No 
 movement had yet been made in England against 
 the slavetrade ; the decision of Granville Sharp's 
 Somerset case had not yet taken place. The Qua- 
 kers, even, had not at that time redeemed them- 
 selves from the opprobrium. Under these circum- 
 stances, after a thorough examination of the subject, 
 he resolved, in the strength of the Lord, to take 
 his stand openly and decidedly on the side of
 
 SAMUEL HOPKINS 137 
 
 humanity. He prepared a sermon for the purpose, 
 and for the first time from a pulpit of New Eng- 
 land was heard an emphatic testimony against the 
 sin of slavery. In contrast with the unselfish and 
 disinterested benevolence which formed in his mind 
 the essential element of Christian holiness, he held 
 up the act of reducing human beings to the condi- 
 tion of brutes, to minister to the convenience, the 
 luxury, and lusts of the owner. He had expected 
 bitter complaint and opposition from his hearers, 
 but was agreeably surprised to find that in most 
 cases his sermon only excited astonishment in their 
 minds that they themselves had never before looked 
 at the subject in the light in which he presented it. 
 Steadily and faithfully pursuing the matter, he had 
 the satisfaction to carry with him his church, and 
 obtain from it, in the midst of a slaveholding and 
 slavetrading community, a resolution every way 
 worthy of note in this day of cowardly compromise 
 with the evil on the part of our leading ecclesias- 
 tical bodies : 
 
 " Resolved, That the slave-trade and the slavery 
 of the Africans, as it has existed among us, is a 
 gross violation of the righteousness and benevo- 
 lence which are so much inculcated in the Gospel, 
 and therefore we will not tolerate it in this church." 
 
 There are few instances on record of moral hero- 
 ism superior to that of Samuel Hopkins, in thus 
 rebuking slavery in the time and place of its 
 power. Honor to the true man ever, who takes 
 his life in his hands, and, at all hazards, speaks 
 the word which is given him to utter, whether men
 
 138 PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES 
 
 will hear or forbear, whether the end thereof is to 
 be praise or censure, gratitude or hatred. It well 
 may be doubted whether on that Sabbath day the 
 angels of God, in their wide survey of His universe, 
 looked upon a nobler spectacle than that of the 
 minister of Newport, rising up before his slave- 
 holding congregation, and demanding, in the name 
 of the Highest, the " deliverance of the captive, 
 and the opening of prison doors to them that were 
 bound." 
 
 Dr. Hopkins did not confine his attention solely 
 to slaveholding in his own church and congrega- 
 tion. He entered into correspondence with the 
 early Abolitionists of Europe as well as his own 
 country. He labored with his brethren in the 
 ministry to bring them to his own view of the 
 great wrong of holding men as slaves. In a visit 
 to his early friend, Dr. Bellamy, at Bethlehem, who 
 was the owner of a slave, he pressed the subject 
 kindly but earnestly upon his attention. Dr. Bel- 
 lamy urged the usual arguments in favor of slavery. 
 Dr. Hopkins refuted them in the most successfid 
 manner, and called upon his friend to do an act of 
 simple justice, in giving immediate freedom to his 
 slave. Dr. Bellamy, thus hardly pressed, said that 
 the slave was a most judicious and faithful fellow ; 
 that, in the management of his farm, he could trust 
 everything to his discretion ; that he treated him 
 well, and he was so happy in his service that he 
 would refuse his freedom if it were offered him. 
 
 " Will you," said Hopkins, " consent to his lib- 
 eration, if he really desires it ? " 
 
 " Yes, certainly," said Dr. Bellamy.
 
 SAMUEL HOPKINS 139 
 
 " Then let us try him," said his guest. 
 
 The slave was at work in an adjoining field, and 
 at the call of his master came promptly to receive 
 his commands. 
 
 " Have you a good master ? " inquired Hopkins. 
 
 " O yes ; massa, he berry good." 
 
 " But are you happy in your present condition ? " 
 queried the Doctor. 
 
 " O yes, massa ; berry happy." 
 
 Dr. Bellamy here could scarcely suppress his 
 exultation at what he supposed was a complete 
 triumph over his anti-slavery brother. But the 
 pertinacious guest continued his queries. 
 
 "Would you not be more happy if you were 
 free ? " 
 
 " O yes, massa," exclaimed the negro, his dark 
 face glowing with new life ; " berry much more 
 happy ! 
 
 To the honor of Dr. Bellamy, he did not hesitate. 
 
 " You have your wish," he said to his servant. 
 " From this moment you are free." 
 
 Dr. Hopkins was a poor man, but one of his first 
 acts, after becoming convinced of the wrongfulness 
 of slavery, was to appropriate the very sum which, 
 in the days of his ignorance, he had obtained as 
 the price of his slave to the benevolent purpose of 
 educating some pious colored men in the town of 
 Newport, who were desirous of returning to their 
 native country as missionaries. In one instance 
 he borrowed, on his own responsibility, the sum 
 requisite to secure the freedom of a slave in whom 
 he became interested. One of his theological pu- 
 pils was Newport Gardner, who, twenty years after
 
 140 PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES 
 
 the death of his kind patron, left Boston as a mis- 
 sionary to Africa. He was a native African, and 
 was held by Captain Gardner, of Newport, who al- 
 lowed him to labor for his own benefit, whenever 
 by extra diligence he could gain a little time for 
 that purpose. The poor fellow was in the habit of 
 laying up his small earnings on these occasions, in 
 the faint hope of one day obtaining thereby the 
 freedom of himself and his family. But time 
 passed on, and the hoard of purchase-money still 
 looked sadly small. He concluded to try the effi- 
 cacy of praying. Having gained a day for him- 
 self, by severe labor, and communicating his plan 
 only to Dr. Hopkins and two or three other Chris- 
 tian friends, he shut himself up in his humble 
 dwelling, and spent the time in prayer for freedom. 
 Towards the close of the day, his master sent for 
 him. He was told that this was his gained time, 
 and that he was engaged for himself. " No mat- 
 ter," returned the master, "I must see him." 
 Poor Newport reluctantly abandoned his supplica- 
 tions, and came at his master's bidding, when, to 
 his astonishment, instead of a reprimand, he re- 
 ceived a paper, signed by his master, declaring him 
 and his family from thenceforth free. He justly 
 attributed this signal blessing to the all-wise Dis- 
 poser, who turns the hearts of men as the rivers of 
 water are turned ; but it cannot be doubted that 
 the labors and arguments of Dr. Hopkins with his 
 master were the human instrumentality in effect- 
 ing it. 
 
 In the year 1773, in connection with Dr. Ezra 
 Stiles, he issued an appeal to the Christian com-
 
 SAMUEL HOPKINS 141 
 
 munity in behalf of a society which he had been 
 instrumental in forming, for the purpose of educat- 
 ing missionaries for Africa. In the desolate and 
 
 o 
 
 benighted condition of that unhappy continent he 
 had become painfully interested, by conversing 
 with the slaves brought into Newport. Another 
 appeal was made on the subject in 1776. 
 
 The war of the Revolution interrupted, for a 
 time, the philanthropic plans of Dr. Hopkins. 
 The beautiful island on which he lived was at an 
 early period exposed to the exactions and devasta- 
 tions of the enemy. All who could do so left it 
 for the mainland. Its wharves were no longer 
 thronged with merchandise ; its principal dwellings 
 stood empty; the very meeting-houses were in a 
 great measure abandoned. Dr. Hopkins, who had 
 taken the precaution, at the commencement of hos- 
 tilities, to remove his family to Great Barrington, 
 remained himself until the year 1776, when the 
 British took possession of the island. During the 
 period of its occupation, he was employed in 
 preaching to destitute congregations. He spent 
 the summer of 1777 at Newburyport, where his 
 memory is still cherished by the few of his hearers 
 who survive. In the spring of 1780, he returned 
 to Newport. Everything had undergone a melan- 
 choly change. The garden of New England lay 
 desolate. His once prosperous and wealthy church 
 and congregation were now poor, dispirited, and, 
 worst of all, demoralized. His meeting-house had 
 been used as a barrack for soldiers ; pulpit and 
 pews had been destroyed ; the very bell had been 
 stolen. Refusing, with his characteristic denial of
 
 142 PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES 
 
 self, a call to settle in a more advantageous posi- 
 tion, he sat himself down once more in the midst 
 of his reduced and impoverished parishioners, and, 
 with no regular salary, dependent entirely on such 
 free-will offerings as from time to time were made 
 him, he remained with them until his death. 
 
 In 1776, Dr. Hopkins published his celebrated 
 " Dialogue concerning the Slavery of the Africans ; 
 showing it to be the Duty and Interest of the 
 American States to Emancipate all their Slaves." 
 This he dedicated to the Continental Congress, 
 the Signers of the Declaration of Independence. 
 It was republished in 1785, by the New York Abo- 
 lition Society, and was widely circulated. A few 
 years after, on coming unexpectedly into posses- 
 sion of a few hundred dollars, he devoted immedi- 
 ately one hundred of it to the society for ameli- 
 orating the condition of the Africans. 
 
 He continued to preach until he had reached his 
 eighty-third year. His last sermon was delivered 
 on the 16th of the tenth month, 1803, and his 
 death took place in the twelfth month following. 
 He died calmly, in the steady faith of one who had 
 long trusted all things in the hand of God. " The 
 language of my heart is," said he, " let God be 
 glorified by all things, and the best interest of His 
 kingdom promoted, whatever becomes of me or my 
 interest." To a young friend, who visited him 
 three days before his death, he said, " I am feeble 
 and cannot say much. I have said all I can say. 
 With my last words, I tell you, religion is the one 
 thing needful." " And now," he continued, affec- 
 tionately pressing the hand of his friend, " I am
 
 SAMUEL HOPKINS 143 
 
 going to die, and I am glad of it." Many years 
 before, an agreement had been made between Dr. 
 Hopkins and his old and tried friend, Dr. Hart, of 
 Connecticut, that when either was called home, the 
 survivor should preach the funeral sermon of the 
 deceased. The venerable Dr. Hart accordingly 
 came, true to his promise, preaching at the funeral 
 from the words of Elisha, " My father, my father ; 
 the chariots of Israel, and the horsemen thereof." 
 In the burial-ground adjoining his meeting-house 
 lies all that was mortal of Samuel Hopkins. 
 
 One of Dr. Hopkins's habitual hearers, and who 
 has borne grateful testimony to the beauty and 
 holiness of his life and conversation, was William 
 Ellery Channing. Widely as he afterwards di- 
 verged from the creed of his early teacher, it con- 
 tained at least one doctrine to the influence of 
 which the philanthropic devotion of his own life to 
 the welfare of man bears witness. He says, him- 
 self, that there always seemed to him something 
 very noble in the doctrine of disinterested benevo- 
 lence, the casting of self aside, and doing good, 
 irrespective of personal consequences, in this world 
 or another, upon which Dr. Hopkins so strongly 
 insisted, as the all-essential condition of holiness. 
 
 How widely apart, as mere theologians, stood 
 Hopkins and Channing ! Yet how harmonious 
 their lives and practice ! Both could forget the 
 poor interests of self, in view of eternal right and 
 universal humanity. Both could appreciate the 
 saving truth, that love to God and His creation is 
 the fulfilling of the divine law. The idea of un- 
 selfish benevolence, which they held in common,
 
 144 PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES 
 
 clothed with sweetness and beauty the stern and 
 repulsive features of the theology of Hopkins, and 
 infused a sublime spirit of self-sacrifice and a glow- 
 ing humanity into the indecisive and less robust 
 faith of Channing. What is the lesson of this but 
 that Christianity consists rather in the affections 
 than in the intellect ; that it is a life rather than 
 a creed ; and that they who diverge the widest 
 from each other in speculation upon its doctrines 
 may, after all, be found working side by side on 
 the common ground of its practice. 
 
 We have chosen to speak of Dr. Hopkins as a 
 philanthropist rather than as a theologian. Let 
 those who prefer to contemplate the narrow secta- 
 rian rather than the universal man dwell upon his 
 controversial works, and extol the ingenuity and 
 logical acumen with which he defended his own 
 dogmas and assailed those of others. We honor 
 him, not as the founder of a new sect, but as the 
 friend of all mankind, the generous defender of 
 the poor and oppressed. Great as unquestionably 
 were his powers of argument, his learning, and 
 skill in the use of the weapons of theologic war- 
 fare, these by no means constitute his highest title 
 to respect and reverence. As the product of an 
 honest and earnest mind, his doctrinal dissertations 
 have at least the merit of sincerity. They were 
 put forth in behalf of what he regarded as truth ; 
 and the success which they met with, while it 
 called into exercise his profoundest gratitude, only 
 served to deepen the humility and self-abasement 
 of their author. As the utterance of what a good 
 man believed and felt, as a part of the history of a
 
 SAMUEL HOPKINS 145 
 
 life remarkable for its consecration to apprehended 
 duty, these writings cannot be without interest 
 even to those who dissent from their arguments 
 and deny their assumptions ; but in the time now, 
 we trust, near at hand, when distracted and divided 
 Christendom shall unite in a new Evangelical 
 union, in which orthodoxy in life and practice 
 shall be estimated above orthodoxy in theory, he 
 will be honored as a good man, rather than as a 
 successful creed-maker ; as a friend of the oppressed 
 and the fearless rebuker of popular sin rather 
 than as the champion of a protracted sectarian war. 
 Even now his writings, so popular in their day, 
 are little known. The time may come when no 
 pilgrim of sectarianism shall visit his grave. But 
 his memory shall live in the hearts of the good and 
 generous ; the emancipated slave shall kneel over 
 his ashes, and bless God for the gift to humanity 
 of a life so devoted to its welfare. To him may be 
 applied the language of one who, on the spot where 
 he labored and lay down to rest, while rejecting 
 the doctrinal views of the theologian, still cherishes 
 the philanthropic spirit of the man : 
 
 " He is not lost, lie hath not passed away : 
 
 Clouds, earths, may pass, but stars shine calmly on ; 
 And he who doth the will of God, for aye 
 
 Abideth, when the earth and heaven are gone. 
 
 " Alas that such a heart is in the grave ! 
 
 Thanks for the life that now shall never end ! 
 Weep, and rejoice, thou terror-hunted slave, 
 
 That hast both lost and found so great a friend ! "
 
 RICHARD BAXTER. 
 
 THE picture drawn by a late English historian 
 of the infamous Jeffreys in his judicial robes, 
 sitting in judgment upon the venerable Richard 
 Baxter, brought before him to answer to an indict- 
 ment, setting forth that the said " Richardus Bax- 
 ter, persona seditiosa et f actiosa pravse mentis, im- 
 piae, inquietae, turbulent disposition et conversa- 
 tion ; falso illicte, injuste nequit factiose seditiose, 
 et irreligiose, fecit, composuit, scripsit quendam 
 falsum, seditiosum, libellosum, factiosum et irreli- 
 giosum librum," is so remarkable that the attention 
 of the most careless reader is at once arrested. 
 Who was that old man, wasted with disease and 
 ghastly with the pallor of imprisonment, upon 
 whom the foul-mouthed buffoon in ermine ex- 
 hausted his vocabulary of abuse and ridicule? 
 Who was Richardus Baxter ? 
 
 The author of works so elaborate and profound 
 as to frighten by their very titles and ponderous 
 folios the modern ecclesiastical student from their 
 perusal, his hold upon the present generation is 
 limited to a few practical treatises, which, from 
 their very nature, can never become obsolete. The 
 Call to the, Unconverted and the Saints' Ever- 
 lasting Rest belong to no time or sect. They 
 speak the universal language of the wants and de- 
 sires of the human soul. They take hold of the
 
 RICHARD BAXTER 147 
 
 awful verities of life and death, righteousness and 
 judgment to come. Through them the suffering 
 and hunted minister of Kidderminster has spoken 
 in warning, entreaty, and rebuke, or in tones of 
 tenderest love and pity, to the hearts of the gen- 
 erations which have succeeded him. His contro- 
 versial works, his confessions of faith, his learned 
 disputations, and his profound doctrinal treatises 
 are no longer read. Their author himself, towards 
 the close of his life, anticipated, in respect to these 
 favorite productions, the children of his early zeal, 
 labor, and suffering, the judgment of posterity. 
 " I perceive," he says, " that most of the doctrinal 
 controversies among Protestants are far more about 
 equivocal words than matter. Experience since 
 the year 1643 to this year 1675 hath loudly called 
 me to repent of my own prejudices, sidings, and 
 censurings of causes and persons not understood, 
 and of all the miscarriages of my ministry and life 
 which have been thereby caused ; and to make it 
 my chief work to call men that are within my 
 hearing to more peaceable thoughts, affections, and 
 practices." 
 
 Richard Baxter was born at the village of Eton 
 Constantine, in 1615. He received from officiating 
 curates of the little church such literary instruction 
 as could be given by men who had left the farmer's 
 flail, the tailor's thimble, and the service of strolling 
 stage-players, to perform church drudgery under 
 the parish incumbent, who was old and wellnigh 
 blind. At the age of sixteen, he was sent to a 
 school at Wroxeter, where he spent three years, to 
 little purpose, so far as a scientific education was
 
 148 PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES 
 
 concerned. His teacher left him to himself mainly, 
 and following the bent of his mind, even at that 
 early period, he abandoned the exact sciences for 
 the perusal of such controversial and metaphysical 
 writings of the schoolmen as his master's library 
 afforded. The smattering of Latin which he ac- 
 quired only served in after years to deform his 
 treatises with barbarous, ill-adapted, and erroneous 
 citations. " As to myself," said he, in his letter 
 written in old age to Anthony Wood, who had in- 
 quired whether he was an Oxonian graduate, " my 
 faults are no disgrace to a university, for I was of 
 none ; I have but little but what I had out of books 
 and inconsiderable help of country divines. Weak- 
 ness and pain helped me to study how to die ; that 
 set me a-studying how to live ; and that on study- 
 ing the doctrine from which I must fetch my mo- 
 tives and comforts ; beginning with necessities, I 
 proceeded by degrees, and am now going to see 
 that for which I have lived and studied." 
 
 Of the first essays of the young theologian as a 
 preacher of the Established Church, his early suf- 
 ferings from that complication of diseases with 
 which his whole life was tormented, of the still 
 keener afflictions of a mind whose entire outlook 
 upon life and nature was discolored and darkened 
 by its disordered bodily medium, and of the strug- 
 gles between his Puritan temperament and his rev- 
 erence for Episcopal formulas, much might be 
 profitably said, did the limits we have assigned 
 ourselves admit. Nor can we do more than briefly 
 allude to the religious doubts and difficulties which 
 darkened and troubled his mind at an early period.
 
 RICHARD BAXTER 149 
 
 He tells us at length in his Life how he strug- 
 gled with these spiritual infirmities and temptations. 
 The future life, the immortality of the soul, and 
 the truth of the Scriptures were by turns ques- 
 tioned. " I never," says he in a letter to Dr. More, 
 inserted in the Sadducisimus Triumphatus, " had 
 so much ado to overcome a temptation as that to 
 the opinion of Averroes, that, as extinguished can- 
 dles go all out in an illuminated air, so separated 
 souls go all into one common anima mundi, and 
 lose their individuation." With these and similar 
 " temptations " Baxter struggled long, earnestly, 
 and in the end triumphantly. His faith, when 
 once established, remained unshaken to the last ; 
 and although always solemn, reverential, and 
 deeply serious, he was never the subject of religious 
 melancholy, or of that mournful depression of soul 
 which arises from despair of an interest in the 
 mercy and paternal love of our common Father. 
 
 The Great Revolution found him settled as a 
 minister in Kidderminster, under the sanction of 
 a drunken vicar, who, yielding to the clamor of his 
 more sober parishioners, and his fear of their ap- 
 peal to the Long Parliament, then busy in its task 
 of abating church nuisances, had agreed to give 
 him sixty pounds per year, in the place of a poor 
 tippling curate, notorious as a common railer and 
 pothouse encumbrance. 
 
 As might have been expected, the sharp con- 
 trast which the earnest, devotional spirit and pain- 
 ful strictness of Baxter presented to the irreverent 
 license and careless good humor of his predecessor 
 by no means commended him to the favor of a
 
 150 PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES 
 
 large class of his parishioners. Sabbath merry- 
 makers missed the rubicund face and maudlin jol- 
 lity of their old vicar ; the ignorant and vicious 
 disliked the new preacher's rigid morality; the 
 better informed revolted at his harsh doctrines, 
 austere life, and grave manner. Intense earnest- 
 ness characterized all his efforts. Contrasting 
 human nature with the Infinite Purity and Holi- 
 ness, he was oppressed with the sense of the loath- 
 someness and deformity of sin, and afflicted by the 
 misery of his fellow-creatures separated from the 
 divine harmony. He tells us that at this period 
 he preached the terrors of the Law and the ne- 
 cessity of repentance, rather than the joys and 
 consolations of the Gospel, upon which he so loved 
 to dwell in his last years. He seems to have felt 
 a necessity laid upon him to startle men from false 
 hope and security, and to call for holiness of life 
 and conformity to the divine will as the only- 
 ground of safety. Powerful and impressive as are 
 the appeals and expostulations contained in his 
 written works, they probably convey but a faint 
 idea of the force and earnestness of those which he 
 poured forth from his pulpit. As he advanced in 
 years, these appeals were less frequently addressed 
 to the fears of his auditors, for he had learned to 
 value a calm and consistent life of practical good- 
 ness beyond any passionate exhibition of terrors, 
 fervors, and transports. Having witnessed, in an 
 age of remarkable enthusiasm and spiritual awak- 
 ening, the ill effects of passional excitements and 
 religious melancholy, he endeavored to present 
 cheerful views of Christian life and duty, and made
 
 RICHARD BAXTER 151 
 
 it a special object to repress morbid imaginations 
 and heal diseased consciences. Thus it came to 
 pass that no man of his day was more often ap- 
 plied to for counsel and relief by persons laboring 
 under mental depression than himself. He has 
 left behind him a very curious and not uninstruc- 
 tive discourse, which he entitled The Cure of 
 Melancholy, by Faith and Physick, in which he 
 shows a great degree of skill in his morbid mental 
 anatomy. He had studied medicine to some ex- 
 tent for the benefit of the poor of his parish, and 
 knew something of the intimate relations and sym- 
 pathy of the body and mind ; he therefore did not 
 hesitate to ascribe many of the spiritual complaints 
 of his applicants to disordered bodily functions, 
 nor to prescribe pills and powders in the place of 
 Scripture texts. More than thirty years after the 
 commencement of his labors at Kidderminster he 
 thus writes : " I was troubled this year with multi- 
 tudes of melancholy persons from several places of 
 the land ; some of high quality, some of low, some 
 exquisitely learned, and some unlearned. I know 
 not how it came to pass, but if men fell melan- 
 choly I must hear from them or see them, more 
 than any physician I knew." He cautions against 
 ascribing melancholy phantasms and passions to 
 the Holy Spirit, warns the young against licentious 
 imaginations and excitements, and ends by advis- 
 ing all to take heed how they make of religion a 
 matter of " fears, tears, and scruples." " True re- 
 ligion," he remarks, " doth principally consist in 
 obedience, love, and joy." 
 
 At this early period of his ministry, however, he
 
 152 PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES 
 
 had all of Whitefield's intensity and fervor, added 
 to reasoning powers greatly transcending those of 
 the revivalist of the next century. Young in 
 years, he was even then old in bodily infirmity and 
 mental experience. Believing himself the victim 
 of a mortal disease, he lived and preached in the 
 constant prospect of death. His memento mori 
 was in his bed-chamber, and sat by him at his 
 frugal meal. The glory of the world was stained 
 to his vision. He was blind to the beauty of all its 
 " pleasant pictures." No monk of Mount Athos 
 or silent Chartreuse, no anchorite of Indian super- 
 stition, ever more completely mortified the flesh, or 
 turned his back more decidedly upon the " good 
 things " of this life. A solemn and funeral atmos- 
 phere surrounded him. He walked in the shadows 
 of the cypress, and literally " dwelt among the 
 tombs." Tortured by incessant pain, he wrestled 
 against its attendant languor and debility, as a sin- 
 ful wasting of inestimable time ; goaded himself to 
 constant toil and devotional exercise, and, to use 
 his own words, " stirred up his sluggish soul to 
 speak to sinners with compassion, as a dying man 
 to dying men." 
 
 Such entire consecration could not long be with- 
 out its effect, even upon the " vicious rabble," as 
 Baxter calls them. His extraordinary earnestness, 
 self-forgetting concern for the spiritual welfare of 
 others, his rigid life of denial and sacrifice, if 
 they failed of bringing men to his feet as peni- 
 tents, could not but awaken a feeling of reverence 
 and awe. In Kidderminster, as in most other 
 parishes of the kingdom, there were at this period
 
 RICHARD BAXTER 153 
 
 pious, sober, prayerful people, diligent readers of 
 the Scriptures, who were derided by their neigh- 
 bors as Puritans, precisians, and hypocrites. These 
 were naturally drawn towards the new preacher, 
 and he as naturally recognized them as " honest 
 seekers of the word and way of God." Intercourse 
 with such men, and the perusal of the writings of 
 certain eminent Non-conformists, had the effect to 
 abate, in some degree, his strong attachment to the 
 Episcopal formula and polity. He began to doubt 
 the rightfulness of making the sign of the cross in 
 baptism, and to hesitate about administering the 
 sacrament to profane swearers and tipplers. 
 
 But while Baxter, in the seclusion of his parish, 
 was painfully weighing the arguments for and 
 against the wearing of surplices, the use of mar- 
 riage rings, and the prescribed gestures and genu- 
 flections of his order, tithing with more or less 
 scruple of conscience the mint and anise and cum- 
 min of pulpit ceremonials, the weightier matters 
 of the law, freedom, justice, and truth were claim- 
 ing the attention of Pym and Hampden, Brook and 
 Vane, in the Parliament House. The controversy 
 between King and Commons had reached the point 
 where it could only be decided by the dread arbit- 
 rament of battle. The somewhat equivocal posi- 
 tion of the Kidderminster preacher exposed him to 
 the suspicion of the adherents of the King and 
 Bishops. The rabble, at that period sympathizing 
 with the party of license in morals and strictness 
 in ceremonials, insulted and mocked him, and 
 finally drove him from his parish. 
 
 On the memorable 23d of tenth month, 1642, he
 
 154 PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES 
 
 was invited to occupy a friend's pulpit at Alcester. 
 While preaching, a low, dull, jarring roll, as of 
 continuous thunder, sounded in his ears. It was 
 the cannon -fire of Edgehill, the prelude to the 
 stern battle-piece of revolution. On the morrow, 
 Baxter hurried to the scene of action. " I was 
 desirous," he says, " to see the field. I found the 
 Earl of Essex keeping the ground, and the King's 
 army facing them on a hill about a mile off. There 
 were about a thousand dead bodies in the field be- 
 tween them." Turning from this ghastly survey, 
 the preacher mingled with the Parliamentary army, 
 when, finding the surgeons busy with the wounded, 
 he very naturally sought occasion for the exercise 
 of his own vocation as a spiritual practitioner. He 
 attached himself to the army. So far as we can 
 gather from his own memoirs and the testimony 
 of his contemporaries, he was not influenced to 
 this step by any of the political motives which actu- 
 ated the Parliamentary leaders. He was no revo- 
 lutionist. He was as blind and unquestioning in 
 his reverence for the King's person and divine 
 right, and as hearty in his hatred of religious tol- 
 eration and civil equality, as any of his clerical 
 brethren who officiated in a similar capacity in the 
 ranks of Goring and Prince Rupert. He seems 
 only to have looked upon the soldiers as a new set 
 of parishioners, whom Providence had thrown in 
 his way. The circumstances of his situation left 
 him little choice in the matter. " I had," he says, 
 " neither money nor friends. I knew not who 
 would receive me in a place of safety, nor had I 
 anything to satisfy them for diet and entertain-
 
 RICHARD BAXTER 155 
 
 ment." He accepted an offer to live in the Gov- 
 ernor's house at Coventry, and preach to the sol- 
 diers of the garrison. Here his skill in polemics 
 was called into requisition, in an encounter with 
 two New England Antinomians, and a certain 
 Anabaptist tailor who was making more rents in 
 the garrison's orthodoxy than he mended in their 
 doublets and breeches. Coventry seems at this 
 time to have been the rendezvous of a large body 
 of clergymen, who, as Baxter says, were "for 
 King and Parliament," men who, in their desire 
 for a more spiritual worship, most unwillingly 
 found themselves classed with the sectaries whom 
 they regarded as troublers and heretics, not to be 
 tolerated ; who thought the King had fallen into 
 the hands of the Papists, and that Essex and 
 Cromwell were fighting to restore him ; and who 
 followed the Parliamentary forces to see to it that 
 they were kept sound in faith, and free from the 
 heresy of which the Court News-Book accused 
 them. Of doing anything to overturn the order 
 of Church and State, or of promoting any radical 
 change in the social and political condition of the 
 people, they had no intention whatever. They 
 looked at the events of the time, and upon their 
 duties in respect to them, not as politicians or re- 
 formers, but simply as ecclesiastics and spiritual 
 teachers, responsible to God for the religious beliefs 
 and practices of the people, rather than for their 
 temporal welfare and happiness. They were not 
 the men who struck down the solemn and impos- 
 ing prelacy of England, and vindicated the divine 
 right of men to freedom by tossing the head of an
 
 156 PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES 
 
 anointed tyrant from the scaffold at Whitehall. It 
 was the so-called schismatics, ranters, and levellers, 
 the disputatious corporals and Anabaptist musket- 
 eers, the dread and abhorrence alike of prelate 
 and presbyter, who, under the lead of Cromwell, 
 
 " Ruined the great work of time, 
 And cast the kingdoms old 
 Into another mould." 
 
 The Commonwealth was the work of the laity, the 
 sturdy yeomanry and God-fearing commoners of 
 England. 
 
 The news of the fight of Naseby reaching Cov- 
 entry, Baxter, who had friends in the Parliamentary 
 forces, wishing, as he says, to be assured of their 
 safety, passed over to the stricken field, and spent 
 a night with them. He was afflicted and con- 
 founded by the information which they gave him, 
 that the victorious army was full of hot-headed 
 schemers and levellers, who were against King and 
 Church, prelacy and ritual, and who were for a free 
 Commonwealth and freedom of religious belief and 
 worship. He was appalled to find that the here- 
 sies of the Antinomiaus, Arminians, and Anabap- 
 tists had made sadder breaches in the ranks of 
 Cromwell than the pikes of Jacob Astley, or the 
 daggers of the roysterers who followed the mad 
 charge of Rupert. Hastening back to Coventry, 
 he called together his clerical brethren, and told 
 them " the sad news of the corruption of the army." 
 After much painful consideration of the matter, it 
 was deemed best for Baxter to enter Cromwell's 
 army, nominally as its chaplain, but really as the 
 special representative of orthodoxy in politics and
 
 RICHARD BAXTER 157 
 
 religion, against the democratic weavers and proph- 
 esying tailors who troubled it. He joined Whal- 
 ley's regiment, and followed it through many a hot 
 skirmish and siege. Personal fear was by no means 
 one of Baxter's characteristics, and he bore him- 
 self through all with the coolness of an old cam- 
 paigner. Intent upon his single object, he sat 
 unmoved under the hail of cannon-shot from the 
 walls of Bristol, confronted the well-plied culverins 
 of Sherburne, charged side by side with Harrison 
 upon Gor ing's musketeers at Langford, and heard 
 the exulting thanksgiving of that grim enthusiast, 
 when " with a loud voice he broke forth in praises 
 of God, as one in rapture ; " and marched, Bible 
 in hand, with Cromwell hims'elf , to the storming of 
 Basing-House, so desperately defended by the Mar- 
 quis of Winchester. In truth, these storms of out- 
 ward conflict were to him of small moment. He 
 was engaged in a sterner battle with spiritual prin- 
 cipalities and powers, struggling with Satan him- 
 self in the guise of political levellers and Anti- 
 nomian sowers of heresy. No antagonist was too 
 high and none too low for him. Distrusting Crom- 
 well, he sought to engage him in a discussion of 
 certain points of abstract theology, wherein his 
 soundness seemed questionable ; but the wary chief 
 baffled off the young disputant by tedious, unan- 
 swerable discourses about free grace, which Baxter 
 admits were not unsavory to others, although the 
 speaker himself had little understanding of the 
 matter. At other times, he repelled his sad-visaged 
 chaplain with unwelcome jests and rough, soldierly 
 merriment ; for he had " a vivacity, hilarity, and
 
 158 PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES 
 
 alacrity as another man hath when he hath taken 
 a cup too much." Baxter says of him, complain- 
 ingly, " he would not dispute with me at all." But, 
 in the midst of such an army, he could not lack 
 abundant opportunity for the exercise of his pecu- 
 liar powers of argumentation. At Amersham, he 
 had a sort of pitched battle with the contumacious 
 soldiers. " When the public talking day came," 
 says he, " I took the reading-pew, and Pitchford's 
 cornet and troopers took the gallery. There did 
 the leader of the Chesham men begin, and after- 
 wards Pitchford's soldiers set in ; and I alone dis- 
 puted with them from morning until almost night ; 
 for I knew their trick, that if I had gone out first, 
 they would have prated what boasting words they 
 listed, and made the people believe that they had 
 baffled me, or got the best ; therefore I stayed it out 
 till they first rose and went away." As usual in 
 such cases, both parties claimed the victory. Bax- 
 ter got thanks only from the King's adherents ; 
 " Pitchford's troops and the leader of the Ches- 
 ham men " retired from their hard day's work, to 
 enjoy the countenance and favor of Cromwell, as 
 men after his own heart, faithful to the Houses and 
 the Word, against kingcraft and prelacy. 
 
 Laughed at and held at arm's length by Crom- 
 well, shunned by Harrison and Berry and other 
 chief officers, opposed on all points by shrewd, 
 earnest men, as ready for polemic controversy as 
 for battle with the King's malignants, and who set 
 off against his theological and metaphysical distinc- 
 tions their own personal experiences and spiritual 
 exercises, he had little to encourage him in his ar-
 
 RICHARD BAXTER 159 
 
 duous labors. Alone in such a multitude, flushed 
 with victory and glowing with religious enthusiasm, 
 he earnestly begged his brother ministers to come 
 to his aid. " If the army," said he, " had only min- 
 isters enough, who could have done such little as I 
 did, all their plot might have been broken, and 
 King, Parliament, and Religion might have been 
 preserved." But no one volunteered to assist him, 
 and the " plot " of revolution went on. 
 
 After Worcester fight he returned to Coventry, to 
 make his report to the ministers assembled there. 
 He told them of his labors and trials, of the growth 
 of heresy and levelling principles in the army, and 
 of the evident design of its leaders to pull down 
 Church, King, and Ministers. He assured them 
 that the day was at hand when all who were true to 
 the King, Parliament, and Religion should come 
 forth to oppose these leaders, and draw away their 
 soldiers from them. For himself, he was willing to 
 go back to the army, and labor there until the crisis 
 of which he spoke had arrived. "Whereupon," 
 says he, " they all voted me to go yet longer." 
 
 Fortunately for the cause of civil and religious 
 freedom, the great body of the ministers, who dis- 
 approved of the ultraism of the victorious army, 
 and sympathized with the defeated King, lacked 
 the courage and devotedness of Baxter. Had they 
 promptly seconded his efforts, although the resto- 
 ration of the King might have been impossible at 
 that late period, the horrors of civil war must have 
 been greatly protracted. As it was, they preferred 
 to remain at home, and let Baxter have the benefit 
 of their prayers and good wishes. He returned to
 
 160 PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES 
 
 the army with the settled purpose of causing its 
 defection from Cromwell ; but, by one of those dis- 
 pensations which the latter used to call " births of 
 Providence," he was stricken down with severe 
 sickness. Baxter's own comments upon this pas- 
 sage in his life are not without interest. He says, 
 God prevented his purposes in his last and chiefest 
 opposition to the army ; that he intended to take 
 off or seduce from their officers the regiment with 
 which he was connected, and then to have tried his 
 persuasion upon the others. He says he afterwards 
 found that his sickness was a mercy to himself, 
 " for they were so strong and active, and I had been 
 likely to have had small success in the attempt, and 
 to have lost my life among them in their fury." He 
 was right in this last conjecture ; Oliver Cromwell 
 would have had no scruples in making an example 
 of a plotting priest ; and " Pitchford's soldiers " 
 might have been called upon to silence, with their 
 muskets, the tough disputant who was proof against 
 their tongues. 
 
 After a long and dubious illness, Baxter was so 
 far restored as to be able to go back to his old par- 
 ish at Kidderminster. Here, under the Protec- 
 torate of Cromwell, he remained in the full enjoy- 
 ment of that religious liberty which he still stoutly 
 condemned in its application to others. 
 
 He afterwards candidly admits, that, under the 
 " Usurper," as he styles Cromwell, " he had such 
 liberty and advantage to preach the Gospel with 
 success, as he could not have under a King, to 
 whom he had sworn and performed true subjection 
 and obedience." Yet this did not prevent him from
 
 RICHARD BAXTER 161 
 
 preaching and printing, " seasonably and moder- 
 ately," against the Protector. " I declared," said 
 he, " Cromwell and his adherents to be guilty of 
 treason and rebellion, aggravated by perfidiousness 
 and hypocrisy. But yet I did not think it my duty 
 to rave against him in the pulpit, or to do this so 
 unseasonably and imprudently as might irritate 
 him to mischief. And the rather, because, as he 
 kept up his approbation of a godly life in gen- 
 eral, and of all that was good, except that which 
 the interest of his sinful cause engaged him to be 
 against. So I perceived that it was his design to 
 do good in the main, and to promote the Gospel 
 and the interests of godliness more than any had 
 done before him." 
 
 Cromwell, if he heard of his diatribes against 
 him, appears to have cared little for them. Lords 
 Warwick and Broghill, on one occasion, brought 
 him to preach before the Lord Protector. He 
 seized the occasion to preach against the sectaries, 
 to condemn all who countenanced them, and to ad- 
 vocate the unity of the Church. Soon after, he 
 was sent for by Cromwell, who made " a long and 
 tedious speech" in the presence of three of his 
 chief men, (one of whom, General Lambert, fell 
 asleep the while,) asserting that God had owned 
 his government in a signal manner. Baxter boldly 
 replied to him, that he and his friends regarded 
 the ancient monarchy as a blessing, and not an 
 evil, and begged to know how that blessing was 
 forfeited to England, and to whom that forfeiture 
 was made. Cromwell, with some heat, made an- 
 swer that it was no forfeiture, but that God had
 
 162 PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES 
 
 made the change. They afterwards held a long 
 conference with respect to freedom of conscience, 
 Cromwell defending his liberal policy, and Bax- 
 ter opposing it. No one can read Baxter's own 
 account of these interviews, without being deeply 
 impressed with the generous and magnanimous 
 spirit of the Lord Protector in tolerating the ut- 
 most freedom of speech on the part of one who 
 openly denounced him as a traitor and usurper. 
 Real greatness of mind could alone have risen 
 above personal resentment under such circum- 
 stances of peculiar aggravation. 
 
 In the death of the Protector, the treachery of 
 Monk, and the restoration of the King, Baxter and 
 his Presbyterian friends believed that they saw 
 the hand of a merciful Providence preparing the 
 way for the best good of England and the Church. 
 Always royalists, they had acted with the party 
 opposed to the King from necessity rather than 
 choice. Considering all that followed, one can 
 scarcely avoid smiling over the extravagant jubila- 
 tions of the Presbyterian divines, on the return of 
 the royal debauchee to Whitehall. They hurried 
 up to London with congratulations of formidable 
 length and papers of solemn advice and counsel, 
 to all which the careless monarch listened, with 
 what patience he was master of. Baxter was one 
 of the first to present himself at Court, and it is 
 creditable to his heart rather than his judgment 
 and discrimination that he seized the occasion to 
 offer a long address to the King, expressive of his 
 expectation that his Majesty would discountenance 
 all sin and promote godliness, support the true
 
 RICHARD BAXTER 163 
 
 exercise of Church discipline and cherish and hold 
 up the hands of the faithful ministers of the 
 Church. To all which Charles II. " made as 
 gracious an answer as we could expect," says Bax- 
 ter, " insomuch that old Mr. Ash burst out into 
 tears of joy." Who doubts that the profligate 
 King avenged himself as soon as the backs of his 
 unwelcome visitors were fairly turned, by coarse 
 jests and ribaldry, directed against a class of men 
 whom he despised and hated, but towards whom, 
 reasons of policy dictated a show of civility and 
 kindness ? 
 
 There is reason to believe that Charles II., had 
 he been able to effect his purpose, would have 
 gone beyond Cromwell himself in the matter of 
 religious toleration ; in other words, he would have 
 taken, in the outset of his reign, the very steps 
 which cost his successor his crown, and procured 
 the toleration of Catholics by a declaration of uni- 
 versal freedom in religion. But he was not in a 
 situation to brave the opposition alike of Prelacy 
 and Presbyterianism, and foiled in a scheme to 
 which he was prompted by that vague, superstitious 
 predilection for the Roman Catholic religion which 
 at times struggled with his habitual scepticism, his 
 next object was to rid himself of the importunities 
 of sectaries and the trouble of religious controver- 
 sies by reestablishing the liturgy, and bribing or 
 enforcing conformity to it on the part of the Pres- 
 byterians. The history of the successful execution 
 of this purpose is familiar to all the readers of the 
 plausible pages of Clarendon on the one side, or 
 the complaining treatises of Neal and Calamy on
 
 164 PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES 
 
 the other. Charles and his advisers triumphed, 
 not so much through their own art, dissimula- 
 tion, and bad faith as through the blind bigotry, 
 divided counsels, and self-seeking of the Non-con- 
 formists. Seduction on one hand and threats on 
 the other, the bribe of bishoprics, hatred of Inde- 
 pendents and Quakers, and the terror of penal 
 laws, broke the strength of Presbyterianism. 
 
 Baxter's whole conduct, on this occasion, bears 
 testimony to his honesty and sincerity, while it 
 shows him to have been too intolerant to secure his 
 own religious freedom at the price of toleration for 
 Catholics, Quakers, and Anabaptists; and too 
 blind in his loyalty to perceive that pure and un- 
 defiled Christianity had nothing to hope for from 
 a scandalous and depraved King, surrounded by 
 scoffing, licentious courtiers and a haughty, re- 
 vengeful prelacy. To secure his influence, the 
 Court offered him the bishopric of Hereford. 
 Superior to personal considerations, he declined 
 the honor; but somewhat inconsistently, in his 
 zeal for the interests of his party, he urged the 
 elevation of at least three of his Presbyterian 
 friends to the Episcopal bench, to enforce that 
 very liturgy which they condemned. He was the 
 chief speaker for the Presbyterians at the famous 
 Savoy Conference, summoned to advise and con- 
 sult upon the Book of Common Prayer. His an- 
 tagonist was Dr. Gunning, ready, fluent, and im- 
 passioned. " They spent," as Gilbert Burnet says, 
 " several days in logical arguing, to the diversion 
 of the town, who looked upon them as a couple of 
 fencers, engaged in a discussion which could not
 
 RICHARD BAXTER 165 
 
 be brought to an end." In themselves considered, 
 many of the points at issue seem altogether too 
 trivial for the zeal with which Baxter contested 
 them, the form of a surplice, the wording of a 
 prayer, kneeling at sacrament, the sign of the 
 cross, etc. With him, however, they were of mo- 
 mentous interest and importance, as things unlaw- 
 ful in the worship of God. He struggled desper- 
 ately, but unavailingly. Presbyterianism, in its 
 eagerness for peace and union and a due share of 
 State support, had already made fatal concessions, 
 and it was too late to stand upon non-essentials. 
 Baxter retired from the conference baffled and de- 
 feated, amidst murmurs and jests. " If you had 
 only been as fat as Dr. Manton," said Clarendon 
 to him, " you would have done well." 
 
 The Act of Conformity, in which Charles II. 
 and his counsellors gave the lie to the liberal 
 declarations of Breda and Whitehall, drove Baxter 
 from his sorrowing parishioners of Kidderminster, 
 and added the evils of poverty and persecution 
 to the painful bodily infirmities under which he 
 was already bowed down. Yet his cup was not 
 one of unalloyed bitterness, and loving lips were 
 prepared to drink it with him. 
 
 Among Baxter's old parishioners of Kiddermin- 
 ster was a widowed lady of gentle birth, named 
 Charlton, who, with her daughter Margaret, occu- 
 pied a house in his neighborhood. The daughter 
 was a brilliant girl, of " strangely vivid wit," and 
 " in early youth," he tells us, " pride, and ro- 
 mances, and company suitable thereunto, did take 
 her up." But erelong, Baxter, who acted in the
 
 166 PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES 
 
 double capacity of spiritual and temporal physi- 
 cian, was sent for to visit her, on an occasion of 
 sickness. He ministered to her bodily and mental 
 sufferings, and thus secured her gratitude and con- 
 fidence. On her recovery, under the influence of 
 his warnings and admonitions, the gay young girl 
 became thoughtful and serious, abandoned her light 
 books and companions, and devoted herself to the 
 duties of a Christian profession. Baxter was her 
 counsellor and confidant. She disclosed to him all 
 her doubts, trials, and temptations, and he, in re- 
 turn, wrote her long letters of sympathy, consola- 
 tion, and encouragement. He began to feel such 
 an unwonted interest in the moral and spiritual 
 growth of his young disciple, that, in his daily 
 walks among his parishioners, he found himself 
 inevitably drawn towards her mother's dwelling. 
 In her presence, the habitual austerity of his man- 
 ner was softened ; his cold, close heart warmed 
 and expanded. He began to repay her confidence 
 with his own, disclosing to her all his plans of 
 benevolence, soliciting her services, and waiting, 
 with deference, for her judgment upon them. A 
 change came over his habits of thought and his 
 literary tastes ; the harsh, rude disputant, the 
 tough, dry logician, found himself addressing to 
 his young friend epistles in verse on doctrinal 
 points and matters of casuistry ; Westminster Cat- 
 echism in rhyme ; the Solemn League and Cov- 
 enant set to music. A miracle alone could have 
 made Baxter a poet ; the cold, clear light of rea- 
 son " paled the ineffectual fires " of his imagina- 
 tion ; all things presented themselves to his vision
 
 RICHARD BAXTER 167 
 
 " with hard outlines, colorless, and with no sur- 
 rounding atmosphere." That he did, nevertheless, 
 write verses, so creditable as to justify a judicious 
 modern critic in their citation and approval, can 
 perhaps be accounted for only as one of the phe- 
 nomena of that subtle and transforming influence 
 to which even his stern nature was unconsciously 
 yielding. Baxter was in love. 
 
 Never did the blind god try his archery on a 
 more unpromising subject. Baxter was nearly 
 fifty years of age, and looked still older. His life 
 had been one long fast and penance. Even in 
 youth he had never known a schoolboy's love for 
 cousin or playmate. He had resolutely closed up 
 his heart against emotions which he regarded as 
 the allurements of time and sense. He had made 
 a merit of celibacy, and written and published 
 against the entanglement of godly ministers in 
 matrimonial engagements and family cares. It is 
 questionable whether he now understood his own 
 case, or attributed to its right cause the peculiar 
 interest which he felt in Margaret Charlton. Left 
 to himself, it is more than probable that he might 
 never have discovered the true nature of that in- 
 terest, or conjectured that anything whatever of 
 earthly passion or sublunary emotion had mingled 
 with his spiritual Platonism. Commissioned and 
 set apart to preach repentance to dying men, pen- 
 niless and homeless, worn with bodily pain and 
 mental toil, and treading, as he believed, on the 
 very margin of his grave, what had he to do with 
 love ? What power had he to inspire that tender 
 sentiment, the appropriate offspring only of youth, 
 and health, and beauty ?
 
 168 PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES 
 
 " Could any Beatrice see 
 A lover in such anchorite ! " 
 
 But in the mean time a reciprocal feeling was 
 gaining strength in the heart of Margaret. To 
 her grateful appreciation of the condescension of 
 a great and good man grave, learned, and re- 
 nowned to her youth and weakness, and to her 
 enthusiastic admiration of his intellectual powers, 
 devoted to the highest and holiest objects, suc- 
 ceeded naturally enough the tenderly suggestive 
 pity of her woman's heart, as she thought of his 
 lonely home, his unshared sorrows, his lack of 
 those sympathies and kindnesses which make 
 tolerable the hard journey of life. Did she not 
 owe to him, under God, the salvation of body and 
 mind? Was he not her truest and most faithful 
 friend, entering with lively interest into all her 
 joys and sorrows ? Had she not seen the cloud of 
 his habitual sadness broken by gleams of sunny 
 warmth and cheerfulness, as they conversed to- 
 gether ? Could she do better than devote herself 
 to the pleasing task of making his life happier, of 
 comforting him in seasons of pain and weariness, 
 encouraging him in his vast labors, and throwing 
 over the cold and hard austerities of his nature the 
 warmth and light of domestic affection? Pity, 
 reverence, gratitude, and womanly tenderness, her 
 fervid imagination and the sympathies of a deeply 
 religious nature, combined to influence her deci- 
 sion. Disparity of age and condition rendered it 
 improbable that Baxter would ever venture to ad- 
 dress her in any other capacity than that of a 
 friend and teacher ; and it was left to herself to
 
 RICHARD BAXTER 169 
 
 give the first intimation of the possibility of a more 
 intimate relation. 
 
 It is easy to imagine with what mixed feelings 
 of joy, surprise, and perplexity Baxter must have 
 received the delicate avowal. There was much in 
 the circumstances of the case to justify doubt, mis- 
 giving, and close searchings of heart. He must 
 have felt the painful contrast which that fair girl 
 in the bloom of her youth presented to the worn 
 man of middle years, whose very breath was suf- 
 fering, and over whom death seemed always im- 
 pending. Keenly conscious of his infirmities of 
 temper, he must have feared for the happiness of 
 a loving, gentle being, daily exposed to their mani- 
 festations. From his well-known habit of consult- 
 ing what he regarded as the divine will in every 
 important step of his life, there can be no doubt 
 that his decision was the result quite as much of a 
 prayerful and patient consideration of duty as of 
 the promptings of his heart. Richard Baxter was 
 no impassioned Abelard; his pupil in the school 
 of his severe and self-denying piety was no Heloise ; 
 but what their union lacked in romantic interest 
 was compensated by its purity and disinterested- 
 ness, and its sanction by all that can hallow human 
 passion, and harmonize the love of the created 
 with the love and service of the Creator. 
 
 Although summoned by a power which it would 
 have been folly to resist, the tough theologian did 
 not surrender at discretion. "From the first 
 thoughts yet many changes and stoppages inter- 
 vened, and long delays," he tells us. The terms 
 upon which he finally capitulated are perfectly in
 
 170 PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES 
 
 keeping with his character. " She consented," he 
 says, " to three conditions of our marriage. 1st. 
 That I should have nothing that before our mar- 
 riage was hers ; that I, who wanted no earthly 
 supplies, might not seem to marry her from selfish- 
 ness. 2d. That she would so alter her affairs that 
 I might be entangled in no lawsuits. 3d. That she 
 should expect none of my time which my min- 
 isterial work should require." 
 
 As was natural, the wits of the Court had their 
 jokes upon this singular marriage ; and many of 
 his best friends regretted it, when they called to 
 mind what he had written in favor of ministerial 
 celibacy, at a time when, as he says, " he thought 
 to live and die a bachelor." But Baxter had no 
 reason to regret the inconsistency of his precept 
 and example. How much of the happiness of the 
 next twenty years of his life resulted from his 
 union with a kind and affectionate woman he has 
 himself testified, in his simple and touching Bre- 
 viate of the Life of the late Mrs. Baxter. Her 
 affections were so ardent that her husband con- 
 fesses his fear that he was unable to make an 
 adequate return, and that she must have been 
 disappointed in him in consequence. He extols 
 her pleasant conversation, her active benevolence, 
 her disposition to aid him in all his labors, and her 
 noble forgetfulness of self, in ministering to his 
 comfort in sickness and imprisonment. " She was 
 the meetest helper I could have had in the world," 
 is his language. " If I spoke harshly or sharply, it 
 offended her. If I carried it (as I am apt) with too 
 much negligence of ceremony or humble compliment
 
 RICHARD BAXTER 171 
 
 to any, she would modestly tell me of it. If my 
 looks seemed not pleasant, she would have me 
 amend them (which my weak, pained state of 
 body indisposed me to do)." He admits she had 
 her failings, but, taken as a whole, the Breviate is 
 an exalted eulogy. 
 
 His history from this time is marked by few in- 
 cidents of a public character. During that most 
 disgraceful period in the annals of England, the 
 reign of the second Charles, his peculiar position 
 exposed him to the persecutions of prelacy and 
 the taunts and abuse of the sectaries, standing as 
 he did between these extremes, and pleading for a 
 moderate Episcopacy. He was between the upper 
 millstone of High Church and the nether one of 
 Dissent. To use his own simile, he was like one 
 who seeks to fill with his hand a cleft in a log, and 
 feels both sides close upon him with pain. All 
 parties and sects had, as they thought, grounds 
 of complaint against him. There was in him an 
 almost childish simplicity of purpose, a headlong 
 earnestness and eagerness, which did not allow 
 him to consider how far a present act or opinion 
 harmonized with what he had already done or 
 written. His greatest admirers admit his lack of 
 judgment, his inaptitude for the management of 
 practical matters. His utter incapacity to compre- 
 hend rightly the public men and measures of his 
 day is abundantly apparent ; and the inconsist- 
 encies of his conduct and his writings are too 
 marked to need comment. He suffered persecu- 
 tion for not conforming to some trifling matters of 
 Church usage, while he advocated the doctrine of
 
 172 PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES 
 
 passive obedience to the King or ruling power, 
 and the right of that power to enforce conformity. 
 He wrote against conformity while himself con- 
 forming ; seceded from the Church, and yet held 
 stated communion with it ; begged for the curacy of 
 Kidderminster, and declined the bishopric of Here- 
 ford. His writings were many of them directly 
 calculated to make Dissenters from the Establish- 
 ment, but he was invariably offended to find oth- 
 ers practically influenced by them, and quarrelled 
 with his own converts to Dissent. The High 
 Churchmen of Oxford burned his Holy Common- 
 wealth as seditious and revolutionary ; while Har- 
 rington and the republican club of Miles's Coffee- 
 House condemned it for its hostility to democracy 
 and its servile doctrine of obedience to kings. 
 He made noble pleas for liberty of conscience 
 and bitterly complained of his own suffering from 
 Church courts, yet maintained the necessity of en- 
 forcing conformity, and stoutly opposed the tol- 
 erant doctrines of Penn and Milton. Never did a 
 great and good man so entangle himself with con- 
 tradictions and inconsistencies. The witty and 
 wicked Sir Roger L'Estrange compiled from the 
 irreconcilable portions of his works a laughable 
 Dialogue between Richard and Baxter. The 
 Antinomians found him guilty of Socinianism ; 
 and one noted controversialist undertook to show, 
 not without some degree of plausibility, that he 
 was by turns a Quaker and a Papist ! 
 
 Although able to suspend his judgment and 
 carefully weigh evidence, upon matters which he 
 regarded as proper subjects of debate and scrutiny,
 
 RICHARD BAXTER 173 
 
 he possessed the power to shut out and banish at 
 will all doubt and misgiving in respect to whatever 
 tended to prove, illustrate, or enforce his settled 
 opinions and cherished doctrines. His credulity 
 at times seems boundless. Hating the Quakers, 
 and prepared to believe all manner of evil of them, 
 he readily came to the conclusion that their lead- 
 ers were disguised Papists. He maintained that 
 Lauderdale was a good and pious man, in spite of 
 atrocities in Scotland which entitle him to a place 
 with Claverhouse ; and indorsed the character of 
 the infamous Dangerfield, the inventor of the 
 Meal-tub Plot, as a worthy convert from popish 
 errors. To prove the existence of devils and 
 spirits, he collected the most absurd stories and 
 old-wives' fables, of soldiers scared from their 
 posts at night by headless bears, of a young witch 
 pulling the hooks out of Mr. Emlen's breeches and 
 swallowing them, of Mr. Beacham's locomotive 
 tobacco-pipe, and the Kev. Mr. Munn's jumping 
 Bible, and of a drunken man punished for his in- 
 temperance by being lifted off his legs by an invis- 
 ible hand! Cotton Mather's marvellous account 
 of his witch experiments in New England delighted 
 him. He had it republished, declaring that "he 
 must be an obstinate Sadducee who doubted it." 
 
 The married life of Baxter, as might be inferred 
 from the state of the times, was an unsettled one. 
 He first took a house at Moorfields, then removed 
 to Acton, where he enjoyed the conversation of 
 his neighbor, Sir Matthew Hale ; from thence he 
 found refuge in Bickmansworth, and after that in 
 divers other places. " The women have most of
 
 174 PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES 
 
 this trouble," he remarks, " but my wife easily 
 bore it all." When unable to preach, his rapid 
 pen was always busy. Huge folios of controversial 
 and doctrinal lore followed each other in quick 
 succession. He assailed Popery and the Estab- 
 lishment, Anabaptists, ultra Calvinists, Antino- 
 inians, Fifth Monarchy men, and Quakers. His 
 hatred of the latter was only modified by his con- 
 tempt. He railed rather than argued against the 
 " miserable creatures," as he styled them. They 
 in turn answered him in like manner. " The 
 Quakers," he says, " in their shops, when I go 
 along London streets, say, ' Alas ! poor man, thou 
 art yet in darkness.' They have oft come to the 
 congregation, when I had liberty to preach Christ's 
 Gospel, and cried out against me as a deceiver of 
 the people. They have followed me home, crying 
 out in the streets, ' The day of the Lord is coming, 
 and thou shalt perish as a deceiver.' They have 
 stood in the market-place, and under my window, 
 year after year, crying to the people, ' Take heed 
 of your priests, they deceive your souls ; ' and if 
 any one wore a lace or neat clothing, they cried 
 out to me, ' These are the fruits of your ministry.' " 
 At Rickmansworth, he found himself a neighbor 
 of William Penn, whom he calls " the captain of 
 the Quakers." Ever ready for battle, Baxter en- 
 countered him in a public discussion, with such 
 fierceness and bitterness as to force from that mild 
 and amiable civilian the remark, that he would 
 rather be Socrates at the final judgment than 
 Richard Baxter. Both lived to know each other 
 better, and to entertain sentiments of mutual
 
 RICHARD BAXTER 175 
 
 esteem. Baxter himself admits that the Quakers, 
 by their perseverance in holding their religious 
 meetings in defiance of penal laws, took upon 
 themselves the burden of persecution which would 
 otherwise have fallen upon himself and his friends ; 
 and makes special mention of the noble and suc- 
 cessful plea of Penn before the Recorder's Court 
 in London, based on the fundamental liberties of 
 Englishmen and the rights of the Great Charter. 
 
 The intolerance of Baxter towards the Separa- 
 tists was turned against him whenever he appealed 
 to the King and Parliament against the proscrip- 
 tion of himself and his friends. " They gathered," 
 he complains, " out of mine and other men's books 
 all that we had said against liberty for Popery and 
 Quakers railing against ministers in open congre- 
 gation, and applied it as against the toleration of 
 ourselves." It was in vain that he explained that 
 he was only in favor of a gentle coercion of dissent, 
 a moderate enforcement of conformity. His plan 
 for dealing with sectaries reminds one of old Isaak 
 Walton's direction to his piscatorial readers, to 
 impale the frog on the hook as gently as if they 
 loved him. 
 
 While at Acton, he was complained of by Dr. 
 Ryves, the rector, one of the King's chaplains in 
 ordinary, for holding religious services in his fam- 
 ily with more than five strangers present. He was 
 cast into Clerkenwell jail, whither his faithful wife 
 followed him. On his discharge, he sought refuge 
 in the hamlet of Totteridge, where he wrote and 
 published that Paraphrase on the New Testament 
 which was made the ground of his prosecution and 
 trial before Jeffreys.
 
 176 PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES 
 
 On the 14th of the sixth month, 1681, he was 
 called to endure the greatest affliction of his life. 
 His wife died on that day, after a brief illness. 
 She who had been his faithful friend, companion, 
 and nurse for twenty years was called away from 
 him in the time of his greatest need of her min- 
 istrations. He found consolation in dwelling on 
 her virtues and excellences in the Breviate of her 
 life ; " a paper monument," he says, " erected by 
 one who is following her even at the door in some 
 passion indeed of love and grief." In the preface 
 to his poetical pieces he alludes to her in terms of 
 touching simplicity and tenderness : " As these 
 pieces were mostly written in various passions, so 
 passion hath now thrust them out into the world. 
 God having taken away the dear companion of the 
 last nineteen years of my life, as her sorrows and 
 sufferings long ago gave being to some of these 
 poems, for reasons which the world is not concerned 
 to know ; so my grief for her removal, and the 
 revival of the sense of former things, have prevailed 
 upon me to be passionate in the sight of all." 
 
 The circumstances of his trial before the judicial 
 monster, Jeffreys, are too well known to justify 
 their detail in this sketch. He was sentenced to 
 pay a fine of five hundred marks. Seventy years 
 of age, and reduced to poverty by former persecu- 
 tions, he was conveyed to the King's Bench prison. 
 Here for two years he lay a victim to intense bod- 
 ily suffering. When, through the influence of his 
 old antagonist, Penn, he was restored to freedom, 
 he was already a dying man. But he came forth 
 from prison as he entered it, unsubdued in spirit.
 
 RICHARD BAXTER 177 
 
 Urged to sign a declaration of thanks to James II., 
 his soul put on the athletic habits of youth, and he 
 stoutly refused to commend an act of toleration 
 which had given freedom not to himself alone, but 
 to Papists and sectaries. Shaking off the dust of 
 the Court from his feet, he retired to a dwelling in 
 Charter-House Square, near his friend Sylvester's, 
 and patiently awaited his deliverance. His death 
 was quiet and peaceful. " I have pain," he said 
 to his friend Mather ; " there is no arguing against 
 sense; but I have peace. I have peace." On 
 being asked how he did, he answered, in memora- 
 ble words, " Almost well ! " 
 
 He was buried in Christ Church, where the re- 
 mains of his wife and her mother had been placed. 
 An immense concourse attended his funeral, of all 
 ranks and parties. Conformist and Non-conform- 
 ist forgot the bitterness of the controversialist, and 
 remembered only the virtues and the piety of the 
 man. Looking back on his life of self-denial and 
 faithfulness to apprehended duty, the men who had 
 persecuted him while living wept over his grave. 
 During the last few years of his life, the severity 
 of his controversial tone had been greatly softened ; 
 he lamented his former lack of charity, the circle 
 of his sympathies widened, his social affections grew 
 stronger with age, and love for his fellow-men uni- 
 versally, and irrespective of religious differences, 
 increased within him. In his Narrative, written 
 in the long, cool shadows of the evening of life, 
 he acknowledges with extraordinary candor this 
 change in his views and feelings. He confesses 
 his imperfections as a writer and public teacher.
 
 178 PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES 
 
 " I wish," he says, " all over-sharp passages were 
 expunged from my writings, and I ask forgiveness 
 of God and man." He tells us that mankind ap- 
 pear more equal to him ; the good are not so good 
 as he once thought, nor the bad so evil ; and that 
 in all there is more for grace to make advantage 
 of, and more to testify for God and holiness, than 
 he once believed. " I less admire," he continues, 
 " gifts of utterance, and the bare profession of re- 
 ligion, than I once did, and have now much more 
 charity for those who, by want of gifts, do make an 
 obscurer profession." 
 
 He laments the effects of his constitutional irrita- 
 bility and impatience upon his social intercourse 
 and his domestic relations, and that his bodily in- 
 firmities did not allow him a free expression of the 
 tenderness and love of his heart. Who does not 
 feel the pathos and inconsolable regret which dic- 
 tated the following paragraph ? 
 
 " When God forgiveth me, I cannot forgive 
 myself, especially for my rash words and deeds by 
 which I have seemed injurious and less tender and 
 kind than I should have been to my near and 
 dear relations, whose love abundantly obliged me. 
 When such are dead, though we never differed in 
 point of interest or any other matter, every sour or 
 cross or provoking word which I gave them maketh 
 me almost irreconcilable to myself, and tells me 
 how repentance brought some of old to pray to the 
 dead whom they had wronged to forgive them, in 
 the hurry of their passion." 
 
 His pride as a logician and skilful disputant 
 abated in the latter and better portion of his life ;
 
 RICHARD BAXTER 179 
 
 he had more deference to the judgment of others, 
 and more distrust of his own. " You admire," said 
 he to a correspondent who had lauded his charac- 
 ter, " one you do not know ; knowledge will cure 
 your error." In his Narrative he writes : " I 
 am much more sensible than heretofore of the 
 breadth and length and depth of the radical, uni- 
 versal, odious sin of selfishness, and therefore have 
 written so much against it ; and of the excellency 
 and necessity of self-denial and of a public mind, 
 and of loving our neighbors as ourselves." Against 
 many difficulties and discouragements, both within 
 himself and in his outward circumstances, he strove 
 to make his life and conversation an expression of 
 that Christian love whose root, as he has said with 
 equal truth and beauty, 
 
 " is set 
 
 In humble self-denial, undertrod, 
 While flower and fruit are growing up to God." x 
 
 Of the great mass of his writings, more volumi- 
 nous than those of any author of his time, it would 
 ill become us to speak with confidence. We are 
 familiar only with some of the best of his practical 
 works, and our estimate of the vast and appalling 
 series of his doctrinal, metaphysical, and controver- 
 sial publications would be entitled to small weight, 
 as the result of very cursory examination. Many 
 of them relate to obsolete questions and issues, mon- 
 umental of controversies long dead, and of dis- 
 putatious doctors otherwise forgotten. Yet, in re- 
 spect to even these, we feel justified in assenting to 
 the opinion of one abundantly capable of appre- 
 1 Poetical Fragments, by R. Baxter, p. 16.
 
 180 PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES 
 
 elating the character of Baxter as a writer. " What 
 works of Mr. Baxter shall I read ? " asked Boswell 
 of Dr. Johnson. " Read any of them," was the 
 answer, " for they are all good." He has left 
 upon all the impress of his genius. Many of them 
 contain sentiments which happily find favor with 
 few in our time : philosophical and psychological 
 disquisitions, which look oddly enough in the light 
 of the intellectual progress of nearly two centuries ; 
 dissertations upon evil spirits, ghosts, and witches, 
 which provoke smiles at the good man's credulity ; 
 but everywhere we find unmistakable evidences of 
 his sincerity and earnest love of truth. He wrote 
 under a solemn impression of duty, allowing neither 
 pain, nor weakness, nor the claims of friendship, nor 
 the social enjoyments of domestic affection, to in- 
 terfere with his sleepless intensity of purpose. He 
 stipulated with his wife, before marriage, that she 
 should not expect him to relax, even for her society, 
 the severity of his labors. He could ill brook in- 
 terruption, and disliked the importunity of visitors. 
 " We are afraid, sir, we break in upon your time," 
 said some of his callers to him upon one occasion. 
 " To be sure you do," was his answer. His seri- 
 ousness seldom forsook him; there is scarce a 
 gleam of gayety in all his one hundred and sixty- 
 eight volumes. He seems to have relished, how- 
 ever, the wit of others, especially when directed 
 against what he looked upon as error. Marvell's 
 inimitable reply to the High-Church pretensions 
 of Parker fairly overcame his habitual gravity, and 
 he several times alludes to it with marked satisfac- 
 tion ; but, for himself, he had no heart for pleas-
 
 RICHARD BAXTER 181 
 
 antry. His writings, like his sermons, were the 
 earnest expostulations of a dying man with dying 
 men. He tells us of no other amusement or relax- 
 ation than the singing of psalms. " Harmony and 
 melody," said he, " are the pleasure and elevation 
 of my soul. It was not the least comfort that I had 
 in the converse of my late dear wife, that our first 
 act in the morning and last in bed at night was a 
 psalm of praise." 
 
 It has been fashionable to speak of Baxter as a 
 champion of civil and religious freedom. He has 
 little claim to such a reputation. He was the stanch 
 advocate of monarchy, and of the right and duty 
 of the State to enforce conformity to what he 
 regarded as the essentials of religious belief and 
 practice. No one regards the prelates who went 
 to the Tower, under James II., on the ground of 
 conscientious scruples against reading the King's 
 declaration of toleration to Dissenters, as martyrs 
 in the cause of universal religious freedom. Nor 
 can Baxter, although he wrote much against the 
 coercion and silencing of godly ministers, and suf- 
 fered imprisonment himself for the sake of a good 
 conscience, be looked upon in the light of an intel- 
 ligent and consistent confessor of liberty. He did 
 not deny the abstract right of ecclesiastical coercion, 
 but complained of its exercise upon himself and his 
 friends as unwarranted and unjust. 
 
 One of the warmest admirers and ablest com- 
 mentators of Baxter designates the leading and pe- 
 culiar trait of his character as unearthliness. In our 
 view, this was its radical defect. He had too little 
 of humanity, he felt too little of the attraction of
 
 182 PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES 
 
 this world, and lived too exclusively in the spiritual 
 and the unearthly, for a full and healthful develop- 
 ment of his nature as a man, or of the graces, chari- 
 ties, and loves of the Christian. He undervalued 
 the common blessings and joys of life, and closed 
 his eyes and ears against the beauty and harmony 
 of outward nature. Humanity, in itself considered, 
 seemed of small moment to him ; " passing away " 
 was written alike on its wrongs and its rights, its 
 pleasures and its pains ; death would soon level all 
 distinctions ; and the sorrows or the joys, the pov- 
 erty or the riches, the slavery or the liberty, of the 
 brief day of its probation seemed of too little con- 
 sequence to engage his attention and sympathies. 
 Hence, while he was always ready to minister to 
 temporal suffering wherever it came to his notice, 
 he made no efforts to remove its political or social 
 causes. In this respect he differed widely from 
 some of his illustrious contemporaries. Penn, while 
 preaching up and down the land, and writing theo- 
 logical folios and pamphlets, could yet urge the 
 political rights of Englishmen, mount the hustings 
 for Algernon Sydney, and plead for unlimited re- 
 ligious liberty ; and Vane, while dreaming of a com- 
 ing millennium and reign of the saints, and busily 
 occupied in defending his Antinoinian doctrines, 
 could at the same time vindicate, with tongue and 
 pen, the cause of civil and religious freedom. But 
 Baxter overlooked the evils and oppressions which 
 were around him, and forgot the necessities and 
 duties of the world of time and sense in his earnest 
 aspirations towards the world of spirits. It is by 
 no means an uninstructive fact, that with the lapse 
 of years his zeal for proselytism, doctrinal dispu-
 
 RICHARD BAXTER 183 
 
 tations, and the preaching of threats and terrors 
 visibly declined, while love for his fellow -men 
 and catholic charity greatly increased, and he was 
 blessed with a clearer perception of the truth that 
 God is best served through His suffering children, 
 and that love and reverence for visible humanity 
 is an indispensable condition of the appropriate 
 worship of the Unseen God. 
 
 But, in taking leave of Richard Baxter, our last 
 words must not be those of censure. Admiration 
 and reverence become us rather. He was an honest 
 man. So far as we can judge, his motives were the 
 highest and best which can influence human action. 
 He had faults and weaknesses, and committed grave 
 errors, but we are constrained to believe that the 
 prayer with which he closes his /Saints' Rest and 
 which we have chosen as the fitting termination of 
 our article, was the earnest aspiration of his life : 
 
 " O merciful Father of Spirits ! suffer not the 
 soul of thy unworthy servant to be a stranger to 
 the joys which he describes to others, but keep me 
 while I remain on earth in daily breathing after 
 thee, and in a believing affectionate walking with 
 thee ! Let those who shall read these pages not 
 merely read the fruits of my studies, but the breath- 
 ing of my active hope and love ; that if my heart 
 were open to their view, they might there read thy 
 love most deeply engraven upon it with a beam 
 from the face of the Son of God ; and not find van- 
 ity or lust or pride within where the words of life 
 appear without, that so these lines may not witness 
 against me, but, proceeding from the heart of the 
 writer, be effectual through thy grace upon the heart 
 of the reader, and so be the savor of life to both."
 
 WILLIAM LEGGETT. 
 
 " Freedom ! thou art not, as poets dream, 
 A fair young girl, with light and delicate limbs, 
 And wavy tresses, gushing from the cap 
 With which the Roman master crowned his slave, 
 When he took off the gyres. A bearded man, 
 Armed to the teeth, art thou ; one mailed hand 
 Grasps the broad shield, and one the sword ; thy brow, 
 Glorious in beauty though it be, is scarred 
 With tokens of old wars ; thy massive limbs 
 Are strong with struggling. Power at thee has launched 
 TTia bolts, and with his lightnings smitten thee ; 
 They could not quench the life thou hast from Heaven." 
 
 BBYANT. 
 
 WHEN the noblest woman in all France stood 
 on the scaffold, just before her execution, she is 
 said to have turned towards the statue of Liberty, 
 which, strangely enough, had been placed near 
 the guillotine, as its patron saint, with the ex- 
 clamation, " O Liberty ! what crimes have been 
 committed in thy name ! " It is with a feeling 
 akin to that which prompted this memorable ex- 
 clamation of Madame Roland that the sincere lover 
 of human freedom and progress is often compelled 
 to regard American democracy. 
 
 For democracy, pure and impartial, the self- 
 government of the whole ; equal rights and privi- 
 leges, irrespective of birth or complexion ; the 
 morality of the Gospel of Christ applied to legis- 
 lation ; Christianity reduced to practice, and show-
 
 WILLIAM LEGGETT 185 
 
 ering the blessings of its impartial love and equal 
 protection upon all, like the rain and dews of 
 heaven, we have the sincerest love and rever- 
 ence. So far as our own government approaches 
 this standard and, with all its faults, we believe 
 it does so more nearly than any other it has our 
 hearty and steadfast allegiance. We complain of 
 and protest against it only where, in its original 
 framework or actual administration, it departs 
 from the democratic principle. Holding, with 
 Novalis, that the Christian religion is the root of 
 all democracy and the highest fact in the rights of 
 man, we regard the New Testament as the true 
 political text-book ; and believe that, just in pro- 
 portion as mankind receive its doctrines and pre- 
 cepts, not merely as matters of faith and relating 
 to another state of being, but as practical rules, 
 designed for the regulation of the present life as 
 well as the future, their institutions, social arrange- 
 ments, and forms of government will approximate 
 to the democratic model. We believe in the ulti- 
 mate complete accomplishment of the mission of 
 Him who came " to preach deliverance to the cap- 
 tive, and the opening of prison doors to them that 
 are bound." We look forward to the universal 
 dominion of His benign humanity; and, turning 
 from the strife and blood, the slavery, and social 
 and political wrongs of the past and present, anti- 
 cipate the realization in the distant future of that 
 state when the song of the angels at His advent 
 shall be no longer a prophecy, but the jubilant ex- 
 pression of a glorious reality, " Glory to God in 
 the highest ! Peace on earth, and good will to 
 man!"
 
 186 PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES 
 
 For the party in this country which has assumed 
 the name of Democracy, as a party, we have had, 
 we confess, for some years past, very little respect. 
 It has advocated many salutary measures, tending 
 to equalize the advantages of trade and remove 
 the evils of special legislation. But if it has 
 occasionally lopped some of the branches of the 
 evil tree of oppression, so far from striking at its 
 root, it has suffered itself to be made the instru- 
 ment of nourishing and protecting it. It has 
 allowed itself to be called, by its Southern flat- 
 terers, " the natural ally of slavery." It has 
 spurned the petitions of the people in behalf of 
 freedom under its feet, in Congress and State leg- 
 islatures. Nominally the advocate of universal 
 suffrage, it has wrested from the colored citizens 
 of Pennsylvania that right of citizenship which 
 they had enjoyed under a Constitution framed by 
 Franklin and Rush. Perhaps the most shameful 
 exhibition of its spirit was made in the late Rhode 
 Island struggle, when the free suffrage conven- 
 tion, solemnly calling heaven and earth to witness 
 its readiness to encounter all the horrors of civil 
 war, in defence of the holy principle of equal and 
 universal suffrage, deliberately excluded colored 
 Rhode Islanders from the privilege of voting. In 
 the Constitutional Conventions of Michigan and 
 Iowa, the same party declared all men equal, and 
 then provided an exception to this rule in the case 
 of the colored inhabitants. Its course on the 
 question of excluding slavery from Texas is a mat- 
 ter of history, known and read of all. 
 
 After such exhibitions of its practice, its pro-
 
 WILLIAM LEGGETT 187 
 
 fessions have lost their power. The cant of de- 
 mocracy upon the lips of men who are living down 
 its principles is, to an earnest mind, wellnigh in- 
 sufferable. Pertinent were the queries of Eliphaz 
 the Temanite, " Shall a man utter vain knowledge, 
 and fill his belly with the east wind ? Shall he 
 reason with unprofitable talk, or with speeches 
 wherewith he can do no good ? " Enough of 
 wearisome talk we have had about " progress," the 
 rights of " the masses," the " dignity of labor," 
 and " extending the area of freedom " ! " Clear 
 your mind of cant, sir," said Johnson to Bos well ; 
 and no better advice could be now given to a class 
 of our democratic politicians. Work out your 
 democracy ; translate your words into deeds ; away 
 with your sentimental generalizations, and come 
 down to the practical details of your duty as men 
 and Christians. What avail your abstract theories, 
 your hopeless virginity of democracy, sacred from 
 the violence of meanings ? A democracy which 
 professes to hold, as by divine right, the doctrine 
 of human equality in its special keeping, and 
 which at the same time gives its direct countenance 
 and support to the vilest system of oppression on 
 which the sun of heaven looks, has no better title 
 to the name it disgraces than the apostate Son of 
 the Morning has to his old place in heaven. We 
 are using strong language, for we feel strongly on 
 this subject. Let those whose hypocrisy we con- 
 demn, and whose sins against humanity we expose, 
 remember that they are the publishers of their own 
 shame, and that they have gloried in their apos- 
 tasy. There is a cutting severity in the answer
 
 188 PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES 
 
 which Sophocles puts in the mouth of Electra, in 
 justification of her indignant rebuke of her wicked 
 mother : 
 
 " 'T is you that say it, not I 
 You do the unholy deeds which find me words." 
 
 Yet in that party calling itself democratic we re- 
 joice to recognize true, generous, and thoroughly 
 sincere men, lovers of the word of democracy, 
 and doers of it also, honest and hearty in their 
 worship of liberty, who are still hoping that the 
 antagonism which slavery presents to democracy 
 will be perceived by the people, in spite of the 
 sophistry and appeals to prejudice by which inter- 
 ested partisans have hitherto succeeded in deceiv- 
 ing them. We believe with such that the mass of 
 the democratic voters of the free States are in real- 
 ity friends of freedom, and hate slavery in all its 
 forms ; and that, with a full understanding of the 
 matter, they could never consent to be sold to 
 presidential aspirants, by political speculators, in 
 lots to suit purchasers, and warranted to be useful 
 in putting down free discussion, perpetuating op- 
 pression, and strengthening the hands of modern 
 feudalism. They are beginning already to see 
 that, under the process whereby men of easy virtue 
 obtain offices from the general government, as the 
 reward of treachery to free principles, the strength 
 and vitality of the party are rapidly declining. 
 To them, at least, democracy means something 
 more than collectorships, consulates, and govern- 
 mental contracts. For the sake of securing a mo- 
 nopoly of these to a few selfish and heartless party 
 managers, they are not prepared to give up the dis-
 
 WILLIAM LEGGETT 189 
 
 tinctive principles of democracy, and substitute in 
 their place the doctrines of the Satanic school of 
 politics. They will not much longer consent to 
 stand before the world as the slavery party of the 
 United States, especially when policy and expedi- 
 ency, as well as principle, unite in recommending 
 a position more congenial to the purposes of their 
 organization, the principles of the fathers of their 
 political faith, the spirit of the age, and the obliga- 
 tions of Christianity. 
 
 The death-blow of slavery in this country will be 
 given by the very power upon which it has hitherto 
 relied with so much confidence. Abused and in- 
 sulted Democracy will, erelong, shake off the loath- 
 some burden under which it is now staggering. In 
 the language of the late Theodore Sedgwick, of 
 Massachusetts, a consistent democrat of the old 
 school : " Slavery, in all its forms, is anti-demo- 
 cratic, an old poison left in the veins, fostering 
 the worst principles of aristocracy, pride, and aver- 
 sion to labor ; the natural enemy of the poor man, 
 the laboring man, the oppressed man. The ques- 
 tion is, whether absolute dominion over any crea- 
 ture in the image of man be a wholesome power in 
 a free country ; whether this is a school in which 
 to train the young republican mind ; whether slave 
 blood and free blood can course healthily together 
 in the same body politic. Whatever may be pres- 
 ent appearances, and by whatever name party may 
 choose to call things, this question must finally be 
 settled by the democracy of the country." 
 
 This prediction was made eight years ago, at a 
 time when all the facts in the case seemed against
 
 190 PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES 
 
 the probability of its truth, and when only here 
 and there the voice of an indignant freeman pro- 
 tested against the exulting claims of the slave 
 power upon the democracy as its " natural ally." 
 The signs of the times now warrant the hope of its 
 fulfilment. Over the hills of the East, and over 
 the broad territory of the Empire State, a new 
 spirit is moving. Democracy, like Balaam upon 
 Zophim, has felt the divine afflatus, and is bless- 
 ing that which it was summoned to curse. 
 
 The present hopeful state of things is owing, in 
 no slight degree, to the self-sacrificing exertions of 
 a few faithful and clear-sighted men, foremost 
 among whom was the late William Leggett ; than 
 whom no one has labored more perseveringly, or, 
 in the end, more successfully, to bring the practice 
 of American democracy into conformity with its 
 professions. 
 
 William Leggett ! Let our right hand forget its 
 cunning, when that name shall fail to awaken gen- 
 erous emotions and aspirations for a higher and 
 worthier manhood ! True man and true demo- 
 crat ; faithful always to Liberty, following wherever 
 she led, whether the storm beat in his face or on 
 his back ; unhesitatingly counting her enemies his 
 own, whether in the guise of Whig monopoly and 
 selfish expediency, or democratic servility north of 
 Mason and Dixon's line towards democratic slave- 
 holding south of it ; poor, yet incorruptible ; de- 
 pendent upon party favor, as a party editor, yet 
 risking all in condemnation of that party, when in 
 the wrong ; a man of the people, yet never stoop- 
 ing to flatter the people's prejudices, he is the
 
 WILLIAM LEGGETT 191 
 
 politician, of all others, whom we would hold up to 
 the admiration and imitation of the young men of 
 our country. What Fletcher of Saltoun is to Scot- 
 land, and the brave spirits of the old Common- 
 wealth time 
 
 ' ' Hands that penned 
 
 And tongues that uttered wisdom, better none 
 The later Sydney, Marvell, Harrington, 
 Young Vane, and others, who called Milton friend " 
 
 are to England, should Leggett be to America. 
 His character was formed on these sturdy demo- 
 cratic models. Had he lived in their day, he would 
 have scraped with old Andrew Marvell the bare 
 blade-bone of poverty, or even laid his head on the 
 block with Vane, rather than forego his indepen- 
 dent thought and speech. 
 
 Of the early life of William Leggett we have no 
 very definite knowledge. Born in moderate cir- 
 cumstances ; at first a woodsman in the Western 
 wilderness, then a midshipman in the navy, then 
 a denizen of New York ; exposed to sore hardships 
 and perilous temptations, he worked his way by 
 the force of his genius to the honorable position of 
 associate editor of the Evening Post, the leading 
 democratic journal of our great commercial me- 
 tropolis. Here he became early distinguished for 
 his ultraism in democracy. His whole soul re- 
 volted against oppression. He was for liberty 
 everywhere and in all things, in thought, in speech, 
 in vote, in religion, in government, and in trade ; 
 he was for throwing off all restraints upon the 
 right of suffrage ; regarding all men as brethren, 
 he looked with disapprobation upon attempts to
 
 192 PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES 
 
 exclude foreigners from the rights of citizenship ; 
 he was for entire freedom of commerce;* he de- 
 nounced a national bank ; he took the lead in op- 
 position to the monopoly of incorporated banks ; 
 he argued in favor of direct taxation, and advo- 
 cated a free post-office, or a system by which let- 
 ters should be transported, as goods and passen- 
 gers now are, by private enterprise. In all this he 
 was thoroughly in earnest. That he often erred 
 through passion and prejudice cannot be doubted ; 
 but in no instance was he found turning aside from 
 the path which he believed to be the true one, from 
 merely selfish considerations. He was honest alike 
 to himself and the pudlic. Every question which 
 was thrown up before him by the waves of politi- 
 cal or moral agitation he measured by his stan- 
 dard of right and truth, and condemned or advo- 
 cated it in utter disregard of prevailing opinions, 
 of its effect upon his pecuniary interest, or of his 
 standing with his party. The vehemence of his 
 passions sometimes betrayed him into violence of 
 language and injustice to his opponents ; but he 
 had that rare and manly trait which enables its 
 possessor, whenever he becomes convinced of error, 
 to make a prompt acknowledgment of the convic- 
 tion. 
 
 In the summer of 1834, a series of mobs, directed 
 against the Abolitionists, who had organized a 
 national society, with the city of New York as its 
 central point, followed each other in rapid succes- 
 sion. The houses of the leading men in the society 
 were sacked and pillaged ; meeting-houses broken 
 into and defaced; and the unoffending colored
 
 WILLIAM LEGGETT 193 
 
 inhabitants of the city treated with the grossest 
 indignity, and subjected, in some instances, to 
 shameful personal outrage. It was emphatically 
 a " Reign of Terror." The press of both political 
 parties and of the leading religious sects, by appeals 
 to prejudice and passion, and by studied misrepre- 
 sentation of the designs and measures of the Abo- 
 litionists, fanned the flame of excitement, until the 
 fury of demons possessed the misguided populace. 
 To advocate emancipation, or defend those who did 
 so, in New York, at that period, was like preach- 
 ing democracy in Constantinople or religious toler- 
 ation in Paris on the eve of St. Bartholomew. Law 
 was prostrated in the dust ; to be suspected of 
 abolitionism was to incur a liability to an indefinite 
 degree of insult and indignity ; and the few and 
 hunted friends of the slave who in those nights of 
 terror laid their heads upon the pillow did so with 
 the prayer of the Psalmist on their lips, " Defend 
 me from them that rise up against me ; save me 
 from bloody men." 
 
 At this period the New York Evening Post spoke 
 out strongly in condemnation of the mob. William 
 Leggett was not then an Abolitionist ; he had known 
 nothing of the proscribed class, save through the 
 cruel misrepresentations of their enemies ; but, true 
 to his democratic faith, he maintained the right to 
 discuss the question of slavery. The infection of 
 cowardly fear, which at that time sealed the lips 
 of multitudes who deplored the excesses of the mob 
 and sympathized with its victims, never reached 
 him. Boldly, indignantly, he demanded that the 
 mob should be put down at once by the civil
 
 194 PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES 
 
 authorities. He declared the Abolitionists, even if 
 guilty of all that had been charged upon them, fully 
 entitled to the privileges and immunities of Amer- 
 ican citizens. He sternly reprimanded the board 
 of aldermen of the city for rejecting with contempt 
 the memorial of the Abolitionists to that body, 
 explanatory of their principles and the measures 
 by which they had sought to disseminate them. 
 Referring to the determination, expressed by the 
 memorialists in the rejected document, not to recant 
 or relinquish any principle which they had adopted, 
 but to live and die by their faith, he said : " In 
 this, however mistaken, however mad, we may con- 
 sider their opinions in relation to the blacks, what 
 honest, independent mind can blame them? Where 
 is the man so poor of soul, so white-livered, so base, 
 that he would do less in relation to any important 
 doctrine in which he religiously believed ? Where 
 is the man who would have his tenets drubbed into 
 him by the clubs of ruffians, or hold his conscience 
 at the dictation of a mob ? " 
 
 In the summer of 1835, a mob of excited citi- 
 zens broke open the post-office at Charleston, South 
 Carolina, and burnt in the street such papers and 
 pamphlets as they judged to be " incendiary ; " in 
 other words, such as advocated the application of 
 the democratic principle to the condition of the 
 slaves of the South. These papers were addressed, 
 not to the slave, but to the master. They con- 
 tained nothing which had not been said and written 
 by Southern men themselves, the Pinkneys, Jeffer- 
 sons, Henrys, and Martins, of Maryland and Vir- 
 ginia. The example set at Charleston did not
 
 WILLIAM LEGGETT 195 
 
 lack imitators. Every petty postmaster south of 
 Mason and Dixon's line became ex qfficio a censor 
 of the press. The Postmaster-General, writing to 
 his subordinate at Charleston, after stating that 
 the post-office department had " no legal right to 
 exclude newspapers from the mail, or prohibit their 
 carriage or delivery, on account of their character 
 or tendency, real or supposed," declared that he 
 would, nevertheless, give no aid, directly or indi- 
 rectly, in circulating publications of an incendiary 
 or inflammatory character ; and assured the per- 
 jured functionary, who had violated his oath of 
 office, that, while he could not sanction, he would 
 not condemn his conduct. Against this virtual 
 encouragement of a flagrant infringement of a con- 
 stitutional right, this licensing of thousands of petty 
 government officials to sit in their mail offices to 
 use the figure of Milton cross-legged, like so many 
 envious Junos, in judgment upon the daily offspring 
 of the press, taking counsel of passion, prejudice, 
 and popular excitement as to what was " incen- 
 diary " or " inflammatory," the Evening Post spoke 
 in tones of manly protest. 
 
 While almost all the editors of his party through- 
 out the country either openly approved of the con- 
 duct of the Postmaster-General or silently acqui- 
 esced in it, William Leggett, who, in the absence 
 of his colleague, was at that time sole editor of the 
 JPost, and who had everything to lose, in a worldly 
 point of view, by assailing a leading functionary of 
 the government, who was a favorite of the Presi- 
 dent and a sharer of his popularity, did not hesi- 
 tate as to the course which consistency and duty
 
 196 PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES 
 
 required at his hands. He took his stand for un- 
 popular truth, at a time when a different course on 
 his part could not have failed to secure him the 
 favor and patronage of his party. In the great 
 struggle with the Bank of the United States, his 
 services had not been unappreciated by the Presi- 
 dent and his friends. Without directly approving 
 the course of the administration on the question 
 of the rights of the Abolitionists, by remaining 
 silent in respect to it, he might have avoided all 
 suspicion of mental and moral independence in- 
 compatible with party allegiance. The imprac- 
 ticable honesty of Leggett, never bending from 
 the erectness of truth for the sake of that " thrift 
 which follows fawning," dictated a most severe 
 and scorching review of the letter of the Post- 
 master-General. " More monstrous, more detesta- 
 ble doctrines we have never heard promulgated," 
 he exclaimed in one of his leading editorials. 
 " With what face, after this, can the Postmaster- 
 General punish a postmaster for any exercise of 
 the fearfully dangerous power of stopping and 
 destroying any portion of the mails ? " " The 
 Abolitionists do not deserve to be placed on the 
 same footing with a foreign enemy, nor their pub- 
 lications as the secret despatches of a spy. They 
 are American citizens, in the exercise of their 
 undoubted right of citizenship ; and however erro- 
 neous their views, however fanatic their conduct, 
 while they act within the limits of the law, what 
 official functionary, be he merely a subordinate or 
 the head of the post-office department, shall dare to 
 abridge them of their rights as citizens, and deny
 
 WILLIAM LEGGETT 197 
 
 them those facilities of intercourse which were 
 instituted for the equal accommodation of all ? If 
 the American people will submit to this, let us 
 expunge all written codes, and resolve society into 
 its original elements, where the might of the strong 
 is better than the right of the weak." 
 
 A few days after the publication of this manly 
 rebuke, he wrote an indignantly sarcastic article 
 upon the mobs which were at this time everywhere 
 summoned to " put down the Abolitionists." The 
 next day, the 4th of the ninth month, 1835, he 
 received a copy of the Address of the American 
 Anti-Slavery Society to the public, containing a 
 full and explicit avowal of all the principles and 
 designs of the association. He gave it a candid 
 perusal, weighed its arguments, compared its doc- 
 trines with those at the foundation of his own 
 political faith, and rose up from its examination an 
 Abolitionist. He saw that he himself, misled by 
 the popular clamor, had done injustice to benevo- 
 lent and self-sacrificing men; and he took the 
 earliest occasion, in an article of great power and 
 eloquence, to make the amplest atonement. He 
 declared his entire concurrence with the views of 
 the American Anti-Slavery Society, with the single 
 exception of a doubt which rested 011 his mind as 
 to the abolition of slavery in the District of Colum- 
 bia. We quote from the concluding paragraph of 
 this article : 
 
 " We assert without hesitation, that, if we pos- 
 sessed the right, we should not scruple to exercise 
 it for the speedy annihilation of servitude and 
 chains. The impression made in boyhood by the 
 glorious exclamation of Cato,
 
 198 PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES 
 
 " ' A day, an hour, of virtuous liberty 
 Is worth a whole eternity of bondage ! ' 
 
 has been worn deeper, not effaced, by time ; and 
 we eagerly and ardently trust that the day will yet 
 arrive when the clank of the bondman's fetters will 
 form no part of the multitudinous sounds which our 
 country sends up to Heaven, mingling, as it were, 
 into a song of praise for our national prosperity. 
 We yearn with strong desire for the day when free- 
 dom shall no longer wave 
 
 " ' Her fustian flag in mockery over slaves.' " 
 
 A few days after, in reply to the assaults made 
 upon him from all quarters, he calmly and firmly 
 reiterated his determination to maintain the right 
 of free discussion of the subject of slavery. 
 
 " The course we are pursuing," said he, " is one 
 which we entered upon after mature deliberation, 
 and we are not to be turned from it by a species 
 of opposition, the inefficacy of which we have seen 
 displayed in so many former instances. It is Philip 
 Van Artevelde who says : 
 
 "'All my life long, 
 
 I have beheld with most respect the man 
 Who knew himself, and knew the ways before him ; 
 And from among them chose considerately, 
 With a clear foresight, not a blindfold courage ; 
 And, having chosen, with a steadfast mind 
 Pursued his purpose.' 
 
 " This is the sort of character we emulate. If 
 to believe slavery a deplorable evil and curse, in 
 whatever light it is viewed ; if to yearn for the day 
 which shall break the fetters of three millions of 
 human beings, and restore to them their birthright 
 of equal freedom ; if to be willing, in season and
 
 WILLIAM LEGGETT 199 
 
 out of season, to do all in our power to promote so 
 desirable a result, by all means not inconsistent with 
 higher duty : if these sentiments constitute us Aboli- 
 tionists, then are we such, and glory in the name." 
 " The senseless cry of ' Abolitionist ' shall never 
 deter us, nor the more senseless attempt of puny 
 prints to read us out of the democratic party. The 
 often-quoted and beautiful saying of the Latin his- 
 torian, Homo sum : humani nihil a me alienumputo-) 
 we apply to the poor slave as well as his master, 
 and shall endeavor to fulfil towards both the obli- 
 gations of an equal humanity." 
 
 The generation which, since the period of which 
 we are speaking, have risen into active life can 
 have but a faint conception of the boldness of this 
 movement on the part of William Leggett. To be 
 an Abolitionist then was to abandon all hope of 
 political preferment or party favor ; to be marked 
 and branded as a social outlaw, under good so- 
 ciety's interdict of food and fire ; to hold property, 
 liberty, and life itself at the mercy of lawless mobs. 
 All this William Leggett clearly saw. He knew 
 how rugged and thorny was the path upon which, 
 impelled by his love of truth and the obligations 
 of humanity, he was entering. From hunted and 
 proscribed Abolitionists and oppressed and spirit- 
 broken colored men, the Pariahs of American de- 
 mocracy, he could alone expect sympathy. The 
 Whig journals, with a few honorable exceptions, 
 exulted over what they regarded as the fall of a 
 formidable opponent ; and after painting his abo- 
 litionism in the most hideous colors, held him up to 
 their Southern allies as a specimen of the radical
 
 200 PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES 
 
 disorganizes and democratic levellers of the North. 
 His own party, in consequence, made haste to pro- 
 scribe him. Government advertising was promptly 
 withdrawn from his paper. The official journals 
 of Washington and Albany read him out of the 
 pale of democracy. Father Ritchie scolded and 
 threatened. The democratic committee issued its 
 bull against him from Tammany Hall. The reso- 
 lutions of that committee were laid before him 
 when he was sinking under a severe illness. Ral- 
 lying his energies, he dictated from his sick-bed 
 an answer marked by all his accustomed vigor and 
 boldness. Its tone was calm, manly, self -relying ; 
 the language of one who, having planted his feet 
 hard down on the rock of principle, stood there 
 like Luther at Worms, because he "could not 
 otherwise." Exhausted nature sunk under the 
 effort. A weary sickness of nearly a year's dura- 
 tion followed. In this sore affliction, deserted as 
 he was by most of his old political friends, we have 
 reason to know that he was cheered by the grati- 
 tude of those in whose behalf he had wellnigh 
 made a martyr's sacrifice ; and that from the hum- 
 ble hearths of his poor colored fellow-citizens fer- 
 vent prayers went up for his restoration. 
 
 His work was not yet done. Purified by trial, 
 he was to stand forth once more in vindication of 
 the truths of freedom. As soon as his health was 
 sufficiently reestablished, he commenced the pub- 
 lication of an independent political and literary 
 journal, under the expressive title of The Plain- 
 dealer. In his first number he stated, that, claim- 
 ing the right of absolute freedom of discussion,
 
 WILLIAM LEGGETT 201 
 
 lie should exercise it with no other limitations than 
 those of his own judgment. A poor man, he ad- 
 mitted that he established the paper in the ex- 
 pectation of deriving from it a livelihood, but that 
 even for that object he could not trim its sails to 
 suit the varying breeze of popular prejudice. " If," 
 said he, " a paper which makes the Right, and not 
 the Expedient, its cardinal object, will not yield its 
 conductor a support, there are honest vocations 
 that will, and better the humblest of them than to 
 be seated at the head of an influential press, if its 
 influence is not exerted to promote the cause of 
 truth." He was true to his promise. The free 
 soul of a free, strong man spoke out in his paper. 
 How refreshing was it, after listening to the 
 inanities, the dull, witless vulgarity, the wearisome 
 commonplace of journalists, who had no higher 
 aim than to echo, with parrot-like exactness, cur- 
 rent prejudices and falsehoods, to turn to the great 
 and generous thoughts, the chaste and vigorous 
 diction, of the Plaindealer I No man ever had a 
 clearer idea of the duties and responsibilities of a 
 conductor of the public press than William Leg- 
 gett, and few have ever combined so many of the 
 qualifications for their perfect discharge : a nice 
 sense of justice, a warm benevolence, inflexible 
 truth, honesty defying temptation, a mind stored 
 with learning, and having at command the treas- 
 ures of the best thoughts of the best authors. As 
 was said of Fletcher of Saltoun, he was " a gentle- 
 man steady in his principles ; of nice honor, abun- 
 dance of learning ; bold as a lion ; a sure friend ; 
 a man who would lose his life to serve his country,
 
 202 PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES 
 
 and would not do a base thing to save it." He 
 had his faults : his positive convictions sometimes 
 took the shape of a proud and obstinate dogma- 
 tism ; he who could so well appeal to the judgment 
 and the reason of his readers too often only roused 
 their passions by invective and vehement declama- 
 tion. Moderate men were startled and pained by 
 the fierce energy of his language ; and he not un- 
 frequently made implacable enemies of opponents 
 whom he might have conciliated and won over by 
 mild expostulation and patient explanation. It 
 must be urged in extenuation, that, as the champion 
 of unpopular truths, he was assailed unfairly on all 
 sides, and indecently misrepresented and calumni- 
 ated to a degree, as his friend Sedgwick justly 
 remarks, unprecedented even in the annals of the 
 American press ; and that his errors in this respect 
 were, in the main, errors of retaliation. 
 
 In the Plaindealer, in common with the leading 
 moral and political subjects of the day, that of 
 slavery was freely discussed in all its bearings. It 
 is difficult, in a single extract, to convey an ade- 
 quate idea of the character of the editorial columns 
 of a paper, where terse and concentrated irony and 
 sarcasm alternate with eloquent appeal and diffuse 
 commentary and labored argument. We can only 
 offer at random the following passages from a long 
 review of a speech of John C. Calhoun, in which 
 that extraordinary man, whose giant intellect has 
 been shut out of its appropriate field of exercise 
 by the very slavery of which he is the champion, 
 undertook to maintain, in reply to a Virginia sen- 
 ator, that chattel slavery was not an evil, but " a 
 great good."
 
 WILLIAM LEGGETT 203 
 
 " We have Mr. Calhoun's own warrant for at- 
 tacking his position with all the fervor which a 
 high sense of duty can give, for we do hold, from 
 the bottom of our soul, that slavery is an evil, 
 a deep, detestable, damnable evil ; evil in all its 
 aspects to the blacks, and a greater evil to the 
 whites; an evil moral, social, and political; an 
 evil which shows itself in the languishing condition 
 of agriculture where it exists, in paralyzed com- 
 merce, and in the prostration of the mechanic arts ; 
 an evil which stares you in the face from unculti- 
 vated fields, and howls in your ears through tangled 
 swamps and morasses. Slavery is such an evil 
 that it withers what it touches. Where it is once 
 securely established the land becomes desolate, as 
 the tree inevitably perishes which the sea-hawk 
 chooses for its nest ; while freedom, on the con- 
 trary, flourishes like the tannen, ' on the loftiest 
 and least sheltered rocks,' and clothes with its re- 
 freshing verdure what, without it, would frown in 
 naked and incurable sterility. 
 
 " If any one desires an illustration of the oppo- 
 site influences of slavery and freedom, let him look 
 at the two sister States of Kentucky and Ohio. 
 Alike in soil and climate, and divided only by a 
 river, whose translucent waters reveal, through 
 nearly the whole breadth, the sandy bottom over 
 which they sparkle, how different are they in all 
 the respects over which man has control ! On the 
 one hand the air is vocal with the mingled tumult 
 of a vast and prosperous population. Every hill- 
 side smiles with an abundant harvest, every valley 
 shelters a thriving village, the click of a busy mill
 
 204 PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES 
 
 drowns the prattle of every rivulet, and all the 
 multitudinous sounds of business denote happy 
 activity in every branch of social occupation. 
 
 " This is the State which, but a few years ago, 
 slept in the unbroken solitude of nature. The 
 forest spread an interminable canopy of shade over 
 the dark soil on which the fat and useless vegeta- 
 tion rotted at ease, and through the dusky vistas 
 of the wood only savage beasts and more savage 
 men prowled in quest of prey. The whole land 
 now blossoms like a garden. The tall and inter- 
 lacing trees have unlocked their hold, and bowed 
 before the woodman's axe. The soil is disencum- 
 bered of the mossy trunks which had reposed upon 
 it for ages. The rivers flash in the sunlight, and 
 the fields smile with waving harvests. This is 
 Ohio, and this is what freedom has done for it. 
 
 " Now, let us turn to Kentucky, and note the 
 opposite influences of slavery. A narrow and un- 
 frequented path through the close and sultry cane- 
 brake conducts us to a wretched hovel. It stands 
 in the midst of an unweeded field, whose dilapidated 
 enclosure scarcely protects it from the lowing and 
 hungry kine. Children half clad and squalid, and 
 destitute of the buoyancy natural to their age, 
 lounge in the sunshine, while their parent saun- 
 ters apart, to watch his languid slaves drive the 
 ill-appointed team afield. This is not a fancy pic- 
 ture. It is a true copy of one of the features 
 which make up the aspect of the State, and of 
 every State where the moral leprosy of slavery 
 covers the people with its noisome scales ; a dead- 
 ening lethargy benumbs the limbs of the body
 
 WILLIAM LEGGETT 205 
 
 politic ; a stupor settles on the arts of life ; agri- 
 culture reluctantly drags the plough and harrow to 
 the field, only when scourged by necessity; the 
 axe drops from the woodman's nerveless hand the 
 moment his fire is scantily supplied with fuel ; and 
 the fen, undrained, sends up its noxious exhala- 
 tions, to rack with cramps and agues the frame 
 already too much enervated by a moral epidemic 
 to creep beyond the sphere of the material rniasm." 
 The Plaindealer was uniformly conducted with 
 eminent ability ; but its editor was too far in ad- 
 vance of his contemporaries to find general accept- 
 ance, or even toleration. In addition to pecuniary 
 embarrassments, his health once more failed, and 
 in the autumn of 1837 he was compelled to sus- 
 pend the publication of his paper. One of the 
 last articles which he wrote for it shows the extent 
 to which he was sometimes carried by the intensity 
 and depth of his abhorrence of oppression, and the 
 fervency of his adoration of liberty. Speaking of 
 the liability of being called upon to aid the master 
 in the subjection of revolted slaves, and in repla- 
 cing their cast-off fetters, he thus expresses him- 
 self : " Would we comply with such a requisition ? 
 No ! Rather would we see our right arm lopped 
 from our body, and the mutilated trunk itself 
 gored with mortal wounds, than raise a finger in 
 opposition to men struggling in the holy cause of 
 freedom. The obligations of citizenship are strong, 
 but those of justice, humanity, and religion, 
 stronger. We earnestly trust that the great con- 
 test of opinion which is now going on in this coun- 
 try may terminate in the enfranchisement of the
 
 206 PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES 
 
 slaves, without recourse to the strife of blood ; but 
 should the oppressed bondmen, impatient of the 
 tardy progress of truth, urged only in discussion, 
 attempt to burst their chains by a more violent and 
 shorter process, they should never encounter our 
 arm nor hear our voice in the ranks of their oppo- 
 nents. We should stand a sad spectator of the con- 
 flict ; and, whatever commiseration we might feel 
 for the discomfiture of the oppressors, we should 
 pray that the battle might end in giving freedom 
 to the oppressed." 
 
 With the Plaindealer, his connection with the 
 public, in a great measure, ceased. His steady 
 and intimate friend, personal as well as political, 
 Theodore Sedgwick, Jun., a gentleman who has, 
 on many occasions, proved himself worthy of his 
 liberty-loving ancestry, thus speaks of him in his 
 private life at this period : " Amid the reverses of 
 fortune, harassed by pecuniary embarrassments, 
 during the tortures of a disease which tore away 
 his life piecemeal, he ever maintained the same 
 manly and unaltered front, the same cheerfulness 
 of disposition, the same dignity of conduct. No 
 humiliating solicitation, no weak complaint, es- 
 caped him." At the election in the fall of 1838, 
 the noble-spirited democrat was not wholly for- 
 gotten. A strenuous effort, which was wellnigh 
 successful, was made to secure his nomination as a 
 candidate for Congress. It was at this juncture 
 that he wrote to a friend in the city, from his resi- 
 dence at New Rochelle, one of the noblest letters 
 ever penned by a candidate for popular favor. 
 The following extracts will show how a true man 
 can meet the temptations of political life :
 
 WILLIAM LEGGETT 207 
 
 " What I am most afraid of is, that some of my 
 friends, in their too earnest zeal, will place me in 
 a false position on the subject of slavery. I am an 
 Abolitionist. I hate slavery in all its forms, de- 
 grees, and influences ; and I deem myself bound, 
 by the highest moral and political obligations, not 
 to let that sentiment of hate lie dormant and smoul- 
 dering in my own breast, but to give it free vent, 
 and let it blaze forth, that it may kindle equal ar- 
 dor through the whole sphere of my influence. I 
 would not have this fact disguised or mystified 
 for any oflice the people have it in their power to 
 give. Rather, a thousand times rather, would I 
 again meet the denunciations of Tammany Hall, 
 and be stigmatized with all the foul epithets with 
 which the anti-abolition vocabulary abounds, than 
 recall or deny one tittle of my creed. Abolition is, 
 in my sense, a necessary and a glorious part of 
 democracy ; and I hold the right and duty to dis- 
 cuss the subject of slavery, and to expose its hide- 
 ous evils in all their bearings, moral, social, and 
 political, as of infinitely higher importance than 
 to carry fifty sub-treasury bills. That I should 
 discharge this duty temperately ; that I should not 
 let it come in collision with other duties ; that I 
 should not let my hatred of slavery transcend the 
 express obligations of the Constitution, or violate 
 its clear spirit, I hope and trust you think suffi- 
 ciently well of me to believe. But what I fear is, 
 (not from you, however,) that some of my advo- 
 cates and champions will seek to recommend me 
 to popular support by representing me as not an 
 Abolitionist, which is false. All that I have writ-
 
 208 PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES 
 
 ten gives the lie to it. All I shall write will give 
 the lie to it. 
 
 " And here, let me add, (apart from any con- 
 sideration already adverted to,) that, as a matter 
 of mere policy, I would not, if I could, have my 
 name disjoined from abolitionism. To be an Abo- 
 litionist now is to be an incendiary ; as, three years 
 ago, to be an anti-monopolist was to be a leveller 
 and a Jack Cade. See what three short years have 
 done in effecting the anti-monopoly reform ; and 
 depend upon it that the next three years, or, if 
 not three, say three times three, if you please, will 
 work a greater revolution on the slavery question. 
 The stream of public opinion now sets against us ; 
 but it is about to turn, and the regurgitation will 
 be tremendous. Proud in that day may well be 
 the man who can float in triumph on the first ref- 
 luent wave, swept onward by the deluge which 
 he himself, in advance of his fellows, has largely 
 shared in occasioning. Such be my fate ; and, 
 living or dead, it will, in some measure, be mine ! 
 I have written my name in ineffaceable letters on 
 the abolition record ; and whether the reward ul- 
 timately come in the shape of honors to the living 
 man, or a tribute to the memory of a departed 
 one, I would not forfeit my right to it for as many 
 
 offices as has in his gift, if each of them was 
 
 greater than his own." 
 
 After mentioning that he had understood that 
 some of his friends had endeavored to propitiate 
 popular prejudice by representing him as no Abo- 
 litionist, he says : 
 
 " Keep them, for God's sake, from committing
 
 WILLIAM LEGGETT 209 
 
 any such fooleries for the sake of getting me into 
 Congress. Let others twist themselves into what 
 shapes they please, to gratify the present taste of 
 the people ; as for me, I am not formed of such 
 pliant materials, and choose to retain, undisturbed, 
 the image of my God ! I do not wish to cheat the 
 people of their votes. I would not get their sup- 
 port, any more than their money, under false pre- 
 tences. I am what I am; and if that does not 
 suit them, I am content to stay at home." 
 
 God be praised for affording us, even in these 
 latter days, the sight of an honest man ! Amidst 
 the heartlessness, the double-dealing, the evasions, 
 the prevarications, the shameful treachery and 
 falsehood, of political men of both parties, in re- 
 spect to the question of slavery, how refreshing is 
 it to listen to words like these ! They renew our 
 failing faith in human nature. They reprove our 
 weak misgivings. We rise up from their perusal 
 stronger and healthier. With something of the 
 spirit which dictated them, we renew our vows to 
 freedom, and, with manlier energy, gird up our 
 souls for the stern struggle before us. 
 
 As might have been expected, and as he him- 
 self predicted, the efforts of his friends to procure 
 his nomination failed ; but the same generous ap- 
 preciators of his rare worth were soon after more 
 successful in their exertions in his behalf. He re- 
 ceived from President Van Buren the appointment 
 of the mission to Guatemala, an appointment 
 which, in addition to honorable employment in the 
 service of his country, promised him the advan- 
 tages of a sea voyage and a change of climate, for
 
 210 PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES 
 
 the restoration of his health. The course of Martin 
 Van Buren on the subject of slavery in the Dis- 
 trict of Columbia forms, in the estimation of many 
 of his best friends, by no means the most creditable 
 portion of his political history ; but it certainly ar- 
 gues well for his magnanimity and freedom from 
 merely personal resentment that he gave this ap- 
 pointment to the man who had animadverted upon 
 that course with the greatest freedom, and whose 
 rebuke of the veto pledge, severe in its truth and 
 justice, formed the only discord in the pjean of 
 partisan flattery which greeted his inaugural. 
 But, however well intended, it came too late. In 
 the midst of the congratulations of his friends on 
 the brightening prospect before him, the still hope- 
 ful and vigorous spirit of William Leggett was 
 summoned away by death. Universal regret was 
 awakened. Admiration of his intellectual power, 
 and that generous and full appreciation of his high 
 moral worth which had been in too many instances 
 withheld from the living man by party policy and 
 prejudice, were now freely accorded to the dead. 
 The presses of both political parties vied with each 
 other in expressions of sorrow at the loss of a great 
 and true man. The Democracy, through all its 
 organs, hastened to canonize him as one of the 
 saints of its calendar. The general committee, in 
 New York, expunged their resolutions of censure. 
 The Democratic Review, at that period the most 
 respectable mouthpiece of the democratic party, 
 made him the subject of exalted eulogy. His 
 early friend and co-editor, William Cullen Bryant, 
 laid upon his grave the following tribute, alike 
 beautiful and true :
 
 WILLIAM LEGGETT 211 
 
 " The earth may ring, from shore to shore, 
 
 With echoes of a glorious name, 
 But he whose loss our tears deplore 
 Has left behind him more than fame. 
 
 " For when the death-frost came to lie 
 
 On Leggett's warm and mighty heart, 
 And quenched his bold and friendly eye, 
 His spirit did not all depart. 
 
 " The words of fire that from his pen 
 
 He flung upon the lucid page 
 Still move, still shake the hearts of men, 
 Amid a cold and coward age. 
 
 " His love of Truth, too warm, too strong, 
 
 For Hope or Fear to chain or chill, 
 His hate of tyranny and wrong, 
 
 Burn in the breasts they kindled still." 
 
 So lived and died William Leggett. What a 
 rebuke of party perfidy, of political meanness, of 
 the common arts and stratagems of demagogues, 
 comes up from his grave! How the cheek of 
 mercenary selfishness crimsons at the thought of 
 his incorruptible integrity ! How heartless and 
 hollow pretenders, who offer lip service to freedom, 
 while they give their hands to whatever work their 
 slaveholding managers may assign them ; who sit 
 in chains round the crib of governmental patron- 
 age, putting on the spaniel, and putting off the 
 man, and making their whole lives a miserable lie, 
 shrink back from a contrast with the proud and 
 austere dignity of his character ! What a comment 
 on their own condition is the memory of a man who 
 could calmly endure the loss of party favor, the re- 
 proaches of his friends, the malignant assaults of 
 his enemies, and the fretting evils of poverty, in
 
 212 PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES 
 
 the hope of bequeathing, like the dying testator of 
 Ford, 
 
 " A fame by scandal untouched, 
 To Memory and Time's old daughter, Truth." 
 
 The praises which such men are now constrained 
 to bestow upon him are their own condemnation. 
 Every stone which they pile upon his grave is 
 written over with the record of their hypocrisy. 
 
 We have written rather for the living than the 
 dead. As one of that proscribed and hunted band 
 of Abolitionists, whose rights were so bravely de- 
 fended by William Leggett, we should, indeed, be 
 wanting in ordinary gratitude not to do honor to 
 his memory; but we have been actuated at the 
 present time mainly by a hope that the character, 
 the lineaments of which we have so imperfectly 
 sketched, may awaken a generous emulation in the 
 hearts of the young democracy of our country. 
 Democracy such as William Leggett believed and 
 practised, democracy in its full and all-comprehen- 
 sive significance, is destined to be the settled politi- 
 cal faith of this republic. Because the despotism 
 of slavery has usurped its name, and offered the 
 strange incense of human tears and blood on its 
 profaned altars, shall we, therefore, abandon the 
 only political faith which coincides with the Gos- 
 pel of Jesus, and meets the aspirations and wants 
 of humanity ? No. The duty of the present gen- 
 eration in the United States is to reduce this faith 
 to practice, to make the beautiful ideal a fact. 
 
 " Every American," says Leggett, " who in any 
 way countenances slavery is derelict to his duty, 
 as a Christian, a patriot, a man ; and every one
 
 WILLIAM LEGGETT 213 
 
 does countenance and authorize it who suffers any 
 opportunity of expressing his deep abhorrence of 
 its manifold abominations to pass unimproved." 
 The whole world has an interest in this matter. 
 The influence of our democratic despotism is ex- 
 erted against the liberties of Europe. Political 
 reformers in the Old World, who have testified to 
 their love of freedom by serious sacrifices, hold but 
 one language on this point. They tell us that 
 American slavery furnishes kings and aristocracies 
 with their most potent arguments ; that it is a per- 
 petual drag on the wheel of political progress. 
 
 We have before us, at this time, a letter from 
 Seidensticker, one of the leaders of the patriotic 
 movement in behalf of German liberty in 1831. It 
 was written from the prison of Celle, where he had 
 been confined for eight years. The writer expresses 
 his indignant astonishment at the speeches of John 
 C. Calhoun, and others in Congress, on the slavery 
 question, and deplores the disastrous influence of 
 our great inconsistency upon the cause of freedom 
 throughout the world, an influence which para- 
 lyzes the hands of the patriotic reformer, while it 
 strengthens those of his oppressor, and deepens 
 around the living martyrs and confessors of Euro- 
 pean democracy the cold shadow of their prisons. 
 
 Joseph Sturge, of Birmingham, the President of 
 the British Free Suffrage Union, and whose philan- 
 thropy and democracy have been vouched for by 
 the Democratic Review in this country, has the fol- 
 lowing passage in an address to the citizens of the 
 United States : " Although an admirer of the insti- 
 tutions of your country, and deeply lamenting the
 
 214 PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES 
 
 evils of my own government, I find it difficult to 
 reply to those who are opposed to any extension 
 of the political rights of Englishmen, when they 
 point to America, and say that where all have a 
 control over the legislation but those who are guilty 
 of a dark skin, slavery and the slavetrade remain, 
 not only unmitigated, but continue to extend ; and 
 that while there is an onward movement in favor 
 of its extinction, not only in England and France, 
 but in Cuba and Brazil, American legislators cling 
 to this enormous evil, without attempting to relax 
 or mitigate its horrors." 
 
 How long shall such appeals, from such sources, 
 be wasted upon us ? Shall our baleful example 
 enslave the world ? Shall the tree of democracy, 
 which our fathers intended for " the healing of the 
 nations," be to them like the fabled upas, blight- 
 ing all around it ? 
 
 The men of the North, the pioneers of the free 
 West, and the non-slaveholders of the South must 
 answer these questions. It is for them to say 
 whether the present wellnigh intolerable evil shall 
 continue to increase its boundaries, and strengthen 
 its hold upon the government, the political parties, 
 and the religious sects of our country. Interest 
 and honor, present possession and future hope, the 
 memory of fathers, the prospects of children, grati- 
 tude, affection, the still call of the dead, the cry of 
 oppressed nations looking hitherward for the result 
 of all their hopes, the voice of God in the soul, in 
 revelation, and in His providence, all appeal to 
 them for a speedy and righteous decision. At 
 this moment, on the floor of Congress, Democracy
 
 WILLIAM LEGGETT 215 
 
 and Slavery have met in a death-grapple. The 
 South stands firm ; it allows no party division on 
 the slave question. One of its members has de- 
 clared that "the slave States have no traitors." 
 Can the same be said of the free ? Now, as in the 
 time of the fatal Missouri Compromise, there are, 
 it is to be feared, political pedlers among our 
 representatives, whose souls are in the market, 
 and whose consciences are vendible commodities. 
 Through their means, the slave power may gain a 
 temporary triumph ; but may not the very base- 
 ness of the treachery arouse the Northern heart ? 
 By driving the free States to the wall, may it not 
 compel them to turn and take an aggressive atti- 
 tude, clasp hands over the altar of their common 
 freedom, and swear eternal hostility to slavery ? 
 
 Be the issue of the present contest what it may, 
 those who are faithful to freedom should allow no 
 temporary reverse to shake their confidence in the 
 ultimate triumph of the right. The slave will be 
 free. Democracy in America will yet be a glori- 
 ous reality ; and when the topstone of that temple 
 of freedom which our fathers left unfinished shall 
 be brought forth with shoutings and cries of grace 
 unto it, when our now drooping Liberty lifts up 
 her head and prospers, happy will he be who can 
 say, with John Milton, " Among those who have 
 something more than wished her welfare, I too 
 have my charter and freehold of rejoicing to me 
 and my heirs."
 
 NATHANIEL PEABODY EOGERS. 
 
 " And Lamb, the frolic and the gentle, 
 Has vanished from his kindly hearth." 
 
 So, in one of the sweetest and most pathetic of 
 his poems touching the loss of his literary friends, 
 sang Wordsworth. We well remember with what 
 freshness and vividness these simple lines came be- 
 fore us, on hearing, last autumn, of the death of 
 the warm-hearted and gifted friend whose name 
 heads this article ; for there was much in his char- 
 acter and genius to remind us of the gentle author 
 of Elia. He had the latter's genial humor and 
 quaintness ; his nice and delicate perception of the 
 beautiful and poetic ; his happy, easy diction, not 
 the result, as in the case of that of the English 
 essayist, of slow and careful elaboration, but the 
 natural, spontaneous language in which his con- 
 ceptions at once embodied themselves, apparently 
 without any consciousness of effort. As Mark 
 Antony talked, he wrote, " right on," telling his 
 readers often what " they themselves did know," 
 yet imparting to the simplest commonplaces of life 
 interest and significance, and throwing a golden 
 haze of poetry over the rough and thorny pathways 
 of every-day duty. Like Lamb, he loved his friends 
 without stint or limit. The " old familiar faces " 
 haunted him. Lamb loved the streets and lanes 
 of London the places where he of tenest came in
 
 NATHANIEL PEABODY ROGERS 217 
 
 contact with the warm, genial heart of humanity 
 better than the country. Rogers loved the wild 
 and lonely hills and valleys of New Hampshire 
 none the less that he was fully alive to the enjoy- 
 ments of society, and could enter with the heartiest 
 sympathy into all the joys and sorrows of his 
 friends and neighbors. 
 
 In another point of view, he was not unlike Elia. 
 He had the same love of home, and home friends, 
 and familiar objects ; the same fondness for com- 
 mon sights and sounds ; the same dread of change ; 
 the same shrinking from the unknown and the 
 dark. Like him, he clung with a child's love to 
 the living present, and recoiled from a contempla- 
 tion of the great change which awaits us. Like 
 him, he was content with the goodly green earth 
 and human countenances, and would fain set up 
 his tabernacle here. He had less of what might 
 be termed self-indulgence in this feeling than 
 Lamb. He had higher views ; he loved this world 
 not only for its own sake, but for the opportunities 
 it afforded of doing good. Like the Persian seer, 
 he beheld the legions of Ormuzd and Ahriman, of 
 Light and Darkness, contending for mastery over 
 the earth, as the sunshine and shadow of a gusty, 
 half-cloudy day struggled on the green slopes of 
 his native mountains ; and, mingled with the 
 bright host, he would fain have fought on until its 
 banners waved in eternal sunshine over the last 
 hiding-place of darkness. He entered into the 
 work of reform with the enthusiasm and chivalry 
 of a knight of the crusades. He had faith in hu- 
 man progress, in the ultimate triumph of the
 
 218 PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES 
 
 good ; millennial lights beaconed up all along his 
 horizon. In the philanthropic movements of the 
 day ; in the efforts to remove the evils of slavery, 
 war, intemperance, and sanguinary laws; in the 
 humane and generous spirit of much of our modern 
 poetry and literature ; in the growing demand of 
 the religious community, of all sects, for the preach- 
 ing of the gospel of love and humanity, he heard 
 the low and tremulous prelude of the great anthem 
 of universal harmony. "The world," said he, in 
 a notice of the music of the Hutchinson family, 
 " is out of tune now. But it will be tuned again, 
 and all will become harmony." In this faith he 
 lived and acted ; working, not always, as it seemed 
 to some of his friends, wisely, but bravely, truth- 
 fully, earnestly, cheering on his fellow-laborers, 
 and imparting to the dullest and most earthward 
 looking of them something of his own zeal and 
 loftiness of purpose. 
 
 " Who was he ? " does the reader ask ? Natu- 
 rally enough, too, for his name has never found 
 its way into fashionable reviews ; it has never been 
 associated with tale, or essay, or poem, to our 
 knowledge. Our friend Griswold, who, like an- 
 other Noah, has launched some hundreds of Amer- 
 ican " poets " and prose writers on the tide of 
 immortality in his two huge arks of rhyme and 
 reason, has either overlooked his name, or deemed 
 it unworthy of preservation. Then, too, he was 
 known mainly as the editor of a proscribed and 
 everywhere-spoken-against anti-slavery paper. It 
 had few readers of literary taste and discrimina- 
 tion ; plain, earnest men and women, intent only
 
 NATHANIEL PEABODY ROGERS 219 
 
 upon the thought itself, and caring little for the 
 clothing of it, loved the Herald of Freedom for its 
 honestness and earnestness, and its bold rebukes 
 of the wrong, its all-surrendering homage to what 
 its editor believed to be right. But the literary 
 world of authors and critics saw and heard little 
 or nothing of him or his writings. " I once had 
 a bit of scholar-craft," he says of himself on one 
 occasion, " and had I attempted it in some pitiful 
 sectarian or party or literary sheet, I should have 
 stood a chance to get quoted into the periodicals. 
 Now, who dares quote from the Herald of Free- 
 dom ? " He wrote for humanity, as his biographer 
 justly says, not for fame. " He wrote because he 
 had something to say, and true to nature, for to 
 him nature was truth ; he spoke right on, with the 
 artlessness and simplicity of a child." 
 
 He was born in Plymouth, New Hampshire, in 
 the sixth month of 1794, a lineal descendant 
 from John Rogers, of martyr-memory. Educated 
 at Dartmouth College, he studied law with Hon. 
 Richard Fletcher, of Salisbury, New Hampshire, 
 now of Boston, and commenced the practice of it 
 in 1819, in his native village. He was diligent 
 and successful in his profession, although seldom 
 known as a pleader. About the year 1833, he be- 
 came interested in the anti-slavery movement. His 
 was one of the few voices of encouragement and 
 sympathy which greeted the author of this sketch 
 on the publication of a pamphlet in favor of imme- 
 diate emancipation. He gave us a kind word of 
 approval, and invited us to his mountain home, on 
 the banks of the Pemigewasset, an invitation
 
 220 PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES 
 
 which, two years afterwards, we accepted. In the 
 early autumn, in company with George Thompson, 
 (the eloquent reformer, who has since been elected 
 a member of the British Parliament from the 
 Tower Hamlets,) we drove up the beautiful valley 
 of the White Mountain tributary of the Merri- 
 mac, and, just as a glorious sunset was steeping 
 river, valley, and mountain in its hues of heaven, 
 were welcomed to the pleasant home and family 
 circle of our friend Rogers. We spent two de- 
 lightful evenings with him. His cordiality, his 
 warm-hearted sympathy in our object, his keen wit, 
 inimitable humor, and childlike and simple mirth- 
 fulness, his full appreciation of the beautiful in art 
 and nature, impressed us with the conviction that 
 we were the guests of no ordinary man ; that we 
 were communing with unmistakable genius, such 
 an one as miglht have added to the wit and elo- 
 quence of Ben Jonson's famous club at the Mer- 
 maid, or that which Lamb and Coleridge and 
 Southey frequented at the Salutation and Cat, of 
 Smithfield. " The most brilliant man I have met 
 in America ! " said George Thompson, as we left 
 the hospitable door of our friend. 
 
 In 1838, he gave up his law practice, left his 
 fine outlook at Plymouth upon the mountains of 
 the North, Moosehillock and the Haystacks, and 
 took up his residence at Concord, for the purpose 
 of editing the Herald of Freedom, an anti-slav- 
 ery paper which had been started some three or 
 four years before. John Pierpont, than whom 
 there could not be a more competent witness, in 
 his brief and beautiful sketch of the life and writ-
 
 NATHANIEL PEABODY ROGERS 221 
 
 ings of Eogers, does not overestimate the ability 
 with which the Herald was conducted, when he 
 says of its editor : " As a newspaper writer, we 
 think him unequalled by any living man ; and in 
 the general strength, clearness, and quickness of 
 his intellect, we think all who knew him well will 
 agree with us that he was not excelled by any 
 editor in the country." He was not a profound 
 reasoner: his imagination and brilliant fancy 
 played the wildest tricks with his logic ; yet, con- 
 sidering the way by which he reached them, it is 
 remarkable that his conclusions were so often cor- 
 rect. The tendency of his mind was to extremes. 
 A zealous Calvinistic church-member, he became 
 an equally zealous opponent of churches and priests ; 
 a warm politician, he became an ultra non-resistant 
 and no-government man. In all this, his sincerity 
 was manifest. If, in the indulgence of his remark- 
 able powers of sarcasm, in the free antics of a 
 humorous fancy, upon whose graceful neck he had 
 flung loose the reins, he sometimes did injustice to 
 individuals, and touched, in irreverent sport, the 
 hem of sacred garments, it had the excuse, at least, 
 of a generous and honest motive. If he some- 
 times exaggerated, those who best knew him can 
 testify that he " set down naught in malice." 
 
 We have before us a printed collection of his 
 writings, hasty editorials, flung off without care 
 or revision, the offspring of sudden impulse fre- 
 quently ; always free, artless, unstudied ; the lan- 
 guage transparent as air, exactly expressing the 
 thought. He loved the common, simple dialect 
 of the people, the " beautiful strong old Saxon,
 
 222 PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES 
 
 the talk words." He had an especial dislike 
 of learned and " dictionary words." He used to 
 recommend Cobbett's Works to " every young 
 man and woman who has been hurt in his or her 
 talk and writing by going to school." 
 
 Our limits will not admit of such extracts from 
 the Collection of his writings as would convey to 
 our readers an adequate idea of his thought and 
 manner. His descriptions of natural scenery glow 
 with life. One can almost see the sunset light 
 flooding the Franconia Notch, and glorifying the 
 peaks of Moosehillock, and hear the murmur of 
 the west wind in the pines, and the light, liquid 
 voice of Pemigewasset sounding up from its rocky 
 channel, through its green hem of maples, while 
 reading them. We give a brief extract from an 
 editorial account of an autumnal trip to Vermont : 
 
 " We have recently journeyed through a portion 
 of thisjfree State ; and it is not all imagination in 
 us that sees, in its bold scenery, its uninfected 
 inland position, its mountainous but fertile and 
 verdant surface, the secret of the noble predisposi- 
 tion of its people. They are located for freedom. 
 Liberty's home is on their Green Mountains. 
 Their farmer republic nowhere touches the ocean, 
 the highway of the world's crimes, as well as its 
 nations. It has no seaport for the importation of 
 slavery, or the exportation of its own highland 
 republicanism. Should slavery ever prevail over 
 this nation, to its utter subjugation, the last linger- 
 ing footsteps of retiring Liberty will be seen, not, 
 as Daniel Webster said, in the proud old Common- 
 wealth of Massachusetts, about Bunker Hill and
 
 NATHANIEL PEABODY ROGERS 223 
 
 Faneuil Hall ; but she will be found wailing, like 
 Jephthah's daughter, among the ' hollows ' and 
 along the sides of the Green Mountains. 
 
 " Vermont shows gloriously at this autumn sea- 
 son. Frost has gently laid hands on her exuberant 
 vegetation, tinging her rock-maple woods without 
 abating the deep verdure of her herbage. Every- 
 where along her peopled hollows and her bold hill- 
 slopes and summits the earth is alive with green, 
 while her endless hard-wood forests are uniformed 
 with all the hues of early fall, richer than the regi- 
 mentals of the kings that glittered in the train of 
 Napoleon on the confines of Poland, when he lin- 
 gered there, on the last outposts of summer, before 
 plunging into the snow-drifts of the North ; more 
 gorgeous than the array of Saladin's life-guard in 
 the wars of the Crusaders, or of ' Solomon in all 
 his glory,' decked in all colors and hues, but still 
 the hues of life. Vegetation touched, but not dead, 
 or, if killed, not bereft yet of 'signs of life.' 
 ' Decay's effacing fingers ' had not yet ' swept the 
 hills ' ' where beauty lingers.' All looked fresh as 
 growing foliage. Vermont frosts don't seem to be 
 ' killing frosts.' They only change aspects of beauty. 
 The mountain pastures, verdant to the peaks, and 
 over the peaks of the high, steep hills, were covered 
 with the amplest feed, and clothed with countless 
 sheep ; the hay-fields heavy with second crop, in 
 some partly cut and abandoned, as if in very wea- 
 riness and satiety, blooming with honeysuckle, con- 
 trasting strangely with the colors on the woods ; 
 the fat cattle and the long-tailed colts and close- 
 built Morgans wallowing in it up to the eyes, or the
 
 224 PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES 
 
 cattle down to rest, with full bellies, by ten in the 
 morning. Fine but narrow roads wound along 
 among the hills, free almost entirely of stone, and 
 so smooth as to be safe for the most rapid driv- 
 ing, made of their rich, dark, powder-looking soil. 
 Beautiful villages or scattered settlements breaking 
 upon the delighted view, on the meandering way, 
 making the ride a continued scene of excitement 
 and admiration. The air fresh, free, and whole- 
 some; the road almost dead level for miles and 
 miles, among mountains that lay over the land 
 like the great swells of the sea, and looking in the 
 prospect as though there could be no passage." 
 
 To this autumnal limning, the following spring 
 picture may be a fitting accompaniment : 
 
 " At last Spring is here in full flush. Winter 
 held on tenaciously and mercilessly, but it has let 
 go. The great sun is high on his northern jour- 
 ney, and the vegetation, and the bird-singing, and 
 the loud frog-chorus, the tree budding and blow- 
 ing, are all upon us ; and the glorious grass 
 superbest of earth's garniture with its ever-satis- 
 fying green. The king-birds have come, and the 
 corn-planter, the scolding bob-o-link. ' Plant your 
 corn, plant your corn,' says he, as he scurries 
 athwart the ploughed ground, hardly lifting his 
 crank wings to a level with his back, so self-impor- 
 tant is he in his admonitions. The earlier birds 
 have gone to housekeeping, and have disappeared 
 from the spray. There has been brief period for 
 them, this spring, for scarcely has the deep snow 
 gone, but the dark-green grass has come, and first 
 we shall know, the ground will be yellow with 
 dandelions.
 
 NATHANIEL PEABODY ROGERS 225 
 
 " I incline to thank Heaven this glorious morn- 
 ing of May 16th for the pleasant home from which 
 we can greet the Spring. Hitherto we have had to 
 await it amid a thicket of village houses, low down, 
 close together, and awfully white. For a prospect, 
 we had the hinder part of an ugly meeting-house, 
 which an enterprising neighbor relieved us of by 
 planting a dwelling-house, right before our eyes, 
 (on his own land, and he had a right to,) which re- 
 lieved us also of all prospect whatever. And the 
 revival spirit of habitation which has come over 
 Concord is clapping up a house between every 
 two in the already crowded town ; and the pros- 
 pect is, it will be soon all buildings. They are 
 constructing, in quite good taste though, small, 
 trim, cottage-like. But I had rather be where I 
 can breathe air, and see beyond my own features, 
 than be smothered among the prettiest houses ever 
 built. We are on the slope of a hill ; it is all 
 sand, be sure, on all four sides of us, but the air is 
 free, (and the sand, too, at times,) and our water, 
 there is danger of hard drinking to live by it. Air 
 and water, the two necessaries of life, and high, 
 free play-ground for the small ones. There is a 
 sand precipice hard by, high enough, were it only 
 rock and overlooked the ocean, to be as sublime as 
 any of the Nahant cliffs. As it is, it is altogether 
 a safer haunt for daring childhood, which could 
 hardly break its neck by a descent of some hun- 
 dreds of feet. 
 
 " A low flat lies between us and the town, with 
 its State-house, and body-guard of well-propor- 
 tioned steeples standing round. It was marshy
 
 PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES 
 
 and wet, but is almost all redeemed by the trans- 
 lation into it of the high hills of sand. It must 
 have been a terrible place for frogs, judging from 
 what remains of it. Bits of water from the springs 
 hard by lay here and there about the low ground, 
 which are peopled as full of singers as ever the 
 gallery of the old North Meeting-house was, and 
 quite as melodious ones. Such performers I never 
 heard, in marsh or pool. They are not the great, 
 stagnant, bull-paddocks, fat and coarse-noted like 
 
 Parson , but clear-water frogs, green, lively, 
 
 and sweet-voiced. I passed their orchestra going 
 home the other evening, with a small lad, and they 
 were at it, all parts, ten thousand peeps, shrill, 
 ear-piercing, and incessant, coming up from every 
 quarter, accompanied by a second, from some 
 larger swimmer with his trombone, and broken in 
 upon, every now and then, but not discordantly, 
 with the loud, quick hallo, that resembles the cry 
 of the tree-toad. ' There are the Hutchinsons,' 
 cried the lad. ' The Rainers,' responded I, glad 
 to remember enough of my ancient Latin to know 
 that Rana, or some such sounding word, stood for 
 frog. But it was a ' band of music,' as the Mil- 
 ler friends say. Like other singers, (all but the 
 Hutchinsons,) these are apt to sing too much, all 
 the time they are awake, constituting really too 
 much of a good thing. I have wondered if the 
 little reptiles were singing in concert, or whether 
 every one peeped on his own hook, their neighbor- 
 hood only making it a chorus. I incline to the 
 opinion that they are performing together, that 
 they know the tune, and each carries his part,
 
 NATHANIEL PEABODY ROGERS 227 
 
 self-selected, in free meeting, and therefore never 
 discordant. The hour rule of Congress might be 
 useful, though far less needed among the frogs 
 than among the profane croakers of the fens at 
 Washington." 
 
 Here is a sketch of the mountain scenery of New 
 Hampshire, as seen from the Holderness Moun- 
 tain, or North Hill, during a visit which he made 
 to his native valley in the autumn of 1841 : 
 
 " The earth sphered up all around us, in every 
 quarter of the horizon, like the crater of a vast vol- 
 cano, and the great hollow within the mountain 
 circle was as smoky as Vesuvius or Etna in their 
 recess of eruption. The little village of Plymouth 
 lay right at our feet, with its beautiful expanse of 
 intervale opening on the eye like a lake among the 
 woods and hills, and the Pemigewasset, bordered 
 along its crooked way with rows of maples, mean- 
 dering from upland to upland through the mea- 
 dows. Our young footsteps had wandered over 
 these localities. Time had cast it all far back: 
 that Pemigewasset, with its meadows and border 
 trees ; that little village whitening in the margin 
 of its intervale ; and that one house which we could 
 distinguish, where the mother that watched over 
 and endured our wayward childhood totters at 
 fourscore ! 
 
 " To the south stretched a broken, swelling up- 
 land country, but champaign from the top of North 
 Hill, patched all over with grain-fields and green 
 wood-lots, the roofs of the farm-houses shining in 
 the sun. Southwest, the Cardigan Mountain 
 showed its bald forehead among the smokes of a
 
 228 PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES 
 
 thousand fires, kindled in the woods in the long 
 drought. Westward, Moosehillock heaved up its 
 long back, black as a whale ; and turning the eye 
 on northward, glancing down the while on the 
 Baker's River valley, dotted over with human 
 dwellings like shingle-bunches for size, you behold 
 the great Franconia Range, its Notch and its 
 Haystacks, the Elephant Mountain on the left, and 
 Lafayette (Great Haystack) on the right, shooting 
 its peak in solemn loneliness high up into the des- 
 ert sky, and overtopping all the neighboring Alps 
 but Mount Washington itself. The prospect of 
 these is most impressive and satisfactory. We don't 
 believe the earth presents a finer mountain display. 
 The Haystacks stand there like the Pyramids on 
 the wall of mountains. One of them eminently 
 has this Egyptian shape. It is as accurate a pyra- 
 mid to the eye as any in the old valley of the Nile, 
 and a good deal bigger than any of those hoary 
 monuments of human presumption, of the impious 
 tyranny of monarchs and priests, and of the appall- 
 ing servility of the erecting multitude. Arthur's 
 Seat in Edinburgh does not more finely resemble a 
 sleeping lion than the huge mountain on the left of 
 the Notch does an elephant, with his great, over- 
 grown rump turned uncivilly toward the gap where 
 the people have to pass. Following round the 
 panorama, you come to the Ossipees and the Sand- 
 wich Mountains, peaks innumerable and nameless, 
 and of every variety of fantastic shape. Down 
 their vast sides are displayed the melancholy-look- 
 ing slides, contrasting with the fathomless woods. 
 " But the lakes, you see lakes, as well as woods
 
 NATHANIEL PEABODY ROGERS 229 
 
 and mountains, from the top of North Hill. New- 
 found Lake in Hebron, only eight miles distant, you 
 cavbt see; it lies too deep among the hills. Ponds 
 show their small blue mirrors from various quarters 
 of the great picture. Worthen's Mill-Pond and the 
 Hardback, where we used to fish for trout in truant, 
 barefooted days, Blair's Mill-Pond, White Oak 
 Pond, and Long Pond, and the Little Squam, a 
 beautiful dark sheet of deep, blue water, about two 
 miles long, stretched an; id the green hills and woods, 
 with a charming little beach at its eastern end, and 
 without an island. And then the Great Squam, 
 connected with it on the east by a short, narrow 
 stream, the very queen of ponds, with its fleet of 
 islands, surpassing in beauty all the foreign waters 
 we have seen, in Scotland or elsewhere, the 
 islands covered with evergreens, which impart their 
 hue to the mass of the lake, as it stretches seven 
 miles on east from its smaller sister, towards the 
 peerless Winnipesaukee. Great Squam is as beauti- 
 ful as water and island can be. But Winnipesaukee, 
 it is the very ' Smile of the Great Spirit.' It looks 
 as if it had a thousand islands ; some of them large 
 enough for little towns, and others not bigger than 
 a swan or a wild duck swimming on its surface of 
 glass." 
 
 His wit and sarcasm were generally too good- 
 natured to provoke even their unfortunate objects, 
 playing all over his editorials like the thunderless 
 lightnings which quiver along the horizon of a night 
 of summer calmness ; but at times his indignation 
 launched them like bolts from heaven. Take the 
 following as a specimen. He is speaking of the
 
 230 PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES 
 
 gag rule of Congress, and commending Southern 
 representatives for their skilful selection of a proper 
 person to do their work : 
 
 " They have a quick eye at the South to the char- 
 acter, or, as they would say, the points of a slave. 
 They look into him shrewdly, as an old jockey does 
 into a horse. They will pick him out, at rifle-shot 
 distance, among a thousand freemen. They have 
 a nice eye to detect shades of vassalage. They saw 
 in the aristocratic popinjay strut of a counterfeit 
 Democrat an itching aspiration to play the slave- 
 holder. They beheld it in ' the cut of his jib,' and 
 his extreme Northern position made him the very 
 tool for their purpose. The little creature has 
 struck at the right of petition. A paltrier hand 
 never struck at a noble right. The Eagle Right of 
 Petition, so loftily sacred in the eyes of the Con- 
 stitution that Congress can't begin to ' abridge ' it, 
 in its pride of place, is hawked at by this crested 
 jay-bird. A * mousing owl ' would have seen better 
 at midnoon than to have done it. It is an idiot 
 blue-jay, such as you see fooling about among the 
 shrub oaks and dwarf pitch pines in the winter. 
 What an ignominious death to the lofty right, were 
 it to die by such a hand ; but it does not die. It 
 is impalpable to the 'malicious mockery' of such 
 4 vain blows.' We are glad it is done done by 
 the South done proudly, and in slaveholding 
 style, by the hand of a vassal. What a man does 
 by another he does by himself, says the maxim. 
 But they will disown the honor of it, and cast it on 
 the despised 'free nigger ' North." 
 
 Or this description not very flattering to the
 
 NATHANIEL PEABODY ROGERS 231 
 
 " Old Commonwealth " of the treatment of the 
 agent of Massachusetts in South Carolina : 
 
 " Slavery may perpetrate anything, and New 
 England can't see it. It can horsewhip the old 
 Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and spit in her 
 governmental face, and she will not recognize it as 
 an offence. She sent her agent to Charleston on 
 a State embassy. Slavery caught him, and sent him 
 ignominiously home. The solemn great man came 
 back in a hurry. He returned in a most undigni- 
 fied trot. He ran ; he scampered, the stately 
 official. The Old Bay State actually pulled foot, 
 cleared, dug, as they say, like any scamp with a hue 
 and cry after him. Her grave old Senator, who no 
 more thought of having to break his stately walk 
 than he had of being flogged at school for stealing- 
 apples, came back from Carolina upon the full run, 
 out of breath and out of dignity. Well, what 's the 
 result ? Why, nothing. She no more thinks of 
 showing resentment about it than she would if light- 
 ning had struck him. He was sent back ' by the 
 visitation of God ; ' and if they had lynched him to 
 death, and stained the streets of Charleston with 
 his blood, a Boston jury, if they could have held 
 inquest over him, would have found that he ' died 
 by the visitation of God.' And it would have been 
 ' crowner's quest law,' Slavery's ' crowners.' " 
 
 Here is a specimen of his graceful blending of 
 irony and humor. He is expostulating with his 
 neighbor of the New Hampshire Patriot, assuring 
 him that he cannot endure the ponderous weight 
 of his arguments, begging for a little respite, and, 
 as a means of obtaining it, urging the editor to
 
 232 PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES 
 
 travel. He advises him to go South, to the White 
 Sulphur Springs, and thinks that, despite of his 
 dark complexion, he would be safe there from be- 
 ing sold for jail fees, as his pro-slavery merits 
 would more than counterbalance his colored liabil- 
 ities, which, after all, were only prima facie evi- 
 dence against him. He suggests Texas, also, as a 
 place where " patriots " of a certain class " most do 
 congregate," and continues as follows : 
 
 " There is Arkansas, too, all glorious in new-born 
 liberty, fresh and unsullied, like Venus out of the 
 ocean, that newly discovered star in the firma- 
 ment banner of this Republic. Sister Arkansas, 
 with her bowie-knife graceful at her side, like the 
 huntress Diana with her silver bow, oh it would 
 be refreshing and recruiting to an exhausted pa- 
 triot to go and replenish his soul at her fountains. 
 The newly evacuated lands of the Cherokee, too, a 
 sweet place now for a lover of his country to visit, 
 to renew his self-complacency by wandering among 
 the quenched hearths of the expatriated Indians ; 
 a land all smoking with the red man's departing 
 curse, a malediction that went to the centre. 
 Yes, and Florida, blossoming and leafy Florida, 
 yet warm with the life-blood of Osceola and his 
 warriors, shed gloriously under flag of truce. 
 Why should a patriot of such a fancy for nature 
 immure himself in the cells of the city, and forego 
 such an inviting and so broad a landscape ? Ite 
 viator. Go forth, traveller, and leave this mouldy 
 editing to less elastic fancies. We would respect- 
 fully invite our Colonel to travel. What signi- 
 fies ? Journey wander go forth itinerate 
 exercise perambulate roam."
 
 NATHANIEL PEA BODY ROGERS 233 
 
 He gives the following ludicrous definition of 
 Congress : 
 
 " But what is Congress ? It is the echo of the 
 country at home, the weathercock, that denotes 
 and answers the shifting wind, a thing of tail, 
 nearly all tail, moved by the tail and by the wind, 
 with small heading, and that corresponding im- 
 plicitly in movement with the broad sail-like stern, 
 which widens out behind to catch the rum-fraught 
 breath of 'the Brotherhood.' As that turns, it 
 turns ; when that stops, it stops ; and in calmish 
 weather looks as steadfast and firm as though it 
 was riveted to the centre. The wind blows, and 
 the little popularity-hunting head dodges this way 
 and that, in endless fluctuation. Such is Congress, 
 or a great portion of it. It will point to the north- 
 west heavens of Liberty, whenever the breezes 
 bear down irresistibly upon it, from the regions of 
 political fair weather. It will abolish slavery at 
 the Capitol, when it has already been doomed to 
 abolition and death everywhere else in the coun- 
 try. ' It will be in at the death.' " 
 
 Replying to the charge that the Abolitionists of 
 the North were " secret " in their movements and 
 designs, he says : 
 
 " ' In secret ! ' Why, our movements have been 
 as prominent and open as the house-tops from the 
 beginning. We have striven from the outset to 
 write the whole matter cloud -high in the heav- 
 ens, that the utmost South might read it. We 
 have cast an arc upon the horizon, like the semi- 
 circle of the polar lights, and upon it have bent 
 our motto, ' Immediate Emancipation,' glorious as
 
 234 PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES 
 
 the rainbow. We have engraven it there, on the 
 blue table of the cold vault, in letters tall enough 
 for the reading of the nations. And why has the 
 far South not read and believed before this ? Be- 
 cause a steam has gone up a fog from New 
 England's pulpit and her degenerate press, and 
 hidden the beaming revelation from its vision. 
 The Northern hierarchy and aristocracy have 
 cheated the South." 
 
 He spoke at times with severity of slaveholders, 
 but far oftener of those who, without the excuse 
 of education and habit, and prompted only by a 
 selfish consideration of political or sectarian ad- 
 vantage, apologized for the wrong, and discoun- 
 tenanced the anti-slavery movement. " We have 
 nothing to say," said he, " to the slave. He is no 
 party to his own enslavement, he is none to his 
 disenthralment. We have nothing to say to the 
 South. The real holder of slaves is not there. He 
 is in the North, the free North. The South alone 
 has not the power to hold the slave. It is the 
 character of the nation that binds and holds him. 
 It is the Republic that does it, the efficient force 
 of which is north of Mason and Dixon's line. By 
 virtue of the majority of Northern hearts and 
 voices, slavery lives in the South ! " 
 
 In 1840, he spent a few weeks in England, Ire- 
 land, and Scotland. He has left behind a few 
 beautiful memorials of his tour. His Ride over 
 the Border, Ride into Edinburgh, Wincobank 
 Hall, Ailsa Craig, gave his paper an interest in 
 the eyes of many who had no sympathy with his 
 political and religious views.
 
 NATHANIEL PEABODY ROGERS 235 
 
 Scattered all over his editorials, like gems, are 
 to be found beautiful images, sweet touches of 
 heartfelt pathos, thoughts which the reader 
 pauses over with surprise and delight. We sub- 
 join a few specimens, taken almost at random 
 from the book before us : 
 
 " A thunder-storm, what can match it for elo- 
 quence and poetry? That rush from heaven of 
 the big drops, in what multitude and succession, 
 and how they sound as they strike ! How they 
 play on the old home roof and the thick tree-tops ! 
 What music to go to sleep by, to the tired boy, as 
 he lies under the naked roof ! And the great, 
 low bass thunder, as it rolls off over the hills, and 
 settles down behind them to the very centre, and 
 you can feel the old earth jar under your feet ! " 
 
 " There was no oratory in the speech of the 
 Learned Blacksmith, in the ordinary sense of that 
 word, no grace of elocution, but mighty thoughts 
 radiating off from his heated mind, like sparks 
 from the glowing steel of his own anvil." 
 
 " The hard hands of Irish labor, with nothing in 
 them, they ring like slabs of marble together, 
 in response to the wild appeals of O'Connell, and 
 the British stand conquered before them, with 
 shouldered arms. Ireland is on her feet, with 
 nothing in her hands, impregnable, unassailable, in 
 utter defencelessness, the first time that ever a 
 nation sprung to its feet unarmed. The veterans 
 of England behold them, and forbear to fire. 
 They see no mark. It will not do to fire upon 
 men ; it will do only to fire upon soldiers. They 
 are the proper mark of the murderous gun, but 
 men cannot be shot."
 
 236 PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES 
 
 " It is coming to that [abolition of war] the 
 world over ; and when it does come to it, oh what a 
 long breath of relief the tired world will draw, as 
 it stretches itself for the first time out upon earth's 
 greensward, and learns the meaning of repose and 
 peaceful sleep ! " 
 
 " He who vests his labor in the faithful ground 
 is dealing directly with God ; human fraud or 
 weakness do not intervene between him and his 
 requital. No mechanic has a set of customers so 
 trustworthy as God and the elements. No savings 
 bank is so sure as the old earth." 
 
 " Literature is the luxury of words. It origi- 
 nates nothing, it does nothing. It talks hard 
 words about the labor of others, and is reckoned 
 more meritorious for it than genius and labor for 
 doing what learning can only descant upon. It 
 trades on the capital of unlettered minds. It 
 struts in stolen plumage, and it is mere plumage. 
 A learned man resembles an owl in more respects 
 than the matter of wisdom. Like that solemn 
 bird, he is about all feathers." 
 
 "Our Second Advent friends contemplate a 
 grand conflagration about the first of April next. 
 I should be willing there should be one, if it could 
 be confined to the productions of the press, with 
 which the earth is absolutely smothered. Human- 
 ity wants precious few books to read, but the great 
 living, breathing, immortal volume of Providence. 
 Life, real life, how to live, how to treat one 
 another, and how to trust God in matters beyond 
 our ken and occasion, these are the lessons to 
 learn, and you find little of them in libraries."
 
 NATHANIEL PEABODY ROGERS 237 
 
 " That accursed drum and fife ! How they have 
 maddened mankind ! And the deep bass boom of 
 the cannon, chiming in in the chorus of battle, that 
 trumpet and wild charging bugle, how they set 
 the military devil in a man, and make him into a 
 soldier ! Think of the human family falling upon 
 one another at the inspiration of music ! How must 
 God feel at it, to see those harp-strings he meant 
 should be waked to a love bordering on divine, 
 strung and swept to mortal hate and butchery ! " 
 
 " Leave off being Jews," (he is addressing Major 
 Noah with regard to his appeal to his brethren to 
 return to Judaea,) " and turn mankind. The rocks 
 and sands of Palestine have been worshipped long 
 enough. Connecticut River or the Merrimac are 
 as good rivers as any Jordan that ever run into a 
 dead or live sea, and as holy, for that matter. In 
 Humanity, as in Christ Jesus, as Paul says, ' there 
 is neither Jew nor Greek.' And there ought to be 
 none. Let Humanity be reverenced with the ten- 
 derest devotion ; suffering, discouraged, down-trod- 
 den, hard-handed, haggard-eyed, care-worn man- 
 kind ! Let these be regarded a little. Would to 
 God I could alleviate all their sorrows, and leave 
 them a chance to laugh ! They are miserable now. 
 They might be as happy as the blackbird on the 
 spray, and as full of melody." 
 
 " I am sick as death at this miserable struggle 
 among mankind for a living. Poor devils ! were 
 they born to run such a gauntlet after the means 
 of life ? Look about you, and see your squirming 
 neighbors, writhing and twisting like so many angle- 
 worms in a fisher's bait-box, or the wriggling ani-
 
 238 PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES 
 
 maleulse seen in the vinegar drop held to the sun. 
 How they look, how they feel, how base it makes 
 them all!" 
 
 " Every human being is entitled to the means of 
 life, as the trout is to his brook or the lark to the 
 blue sky. Is it well to put a human ' young one ' 
 here to die of hunger, thirst, and nakedness, or else 
 be preserved as a pauper ? Is this fair earth but a 
 poor-house by creation and intent ? Was it made 
 for that ? and these other round things we see 
 dancing in the firmament to the music of the 
 spheres, are they all great shining poor-houses ? " 
 
 " The divines always admit things after the age 
 has adopted them. They are as careful of the 
 age as the weathercock is of the wind. You might 
 as well catch an old experienced weathercock, on 
 some ancient Orthodox steeple, standing all day 
 with its tail east in a strong out wind, as the divines 
 at odds with the age." 
 
 But we must cease quoting. The admirers of 
 Jean Paul Richter might find much of the charm 
 and variety of the " Flower, Fruit, and Thorn 
 Pieces " in this newspaper collection. They may 
 see, perhaps, as we do, some things which they 
 cannot approve of, the tendency of which, however 
 intended, is very questionable. But, with us, they 
 will pardon something to the spirit of liberty, 
 much to that of love and humanity which breathes 
 through all. 
 
 Disgusted and heart-sick at the general indiffer- 
 ence of Church and clergy to the temporal condition 
 of the people, at their apologies for and defences 
 of slavery, war, and capital punishment, Rogers
 
 NATHANIEL PEABODY ROGERS 239 
 
 turned Protestant, in the full sense of the term. 
 He spoke of priests and " pulpit wizards " as freely 
 as John Milton did two centuries ago, although 
 with far less bitterness and rasping satire. He 
 could not endure to see Christianity and Humanity 
 divorced. He longed to see the beautiful life of 
 Jesus his sweet humanities, his brotherly love, 
 his abounding sympathies made the example of 
 all men. Thoroughly democratic, in his view all 
 men were equal. Priests, stripped of their sacer- 
 dotal tailoring, were in his view but men, after all. 
 He pitied them, he said, for they were in a wrong 
 position, above life's comforts and sympathies, 
 " up in the unnatural cold, they had better come 
 down among men, and endure and enjoy with 
 them." " Mankind," said he, " want the healing 
 influences of humanity. They must love one an- 
 other more. Disinterested good will make the 
 world as it should be." 
 
 His last visit to his native valley was in the 
 autumn of 1845. In a familiar letter to a friend, 
 he thus describes his farewell view of the mountain 
 glories of his childhood's home : 
 
 " I went a jaunt, Thursday last, about twenty 
 miles north of this valley, into the mountain region, 
 where what I beheld, if I could tell it as I saw it, 
 would make your outlawed sheet sought after wher- 
 ever our Anglo-Saxon tongue is spoken in the wide 
 world. I have been many a time among those 
 Alps, and never without a kindling of wildest 
 enthusiasm in my woodland blood. But I never 
 saw them till last Thursday. They never loomed 
 distinctly to my eye before, and the sun never shone
 
 240 PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES 
 
 on them from heaven till then. They were so near 
 me, I could seem to hear the voice of their cataracts, 
 as I could count their great slides, streaming adown 
 their lone and desolate sides, old slides, some of 
 them overgrown with young woods, like half -healed 
 scars on the breast of a giant. The great rains 
 had clothed the valleys of the upper Pemigewasset 
 in the darkest and deepest green. The meadows 
 were richer and more glorious in their thick ' fall 
 feed ' than Queen Anne's Garden, as I saw it 
 from the windows of Windsor Castle. And the 
 dark hemlock and hackmatack woods were yet 
 darker after the wet season, as they lay, in a hun- 
 dred wildernesses, in the mighty recesses of the 
 mountains. But the peaks, the eternal, the 
 solitary, the beautiful, the glorious and dear moun- 
 tain peaks, my own Moosehillock and my native 
 Haystacks, these were the things on which eye 
 and heart gazed and lingered, and I seemed to see 
 them for the last time. It was on my way back 
 that I halted and turned to look at them from a 
 high point on the Thornton road. It was about 
 four in the afternoon. It had rained among the 
 hills about the Notch, and cleared off. The sun, 
 there sombred at that early hour, as towards his 
 setting, was pouring his most glorious light upon 
 the naked peaks, and they casting their mighty 
 shadows far down among the inaccessible woods 
 that darken the hollows that stretch between their 
 bases. A cloud was creeping up to perch and rest 
 awhile on the highest top of Great Haystack. 
 Vulgar folks have called it Mount Lafayette, since 
 the visit of that brave old Frenchman in 1825 or
 
 NATHANIEL PEABODY ROGERS 241 
 
 1826. If they had asked his opinion, he would 
 have told them the names of mountains could n't 
 be altered, and especially names like that, so 
 appropriate, so descriptive, and so picturesque. 
 A little hard white cloud, that looked like a hun- 
 dred fleeces of wool rolled into one, was climbing 
 rapidly along up the northwestern ridge, that 
 ascended to the lonely top of Great Haystack. 
 All the others were bare. Four or five of them, 
 as distinct and shapely as so many pyramids ; 
 some topped out with naked cliff, on which the sun 
 lay in melancholy glory ; others clothed thick all 
 the way up with the old New Hampshire hemlock 
 or the daring hackmatack, Pierpont's hack- 
 matack. You could see their shadows stretching 
 many and many a mile, over Grant and Loca- 
 tion, away beyond the invading foot of Incorpora- 
 tion, where the timber-hunter has scarcely ex- 
 plored, and where the moose browses now, I 
 suppose, as undisturbed as he did before the settle- 
 ment of the State. I wish our young friend and 
 genius, Harrison Eastman, had been with me, to 
 see the sunlight as it glared on the tops of those 
 woods, and to see the purple of the mountains. I 
 looked at it myself almost with the eye of a painter. 
 If a painter looked with mine, though, he never 
 could look off upon his canvas long enough to 
 make a picture; he would gaze forever at the 
 original. 
 
 " But I had to leave it, and to say in my heart, 
 Farewell ! And as I travelled on down, and the 
 sun sunk lower and lower towards the summit of 
 the western ridge, the clouds came up and formed
 
 242 PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES 
 
 an Alpine range in the evening heavens above it, 
 like other Haystacks and Moosehillocks, so 
 dark and dense that fancy could easily mistake 
 them for a higher Alps. There were the peaks 
 and the great passes; the Franconia Notches 
 among the cloudy cliffs, and the great White 
 Mountain Gap." 
 
 His health, never robust, had been gradually 
 failing for some time previous to his death. He 
 needed more repose and quiet than his duties as 
 an editor left him ; and to this end he purchased a 
 small and pleasant farm in his loved Peinigewasset 
 valley, in the hope that he might there recruit his 
 wasted energies. In the sixth month of the year 
 of his death, in a letter to us, he spoke of his pros- 
 pects in language which even then brought moist- 
 ure to our eyes : 
 
 " I am striving to get me an asylum of a farm. 
 I have a wife and seven children, every one of 
 them with a whole spirit. I don't want to be sep- 
 arated from any of them, only with a view to come 
 together again. I have a beautiful little retreat in 
 prospect, forty odd miles north, where I imagine 
 I can get potatoes and repose, a sort of haven 
 or port. I am among the breakers, and 'mad 
 for land.' If I get this home, it is a mile or two 
 in among the hills from the pretty domicil once 
 visited by yourself and glorious Thompson, I am 
 this moment indulging the fancy that I may see 
 you at it before we die. Why can't I have you 
 come and see me? You see, dear W., I don't 
 want to send you anything short of a full epistle. 
 Let me end as I begun, with the proffer of my
 
 NATHANIEL PEABODY ROGERS 243 
 
 hand in grasp of yours extended. My heart I do 
 not proffer, it was yours before, it shall be 
 yours while I am N. P. KOGERS." 
 
 Alas ! the haven of a deeper repose than he had 
 dreamed of was close at hand. He lingered until 
 the middle of the tenth month, suffering much, yet 
 calm and sensible to the last. Just before his 
 death, he desired his children to sing at his bedside 
 that touching song of Lover's, The Angel's Whis- 
 per. Turning his eyes towards the open window, 
 through which the leafy glory of the season he 
 most loved was visible, he listened to the sweet 
 melody. In the words of his friend Pierpont, 
 
 " The angel's whisper stole in song upon his closing ear; 
 From his own daughter's lips it came, so musical and clear, 
 That scarcely knew the dying man what melody was there 
 The last of earth's or first of heaven's pervading all the air." 
 
 He sleeps in the Concord burial-ground, under 
 the shadow of oaks ; the very spot he would 
 have chosen, for he looked upon trees with some- 
 thing akin to human affection. " They are," he 
 said, " the beautiful handiwork and architecture of 
 God, on which the eye never tires. Every one is 
 ' a feather in the earth's cap,' a plume in her bon- 
 net, a tress on her forehead, a comfort, a re- 
 freshing, and an ornament to her." Spring has 
 hung over him her buds, and opened beside him 
 her violets. Summer has laid her green oaken 
 garland on his grave, and now the frost-blooms of 
 autumn drop upon it. Shall man cast a nettle on 
 that mound ? He loved humanity, shall it be 
 less kind to him than Nature ? Shall the bigotry 
 of sect, and creed, and profession, drive its con-
 
 244 PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES 
 
 demnatory stake into his grave? God forbid. 
 The doubts which he sometimes unguardedly ex- 
 pressed had relation, we are constrained to believe, 
 to the glosses of commentators and creed-makers 
 and the inconsistency of professors, rather than to 
 those facts and precepts of Christianity to which 
 he gave the constant assent of his practice. He 
 sought not his own. His heart yearned with pity 
 and brotherly affection for all the poor and suffer- 
 ing in the universe. Of him, the angel of Leigh 
 Hunt's beautiful allegory might have written, in 
 the golden book of remembrance, as he did of the 
 good Abou Ben Adhem, " He loved his fellow- 
 men."
 
 KOBEKT DINSMORE. 
 
 THE great charm of Scottish poetry consists in 
 its simplicity, and genuine, unaffected sympathy 
 with the common joys and sorrows of daily life. It 
 is a home-taught, household melody. It calls to 
 mind the pastoral bleat on the hillsides, the kirk- 
 bells of a summer Sabbath, the song of the lark in 
 the sunrise, the cry of the quail in the corn-land, 
 the low of cattle, and the blithe carol of milkmaids 
 " when the kye come hame " at gloaming. Meet- 
 ings at fair and market, blushing betrothments, 
 merry weddings, the joy of young maternity, the 
 lights and shades of domestic life, its bereavements 
 and partings, its chances and changes, its holy 
 death-beds, and funerals solemnly beautiful in 
 quiet kirkyards, these furnish the hints of the 
 immortal melodies of Burns, the sweet ballads of 
 the Ettrick Shepherd and Allan Cunningham, and 
 the rustic drama of Ramsay. It is the poetry of 
 home, of nature, and the affections. 
 
 All this is sadly wanting in our young literature. 
 We have no songs ; American domestic life has 
 never been hallowed and beautified by the sweet 
 and graceful and tender associations of poetry. 
 We have no Yankee pastorals. Our rivers and 
 streams turn mills and float rafts, and are other- 
 wise as commendably useful as those of Scotland ; 
 but no quaint ballad or simple song reminds us
 
 246 PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES 
 
 that men and women have loved, met, and parted 
 on their banks, or that beneath each roof within 
 their valleys the tragedy and comedy of life have 
 been enacted. Our poetry is cold and imitative ; 
 it seems more the product of over-strained intel- 
 lects than the spontaneous outgushing of hearts 
 warm with love, and strongly sympathizing with 
 human nature as it actually exists about us, with 
 the joys and griefs of the men and women whom 
 we meet daily. Unhappily, the opinion prevails 
 that a poet must be also a philosopher, and hence 
 it is that much of our poetry is as indefinable in 
 its mysticism as an Indian Brahmin's commentary 
 on his sacred books, or German metaphysics sub- 
 jected to homceopathic dilution. It assumes to be 
 prophetical, and its utterances are oracular. It 
 tells of strange, vague emotions and yearnings, 
 painfully suggestive of spiritual " groanings which 
 cannot be uttered." If it "babbles o' green 
 fields " and the common sights and sounds of na- 
 ture, it is only for the purpose of finding some 
 vague analogy between them and its internal ex- 
 periences and longings. It leaves the warm and 
 comfortable fireside of actual knowledge and hu- 
 man comprehension, and goes wailing and gibber- 
 ing like a ghost about the impassable doors of 
 mystery : 
 
 " It fain would be resolved 
 
 How things are done, 
 And who the tailor is 
 
 That works for the man i' the sun." 
 
 How shall we account for this marked tendency in 
 the literature of a shrewd, practical people ? Is it
 
 ROBERT DINSMORE 247 
 
 that real life in New England lacks those con- 
 ditions of poetry and romance which age, rever- 
 ence, and superstition have gathered about it in 
 the Old World ? Is it that 
 
 " Ours are not Tempe's nor Arcadia's vales," 
 
 but are more famous for growing Indian corn and 
 potatoes, and the manufacture of wooden ware 
 and pedler notions, than for romantic associations 
 and legendary interest ? That our huge, unshapely 
 shingle structures, blistering in the sun and glar- 
 ing with windows, were evidently never reared by 
 the spell of pastoral harmonies, as the walls of 
 Thebes rose at the sound of the lyre of Amphion? 
 That the habits of our people are too cool, cau- 
 tious, undemonstrative, to furnish the warp and 
 woof of song and pastoral, and that their dialect 
 and figures of speech, however richly significant 
 and expressive in the autobiography of Sam Slick, 
 or the satire of Hosea Biglow and Ethan Spike, 
 form a very awkward medium of sentiment and 
 pathos ? All this may be true. But the Yankee, 
 after all, is a man, and as such his history, could 
 it be got at, must have more or less of poetic ma- 
 terial in it ; moreover, whether conscious of it or 
 not, he also stands relieved against the background 
 of Nature's beauty or sublimity. There is a poeti- 
 cal side to the commonplace of his incomings and 
 outgoings ; study him well, and you may frame an 
 idyl of some sort from his apparently prosaic ex- 
 istence. Our poets, we must needs think, are 
 deficient in that shiftiness, ready adaptation to 
 circumstances, and ability of making the most of
 
 248 PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES 
 
 things, for which, as a people, we are proverbial. 
 Can they make nothing of our Thanksgiving, that 
 annual gathering of long-severed friends ? Do they 
 find nothing to their purpose in our apple-bees, 
 huskings, berry - pickings, summer picnics, and 
 winter sleigh-rides ? Is there nothing available in 
 our peculiarities of climate, scenery, customs, and 
 political institutions ? Does the Yankee leap into 
 life, shrewd, hard, and speculating, armed, like 
 Pallas, for a struggle with fortune ? Are there 
 not boys and girls, school loves and friendship, 
 courtings and match-makings, hope and fear, and 
 all the varied play of human passions, the keen 
 struggles of gain, the mad grasping of ambition, 
 sin and remorse, tearful repentance and holy aspi- 
 rations ? Who shall say that we have not all the 
 essentials of the poetry of human life and simple 
 nature, of the hearth and the farm-field ? Here, 
 then, is a mine un worked, a harvest ungathered. 
 Who shall sink the shaft and thrust in the sickle ? 
 
 And here let us say that the mere dilettante and 
 the amateur ruralist may as well keep their hands 
 off. The prize is not for them. He who would 
 successfully strive for it must be himself what he 
 sings, part and parcel of the rural life of New 
 England, one who has grown strong amidst its 
 healthful influences, familiar with all its details, and 
 capable of detecting whatever of beauty, humor, or 
 pathos pertain to it, one who has added to his 
 book-lore the large experience of an active partici- 
 pation in the rugged toil, the hearty amusements, 
 the trials, and the pleasures he describes. 
 
 We have been led to these reflections by an inci-
 
 ROBERT DINSMORE 249 
 
 dent which has called up before us the homespun 
 figure of an old friend of our boyhood, who had the 
 good sense to discover that the poetic element ex- 
 isted in the simple home life of a country farmer, 
 although himself unable to give a very creditable 
 expression of it. He had the " vision," indeed, but 
 the "faculty divine" was wanting; or, if he pos- 
 sessed it in any degree, as Thersites says of the wit 
 of Ajax, " it would not out, but lay coldly in him 
 like fire in the flint." 
 
 While engaged this morning in looking over a 
 large exchange list of newspapers, a few stanzas of 
 poetry in the Scottish dialect attracted our attention. 
 As we read them, like a wizard's rhyme they seemed 
 to have the power of bearing us back to the past. 
 They had long ago graced the columns of that soli- 
 tary sheet which once a week diffused happiness 
 over our fireside circle, making us acquainted, in 
 our lonely nook, with the goings-on of the great 
 world. The verses, we are now constrained to ad- 
 mit, are not remarkable in themselves, truth and 
 simple nature only ; yet how our young hearts re- 
 sponded to them ! Twenty years ago there were 
 fewer verse-makers than at present ; and as our 
 whole stock of light literature consisted of Ell- 
 wood's Davideis and the selections of Lindley 
 Murray's English Reader, it is not improbable 
 that we were in a condition to overestimate the 
 contributions to the poet's corner of our village 
 newspaper. Be that as it may, we welcome them 
 as we would the face of an old friend, for they some- 
 how remind us of the scent of haymows, the breath 
 of cattle, the fresh greenery by the brookside, the
 
 250 PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES 
 
 moist earth broken by the coulter and turned up to 
 the sun and winds of May. This particular piece, 
 which follows, is entitled The Sparrow, and was 
 occasioned by the crushing of a bird's-nest by the 
 author while ploughing among his corn. It has 
 something of the simple tenderness of Burns. 
 
 " Poor innocent and hapless Sparrow ! 
 Why should my mould-board gie thee sorrow 1 
 This day thou '11 chirp and mourn the morrow 
 
 Wi' anxious breast ; 
 The plough has turned the mould' ring furrow 
 
 Deep o'er thy nest ! 
 
 "Just i' the middle o' the hill 
 Thy nest was placed wi' curious skill ; 
 There I espied thy little bill 
 
 Beneath the shade. 
 In that sweet bower, secure frae ill, 
 
 Thine eggs were laid. 
 
 "Five corns o' maize had there been drappit, 
 An' through the stalks thy head was pappit, 
 The drawing nowt could na be stappit 
 
 I quickly f oun' ; 
 
 Syne frae thy cozie nest thou happit, 
 Wild fluttering roun'. 
 
 " The sklentin stane beguiled the sheer, 
 In vain I tried the plough to steer ; 
 A wee bit stumpie i' the rear 
 
 Cam' 'tween my legs, 
 An' to the jee-side gart me veer 
 
 An' crush thine eggs. 
 
 " Alas ! alas ! my bonnie birdie ! 
 Thy faithful mate flits round to guard thee. 
 Connubial love ! a pattern worthy 
 
 The pious priest ! 
 
 What savage heart could be sae hardy 
 As wound thy breast ?
 
 ROBERT DINSMORE 251 
 
 " Ah me ! it was nae fau't o' mine ; 
 It gars me greet to see thee pine. 
 It may be serves His great design 
 
 Who governs all ; 
 Omniscience tents wi' eyes divine 
 
 The Sparrow's fall ! 
 
 " How much like thine are human dools, 
 Their sweet wee bairns laid i' the mools ? 
 The Sovereign Power who nature rules 
 
 Hath said so be it ; 
 But poor blin' mortals are sic fools 
 
 They canua see it. 
 
 ' ' Nae doubt that He who first did mate us 
 Has fixed our lot as sure as fate is, 
 An' when He wounds He disna hate us, 
 
 But anely this, 
 He '11 gar the ills which here await us 
 
 Yield lastin' bliss." 
 
 In the early part of the eighteenth century a 
 considerable number of Presbyterians of Scotch 
 descent, from the north of Ireland, emigrated to 
 the New World. In the spring of 1719, the in- 
 habitants of Haverhill, on the Merriiuac, saw 
 them passing up the river in several canoes, one 
 of which unfortunately upset in the rapids above 
 the village. The following fragment of a ballad 
 celebrating this event has been handed down to 
 the present time, and may serve to show the feel- 
 ings even then of the old English settlers towards 
 the Irish emigrants : 
 
 " They began to scream and bawl, 
 
 As out they tumbled one and all, 
 And, if the Devil had spread his net, 
 He could have made a glorious haul ! " 
 
 The new-comers proceeded up the river, and,
 
 252 PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES 
 
 landing opposite to the Uncanoonuc Hills, on the 
 present site of Manchester, proceeded inland to 
 Beaver Pond. Charmed with the appearance of 
 the country, they resolved here to terminate their 
 wanderings. Under a venerable oak on the margin 
 of the little lake, they knelt down with their min- 
 ister, Jamie McGregore, and laid, in prayer and 
 thanksgiving, the foundation of their settlement. 
 In a few years they had cleared large fields, built 
 substantial stone and frame dwellings and a large 
 and commodious meeting-house ; wealth had accu- 
 mulated around them, and they had everywhere 
 the reputation of a shrewd and thriving community. 
 They were the first in New England to cultivate 
 the potato, which their neighbors for a long time 
 regarded as a pernicious root, altogether unfit for 
 a Christian stomach. Every lover of that invalua- 
 ble esculent has reason to remember with gratitude 
 the settlers of Londonderry. 
 
 Their moral acclimation in Ireland had not been 
 without its effect upon their character. Side by 
 side with a Presbyterianism as austere as that of 
 John Knox had grown up something of the wild 
 Milesian humor, love of convivial excitement and 
 merry-making. Their long prayers and fierce zeal 
 in behalf of orthodox tenets only served, in the 
 eyes of their Puritan neighbors, to make more glar- 
 ing still the scandal of their marked social irregu- 
 larities. It became a common saying in the region 
 round about that " the Derry Presbyterians would 
 never give up a pint of doctrine or a pint of rum." 
 Their second minister was an old scarred fighter, 
 who had signalized himself in the stout defence
 
 ROBERT DIN SHORE 253 
 
 of Londonderry, when James II. and his Papists 
 were thundering at its gates. Agreeably to his 
 death-bed directions, his old fellow-soldiers, in their 
 leathern doublets and battered steel caps, bore him 
 to his grave, firing over him the same rusty mus- 
 kets which had swept down rank after rank of the 
 men of Amalek at the Derry siege. 
 
 Erelong the celebrated Derry fair was estab- 
 lished, in imitation of those with which they had 
 been familiar in Ireland. Thither annually came 
 all manner of horse- jockeys and pedlers, gentlemen 
 and beggars, fortune-tellers, wrestlers, dancers and 
 fiddlers, gay young farmers and buxom maidens. 
 Strong drink abounded. They who had good-nat- 
 uredly wrestled and joked together in the morning 
 not unfrequently closed the day with a fight, until, 
 like the revellers of Donnybrook, 
 
 " Their hearts were soft with whiskey, 
 And their heads were soft with blows." 
 
 A wild, frolicking, drinking, fiddling, courting, 
 horse-racing, riotous merry-making, a sort of 
 Protestant carnival, relaxing the grimness of Puri- 
 tanism for leagues around it. 
 
 In the midst of such a community, and partak- 
 ing of all its influences, Robert Dinsmore, the au- 
 thor of the poem I have quoted, was born, about 
 the middle of the last century. His paternal an- 
 cestor, John, younger son of a Laird of Achen- 
 mead, who left the banks of the Tweed for the 
 green fertility of Northern Ireland, had emi- 
 grated to New England some forty years before, 
 and, after a rough experience of Indian captivity 
 in the wild woods of Maine, had settled down
 
 254 PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES 
 
 among his old neighbors in Londonderry. Until 
 nine years of age, Robert never saw a school. He 
 was a short time under the tuition of an old British 
 soldier, who had strayed into the settlement after 
 the French war, " at which time," he says in a let- 
 ter to a friend, " I learned to repeat the shorter 
 and larger catechisms. These, with the Scripture 
 proofs annexed to them, confirmed me in the or- 
 thodoxy of my forefathers, and I hope I shall ever 
 remain an evidence of the truth of what the wise 
 man said, ' Train up a child in the way he should 
 go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.' " 
 He afterwards took lessons with one Master Mc- 
 Keen, who used to spend much of his time in hunt- 
 ing squirrels with his pupils. He learned to read 
 and write ; and the old man always insisted that 
 he should have done well at ciphering also, had he 
 not fallen hi love with Molly Park. At the age of 
 eighteen he enlisted in the Revolutionary army, 
 and was at the battle of Saratoga. On his return 
 he married his fair Molly, settled down as a farmer 
 in Windham, formerly a part of Londonderry, and 
 before he was thirty years of age became an elder 
 in the church, of the creed and observances of 
 which he was always a zealous and resolute de- 
 fender. From occasional passages in his poems, it 
 is evident that the instructions which he derived 
 from the pulpit were not unlike those which Burns 
 suggested as needful for the unlucky lad whom he 
 was commending to his friend Hamilton : 
 
 " Ye '11 catechise him ilka quirk, 
 An' shore him weel wi' hell." 
 
 In a humorous poem, entitled Spring's Lament^
 
 ROBERT DIN SHORE 255 
 
 he thus describes the consternation produced in 
 the meeting-house at sermon time by a dog, who, in 
 search of his mistress, rattled and scraped at the 
 " west porch door : " 
 
 " The vera priest was scared himsel', 
 His sermon he could hardly spell ; 
 Auld carlins fancied they could smell 
 
 The brimstone matches; 
 They thought he was some imp o' hell, 
 
 In quest o' wretches." 
 
 He lived to a good old age, a home-loving, un- 
 pretending farmer, cultivating his acres with his 
 own horny hands, and cheering the long rainy days 
 and winter evenings with homely rhyme. Most of 
 his pieces were written in the dialect of his ances- 
 tors, which was well understood by his neighbors 
 and friends, the only audience upon which he could 
 venture to calculate. He loved all old things, old 
 language, old customs, old theology. In a rhyming 
 letter to his cousin Silas, he says : 
 
 " Though Death our ancestors has cleekit, 
 An' under clods them closely steekit, 
 We '11 mark the place their chimneys reekit, 
 Their native tongue we yet wad speak it, 
 W? accent glib: 1 
 
 He wrote sometimes to amuse his neighbors, 
 often to soothe their sorrow under domestic calam- 
 ity, or to give expression to his own. With little 
 of that delicacy of taste which results from the 
 attrition of fastidious and refined society, and al- 
 together too truthful and matter-of-fact to call in 
 the aid of imagination, he describes in the simplest 
 and most direct terms the circumstances in which 
 he found himself, and the impressions which these
 
 256 PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES 
 
 circumstances had made on his own mind. He 
 calls things by their right names ; no euphuism or 
 transcendentalism, the plainer and commoner 
 the better. He tells us of his farm life, its joys 
 and sorrows, its mirth and care, with no embellish- 
 ment, with no concealment of repulsive and un- 
 graceful features. Never having seen a nightin- 
 gale, he makes no attempt to describe the fowl ; 
 but he has seen the night-hawk, at sunset, cutting 
 the air above him, and he tells of it. Side by 
 side with his waving corn-fields and orchard- 
 blooms we have the barn-yard and pigsty. Noth- 
 ing which was necessary to the comfort and happi- 
 ness of his home and avocation was to him " com- 
 mon or unclean." Take, for instance, the follow- 
 ing, from a poem written at the close of autumn, 
 after the death of his wife : 
 
 " No more may I the Spring Brook trace, 
 No more with sorrow view the place 
 
 Where Mary's wash-tub stood ; 
 No more may wander there alone, 
 And lean upon the mossy stone 
 
 Where once she piled her wood. 
 ' T was there she bleached her linen cloth, 
 
 By yonder bass-wood tree ; 
 From that sweet stream she made her broth, 
 
 Her pudding and her tea. 
 That stream, whose waters running, 
 
 O'er mossy root and stone, 
 Made ringing and singing, 
 
 Her voice could match alone." 
 
 We envy not the man who can sneer at this 
 simple picture. It is honest as Nature herself. An 
 old and lonely man looks back upon the young 
 years of his wedded life. Can we not look with
 
 ROBERT DIN SHORE 257 
 
 him ? The sunlight of a summer morning is weav- 
 ing itself with the leafy shadows of the bass-tree, 
 beneath which a fair and ruddy-cheeked young 
 woman, with her full, rounded arms bared to the 
 elbow, bends not ungracefully to her task, pausing 
 ever and anon to play with the bright-eyed child 
 beside her, and mingling her songs with the pleas- 
 ant murmurings of gliding water ! Alas ! as the 
 old man looks, he hears that voice, which perpetu- 
 ally sounds to us all from the past no more ! 
 
 Let us look at him in his more genial mood. 
 Take the opening lines of his Thanksgiving Day. 
 What a plain, hearty picture of substantial com- 
 fort! 
 
 " When corn is in the garret stored, 
 And sauce in cellar well secured ; 
 When good fat beef we can afford, 
 
 And things that 're dainty, 
 With good sweet cider on our board, 
 
 And pudding plenty ; 
 
 " When stock, well housed, may chew the cud, 
 And at my door a pile of wood, 
 A rousing fire to warm my blood, 
 
 Blest sight to see ! 
 It puts my rustic muse in mood 
 
 To sing for thee." 
 
 If he needs a simile, he takes the nearest at 
 hand. In a letter to his daughter he says : 
 
 " That mine is not a longer letter, 
 The cause is not the want of matter, 
 Of that there 's plenty, worse or better; 
 
 But like a mill 
 
 Whose stream beats back with surplus water, 
 The wheel stands still." 
 
 Something of the humor of Burns gleams out
 
 258 PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES 
 
 occasionally from the sober decorum of his verses. 
 In an epistle to his friend Betton, high sheriff of 
 the county, who had sent to him for a peck of seed- 
 corn, he says : 
 
 " Soon plantin' time will come again, 
 Syne may the heavens gie us rain, 
 An' shining heat to bless ilk plain 
 
 An' fertile hill, 
 
 An' gar the loads o' yellow grain, 
 Our garrets fill. 
 
 " As long as I hae food and clothing, 
 An' still am hale and fier and breathing, 
 Ye 's get the corn and may be aething 
 
 Ye '11 do for me ; 
 (Though God forbid) hang me for naething 
 
 An' lose your fee." 
 
 And on receiving a copy of some verses written by 
 a lady, he talks in a sad way for a Presbyterian 
 deacon : 
 
 " Were she some Aborigine squaw, 
 Wha sings so sweet by nature's law, 
 I 'd meet her in a hazle shaw, 
 
 Or some green loany, 
 And make her tawny phiz and 'a 
 
 My welcome crony." 
 
 The practical philosophy of the stout, jovial 
 rhymer was but little affected by the sour-featured 
 asceticism of the elder. He says : 
 
 " We '11 eat and drink, and cheerful take 
 Our portions for the Donor's sake, 
 For thus the Word of Wisdom spake 
 
 Man can't do better ; 
 Nor can we by our labors make 
 
 The Lord our debtor." 
 
 A quaintly characteristic correspondence in 
 rhyme between the Deacon and Parson McGregore,
 
 ROBERT DIN SHORE 259 
 
 evidently " birds o' ane feather," is still in exist- 
 ence. The minister, in acknowledging the epistle 
 of his old friend, commences his reply as follows : 
 
 " Did e'er a cuif tak' up a quill, 
 Wha ne'er did aught that he did well, 
 To gar the muses rant and reel, 
 
 An' flaunt and swagger, 
 Nae doubt ye '11 say 't is that daft chiel 
 
 Old Dite McGregore ! " 
 
 The reply is in the same strain, and may serve 
 to give the reader some idea of the old gentleman 
 as a religious controversialist : 
 
 " My reverend friend and kind McGregore, 
 Although thou ne'er was ca'd a hragger, 
 Thy muse I 'm sure nane e'er was glegger 
 
 Thy Scottish lays 
 Might gar Socinians fa' or stagger, 
 E'en in their ways. 
 
 ' ' When Unitarian champions dare thee, 
 Goliah like, and think to scare thee, 
 Dear Davie, fear not, they '11 ne'er waur thee ; 
 
 But draw thy sling, 
 Weel loaded frae the Gospel quarry, 
 
 An' gie 't a fling." 
 
 The last time I saw him, he was chaffering in the 
 market-place of my native village, swapping pota- 
 toes and onions and pumpkins for tea, coffee, mo- 
 lasses, and, if the truth be told, New England rum. 
 Threescore years and ten, to use his own words, 
 
 " Hung o'er his back, 
 And bent him like a muckle pack," 
 
 yet he still stood stoutly and sturdily in his thick 
 shoes of cowhide, like one accustomed to tread in- 
 dependently the soil of his own acres, his broad, 
 honest face seamed by care and darkened by ex-
 
 260 PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES 
 
 posure to " all the airts that blow," and his white 
 hair flowing in patriarchal glory beneath his felt 
 hat. A genial, jovial, large-hearted old man, sim- 
 ple as a child, and betraying, neither in look nor 
 manner, that he was accustomed to 
 
 " Feed on thoughts which voluntary move 
 Harmonious numbers." 
 
 Peace to him ! A score of modern dandies and 
 sentimentalists could ill supply the place of this 
 one honest man. In the ancient burial-ground of 
 Windham, by the side of his " beloved Molly," 
 and in view of the old meeting-house, there is a 
 mound of earth, where, every spring, green grasses 
 tremble in the wind and the warm sunshine calls 
 out the flowers. There, gathered like one of his 
 own ripe sheaves, the farmer poet sleeps with his 
 fathers.
 
 PLACIDO, THE SLAVE POET. 
 
 [1845.] 
 
 I HAVE been greatly interested in the fate of 
 Juan Placido, the black revolutionist of Cuba, who 
 was executed in Havana, as the alleged instigator 
 and leader of an attempted revolt on the part of 
 the slaves in that city and its neighborhood. 
 
 Juan Placido was born a slave on the estate of 
 Don Terribio de Castro. His father was an Afri- 
 can, his mother a mulatto. His mistress treated 
 him with great kindness, and taught him to read. 
 When he was twelve years of age she died, and he 
 fell into other and less compassionate hands. At 
 the age of eighteen, on seeing his mother struck 
 with a heavy whip, he for the first time turned 
 upon his tormentors. To use his own words, " I 
 felt the blow in my heart. To utter a loud cry, 
 and from a downcast boy, with the timidity of one 
 weak as a lamb, to become all at once like a raging 
 lion, was a thing of a moment." He was, however, 
 subdued, and the next morning, together with his 
 mother, a tenderly nurtured and delicate woman, 
 severely scourged. On seeing his mother rudely 
 stripped and thrown down upon the ground, he at 
 first with tears implored the overseer to spare her ; 
 but at the sound of the first blow, as it cut into her 
 naked flesh, he sprang once more upon the ruffian,
 
 262 PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES 
 
 who, having superior strength, beat him until he 
 was nearer dead than alive. 
 
 After suffering all the vicissitudes of slavery, 
 hunger, nakedness, stripes; after bravely and 
 nobly bearing up against that slow, dreadful pro- 
 cess which reduces the man to a thing, the image 
 of God to a piece of merchandise, until he had 
 reached his thirty-eighth year, he was unexpectedly 
 released from his bonds. Some literary gentlemen 
 in Havana, into whose hands two or three pieces 
 of his composition had fallen, struck with the vigor, 
 spirit, and natural grace which they manifested, 
 sought out the author, and raised a subscription to 
 purchase his freedom. He came to Havana, and 
 maintained himself by house-painting, and such 
 other employments as his ingenuity and talents 
 placed within his reach. He wrote several poems, 
 which have been published in Spanish at Havana, 
 and translated by Dr. Madden, under the title of 
 Poems by a Slave. 
 
 It is not too much to say of these poems that 
 they will bear a comparison with most of the pro- 
 ductions of modern Spanish literature. The style 
 is bold, free, energetic. Some of the pieces are 
 sportive and graceful ; such is the address to The 
 Cucuya, or Cuban firefly. This beautiful insect 
 is sometimes fastened in tiny nets to the light 
 dresses of the Cuban ladies, a custom to which the 
 writer gallantly alludes in the following lines : 
 
 " Ah ! still as one looks on such brightness and bloom, 
 On such beauty as hers, one might envy the doom 
 Of a captive Cucnya that 's destined, like this, 
 To be touched by her hand and revived by her kiss !
 
 PLACIDO, THE SLAVE POET 263 
 
 In the cage which her delicate hand has prepared, 
 
 The beautiful prisoner nestles unscared, 
 
 O'er her fair forehead shining serenely and bright, 
 
 In beauty's own bondage revealing its light ! 
 
 And when the light dance and the revel are done, 
 
 She bears it away to her alcove alone, 
 
 Where, fed by her hand from the cane that 's most choice, 
 
 In secret it gleams at the sound of her voice ! 
 
 O beautiful maiden ! may Heaven accord 
 
 Thy care of the captive a fitting reward, 
 
 And never may fortune the fetters remove 
 
 Of a heart that is thine in the bondage of love ! " 
 
 In his Dream, a fragment of some length, Pla- 
 cido dwells in a touching manner upon the scenes 
 of his early years. It is addressed to his brother 
 Florence, who was a slave near Matanzas, while 
 the author was in the same condition at Havana. 
 There is a plaintive and melancholy sweetness in 
 these lines, a natural pathos, which finds its way 
 to the heart : 
 
 " Thou knowest, dear Florence, my sufferings of old, 
 The struggles maintained with oppression for years ; 
 We shared them together, and each was consoled 
 
 With the love which was nurtured by sorrow and tears. 
 
 "But now far apart, the sad pleasure is gone, 
 
 We mingle our sighs and our sorrows no more ; 
 The course is a new one which each has to run, 
 And dreary for each is the pathway before. 
 
 " But in slumber our spirits at least shall commune, 
 
 We will meet as of old in the visions of sleep, 
 In dreams which call back early days, when at noon 
 We stole to the shade of the palm-tree to weep ! 
 
 "For solitude pining, in anguish of late 
 
 The heights of Quintana I sought for repose ; 
 
 And there, in the cool and the silence, the weight 
 
 Of my cares was forgotten, I felt not my woes.
 
 264 PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES 
 
 "Exhausted and weary, the spell of the place 
 
 Sank down on my eyelids, and soft slumber stole 
 So sweetly upon me, it left not a trace 
 
 Of sorrow o'ercasting the light of the soul." 
 
 The writer then imagines himself borne lightly 
 through the air to the place of his birth. The 
 valley of Matanzas lies beneath him, hallowed by 
 the graves of his parents. He proceeds : 
 
 " I gazed on that spot where together we played, 
 
 Our innocent pastimes came fresh to my mind, 
 Our mother's caress, and the fondness displayed 
 In each word and each look of a parent so kind. 
 
 " I looked on the mountain, whose fastnesses wild 
 The fugitives seek from the rifle and hound ; 
 Below were the fields where they suffered and toiled, 
 And there the low graves of their comrades are found. 
 
 " The mill-house was there, and the turmoil of old ; 
 
 But sick of these scenes, for too well were they known, 
 I looked for the stream where in childhood I strolled 
 When a moment of quiet and peace was my own. 
 
 " With mingled emotions of pleasure and pain, 
 
 Dear Florence, I sighed to behold thee once more ; 
 I sought thee, my brother, embraced thee again, 
 But I found thee a slave as I left thee before ! ' ' 
 
 Some of his devotional pieces evince the fer- 
 vor and true feeling of the Christian poet. His 
 Ode to Religion contains many admirable lines. 
 Speaking of the martyrs of the early days of Chris- 
 tianity, he says finely : 
 
 " Still in that cradle, purpled with their blood, 
 The infant Faith waxed stronger day by day." 
 
 I cannot forbear quoting the last stanza of this 
 poem :
 
 PLACIDO, THE SLAVE POET 265 
 
 " God of mercy, throned in glory high, 
 
 On earth and all its misery look down : 
 Behold the wretched, hear the captive's cry, 
 
 And call Thy exiled children round Thy throne ! 
 There would I fain in contemplation gaze 
 
 On Thy eternal beauty, and would make 
 Of love one lasting canticle of praise, 
 
 And every theme but Thee henceforth forsake ! " 
 
 His best and noblest production is an ode To 
 Cuba, written on the occasion of Dr. Madden's 
 departure from the island, and presented to that 
 gentleman. It was never published in Cuba, as its 
 sentiments would have subjected the author to per- 
 secution. It breathes a lofty spirit of patriotism, 
 and an indignant sense of the wrongs inflicted 
 upon his race. Withal, it has something of the 
 grandeur and stateliness of the old Spanish muse. 
 
 " Cuba ! of what avail that thou art fair, 
 
 Pearl of the Seas, the pride of the Antilles, 
 If thy poor sons have still to see thee share 
 
 The pangs of bondage and its thousand ills ? 
 
 Of what avail the verdure of thy hills, 
 The purple bloom thy coffee-plain displays ; 
 
 The cane's luxuriant growth, whose culture fills 
 More graves than famine, or the sword finds ways 
 To glut with victims calmly as it slays ? 
 
 " Of what avail that thy clear streams abound 
 
 With precious ore, if wealth there 's none to buy 
 Thy children's rights, and not one grain is found 
 
 For Learning's shrine, or for the altar nigh 
 
 Of poor, forsaken, downcast Liberty ? 
 Of what avail the riches of thy port, 
 
 Forests of masts and ships from every sea, 
 If Trade alone is free, and man, the sport 
 And spoil of Trade, bears wrongs of every sort ? 
 
 " Cuba ! Cuba ! when men call thee fair, 
 And rich, and beautiful, the Queen of Isles,
 
 266 PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES 
 
 Star of the West, and Ocean's gem most rare, 
 Oh, say to those -who mock thee -with such -wiles : 
 Take off these flowers ; and view the lifeless spoils 
 
 Which wait the worm ; behold their hues beneath 
 The pale, cold cheek ; and seek for living smiles 
 
 Where Beauty lies not in the arms of Death, 
 
 And Bondage taints not with its poison breath ! " 
 
 The disastrous result of the last rising of the 
 slaves in Cuba is well known. Betrayed, and 
 driven into premature collision with their oppres- 
 sors, the insurrectionists were speedily crushed into 
 subjection. Placido was arrested, and after a long 
 hearing was condemned to be executed, and con- 
 signed to the Chapel of the Condemned. 
 
 How far he was implicated in the insurrectionary 
 movement it is now perhaps impossible to ascer- 
 tain. The popular voice at Havana pronounced 
 him its leader and projector, and as such he was 
 condemned. His own bitter wrongs ; the terrible 
 recollections of his life of servitude ; the sad con- 
 dition of his relatives and race, exposed to scorn, 
 contumely, and the heavy hand of violence ; the 
 impunity with which the most dreadful outrages 
 upon the persons of slaves were inflicted, acting 
 upon a mind fully capable of appreciating the 
 beauty and dignity of freedom, furnished abun- 
 dant incentives to an effort for the redemption of 
 his race and the humiliation of his oppressors. 
 The Heraldo, of Madrid speaks of him as "the 
 celebrated poet, a man of great natural genius, and 
 beloved and appreciated by the most respectable 
 young men of Havana." It accuses him of wild 
 and ambitious projects, and states that he was in- 
 tended to be the chief of the black race after they 
 had thrown off the yoke of bondage.
 
 PLACIDO, THE SLAVE POET 267 
 
 He was executed at Havana in the seventh 
 month, 1844. According to the custom in Cuba 
 with condemned criminals, he was conducted from 
 prison to the Chapel of the Doomed. He passed 
 thither with singular composure, amidst a great 
 concourse of people, gracefully saluting his numer- 
 ous acquaintances. The chapel was hung with 
 black cloth, and dimly lighted. He was seated be- 
 side his coffin. Priests in long black robes stood 
 around him, chanting in sepulchral voices the ser- 
 vice of the dead. It is an ordeal under which the 
 stoutest-hearted and most resolute have been found 
 to sink. After enduring it for twenty-four hours 
 he was led out to execution. He came forth calm 
 and undismayed; holding a crucifix in his hand, 
 he recited in a loud, clear voice a solemn prayer in 
 verse, which he had composed amidst the horrors 
 of the Chapel. The following is an imperfect 
 rendering of a poem which thrilled the hearts of 
 all who heard it : 
 
 ' ' God of unbounded love and power eternal, 
 To Thee I turn in darkness and despair ! 
 Stretch forth Thine arm, and from the brow infernal 
 
 Of Calumny the veil of Justice tear ; 
 And from the forehead of my honest fame 
 Pluck the world's brand of infamy and shame ! 
 
 " O King of kings ! my fathers' God ! who only 
 
 Art strong to save, by whom is all controlled, 
 Who givest the sea its waves, the dark and lonely 
 
 Abyss of heaven its light, the North its cold, 
 The air its currents, the warm sun its beams, 
 Life to the flowers, and motion to the streams ! 
 
 " All things obey Thee, dying or reviving 
 
 As thou commandest ; all, apart from Thee,
 
 268 PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES 
 
 From Thee alone their life and power deriving, 
 
 Sink and are lost in vast eternity ! 
 Yet doth the void obey Thee ; since from naught 
 This marvellous being by Thy hand was wrought. 
 
 " O merciful God ! I cannot shun Thy presence, 
 For through its veil of flesh Thy piercing eye 
 
 Looketh upon my spirit's unsoiled essence, 
 As through the pure transparence of the sky ; 
 
 Let not the oppressor clap his bloody hands, 
 
 As o'er my prostrate innocence he stands! 
 
 " But if, alas, it seemeth good to Thee 
 
 That I should perish as the guilty dies, 
 And that in death my foes should gaze on me 
 
 With hateful malice and exulting eyes, 
 Speak Thou the word, and bid them shed my blood, 
 Fully in me Thy will be done, God ! " 
 
 On arriving at the fatal spot, he sat down as or- 
 dered, on a bench, with his back to the soldiers. 
 The multitude recollected that in some affecting 
 lines, written by the conspirator in prison, he had 
 said that it would be useless to seek to kill him by 
 shooting his body, that his heart must be pierced 
 ere it would cease its throbbings. At the last mo- 
 ment, just as the soldiers were about to fire, he rose 
 up and gazed for an instant around and above him : 
 on the beautiful capital of his native land and its 
 sail-flecked bay, on the dense crowds about him, 
 the blue mountains in the distance, and the sky 
 glorious with summer sunshine. " Adios, mundo ! " 
 (Farewell, world !) he said calmly, and sat down. 
 The word was given, and five balls entered his 
 body. Then it was that, amidst the groans and 
 murmurs of the horror-stricken spectators, he rose 
 up once more, and turned his head to the shudder- 
 ing soldiers, his face wearing an expression of su-
 
 PLAC1DO, THE SLAVE POET 269 
 
 perhuman courage. " Will no one pity me ? " he 
 said, laying his hand over his heart. " Here, fire 
 here ! " While he yet spake, two balls entered his 
 heart, and he fell dead. 
 
 Thus perished the hero poet of Cuba. He has 
 not fallen in vain. His genius and his heroic 
 death will doubtless be regarded by his race as 
 precious legacies. To the great names of L'Ou- 
 verture and Petion the colored man can now add 
 that of Juan Placido.
 
 PERSONAL SKETCHES AND 
 TRIBUTES 
 
 THE FUNERAL OF TORREY. 
 
 Charles T. Torrey, an able young Congregational clergyman, 
 died May 9, 1846, in the state's prison of Maryland, for the 
 offence of aiding slaves to escape from bondage. His funeral in 
 Boston, attended by thousands, was a most impressive occasion. 
 The following is an extract from an article written for the Essex 
 Transcript : 
 
 SOME seven years ago, we saw Charles T. Torrey 
 for the first time. His wife was leaning on his arm, 
 young, loving, and beautiful ; the heart that saw 
 them blessed them. Since that time, we have known 
 him as a most energetic and zealous advocate of the 
 anti-slavery cause. He had fine talents, improved 
 by learning and observation, a clear, intensely ac- 
 tive intellect, and a heart full of sympathy and 
 genial humanity. It was with strange and bitter 
 feelings that we bent over his coffin and looked 
 upon his still face. The pity which we had felt 
 for him in his long sufferings gave place to indigna- 
 tion against his murderers. Hateful beyond the 
 power of expression seemed the tyranny which had 
 murdered him with the slow torture of the dungeon. 
 May God forgive us, if for the moment we felt like 
 grasping His dread prerogative of vengeance. As
 
 272 PERSONAL SKETCHES AND TRIBUTES 
 
 we passed out of the hall, a friend grasped our 
 hand hard, his eye flashing through its tears, with 
 a stern reflection of our own emotions, while he 
 whispered through his pressed lips : " It is enough 
 to turn every anti-slavery heart into steel." Our 
 blood boiled ; we longed to see the wicked apolo- 
 gists of slavery the blasphemous defenders of it 
 in Church and State led up to the coffin of our 
 murdered brother, and there made to feel that their 
 hands had aided in riveting the chain upon those 
 still limbs, and in shutting out from those cold lips 
 the free breath of heaven. 
 
 A long procession followed his remains to their 
 resting-place at Mount Auburn. A monument to 
 his memory will be raised in that cemetery, in the 
 midst of the green beauty of the scenery which he 
 loved in life, and side by side with the honored 
 dead of Massachusetts. Thither let the friends 
 of humanity go to gather fresh strength from the 
 memory of the martyr. There let the slaveholder 
 stand, and as he reads the record of the enduring 
 marble commune with his own heart, and feel that 
 sorrow which worketh repentance. 
 
 The young, the beautiful, the brave ! he is safe 
 now from the malice of his enemies. Nothing can 
 harm him more. His work for the poor and help- 
 less was well and nobly done. In the wild woods 
 of Canada, around many a happy fireside and holy 
 family altar, his name is on the lips of God's poor. 
 He put his soul in their souls' stead ; he gave his 
 life for those who had no claim on his love save 
 that of human brotherhood. How poor, how piti- 
 ful and paltry, seem our labors! How small and
 
 THE FUNERAL OF TORRE Y 273 
 
 mean our trials and sacrifices ! May the spirit of 
 the dead be with us, and infuse into our hearts 
 something of his own deep sympathy, his hatred of 
 injustice, his strong faith and heroic endurance. 
 May that spirit be gladdened in its present sphere 
 by the increased zeal and faithfulness of the friends 
 he has left behind.
 
 EDWARD EVERETT. 
 
 A letter to Robert C. Waterston. 
 
 AMESBURY, 27th 1st Month, 1865. 
 
 I ACKNOWLEDGE through thee the invitation of 
 the standing committee of the Massachusetts His- 
 torical Society to be present at a special meeting 
 of the Society for the purpose of paying a tribute 
 to the memory of our late illustrious associate, 
 Edward Everett. 
 
 It is a matter of deep regret to me that the state 
 of my health will not permit me to be with you on 
 an occasion of so much interest. 
 
 It is most fitting that the members of the His- 
 torical Society of Massachusetts should add their 
 tribute to those which have been already offered 
 by all sects, parties, and associations to the name 
 and fame of their late associate. He was himself 
 a maker of history, and part and parcel of all the 
 noble charities and humanizing influences of his 
 State and time. 
 
 When the grave closed over him who added 
 new lustre to the old and honored name of Quincy, 
 all eyes instinctively turned to Edward Everett as 
 the last of that venerated class of patriotic civil- 
 ians who, outliving all dissent and jealousy and 
 party prejudice, held their reputation by the secure 
 tenure of the universal appreciation of its worth as
 
 EDWARD EVERETT 275 
 
 a common treasure of the republic. It is not for 
 me to pronounce his eulogy. Others, better quali- 
 fied by their intimate acquaintance with him, have 
 done and will do justice to his learning, eloquence, 
 varied culture, and social virtues. My secluded 
 country life has afforded me few opportunities of 
 personal intercourse with him, while my pronounced 
 radicalism on the great question which has divided 
 popular feeling rendered our political paths widely 
 divergent. Both of us early saw the danger which 
 threatened the country. In the language of the 
 prophet, we " saw the sword coming upon the land," 
 but while he believed in the possibility of averting 
 it by concession and compromise, I, on the contrary, 
 as firmly believed that such a course could only 
 strengthen and confirm what I regarded as a gi- 
 gantic conspiracy against the rights and liberties, 
 the union and the life, of the nation. 
 
 Eecent events have certainly not tended to 
 change this belief on my part ; but in looking over 
 the past, while I see little or nothing to retract in 
 the matter of opinion, I am saddened by the re- 
 flection that through the very intensity of my con- 
 victions I may have done injustice to the motives of 
 those with whom I differed. As respects Edward 
 Everett, it seems to me that only within the last 
 four years I have truly known him. 
 
 In that brief period, crowded as it is with a 
 whole life-work of consecration to the union, free- 
 dom, and glory of his country, he not only com- 
 manded respect and reverence, but concentrated 
 upon himself in a most remarkable degree the love 
 of all loyal and generous hearts. We have seen,
 
 276 PERSONAL SKETCHES AND TRIBUTES 
 
 in these years of trial, very great sacrifices offered 
 upon the altar of patriotism, wealth, ease, home- 
 love, life itself. But Edward Everett did more 
 than this : he laid on that altar not only his time, 
 talents, and culture, but his pride of opinion, his 
 long-cherished views of policy, his personal and 
 political predilections and prejudices, his constitu- 
 tional fastidiousness of conservatism, and the care- 
 fully elaborated symmetry of his public reputation. 
 With a rare and noble magnanimity, he met, with- 
 out hesitation, the demand of the great occasion. 
 Breaking away from all the besetments of custom 
 and association, he forgot the things that are be- 
 hind, and, with an eye single to present duty, 
 pressed forward towards the mark of the high call- 
 ing of Divine Providence in the events of our time. 
 All honor to him ! If we mourn that he is now 
 beyond the reach of our poor human praise, let us 
 reverently trust that he has received that higher 
 plaudit : " Well done, thou good and faithful ser- 
 vant ! " 
 
 When I last met him, as my colleague in the 
 Electoral College of Massachusetts, his look of 
 health and vigor seemed to promise us many years 
 of his wisdom and usefulness. On greeting him I 
 felt impelled to express my admiration and grate- 
 ful appreciation of his patriotic labors ; and I shall 
 never forget how readily and gracefully he turned 
 attention from himself to the great cause in which 
 we had a common interest, and expressed his thank- 
 fulness that he had still a country to serve. 
 
 To keep green the memory of such a man is at 
 once a privilege and a duty. That stainless life of
 
 EDWARD EVERETT 277 
 
 seventy years is a priceless legacy. His hands were 
 pure. The shadow of suspicion never fell on him. 
 If he erred in his opinions (and that he did so he 
 had the Christian grace and courage to own), no 
 selfish interest weighed in the scale of his judgment 
 against truth. 
 
 As our thoughts follow him to his last resting- 
 place, we are sadly reminded of his own touching 
 lines, written many years ago at Florence. The 
 name he has left behind is none the less " pure " 
 that instead of being " humble," as he then antici- 
 pated, it is on the lips of grateful millions, and 
 written ineffaceable on the record of his country's 
 trial and triumph : 
 
 " Yet not for me when I shall fall asleep 
 Shall Santa Croce's lamps their vigils keep. 
 Beyond the main in Auburn's quiet shade, 
 With those I loved and love my couch be made ; 
 Spring's pendant branches o'er the hillock wave, 
 And morning's dewdrops glisten on my grave, 
 While Heaven's great arch shall rise above my bed, 
 When Santa Croce's crumbles on her dead, 
 Unknown to erring or to suffering fame, 
 So may I leave a pure though humble name." 
 
 Congratulating the Society on the prospect of 
 the speedy consummation of the great objects of 
 our associate's labors, the peace and permanent 
 union of our country, 
 
 I am very truly thy friend.
 
 LEWIS TAPPAN. 
 
 [1873.] 
 
 ONE after another, those foremost in the anti- 
 slavery conflict of the last half century are rapidly 
 passing away. The grave has just closed over all 
 that was mortal of Salmon P. Chase, the kingliest 
 of men, a statesman second to no other in our 
 history, too great and pure for the Presidency, yet 
 leaving behind him a record which any incumbent 
 of that station might envy, and now the tele- 
 graph brings us the tidings of the death of Lewis 
 Tappan, of Brooklyn, so long and so honorably 
 identified with the anti-slavery cause, and with 
 every philanthropic and Christian enterprise. He 
 was a native of Massachusetts, born at Northamp- 
 ton in 1788, of Puritan lineage, one of a fam- 
 ily remarkable for integrity, decision of character, 
 and intellectual ability. At the very outset, in 
 company with his brother Arthur, he devoted his 
 time, talents, wealth, and social position to the 
 righteous but unpopular cause of Emancipation, 
 and became, in consequence, a mark for the perse- 
 cution which followed such devotion. His business 
 was crippled, his name cast out as evil, his dwelling 
 sacked, and his furniture dragged into the street 
 and burned. Yet he never, in the darkest hour, 
 faltered or hesitated for a moment. He knew he 

 
 LEWIS TAPPAN 279 
 
 was right, and that the end would justify him ; 
 one of the cheerf ullest of men, he was strong where 
 others were weak, hopeful where others despaired. 
 He was wise in counsel, and prompt in action ; like 
 Tennyson's Sir Galahad, 
 
 " His strength was as the strength of ten, 
 Because his heart was pure. ' ' 
 
 I met him for the first time forty years ago, at 
 the convention which formed the American Anti- 
 Slavery Society, where I chanced to sit by him as 
 one of the secretaries. Myself young and inex- 
 perienced, I remember how profoundly I was im- 
 pressed by his cool self-possession, clearness of per- 
 ception, and wonderful executive ability. Had he 
 devoted himself to party politics with half the zeal 
 which he manifested in behalf of those who had no 
 votes to give and no honors to bestow, he could 
 have reached the highest offices in the land. He 
 chose his course, knowing all that he renounced, 
 and he chose it wisely. He never, at least, re- 
 gretted it. 
 
 And now, at the ripe age of eighty-five years, the 
 brave old man has passed onward to the higher 
 life, having outlived here all hatred, abuse, and 
 misrepresentation, having seen the great work of 
 Emancipation completed, and white men and black 
 men equal before the law. I saw him for the last 
 time three years ago, when he was preparing his 
 valuable biography of his beloved brother Arthur. 
 Age had begun to tell upon his constitution, but 
 his intellectual force was not abated. The old, 
 pleasant laugh and playful humor remained. He 
 looked forward to the close of life hopefully, even
 
 280 PERSONAL SKETCHES AND TRIBUTES 
 
 cheerfully, as he called to mind the dear friends 
 who had passed on before him, to await his coming. 
 Of the sixty-three signers of the Anti-Slavery 
 Declaration at the Philadelphia Convention in 
 1833, probably not more than eight or ten are now 
 living. 
 
 "As clouds that rake the mountain summits, 
 
 As waves that know no guiding hand, 
 So swift has brother followed brother 
 From sunshine to the sunless land." 
 
 Yet it is a noteworthy fact that the oldest mem- 
 ber of that convention, David Thurston, D. D., of 
 Maine, lived to see the slaves emancipated, and to 
 mingle his voice of thanksgiving with the bells that 
 rang in the day of universal freedom.
 
 BAYAKD TAYLOK. 
 
 Read at the memorial meeting in Tremont Temple, Boston, 
 January 10, 1879. 
 
 I AM not able to attend the memorial meeting 
 in Tremont Temple on the 10th instant, but my 
 heart responds to any testimonial appreciative of 
 the intellectual achievements and the noble and 
 manly life of Bayard Taylor. More than thirty 
 years have intervened between my first meeting 
 him in the fresh bloom of his youth and hope 
 and honorable ambition, and my last parting with 
 him under the elms of Boston Common, after our 
 visit to Richard H. Dana, on the occasion of the 
 ninetieth anniversary of that honored father of 
 American poetry, still living to lament the death 
 of his younger disciple and friend. How much he 
 has accomplished in these years ! The most indus- 
 trious of men, slowly, patiently, under many dis- 
 advantages, he built up his splendid reputation. 
 Traveller, editor, novelist, translator, diplomatist, 
 and through all and above all poet, what he was 
 he owed wholly to himself. His native honesty 
 was satisfied with no half tasks. He finished as 
 he went, and always said and did his best. 
 
 It is perhaps too early to assign him his place in 
 American literature. His picturesque books of 
 travel, his Oriental lyrics, his Pennsylvanian idyls,
 
 282 PERSONAL SKETCHES AND TRIBUTES 
 
 his Centennial ode, the pastoral beauty and Chris- 
 tian sweetness of Lars, and the high argument 
 and rhythmic marvel of Deukalion are sureties of 
 the permanence of his reputation. But at this 
 moment my thoughts dwell rather upon the man 
 than the author. The calamity of his death, felt 
 in both hemispheres, is to me and to all who inti- 
 mately knew and loved him a heavy personal loss. 
 Under the shadow of this bereavement, in the 
 inner circle of mourning, we sorrow most of all 
 that we shall see his face no more, and long for 
 " the touch of a vanished hand, and the sound of a 
 voice that is still."
 
 WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING. 
 
 Read at the dedication of the Charming Memorial Church at 
 Newport, R. I. 
 
 DANVERS, MASS., 3d Mo., 13, 1880. 
 
 I SCARCELY need say that I yield to no one in 
 love and reverence for the great and good man 
 whose memory, outliving all prejudices of creed, 
 sect, and party, is the common legacy of Christen- 
 dom. As the years go on, the value of that legacy 
 will be more and more felt ; not so much, perhaps, 
 in doctrine as in spirit, in those utterances of a 
 devout soul which are above and beyond the affir- 
 mation or negation of dogma. 
 
 His ethical severity and Christian tenderness ; 
 his hatred of wrong and oppression, with love and 
 pity for the wrong-doer ; his noble pleas for self- 
 culture, temperance, peace, and purity ; and above 
 all, his precept and example of unquestioning 
 obedience to duty and the voice of God in his 
 soul, can never become obsolete. It is very fitting 
 that his memory should be especially cherished 
 with that of Hopkins and Berkeley in the beautiful 
 island to which the common residence of those 
 worthies has lent additional charms and interest.
 
 DEATH OF PRESIDENT GARFIELD. 
 
 A letter written to W. H. B. Currier, of Amesbury, Mass. 
 
 DANVERS, MASS., 9th Mo., 24, 1881. 
 
 I REGRET that it is not in my power to join the 
 citizens of Amesbury and Salisbury in the memo- 
 rial services on the occasion of the death of our 
 lamented President. But in heart and sympathy 
 I am with you. I share the great sorrow which 
 overshadows the land ; I fully appreciate the irre- 
 trievable loss. But it seems to me that the occa- 
 sion is one for thankfulness as well as grief. 
 
 Through all the stages of the solemn tragedy 
 which has just closed with the death of our no- 
 blest and best, I have felt that the Divine Provi- 
 dence was overruling the mighty affliction, that 
 the patient sufferer at Washington was drawing 
 with cords of sympathy all sections and parties 
 nearer to each other. And now, when South and 
 North, Democrat and Republican, Radical and 
 Conservative, lift their voices in one unbroken 
 accord of lamentation ; when I see how, in spite of 
 the greed of gain, the lust of office, the strifes and 
 narrowness of party politics, the great heart of the 
 nation proves sound and loyal, I feel a new hope 
 for the republic, I have a firmer faith in its sta- 
 bility. It is said that no man liveth and no man 
 dieth to himself; and the pure and noble life of
 
 DEATH OF PRESIDENT GARFIELD 285 
 
 Garfield, and his slow, long martyrdom, so bravely 
 borne in view of all, are, I believe, bearing for us 
 as a people "the peaceable fruits of righteous- 
 ness." We are stronger, wiser, better, for them. 
 
 With him it is well. His mission fulfilled, he 
 goes to his grave by the Lakeside honored and 
 lamented as man never was before. The whole 
 world mourns him. There is no speech nor lan- 
 guage where the voice of his praise is not heard. 
 About his grave gather, with heads uncovered, the 
 vast brotherhood of man. 
 
 And .with us it is well, also. We are nearer a 
 united people than ever before. We are at peace 
 with all ; our future is full of promise ; our indus- 
 trial and financial condition is hopeful. God grant 
 that, while our material interests prosper, the 
 moral and spiritual influence of the occasion may 
 be permanently felt; that the solemn sacrament 
 of Sorrow, whereof we have been made partakers, 
 may be blest to the promotion of the righteousness 
 which exalteth a nation.
 
 LYDIA MARIA CHILD. 
 
 In 1882 a collection of the Letters of Lydia Maria Child was 
 published, for which I wrote the following sketch, as an intro- 
 duction: -^ 
 
 IN presenting to the public this memorial vol- 
 ume, its compilers deemed that a brief biographical 
 introduction was necessary ; and as a labor of love 
 I have not been able to refuse their request to pre- 
 pare it. 
 
 Lydia Maria Francis was bom in Medford, 
 Massachusetts, February 11, 1802. Her father, 
 Convers Francis, was a worthy and substantial 
 citizen of that town. Her brother, Convers Fran- 
 cis, afterwards theological professor in Harvard 
 College, was some years older than herself, and 
 assisted her in her early home studies, though, with 
 the perversity of an elder brother, he sometimes 
 mystified her in answering her questions. Once, 
 when she wished to know what was meant by 
 Milton's " raven down of darkness," which was 
 made to smile when smoothed, he explained that 
 it was only the fur of a black cat, which sparkled 
 when stroked ! Later in life this brother wrote of 
 her, " She has been a dear, good sister to me : 
 would that I had been half as good a brother to 
 her." Her earliest teacher was an aged spinster, 
 known in the village as " Marm Betty," painfully 
 shy, and with many oddities of person and manner,
 
 Lydia Maria Child
 

 
 LYDIA MARIA CHILD 287 
 
 the never-forgotten calamity of whose life was that 
 Governor Brooks once saw her drinking out of the 
 nose of her tea-kettle. Her school was in her 
 bed-room, always untidy, and she was a constant 
 chewer of tobacco ; but the children were fond of 
 her, and Maria and her father always carried her 
 a good Sunday dinner. Thomas W. Higginson, in 
 Eminent Women of the Age, mentions in this con- 
 nection that, according to an established custom, 
 on the night before Thanksgiving " all the humble 
 friends of the Francis household Marm Betty, 
 the washerwoman, wood-sawyer, and journeymen, 
 some twenty or thirty in all were summoned to 
 a preliminary entertainment. They there partook 
 of an immense chicken pie, pumpkin pie made in 
 milk-pans, and heaps of doughnuts. They feasted 
 in the large, old-fashioned kitchen, and went away 
 loaded with crackers and bread and pies, not for- 
 getting * turnovers ' for the children. Such plain 
 application of the doctrine that it is more blessed 
 to give than receive may have done more to mould 
 the character of Lydia Maria Child of maturer 
 years than all the faithful labors of good Dr. Os- 
 good, to whom she and her brother used to repeat 
 the Assembly's catechism once a month." 
 
 Her education was limited to the public schools, 
 with the exception of one year at a private semi- 
 nary in her native town. From a note by her 
 brother, Dr. Francis, we learn that when twelve 
 years of age she went to Norridgewock, Maine, 
 where her married sister resided. At Dr. Brown's, 
 in Skowhegan, she first read Waverley. She was 
 greatly excited, and exclaimed, as she laid down
 
 288 PERSONAL SKETCHES AND TRIBUTES 
 
 the book, " Why cannot I write a novel ? " She 
 remained in Norridgewock and vicinity for several 
 years, and on her return to Massachusetts took 
 up her abode with her brother at Watertown. He 
 encouraged her literary tastes, and it was in his 
 study that she commenced her first story, Hobomok, 
 which she published in the twenty-first year of her 
 age. The success it met with induced her to give 
 to the public, soon after, The Rebels : a Tale of 
 the Revolution, which was at once received into 
 popular favor, and ran rapidly through several 
 editions. Then followed in close succession The 
 Mother's Boole, running through eight American 
 editions, twelve English, and one German, The 
 Girl's Book, the History of Women, and the 
 Frugal Housewife, of which thirty-five editions 
 were published. Her Juvenile Miscellany was 
 commenced in 1826. 
 
 It is not too much to say that half a century ago 
 she was the most popular literary woman in the 
 United States. She had published historical novels 
 of unquestioned power of description and charac- 
 terization, and was widely and favorably known as 
 the editor of the Juvenile Miscellany, which was 
 probably the first periodical in the English tongue 
 devoted exclusively to children, and to which she 
 was by far the largest contributor. Some of the 
 tales and poems from her pen were extensively 
 copied and greatly admired. It was at this period 
 that the North American Review, the highest 
 literary authority of the country, said of her, " We 
 are not sure that any woman of our country could 
 outrank Mrs. Child. This lady has been long
 
 LYDIA MARIA CHILD 289 
 
 before the public as an author with much success. 
 And she well deserves it, for in all her works noth- 
 ing can be found which does not commend itself, 
 by its tone of healthy morality and good sense. 
 Few female writers, if any, have done more or 
 better things for our literature in the lighter or 
 graver departments." 
 
 Comparatively young, she had placed herself in 
 the front rank of American authorship. Her 
 books and her magazine had a large circulation, 
 and were affording her a comfortable income, at a 
 time when the rewards of authorship were uncer- 
 tain and at the best scanty. 
 
 In 1828 she married David Lee Child, Esq., a 
 young and able lawyer, and took up her residence 
 in Boston. In 1831-32 both became deeply inter- 
 ested in the subject of slavery, through the writings 
 and personal influence of William Lloyd Garrison. 
 Her husband, a member of the Massachusetts legis- 
 lature and editor of the Massachusetts Journal, 
 had, at an earlier date, denounced the project of 
 the dismemberment of Mexico for the purpose of 
 strengthening and extending American slavery. 
 He was one of the earliest members of the New 
 England Anti-Slavery Society, and his outspoken 
 hostility to the peculiar institution greatly and 
 unfavorably affected his interests as a lawyer. In 
 1832 he addressed a series of able letters on slavery 
 and the slave-trade to Edward S. Abdy, a promi- 
 nent English philanthropist. In 1836 he published 
 in Philadelphia ten strongly written articles on the 
 same subject. He visited England and France in 
 1837, and while in Paris addressed an elaborate
 
 290 PERSONAL SKETCHES AND TRIBUTES 
 
 memoir to the Socie"te pour 1' Abolition d'Escla- 
 vage, and a paper on the same subject to the editor 
 of the Eclectic Review, in London. To his facts 
 and arguments John Quincy Adams was much 
 indebted in the speeches which he delivered in 
 Congress on the Texas question. 
 
 In 1833 the American Anti-Slavery Society was 
 formed by a convention in Philadelphia. Its num- 
 bers were small, and it was everywhere spoken 
 against. It was at this time that Lydia Maria 
 Child startled the country by the publication of her 
 noble Appeal in Behalf of that Class of Ameri- 
 cans called Africans. It is quite impossible for 
 any one of the present generation to imagine the 
 popular surprise and indignation which the book 
 called forth, or how entirely its author cut herself 
 off from the favor and sympathy of a large number 
 of those who had previously delighted to do her 
 honor. Social and literary circles, which had been 
 proud of her presence, closed their doors against 
 her. The sale of her books, the subscriptions to 
 her magazine, fell off to a ruinous extent. She 
 knew all she was hazarding, and made the great 
 sacrifice, prepared for all the consequences which 
 followed. In the preface to her book she says, " I 
 am fully aware of the unpopularity of the task I 
 have undertaken ; but though I expect ridicule and 
 censure, I do not fear them. A few years hence, 
 the opinion of the world will be a matter in which 
 I have not even the most transient interest ; but 
 this book will be abroad on its mission of humanity 
 long after the hand that wrote it is mingling with 
 the dust. Should it be the means of advancing,
 
 LYDIA MARIA CHILD 291 
 
 even one single hour, the inevitable progress of 
 truth and justice, I would not exchange the con- 
 sciousness for all Kothschild's wealth or Sir Wal- 
 ter's fame." 
 
 Thenceforth her life was a battle ; a constant 
 rowing hard against the stream of popular preju- 
 dice and hatred. And through it all pecuniary 
 privation, loss of friends and position, the painful- 
 ness of being suddenly thrust from " the still air of 
 delightful studies " into the bitterest and sternest 
 controversy of the age she bore herself with pa- 
 tience, fortitude, and unshaken reliance upon the 
 justice and ultimate triumph of the cause she had 
 espoused. Her pen was never idle. Wherever 
 there was a brave word to be spoken, her voice 
 was heard, and never without effect. It is not ex- 
 aggeration to say that no man or woman at that 
 period rendered more substantial service to the 
 cause of freedom, or made such a " great renunci- 
 ation " in doing it. 
 
 A practical philanthropist, she had the courage 
 of her convictions, and from the first was no mere 
 closet moralist or sentimental bewailer of the woes 
 of humanity. She was the Samaritan stooping 
 over the wounded Jew. She calmly and unflinch- 
 ingly took her place by the side of the despised 
 slave and free man of color, and in word and act 
 protested against the cruel prejudice which shut 
 out its victims from the rights and privileges of 
 American citizens. Her philanthropy had no taint 
 of fanaticism ; throughout the long struggle, in 
 which she was a prominent actor, she kept her fine 
 sense of humor, good taste, and sensibility to the
 
 292 PERSONAL SKETCHES AND TRIBUTES 
 beautiful in art and nature. 1 While faithful to 
 
 1 The opposition she met with from those who had shared her 
 confidence and friendship was of course keenly felt, but her kindly 
 and genial disposition remained unsoured. She rarely spoke of 
 her personal trials, and never posed as a martyr. The nearest 
 approach to anything like complaint is in the following lines, the 
 date of which I have not been able to ascertain : 
 
 THE WORLD THAT I AM PASSING THROUGH. 
 
 Few in the days of early youth 
 Trusted like me in love and truth. 
 I 've learned sad lessons from the years, 
 But slowly, and with many tears ; 
 For God made me to kindly view 
 The world that I am passing through. 
 
 Though kindness and forbearance long 
 Must meet ingratitude and wrong, 
 I still would bless my fellow-men, 
 And trust them though deceived again. 
 God help me still to kindly view 
 The world that I am passing through. 
 
 From all that fate has brought to me 
 
 I strive to learn humility, 
 
 And trust in Him who rules above, 
 
 Whose universal law is love. 
 
 Thus only can I kindly view 
 
 The world that I am passing through. 
 
 When I approach the setting sun, 
 And feel my journey well-nigh done, 
 May Earth be veiled in genial light, 
 And her last smile to me seem bright. 
 Help me till then to kindly view 
 The world that I am passing through. 
 
 And all who tempt a trusting heart 
 
 From faith and hope to drift apart, 
 
 May they themselves be spared the pain 
 
 Of losing power to trust again. 
 
 God help us all to kindly view 
 
 The world that we are passing through.
 
 LYDIA MARIA CHILD 293 
 
 the great duty which she felt was laid upon her in 
 an especial manner, she was by no means a re- 
 former of one idea, but her interest was manifested 
 in every question affecting the welfare of human- 
 ity. Peace, temperance, education, prison reform, 
 and equality of civil rights, irrespective of sex, en- 
 gaged her attention. Under all the disadvantages 
 of her estrangement from popular favor, her charm- 
 ing Greek romance of Philothea and her Lives of 
 Madame Roland and the Baroness de Stael proved 
 that her literary ability had lost nothing of its 
 strength, and that the hand which penned such 
 terrible rebukes had still kept its delicate touch, 
 and gracefully yielded to the inspiration of fancy 
 and art. While engaged with her husband in the 
 editorial supervision of the Anti-Slavery Standard, 
 she wrote her admirable Letters from New York; 
 humorous, eloquent, and picturesque, but still hu- 
 manitarian in tone, which extorted the praise of 
 even a pro-slavery community. Her great work, 
 in three octavo volumes, The Progress of Religious 
 Ideas, belongs, in part, to that period. It is an 
 attempt to represent in a candid, unprejudiced 
 manner the rise and progress of the great religions 
 of the world, and their ethical relations to each 
 other. She availed herself of, and carefully stud- 
 ied, the authorities at that time accessible, and the 
 result is creditable to her scholarship, industry, and 
 conscientiousness. If, in her desire to do justice 
 to the religions of Buddha and Mohammed, in 
 which she has been followed by Maurice, Max 
 Miiller, and Dean Stanley, she seems at times to 
 dwell upon the best and overlook the darker fea-
 
 294 PERSONAL SKETCHES AND TRIBUTES 
 
 tures of those systems, her concluding reflections 
 should vindicate her from the charge of undervalu- 
 ing the Christian faith, or of lack of reverent ap- 
 preciation of its founder. In the closing chapter 
 of her work, in which the large charity and broad 
 sympathies of her nature are manifest, she thus 
 turns with words of love, warm from the heart, to 
 Him whose Sermon on the Mount includes most 
 that is good and true and vital in the religions and 
 philosophies of the world : 
 
 " It was reserved for Him to heal the broken- 
 hearted, to preach a gospel to the poor, to say, 
 ' Her sins, which are many, are forgiven, for she 
 loved much.' Nearly two thousand years have 
 passed away since these words of love and pity 
 were uttered, yet when I read them my eyes fill 
 with tears. I thank Thee, O Heavenly Father, for 
 all the messengers thou hast sent to man ; but, 
 above all, I thank Thee for Him, thy beloved Son ! 
 Pure lily blossom of the centuries, taking root in 
 the lowliest depths, and receiving the light and 
 warmth of heaven in its golden heart ! All that 
 the pious have felt, all that poets have said, all 
 that artists have done, with their manifold forms 
 of beauty, to represent the ministry of Jesus, are 
 but feeble expressions of the great debt we owe 
 Him who is even now curing the lame, restoring 
 sight to the blind, and raising the dead in that 
 spiritual sense wherein all miracle is true." 
 
 During her stay in New York, as editor of the 
 Anti - Slavery Standard, she found a pleasant 
 home at the residence of the genial philanthropist, 
 Isaac T. Hopper, whose remarkable life she after-
 
 LYDIA MARIA CHILD 295 
 
 wards wrote. Her portrayal of this extraordinary 
 man, so brave, so humorous, so tender and faithful 
 to his convictions of duty, is one of the most read- 
 able pieces of biography in English literature. 
 Thomas Wentworth Higginson, in a discriminat- 
 ing paper published in 1869, speaks of her eight 
 years' sojourn in New York as the most interest- 
 ing and satisfactory period of her whole life. " She 
 was placed where her sympathetic nature found 
 abundant outlet and occupation. Dwelling in a 
 house where disinterestedness and noble labor were 
 as daily breath, she had great opportunities. 
 There was no mere alms-giving ; but sin and sor- 
 row must be brought home to the fireside and the 
 heart ; the fugitive slave, the drunkard, the out- 
 cast woman, must be the chosen guests of the 
 abode, must be taken, and held, and loved into 
 reformation or hope." 
 
 It would be a very imperfect representation of 
 Maria Child which regarded her only from a liter- 
 ary point of view. She was wise in counsel ; and 
 men like Charles Sumner, Henry Wilson, Salmon 
 P. Chase, and Governor Andrew availed them- 
 selves of her foresight and sound judgment of men 
 and measures. Her pen was busy with corre- 
 spondence, and whenever a true man or a good cause 
 needed encouragement, she was prompt to give it. 
 Her donations for benevolent causes and beneficent 
 reforms were constant and liberal ; and only those 
 who knew her intimately could understand the 
 cheerful and unintermitted self-denial which alone 
 enabled her to make them. . She did her work as 
 far as possible out of sight, without noise or pre-
 
 296 PERSONAL SKETCHES AND TRIBUTES 
 
 tension. Her time, talents, and money were held 
 not as her own, but a trust from the Eternal Father 
 for the benefit of His suffering children. Her 
 plain, cheap dress was glorified by the generous 
 motive for which she wore it. Whether in the 
 crowded city among the sin-sick and starving, or 
 among the poor and afflicted in the neighborhood 
 of her country home, no story of suffering and 
 need, capable of alleviation, ever reached her with- 
 out immediate sympathy and corresponding action. 
 Lowell, one of her warmest admirers, in his fable 
 for Critics has beautifully portrayed her abound- 
 ing benevolence : 
 
 " There comes Philothea, her face all aglow : 
 She has just been dividing some poor creature's woe, 
 And can't tell which pleases her most, to relieve 
 His want, or his story to hear and believe. 
 No donbt against many deep griefs she prevails, 
 For her ear is the refuge of destitute tales ; 
 She knows well that silence is sorrow's best food, 
 And that talking draws off from the heart its black blood." 
 
 ' ' The pole, science tells us, the magnet controls, 
 But she is a magnet to emigrant Poles, 
 And folks with a mission that nobody knows 
 Throng thickly about her as bees round a rose. 
 She can fill up the carets in such, make their scope 
 Converge to some focus of rational hope, 
 And, with sympathies fresh as the morning, their gall 
 Can transmute into honey, but this is not all; 
 Not only for those she has solace ; O, say, 
 Vice's desperate nursling adrift in Broadway, 
 Who clingest, with all that is left of thee human, 
 To the last slender spar from the wreck of the woman, 
 Hast thou not found one shore where those tired, drooping feet 
 Could reach firm mother-earth, one full heart on whose beat 
 The soothed head in silence reposing could hear 
 The chimes of far childhood throb back on the ear ?
 
 LYDIA MARIA CHILD 297 
 
 Ah, there 's many a beam from the fountain of day 
 
 That, to reach us unclouded, must pass, on its way, 
 
 Through the soul of a woman, and hers is wide ope 
 
 To the influence of Heaven as the blue eyes of Hope ; 
 
 Yes, a great heart is hers, one that dares to go in 
 
 To the prison, the slave-hut, the alleys of sin, 
 
 And to bring into each, or to find there, some line 
 
 Of the never completely out-trampled divine ; 
 
 If her heart at high floods swamps her brain now and then, 
 
 'T is but richer for that when the tide ebbs again, 
 
 As, after old Nile has subsided, his plain 
 
 Overflows with a second broad deluge of grain ; 
 
 What a wealth would it bring to the narrow and sour, 
 
 Could they be as a Child but for one little hour ! " 
 
 After leaving New York, her husband and her- 
 self took up their residence in the rural town of 
 Wayland, Mass. Their house, plain and unpre- 
 tentious, had a wide and pleasant outlook ; a flower 
 garden, carefully tended by her own hands, in 
 front, and on the side a fruit orchard and vege- 
 table garden, under the special care of her hus- 
 band. The house was always neat, with some ap- 
 pearance of unostentatious decoration, evincing at 
 once the artistic taste of the hostess and the con- 
 scientious economy which forbade its indulgence to 
 any great extent. Her home was somewhat apart 
 from the lines of rapid travel, and her hospitality 
 was in a great measure confined to old and inti- 
 mate friends, while her visits to the city were 
 brief and infrequent. A friend of hers, who had 
 ample opportunities for a full knowledge of her 
 home-life, says, " The domestic happiness of Mr. 
 and Mrs. Child seemed to me perfect. Their sym- 
 pathies, their admiration of all things good, and 
 their hearty hatred of all things mean and evil
 
 298 PERSONAL SKETCHES AND TRIBUTES 
 
 were in entire unison. Mr. Child shared his 
 wife's enthusiasms, and was very proud of her. 
 Their affection, never paraded, was always mani- 
 fest. After Mr. Child's death, Mrs. Child, in 
 speaking of the future life, said, ' I believe it 
 would be of small value to me if I were not united 
 to him.' " 
 
 In this connection I cannot forbear to give an 
 extract from some reminiscences of her husband, 
 which she left among her papers, which, better 
 than any words of mine, will convey an idea of 
 their simple and beautiful home-life : 
 
 " In 1852 we made a humble home in Wayland, 
 Mass., where we spent twenty-two pleasant years 
 entirely alone, without any domestic, mutually 
 serving each other, and dependent upon each other 
 for intellectual companionship. I always depended 
 on his richly stored mind, which was able and 
 ready to furnish needed information on any sub- 
 ject. He was my walking dictionary of many lan- 
 guages, my Universal Encyclopaedia. 
 
 " In his old age he was as affectionate and de- 
 voted as when the lover of my youth; nay, he 
 manifested even more tenderness. He was often 
 singing, 
 
 " ' There 's nothing half so sweet in life 
 As Love's old dream.' 
 
 " Very often, when he passed by me, he would 
 lay his hand softly on my head and murmur, 
 'Carum caput.' . . . But what I remember with 
 the most tender gratitude is his uniform patience 
 and forbearance with my faults. . . . He never 
 would see anything but the bright side of my char-
 
 LYDIA MARIA CHILD 299 
 
 acter. He always insisted upon thinking that 
 whatever I said was the wisest and the wittiest, 
 and that whatever I did was the best. The simplest 
 little jeu d* esprit of mine seemed to him wonder- 
 fully witty. Once, when he said, ' I wish for your 
 sake, dear, I were as rich as Croesus,' I answered, 
 * You are Croesus, for you are king of Lydia.' 
 How often he used to quote that ! 
 
 " His mind was unclouded to the last. He had 
 a passion for philology, and only eight hours before 
 he passed away he was searching out the derivation 
 of a word." 
 
 Her well-stored mind and fine conversational gifts 
 made her company always desirable. No one who 
 listened to her can forget the earnest eloquence 
 with which she used to dwell upon the evidences, 
 from history, tradition, and experience, of the 
 superhuman and supernatural ; or with what eager 
 interest she detected in the mysteries of the old 
 religions of the world the germs of a purer faith 
 and a holier hope. She loved to listen, as in St. 
 Pierre's symposium of The Coffee-House of Swat, 
 to the confessions of faith of all sects and schools 
 of philosophy, Christian and pagan, and gather 
 from them the consoling truth that our Father has 
 nowhere left his children without some witness of 
 Himself. She loved the old mystics, and lingered 
 with curious interest and sympathy over the writ- 
 ings of Bbhme, Swedenborg, Molinos, and Wool- 
 man. Yet this marked speculative tendency seemed 
 not in the slightest degree to affect her practical 
 activities. Her mysticism and realism ran in close 
 parallel lines without interfering with each other.
 
 300 PERSONAL SKETCHES AND TRIBUTES 
 
 With strong rationalistic tendencies from educa- 
 tion and conviction, she found herself in spiritual 
 accord with the pious introversion of Thomas a 
 Kempis and Madame Guion. She was fond of 
 Christmas Eve stories, of warnings, signs, and 
 spiritual intimations, her half belief in which some- 
 times seemed like credulity to her auditors. James 
 Kussell Lowell, in his tender tribute to her, play- 
 fully alludes to this characteristic : 
 
 " She has such a musical taste that she '11 go 
 Any distance to hear one who draws a long bow. 
 She will swallow a wonder by mere might and main." 
 
 In 1859 the descent of John Brown upon Har- 
 per's Ferry, and his capture, trial, and death, 
 startled the nation. When the news reached her 
 that the misguided but noble old man lay desper- 
 ately wounded in prison, alone and unfriended, she 
 wrote him a letter, under cover of one to Governor 
 Wise, asking permission to go and nurse and care 
 for him. The expected arrival of Captain Brown's 
 wife made her generous offer unnecessary. The 
 prisoner wrote her, thanking her, and asking her 
 to help his family, a request with which she faith- 
 fully complied. With his letter came one from 
 Governor Wise, in courteous reproval of her sym- 
 pathy for John Brown. To this she responded in 
 an able and effective manner. Her reply found its 
 way from Virginia to the New York Tribune, and 
 soon after Mrs. Mason, of King George's County, 
 wife of Senator Mason, the author of the infamous 
 Fugitive Slave Law, wrote her a vehement letter, 
 commencing with threats of future damnation, and 
 ending with assuring her that " no Southerner,
 
 LYD1A MARIA CHILD 301 
 
 after reading her letter to Governor Wise, ought 
 to read a line of her composition, or touch a maga- 
 zine which bore her name in its list of contribu- 
 tors." To this she wrote a calm, dignified reply, 
 declining to dwell on the fierce invectives of her as- 
 sailant, and wishing her well here and hereafter. 
 She would not debate the specific merits or de- 
 merits of a man whose body was in charge of the 
 courts, and whose reputation was sure to be in 
 charge of posterity. " Men," she continues, " are 
 of small consequence in comparison with principles, 
 and the principle for which John Brown died is 
 the question at issue between us." These letters 
 were soon published in pamphlet form, and had the 
 immense circulation of 300,000 copies. 
 
 In 1867 she published A Romance of the Repub- 
 lic, a story of the days of slavery ; powerful in its 
 delineation of some of the saddest as well as the 
 most dramatic conditions of master and slave in the 
 Southern States. Her husband, who had been long 
 an invalid, died in 1874. After his death her 
 home, in winter especially, became a lonely one, 
 and in 1877 she began to spend the cold months in 
 Boston. 
 
 Her last publication was in 1878, when her -4s- 
 pirations of the World, a book of selections, on 
 moral and religious subjects, from the literature of 
 all nations and times, was given to the public. The 
 introduction, occupying fifty pages, shows, at three- 
 score and ten, her mental vigor unabated, and is 
 remarkable for its wise, philosophic tone and feli- 
 city of diction. It has the broad liberality of her 
 more elaborate work on the same subject, and in
 
 302 PERSONAL SKETCHES AND TRIBUTES 
 
 the mellow light of life's sunset her words seem 
 touched with a tender pathos and beauty. " All 
 we poor mortals," she says, " are groping our way 
 through paths that are dim with shadows ; and we 
 are all striving, with steps more or less stumbling, 
 to follow some guiding star. As we travel on, be- 
 loved companions of our pilgrimage vanish from 
 our sight, we know not whither ; and our bereaved 
 hearts utter cries of supplication for more light. 
 We know not where Hermes Trismegistus lived, 
 or who he was ; but his voice sounds plaintively 
 human, coming up from the depths of the ages, 
 calling out, ' Thou art God ! and thy man crieth 
 these things unto Thee ! ' Thus closely allied in 
 our sorrows and limitations, in our aspirations and 
 hopes, surely we ought not to be separated in our 
 sympathies. However various the names by which 
 we call the Heavenly Father, if they are set to 
 music by brotherly love, they can all be sung to- 
 gether." 
 
 Her interest in the welfare of the emancipated 
 class at the South and of the ill-fated Indians of 
 the West remained unabated, and she watched with 
 great satisfaction the experiment of the education 
 of both classes in General Armstrong's institution 
 at Hampton, Va. She omitted no opportunity of 
 aiding the greatest social reform of the age, which 
 aims to make the civil and political rights of women 
 equal to those of men. Her sympathies, to the last, 
 went out instinctively to the wronged and weak. 
 She used to excuse her vehemence in this respect 
 by laughingly quoting lines from a poem entitled 
 The Under Dog in the Fight :
 
 LYDIA MARIA CHILD 303 
 
 " I know that the world, the great big world, 
 
 Will never a moment stop 
 To see which dog may be in the wrong, 
 But will shout for the dog on top. 
 
 " But for me, I never shall pause to ask 
 
 Which dog may be in the right ; 
 For my heart will beat, while it beats at all, 
 For the under dog in the fight. ' ' 
 
 I am indebted to a gentleman who was at one 
 time a resident of Wayland, and who enjoyed her 
 confidence and warm friendship, for the following 
 impressions of her life in that place : 
 
 " On one of the last beautiful Indian summer 
 afternoons, closing the past year, I drove through 
 Wayland, and was anew impressed with the charm 
 of our friend's simple existence there. The tender 
 beauty of the fading year seemed a reflection of her 
 own gracious spirit ; the lovely autumn of her life, 
 whose golden atmosphere the frosts of sorrow and 
 advancing age had only clarified and brightened. 
 
 " My earliest recollection of Mrs. Child in Way- 
 land is of a gentle face leaning from the old stage 
 window, smiling kindly down on the childish fig- 
 ures beneath her ; and from that moment her gra- 
 cious motherly presence has been closely associated 
 with the charm of rural beauty in that village, 
 which until very lately has been quite apart from 
 the line of travel, and unspoiled by the rush and 
 worry of our modern steam-car mode of living. 
 
 "Mrs. Child's life in the place made, indeed, 
 an atmosphere of its own, a benison of peace and 
 good-will, which was a noticeable feature to all who 
 were acquainted with the social feeling of the little 
 community, refined, as it was too, by the elevating
 
 304 PERSONAL SKETCHES AND TRIBUTES 
 
 influence of its distinguished pastor, Dr. Sears. 
 Many are the acts of loving kindness and maternal 
 care which could be chronicled of her residence 
 there, were we permitted to do so; and number- 
 less are the lives that have gathered their onward 
 impulse from her helping hand. But it was all a 
 confidence which she hardly betrayed to her in- 
 most self, and I will not recall instances which 
 might be her grandest eulogy. Her monument is 
 builded in the hearts which knew her benefactions, 
 and it will abide with ' the power that makes for 
 righteousness.' 
 
 " One of the pleasantest elements of her life in 
 Wayland was the high regard she won from the 
 people of the village, who, proud of her literary at- 
 tainment, valued yet more the noble womanhood 
 of the friend who dwelt so modestly among them. 
 The grandeur of her exalted personal character 
 had, in part, eclipsed for them the qualities which 
 made her fame with the world outside. 
 
 "The little house on the quiet by-road over- 
 looked broad green meadows. The pond behind 
 it, where bloom the lilies whose spotless purity 
 may well symbolize her gentle spirit, is a sacred 
 pool to her townsfolk. But perhaps the most fit- 
 ting similitude of her life in Wayland was the 
 quiet flow of the river, whose gentle curves make 
 green her meadows, but whose powerful energy, 
 joining the floods from distant mountains, moves, 
 with resistless might, the busy shuttles of a hun- 
 dred mills. She was too truthful to affect to wel- 
 come unwarrantable invaders of her peace, but no 
 weary traveller on life's hard ways ever applied to
 
 LYD1A MARIA CHILD 305 
 
 her in vain. The little garden plot before her 
 door was a sacred enclosure, not to be rudely in- 
 truded upon ; but the flowers she tended with ma- 
 ternal care were no selfish possession, for her own 
 enjoyment only, and many are the lives their sweet- 
 ness has gladdened forever. So she lived among a 
 singularly peaceful and intelligent community as 
 one of themselves, industrious, wise, and happy ; 
 with a frugality whose motive of wider benevolence 
 was in itself a homily and a benediction." 
 
 In my last interview with her, our conversation, 
 as had often happened before, turned upon the 
 great theme of the future life. She spoke, as I re- 
 member, calmly and not uncheerf ully, but with the 
 intense earnestness and reverent curiosity of one 
 who felt already the shadow of the unseen world 
 resting upon her. 
 
 Her death was sudden and quite unexpected. 
 For some months she had been troubled with a 
 rheumatic affection, but it was by no means re- 
 garded as serious. A friend, who visited her a few 
 days before her departure, found her in a comfort- 
 able condition, apart from lameness. She talked 
 of the coming election with much interest, and of 
 her plans for the winter. On the morning of her 
 death (October 20, 1880) she spoke of feeling re- 
 markably well. Before leaving her chamber she 
 complained of severe pain in the region of the 
 heart. Help was called by her companion, but 
 only reached her to witness her quiet passing away. 
 
 The funeral was, as befitted one like her, plain 
 and simple. Many of her old friends were pres- 
 ent, and Wendell Phillips paid an affecting and
 
 306 PERSONAL SKETCHES AND TRIBUTES 
 
 eloquent tribute to his old friend and anti-slavery 
 coadjutor. He referred to the time when she ac- 
 cepted, with serene self-sacrifice, the obloquy which 
 her Appeal had brought upon her, and noted, 
 as one of the many ways in which popular hatred 
 was manifested, the withdrawal from her of the 
 privileges of the Boston Athenaeum. Her pall- 
 bearers were elderly, plain farmers in the neigh- 
 borhood ; and, led by the old white-haired under- 
 taker, the procession wound its way to the not dis- 
 tant burial-ground, over the red and gold of fallen 
 leaves, and under the half-clouded October sky. 
 A lover of all beautiful things, she was, as her in- 
 timate friends knew, always delighted by the sight 
 of rainbows, and used to so arrange prismatic 
 glasses as to throw the colors on the walls of her 
 room. Just after her body was consigned to the 
 earth, a magnificent rainbow spanned with its arc 
 of glory the eastern sky. 1 
 
 1 The incident at her burial is alluded to in a sonnet written 
 by William P. Andrews : 
 
 " Freedom ! she knew thy summons, and obeyed 
 That clarion voice as yet scarce heard of men ; 
 Gladly she joined thy red-cross service when 
 Honor and wealth must at thy feet be laid : 
 Onward with faith undaunted, undismayed 
 By threat or scorn, she toiled with hand and brain 
 To make thy cause triumphant, till the chain 
 Lay broken, and for her the freedmen prayed. 
 Nor yet she faltered ; in her tender care 
 She took us all ; and wheresoe'er she went, 
 Blessings, and Faith, and Beauty followed there, 
 E'en to the end, where she lay down content ; 
 And with the gold light of a life more fair, 
 Twin bows of promise o'er her grave were blent."
 
 LYDIA MARIA CHILD 307 
 
 The letters in this collection constitute but a 
 small part of her large correspondence. They 
 have been gathered up and arranged by the hands 
 of dear relatives and friends as a fitting memorial 
 of one who wrote from the heart as well as the 
 head, and who held her literary reputation subor- 
 dinate always to her philanthropic aim to lessen 
 the sum of human suffering, and to make the 
 world better for her living. If they sometimes 
 show the heat and impatience of a zealous reformer, 
 they may well be pardoned in consideration of the 
 circumstances under which they were written, and 
 of the natural indignation of a generous nature in 
 view of wrong and oppression. If she touched 
 with no very reverent hand the garment hem of 
 dogmas, and held to the spirit of Scripture rather 
 than its letter, it must be remembered that she 
 lived in a time when the Bible was cited in de- 
 fence of slavery, as it is now in Utah in support of 
 polygamy ; and she may well be excused for some 
 degree of impatience with those who, in the tith- 
 ing of mint and anise and cummin, neglected 
 the weightier matters of the law of justice and 
 mercy. 
 
 Of the men and women directly associated with 
 the beloved subject of this sketch, but few are now 
 left to recall her single-hearted devotion to appre- 
 hended duty, her unselfish generosity, her love of 
 all beauty and harmony, and her trustful rever- 
 ence, free from pretence and cant. It is not un- 
 likely that the surviving sharers of her love and 
 friendship may feel the inadequateness of this brief 
 memorial, for I close it with the consciousness of
 
 308 PERSONAL SKETCHES AND TRIBUTES 
 
 having failed to fully delineate the picture which 
 my memory holds of a wise and brave, but tender 
 and loving woman, of whom it might well have 
 been said, in the words of the old Hebrew text, 
 " Many daughters have done virtuously, but thou 
 excellest them all."
 
 OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. 
 
 On the occasion of the seventy-fifth birthday of Dr. Holmes The 
 Critic of New York collected personal tributes from friends and 
 admirers of that author. My own contribution was as follows : 
 
 POET, essayist, novelist, humorist, scientist, ripe 
 scholar, and wise philosopher, if Dr. Holmes does 
 not, at the present time, hold in popular estimation 
 the first place in American literature, his rare ver- 
 satility is the cause. In view of the inimitable 
 prose writer, we forget the poet ; in our admiration 
 of his melodious verse, we lose sight of Elsie Ven- 
 ner and The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 
 We laugh over his wit and humor, until, to use his 
 own words, 
 
 " We suspect the azure blossom that unfolds upon a shoot, 
 As if Wisdom's old potato could not flourish at its root; " 
 
 and perhaps the next page melts us into tears by 
 a pathos only equalled by that of Sterne's sick 
 Lieutenant. He is Montaigne and Bacon under 
 one hat. His varied qualities would suffice for 
 the mental furnishing of half a dozen literary spe- 
 cialists. 
 
 To those who have enjoyed the privilege of his 
 intimate acquaintance, the man himself is more 
 than the author. His genial nature, entire free- 
 dom from jealousy or envy, quick tenderness, large 
 charity, hatred of sham, pretence, and unreality, 
 and his reverent sense of the eternal and perma-
 
 310 PERSONAL SKETCHES AND TRIBUTES 
 
 nent have secured for him something more and 
 dearer than literary renown, the love of all who 
 know him. I might say much more : I could not 
 say less. May his life be long in the land. 
 
 AMBSBUBT, MASS., 8th Month, 18, 1884.
 
 LONGFELLOW. 
 
 Written to the chairman of the committee of arrangements for 
 unveiling the bust of Longfellow at Portland, Maine, on the poet's 
 birthday, February 27, 1885. 
 
 I AM sorry it is not in my power to accept the 
 invitation of the committee to be present at the 
 unveiling of the bust of Longfellow on the 27th 
 instant, or to write anything worthy of the occasion 
 in metrical form. 
 
 The gift of the Westminster Abbey committee 
 cannot fail to add another strong tie of sympa- 
 thy between two great English-speaking peoples. 
 And never was gift more fitly bestowed. The city 
 of Portland the poet's birthplace, " beautiful for 
 situation," looking from its hills on the scenery he 
 loved so well, Deering's Oaks, the many-islanded 
 bay and far inland mountains, delectable in sunset 
 needed this sculptured representation of her illus- 
 trious son, and may well testify her joy and grati- 
 tude at its reception, and repeat in so doing the 
 words of the Hebrew prophet: "O man, greatly 
 beloved ! thou shalt stand in thy place."
 
 OLD NEWBURY. 
 
 Letter to Samuel J. Spalding, D. D., on the occasion of the cel- 
 ebration of the 250th anniversary of the settlement of New- 
 bury. 
 
 MY DEAK FRIEND, I am sorry that I cannot 
 hope to be with you on the 250th anniversary of the 
 settlement of old Newbury. Although lean hardly 
 call myself a son of the ancient town, my grand- 
 mother, Sarah Greenleaf, of blessed memory, was 
 its daughter, and I may therefore claim to be its 
 grandson. Its genial and learned historian, Joshua 
 Coffin, was my first school-teacher, and all my life 
 I have lived in sight of its green hills and in hear- 
 ing of its Sabbath bells. Its wealth of natural 
 beauty has not been left unsung by its own poets, 
 Hannah Gould, Mrs. Hopkins, George Lunt, and 
 Edward A. Washburn, while Harriet Prescott 
 Spofford's Plum Island Sound is as sweet and 
 musical as Tennyson's Brook. Its history and 
 legends are familiar to me. I seem to have known 
 all its old worthies, whose descendants have helped 
 to people a continent, and who have carried the 
 name and memories of their birthplace to the Mex- 
 ican gulf and across the Rocky Mountains to the 
 shores of the Pacific. They were the best and se- 
 lectest of Puritanism, brave, honest, God-fearing 
 men and women ; and if their creed in the lapse of 
 time has lost something of its vigor, the influence
 
 Old Newbury

 
 OLD NEWBURY 313 
 
 of their ethical righteousness still endures. The 
 prophecy of Samuel Sewall that Christians should 
 be found in Newbury so long as pigeons shall roost 
 on its oaks and Indian corn grows in Oldtown 
 fields remains still true, and we trust will always 
 remain so. Yet, as of old, the evil personage 
 sometimes intrudes himself into company too good 
 for him. It was said in the witchcraft trials of 
 1692 that Satan baptized his converts at New- 
 bury Falls, the scene, probably, of one of Haw- 
 thorne's weird Twice Told Tales; and there is 
 a tradition that, in the midst of a heated contro- 
 versy between one of Newbury's painful minis- 
 ters and his deacon, who (anticipating Garrison by 
 a century) ventured to doubt the propriety of 
 clerical slaveholding, the Adversary made his ap- 
 pearance in the shape of a black giant stalking 
 through Byfield. It was never, I believe, defi- 
 nitely settled whether he was drawn there by the 
 minister's zeal in defence of slavery or the deacon's 
 irreverent denial of the minister's right and duty 
 to curse Canaan in the person of his negro. 
 
 Old Newbury has sometimes been spoken of as 
 ultra-conservative and hostile to new ideas and 
 progress, but this is not warranted by it's history. 
 More than two centuries ago, when Major Pike, 
 just across the river, stood up and denounced in 
 open town meeting the law against freedom of 
 conscience and worship, and was in consequence 
 fined and outlawed, some of Newbury's best citi- 
 zens stood bravely by him. The town took no part 
 in the witchcraft horror, and got none of its old 
 women and town charges hanged for witches.
 
 314 PERSONAL SKETCHES AND TRIBUTES 
 
 " Goody " Morse had the spirit rappings in her 
 house two hundred years earlier than the Fox girls 
 did, and somewhat later a Newbury minister, in 
 wig and knee-buckles, rode, Bible in hand, over to 
 Hampton to lay a ghost who had materialized him- 
 self and was stamping up and down stairs in his 
 military boots. 
 
 Newbury's ingenious citizen, Jacob Perkins, in 
 drawing out diseases with his metallic tractors, was 
 quite as successful as modern " faith and mind " 
 doctors. The Quakers, whipped at Hampton on 
 one hand and at Salem on the other, went back 
 and forth unmolested in Newbury, for they could 
 make no impression on its iron-clad orthodoxy. 
 Whitefield set the example, since followed by the 
 Salvation Army, of preaching in its streets, and 
 now lies buried under one of its churches with 
 almost the honors of sainthood. William Lloyd 
 Garrison was born in Newbury. The town must 
 be regarded as the Alpha and Omega of anti-slavery 
 agitation, beginning with its abolition deacon and 
 ending with Garrison. Puritanism, here as else- 
 where, had a flavor of radicalism ; it had its hu- 
 morous side, and its ministers did not hesitate to 
 use wit and sarcasm, like Elijah before the priests 
 of Baal. As, for instance, the wise and learned 
 clergyman, Puritan of the Puritans, beloved and 
 reverenced by all, who has just laid down the bur- 
 den of his nearly one hundred years, startled and 
 shamed his brother ministers who were zealously 
 for the enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Law, by 
 preparing for them a form of prayer for use while 
 engaged in catching runaway slaves.
 
 OLD NEW BURY 315 
 
 I have, I fear, dwelt too long upon the story and 
 tradition of the old town, which will doubtless be 
 better told by the orator of the day. The theme 
 is to me full of interest. Among the blessings 
 which I would gratefully own is the fact that my 
 lot has been cast in the beautiful valley of the 
 Merrimac, within sight of Newbury steeples, Plum 
 Island, and Crane Neck and Pipe Stave hills. 
 
 Let me, in closing, pay something of the debt I 
 have owed from boyhood, by expressing a senti- 
 ment in which I trust every son of the ancient 
 town will unite : Joshua Coffin, historian of New- 
 bury, teacher, scholar, and antiquarian, and one 
 of the earliest advocates of slave emancipation : 
 May his memory be kept green, to use the words 
 of Judge Sewall, " so long as Plum Island keeps 
 its post and a sturgeon leaps in Merrimac River." 
 
 AMESBURY, 6th Month, 1885.
 
 SCHOOLDAY KEMEMBEANCES. 
 
 To Rev. Charles Wlngate, Hon. James H. Carle- 
 ton, Thomas B. Garland, Esq., Committee of 
 Students of Haverhill Academy : 
 DEAR FRIENDS, I was most agreeably sur- 
 prised last evening by receiving your carefully pre- 
 pared and beautiful Haverhill Academy Album, 
 containing the photographs of a large number of 
 my old friends and schoolmates. I know of noth- 
 ing which could have given me more pleasure. If 
 the faces represented are not so unlined and ruddy 
 as those which greeted each other at the old acad- 
 emy, on the pleasant summer mornings so long 
 ago, when life was before us, with its boundless 
 horizon of possibilities, yet, as I look over them, I 
 see that, on the whole, Time has not been hard 
 with us, but has touched us gently. The hiero- 
 glyphics he has traced upon us may, indeed, reveal 
 something of the cares, trials, and sorrows incident 
 to humanity, but they also tell of generous endeavor, 
 beneficent labor, developed character, and the slow, 
 sure victories of patience and fortitude. I turn to 
 them with the proud satisfaction of feeling that I 
 have been highly favored in my early companions, 
 and that I have not been disappointed in my school 
 friendships. The two years spent at the academy 
 I have always reckoned among the happiest of my 
 life, though I have abundant reason for gratitude
 
 SCHOOLDAY REMEMBRANCES 317 
 
 that, in the long, intervening years, I have been 
 blessed beyond my deserving. 
 
 It has been our privilege to live in an eventful 
 period, and to witness wonderful changes since we 
 conned our lessons together. How little we then 
 dreamed of the steam car, electric telegraph, and 
 telephone ! We studied the history and geography 
 of a world only half explored. Our country was 
 an unsolved mystery. " The Great American 
 Desert " was an awful blank on our school maps. 
 We have since passed through the terrible ordeal 
 of civil war, which has liberated enslaved millions, 
 and made the union of the States an established 
 fact, and no longer a doubtful theory. If life is 
 to be measured not so much by years as by thoughts, 
 emotion, knowledge, action, and its opportunity of 
 a free exercise of all our powers and faculties, we 
 may congratulate ourselves upon really outliving 
 the venerable patriarchs. For myself, I would not 
 exchange a decade of my own life for a century of 
 the Middle Ages, or a " cycle of Cathay." 
 
 Let me, gentlemen, return my heartiest thanks 
 to you, and to all who have interested themselves 
 in the preparation of the Academy Album, and 
 assure you of my sincere wishes for your health 
 and happiness. 
 
 OAK KNOLL, DANVEBS, 12th Month, 25, 1885.
 
 EDWIN PERCY WHIFFLE. 
 
 I HAVE been pained to learn of the decease 
 of my friend of many years, Edwin P. Whipple. 
 Death, however expected, is always something of a 
 surprise, and in his case I was not prepared for it 
 by knowing of any serious failure of his health. 
 With the possible exception of Lowell and Matthew 
 Arnold, he was the ablest critical essayist of his 
 time, and the place he has left will not be readily 
 filled. 
 
 Scarcely inferior to Macaulay in brilliance of 
 diction and graphic portraiture, he was freer from 
 prejudice and passion, and more loyal to the truth 
 of fact and history. He was a thoroughly honest 
 man. He wrote with conscience always at his 
 elbow, and never sacrificed his real convictions for 
 the sake of epigram and antithesis. He instinc- 
 tively took the right side of the questions that came 
 before him for decision, even when by so doing he 
 ranked himself with the unpopular minority. He 
 had the manliest hatred of hypocrisy and mean- 
 ness ; but if his language had at times the severity 
 of justice, it was never merciless. He " set down 
 naught in malice." 
 
 Never blind to faults, he had a quick and sym- 
 pathetic eye for any real excellence or evidence of 
 reserved strength in the author under discussion.
 
 EDWIN PERCY WHIPPLE 319 
 
 He was a modest man, sinking his own personality 
 out of sight, and he always seemed to me more 
 interested in the success of others than in his own. 
 Many of his literary contemporaries have had 
 reason to thank him not only for his cordial recog- 
 nition and generous praise, but for the firm and 
 yet kindly hand which pointed out deficiencies and 
 errors of taste and judgment. As one of those 
 who have found pleasure and profit in his writings 
 in the past, I would gratefully commend them to 
 the generation which survives him. His Litera- 
 ture of the Age of Elizabeth is deservedly popular, 
 but there are none of his Essays which will not 
 repay a careful study. " What works of Mr. Bax- 
 ter shall I read ? " asked Boswell of Dr. Johnson. 
 " Read any of them," was the answer, " for they 
 are all good." 
 
 He will have an honored place in the history of 
 American literature. But I cannot now dwell 
 upon his authorship while thinking of him as the 
 beloved member of a literary circle now, alas ! 
 sadly broken. I recall the wise, genial companion 
 and faithful friend of nearly half a century, the 
 memory of whose words and acts of kindness 
 moistens my eyes as I write. 
 
 It is the inevitable sorrow of age that one's com- 
 panions must drop away on the right hand and the 
 left with increasing frequency, until we are com- 
 pelled to ask with Wordsworth, 
 
 " Who next shall fall and disappear ? " 
 
 But in the case of him who has just passed from
 
 320 PERSONAL SKETCHES AND TRIBUTES 
 
 us, we have the satisfaction of knowing that his 
 life-work has been well and faithfully done, and 
 that he leaves behind him only friends. 
 
 DANVEKS, 6th Month, 18, 1886.
 
 HISTORICAL PAPERS 
 
 DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 In February, 1839, Henry Clay delivered a speech in the 
 United States Senate, which was intended to smooth away the 
 difficulties which his moderate opposition to the encroachments 
 of slavery had erected in his path to the presidency. His calum- 
 niation of O'Connell called out the following 1 summary of the 
 career of the great Irish patriot. It was published originally in 
 the Pennsylvania Freeman of Philadelphia, April 25, 1839. 
 
 PERHAPS the most unlucky portion of the un- 
 lucky speech of Henry Clay on the slavery ques- 
 tion is that in which an attempt is made to hold 
 up to scorn and contempt the great Liberator of 
 Ireland. We say an attempt, for who will say it 
 has succeeded ? Who feels contempt for O'Con- 
 nell? Surely not the slaveholder? From Henry 
 Clay, surrounded by his slave-gang at Ashland, to 
 the most miserable and squalid slave-driver and 
 small breeder of human cattle in Virginia and 
 Maryland who can spell the name of O'Counell 
 in his newspaper, these republican brokers in blood 
 fear and hate the eloquent Irishman. But their 
 contempt, forsooth ! Talk of the sheep-stealer's 
 contempt for the officer of justice who nails his 
 ears to the pillory, or sets the branding iron on 
 his forehead !
 
 322 HISTORICAL PAPERS 
 
 After denouncing the abolitionists for gratui- 
 tously republishing the advertisements for runaway 
 slaves, the Kentucky orator says : 
 
 "And like a notorious agitator upon another 
 theatre, they would hunt down and proscribe from 
 the pale of civilized society the inhabitants of that 
 entire section. Allow me, Mr. President, to say 
 that whilst I recognize in the justly wounded feel- 
 ings of the Minister of the United States at the 
 Court of St. James much to excuse the notice 
 which he was provoked to take of that agitator, 
 in my humble opinion he would better have con- 
 sulted the dignity of his station and of his country 
 in treating him with contemptuous silence. He 
 would exclude us from European society, he who 
 himself can only obtain a contraband admission, 
 and is received with scornfid repugnance into it ! 
 If he be no more desirous of our society than we 
 are of his, he may rest assured that a state of per- 
 petual non-intercourse will exist between us. Yes, 
 sir, I think the American Minister would best have 
 pursued the dictates of true dignity by regarding 
 the language of the member of the British House 
 of Commons as the malignant ravings of the 
 plunderer of his own country, and the libeller of 
 a foreign and kindred people." 
 
 The recoil of this attack " followed hard upon " 
 the tones of congratulation and triumph of parti- 
 san editors at the consummate skill and dexter- 
 ity with which their candidate for the presidency 
 had absolved himself from the suspicion of aboli- 
 tionism, and by a master-stroke of policy secured 
 the confidence of the slaveholding section of the
 
 DANIEL 0' CON NELL 323 
 
 Union. But the late Whig defeat in New York 
 has put an end to these premature rejoicings. 
 " The speech of Mr. Clay in reference to the Irish 
 agitator has been made use of against us with no 
 small success," say the New York papers. " They 
 failed," says the Daily Evening Star, "to con- 
 vince the Irish voters that Daniel O'Connell was 
 the ' plunderer of his country,' or that there was an 
 excuse for thus denouncing him." 
 
 The defeat of the Whigs of New York and the 
 cause of it have excited no small degree of alarm 
 among the adherents of the Kentucky orator. In 
 this city, the delicate Philadelphia Gazette comes 
 magnanimously to the aid of Henry Clay, 
 
 "A torn-tit twittering on an eagle's back." 
 
 The learned editor gives it as his opinion that 
 Daniel O'Connell is a " political beggar," a " dis- 
 organizing apostate ; " talks in its pretty way of 
 the man's " impudence " and " falsehoods " and 
 " cowardice," etc. ; and finally, with a modesty and 
 gravity which we cannot but admire, assures us 
 that " his weakness of mind is almost beyond 
 calculation " / 
 
 We have heard it rumored during the past 
 week, among some of the self-constituted organs of 
 the Clay party in this city, that at a late meeting 
 in Chestnut Street a committee was appointed to 
 collect, collate, and publish the correspondence 
 between Andrew Stevenson and O'Connell, and so 
 much of the latter's speeches and writings as re- 
 late to American slavery, for the purpose of con- 
 vincing the countrymen of O'Connell of the jus-
 
 324 HISTORICAL PAPERS 
 
 tice, propriety, and, in view of the aggravated cir- 
 cumstances of the case, moderation and forbear- 
 ance of Henry Clay when speaking of a man who 
 has had the impudence to intermeddle with the 
 " patriarchal institutions " of our country, and with 
 the " domestic relations " of Kentucky and Vir- 
 ginia slave-traders. 
 
 We wait impatiently for the fruits of the labors 
 of this sagacious committee. We should like to 
 see those eloquent and thrilling appeals to the 
 sense of shame and justice and honor of America 
 republished. We should like to see if any Irish- 
 man, not wholly recreant to the interests and wel- 
 fare of the Green Island of his birth, will in con- 
 sequence of this publication give his vote to the 
 slanderer of Ireland's best and noblest champion. 
 
 But who is Daniel O'Connell ? "A demagogue 
 a ruffian agitator!" say the Tory journals of 
 Great Britain, quaking meantime with awe and 
 apprehension before the tremendous moral and 
 political power which he is wielding, a power at 
 this instant mightier than that of any potentate of 
 Europe. " A blackguard " a fellow who " ob- 
 tains contraband admission into European soci- 
 ety " a " malignant libeller " a " plunderer of 
 his country " a man whose " wind should be 
 stopped," say the American slaveholders, and 
 their apologists, Clay, Stevenson, Hamilton, and 
 the Philadelphia Gazette, and the Democratic 
 Whig Association. 
 
 But who is Daniel O'Connell? Ireland now 
 does justice to him, the world will do so hereafter. 
 No individual of the present age has done more for
 
 DANIEL 0' CONN ELL 325 
 
 human liberty. His labors to effect the peaceable 
 deliverance of his own oppressed countrymen, and 
 to open to the nations of Europe a new and purer 
 and holier pathway to freedom unstained with 
 blood and un moistened by tears, and his mighty 
 instrumentality in the abolition of British colonial 
 slavery, have left their impress upon the age. They 
 will be remembered and felt beneficially long 
 after the miserable slanders of Tory envy and ma- 
 lignity at home, and the clamors of slaveholders 
 abroad, detected in their guilt, and writhing in 
 the gaze of Christendom, shall have perished for- 
 ever, when the Clays and Calhouns, the Peels 
 and Wellingtons, the opponents of reform in 
 Great Britain and the enemies of slave emancipa- 
 tion in the United States, shall be numbered with 
 those who in all ages, to use the words of the elo- 
 quent Lamartine, have " sinned against the Holy 
 Ghost in opposing the improvement of things, in 
 an egotistical and stupid attempt to draw back the 
 moral and social world which God and nature are 
 urging forward." 
 
 The character and services of O'Connell have 
 never been fully appreciated in this country. En- 
 grossed in our own peculiar interests, and in the 
 plenitude of our self-esteem ; believing that " we 
 are the people, and that wisdom will perish with 
 us," that all patriotism and liberality of feeling 
 are confined to our own territory, we have not fol- 
 lowed the untitled Barrister of Derrynane Abbey, 
 step by step, through the development of one of 
 the noblest experiments ever made for the cause of 
 liberty and the welfare of man.
 
 326 HISTORICAL PAPERS 
 
 The revolution which O'Connell has already par- 
 tially effected in his native land, and which, from 
 the evident signs of cooperation in England and 
 Scotland, seems not far from its entire accomplish- 
 ment, will form a new era in the history of the 
 civilized world. Heretofore the patriot has relied 
 more upon physical than moral means for the re- 
 generation of his country and its redemption from 
 oppression. His revolutions, however pure in prin- 
 ciple, have ended in practical crime. The great 
 truth was yet to be learned that brute force is in- 
 compatible with a pure love of freedom, inasmuch 
 as it is in itself an odious species of tyranny the 
 relic of an age of slavery and barbarism the 
 common argument of despotism a game 
 
 " which, were their subjects "wise, 
 Kings would not play at." 
 
 But the revolution in which O'Connell is engaged, 
 although directed against the oppression of centu- 
 ries, relies with just confidence upon the united 
 moral energies of the people : a moral victory of 
 reason over prejudice, of justice over oppression ; 
 the triumph of intellectual energy where the brute 
 appeal to arms had miserably failed ; the vindi- 
 cation of man's eternal rights, not by the sword 
 fleshed in human hearts, but by weapons tempered 
 in the armory of Heaven with truth and mercy 
 and love. 
 
 Nor is it a visionary idea, or the untried theory 
 of an enthusiast, this triumphant reliance upon 
 moral and intellectual power for the reform of po- 
 litical abuses, for the overthrowing of tyranny and 
 the pulling down of the strongholds of arbitrary
 
 DANIEL O'CONNELL 327 
 
 power. The emancipation of the Catholic of Great 
 Britain from the thrall of a century, in 1829, pre- 
 pared the way for the bloodless triumph of Eng- 
 lish reform in 1832. The Catholic Association 
 was the germ of those political unions which com- 
 pelled, by their mighty yet peaceful influence, the 
 King of England to yield submissively to the su- 
 premacy of the people. 1 Both of these remarkable 
 events, these revolutions shaking nations to their 
 centre, yet polluted with no blood and sullied by no 
 crime, were effected by the salutary agitations of 
 the public mind, first set in motion by the master- 
 spirit of O'Connell, and spreading from around 
 him to every portion of the British empire like the 
 undulations from the disturbed centre of a lake. 
 
 The Catholic question has been but imperfectly 
 understood in this country. Many have allowed 
 their just disapprobation of the Catholic religion 
 to degenerate into a most unwarrantable preju- 
 dice against its conscientious followers. The cruel 
 persecutions of the dissenters from the Romish 
 Church, the massacre of St. Bartholomew's day, 
 the horrors of the Inquisition, the crusades against 
 the Albigenses and the simple dwellers of the Vau- 
 dois valleys, have been regarded as atrocities pecu- 
 liar to the believers in papal infallibility, and the 
 necessary consequences of their doctrines ; and 
 hence they have looked upon the constitutional agi- 
 
 1 The celebrated Mr. Attwood has been called the " father of 
 political unions." In a speech delivered by his brother, C. Att- 
 wood, Esq., at the Sunderland Reform Meeting, September 10, 
 1832, I find the following admission : " Gentlemen, the first politi- 
 cal union was the Roman Catholic Association of Ireland, and the 
 true founder and father of political unions is Daniel O'Connell."
 
 328 HISTORICAL PAPERS 
 
 tation of the Irish Catholics for relief from griev- 
 ous disabilities and unjust distinctions as a strug- 
 gle merely for supremacy or power. 
 
 Strange, that the truth to which all history so 
 strongly testifies should thus be overlooked, the 
 undeniable truth that religious bigotry and intol- 
 erance have been confined to no single sect ; that 
 the persecuted of one century have been the perse- 
 cutors of another. In our own country, it would 
 be well for us to remember that at the very time 
 when in New England the Catholic, the Quaker, 
 and the Baptist were banished on pain of death, 
 and where some even suffered that dreadful pen- 
 alty, in Catholic Maryland, under the Catholic 
 Lord Baltimore, perfect liberty of conscience was 
 established, and Papist and Protestant went quietly 
 through the same streets to their respective altars. 
 
 At the commencement of O'Connell's labors for 
 emancipation he found the people of Ireland di- 
 vided into three great classes, the Protestant or 
 Church party, the Dissenters, and the Catholics : 
 the Church party constituting about one tenth of 
 the population, yet holding in possession the gov- 
 ernment and a great proportion of the landed 
 property of Ireland, controlling church and state 
 and law and revenue, the army, navy, magistracy, 
 and corporations, the entire patronage of the coun- 
 try, holding their property and power by the favor 
 of England, and consequently wholly devoted to 
 her interest ; the Dissenters, probably twice as nu- 
 merous as the Church party, mostly engaged in 
 trade and manufactures, sustained by their own 
 talents and industry, Irish in feeling, partaking in
 
 DANIEL 0' CON NELL 329 
 
 no small degree of the oppression of their Catholic 
 brethren, and among the first to resist that oppres- 
 sion in 1782 ; the Catholics constituting at least 
 two thirds of the whole population, and almost 
 the entire peasantry of the country, forming a 
 large proportion of the mercantile interest, yet 
 nearly excluded from the possession of landed 
 property by the tyrannous operation of the penal 
 laws. Justly has a celebrated Irish patriot (Theo- 
 bald Wolfe Tone) spoken of these laws as "an 
 execrable and infamous code, framed with the art 
 and malice of demons to plunder and degrade and 
 brutalize the Catholics of Ireland. There was no 
 disgrace, no injustice, no disqualification, moral, 
 political, or religious, civil or military, which it 
 has not heaped upon them." 
 
 The following facts relative to the disabilities 
 under which the Catholics of the United Kingdom 
 labored previous to the emancipation of 1829 will 
 serve to show in some measure the oppressive oper- 
 ation of those laws which placed the foot of one 
 tenth of the population of Ireland upon the necks 
 of the remainder. 
 
 A Catholic peer could not sit in the House of 
 Peers, nor a Catholic commoner in the House of 
 Commons. A Catholic could not be Lord Chan- 
 cellor, or Keeper, or Commissioner of the Great 
 Seal ; Master or Keeper of the Rolls ; Justice of 
 the King's Bench or of the Common Pleas ; Baron 
 of the Exchequer ; Attorney or Solicitor General ; 
 King's Sergeant at Law; Member of the King's 
 Council ; Master in Chancery, nor Chairman of 
 Sessions for the County of Dublin. He could not
 
 330 HISTORICAL PAPERS 
 
 be the Recorder of a city or town ; an advocate in 
 the spiritual courts ; Sheriff of a county, city, or 
 town ; Sub-Sheriff ; Lord Lieutenant, Lord Deputy, 
 or other governor of Ireland ; Lord High Treas- 
 urer ; Governor of a county ; Privy Councillor ; 
 Postmaster General ; Chancellor of the Exchequer 
 or Secretary of State ; Vice Treasurer, Cashier of 
 the Exchequer ; Keeper of the Privy Seal or Audi- 
 tor General ; Provost or Fellow of Dublin Univer- 
 sity ; nor Lord Mayor or Alderman of a corporate 
 city or town. He could not be a member of a par- 
 ish vestry, nor bequeath any sum of money or any 
 lands for the maintenance of a clergyman, or for 
 the support of a chapel or a school ; and in corpo- 
 rate towns he was excluded from the grand juries. 
 O'Connell commenced his labors for emancipa- 
 tion with the strong conviction that nothing short 
 of the united exertions of the Irish people could 
 overthrow the power of the existing government, 
 and that a union of action could only be obtained 
 by the establishment of something like equality be- 
 tween the different religious parties. Discarding 
 all other than peaceful means for the accomplish- 
 ment of his purpose, he placed himself and his fol- 
 lowers beyond the cognizance of unjust and op- 
 pressive laws. Wherever he poured the oil of 
 his eloquence upon the maddened spirits of his 
 wronged and insulted countrymen, the mercenary 
 soldiery found no longer an excuse for violence ; 
 and calm, firm, and united, the Catholic Association 
 remained secure in the moral strength of its pure 
 and peaceful purpose, amid the bayonets of a Tory 
 administration. His influence was felt in all parts
 
 DANIEL 0' CON NELL 331 
 
 of the island. Wherever an unlawful association 
 existed, his great legal knowledge enabled him 
 at once to detect its character, and, by urging its 
 dissolution, to snatch its deluded members from 
 the ready fangs of their enemies. In his presence the 
 Catholic and the Protestant shook hands together, 
 and the wild Irish clansman forgot his feuds. He 
 taught the party in power, and who trembled at 
 the dangers around them, that security and peace 
 could only be obtained by justice and kindness. 
 He entreated his oppressed Catholic brethren to 
 lay aside their weapons, and with pure hearts and 
 naked hands to stand firmly together in the calm 
 but determined energy of men, too humane for 
 deeds of violence, yet too mighty for the patient 
 endurance of wrong. 
 
 The spirit of the olden time was awakened, of 
 the day when Flood thundered and Curran light- 
 ened ; the light which shone for a moment in the 
 darkness of Ireland's century of wrong burned 
 upwards clearly and steadily from all its ancient 
 altars. Shoulder to shoulder gathered around him 
 the patriot spirits of his nation, men unbribed 
 by the golden spoils of governmental patronage : 
 Shiel with his ardent eloquence, O'Dwyer and 
 Walsh, and Grattan and O'Connor, and Steel, the 
 Protestant agitator, wearing around him the em- 
 blem of national reconciliation, of the reunion of 
 Catholic and Protestant, the sash of blended 
 orange and green, soiled and defaced by his patri- 
 otic errands, stained with the smoke of cabins, and 
 the night rains and rust of weapons, and the moun- 
 tain mist, and the droppings of the wild woods
 
 332 HISTORICAL PAPERS 
 
 of Clare. He united in one mighty and resistless 
 mass the broken and discordant factions, whose 
 desultory struggles against tyranny had hitherto 
 only added strength to its fetters, and infused into 
 that mass his own lofty principles of action, until 
 the solemn tones of expostulation and entreaty, 
 bursting at once from the full heart of Ireland, 
 were caught up by England and echoed back from 
 Scotland, and the language of justice and humanity 
 was wrung from the reluctant lips of the cold and 
 remorseless oppressor of his native land, at once 
 its disgrace and glory, the conqueror of Napo- 
 leon ; and, in the words of his own Curran, the 
 chains of the Catholic fell from around him, and 
 he stood forth redeemed and disenthralled by the 
 irresistible genius of Universal Emancipation. 
 
 On the passage of the bill for Catholic eman- 
 cipation, O'Connell took his seat in the British 
 Parliament. The eyes of millions were upon him. 
 Ireland betrayed so often by those in whom 
 she had placed her confidence; brooding in sor- 
 rowful remembrance over the noble names and 
 brilliant reputations sullied by treachery and cor- 
 ruption, the long and dark catalogue of her rec- 
 reant sous, who, allured by British gold and Brit- 
 ish patronage, had sacrificed on the altar of their 
 ambition Irish pride and Irish independence, and 
 lifted their parricidal arms against their sorrow- 
 ing mother, " crownless and voiceless in her woe " 
 now hung with breathless eagerness over the 
 ordeal to which her last great champion was sub- 
 jected. 
 
 The crisis in O'Connell's destiny had come.
 
 DANIEL O'CONNELL 333 
 
 The glitter of the golden bribe was in his eye ; the 
 sound of titled magnificence was in his ear; the 
 choice was before him to sit high among the hon- 
 orable, the titled, and the powerful, or to take his 
 humble seat in the hall of St. Stephen's as the 
 Irish demagogue, the agitator, the Kerry repre- 
 sentative. He did not hesitate in his choice. On 
 the first occasion that offered he told the story of 
 Ireland's wrongs, and demanded justice in the 
 name of his suffering constituents. He had put 
 his hand to the plough of reform, and he could not 
 relinquish his hold, for his heart was with it. 
 
 Determined to give the Whig administration no 
 excuse for neglecting the redress of Irish griev- 
 ances, he entered heart and soul into the great 
 measure of English reform, and his zeal, tact, and 
 eloquence contributed not a little to its success. 
 Yet even his friends speak of his first efforts in 
 the House of Commons as failures. The Irish 
 accent ; the harsh avowal of purposes smacking of 
 rebellion ; the eccentricities and flowery luxuri- 
 ance of an eloquence nursed in the fervid atmos- 
 phere of Ireland suddenly transplanted to the 
 cold and commonplace one of St. Stephen's ; the 
 great and illiberal prejudices against him scarcely 
 abated from what they were when, as the member 
 from Clare, he was mobbed on his way to London, 
 for a time opposed a barrier to the influence of 
 his talents and patriotism. But he triumphed at 
 last : the mob-orator of Clare and Kerry, the de- 
 claimer in the Dublin Rooms of the Political and 
 Trades' Union, became one of the most attractive 
 and popular speakers of the British Parliament ;
 
 334 HISTORICAL PAPERS 
 
 one whose aid has been courted and whose rebuke 
 has been feared by the ablest of England's repre- 
 sentatives. Amid the sneers of derision and the 
 clamor of hate and prejudice he has triumphed, 
 on that very arena so fatal to Irish eloquence and 
 Irish fame, where even Grattan failed to sustain 
 himself, and the impetuous spirit of Flood was 
 stricken down. 
 
 No subject in which Ireland was not directly 
 interested has received a greater share of O'Con- 
 nell's attention than that of the abolition of co- 
 lonial slavery. Utterly detesting tyranny of all 
 kinds, he poured forth his eloquent soul in stern 
 reprobation of a system full at once of pride and 
 misery and oppression, and darkened with blood. 
 His speech on the motion of Thomas Fowell Bux- 
 ton for the immediate emancipation of the slaves 
 gave a new tone to the discussion of the question. 
 He entered into no petty pecuniary details; no 
 miserable computation of the shillings and pence 
 vested in beings fashioned in the image of God. 
 He did not talk of the expediency of continuing 
 the evil because it had grown monstrous. To use 
 his own words, he considered " slavery a crime to 
 be abolished ; not merely an evil to be palliated." 
 He left Sir Robert Peel and the Tories to eulogize 
 the characters and defend the interests of the plant- 
 ers, in common with those of a tithe-reaping priest- 
 hood, building their houses by oppression and their 
 chambers by wrong, and spoke of the negro's 
 interest, the negro's claim to justice ; demanding 
 sympathy for the plundered as well as the plun- 
 derers, for the slave as well as his master. He
 
 DANIEL 0' CONN ELL 335 
 
 trampled as dust under his feet the blasphemy that 
 obedience to the law of eternal justice is a prin- 
 ciple to be acknowledged in theory only, because 
 unsafe in practice. He would, he said, enter into 
 no compromise with slavery. He cared not what 
 cast or creed or color it might assume, whether 
 personal or political, intellectual or spiritual; he 
 was for its total, immediate abolition. He was 
 for justice, -"-justice in the name of humanity and 
 according to the righteous law of the living God. 
 
 Ardently admiring our free institutions, and 
 constantly pointing to our glorious political exalta- 
 tion as an incentive to the perseverance of his own 
 countrymen in their struggle against oppression, he 
 has yet omitted no opportunity of rebuking our 
 inexcusable slave system. An enthusiastic admirer 
 of Jefferson, he has often regretted that his prac- 
 tice should have so illy accorded with his noble 
 sentiments on the subject of slavery, which so fully 
 coincided with his own. In truth, wherever man 
 has been oppressed by his fellow-man, O'Connell's 
 sympathy has been directed : to Italy, chained 
 above the very grave of her ancient liberties ; to 
 the republics of Southern America; to Greece, 
 dashing the foot of the indolent Ottoman from her 
 neck ; to France and Belgium ; and last, not least, 
 to Poland, driven from her cherished nationality, 
 and dragged, like his own Ireland, bleeding and 
 violated, to the deadly embrace of her oppressor. 
 American slavery but shares in his common de- 
 nunciation of all tyranny ; its victims but partake 
 of his common pity for the oppressed and perse- 
 cuted and the trodden down.
 
 336 HISTORICAL PAPERS 
 
 In this hasty and imperfect sketch we cannot 
 enter into the details of that cruel disregard of 
 Irish rights which was manifested by a Reformed 
 Parliament, convoked, to use the language of Wil- 
 liam IV., " to ascertain the sense of the people." It 
 is perhaps enough to say that O'Connell's indignant 
 refusal to receive as full justice the measure of 
 reform meted out to Ireland was fully justified by 
 the facts of the case. The Irish Reform Bill gave 
 Ireland, with one third of the entire population of 
 the United Kingdoms, only one sixth of the Par- 
 liamentary delegation. It diminished instead of 
 increasing the number of voters ; in the towns and 
 cities it created a high and aristocratic franchise ; 
 in many boroughs it established so narrow a basis 
 of franchise as to render them liable to corruption 
 and abuse as the rotten boroughs of the old system. 
 It threw no new power into the hands of the peo- 
 ple ; and with no little justice has O'Connell him- 
 self termed it an act to restore to power the Orange 
 ascendancy in Ireland, and to enable a faction to 
 trample with impunity on the friends of reform 
 and constitutional freedom. 1 
 
 In May, 1832, O'Connell commenced the publi- 
 cation of his celebrated Letters to the Reformers 
 of Great Britain. Like Tallien, before the French 
 convention, he " rent away the veil " which Hume 
 and Atwood had only partially lifted. He held 
 up before the people of Great Britain the new 
 indignities which had been added to the long cata- 
 logue of Ireland's wrongs ; he appealed to their 
 justice, their honor, their duty, for redress, and 
 
 1 Letters to the Reformers of Great Britain, No. 1.
 
 DANIEL O'CONNELL 337 
 
 cast down before the Whig administration the 
 gauntlet of his country's defiance and scorn. There 
 is a fine burst of indignant Irish feeling in the 
 concluding paragraphs of his fourth letter : 
 
 " I have demonstrated the contumelious injuries 
 inflicted upon us by this Reform Bill. My letters 
 are long before the public. They have been un- 
 refuted, uncontradicted in any of their details. 
 And with this case of atrocious injustice to Ireland 
 placed before the reformers of Great Britain, what 
 assistance, what sympathy, do we receive ? Why, 
 I have got some half dozen drivelling letters from 
 political unions and political characters, asking me 
 whether I advise them to petition or bestir them- 
 selves in our behalf ! 
 
 " Reformers of Great Britain ! I do not ask you 
 either to petition or be silent. I do not ask you 
 to petition or to do any other act in favor of the 
 Irish. You will consult your own feelings of jus- 
 tice and generosity, unprovoked by any advice or 
 entreaty of mine. 
 
 " For my own part, I never despaired of Ireland ; 
 I do not, I will not, I cannot, despair of my beloved 
 country. She has, in my view, obtained freedom 
 of conscience for others, as well as for herself. 
 She has shaken off the incubus of tithes while silly 
 legislation was dealing out its folly and its false- 
 hoods. She can, and she will, obtain for herself 
 justice and constitutional freedom ; and although 
 she may sigh at British neglect and ingratitude, 
 there is no sound of despair in that sigh, nor any 
 want of moral energy on her part to attain her own 
 rights by peaceable and legal means."
 
 338 HISTORICAL PAPERS 
 
 Through all the stages of O'Connell's political 
 career, he has never failed to attribute to the union 
 with Great Britain much of the suffering and 
 degradation of his country. To a repeal of that 
 Union he alone looked as a remedy for the evils of 
 absenteeism, that canker of the heart, draining 
 away the very springs of her life ; the Church Es- 
 tablishment, with its tithe-proctors and bayonets ; 
 the decay of her manufactures and the general 
 prostration of her commercial energies. Hence, 
 while contending for Catholic emancipation, his 
 enemies justly termed him " an agitator with ulte- 
 rior views." " I toiled," said O'ConneU, " for Cath- 
 olic emancipation, only with the repeal as my great 
 and ultimate object. It was because I saw that 
 it was impossible to bring the people of Ireland 
 to combine for national independence, until there 
 was an end of unjust political degradation of the 
 great majority and of the unjust political ascend- 
 ancy of the few." Under his directions the people 
 of Ireland had effectually nullified the tithe sys- 
 tem, by refusing, in common with the Quakers, to 
 pay for the support of a church with whose min- 
 istry they had no communion ; and when their 
 property was seized, in default of payment, by the 
 tithe-proctor, " the odious tithe-proctor," as Moore, 
 in his Captain Rock, calls him, no Irishman, with 
 one spark of national feeling in his bosom, could 
 be found to purchase it. Yet the Whig minis- 
 try sustained this religious robbery, and, weary of 
 fruitless expostulation with an English Parliament, 
 O'Connell commenced openly his " agitation " for 
 a repeal of the Union. Here, too, the spirit of 
 Ireland has been with him.
 
 DANIEL O'CONNELL 339 
 
 The tithe system, unutterably odious and full 
 of all injustice, had prepared the way for this ex- 
 pression of feeling on the part of the people. Ire- 
 land had never, in any period of her history, bowed 
 her neck peaceably to the ecclesiastical yoke. 
 From the Canon of Cashel, prepared by English 
 deputies in the twelfth century, decreeing for the 
 first time that tithes should be paid in Ireland, 
 down to the present moment, the Church in her 
 borders has relied solely upon the strong arm of 
 the law, and literally reaped its tithes with the 
 sword. The decree of the Dublin Synod, under 
 Archbishop Comyn, in 1185, could only be enforced 
 within the pale of the English settlement. The 
 attempts of Henry VIII. also failed. Without the 
 pale all endeavors to collect tithes were met by 
 stern opposition. And although from the time of 
 William III. the tithe system has been established 
 in Ireland, yet at no period has it been regarded 
 otherwise than as a system of legalized robbery by 
 seven eighths of the people. An examination of 
 this system cannot fail to excite our wonder, not 
 that it has been thus regarded, but that it has been 
 so long endured by any people on the face of the 
 earth, least of all by Irishmen. Tithes to the 
 amount of .1,000,000 are annually wrung from 
 impoverished Ireland, in support of a clergy who 
 can only number about one sixteenth of her pop- 
 ulation as their hearers ; and wrung, too, in 
 an undue proportion, from the Catholic counties. 1 
 In the southern and middle counties, almost en- 
 tirely inhabited by the Catholic peasantry, every- 
 1 See Dr. Doyle's Evidence before Hon. E. G. Stanley.
 
 340 HISTORICAL PAPERS 
 
 thing they possess is subject to the tithe : the 
 cow is seized in the hovel, the potato in the bar- 
 rel, the coat even on the poor man's back. 1 The 
 revenues of five of the dignitaries of the Irish 
 Church Establishment are as follows : the Primacy 
 140,000 ; Derry 120,000 ; Kilmore 100,000 ; 
 Clogher 100,000 ; Waterford 70,000. Compare 
 these enormous sums with that paid by Scot- 
 land for the maintenance of the Church, namely : 
 270,000. Yet that Church has 2,000,000 souls 
 under its care, while that of Ireland has not above 
 500,000. Nor are these princely livings expended 
 in Ireland by their possessors. The bishoprics of 
 Cloyne and Meath have been long held by absen- 
 tees, by men who know no more of their flocks 
 than the non-resident owner of a West India plan- 
 tation did of the miserable negroes, the fruits of 
 whose thankless labor were annually transmitted 
 to him. Out of 1289 beneficed clergymen in Ire- 
 land, between five and six hundred are non-resi- 
 dents, spending in Bath and London, or in making 
 the fashionable tour of the Continent, the wealth 
 forced from the Catholic peasant and the Protes- 
 tant dissenter by the bayonets of the military. 
 Scorching and terrible was the sarcasm of Grattan 
 applied to these locusts of the Church : " A beastly 
 and pompous priesthood, political potentates and 
 Christian pastors, full of false zeal, full of worldly 
 pride, and full of gluttony, empty of the true 
 religion, to their flocks oppressive, to their inferior 
 clergy brutal, to their king abject, and to their 
 God impudent and familiar, they stand on the 
 1 Speech of T. Reynolds, Esq., at an anti-tithe meeting.
 
 DANIEL O'CONNELL 341 
 
 altar as a stepping-stone to the throne, glorying 
 in the ear of princes, whom they poison with 
 crooked principles and heated advice ; a faction 
 against their king when they are not his slaves,* 
 ever the dirt under his feet or a poniard to his 
 heart." 
 
 For the evils of absenteeism, the non-residence 
 of the wealthy landholders, draining from a starv- 
 ing country the very necessaries of life, a remedy 
 is sought in a repeal of the union, and the provi- 
 sions of a domestic parliament. In O'Connell's 
 view, a restoration of such a parliament can alone 
 afford that adequate protection to the national in- 
 dustry so loudly demanded by thousands of un- 
 employed laborers, starving amid the ruins of 
 deserted manufactories. During the brief period 
 of partial Irish liberty which followed the pacific 
 revolution of '82, the manufactures of the country 
 revived and flourished ; and the smile of contented 
 industry was visible all over the land. In 1797 
 there were 15,000 silk-weavers in the city of Dublin 
 alone. There are now but 400. Such is the prac- 
 tical effect of the Union, of that suicidal act of the 
 Irish Parliament which yielded up in a moment of 
 treachery and terror the dearest interests of the 
 country to the legislation of an English Parliament 
 and the tender mercies of Castlereagh, of that 
 Castlereagh who, when accused by Grattan of 
 spending ,15,000 in purchasing votes for the Union, 
 replied with the rare audacity of high-handed in- 
 iquity, "We did spend 15,000, and we would 
 have spent 15,000,000 if necessary to carry the 
 Union ; " that Castlereagh who, when 707,000 Irish-
 
 342 HISTORICAL PAPERS 
 
 men petitioned against the Union and 300,000 for 
 it, maintained that the latter constituted the major- 
 ity ! Well has it been said that the deep vengeance 
 which Ireland owed him was inflicted by the great 
 criminal upon himself. The nation which he sold 
 and plundered saw him make with his own hand 
 the fearful retribution. The great body of the 
 Irish people never assented to the Union. The 
 following extract from a speech of Earl (then Mr.) 
 Grey, in 1800, upon the Union question, will show 
 what means were made use of to drag Ireland, while 
 yet mourning over her slaughtered children, to the 
 marriage altar with England : " If the Parliament 
 of Ireland had been left to itself, untempted and 
 unawed, it would without hesitation have rejected 
 the resolutions. Out of the 300 members, 120 
 strenuously opposed the measure, 162 voted for 
 it : of these, 116 were placemen ; some of them 
 were English generals on the staff, without a foot 
 of ground in Ireland, and completely dependent on 
 government." " Let us reflect upon the arts made 
 use of since the last session of the Irish Parliament 
 to pack a majority, for Union, in the House of 
 Commons. All persons holding offices under gov- 
 ernment, if they hesitated to vote as directed, were 
 stripped of all their employments. A bill framed 
 for preserving the purity of Parliament was likewise 
 abused, and no less than 63 seats were vacated by 
 their holders' having received nominal offices." 
 
 The signs of the times are most favorable to the 
 success of the Irish Liberator. The tremendous 
 power of the English political unions is beginning 
 to develop itself in favor of Ireland. A deep sym-
 
 DANIEL O'CONNELL 343 
 
 pathy is evinced for her sufferings, and a general 
 determination to espouse her cause. Brute force 
 cannot put down the peaceable and legal agitation 
 of the question of her rights and interests. The 
 spirit of the age forbids it. The agitation will go 
 on, for it is spreading among men who, to use the 
 words of the eloquent Shiel, while looking out upon 
 the ocean, and gazing upon the shore, which Nature 
 has guarded with so many of her bulwarks, can 
 hear the language of Repeal muttered in the dash- 
 ing of the very waves which separate them from 
 Great Britain by a barrier of God's own creation. 
 Another bloodless victory, we trust, awaits O'Con- 
 nell, a victory worthy of his heart and intellect, 
 unstained by one drop of human blood, unmois- 
 tened by a solitary tear. 
 
 Ireland will be redeemed and disenthralled, not 
 perhaps by a repeal of the Union, but by the ac- 
 complishment of such a thorough reform in the 
 government and policy of Great Britain as shall 
 render a repeal unnecessary and impolitic. 
 
 The sentiments of O'Connell in regard to the 
 means of effecting his object of political reform are 
 distinctly impressed upon all his appeals to the 
 people. In his letter of December, 1832, to the 
 Dublin Trades Union, he says : " The Repealers 
 must not have our cause stained with blood. Far 
 indeed from it. We can, and ought to, carry the 
 repeal only in the total absence of offence against 
 the laws of man or crime in the sight of God. The 
 best revolution which was ever effected could not 
 be worth one drop of human blood." In his speech 
 at the public dinner given him by the citizens of
 
 344 HISTORICAL PAPERS 
 
 Cork, we find a yet more earnest avowal of pacific 
 principles. " It may be stated," said he, " to coun- 
 tervail our efforts, that this struggle will involve the 
 destruction of life and property ; that it will over- 
 turn the framework of civil society, and give an un- 
 due and fearful influence to one rank to the ruin of 
 all others. These are awful considerations, truly, 
 if risked. I am one of those who have always 
 believed that any political change is too dearly 
 purchased by a single drop of blood, and who 
 think that any political superstructure based upon 
 other opinion is like the sand-supported fabric, 
 beautiful in the brief hour of sunshine, but the mo- 
 ment one drop of rain touches the arid basis melt- 
 ing away in wreck and ruin ! I am an accountable 
 being ; I have a soul and a God to answer to, in 
 another and better world, for my thoughts and 
 actions in this. / disclaim here any act of mine 
 which would sport with the lives of my fellow-crea- 
 tures, any amelioration of our social condition 
 which must be purchased by their blood. And 
 here, in the face of God and of our common coun- 
 try, I protest that if I did not sincerely and firmly 
 believe that the amelioration I desire could be 
 effected without violence, without any change in 
 the relative scale of ranks in the present social 
 condition of Ireland, except that change which all 
 must desire, making each better than it was before, 
 and cementing all in one solid irresistible mass, I 
 would at once give up the struggle which I have 
 always kept with tyranny. I would withdraw from 
 the contest which I have hitherto waged with those 
 who would perpetuate our thraldom. I would not
 
 DANIEL O'CONNELL 345 
 
 for one moment dare to venture for that which in 
 costing one human life would cost infinitely too 
 dear. But it will cost no such price. Have we not 
 had within my memory two great political revolu- 
 tions ? And had we them not without bloodshed 
 or violence to the social compact? Have we not 
 arrived at a period when physical force and mili- 
 tary power yield to moral and intellectual energy ? 
 Has not the time of ' Cedant arma togae ' come for 
 us and the other nations of the earth ? " 
 
 Let us trust that the prediction of O'Connell 
 will be verified; that reason and intellect are 
 destined, under God, to do that for the nations of 
 the earth which the physical force of centuries and 
 the red sacrifice of a thousand battle-fields have 
 failed to accomplish. Glorious beyond all others 
 will be the day when " nation shall no more rise 
 up against nation ; " when, as a necessary conse- 
 quence of the universal acknowledgment of the 
 rights of man, it shall no longer be in the power of 
 an individual to drag millions into strife, for the 
 unholy gratification of personal prejudice and pas- 
 sion. The reformed governments of Great Britain 
 and France, resting, as they do, upon a popular 
 basis, are already tending to this consummation, 
 for the people have suffered too much from the 
 warlike ambition of their former masters not to 
 have learned that the gains of peaceful industry 
 are better than the wages of human butchery. 
 
 Among the great names of Ireland alike con- 
 spicuous, yet widely dissimilar stand Wellington 
 and O'Connell. The one smote down the modern 
 Alexander upon Waterloo's field of death, but
 
 346 HISTORICAL PAPERS 
 
 the page of his reputation is dim with the tears of 
 the widow and the orphan, and dark with the stain 
 of blood. The other, armed only with the weapons 
 of truth and reason, has triumphed over the oppres- 
 sion of centuries, and opened a peaceful pathway 
 to the Temple of Freedom, through which its God- 
 dess may be seen, no longer propitiated with human 
 sacrifices, like some foul idol of the East, but 
 clothed in Christian attributes, and smiling in the 
 beauty of holiness upon the pure hearts and peace- 
 ful hands of its votaries. The bloodless victories 
 of the latter have all the sublimity with none of the 
 criminality which attaches itself to the triumphs of 
 the former. To thunder high truths in the deaf- 
 ened ear of nations, to rouse the better spirit of 
 the age, to soothe the malignant passions of as- 
 sembled and maddened men, to throw open the 
 temple doors of justice to the abused, enslaved, and 
 persecuted, to unravel the mysteries of guilt, and 
 hold up the workers of iniquity in the severe light 
 of truth stripped of their disguise and covered with 
 the confusion of their own vileness, these are 
 victories more glorious than any which have ever 
 reddened the earth with carnage : 
 
 " They ask a spirit of more exalted pitch, 
 And courage tempered with a holier fire." 
 
 Of the more recent efforts of O'Connell we need 
 not speak, for no one can read the English peri- 
 odicals and papers without perceiving that O'Con- 
 nell is, at this moment, the leading politician, the 
 master mind of the British empire. Attempts have 
 been made to prejudice the American mind against 
 him by a republication on this side of the water of
 
 DANIEL 0' CONN ELL 347 
 
 the false and foul slanders of his Tory enemies, in 
 reference to what is called " the O'Connell rent," 
 a sum placed annually in his hands by a grateful 
 people, and which he has devoted scrupulously to 
 the great object of Ireland's political redemption. 
 He has acquired no riches by his political efforts ; 
 his heart and soul and mind and strength have 
 been directed to his suffering country and the 
 cause of universal freedom. For this he has de- 
 servedly a place in the heart and affections of 
 every son of Ireland. One million of ransomed 
 slaves in the British dependencies will teach their 
 children to repeat the name of O'Connell with that 
 of Wilberforce and Clarkson. And when the 
 stain and caste of slavery shall have passed from 
 our own country, he will be regarded as our friend 
 and benefactor, whose faithful rebukes and warn- 
 ings and eloquent appeals to our pride of charac- 
 ter, borne to us across the Atlantic, touched the 
 guilty sensitiveness of the national conscience, and 
 through shame prepared the way for repentance.
 
 ENGLAND UNDER JAMES II. 
 
 A review of the first two volumes of Macaulay's History of Eng- 
 land from the Accession of James II. 
 
 IN accordance with the labor-saving spirit of the 
 age, we have in these volumes an admirable exam- 
 ple of history made easy. Had they been pub- 
 lished in his time, they might have found favor in 
 the eyes of the poet Gray, who declared that his 
 ideal of happiness was " to lie on a sofa and read 
 eternal new romances." 
 
 The style is that which lends such a charm to 
 the author's essays, brilliant, epigrammatic, vig- 
 orous. Indeed, herein lies the fault of the work, 
 when viewed as a mere detail of historical facts. 
 Its sparkling rhetoric is not the safest medium of 
 truth to the simple-minded inquirer. A discrimi- 
 nating and able critic has done the author no injus- 
 tice in saying that, in attempting to give effect and 
 vividness to his thoughts and diction, he is often 
 overstrained and extravagant, and that his epigram- 
 matic style seems better fitted for the glitter of 
 paradox than the sober guise of truth. The intel- 
 ligent and well-informed reader of the volume be- 
 fore us will find himself at times compelled to re- 
 verse the decisions of the author, and deliver some 
 unfortunate personage, sect, or class from the pil- 
 lory of his rhetoric and the merciless pelting of his 
 ridicule. There is a want of the repose and quiet
 
 ENGLAND UNDER JAMES 11. 349 
 
 which we look for in a narrative of events long 
 passed away ; we rise from the perusal of the book 
 pleased and excited, but with not so clear a con- 
 ception of the actual realities of which it treats as 
 would be desirable. We cannot help feeling that 
 the author has been somewhat over-scrupulous in 
 avoiding the dulness of plain detail, and the dry- 
 ness of dates, names, and statistics. The freedom, 
 flowing diction, and sweeping generality of the re- 
 viewer and essayist are maintained throughout; 
 and, with one remarkable exception, the History of 
 England might be divided into papers of magazine 
 length, and published, without any violence to 
 propriety, as a continuation of the author's labors 
 in that department of literature in which he con- 
 fessedly stands without a rival, historical review. 
 That exception is, however, no unimportant one. 
 In our view, it is the crowning excellence of the 
 first volume, its distinctive feature and principal 
 attraction. We refer to the third chapter of the 
 volume, from page 260 to page 398, the descrip- 
 tion of the condition of England at the period of 
 the accession of James II. We know of nothing 
 like it in the entire range of historical literature. 
 The veil is lifted up from the England of a century 
 and a half ago ; its geographical, industrial, social, 
 and moral condition is revealed ; and, as the pano- 
 rama passes before us of lonely heaths, fortified 
 farm-houses, bands of robbers, rude country squires 
 doling out the odds and ends of their coarse fare 
 to clerical dependents, rough roads, serviceable 
 only for horseback travelling, towns with un- 
 lighted streets, reeking with filth and offal, and
 
 350 HISTORICAL PAPERS 
 
 prisons, damp, loathsome, infected with disease, 
 and swarming with vermin, we are filled with 
 wonder at the contrast which it presents to the 
 England of our day. We no longer sigh for " the 
 good old days." The most confirmed grumbler is 
 compelled to admit that, bad as things now are, 
 they were far worse a few generations back. Ma- 
 caulay, in this elaborate and carefully prepared 
 chapter, has done a good service to humanity in 
 disabusing well-intentioned ignorance of the melan- 
 choly notion that the world is growing worse, and 
 in putting to silence the cant of blind, unreasoning 
 conservatism. 
 
 In 1685 the entire population of England our 
 author estimates at from five millions to five mil- 
 lions five hundred thousand. Of the eight hun- 
 dred thousand families at that period, one half had 
 animal food twice a week. The other half ate it 
 not at all, or at most not oftener than once a week. 
 Wheaten loaves were only seen at the tables of the 
 comparatively wealthy. Rye, barley, and oats were 
 the food of the vast majority. The average wages 
 of workingmen was at least one half less than is 
 paid in England for the same service at the present 
 day. One fifth of the people were paupers, or re- 
 cipients of parish relief. Clothing and bedding 
 were scarce and dear. Education was almost 
 unknown to the vast majority. The houses and 
 shops were not numbered in the cities, for por- 
 ters, coachmen, and errand-runners could not read. 
 The shopkeeper distinguished his place of business 
 by painted signs and graven images. Oxford and 
 Cambridge Universities were little better than a
 
 ENGLAND UNDER JAMES II. 351 
 
 modern grammar and Latin school in a provin- 
 cial village. The country magistrate used on the 
 bench language too coarse, brutal, and vulgar for 
 a modern tap-room. Fine gentlemen in London 
 vied with each other in the lowest ribaldry and the 
 grossest profanity. The poets of the time, from 
 Dryden to Durfey, ministered to the popular licen- 
 tiousness. The most shameless indecency polluted 
 their pages. The theatre and the brothel were in 
 strict unison. The Church winked at the vice 
 which opposed itself to the austere morality or hy- 
 pocrisy of Puritanism. The superior clergy, with 
 a few noble exceptions, were self-seekers and 
 courtiers ; the inferior were idle, ignorant hangers- 
 on upon blaspheming squires and knights of the 
 shire. The domestic chaplain, of all men living, 
 held the most unenviable position. " If he was 
 permitted to dine with the family, he was expected 
 to content himself with the plainest fare. He 
 might fill himself with the corned beef and carrots ; 
 but as soon as the tarts and cheese-cakes made 
 their appearance he quitted his seat, and stood 
 aloof till he was summoned to return thanks for 
 the repast, from a great part of which he had been 
 excluded." 
 
 Beyond the Trent the country seems at this 
 period to have been in a state of barbarism. The 
 parishes kept bloodhounds for the purpose of hunt- 
 ing freebooters. The farm-houses were fortified 
 and guarded. So dangerous was the country that 
 persons about travelling thither made their wills. 
 Judges and lawyers only ventured therein, escorted 
 by a strong guard of armed men.
 
 352 HISTORICAL PAPERS 
 
 The term of human life throughout the kingdom 
 was much shorter than it is at the present time. 
 The year 1685 was not a sickly year ; yet one in 
 twenty-three of the entire population of London 
 died. The present annual mortality of London is 
 only one in forty. Filth was allowed to accumu- 
 late in the streets of the capital to a degree which 
 would be intolerable to modern sensitiveness. The 
 dwellings of the peasantry were loathsome as stys. 
 Personal cleanliness was little attended to. Foul 
 infectious diseases, now almost unknown, were 
 common. Fleas and other detestable vermin 
 abounded. The sense of misery was stupefied by 
 enormous draughts of beer, almost the only article 
 of consumption which was cheaper than at present. 
 
 Sectarian bigotry and persecution, for opinions 
 on matters about which often neither persecutor 
 nor persecuted could be certain, added to the evils 
 of the times. Neighbor acted as spy upon neigh- 
 bor ; swearing and drunken Cavaliers avenged the 
 persecution and plunder of their fathers in Crom- 
 well's time by packing the jail with the inheritors 
 of the faith and names of the old Puritan zealots. 
 When the corpse of some Independent preacher or 
 Anabaptist interpreter of prophecies was brought 
 out from the jail where heresy expiated its offences, 
 the rabble followed it with scoffing and deri- 
 sion, encouraged thereto by magistrates and clergy. 
 The temper of the time was hard and cruel. Ma- 
 caulay has two or three pages crowded with ter- 
 rible facts touching this point. The gospel of 
 humanity seems neither to have been preached nor 
 felt.
 
 ENGLAND UNDER JAMES II. 353 
 
 The natural resources of the island were unde- 
 veloped. The tin mines of Cornwall, which two 
 thousand years before attracted the ships of the 
 merchant princes of Tyre beyond the Pillars of 
 Hercules, were indeed worked to a considerable 
 extent ; but the copper mines, which now yield an- 
 nually fifteen thousand tons, were entirely neg- 
 lected. Rock salt was known to exist, but was 
 not used to any considerable extent ; and only a 
 partial supply of salt by evaporation was obtained. 
 The coal and iron of England are at this time the 
 stable foundations of her industrial and commer- 
 cial greatness. But in 1685 the great part of 
 the iron used was imported. Only about ten thou- 
 sand tons were annually cast. Now eight hun- 
 dred thousand is the average annual production. 
 Equally great has been the increase in coal mining. 
 " Coal," says Macaulay, " though very little used 
 in any species of manufacture, was already the or- 
 dinary fuel in some districts which were fortunate 
 enough to possess large beds, and in the capital, 
 which could easily be supplied by water carriage. 
 It seems reasonable to believe that at least one 
 half of the quantity then extracted from the pits 
 was consumed in London. The consumption of 
 London seemed to the writers of that age enor- 
 mous, and was often mentioned by them as a 
 proof of the greatness of the imperial city. They 
 scarcely hoped to be believed when they affirmed 
 that two hundred and eighty thousand chaldrons 
 that is to say, about three hundred and fifty 
 thousand tons were, in the last year of the 
 reign of Charles II., brought to the Thames. At
 
 354 HISTORICAL PAPERS 
 
 present near three millions and a half of tons are 
 required yearly by the metropolis ; and the whole 
 annual produce cannot, on the most moderate com- 
 putation, be estimated at less than twenty millions 
 of tons." 
 
 After thus passing in survey the England of our 
 ancestors five or six generations back, the author 
 closes his chapter with some eloquent remarks 
 upon the progress of society. Contrasting the 
 hardness and coarseness of the age of which he 
 treats with the softer and more humane features of 
 our own, he says : " Nowhere could be found that 
 sensitive and restless compassion which has in our 
 time extended powerful protection to the factory 
 child, the Hindoo widow, to the negro slave ; which 
 pries into the stores and water-casks of every emi- 
 grant ship ; which winces at every lash laid on the 
 back of a drunken soldier ; which will not suffer 
 the thief in the hulks to be ill fed or overworked ; 
 and which has repeatedly endeavored to save the 
 life even of the murderer. The more we study the 
 annals of the past, the more shall we rejoice that 
 we live in a merciful age, in an age in which 
 cruelty is abhorred, and in which pain, even when 
 deserved, is inflicted reluctantly and from a sense 
 of duty. Every class, doubtless, has gained largely 
 by this great moral change ; but the class which 
 has gained most is the poorest, the most depend- 
 ent, and the most defenceless." 
 
 The history itself properly commences at the 
 close of this chapter. Opening with the death- 
 scene of the dissolute Charles II., it presents a 
 series of brilliant pictures of the events succeeding.
 
 ENGLAND UNDER JAMES II. 355 
 
 The miserable fate of Gates and Dangerfield, the 
 perjured inventors of the Popish Plot ; the trial of 
 Baxter by the infamous Jeffreys ; the ill-starred 
 attempt of the Duke of Monmouth ; the battle of 
 Sedgemoor, and the dreadful atrocities of the 
 king's soldiers, and the horrible perversion of jus- 
 tice by the king's chief judge in the " Bloody 
 Assizes ; " the barbarous hunting of the Scotch 
 Dissenters by Claverhouse ; the melancholy fate of 
 the brave and noble Duke of Argyle, are de- 
 scribed with graphic power unknown to Smollett or 
 Hume. Personal portraits are sketched with a 
 bold freedom which at times startles us. The " old 
 familiar faces," as we have seen them through the 
 dust of a century and a half, start before us with 
 lifelike distinctness of outline and coloring. Some 
 of them disappoint us ; like the ghost of Hamlet's 
 father, they come in a " questionable shape." Thus, 
 for instance, in his sketch of William Penn, the 
 historian takes issue with the world on his charac- 
 ter, and labors through many pages of disingenu- 
 ous innuendoes and distortion of facts to transform 
 the saint of history into a pliant courtier. 
 
 The second volume details the follies and mis- 
 fortunes, the decline and fall, of the last of the 
 Stuarts. All the art of the author's splendid rhet- 
 oric is employed in awakening, by turns, the indig- 
 nation and contempt of the reader in contemplat- 
 ing the character of the wrong-headed king. In 
 portraying that character, he has brought into ex- 
 ercise all those powers of invective and merciless 
 ridicule which give such a savage relish to his de- 
 lineation of Barrere. To preserve the consistency
 
 356 HISTORICAL PAPERS 
 
 of this character, he denies the king any credit for 
 whatever was really beneficent and praiseworthy in 
 his government. He holds up the royal delinquent 
 in only two lights : the one representing him as a 
 tyrant towards his people ; the other as the abject 
 slave of foreign priests, a man at once hateful 
 and ludicrous, of whom it is difficult to speak with- 
 out an execration or a sneer. 
 
 The events which preceded the revolution of 
 1688 ; the undisguised adherence of the king to 
 the Church of Rome ; the partial toleration of the 
 despised Quakers and Anabaptists; the gradual 
 relaxation of the severity of the penal laws against 
 Papists and Dissenters, preparing the way for the 
 royal proclamation of entire liberty of conscience 
 throughout the British realm, allowing the crop- 
 eared Puritan and the Papist priest to build con- 
 venticles and mass houses under the very eaves of 
 the palaces of Oxford and Canterbury ; the mining 
 and countermining of Jesuits and prelates, are 
 detailed with impartial minuteness. The secret 
 springs of the great movements of the time are 
 laid bare ; the mean and paltry instrumentalities 
 are seen at work in the under world of corruption, 
 prejudice, and falsehood. No one, save a blind, 
 unreasoning partisan of Catholicism or Episcopacy, 
 can contemplate this chapter in English history 
 without a feeling of disgust. However it may have 
 been overruled for good by that Providence which 
 takes the wise in their own craftiness, the revolu- 
 tion of 1688, in itself considered, affords just as 
 little cause for self-congratulation on the part of 
 Protestants as the substitution of the supremacy of
 
 ENGLAND UNDER JAMES II. 357 
 
 the crowned Bluebeard, Henry VIII., for that of 
 the Pope, in the English Church. It had little in 
 common with the revolution of 1642. The field 
 of its action was the closet of selfish intrigue, 
 the stalls of discontented prelates, the chambers 
 of the wanton and adulteress, the confessional 
 of a weak prince, whose mind, originally narrow, 
 had been cramped closer still by the strait-jacket 
 of religious bigotry and superstition. The age of 
 nobility and heroism had wellnigh passed away. 
 The pious fervor, the self-denial, and the strict 
 morality of the Puritanism of the days of Crom- 
 well, and the blunt honesty and chivalrous loyalty 
 of the Cavaliers, had both measurably given place 
 to the corrupting influences of the licentious and 
 infidel court of Charles II. ; and to the arrogance, 
 intolerance, and shameless self-seeking of a prelacy 
 which, in its day of triumph and revenge, had more 
 than justified the terrible denunciations and scath- 
 ing gibes of Milton. 
 
 Both Catholic and Protestant writers have mis- 
 represented James II. He deserves neither the 
 execrations of the one nor the eulogies of the 
 other. The candid historian must admit that he 
 was, after all, a better man than his brother 
 Charles II. He was a sincere and bigoted Cath- 
 olic, and was undoubtedly honest in the declara- 
 tion, which he made in that unlucky letter which 
 Burnet ferreted out on the Continent, that he 
 was prepared to make large steps to build up the 
 Catholic Church in England, and, if necessary, to 
 become a martyr in her cause. He was proud, 
 austere, and self-willed. In the treatment of his
 
 358 HISTORICAL PAPERS 
 
 enemies he partook of the cruel temper of his time. 
 He was at once ascetic and sensual, alternating be- 
 tween the hair-shirt of penance and the embraces 
 of Catharine Sedley. His situation was one of the 
 most difficult and embarrassing which can be con- 
 ceived of. He was at once a bigoted Papist and a 
 Protestant pope. He hated the French domina- 
 tion to which his brother had submitted ; yet his 
 pride as sovereign was subordinated to his alle- 
 giance to Rome and a superstitious veneration for 
 the wily priests with which Louis XIV. sur- 
 rounded him. As the head of Anglican heretics, 
 he was compelled to submit to conditions galling 
 alike to the sovereign and the man. He found, on 
 his accession, the terrible penal laws against the 
 Papists in full force ; the hangman's knife was yet 
 warm with its ghastly butcher-work of quartering 
 and disembowelling suspected Jesuits and victims 
 of the lie of Titus Gates ; the Tower of London 
 had scarcely ceased to echo the groans of Catholic 
 confessors stretched on the rack by Protestant in- 
 quisitors. He was torn by conflicting interests 
 and spiritual and political contradictions. The 
 prelates of the Established Church must share the 
 responsibility of many of the worst acts of the early 
 part of his reign. Oxford sent up its lawned dep- 
 utations to mingle the voice of adulation with the 
 groans of tortured Covenanters, and fawning eccle- 
 siastics burned the incense of irreverent flattery 
 under the nostrils of the Lord's anointed, while the 
 blessed air of England was tainted by the carcasses 
 of the ill-fated followers of Monmouth, rotting on 
 a thousand gibbets. While Jeffreys was threaten-
 
 ENGLAND UNDER JAMES II. 359 
 
 ing Baxter and his Presbyterian friends with the 
 pillory and whipping-post ; while Quakers and 
 Baptists were only spared from extermination as 
 game preserves for the sport of clerical hunters ; 
 while the prisons were thronged with the heads of 
 some fifteen thousand beggared families, and Dis- 
 senters of every name and degree were chased from 
 one hiding-place to another, like David among the 
 cliffs of Ziph and the rocks of the wild goats, 
 the thanksgivings and congratulations of prelacy 
 arose in an unbroken strain of laudation from all 
 the episcopal palaces of -England. What mat- 
 tered it to men, in whose hearts, to use the lan- 
 guage of John Milton, " the sour leaven of human 
 traditions, mixed with the poisonous dregs of hypoc- 
 risy, lay basking in the sunny warmth of wealth 
 and promotion, hatching Antichrist," that the priv- 
 ileges of Englishmen and the rights secured by 
 the great charter were violated and trodden under 
 foot, so long as usurpation enured to their own 
 benefit ? But when King James issued his Decla- 
 ration of Indulgence, and stretched his prerogative 
 on the side of tolerance and charity, the zeal of the 
 prelates for preserving the integrity of the British 
 constitution and the limiting of the royal power 
 flamed up into rebellion. They forswore them- 
 selves without scruple : the disciples of Laud, the 
 asserters of kingly infallibility and divine right, 
 talked of usurped power and English rights in 
 the strain of the very schismatics whom they had 
 persecuted to the death. There is no reason to 
 believe that James supposed that, in issuing his 
 declaration suspending the penal laws, he had
 
 360 HISTORICAL PAPERS 
 
 transcended the rightful prerogative of his throne. 
 The power which he exercised had been used by his 
 predecessors for far less worthy purposes, and with 
 the approbation of many of the very men who now 
 opposed him. His ostensible object, expressed in 
 language which even those who condemn his policy 
 cannot but admire, was a laudable and noble one. 
 " We trust," said he, " that it will not be vain 
 that we have resolved to use our utmost endeavors 
 to establish liberty of conscience on such just and 
 equal foundations as will render it unalterable, and 
 secure to all people the free exercise of their re- 
 ligion, by which future ages may reap the benefit 
 of what is so undoubtedly the general good of the 
 whole kingdom." Whatever may have been the 
 motive of this declaration, even admitting the 
 suspicions of his enemies to have been true, that he 
 advocated universal toleration as the only means 
 of restoring Koman Catholics to all the rights and 
 privileges of which the penal laws deprived them, 
 it would seem that there could have been no 
 very serious objection on the part of real friends of 
 religious toleration to the taking of him at his word 
 and placing Englishmen of every sect on an equal- 
 ity before the law. The Catholics were in a very 
 small minority, scarcely at that time as numerous 
 as the Quakers and Anabaptists. The army, the 
 navy, and nine tenths of the people of England 
 were Protestants. Real danger, therefore, from a 
 simple act of justice towards their Catholic fellow- 
 citizens, the people of England had no ground for 
 apprehending. But the great truth, which is even 
 now but imperfectly recognized throughout Chris-
 
 ENGLAND UNDER JAMES II. 361 
 
 tendom, that religious opinions rest between man 
 and his Maker, and not between man and the mag- 
 istrate, and that the domain of conscience is sacred, 
 was almost unknown to the statesmen and school- 
 men of the seventeenth century. Milton ultra 
 liberal as he was excepted the Catholics from 
 his plan of toleration. Locke, yielding to the pre- 
 judices of the time, took the same ground. The 
 enlightened latitudinarian ministers of the Estab- 
 lished Church men whose talents and Christian 
 charity redeem in some measure the character of 
 that Church in the day of its greatest power and 
 basest apostasy stopped short of universal toler- 
 ation. The Presbyterians excluded Quakers, Bap- 
 tists, and Papists from the pale of their charity. 
 With the single exception of the sect of which 
 William Penn was a conspicuous member, the idea 
 of complete and impartial toleration was novel and 
 unwelcome to all sects and classes of the English 
 people. Hence it was that the very men whose 
 liberties and estates had been secured by the dec- 
 laration, and who were thereby permitted to hold 
 their meetings in peace and quietness, used their 
 newly acquired freedom in denouncing the king, 
 because the same key which had opened their 
 prison doors had also liberated the Papists and 
 the Quakers. Baxter's severe and painful spirit 
 could not rejoice in an act which had, indeed, re- 
 stored him to personal freedom, but which had, in 
 his view, also offended Heaven, and strengthened 
 the powers of Antichrist by extending the same 
 favor to Jesuits and Ranters. Bunyan disliked 
 the Quakers next to the Papists ; and it greatly
 
 362 HISTORICAL PAPERS 
 
 lessened his satisfaction at his release from BecU 
 ford jail that it had been brought about by the 
 influence of the former at the court of a Catholic 
 prince. Dissenters forgot the wrongs and perse- 
 cutions which they had experienced at the hands 
 of the prelacy, and joined the bishops in opposition 
 to the declaration. They almost magnified into 
 Christian confessors the prelates who remonstrated 
 against the indulgence, and actually plotted against 
 the king for restoring them to liberty of person 
 and conscience. The nightmare fear of Popery 
 overcame their love of religious liberty ; and they 
 meekly offered their necks to the yoke of prelacy as 
 the only security against the heavier one of Papist 
 supremacy. In a far different manner the clear- 
 eyed and plain-spoken John Milton met the claims 
 and demands of the hierarchy in his time. " They 
 entreat us," said he, " that we be not weary of the 
 insupportable grievances that our shoulders have 
 hitherto cracked under ; they beseech us that we 
 think them fit to be our justices of peace, our 
 lords, our highest officers of state. They pray us 
 that it would please us to let them still haul us 
 and wrong us with their bandogs and pursuivants ; 
 and that it would please the Parliament that they 
 may yet have the whipping, fleecing, and flaying 
 of us in their diabolical courts, to tear the flesh 
 from our bones, and into our wide wounds, instead 
 of balm, to pour in the oil of tartar, vitriol, and 
 mercury. Surely a right, reasonable, innocent, 
 and soft-hearted petition ! O the relenting bowels 
 of the fathers ! " 
 
 Considering the prominent part acted by William
 
 ENGLAND UNDER JAMES 11. 363 
 
 Penn in the reign of James II., and his active and 
 influential support of the obnoxious declaration 
 which precipitated the revolution of 1688, it could 
 hardly have been otherwise than that his charac- 
 ter should suffer from the unworthy suspicions 
 and prejudices of his contemporaries. His views 
 of religious toleration were too far in advance of 
 the age to be received with favor. They were of 
 necessity misunderstood and misrepresented. All 
 his life he had been urging them with the earnest- 
 ness of one whose convictions were the result, not 
 so much of human reason as of what he regarded 
 as divine illumination. What the council of James 
 yielded upon grounds of state policy he defended 
 on those of religious obligation. He had suffered 
 in person and estate for the exercise of his reli- 
 gion. He had travelled over Holland and Ger- 
 many, pleading with those in authority for univer- 
 sal toleration and charity. On a sudden, on the 
 accession of James, the friend of himself and his 
 family, he found himself the most influential unti- 
 tled citizen in the British realm. He had free ac- 
 cess to the royal ear. Asking nothing for himself 
 or his relatives, he demanded only that the good 
 people of England should be no longer despoiled 
 of liberty and estate for their religious opinions. 
 James, as a Catholic, had in some sort a common 
 interest with his dissenting subjects, and the decla- 
 ration was for their common relief. Penn, con- 
 scious of the rectitude of his own motives and 
 thoroughly convinced of the Christian duty of tol- 
 eration, welcomed that declaration as the precursor 
 of the golden age of liberty and love and good-will
 
 364 HISTORICAL PAPERS 
 
 to men. He was not the man to distrust the mo- 
 tives of an act so fully in accordance with his life- 
 long aspirations and prayers. He was charitable 
 to a fault: his faith in his fellow-men was often 
 stronger than a clearer insight of their characters 
 would have justified. He saw the errors of the 
 king, and deplored them; he denounced Jeffreys 
 as a butcher who had been let loose by the priests ; 
 and pitied the king, who was, he thought, swayed 
 by evil counsels. He remonstrated against the in- 
 terference of the king with Magdalen College ; and 
 reproved and rebuked the hopes and aims of the 
 more zealous and hot-headed Catholics, advising 
 them to be content with simple toleration. But 
 the constitution of his mind fitted him rather for 
 the commendation of the good than the denuncia- 
 tion of the bad. He had little in common with 
 the bold and austere spirit of the Puritan reform- 
 ers. He disliked their violence and harshness; 
 while, on the other hand, he was attracted and 
 pleased by the gentle disposition and mild coun- 
 sels of Locke, and Tillotson, and the latitudinari- 
 ans of the English Church. He was the intimate 
 personal and political friend of Algernon Sydney ; 
 sympathized with his republican theories, and 
 shared his abhorrence of tyranny, civil and eccle- 
 siastical. He found in him a man after his own 
 heart, genial, generous, and loving ; faithful to 
 duty and the instincts of humanity ; a true Chris- 
 tian gentleman. His sense of gratitude was strong, 
 and his personal friendships sometimes clouded his 
 judgment. In giving his support to the measures 
 of James in behalf of liberty of conscience, it must
 
 ENGLAND UNDER JAMES II. 365 
 
 be admitted that he acted in consistency with his 
 principles and professions. To have taken ground 
 against them, he must have given the lie to his 
 declarations from his youth upward. He could 
 not disown and deny his own favorite doctrine be- 
 cause it came from the lips of a Catholic king and 
 his Jesuit advisers ; and in thus rising above the 
 prejudices of his time, and appealing to the reason 
 and humanity of the people of England in favor of 
 a cordial indorsement on the part of Parliament of 
 the principles of the declaration, he believed that 
 he was subserving the best interests of his beloved 
 country and fulfilling the solemn obligations of 
 religious duty. The downfall of James exposed 
 Penn to peril and obloquy. Perjured informers 
 endeavored to swear away his life ; and, although 
 nothing could be proved against him beyond the 
 fact that he had steadily supported the great meas- 
 ure of toleration, he was compelled to live secluded 
 in his private lodgings in London for two or three 
 years, with a proclamation for his arrest hanging 
 over his head. At length, the principal informer 
 against him having been found guilty of perjury, 
 the government warrant was withdrawn ; and Lords 
 Sidney, Rochester, and Somers, and the Duke of 
 Buckingham, publicly bore testimony that nothing 
 had been urged against him save by impostors, 
 and that " they had known him, some of them, for 
 thirty years, and had never known him to do an ill 
 thing, but many good offices." It is a matter of 
 regret that one professing to hold the impartial 
 pen of history should have given the sanction of 
 his authority to the slanderous and false imputa-
 
 366 HISTORICAL PAPERS 
 
 tions of such a man as Burnet, who has never been 
 regarded as an authentic chronicler. 1 The pan- 
 
 1 Gilbert Burnet, in liberality as a politician and tolerance as a 
 Churchman, was far in advance of his order and time. It is true 
 that he shut out the Catholics from the pale of his charity and 
 barely tolerated the Dissenters. The idea of entire religious lib- 
 erty and equality shocked even his moderate degree of sensitive- 
 ness. He met Penn at the court of the Prince of Orange, and, 
 after a long and fruitless effort to convince the Dissenter that the 
 penal laws against the Catholics should be enforced, and alle- 
 giance to the Established Church continue the condition of quali- 
 fication for offices of trust and honor, and that he and his friends 
 should rest contented with simple toleration, he became irritated 
 by the inflexible adherence of Penn to the principle of entire re- 
 ligious freedom. One of the most worthy sons of the Episcopal 
 Church, Thomas Clarkson, alluding to this discussion, says: 
 " Burnet never mentioned him (Penn) afterwards but coldly or 
 sneeringly, or in a way to lower him in the estimation of the 
 reader, whenever he had occasion to speak of him in his History 
 of his Own Times." 
 
 He was a man of strong prejudices ; he lived in the midst of 
 revolutions, plots, and intrigues ; he saw much of the worst side 
 of human nature ; and he candidly admits, in the preface to his 
 great work, that he was inclined to think generally the worst of 
 men and parties, and that the reader should make allowance for 
 this inclination, although he had honestly tried to give the truth. 
 Dr. King, of Oxford, in his Anecdotes of his Own Times, p. 185, 
 says : " I knew Burnet : he was a furious party-man, and easily 
 imposed upon by any lying spirit of his faction ; but he was a 
 better pastor than any man who is now seated on the bishops' 
 bench." The Tory writers Swift, Pope, Arbuthnot, and oth- 
 ers have undoubtedly exaggerated the defects of Burnet's nar- 
 rative ; while, on the other hand, his Whig commentators have 
 excused them on the ground of his avowed and fierce partisanship. 
 Dr. Johnson, in his blunt way, says : "I do not believe Burnet 
 intentionally lied ; but he was so much prejudiced that he took 
 no pains to find out the truth." On the contrary, Sir James 
 Mackintosh, in the Edinburgh Review, speaks of the Bishop as an 
 honest writer, seldom substantially erroneous, though often in- 
 accurate in points of detail ; and Macaulay, who has quite too 
 closely followed him in his history, defends him as at least quite 
 as accurate as his contemporary writers, and says that, "in his
 
 ENGLAND UNDER JAMES II. 367 
 
 theon of history should not be lightly disturbed. 
 A good man's character is the world's common 
 legacy ; and humanity is not so rich in models of 
 purity and goodness as to be able to sacrifice such 
 a reputation as that of William Penn to the point 
 of an antithesis or the effect of a paradox. 
 
 moral character, as in his intellectual, great blemishes were more 
 than compensated by great excellences."
 
 THE BORDER WAR OF 1708. 
 
 THE picturesque site of the now large village of 
 Haverhill, on the Merrimac River, was occupied a 
 century and a half ago by some thirty dwellings, 
 scattered at unequal distances along the two princi- 
 pal roads, one of which, running parallel with the 
 river, intersected the other, which ascended the 
 hill northwardly and lost itself in the dark woods. 
 The log huts of the first settlers had at that time 
 given place to comparatively spacious and commo- 
 dious habitations, framed and covered with sawed 
 boards, and cloven clapboards, or shingles. They 
 were, many of them, two stories in front, with the 
 roof sloping off behind to a single one ; the win- 
 dows few and small, and frequently so fitted as to 
 be opened with difficulty, and affording but a 
 scanty supply of light and air. Two or three of 
 the best constructed were occupied as garrisons, 
 where, in addition to the family, small companies 
 of soldiers were quartered. On the high grounds 
 rising from the river stood the mansions of the 
 well-defined aristocracy of the little settlement, 
 larger and more imposing, with projecting upper 
 stories and carved cornices. On the front of one 
 of these, over the elaborately wrought entablature 
 of the doorway, might be seen the armorial bear- 
 ings of the honored family of Saltonstall. Its 
 hospitable door was now closed ; no guests filled
 
 THE BORDER WAR OF 1708 369 
 
 its spacious hall or partook of the rich delicacies of 
 its ample larder. Death had been there ; its ven- 
 erable and respected occupant had just been borne 
 by his peers in rank and station to the neighbor- 
 ing graveyard. Learned, affable, intrepid, a sturdy 
 asserter of the rights and liberties of the Province, 
 and so far in advance of his time as to refuse to 
 yield to the terrible witchcraft delusion, vacating 
 his seat on the bench and openly expressing his 
 disapprobation of the violent and sanguinary pro- 
 ceedings of the court, wise in council and prompt 
 in action, not his own townsmen alone, but the 
 people of the entire Province, had reason to mourn 
 the loss of Nathaniel Saltonstall. 
 
 Four years before the events of which we are 
 about to speak, the Indian allies of the French in 
 Canada suddenly made their appearance in the 
 westerly part of the settlement. At the close of a 
 midwinter day six savages rushed into the open 
 gate of a garrison-house owned by one Bradley, 
 who appears to have been absent at the time. A 
 sentinel, stationed in the house, discharged his 
 musket, killing the foremost Indian, and was him- 
 self instantly shot down. The mistress of the 
 house, a spirited young woman, was making soap 
 in a large kettle over the fire. She seized her 
 ladle and dashed the boiling liquid in the faces of 
 the assailants, scalding one of them severely, and 
 was only captured after such a resistance as can 
 scarcely be conceived of by the delicately framed 
 and tenderly nurtured occupants of the places of 
 our great-grandmothers. After plundering the 
 house, the Indians started on their long winter
 
 370 HISTORICAL PAPERS 
 
 march for Canada. Tradition says that some thir- 
 teen persons, probably women and children, were 
 killed outright at the garrison. Goodwife Brad- 
 ley and four others were spared as prisoners. The 
 ground was covered with deep snow, and the cap- 
 tives were compelled to carry heavy burdens of 
 their plundered household-stuffs ; while for many 
 days in succession they had no other sustenance 
 than bits of hide, ground-nuts, the bark of trees, 
 and the roots of wild onions and lilies. In this 
 situation, in the cold, wintry forest, and unat- 
 tended, the unhappy young woman gave birth to a 
 child. Its cries irritated the savages, who cruelly 
 treated it and threatened its life. To the entreaties 
 of the mother they replied, that they would spare 
 it on the condition that it should be baptized after 
 their fashion. She gave the little innocent into 
 their hands, when with mock solemnity they made 
 the sign of the cross upon its forehead by gashing 
 it "with their knives, and afterwards barbarously put 
 it to death before the eyes of its mother, seeming 
 to regard the whole matter as an excellent piece of 
 sport. Nothing so strongly excited the risibilities 
 of these grim barbarians as the tears and cries of 
 their victims, extorted by physical or mental agony. 
 Capricious alike in their cruelties and their kind- 
 nesses, they treated some of their captives with 
 forbearance and consideration and tormented others 
 apparently without cause. One man, on his way 
 to Canada, was killed because they did not like his 
 looks, "he was so sour;" another, because he 
 was " old and good for nothing." One of their 
 own number, who was suffering greatly from the
 
 THE BORDER WAR OF 1708 371 
 
 effects of the scalding soap, was derided and 
 mocked as a " fool who had let a squaw whip him ; " 
 while on the other hand the energy and spirit 
 manifested by Goodwife Bradley in her defence 
 was a constant theme of admiration, and gained 
 her so much respect among her captors as to pro- 
 tect her from personal injury or insult. On her 
 arrival in Canada she was sold to a French farmer, 
 by whom she was kindly treated. 
 
 In the mean time her husband made every exer- 
 tion in his power to ascertain her fate, and early 
 in the next year learned that she was a slave in 
 Canada. He immediately set off through the wil- 
 derness on foot, accompanied only by his dog, who 
 drew a small sled, upon which he carried some 
 provisions for his sustenance, and a bag of snuff, 
 which the Governor of the Province gave him as 
 a present to the Governor of Canada. After 
 encountering almost incredible hardships and dan- 
 gers with a perseverance which shows how well he 
 appreciated the good qualities of his stolen help- 
 mate, he reached Montreal and betook himself to 
 the Governor's residence. Travel- worn, ragged, 
 and wasted with cold and hunger, he was ushered 
 into the presence of M. Vaudreuil. The courtly 
 Frenchman civilly received the gift of the bag of 
 snuff, listened to the poor fellow's story, and put 
 him in a way to redeem his wife without difficulty. 
 The joy of the latter on seeing her husband in the 
 strange land of her captivity may well be imag- 
 ined. They returned by water, landing at Boston 
 early in the summer. 
 
 There is a tradition that this was not the good-
 
 372 HISTORICAL PAPERS 
 
 wife's first experience of Indian captivity. The 
 late Dr. Abiel Abbott, in his manuscript of Judith 
 Whiting's Recollections of the Indian Wars, states 
 that she had previously been a prisoner, probably 
 before her marriage. After her return she lived 
 quietly at the garrison-house until the summer of 
 the next year. One bright moonlit-night a party 
 of Indians were seen silently and cautiously ap- 
 proaching. The only occupants of the garrison at 
 that time were Bradley, his wife and children, and 
 a servant. The three adults armed themselves 
 with muskets, and prepared to defend themselves. 
 Goodwife Bradley, supposing the Indians had 
 come with the intention of again capturing her, 
 encouraged her husband to fight to the last, declar- 
 ing that she had rather die on her own hearth than 
 fall into their hands. The Indians rushed upon 
 the garrison, and assailed the thick oaken door, 
 which they forced partly open, when a well-aimed 
 shot from Goodwife Bradley laid the foremost dead 
 on the threshold. The loss of their leader so dis- 
 heartened them that they made a hasty retreat. 
 
 The year 1707 passed away without any attack 
 upon the exposed frontier settlement. A feeling 
 of comparative security succeeded to the almost 
 sleepless anxiety and terror of the inhabitants ; 
 and they were beginning to congratulate each other 
 upon the termination of their long and bitter trials. 
 But the end was not yet. 
 
 Early in the spring of 1708, the principal tribes 
 of Indians in alliance with the French held a great 
 council, and agreed to furnish three hundred war- 
 riors for an expedition to the English frontier.
 
 THE BORDER WAR OF 1708 373 
 
 They were joined by one hundred French Cana- 
 dians and several volunteers, consisting of officers 
 of the French array, and younger sons of the nobil- 
 ity, adventurous and unscrupulous. The Sieur de 
 Chaillons, and Hertel de Rouville, distinguished as 
 a partisan in former expeditions, cruel and unspar- 
 ing as his Indian allies, commanded the French 
 troops ; the Indians, marshalled under their several 
 chiefs, obeyed the general orders of La Perriere. 
 A Catholic priest accompanied them. De Rou- 
 ville, with the French troops and a portion of the 
 Indians, took the route by the River St. Franois 
 about the middle of summer. La Perriere, with 
 the French Mohawks, crossed Lake Champlain. 
 The place of rendezvous was Lake Nickisipigue. 
 On the way a Huron accidentally killed one of his 
 companions ; whereupon the tribe insisted on halt- 
 ing and holding a council. It was gravely decided 
 that this accident was an evil omen, and that the 
 expedition would prove disastrous ; and, in spite 
 of the endeavors of the French officers, the whole 
 band deserted. Next the Mohawks became dissat- 
 isfied, and refused to proceed. To the entreaties 
 and promises of their French allies they replied 
 that an infectious disease had broken out among 
 them, and that, if they remained, it would spread 
 through the whole army. The French partisans 
 were not deceived by a falsehood so transparent ; 
 but they were in no condition to enforce obedi- 
 ence ; and, with bitter execrations and reproaches, 
 they saw the Mohawks turn back on their war- 
 path. The diminished army pressed on to Nicki- 
 sipigue, in the expectation of meeting, agreeably
 
 374 HISTORICAL PAPERS 
 
 to their promise, the Norridgewock and Penobscot 
 Indians. They found the place deserted, and, after 
 waiting for some days, were forced to the conclu- 
 sion that the Eastern tribes had broken their 
 pledge of cooperation. Under these circumstances 
 a council was held ; and the original design of the 
 expedition, namely, the destruction of the whole 
 line of frontier towns, beginning with Portsmouth, 
 was abandoned. They had still a sufficient force 
 for the surprise of a single settlement ; and Haver- 
 hill, on the Merrimac, was selected for conquest. 
 
 In the mean time, intelligence of the expedition, 
 greatly exaggerated in point of numbers and ob- 
 ject, had reached Boston, and Governor Dudley 
 had despatched troops to the more exposed out- 
 posts of the Provinces of Massachusetts and New 
 Hampshire. Forty men, under the command of 
 Major Turner and Captains Price and Gardner, 
 were stationed at Haverhill in the different gar- 
 rison-houses. At first a good degree of vigilance 
 was manifested; but, as days and weeks passed 
 without any alarm, the inhabitants relapsed into 
 their old habits ; and some even began to believe 
 that the rumored descent of the Indians was only 
 a pretext for quartering upon them twoscore of 
 lazy, rollicking soldiers, who certainly seemed more 
 expert in making love to their daughters, and 
 drinking their best ale and cider, than in patrol- 
 ling the woods or putting the garrisons into a de- 
 fensible state. The grain and hay harvest ended 
 without disturbance; the men worked in their 
 fields, and the women pursued their household 
 avocations, without any very serious apprehension 
 of danger.
 
 THE BORDER WAR OF 1708 375 
 
 Among the inhabitants of the village was an 
 eccentric, ne'er-do-well fellow, named Keezar, who 
 led a wandering, unsettled life, oscillating, like a 
 crazy pendulum, between Haverhill and Ames- 
 bury. He had a smattering of a variety of trades, 
 was a famous wrestler, and for a mug of ale would 
 leap over an ox-cart with the unspilled beverage in 
 his hand. On one occasion, when at supper, his 
 wife complained that she had no tin dishes ; and, 
 as there were none to be obtained nearer than 
 Boston, he started on foot in the evening, travelled 
 through the woods to the city, and returned with 
 his ware by sunrise the next morning, passing over 
 a distance of between sixty and seventy miles. 
 The tradition of his strange habits, feats of 
 strength, and wicked practical jokes is still com- 
 mon in his native town. On the morning of the 
 29th of the eighth month he was engaged in taking 
 home his horse, which, according to his custom, he 
 had turned into his neighbor's rich clover field the 
 evening previous. By the gray light of dawn he 
 saw a long file of men marching silently towards 
 the town. He hurried back to the village and 
 gave the alarm by firing a gun. Previous to this, 
 however, a young man belonging to a neighboring 
 town, who had been spending the night with a 
 young woman of the village, had met the advance 
 of the war-party, and, turning back in extreme ter- 
 ror and confusion, thought only of the safety of his 
 betrothed, and passed silently through a consider- 
 able part of the village to her dwelling. After he 
 had effectually concealed her he ran out to give 
 the alarm. But it was too late. Keezar's gun
 
 376 HISTORICAL PAPERS 
 
 was answered by the terrific yells, whistling, and 
 whooping of the Indians. House after house was 
 assailed and captured. Men, women, and children 
 were massacred. The minister of the town was 
 killed by a shot through his door. Two of his 
 children were saved by the courage and sagacity 
 of his negro slave Hagar. She carried them into 
 the cellar and covered them with tubs, and then 
 crouched behind a barrel of meat just in time to 
 escape the vigilant eyes of the enemy, who entered 
 the cellar and plundered it. She saw them pass 
 and repass the tubs under which the children lay 
 and take meat from the very barrel which con- 
 cealed herself. Three soldiers were quartered in 
 the house ; but they made no defence, and were 
 killed while begging for quarter. 
 
 The wife of Thomas Hartshorne, after her hus- 
 band and three sons had fallen, took her younger 
 children into the cellar, leaving an infant on a bed 
 in the garret, fearful that its cries would betray 
 her place of concealment if she took it with her. 
 The Indians entered the garret and tossed the 
 child out of the window upon a pile of clapboards, 
 where it was afterwards found stunned and insen- 
 sible. It recovered, nevertheless, and became a 
 man of remarkable strength and stature ; and it 
 used to be a standing joke with his friends that he 
 had been stinted by the Indians when they threw 
 him out of the window. Goodwife Swan, armed 
 with a long spit, successfully defended her door 
 against two Indians. While the massacre went 
 on, the priest who accompanied the expedition, 
 with some of the French officers, went into the
 
 THE BORDER WAR OF 1708 377 
 
 meeting-house, the walls of which were afterwards 
 found written over with chalk. At sunrise, Major 
 Turner, with a portion of his soldiers, entered the 
 village ; and the enemy made a rapid retreat, carry- 
 ing with them seventeen prisoners. They were 
 pursued and overtaken just as they were entering 
 the woods ; and a severe skirmish took place, in 
 which the rescue of some of the prisoners was 
 effected. Thirty of the enemy were left dead on 
 the field, including the infamous Hertel de Rou- 
 ville. On the part of the villagers, Captains Ayer 
 and Wainwright and Lieutenant Johnson, with 
 thirteen others, were killed. The intense heat of 
 the weather made it necessary to bury the dead 
 on the same day. They were laid side by side in a 
 long trench in the burial-ground. The body of the 
 venerated and lamented minister, with those of his 
 wife and child, sleep in another part of the burial- 
 ground, where may still be seen a rude monument 
 with its almost illegible inscription : 
 
 " Clauditur hoc tumulo corpus Reverendi pii 
 doctique viri D. Benjamin Rolfe, ecclesice Christi 
 quce est in Haverhill pastoris fidelissimi ; qui 
 domi suco ab hostibus barbare trucidatus. A 
 laboribus suis requievit mane diei sacrce quietis, 
 Aug. XXIX, anno Dom. MD CC VIII. ^tatis 
 suce XL VI." 
 
 Of the prisoners taken, some escaped during the 
 skirmish, and two or three were sent back by the 
 French officers, with a message to the English 
 soldiers, that, if they pursued the party on their 
 retreat to Canada, the other prisoners should be 
 put to death. One of them, a soldier stationed in
 
 378 HISTORICAL PAPERS 
 
 Captain Wainwright's garrison, on his return four 
 years after, published an account of his captivity. 
 He was compelled to carry a heavy pack, and was 
 led by an Indian by a cord round his neck. The 
 whole party suffered terribly from hunger. On 
 reaching Canada the Indians shaved one side of 
 his head, and greased the other, and painted his 
 face. At a fort nine miles from Montreal a coun- 
 cil was held in order to decide his fate ; and he had 
 the unenviable privilege of listening to a protracted 
 discussion upon the expediency of burning him. 
 The fire was already kindled, and the poor fellow 
 was preparing to meet his doom with firmness, 
 when it was announced to him that his life was 
 spared. This result of the council by no means 
 satisfied the women and boys, who had anticipated 
 rare sport in the roasting of a white man and a 
 heretic. One squaw assailed him with a knife and 
 cut off one of his fingers ; another beat him with 
 a pole. The Indians spent the night in dancing 
 and singing, compelling their prisoner to go round 
 the ring with them. In the morning one of their 
 orators made a long speech to him, and formally 
 delivered him over to an old squaw, who took him 
 to her wigwam and treated him kindly. Two or 
 three of the young women who were carried away 
 captive married Frenchmen in Canada and never 
 returned. Instances of this kind were by no 
 means rare during the Indian wars. The simple 
 manners, gayety, and social habits of the French 
 colonists among whom the captives were dispersed 
 seem to have been peculiarly fascinating to the 
 daughters of the grave and severe Puritans.
 
 THE BORDER WAR OF 1708 379 
 
 At the beginning of the present century, Judith 
 Whiting was the solitary survivor of all who wit- 
 nessed the inroad of the French and Indians in 
 1708. She was eight years of age at the time of 
 the attack, and her memory of it to the last was 
 distinct and vivid. Upon her old brain, from 
 whence a great portion of the records of the inter- 
 vening years had been obliterated, that terrible 
 picture, traced with fire and blood, retained its 
 sharp outlines and baleful colors.
 
 THE GREAT IPSWICH FRIGHT. 
 
 " The Frere into the dark gazed forth ; 
 The sounds went onward towards the north ; 
 The murmur of tongues, the tramp and tread 
 Of a mighty army to battle led." 
 
 BALLAD OF THE Cn>. 
 
 LIFE'S tragedy and comedy are never far apart. 
 The ludicrous and the sublime, the grotesque and 
 the pathetic, jostle each other on the stage ; the 
 jester, with his cap and bells, struts alongside of 
 the hero ; the lord mayor's pageant loses itself in 
 the mob around Punch and Judy ; the pomp and 
 circumstance of war become mirth-provoking in a 
 militia muster ; and the majesty of the law is 
 ridiculous in the mock dignity of a justice's court. 
 The laughing philosopher of old looked on one 
 side of life and his weeping contemporary on the 
 other ; but he who has an eye to both must often 
 experience that contrariety of feeling which Sterne 
 compares to " the contest in the moist eyelids of 
 an April morning, whether to laugh or cry." 
 
 The circumstance we are about to relate may 
 serve as an illustration of the way in which the 
 woof of comedy interweaves with the warp of 
 tragedy. It occurred in the early stages of the 
 American Revolution, and is part and parcel of 
 its history in the northeastern section of Massa- 
 chusetts.
 
 THE GREAT IPSWICH FRIGHT 381 
 
 About midway between Salem and the ancient 
 town of Newburyport, the traveller on the Eastern 
 Railroad sees on the right, between him and the 
 sea, a tall church-spire, rising above a semicircle 
 of brown roofs and venerable elms ; to which a 
 long scalloping range of hills, sweeping off to the 
 seaside, forms a green background. This is Ips- 
 wich, the ancient Agawam ; one of those steady, 
 conservative villages, of which a few are still left 
 in New England, wherein a contemporary of Cot- 
 ton Mather and Governor Endicott, were he per- 
 mitted to revisit the scenes of his painful probation, 
 would scarcely feel himself a stranger. Law and 
 Gospel, embodied in an orthodox steeple and a 
 court-house, occupy the steep, rocky eminence in its 
 midst ; below runs the small river under its pictu- 
 resque stone bridge ; and beyond is the famous fe- 
 male seminary, where Andover theological students 
 are wont to take unto themselves wives of the 
 daughters of the Puritans. An air of comfort and 
 quiet broods over the whole town. Yellow moss 
 clings to the seaward sides of the roofs ; one's eyes 
 are not endangered by the intense glare of painted 
 shingles and clapboards. The smoke of hospitable 
 kitchens curls up through the overshadowing elms 
 from huge-throated chimneys, whose hearth-stones 
 have been worn by the feet of many generations. 
 The tavern was once renowned throughout New 
 England, and it is still a creditable hostelry. Dur- 
 ing court time it is crowded with jocose lawyers, 
 anxious clients, sleepy jurors, and miscellaneous 
 hangers on ; disinterested gentlemen, who have no 
 particular business of their own in court, but who
 
 382 HISTORICAL PAPERS 
 
 regularly attend its sessions, weighing evidence, 
 deciding upon the merits of a lawyer's plea or a 
 judge's charge, getting up extempore trials upon 
 the piazza or in the bar-room of cases still in- 
 volved in the glorious uncertainty of the law in 
 the court-house, proffering gratuitous legal advice 
 to irascible plaintiffs and desponding defendants, 
 and in various other ways seeing that the Com- 
 monwealth receives no detriment. In the autumn 
 old sportsmen make the tavern their headquarters 
 while scouring the marshes for sea-birds ; and slim 
 young gentlemen from the city return thither with 
 empty game-bags, as guiltless in respect to the 
 snipes and wagtails as Winkle was in the matter of 
 the rooks, after his shooting excursion at Dingle 
 Dell. Twice, nay, three times, a year, since third 
 parties have been in fashion, the delegates of the 
 political churches assemble in Ipswich to pass 
 patriotic resolutions, and designate the candidates 
 whom the good people of Essex County, with im- 
 plicit faith in the wisdom of the selection, are ex- 
 pected to vote for. For the rest there are pleasant 
 walks and drives around the picturesque village. 
 The people are noted for their hospitality ; in sum- 
 mer the sea-wind blows cool over its healthy hills, 
 and, take it for all in all, there is not a better pre- 
 served or pleasanter specimen of a Puritan town 
 remaining in the ancient Commonwealth. 
 
 The 21st of April, 1775, witnessed an awful com- 
 motion in the little village of Ipswich. Old men, 
 and boys, (the middle-aged had marched to Lex- 
 ington some days before,) and all the women in 
 the place who were not bedridden or sick, came
 
 THE GREAT IPSWICH FRIGHT 383 
 
 rushing as with one accord to the green in front 
 of the meeting-house. A rumor, which no one at- 
 tempted to trace or authenticate, spread from lip 
 to lip that the British regulars had landed on the 
 coast and were marching upon the town. A scene 
 of indescribable terror and confusion followed. 
 Defence was out of the question, as the young and 
 able-bodied men of the entire region round about 
 had marched to Cambridge and Lexington. The 
 news of the battle at the latter place, exaggerated 
 in all its details, had been just received ; terrible 
 stories of the atrocities committed by the dreaded 
 " regulars " had been related ; and it was believed 
 that nothing short of a general extermination of 
 the patriots men, women, and children was 
 contemplated by the British commander. Almost 
 simultaneously the people of Beverly, a village a 
 few miles distant, were smitten with the same 
 terror. How the rumor was communicated no one 
 could tell. It was there believed that the enemy 
 had fallen upon Ipswich, and massacred the inhab- 
 itants without regard to age or sex. 
 
 It was about the middle of the afternoon of this 
 day that the people of Newbury, ten miles farther 
 north, assembled in an informal meeting at the 
 town-house to hear accounts from the Lexington 
 fight, and to consider what action was necessary 
 in consequence of that event. Parson Carey was 
 about opening the meeting with prayer when hur- 
 ried hoof-beats sounded up the street, and a mes- 
 senger, loose-haired and panting for breath, rushed 
 up the staircase. " Turn out, turn out, for God's 
 sake," he cried, " or you will be all killed ! The
 
 384 HISTORICAL PAPERS 
 
 regulars are marching on us ; they are at Ipswich 
 now, cutting and slashing all before them ! " Uni- 
 versal consternation was the immediate result of 
 this fearful announcement ; Parson Carey's prayer 
 died on his lips ; the congregation dispersed over 
 the town, carrying to every house the tidings that 
 the regulars had come. Men on horseback went 
 galloping up and down the streets, shouting the 
 alarm. Women and children echoed it from every 
 corner. The panic became irresistible, uncontrol- 
 lable. Cries were heard that the dreaded invaders 
 had reached Oldtown Bridge, a little distance from 
 the village, and that they were killing all whom they 
 encountered. Flight was resolved upon. All the 
 horses and vehicles in the town were put in requi- 
 sition ; men, women, and children hurried as for 
 life towards the north. Some threw their silver 
 and pewter ware and other valuables into wells. 
 Large numbers crossed the Merrimac, and spent 
 the night in the deserted houses of Salisbury, 
 whose inhabitants, stricken by the strange terror, 
 had fled into New Hampshire, to take up their 
 lodgings in dwellings also abandoned by their 
 owners. A few individuals refused to fly with the 
 multitude ; some, unable to move by reason of sick- 
 ness, were left behind by their relatives. One old 
 gentleman, whose excessive corpulence rendered 
 retreat on his part impossible, made a virtue of ne- 
 cessity ; and, seating himself in his doorway with 
 his loaded king's arm, upbraided his more nimble 
 neighbors, advising them to do as he did, and 
 " stop and shoot the devils." Many ludicrous in- 
 stances of the intensity of the terror might be re-
 
 THE GREAT IPSWICH FRIGHT 385 
 
 lated. One man got his family into a boat to go 
 to Earn Island for safety. He imagined lie was 
 pursued by the enemy through the dusk of the 
 evening, and was annoyed by the crying of an in- 
 fant in the after part of the boat. " Do throw that 
 squalling brat overboard," he called to his wife, 
 " or we shall be all discovered and killed ! " A 
 poor woman ran four or five miles up the river, 
 and stopped to take breath and nurse her child, 
 when she found to her great horror that she had 
 brought off the cat instead of the baby ! 
 
 All through that memorable night the terror 
 swept onward towards the north with a speed 
 which seems almost miraculous, producing every- 
 where the same results. At midnight a horseman, 
 clad only in shirt and breeches, dashed by our 
 grandfather's door, in Haverhill, twenty miles up 
 the river. " Turn out ! Get a musket ! Turn 
 out ! " he shouted ; " the regulars are landing on 
 Plum Island ! " " I 'm glad of it," responded the 
 old gentleman from his chamber window ; " I wish 
 they were all there, and obliged to stay there." 
 When it is understood that Plum Island is little 
 more than a naked sand-ridge, the benevolence 
 of this wish can be readily appreciated. 
 
 All the boats on the river were constantly em- 
 ployed for several hours in conveying across the 
 terrified fugitives. Through " the dead waste and 
 middle of the night " they fled over the border 
 into New Hampshire. Some feared to take the 
 frequented roads, and wandered over wooded hills 
 and through swamps where the snows of the late 
 winter had scarcely melted. They heard the tramp
 
 386 HISTORICAL PAPERS 
 
 and outcry of those behind them, and fancied that 
 the sounds were made by pursuing enemies. Fast 
 as they fled, the terror, by some unaccountable 
 means, outstripped them. They found houses de- 
 serted and streets strewn with household stuffs, 
 abandoned in the hurry of escape. Towards morn- 
 ing, however, the tide partially turned. Grown 
 men began to feel ashamed of their fears. The 
 old Anglo-Saxon hardihood paused and looked the 
 terror in its face. Single or in small parties, armed 
 with such weapons as they found at hand, among 
 which long poles, sharpened and charred at the 
 end, were conspicuous, they began to retrace 
 their steps. In the mean time such of the good 
 people of Ipswich as were unable or unwilling to 
 leave their homes became convinced that the ter- 
 rible rumor which had nearly depopulated their 
 settlement was unfounded. 
 
 Among those who had there awaited the on- 
 slaught of the regulars was a young man from 
 Exeter, New Hampshire. Becoming satisfied that 
 the whole matter was a delusion, he mounted his 
 horse and followed after the retreating multitude, 
 undeceiving all whom he overtook. Late at night 
 he reached Newburyport, greatly to the relief of its 
 sleepless inhabitants, and hurried across the river, 
 proclaiming as he rode the welcome tidings. The 
 sun rose upon haggard and jaded fugitives, worn 
 with excitement and fatigue, slowly returning home- 
 ward, their satisfaction at the absence of danger 
 somewhat moderated by an unpleasant conscious- 
 ness of the ludicrous scenes of their premature 
 night flitting.
 
 THE GREAT IPSWICH FRIGHT 387 
 
 Any inference which might be drawn from the 
 foregoing narrative derogatory to the character of 
 the people of New England at that day, on the 
 score of courage, would be essentially erroneous. 
 It is true, they were not the men to court danger 
 or rashly throw away their lives for the mere glory 
 of the sacrifice. They had always a prudent and 
 wholesome regard to their own comfort and safety ; 
 they justly looked upon sound heads and limbs as 
 better than broken ones ; life was to them too 
 serious and important, and their hard-gained prop- 
 erty too valuable, to be lightly hazarded. They 
 never attempted to cheat themselves by under-esti- 
 mating the difficulty to be encountered, or shutting 
 their eyes to its probable consequences. Cautious, 
 wary, schooled in the subtle strategy of Indian 
 warfare, where self-preservation is by no means a 
 secondary object, they had little in common with 
 the reckless enthusiasm of their French allies, or 
 the stolid indifference of the fighting machines of 
 the British regular army. When danger could no 
 longer be avoided, they met it with firmness and 
 iron endurance, but with a very vivid appreciation 
 of its magnitude. Indeed, it must be admitted by 
 all who are familiar with the history of our fathers 
 that the element of fear held an important place 
 among their characteristics. It exaggerated all the 
 dangers of their earthly pilgrimage, and peopled 
 the future with shapes of evil. Their fear of Satan 
 invested him with some of the attributes of Omnip- 
 otence, and almost reached the point of reverence. 
 The slightest shock of an earthquake filled all 
 hearts with terror. Stout men trembled by their
 
 388 HISTORICAL PAPERS 
 
 hearths with dread of some paralytic old woman 
 supposed to be a witch. And when they believed 
 themselves called upon to grapple with these ter- 
 rors and endure the afflictions of their allotment, 
 they brought to the trial a capability of suffering 
 undiminished by the chloroform of modern philos- 
 ophy. They were heroic in endurance. Panics 
 like the one we have described might bow and 
 sway them like reeds in the wind ; but they stood 
 up like the oaks of their own forests beneath the 
 thunder and the hail of actual calamity. 
 
 It was certainly lucky for the good people of 
 Essex County that no wicked wag of a Tory un- 
 dertook to immortalize in rhyme their ridiculous 
 hegira, as Judge Hopkinson did the famous Bat- 
 tle of the Kegs in Philadelphia. Like the more 
 recent Madawaska war in Maine, the great Che- 
 patchet demonstration in Rhode Island, and the 
 " Sauk fuss " of Wisconsin, it remains to this day 
 " unsyllabled, unsung; " and the fast-fading mem- 
 ory of age alone preserves the unwritten history of 
 the great Ipswich fright.
 
 POPE NIGHT. 
 
 " Lay up the fagots neat and trim ; 
 Pile 'em up higher; 
 Set 'em afire ! 
 The Pope roasts us, and we '11 roast him ! " 
 
 Old Song. 
 
 THE recent attempt of the Komish Church to 
 reestablish its hierarchy in Great Britain, with 
 the new cardinal, Dr. Wiseman, at its head, seems 
 to have revived an old popular custom, a grim 
 piece of Protestant sport, which, since the days of 
 Lord George Gordon and the " No Popery " mob, 
 had very generally fallen into disuse. On the 5th 
 of the eleventh month of this present year all Eng- 
 land was traversed by processions and lighted up 
 with bonfires, in commemoration of the detection 
 of the " gunpowder plot " of Guy Fawkes and the 
 Papists in 1605. Popes, bishops, and cardinals, in 
 straw and pasteboard, were paraded through the 
 streets and burned amid the shouts of the popu- 
 lace, a great portion of whom would have doubt- 
 less been quite as ready to do the same pleasant 
 little office for the Bishop of Exeter or his Grace 
 of Canterbury, if they could have carted about and 
 burned in effigy a Protestant hierarchy as safely 
 as a Catholic one. 
 
 In this country, where every sect takes its own 
 way, undisturbed by legal restrictions, each eccle-
 
 390 HISTORICAL PAPERS 
 
 siastical tub balancing itself as it best may on its 
 own bottom, and where bishops Catholic and bish- 
 ops Episcopal, bishops Methodist and bishops Mor- 
 mon, jostle each other in our thoroughfares, it is 
 not to be expected that we should trouble our- 
 selves with the matter at issue between the rival 
 hierarchies on the other side of the water. It is a 
 very pretty quarrel, however, and good must come 
 out of it, as it cannot fail to attract popular atten- 
 tion to the shallowness of the spiritual pretensions 
 of both parties, and lead to the conclusion that a 
 hierarchy of any sort has very little in common 
 with the fishermen and tent-makers of the New 
 Testament. 
 
 Pope Night the anniversary of the discovery 
 of the Papal incendiary Guy Fawkes, booted and 
 spurred, ready to touch fire to his powder-train 
 under the Parliament House was celebrated by 
 the early settlers of New England, and doubtless 
 afforded a good deal of relief to the younger plants 
 of grace in the Puritan vineyard. In those solemn 
 old days, the recurrence of the powder-plot anni- 
 versary, with its processions, hideous images of the 
 Pope and Guy Fawkes, its liberal potations of 
 strong waters, and its blazing bonfires reddening 
 the wild November hills, must have been looked 
 forward to with no slight degree of pleasure. For 
 one night, at least, the cramped and smothered 
 fun and mischief of the younger generation were 
 permitted to revel in the wild extravagance of a 
 Roman saturnalia or the Christmas holidays of a 
 slave plantation. Bigotry frowning upon the 
 May-pole, with its flower wreaths and sportive
 
 POPE NIGHT 391 
 
 revellers, and counting the steps of the dancers as 
 so many steps towards perdition recognized in 
 the grim farce of Guy Fawkes's anniversary some- 
 thing of its own lineaments, smiled complacently 
 upon the riotous young actors, and opened its 
 close purse to furnish tar-barrels to roast the Pope, 
 and strong water to moisten the throats of his 
 noisy judges and executioners. 
 
 Up to the time of the Revolution the powder 
 plot was duly commemorated throughout New Eng- 
 land. At that period the celebration of it was dis- 
 countenanced, and in many places prohibited, on 
 the ground that it was insulting to our Catholic 
 allies from France. In Coffin's History of New- 
 bury it is stated that, in 1774, the town authorities 
 of Newburyport ordered " that no effigies be car- 
 ried about or exhibited only in the daytime." The 
 last public celebration in that town was in the fol- 
 lowing year. Long before the close of the last 
 century the exhibitions of Pope Night had entirely 
 ceased throughout the country, with, as far as we 
 can learn, a solitary exception. The stranger who 
 chances to be travelling on the road between New- 
 buryport and Haverhill, on the night of the 5th 
 of November, may well fancy that an invasion is 
 threatened from the sea, or that an insurrection is 
 going on inland ; for from all the high hills over- 
 looking the river tall fires are seen blazing redly 
 against the cold, dark, autumnal sky, surrounded 
 by groups of young men and boys busily engaged 
 in urging them with fresh fuel into intenser activ- 
 ity. To feed these bonfires, everything combusti- 
 ble which could be begged or stolen from the neigh-
 
 392 HISTORICAL PAPERS 
 
 boring villages, farm-houses, and fences is put in 
 requisition. Old tar-tubs, purloined from the ship- 
 builders of the river-side, and flour and lard bar- 
 rels from the village-traders, are stored away for 
 days, and perhaps weeks, in the woods or in the 
 rain-gullies of the hills, in preparation for Pope 
 Night. From the earliest settlement of the towns 
 of Amesbury and Salisbury, the night of the pow- 
 der plot has been thus celebrated, with unbroken 
 regularity, down to the present time. The event 
 which it once commemorated is probably now un- 
 known to most of the juvenile actors. The symbol 
 lives on from generation to generation after the 
 significance is lost ; and we have seen the children 
 of our Catholic neighbors as busy as their Protes- 
 tant playmates in collecting, "by hook or by 
 crook," the materials for Pope-Night bonfires. We 
 remember, on one occasion, walking out with a 
 gifted and learned Catholic friend to witness the 
 fine effect of the illumination on the hills, and his 
 hearty appreciation of its picturesque and wild 
 beauty, the busy groups in the strong relief of 
 the fires, and the play and corruscation of the 
 changeful lights on the bare, brown hills, naked 
 trees, and autumn clouds. 
 
 In addition to the bonfires on the hills, there 
 was formerly a procession in the streets, bearing 
 grotesque images of the Pope, his cardinals and 
 friars ; and behind them Satan himself, a monster 
 with huge ox-horns on his head, and a long tail, 
 brandishing his pitchfork and goading them on- 
 ward. The Pope was generally furnished with a 
 movable head, which could be turned round, thrown
 
 POPE NIGHT 393 
 
 back, or made to bow, like that of a china-ware 
 mandarin. An aged inhabitant of the neighbor- 
 hood has furnished us with some fragments of the 
 songs sung on such occasions, probably the same 
 which our British ancestors trolled forth around 
 their bonfires two centuries ago : 
 
 " The fifth of November, 
 As you well remember, 
 
 Was gunpowder treason and plot; 
 And where is the reason 
 That gunpowder treason 
 
 Should ever be forgot ? ' ' 
 
 " When James the First the sceptre swayed, 
 This hellish powder plot was laid ; 
 They placed the powder down below, 
 All for Old England's overthrow. 
 Lucky the man, and happy the day, 
 That caught Guy Fawkes in the middle of his play ! " 
 
 " Hark ! our bell goes jink, jink, jink ; 
 Pray, madam, pray, sir, give us something to drink ; 
 Pray, madam, pray, sir, if you '11 something giVo, 
 We '11 burn the dog, and not let him live. 
 We '11 burn the dog without his head, 
 And then you '11 say the dog is dead." 
 
 " Look here ! from Home 
 The Pope has come, 
 
 That fiery serpent dire ; 
 Here's the Pope that we have got, 
 The old promoter of the plot ; 
 We '11 stick a pitchfork in his back, 
 And throw him in the fire ! " 
 
 There is a slight savor of a Smithfield roasting 
 about these lines, such as regaled the senses of 
 the Virgin Queen or Bloody Mary, which entirely 
 reconciles us to their disuse at the present time.
 
 394 HISTORICAL PAPERS 
 
 It should be the fervent prayer of all good men 
 that the evil spirit of religious hatred and intoler- 
 ance, which on the one hand prompted the gun- 
 powder plot, and which on the other has ever since 
 made it the occasion of reproach and persecution 
 of an entire sect of professing Christians, may be 
 no longer perpetuated. In the matter of exclu- 
 siveness and intolerance, none of the older sects 
 can safely reproach each other ; and it becomes all 
 to hope and labor for the coming of that day when 
 the hymns of Cowper and the Confessions of Au- 
 gustine, the humane philosophy of Channing and 
 the devout meditations of Thomas a Kempis, the 
 simple essays of Woolman and the glowing periods 
 of Bossuet, shall be regarded as the offspring of 
 one spirit and one faith, lights of a common 
 altar, and precious stones in the temple of the one 
 universal Church.
 
 THE BOY CAPTIVES. 
 
 AN INCIDENT OF THE INDIAN WAR OF 1695. 
 
 THE township of Haverhill, even as late as the 
 close of the seventeenth century, was a frontier 
 settlement, occupying an advanced position in the 
 great wilderness, which, unbroken by the clearing 
 of a white man, extended from the Merrimac 
 River to the French villages on the St. Francois. 
 A tract of twelve miles on the river and three or 
 four northwardly was occupied by scattered settlers, 
 while in the centre of the town a compact village 
 had grown up. In the immediate vicinity there 
 were but few Indians, and these generally peaceful 
 and inoffensive. On the breaking out of the Nar- 
 ragansett war, the inhabitants had erected fortifi- 
 cations and taken other measures for defence ; but, 
 with the possible exception of one man who was 
 found slain in the woods in 1676, none of the in- 
 habitants were molested ; and it was not until 
 about the year 1689 that the safety of the settle- 
 ment was seriously threatened. Three persons 
 were killed in that year. In 1690 six garrisons 
 were established in different parts of the town, 
 with a small company of soldiers attached to each. 
 Two of these houses are still standing. They were 
 built of brick, two stories high, with a single out- 
 side door, so small and narrow that but one person
 
 396 HISTORICAL PAPERS 
 
 could enter at a time ; the windows few, and only 
 about two and a half feet long by eighteen inches 
 wide, with thick diamond glass secured with lead, 
 and crossed inside with bars of iron. The base- 
 ment had but two rooms, and the chamber was 
 entered by a ladder instead of stairs ; so that the 
 inmates, if driven thither, could cut off communi- 
 cation with the rooms below. Many private houses 
 were strengthened and fortified. We remember 
 one familiar to our boyhood, a venerable old 
 building of wood, with brick between the weather- 
 boards and ceiling, with a massive balustrade over 
 the door, constructed of oak timber and plank, 
 with holes through the latter for firing upon assail- 
 ants. The door opened upon a stone-paved hall, 
 or entry, leading into the huge single room of the 
 basement, which was lighted by two small win- 
 dows, the ceiling black with the smoke of a century 
 and a half ; a huge fireplace, calculated for eight- 
 feet wood, occupying one entire side ; while, over- 
 head, suspended from the timbers, or on shelves 
 fastened to them, were household stores, farming 
 utensils, fishing-rods, guns, bunches of herbs gath- 
 ered perhaps a century ago, strings of dried apples 
 and pumpkins, links of mottled sausages, spareribs, 
 and flitches of bacon ; the firelight of an evening 
 dimly revealing the checked woollen coverlet of the 
 bed in one far-off corner, while in another 
 
 " the pewter plates on the dresser 
 
 Caught and reflected the flame as shields of armies the sun- 
 shine." 
 
 Tradition has preserved many incidents of life 
 in the garrisons. In times of unusual peril the
 
 THE BOY CAPTIVES 397 
 
 settlers generally resorted at night to the fortified 
 houses, taking thither their flocks and herds and 
 such household valuables as were most likely to 
 strike the fancy or minister to the comfort or van- 
 ity of the heathen marauders. False alarms were 
 frequent. The smoke of a distant fire, the bark of 
 a dog in the deep woods, a stump or bush taking 
 in the uncertain light of stars and moon the ap- 
 pearance of a man, were sufficient to spread alarm 
 through the entire settlement, and to cause the 
 armed men of the garrison to pass whole nights in 
 sleepless watching. It is said that at Haselton's 
 garrison-house the sentinel on duty saw, as he 
 thought, an Indian inside of the paling which sur- 
 rounded the building, and apparently seeking to 
 gain an entrance. He promptly raised his musket 
 and fired at the intruder, alarming thereby the 
 entire garrison. The women and children left their 
 beds, and the men seized their guns and commenced 
 firing on the suspicious object ; but it seemed to 
 bear a charmed life, and remained unharmed. As 
 the morning dawned, however, the mystery was 
 solved by the discovery of a black quilted petticoat 
 hanging on the clothes'-line, completely riddled 
 with balls. 
 
 As a matter of course, under circumstances of 
 perpetual alarm and frequent peril, the duty of 
 cultivating their fields, and gathering their har- 
 vests, and working at their mechanical avocations 
 was dangerous and difficult to the settlers. One 
 instance will serve as an illustration. At the gar- 
 rison-house of Thomas Dustin, the husband of the 
 far-famed Mary Dustin, (who, while a captive of
 
 398 HISTORICAL PAPERS 
 
 the Indians, and maddened by the murder of her 
 infant child, killed and scalped, with the assistance 
 of a young boy, the entire band of her captors, ten 
 in number,) the business of brick-making was car- 
 ried on. The pits where the clay was found were 
 only a few rods from the house ; yet no man ven- 
 tured to bring the clay to the yard within the en- 
 closure without the attendance of a file of soldiers. 
 An anecdote relating to this garrison has been 
 handed down to the present time. Among its in- 
 mates were two young cousins, Joseph and Mary 
 Whittaker ; the latter a merry, handsome girl, re- 
 lieving the tedium of garrison duty with her light- 
 hearted mirthfulness, and 
 
 " Malting a sunshine in that shady place." 
 
 Joseph, in the intervals of his labors in the double 
 capacity of brick-maker and man-at-arms, was as- 
 siduous in his attentions to his fair cousin, who 
 was not inclined to encourage him. Growing des- 
 perate, he threatened one evening to throw him- 
 self into the garrison well. His threat only called 
 forth the laughter of his mistress ; and, bidding 
 her farewell, he proceeded to put it in execution. 
 On reaching the well he stumbled over a log ; 
 whereupon, animated by a happy idea, he dropped 
 the wood into the water instead of himself, and, 
 hiding behind the curb, awaited the result. Mary, 
 who had been listening at the door, and who had 
 not believed her lover capable of so rash an act, 
 heard the sudden plunge of the wooden Joseph. 
 She ran to the well, and, leaning over the curb 
 and peering down the dark opening, cried out, in
 
 THE BOY CAPTIVES 399 
 
 tones of anguish and remorse, " O Joseph, if you 're 
 in the land of the living, I '11 have you ! " "1 11 
 take ye at your word," answered Joseph, springing 
 up from his hiding-place, and avenging himself 
 for her coyness and coldness by a hearty embrace. 
 
 Our own paternal ancestor, owing to religious 
 scruples in the matter of taking arms even for 
 defence of life and property, refused to leave his 
 undefended house and enter the garrison. The 
 Indians frequently came to his house; and the 
 family more than once in the night heard them 
 whispering under the windows, and saw them put 
 their copper faces to the glass to take a view of the 
 apartments. Strange as it may seem, they never 
 offered any injury or insult to the inmates. 
 
 In 1695 the township was many times molested 
 by Indians, and several persons were killed and 
 wounded. Early in the fall a small party made 
 their appearance in the northerly part of the town, 
 where, finding two boys at work in an open field, 
 they managed to surprise and capture them, and, 
 without committing further violence, retreated 
 through the woods to their homes on the shore of 
 Lake Winnipesaukee. Isaac Bradley, aged fifteen, 
 was a small but active and vigorous boy ; his com- 
 panion in captivity, Joseph Whittaker, was only 
 eleven, yet quite as large in size, and heavier in his 
 movements. After a hard and painful journey 
 they arrived at the lake, and were placed in an In- 
 dian family, consisting of a man and squaw and 
 two or three children. Here they soon acquired a 
 sufficient knowledge of the Indian tongue to en- 
 able them to learn from the conversation carried
 
 400 HISTORICAL PAPERS 
 
 on in their presence that it was designed to take 
 them to Canada in the spring. This discovery was 
 a painful one. Canada, the land of Papist priests 
 and bloody Indians, was the especial terror of the 
 New England settlers, and the anathema marana- 
 tha of Puritan pulpits. Thither the Indians usu- 
 ally hurried their captives, where they compelled 
 them to work in their villages or sold them to the 
 French planters. Escape from thence through a 
 deep wilderness, and across lakes and mountains 
 and almost impassable rivers, without food or 
 guide, was regarded as an impossibility. The poor 
 boys, terrified by the prospect of being carried still 
 farther from their home and friends, began to 
 dream of escaping from their masters before they 
 started for Canada. It was now winter ; it would 
 have been little short of madness to have chosen 
 for flight that season of bitter cold and deep 
 snows. Owing to exposure and want of proper 
 food and clothing, Isaac, the eldest of the boys, 
 was seized with a violent fever, from which he 
 slowly recovered in the course of the winter. His 
 Indian mistress was as kind to him as her circum- 
 stances permitted, procuring medicinal herbs 
 and roots for her patient, and tenderly watching 
 over him in the long winter nights. Spring came 
 at length ; the snows melted ; and the ice was 
 broken up on the lake. The Indians began to 
 make preparations for journeying to Canada ; and 
 Isaac, who had during his sickness devised a plan 
 of escape, saw that the time of putting it in execu- 
 tion had come. On the evening before he was to 
 make the attempt he for the first time informed his
 
 The Boy Captives
 
 THE BOY CAPTIVES 401 
 
 younger companion of his design, and told him, if 
 he intended to accompany him, he must be awake 
 at the time appointed. The boys lay down as 
 usual in the wigwam, in the midst of the family. 
 Joseph soon fell asleep ; but Isaac, fully sensible 
 of the danger and difficulty of the enterprise be- 
 fore him, lay awake, watchful for his opportunity. 
 About midnight he rose, cautiously stepping over 
 the sleeping forms of the family, and securing, as 
 he went, his Indian master's flint, steel, and tinder, 
 and a small quantity of dry moose-meat and corn- 
 bread. He then carefully awakened his compan- 
 ion, who, starting up, forgetful of the cause of his 
 disturbance, asked aloud, " What do you want ? " 
 The savages began to stir ; and Isaac, trembling 
 with fear of detection, lay down again and pre- 
 tended to be asleep. After waiting a while he 
 again rose, satisfied, from the heavy breathing of 
 the Indians, that they were all sleeping ; and fear- 
 ing to awaken Joseph a second time, lest he should 
 again hazard all by his thoughtlessness, he crept 
 softly out of the wigwam. He had proceeded but 
 a few rods when he heard footsteps behind him ; 
 and, supposing himself pursued, he hurried into 
 the woods, casting a glance backward. What was 
 his joy to see his young companion running after 
 him ! They hastened on in a southerly direction 
 as nearly as they could determine, hoping to reach 
 their distant home. When daylight appeared they 
 found a large hollow log, into which they crept for 
 concealment, wisely judging that they would be 
 hotly pursued by their Indian captors. 
 
 Their sagacity was by no means at fault. The
 
 402 HISTORICAL PAPERS 
 
 Indians, missing their prisoners in the morning, 
 started off in pursuit with their dogs. As the 
 young boys lay in the log they could hear the 
 whistle of the Indians and the barking of dogs 
 upon their track. It was a trying moment ; and 
 even the stout heart of the elder boy sank within 
 him as the dogs came up to the log and set up a 
 loud bark of discovery. But his presence of mind 
 saved him. He spoke in a low tone to the dogs, 
 who, recognizing his familiar voice, wagged their 
 tails with delight and ceased barking. He then 
 threw to them the morsel of moose-meat he had 
 taken from the wigwam. While the dogs were 
 thus diverted the Indians made their appearance. 
 The boys heard the light, stealthy sound of their 
 moccasins on the leaves. They passed close to 
 the log ; and the dogs, having devoured their 
 moose-meat, trotted after their masters. Through 
 a crevice in the log the boys looked after them and 
 saw them disappear in the thick woods. They 
 remained in their covert until night, when they 
 started again on their long journey, taking a new 
 route to avoid the Indians. At daybreak they 
 again concealed themselves, but travelled the next 
 night and day without resting. By this time they 
 had consumed all the bread which they had taken, 
 and were fainting from hunger and weariness. 
 Just at the close of the third day they were provi- 
 dentially enabled to kill a pigeon and a small tor- 
 toise, a part of which they ate raw, not daring to 
 make a fire, which might attract the watchful eyes 
 of savages. On the sixth day they struck upon an 
 old Indian path, and, following it until night, came
 
 THE BOY CAPTIVES 403 
 
 suddenly upon a camp of the enemy. Deep in 
 the heart of the forest, under the shelter of a ridge 
 of land heavily timbered, a great fire of logs and 
 brushwood was burning; and around it the Ind- 
 ians sat, eating their moose-meat and smoking their 
 pipes. 
 
 The poor fugitives, starving, weary, and chilled 
 by the cold spring blasts, gazed down upon the 
 ample fire, and the savory meats which the squaws 
 were cooking by it, but felt no temptation to pur- 
 chase warmth and food by surrendering themselves 
 to captivity. Death in the forest seemed prefer- 
 able. They turned and fled back upon their track, 
 expecting every moment to hear the yells of pur- 
 suers. The morning found them seated on the 
 bank of a small stream, their feet torn and bleed- 
 ing, and their bodies emaciated. The elder, as a 
 last effort, made search for roots, and fortunately 
 discovered a few ground-nuts, (jglicine, apios) 
 which served to refresh in some degree himself and 
 his still weaker companion. As they stood together 
 by the stream, hesitating and almost despairing, it 
 occurred to Isaac that the rivulet might lead to a 
 larger stream of water, and that to the sea and the 
 white settlements near it ; and he resolved to fol- 
 low it. They again began their painful march ; the 
 day passed, and the night once more overtook 
 them. When the eighth morning dawned, the 
 younger of the boys found himself unable to rise 
 from his bed of leaves. Isaac endeavored to en- 
 courage him, dug roots, and procured water for 
 him ; but the poor lad was utterly exhausted. He 
 had no longer heart or hope. The elder boy laid
 
 404 HISTORICAL PAPERS 
 
 him on leaves and dry grass at the foot of a tree, 
 and with a heavy heart bade him farewell. Alone 
 he slowly and painfully proceeded down the stream, 
 now greatly increased in size by tributary rivulets. 
 On the top of a hill he climbed with difficulty into 
 a tree, and saw in the distance what seemed to be 
 a clearing and a newly raised frame building. 
 Hopeful and rejoicing, he turned back to his young 
 companion, told him what he had seen, and, after 
 chafing his limbs awhile, got him upon his feet. 
 Sometimes supporting him, and at others carrying 
 him on his back, the heroic boy staggered towards 
 the clearing. On reaching it he found it deserted, 
 and was obliged to continue his journey. Towards 
 night signs of civilization began to appear, the 
 heavy, continuous roar of water was heard ; and, 
 presently emerging from the forest, he saw a great 
 river dashing in white foam down precipitous 
 rocks, and on its bank the gray walls of a htige 
 stone building, with flankers, palisades, and moat, 
 over which the British flag was flying. This was 
 the famous Saco Fort, built by Governor Phips 
 two years before, just below the falls of the Saco 
 River. The soldiers of the garrison gave the poor 
 fellows a kindly welcome. Joseph, who was scarcely 
 alive, lay for a long time sick in the fort; but 
 Isaac soon regained his strength, and set out for 
 his home in Haverhill, which he had the good for- 
 tune to arrive at in safety. 
 
 Amidst the stirring excitements of the present 
 day, when every thrill of the electric wire conveys 
 a new subject for thought or action to a generation 
 as eager as the ancient Athenians for some new
 
 THE BOY CAPTIVES 405 
 
 thing, simple legends of the past like that which 
 we have transcribed have undoubtedly lost in a 
 great degree their interest. The lore of the fire- 
 side is becoming obsolete, and with the octogena- 
 rian few who still linger among us will perish the 
 unwritten history of border life in New England.
 
 THE BLACK MEN IN THE REVOLUTION 
 AND WAR OF 1812. 
 
 THE return of the festival of our national in- 
 dependence has called our attention to a matter 
 which has been very carefully kept out of sight by 
 orators and toast-drinkers. We allude to the par- 
 ticipation of colored men in the great struggle for 
 American freedom. It is not in accordance with 
 our taste or our principles to eulogize the shedders 
 of blood even in a cause of acknowledged justice ; 
 but when we see a whole nation doing honor to the 
 memories of one class of its defenders to the total 
 neglect of another class, who had the misfortune 
 to be of darker complexion, we cannot forego the 
 satisfaction of inviting notice to certain historical 
 facts which for the last half century have been 
 quietly elbowed aside, as no more deserving of a 
 place in patriotic recollection than the descendants 
 of the men to whom the facts in question relate 
 have to a place in a Fourth of July procession. 
 
 Of the services and sufferings of the colored 
 soldiers of the Revolution no attempt has, to our 
 knowledge, been made to preserve a record. They 
 have had no historian. With here and there an 
 exception, they have all passed away ; and only 
 some faint tradition of their campaigns under 
 Washington and Greene and Lafayette, and of 
 their cruisings under Decatur and Barry, lingers
 
 BLACK MEN IN THE REVOLUTION 407 
 
 among their descendants. Yet enough is known 
 to show that the free colored men of the United 
 States bore their full proportion of the sacrifices 
 and trials of the Revolutionary War. 
 
 The late Governor Eustis, of Massachusetts, 
 the pride and boast of the democracy of the East, 
 himself an active participant in the war, and there- 
 fore a most competent witness, Governor Mor- 
 rill, of New Hampshire, Judge Hemphill, of Penn- 
 sylvania, and other members of Congress, in the 
 debate on the question of admitting Missouri as a 
 slave State into the Union, bore emphatic testi- 
 mony to the efficiency and heroism of the black 
 troops. Hon. Calvin Goddard, of Connecticut, 
 states that in the little circle of his residence he 
 was instrumental in securing, under the act of 
 1818, the pensions of nineteen colored soldiers. 
 "I cannot," he says, " refrain from mentioning one 
 aged black man, Primus Babcock, who proudly 
 presented to me an honorable discharge from ser- 
 vice during the war, dated at the close of it, 
 wholly in the handwriting of George Washington ; 
 nor can I forget the expression of his feelings when 
 informed, after his discharge had been sent to the 
 War Department, that it could not be returned. 
 At his request it was written for, as he seemed 
 inclined to spurn the pension and reclaim the dis- 
 charge." There is a touching anecdote related of 
 Baron Steuben on the occasion of the disbandment 
 of the American army. A black soldier, with his 
 wounds unhealed, utterly destitute, stood on the 
 wharf just as a vessel bound for his distant home 
 was getting under way. The poor fellow gazed at
 
 408 HISTORICAL PAPERS 
 
 the vessel with tears in his eyes, and gave himself 
 up to despair. The warm-hearted foreigner wit- 
 nessed his emotion, and, inquiring into the cause 
 of it, took his last dollar from his purse and gave 
 it to him, with tears of sympathy trickling down 
 his cheeks. Overwhelmed with gratitude, the poor 
 wounded soldier hailed the sloop and was received 
 on board. As it moved out from the wharf, he 
 cried back to his noble friend on shore, " God Al- 
 mighty bless you, Master Baron ! " 
 
 " In Rhode Island," says Governor Eustis in his 
 able speech against slavery in Missouri, 12th of 
 twelfth month, 1820, " the blacks formed an entire 
 regiment, and they discharged their duty with zeal 
 and fidelity. The gallant defence of Red Bank, 
 in which the black regiment bore a part, is among 
 the proofs of their valor." In this contest it will 
 be recollected that four hundred men met and re- 
 pulsed, after a terrible and sanguinary struggle, 
 fifteen hundred Hessian troops, headed by Count 
 Donop. The glory of the defence of Red Bank, 
 which has been pronounced one of the most heroic 
 actions of the war, belongs in reality to black men ; 
 yet who now hears them spoken of in connection 
 with it ? Among the traits which distinguished 
 the black regiment was devotion to their officers. 
 In the attack made upon the American lines near 
 Croton River on the 13th of the fifth month, 1781, 
 Colonel Greene, the commander of the regiment, 
 was cut down and mortally wounded ; but the sa- 
 bres of the enemy only reached him through the 
 bodies of his faithful guard of blacks, who hovered 
 over him to protect him, every one of whom was
 
 BLACK MEN IN THE REVOLUTION 409 
 
 killed. The late Dr. Harris, of Dunbarton, New 
 Hampshire, a Revolutionary veteran, stated, in a 
 speech at Francistown, New Hampshire, some 
 years ago, that on one occasion the regiment to 
 which he was attached was commanded to defend 
 an important position, which the enemy thrice as- 
 sailed, and from which they were as often repulsed. 
 " There was," said the venerable speaker, " a regi- 
 ment of blacks in the same situation, a regiment 
 of negroes righting for our liberty and indepen- 
 dence, not a white man among them but the offi- 
 cers, in the same dangerous and responsible po- 
 sition. Had they been unfaithful or given way 
 before the enemy, all would have been lost. Three 
 times in succession were they attacked with most 
 desperate fury by well -disciplined and veteran 
 troops ; and three times did they successfully repel 
 the assault, and thus preserve an army. They 
 fought thus through the war. They were brave 
 and hardy troops." 
 
 In the debate in the New York Convention of 
 1821 for amending the Constitution of the State, 
 on the question of extending the right of suffrage 
 to the blacks, Dr. Clarke, the delegate from Dela- 
 ware County, and other members, made honorable 
 mention of the services of the colored troops in the 
 Revolutionary army. 
 
 The late James Forten, of Philadelphia, well 
 known as a colored man of wealth, intelligence, 
 and philanthropy, enlisted in the American navy 
 under Captain Decatur, of the Royal Louis, was 
 taken prisoner during his second cruise, and, with 
 nineteen other colored men, confined on board the
 
 410 HISTORICAL PAPERS 
 
 horrible Jersey prison-ship. All the vessels in the 
 American service at that period were partly manned 
 by blacks. The old citizens of Philadelphia to 
 this day remember the fact that, when the troops 
 of the North marched through the city, one or 
 more colored companies were attached to nearly 
 all the regiments. 
 
 Governor Eustis, in the speech before quoted, 
 states that the free colored soldiers entered the 
 ranks with the whites. The time of those who 
 were slaves was purchased of their masters, and 
 they were induced to enter the service in conse- 
 quence of a law of Congress by which, on condi- 
 tion of their serving in the ranks during the war, 
 they were made freemen. This hope of liberty in- 
 spired them with courage to oppose their breasts to 
 the Hessian bayonet at Red Bank, and enabled 
 them to endure with fortitude the cold and famine 
 of Valley Forge. The anecdote of the slave of 
 General Sullivan, of New Hampshire, is well 
 known. When his master told him that they were 
 on the point of starting for the army, to fight for 
 liberty, he shrewdly suggested that it would be a 
 great satisfaction to know that he was indeed going 
 to fight for Ms liberty. Struck with the reason- 
 ableness and justice of this suggestion, General 
 Sullivan at once gave him his freedom. 
 
 The late Tristam Burgess, of Rhode Island, in 
 a speech in Congress, first month, 1828, said : 
 "At the commencement of the Revolutionary War, 
 Rhode Island had a number of slaves. A regiment 
 of them were enlisted into the Continental service, 
 and no braver men met the enemy in battle ; but
 
 BLACK MEN IN THE REVOLUTION 411 
 
 not one of them was permitted to be a soldier until 
 he had first been made a freeman." 
 
 The celebrated Charles Pinckney, of South Car- 
 olina, in his speech on the Missouri question, and 
 in defence of the slave representation of the South, 
 made the following admissions : 
 
 "They (the colored people) were in numerous 
 instances the pioneers, and in all the laborers, of 
 our armies. To their hands were owing the great- 
 est part of the fortifications raised for the protec- 
 tion of the country. Fort Moultrie gave, at an 
 early period of the inexperienced and untried valor 
 of our citizens, immortality to the American arms ; 
 and in the Northern States numerous bodies of 
 them were enrolled, and fought side by side with 
 the whites at the battles of the Revolution." 
 
 Let us now look forward thirty or forty years, 
 to the last war with Great Britain, and see whether 
 the whites enjoyed a monopoly of patriotism at 
 that time. 
 
 Martindale, of New York, in Congress, 22d of 
 first month, 1828, said : " Slaves, or negroes who 
 had been slaves, were enlisted as soldiers in the 
 war of the Revolution ; and I myself saw a bat- 
 talion of them, as fine, martial-looking men as I 
 ever saw, attached to the Northern army in the last 
 war, on its march from Plattsburg to Sackett's 
 Harbor." 
 
 Hon. Charles Miner, of Pennsylvania, in Con- 
 gress, second month, 7th, 1828, said : " The African 
 race make excellent soldiers. Large numbers of 
 them were with Perry, and helped to gain the bril- 
 liant victory of Lake Erie. A whole battalion of
 
 412 HISTORICAL PAPERS 
 
 them were distinguished for their orderly appear- 
 ance." 
 
 Dr. Clarke, in the convention which revised the 
 Constitution of New York in 1821, speaking of the 
 colored inhabitants of the State, said : 
 
 " In your late war they contributed largely 
 towards some of your most splendid victories. On 
 Lakes Erie and Champlain, where your fleets tri- 
 umphed over a foe superior in numbers and en- 
 gines of death, they were manned in a large pro- 
 portion with men of color. And in this very 
 house, in the fall of 1814, a bill passed, receiving 
 the approbation of all the branches of your gov- 
 ernment, authorizing the governor to accept the 
 services of a corps of two thousand free people of 
 color. Sir, these were times which tried men's 
 souls. In these times it was no sporting matter 
 to bear arms. These were times when a man who 
 shouldered his musket did not know but he bared 
 his bosom to receive a death-wound from the en- 
 emy ere he laid it aside ; and in these times these 
 people were found as ready and as wiling to vol- 
 unteer in your service as any other. They were 
 not compelled to go ; they were not drafted. No ; 
 your pride had placed them beyond your compul- 
 sory power. But there was no necessity for its 
 exercise ; they were volunteers, yes, sir, volun- 
 teers to defend that very country from the inroads 
 and ravages of a ruthless and vindictive foe which 
 had treated them with insult, degradation, and 
 slavery." 
 
 On the capture of Washington by the British 
 forces, it was judged expedient to fortify, without
 
 BLACK MEN IN THE REVOLUTION 413 
 
 delay, the principal towns and cities exposed to 
 similar attacks. The Vigilance Committee of Phil- 
 adelphia waited upon three of the principal col- 
 ored citizens, namely, James Forten, Bishop Allen, 
 and Absalom Jones, soliciting the aid of the peo- 
 ple of color in erecting suitable defences for the 
 city. Accordingly, twenty-five hundred colored 
 men assembled in the State-House yard, and from 
 thence marched to Gray's Ferry, where they labored 
 for two days almost without intermission. Their 
 labors were so faithful and efficient that a vote of 
 thanks was tendered them by the committee. A 
 battalion of colored troops was at the same time 
 organized in the city under an officer of the United 
 States army ; and they were on the point of march- 
 ing to the frontier when peace was proclaimed. 
 
 General Jackson's proclamations to the free col- 
 ored inhabitants of Louisiana are well known. In 
 his first, inviting them to take up arms, he said : 
 
 " As sons of freedom, you are now called on to 
 defend our most inestimable blessings. As Ameri- 
 cans, your country looks with confidence to her 
 adopted children for a valorous support. As fa- 
 thers, husbands, and brothers, you are summoned 
 to rally round the standard of the eagle, to defend 
 all which is dear in existence." 
 
 The second proclamation is one of the highest 
 compliments ever paid by a military chief to his 
 soldiers : 
 
 "TO THE FREE PEOPLE OF COLOR. 
 " Soldiers ! when on the banks of the Mobile 1 
 called you to take up arms, inviting you to partake
 
 414 HISTORICAL PAPERS 
 
 the perils and glory of your white fellow-citizens, I 
 expected much from you ; for I was not ignorant 
 that you possessed qualities most formidable to an 
 invading enemy. I knew with what fortitude you 
 could endure hunger, and thirst, and all the fa- 
 tigues of a campaign. I knew well how you loved 
 your native country, and that you, as well as our- 
 selves, had to defend what man holds most dear, 
 his parents, wife, children, and property. You 
 have done more than I expected. In addition to 
 the previous qualities I before knew you to possess, 
 I found among you a noble enthusiasm, which leads 
 to the performance of great things. 
 
 " Soldiers ! the President of the United States 
 shall hear how praiseworthy was your conduct in 
 the hour of danger, and the Representatives of the 
 American people will give you the praise your 
 exploits entitle you to. Your general anticipates 
 them in applauding your noble ardor." 
 
 It will thus be seen that whatever honor belongs 
 to the " heroes of the Revolution " and the volun- 
 teers in " the second war for independence " is to 
 be divided between the white and the colored man. 
 We have dwelt upon this subject at length, not be- 
 cause it accords with our principles or feelings, for 
 it is scarcely necessary for us to say that we are 
 one of those who hold that 
 
 " Peace hath her victories 
 No less renowned than war," 
 
 and certainly far more desirable and useful ; but 
 because, in popular estimation, the patriotism 
 which dares and does on the battle-field takes a
 
 BLACK MEN IN THE REVOLUTION 415 
 
 higher place than the quiet exercise of the duties 
 of peaceful citizenship ; and we are willing that 
 colored soldiers, with their descendants, should 
 have the benefit, if possible, of a public sentiment 
 which has so extravagantly lauded their white com- 
 panions in arms. If pulpits must be desecrated 
 by eulogies of the patriotism of bloodshed, we see 
 no reason why black defenders of their country in 
 the war for liberty should not receive honorable 
 mention as well as white invaders of a neighboring 
 republic who have volunteered in a war for plun- 
 der and slavery extension. For the latter class of 
 " heroes " we have very little respect. The patri- 
 otism of too many of them forcibly reminds us of 
 Dr. Johnson's definition of that much-abused term : 
 " Patriotism, sir ! 'T is the last refuge of a scoun- 
 drel." 
 
 " What right, I demand," said an American ora- 
 tor some years ago, " have the children of Africa 
 to a homestead in the white man's country ? " The 
 answer will in part be found in the facts which 
 we have presented. Their right, like that of their 
 white fellow-citizens, dates back to the dread ar- 
 bitrament of battle. Their bones whiten every 
 stricken field of the Revolution ; their feet tracked 
 with blood the snows of Jersey ; their toil built 
 up every fortification south of the Potomac ; they 
 shared the famine and nakedness of Valley Forge 
 and the pestilential horrors of the old Jersey prison- 
 ship. Have they, then, no claim to an equal par- 
 ticipation in the blessings which have grown out 
 of the national independence for which they 
 fought ? Is it just, is it magnanimous, is it safe,
 
 416 HISTORICAL PAPERS 
 
 even, to starve the patriotism of such a people, to 
 cast their hearts out of the treasury of the Repub- 
 lic, and to convert them, by political disfranchise- 
 ment and social oppression, into enemies ?
 
 THE SCOTTISH EEFOEMEES. 
 
 " The mills of God grind slowly, but they grind exceeding small ; 
 Though with patience He stands waiting, with exactness grinds 
 He all." 
 
 FBIEDKICH VON LOGAU. 
 
 THE great impulse of the French Eevolution was 
 not confined by geographical boundaries. Flash- 
 ing hope into the dark places of the earth, far down 
 among the poor and long oppressed, or startling 
 the oppressor in his guarded chambers like that 
 mountain of fire which fell into the sea at the 
 sound of the apocalyptic trumpet, it agitated the 
 world. 
 
 The arguments of Condorcet, the battle-words 
 of Mirabeau, the fierce zeal of St. Just, the iron 
 energy of Danton, the caustic wit of Camille Des- 
 moulins, and the sweet eloquence of Vergniaud 
 found echoes in all lands, and nowhere more readily 
 than in Great Britain, the ancient foe and rival of 
 France. The celebrated Dr. Price, of London, 
 and the still more distinguished Priestley, of Bir- 
 mingham, spoke out boldly in defence of the great 
 principles of the Eevolution. A London club of 
 reformers, reckoning among its members such men 
 as Sir William Jones, Earl Grey, Samuel Whit- 
 bread, and Sir James Mackintosh, was established 
 for the purpose of disseminating liberal appeals 
 and arguments throughout the United Kingdom.
 
 418 HISTORICAL PAPERS 
 
 In Scotland an auxiliary society was formed, un- 
 der the name of Friends of the People. Thomas 
 Muir, young in years, yet an elder in the Scottish 
 kirk, a successful advocate at the bar, talented, af- 
 fable, eloquent, and distinguished for the purity of 
 his life and his enthusiasm in the cause of freedom, 
 was its principal originator. In the twelfth month 
 of 1792 a convention of reformers was held at Ed- 
 inburgh. The government became alarmed, and 
 a warrant was issued for the arrest of Muir. He 
 escaped to France ; but soon after, venturing to 
 return to his native land, was recognized and im- 
 prisoned. He was tried upon the charge of lend- 
 ing books of republican tendency, and reading an 
 address from Theobald Wolfe Tone and the United 
 Irishmen before the society of which he was a 
 member. He defended himself in a long and 
 eloquent address, which concluded in the following 
 manly strain : 
 
 " What, then, has been my crime ? Not the 
 lending to a relation a copy of Thomas Paine's 
 works, not the giving away to another a few 
 numbers of an innocent and constitutional publi- 
 cation ; but my crime is, for having dared to be, 
 according to the measure of my feeble abilities, a 
 strenuous and an active advocate for an equal rep- 
 resentation of the people in the House of the people, 
 for having dared to accomplish a measure by 
 legal means which was to diminish fche weight of 
 their taxes and to put an end to the profusion of 
 their blood. Gentlemen, from my infancy to this 
 moment I have devoted myself to the cause of the 
 people. It is a good cause : it will ultimately pre- 
 vail, it will finally triumph."
 
 THE SCOTTISH REFORMERS 419 
 
 He was sentenced to transportation for fourteen 
 years, and was removed to the Edinburgh jail, 
 from thence to the hulks, and lastly to the trans- 
 port-ship, containing eighty-three convicts, which 
 conveyed him to Botany Bay. 
 
 The next victim was Palmer, a learned and 
 highly accomplished Unitarian minister in Dun- 
 dee. He was greatly beloved and respected as 
 a polished gentleman and sincere friend of the 
 people. He was charged with circulating a re- 
 publican tract, and was sentenced to seven years' 
 transportation. 
 
 But the Friends of the People were not quelled 
 by this summary punishment of two of their devoted 
 leaders. In the tenth month, 1793, delegates were 
 called together from various towns in Scotland, as 
 well as from Birmingham, Sheffield, and other 
 places in England. Gerrald and Margarot were 
 sent up by the London society. After a brief sit- 
 ting, the convention was dispersed by the public 
 authorities. Its sessions were opened and closed 
 with prayer, and the speeches of its members man- 
 ifested the pious enthusiasm of the old Camero- 
 nians and Parliament-men of the times of Crom- 
 well. Many of the dissenting clergy were present. 
 William Skirving, the most determined of the band, 
 had been educated for the ministry, and was a sin- 
 cerely religious man. Joseph Gerrald was a young 
 man of brilliant talents and exemplary character. 
 When the sheriff entered the hall to disperse the 
 friends of liberty, Gerrald knelt in prayer. His re- 
 markable words were taken down by a reporter on 
 the spot. There is nothing in modern history to
 
 420 HISTORICAL PAPERS 
 
 compare with this supplication, unless it be that of 
 Sir Henry Vane, a kindred martyr, at the foot of 
 the scaffold, just before his execution. It is the 
 prayer of universal humanity, which God will yet 
 hear and answer. 
 
 " O thou Governor of the universe, we rejoice 
 that, at all times and in all circumstances, we have 
 liberty to approach Thy throne, and that we are as- 
 sured that no sacrifice is more acceptable to Thee 
 than that which is made for the relief of the op- 
 pressed. In this moment of trial and persecution 
 we pray that Thou wouldst be our defender, our 
 counsellor, and our guide. Oh, be Thou a pillar of 
 fire to us, as Thou wast to our fathers of old, to en- 
 lighten and direct us ; and to our enemies a pillar 
 of cloud, and darkness, and confusion. 
 
 " Thou art Thyself the great Patron of liberty. 
 Thy service is perfect freedom. Prosper, we be- 
 seech Thee, every endeavor which we make to pro- 
 mote Thy cause ; for we consider the cause of truth, 
 or every cause which tends to promote the happi- 
 ness of Thy creatures, as Thy cause. 
 
 " O thou merciful Father of mankind, enable us, 
 for Thy name's sake, to endure persecution with 
 fortitude ; and may we believe that all trials and 
 tribulations of life which we endure shall work to- 
 gether for good to them that love Thee ; and grant 
 that the greater the evil, and the longer it may be 
 continued, the greater good, in Thy holy and ador- 
 able providence, may be produced therefrom. And 
 this we beg, not for our own merits, but through 
 the merits of Him who is hereafter to judge the 
 world in righteousness and mercy."
 
 THE SCOTTISH REFORMERS 421 
 
 He ceased, and the sheriff, who had been tem- 
 porarily overawed by the extraordinary scene, en- 
 forced the warrant, and the meeting was broken 
 up. The delegates descended to the street in si- 
 lence, Arthur's Seat and Salisbury Crags gloom- 
 ing in the distance and night, an immense and 
 agitated multitude waiting around, over which 
 tossed the flaring flambeaux of the sheriff's train. 
 Gerrald, who was already under arrest, as he de- 
 scended, spoke aloud, " Behold the funeral torches 
 of Liberty ! " 
 
 Skirving and several others were immediately 
 arrested. They were tried in the first month, 1794, 
 and sentenced, as Muir and Palmer had previously 
 been, to transportation. Their conduct throughout 
 was worthy of their great and holy cause. Ger- 
 rald's defence was that of freedom rather than his 
 own. Forgetting himself, he spoke out manfully 
 and earnestly for the poor, the oppressed, the over- 
 taxed, and starving millions of his countrymen. 
 That some idea may be formed of this noble plea 
 for liberty, I give an extract from the concluding 
 paragraphs : 
 
 " True religion, like all free governments, ap- 
 peals to the understanding for its support, and 
 not to the sword. All systems, whether civil or 
 moral, can only be durable in proportion as they 
 are founded on truth and calculated to promote the 
 good of mankind. This will account to us why 
 governments suited to the great energies of man 
 have always outlived the perishable things which 
 despotism has erected. Yes, this will account to 
 us why the stream of Time, which is continually
 
 422 HISTORICAL PAPERS 
 
 washing away the dissoluble fabrics of superstitions 
 and impostures, passes without injury by the ada- 
 mant of Christianity. 
 
 " Those who are versed in the history of their 
 country, in the history of the human race, must 
 know that rigorous state prosecutions have always 
 preceded the era of convulsion ; and this era, I 
 fear, will be accelerated by the folly and madness 
 of our rulers. If the people are discontented, the 
 proper mode of quieting their discontent is, not by 
 instituting rigorous and sanguinary prosecutions, 
 but by redressing their wrongs and conciliating 
 their affections. Courts of justice, indeed, may be 
 called in to the aid of ministerial vengeance ; but 
 if once the purity of their proceedings is suspected, 
 they will cease to be objects of reverence to the 
 nation ; they will degenerate into empty and ex- 
 pensive pageantry, and become the partial instru- 
 ments of vexatious oppression. Whatever may 
 become of me, my principles will last forever. In- 
 dividuals may perish; but truth is eternal. The 
 rude blasts of tyranny may blow from every quar- 
 ter ; but freedom is that hardy plant which will 
 survive the tempest and strike an everlasting root 
 into the most unfavorable soil. 
 
 " Gentlemen, I am in your hands. About my 
 life I feel not the slightest anxiety : if it would 
 promote the cause, I would cheerfully make the 
 sacrifice ; for if I perish on an occasion like the 
 present, out of my ashes will arise a flame to con- 
 sume the tyrants and oppressors of my country." 
 
 Years have passed, and the generation which 
 knew the persecuted reformers has given place to
 
 THE SCOTTISH REFORMERS 423 
 
 another. And now, half a century after William 
 Skirving, as he rose to receive his sentence, de- 
 clared to his judges, " You may condemn us as 
 felons, but your sentence shall yet be reversed by 
 the people" the names of these men are once more 
 familiar to British lips. The sentence has been 
 reversed ; the prophecy of Skirving has become 
 history. On the 21st of the eighth month, 1853, 
 the corner-stone of a monument to the memory of 
 the Scottish martyrs for which subscriptions 
 had been received from such men as Lord Hol- 
 land, the Dukes of Bedford and Norfolk, and the 
 Earls of Essex and Leicester was laid with im- 
 posing ceremonies in the beautiful burial-place of 
 Calton Hill, Edinburgh, by the veteran reformer 
 and tribune of the people, Joseph Hume, M. P. 
 After delivering an appropriate address, the aged 
 radical closed the impressive scene by reading the 
 prayer of Joseph Gerrald. At the banquet which 
 afterwards took place, and which was presided over 
 by John Dunlop, Esq., addresses were made by 
 the president and Dr. Ritchie, and by William 
 Skirving, of Kirkaldy, son of the martyr. The 
 Complete Suffrage Association of Edinburgh, to 
 the number of five hundred, walked in procession 
 to Calton Hill, and in the open air proclaimed un- 
 molested the very principles for which the martyrs 
 of the past century had suffered. 
 
 The account of this tribute to the memory of de- 
 parted worth cannot fail to awaken in generous 
 hearts emotions of gratitude towards Him who has 
 thus signally vindicated His truth, showing that the 
 triumph of the oppressor is but for a season, and
 
 424 HISTORICAL PAPERS 
 
 that even in this world a lie cannot live forever. 
 Well and truly did George Fox say in his last days, 
 " The truth is above all" 
 
 Will it be said, however, that this tribute comes 
 too late ; that it cannot solace those brave hearts 
 which, slowly broken by the long agony of colonial 
 servitude, are now cold in strange graves ? It is, 
 indeed, a striking illustration of the truth that he 
 who would benefit his fellow-man must " walk by 
 faith," sowing his seed in the morning, and in the 
 evening withholding not his hand ; knowing only 
 this, that in God's good time the harvest shall 
 spring up and ripen, if not for himself, yet for oth- 
 ers, who, as they bind the full sheaves and gather 
 in the heavy clusters, may perchance remember 
 him with gratitude and set up stones of memorial 
 on the fields of his toil and sacrifices. We may 
 regret that in this stage of the spirit's life the sin- 
 cere and self-denying worker is not always per- 
 mitted to partake of the fruits of his toil or receive 
 the honors of a benefactor. We hear his good evil 
 spoken of, and his noblest sacrifices counted as 
 naught ; we see him not only assailed by the wicked, 
 but discountenanced and shunned by the timidly 
 good, followed on his hot and dusty pathway by 
 the execrations of the hounding mob and the con- 
 temptuous pity of the worldly wise and prudent ; 
 and when at last the horizon of Time shuts down 
 between him and ourselves, and the places which 
 have known him know him no more forever, we are 
 almost ready to say with the regal voluptuary of 
 old, " This also is vanity and a great evil ; for 
 what hath a man of all his labor and of the vexa-
 
 THE SCOTTISH REFORMERS 425 
 
 tion of his heart wherein he hath labored under the 
 sun ? " But is this the end ? Has God's universe 
 no wider limits than the circle of the blue wall 
 which shuts in our nestling-place ? Has life's in- 
 fancy only been provided for, and beyond this 
 poor nursery-chamber of Time is there no play- 
 ground for the soul's youth, no broad fields for its 
 manhood ? Perchance, could we but lift the cur- 
 tains of the narrow pinfold wherein we dwell, we 
 might see that our poor friend and brother whose 
 fate we have thus deplored has by no means lost 
 the reward of his labors, but that in new fields of 
 duty he is cheered even by the tardy recognition 
 of the value of his services in the old. The con- 
 tinuity of life is never broken ; the river flows on- 
 ward and is lost to our sight, but under its new 
 horizon it carries the same waters which it gathered 
 under ours, and its unseen valleys are made glad 
 by the offerings which are borne down to them 
 from the past, flowers, perchance, the germs of 
 which its own waves had planted on the banks of 
 Time. Who shall say that the mournful and re- 
 pentant love with which the benefactors of our 
 race are at length regarded may not be to them, in 
 their new condition of being, sweet and grateful as 
 the perfume of long-forgotten flowers, or that our 
 harvest-hymns of rejoicing may not reach the ears 
 of those who in weakness and suffering scattered 
 the seeds of blessing ? 
 
 The history of the Edinburgh reformers is no 
 new one ; it is that of all who seek to benefit their 
 age by rebuking its popular crimes and exposing 
 its cherished errors. The truths which they told
 
 426 HISTORICAL PAPERS 
 
 were not believed, and for that very reason were 
 the more needed ; for it is evermore the case that 
 the right word when first uttered is an unpopular 
 and denied one. Hence he who undertakes to 
 tread the thorny pathway of reform who, smit- 
 ten with the love of truth and justice, or indignant 
 in view of wrong and insolent oppression, is rashly 
 inclined to throw himself at once into that great 
 conflict which the Persian seer not untruly repre- 
 sented as a war between light and darkness 
 would do well to count the cost in the outset. If 
 he can live for Truth alone, and, cut off from the 
 general sympathy, regard her service as its " own 
 exceeding great reward ; " if he can bear to be 
 counted a fanatic and crazy visionary ; if, in all 
 good nature, he is ready to receive from the very 
 objects of his solicitude abuse and obloquy in re- 
 turn for disinterested and self-sacrificing efforts 
 for their welfare ; if, with his purest motives mis- 
 understood and his best actions perverted and dis- 
 torted into crimes, he can still hold on his way 
 and patiently abide the hour when " the whirligig 
 of Time shall bring about its revenges ; " if, on 
 the whole, he is prepared to be looked upon as a 
 sort of moral outlaw or social heretic, under good 
 society's interdict of food and fire ; and if he is 
 well assured that he can, through all this, preserve 
 his cheerfulness and faith in man, let him gird 
 up his loins and go forward in God's name. He 
 is fitted for his vocation ; he has watched all night 
 by his armor. Whatever his trial may be, he is 
 prepared; he may even be happily disappointed 
 in respect to it ; flowers of unexpected refreshing
 
 THE SCOTTISH REFORMERS 427 
 
 may overhang the hedges of his strait and narrow 
 way ; but it remains to be true that he who serves 
 his contemporaries in faithfulness and sincerity 
 must expect no wages from their gratitude ; for, as 
 has been well said, there is, after all, but one way 
 of doing the world good, and unhappily that way 
 the world does not like ; for it consists in telling it 
 the very thing which it does not wish to hear. 
 
 Unhappily, in the case of the reformer, his most 
 dangerous foes are those of his own household. 
 True, the world's garden has become a desert and 
 needs renovation ; but is his own little nook weed- 
 less ? Sin abounds without ; but is his own heart 
 pure ? While smiting down the giants and drag- 
 ons which beset the outward world, are there no 
 evil guests sitting by his own hearth-stone ? Am- 
 bition, envy, self-righteousness, impatience, dogma- 
 tism, and pride of opinion stand at his door-way 
 ready to enter whenever he leaves it unguarded. 
 Then, too, there is no small danger of failing to dis- 
 criminate between a rational philanthropy, with 
 its adaptation of means to ends, and that spiritual 
 knight-errantry which undertakes the champion- 
 ship of every novel project of reform, scouring the 
 world in search of distressed schemes held in du- 
 rance by common sense and vagaries happily spell- 
 bound by ridicule. He must learn that, although 
 the most needful truth may be unpopular, it does 
 not follow that unpopularity is a proof of the truth 
 of his doctrines or the expediency of his measures. 
 He must have the liberality to admit that it is 
 barely possible for the public on some points to be 
 right and himself wrong, and that the blessing in-
 
 428 HISTORICAL PAPERS 
 
 yoked upon those who suffer for righteousness is 
 not available to such as court persecution and in- 
 vite contempt ; for folly has its martyrs as well as 
 wisdom ; and he who has nothing better to show of 
 himself than the scars and bruises which the popu- 
 lar foot has left upon him is not even sure of win- 
 ning the honors of martyrdom as some compensa- 
 tion for the loss of dignity and self-respect involved 
 in the exhibition of its pains. To the reformer, in 
 an especial manner, comes home the truth that 
 whoso ruleth his own spirit is greater than he who 
 taketh a city. Patience, hope, charity, watchful- 
 ness unto prayer, how needful are all these to 
 his success ! Without them he is in danger of in- 
 gloriously giving up his contest with error and 
 prejudice at the first repulse ; or, with that spiteful 
 philanthropy which we sometimes witness, taking 
 a sick world by the nose, like a spoiled child, and 
 endeavoring to force down its throat the long-re- 
 jected nostrums prepared for its relief. 
 
 What then ? Shall we, in view of these things, 
 call back young, generous spirits just entering upon 
 the perilous pathway ? God forbid ! Welcome, 
 thrice welcome, rather. Let them go forward, not 
 unwarned of the dangers nor unreminded of the 
 pleasures which belong to the service of humanity. 
 Great is the consciousness of right. Sweet is the 
 answer of a good conscience. He who pays his 
 whole-hearted homage to truth and duty, who 
 swears his lifelong fealty on their altars, and rises 
 up a Nazarite consecrated to their holy service, 
 is not without his solace and enjoyment when, to 
 the eyes of others, he seems the most lonely and
 
 THE SCOTTISH REFORMERS 429 
 
 miserable. He breathes an atmosphere which the 
 multitude know not of ; "a serene heaven which 
 they cannot discern rests over him, glorious in its 
 purity and stillness." Nor is he altogether without 
 kindly human sympathies. All generous and ear- 
 nest hearts which are brought in contact with his 
 own beat evenly with it. All that is good, and 
 truthful, and lovely in man, whenever and wherever 
 it truly recognizes him, must sooner or later 
 acknowledge his claim to love and reverence. His 
 faith overcomes all things. The future unrolls 
 itself before him, with its waving harvest-fields 
 springing up from the seed he is scattering ; and 
 he looks forward to the close of life with the calm 
 confidence of one who feels that he has not lived 
 idle and useless, but with hopeful heart and strong 
 arm has labored with God and Nature for the best. 
 And not in vain. In the economy of God, no 
 effort, however small, put forth for the right cause, 
 fails of its effect. No voice, however feeble, lifted 
 up for truth, ever dies amidst the confused noises 
 of time. Through discords of sin and sorrow, pain 
 and wrong, it rises a deathless melody, whose notes 
 of wailing are hereafter to be changed to those of 
 triumph as they blend with the great harmony of 
 a reconciled universe. The language of a transat- 
 lantic reformer to his friends is then as true as 
 it is hopeful and cheering : " Triumph is certain. 
 We have espoused no losing cause. In the body 
 we may not join our shout with the victors ; but in 
 spirit we may even now. There is but an interval 
 of time between us and the success at which we 
 aim. In all other respects the links of the chain
 
 430 HISTORICAL PAPERS 
 
 are complete. Identifying ourselves with immortal 
 and immutable principles, we share both their im- 
 mortality and immutability. The vow which unites 
 us with truth makes futurity present with us. Our 
 being resolves itself into an everlasting now. It is 
 not so correct to say that we shall be victorious as 
 that we are so. When we will in unison with the 
 supreme Mind, the characteristics of His will be- 
 come, in some sort, those of ours. What He has 
 willed is virtually done. It may take ages to un- 
 fold itself ; but the germ of its whole history is 
 wrapped up in His determination. When we make 
 His will ours, which we do when we aim at truth, 
 that upon which we are resolved is done, decided, 
 born. Life is in it. It is ; and the future is but 
 the development of its being. Ours, therefore, is 
 a perpetual triumph. Our deeds are, all of them, 
 component elements of success." 1 
 
 1 MialVs Essays ; Nonconformist, Vol. iv.
 
 THE PILGRIMS OF PLYMOUTH. 
 
 From a letter on the celebration of the 250th anniversary of 
 the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth, December 22, 1870. 
 
 No one can appreciate more highly than myself 
 the noble qualities of the men and women of the 
 Mayflower. It is not of them that I, a descend- 
 ant of the " sect called Quakers," have reason to 
 complain in the matter of persecution. A genera- 
 tion which came after them, with less piety and 
 more bigotry, is especially responsible for the little 
 unpleasantness referred to ; and the sufferers from 
 it scarcely need any present championship. They 
 certainly did not wait altogether for the revenges of 
 posterity. If they lost their ears, it is satisfactory 
 to remember that they made those of their mutila- 
 tors tingle with a rhetoric more sharp than polite. 
 
 A worthy New England deacon once described 
 a brother in the church as a very good man God- 
 ward, but rather hard man-ward. It cannot be 
 denied that some very satisfactory steps have been 
 taken in the latter direction, at least, since the 
 days of the Pilgrims. Our age is tolerant of creed 
 and dogma, broader in its sympathies, more keenly 
 sensitive to temporal need, and, practically recog- 
 nizing the brotherhood of the race, wherever a cry 
 of suffering is heard its response is quick and gen- 
 erous. It has abolished slavery, and is lifting 
 woman from world-old degradation to equality
 
 432 HISTORICAL PAPERS 
 
 with man before the law. Our criminal codes no 
 longer embody the maxim of barbarism, " an eye 
 for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth," but have re- 
 gard not only for the safety of the community, but 
 to the reform and well-being of the criminal. All 
 the more, however, for this amiable tenderness do 
 we need the counterpoise of a strong sense of jus- 
 tice. With our sympathy for the wrong-doer we 
 need the old Puritan and Quaker hatred of wrong- 
 doing ; with our just tolerance of men and opinions 
 a righteous abhorrence of sin. All the more for 
 the sweet humanities and Christian liberalism 
 which, in drawing men nearer to each other, are 
 increasing the sum of social influences for good or 
 evil, we need the bracing atmosphere, healthful, if 
 austere, of the old moralities. Individual and so- 
 cial duties are quite as imperative now as when 
 they were minutely specified in statute-books and 
 enforced by penalties no longer admissible. It is 
 well that stocks, whipping-post, and ducking-stool 
 are now only matters of tradition ; but the honest 
 reprobation of vice and crime which they symbol- 
 ized should by no means perish with them. The 
 true life of a nation is in its personal morality, and 
 no excellence of constitution and laws can avail 
 much if the people lack purity and integrity. 
 Culture, art, refinement, care for our own comfort 
 and that of others, are all well, but truth, honor, 
 reverence, and fidelity to duty are indispensable. 
 
 The Pilgrims were right in affirming the para- 
 mount authority of the law of God. If they erred 
 in seeking that authoritative law, and passed over 
 the Sermon on the Mount for the stern Hebraisms
 
 THE PILGRIMS OF PLYMOUTH 433 
 
 of Moses ; if they hesitated in view of the largeness 
 of Christian liberty ; if they seemed unwilling to 
 accept the sweetness and light of the good tidings, 
 let us not forget that it was the mistake of men 
 who feared more than they dared to hope, whose 
 estimate of the exceeding awfulness of sin caused 
 them to dwell upon God's vengeance rather than 
 his compassion ; and whose dread of evil was so 
 great that, in shutting their hearts against it, they 
 sometimes shut out the good. It is well for us if 
 we have learned to listen to the sweet persuasion 
 of the Beatitudes ; but there are crises in all lives 
 which require also the emphatic " Thou shalt not " 
 ol the Decalogue which the founders wrote on the 
 gate-posts of their commonwealth. 
 
 Let us then be thankful for the assurances 
 which the last few years have afforded us that 
 
 " The Pilgrim spirit is not dead, 
 But walks in noon's broad light." 
 
 We have seen it in the faith and trust which no 
 circumstances could shake, in heroic self-sacrifice, 
 in entire consecration to duty. The fathers have 
 lived in their sons. Have we not all known the 
 Winthrops and Brewsters, the Saltonstalls and 
 Sewalls, of old times, in gubernatorial chairs, in 
 legislative halls, around winter camp-fires, in the 
 slow martyrdoms of prison and hospital ? The 
 great struggle through which we have passed has 
 taught us how much we owe to the men and 
 women of the Plymouth Colony, the noblest an- 
 cestry that ever a people looked back to with love 
 and reverence. Honor, then, to the Pilgrims 1 
 Let their memory be green forever ! 
 
 n
 
 GOVEKNOR ENDICOTT. 
 
 I AM sorry that I cannot respond in person to 
 the invitation of the Essex Institute to its com- 
 memorative festival on the 18th. I especially re- 
 gret it, because, though a member of the Society 
 of Friends, and, as such, regarding with abhorrence 
 the severe persecution of the sect under the ad- 
 ministration of Governor Endicott, I am not un- 
 mindful of the otherwise noble qualities and wor- 
 thy record of the great Puritan, whose misfortune 
 it was to live in an age which regarded religious 
 toleration as a crime. He was the victim of the 
 merciless logic of his creed. He honestly thought 
 that every convert to Quakerism became by virtue 
 of that conversion a child of perdition; and, as 
 the head of the Commonwealth, responsible for 
 the spiritual as well as temporal welfare of its in- 
 habitants, he felt it his duty to whip, banish, and 
 hang heretics to save his people from perilous 
 heresy. 
 
 The extravagance of some of the early Quakers 
 has been grossly exaggerated. Their conduct will 
 compare in this respect favorably with that of the 
 first Anabaptists and Independents; but it must 
 be admitted that many of them manifested a good 
 deal of that wild enthusiasm which has always 
 been the result of persecution and the denial of the
 
 GOVERNOR ENDICOTT 435 
 
 rights of conscience and worship. Their pertina- 
 cious defiance of laws enacted against them, and 
 their fierce denunciations of priests and magis- 
 trates, must have been particularly aggravating to 
 a man as proud and high tempered as John Endi- 
 cott. He had that free-tongued neighbor of his, 
 Edward Wharton, smartly whipped at the cart-tail 
 about once a month, but it may be questioned 
 whether the governor's ears did not suffer as much 
 under Wharton's biting sarcasm and " free speech " 
 as the latter's back did from the magisterial whip. 
 Time has proved that the Quakers had the best 
 of the controversy ; and their descendants can well 
 afford to forget and forgive an error which the 
 Puritan governor shared with the generation in 
 which he lived. 
 
 WEST OSSIPEE, N. H., 14th 9th Month, 1878.
 
 JOHN WINTHROP. 
 
 On the anniversary of his landing at Salem. 
 
 I SEE by the call of the Essex Institute that 
 some probability is suggested that I may furnish a 
 poem for the occasion of its meeting at The Wil- 
 lows on the 22d. I would be glad to make the 
 implied probability a fact, but I find it difficult to 
 put my thoughts into metrical form, and there 
 will be little need of it, as I understand a lady of 
 Essex County, who adds to her modern culture 
 and rare poetical gifts the best spirit of her Puri- 
 tan ancestry, has lent the interest of her verse to 
 the occasion. 
 
 It was a happy thought of the Institute to select 
 for its first meeting of the season the day and the 
 place of the landing of the great and good gover- 
 nor, and permit me to say, as thy father's old 
 friend, that its choice for orator, of the son of him 
 whose genius, statesmanship, and eloquence hon- 
 ored the place of his birth, has been equally happy. 
 As I look over the list of the excellent worthies of 
 the first emigrations, I find no one who, in all re- 
 spects, occupies a nobler place in the early colonial 
 history of Massachusetts than John Winthrop. 
 Like Vane and Milton, he was a gentleman as well 
 as a Puritan, a cultured and enlightened statesman
 
 JOHN W1NTHROP 437 
 
 as well as a God-fearing Christian. It was not 
 under his long and wise chief magistracy that re- 
 ligious bigotry and intolerance hung and tortured 
 their victims, and the terrible delusion oi witch- 
 craft darkened the sun at noonday over Essex. If 
 he had not quite reached the point where, to use 
 the words of Sir Thomas More, he could " hear 
 heresies talked and yet let the heretics alone," he 
 was in charity and forbearance far in advance of 
 his generation. 
 
 I am sorry that I must miss an occasion of so 
 much interest. I hope you will not lack the pres- 
 ence of the distinguished citizen who inherits the 
 best qualities of his honored ancestor, and who, as 
 a statesman, scholar, and patriot, has added new 
 lustre to the name of Winthrop. 
 
 DANVEBS, 6th Month, 19, 1880.
 
 
 A A 0002796159