A HAND-BOOK 
 
 OF 
 
 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 
 
 INTENDED FOR THE 
 
 USE OF HIGH SCHOOLS, 
 
 AS WELL AS 
 
 A COMPANION AND GUIDE FOR PRIVATE STUDENTS, 
 AND FOR GENERAL READERS. 
 
 BY 
 
 FRANCIS H. UNDERWOOD, A.M. 
 
 BOSTON : 
 LEE AND SHEPARD, PUBLISHERS. 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 LEE, SHEPARD AND DILLINGHAM. 
 
 1874. 
 
Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1872, 
 
 BY LEE AND SHEPARD, 
 In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, 
 
 
 
 Electrotyped at the Boston Stereotype Foundry, 
 No. 19 Spring Lane, 
 
TO 
 
 WILLIAM LEE, 
 
 AS A TRIBUTE TO THE INTELLIGENCE, UPRIGHTNESS, 
 
 AND LIBERALITY, MANIFESTED IN HIS 
 
 DEALINGS WITH AUTHORS, 
 
 AND 
 
 AS A RECOGNITION OF HIS CONSTANT FRIENDSHIP 
 FOR TWENTY YEARS, 
 
 ^jjig $0lunu \% 
 
 BY THE AUTHOR. 
 
 M114682 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 WHEN the first volume of the Hand-book of English 
 Literature was published, some fifteen months ago, it was 
 announced that a second volume, devoted to American au- 
 thors, was nearly ready. But though the materials had been 
 collected, the editor soon found it desirable to go over the 
 ground again more thoroughly, and to consult original edi- 
 tions in all cases where it was practicable. The labor and 
 perplexity involved in making the selections, and in furnish- 
 ing biographical and critical notices, will hardly be over-esti- 
 mated. Much of the labor led to no visible results ; as, when 
 a month's diligent reading sometimes failed to discover more 
 than one or two authors that should be represented in the 
 collection. 
 
 The rule of selection adopted, though clear as a general 
 principle, is one that admits of some latitude in application, 
 and has frequently led to results that were regretted by the 
 editor. Writers of acknowledged genius are never very 
 numerous, and it would be easy to make a small collection 
 that would be considered judicious and fair. On the other 
 hand; if it were desirable to make a new and complete cyclo- 
 
 v 
 
VI PREFACE. 
 
 paedia of our literature, the delicate choice between authors 
 of nearly equal rank would be avoided. It appeared to the 
 editor that a collection, to be useful for " high schools, private 
 students, and general readers," should be fuller than an 
 anthology, and should exhibit historically the growth of lit- 
 erature in its various departments ; but it was not considered 
 necessary to include in its pages specimens from every au- 
 thor. This Hand-book is accordingly the result of a com- 
 promise, and is believed to contain as large a quantity of 
 specimens from as large a number of leading and represen- 
 tative authors as could be printed in one convenient volume. 
 
 The age and capacity of those who are most likely to use 
 the work have been kept in mind ; and in consequence the 
 editor has printed some extracts (especially from philo- 
 sophic writers) which are not the highest specimens of the 
 powers of their authors. From similar considerations some 
 eminent metaphysicans have not been represented at all, 
 and a large proportion of humorous and entertaining arti- 
 cles has been 'chosen. 
 
 Those who expect to find this a compilation of altogether 
 fresh pieces will be disappointed. The best productions of 
 American authors are almost tediously familiar. Our litera- 
 ture is like our edifices so new that there is no chance for 
 a forgotten closet, a cobwebbed garret, or a dark, vaulted 
 cellar. There is very little here to reward the labors of the 
 literary antiquary. In England, where five centuries of accu- 
 mulations fill the libraries, the case is different, and there is 
 room for variety in strictly historical collections of prose and 
 verse. 
 
 A friend who looked over the proof sheets of this volume 
 objected to the insertion of Poe's Raven, because it had 
 
PREFACE. Vll 
 
 appeared in every previous collection, and was thoroughly 
 worn out. The conversation that followed will serve to 
 illustrate further the general principle of selection that has 
 been referred to. 
 
 Put in Socratic form, it stands thus : Is Poe an author who 
 should be included in the book? Decidedly, yes. Is he 
 distinguished in poetry or in prose? Greatly in both. First, 
 as to his poetry, is not The Raven his most striking poem ? 
 Certainly. And shall not the new generations have the best 
 poem of each author to read when it is practicable to print 
 it? I suppose they should. Is the fact, then, that readers 
 of the present generation have grown weary of its iteration 
 a reason for omitting it ? Probably not. Must it not have 
 a place in an historical compilation? Yes. Next, as to his 
 prose, what does the bulk of it consist of? Of tales, mostly 
 of a marvellous kind. Are any of them of proper length 
 for this book? They are too long. Are they separable? 
 No ; the interest is wholly in the development of the plot. 
 Are there any short episodes, either of description, of poeti- 
 cal sentiment, of human feeling, or of moral reflection, that 
 could be taken so that each could stand by itself? None 
 worth the space that would have to be taken from other 
 more estimable writers of prose. Then we shall allow The 
 Raven, and one or two minor pieces, to represent Poe? 
 Probably that will be best. 
 
 With this illustration the editor leaves the subject, and 
 prefers, as to other cases, to imitate the reticence of the 
 judge who declined to give his reasons for a decision he 
 had made, saying he knew his law was right, although his 
 reasons might be wrong. The editor would add that the 
 results here presented, including the critical estimates of 
 
Vlll PREFACE. 
 
 authors, have been the subject of careful and conscientious 
 study. 
 
 It will be noticed that a few poems are printed at the end 
 of the collection without preliminary biographical notes. 
 These are such productions as the editor was unwilling 
 to omit, but were either from authors who had not written 
 much else suited to his purpose, or from those whose 
 standing has yet to be established. 
 
 The editor has made frequent use of Duyckinck's Cyclo- 
 paedia of American Literature, Griswold's Prose Writers 
 of America, and Drake's American Biography, and other 
 collections, for dates and other matters of fact. 
 
 He desires further to acknowledge his obligations to 
 Mr. William A. Wheeler, Assistant Superintendent of the 
 Boston Public Library, for aid and advice in making re- 
 searches ; also to Mr. John S. White, Master in the Latin 
 School, and to Dr. Thomas M. Brewer, for valuable notes. 
 
 BOSTON, July 15, 1872. 
 
HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION. 
 
 THE history of literature in the United States is naturally divided 
 into three periods, corresponding with the various stages of the 
 political, commercial, and social progress of the country: i. The 
 colonial period, from the first settlements to near the middle of the 
 eighteenth century ; 2. The revolutionary period, from the first 
 awakening of the spirit of independence to the successful issue of 
 the struggle and the peaceful close of the administration of Wash- 
 ington ; and 3. The period of national development in which we are 
 now living. 
 
 For many and obvious reasons the colonial period was not favor- 
 able to literature. All the energies of the early settlers were 
 expended in felling trees, providing shelter from the elements, 
 procuring their daily food, and defending their families from the 
 savages. There was no cessation from toil, no respite from danger. 
 The grand scenery of the unbroken forests created no sentiment of 
 admiration in the minds of the colonists. They were not landscapes 
 to be mused upon in poetic reverie, but so many acres of stubborn 
 woods to be chopped down and burned. The settler found the 
 forest his enemy, as well as a shelter for his ambushed foes ; and 
 the feeling of hostility has been savagely kept up, as too many of our 
 bare, windy hills and arid plains attest. The noble rivers, fringed 
 with shrubs, through which the antlered deer pushed their way, were 
 regarded less as mirrors of Nature's beauty than as obstructions to 
 travel that required bridging. The painted warrior was not the 
 picturesque figure of woodland romance, as in the novels of later 
 days, but a demon with a torch, tomahawk, and scalping-knife. 
 
 ix 
 
X HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION. 
 
 There was little scope for the imagination, as an element of litera- 
 ture, in the midst of an all-pervading fear. The few letters sent to 
 friends in Old England, the preachers' notes for Sabbath discourses, 
 and the homely annals kept by secretaries and magistrates, were the 
 principal intellectual performances for a generation. Not that there 
 was any lack of ability and learning among the colonists. The set- 
 tlers . of Boston, in particular, had many well-educated men among 
 their number ; but only the clergy had leisure for literary culture, 
 and they were, for the most part, so much occupied with the duties 
 of their calling, that they wrote very few books of general interest. 
 It was truly a " church militant " that ruled in the infant colonies. 
 Controversy was the means and end of education. The very air 
 shivered with theological subtilty. The feet of the doubter or the 
 debater (on the wrong side) were sooner or later made acquainted 
 with the stocks, or with the lonely ways that led away'from Chris- 
 tian homes into the depths of the unpitying wilderness, or the 
 haunts of the white man's pitiless foe. 
 
 The department of dramatic literature, at that time the most pro- 
 lific of any in the language, was avoided and reprobated by the Pu- 
 ritans. The stage was regarded as unchristian, and all its literature 
 was under ban. Prose fiction had not then been created. Science 
 was but just awaking from the sleep of centuries, and the powerful 
 influence it was to exert on letters was then unsuspected. A little 
 reflection will show that these causes were sufficient to confine the 
 efforts of writers in a comparatively narrow compass. And it is 
 not to be forgotten that religion had a constant and an overwhelm- 
 ing interest, especially with educated men, so that all other topics 
 seemed trivial and barren in comparison. 
 
 Therefore let us be just to the memory of the fathers. They had 
 their task, and they accomplished it. Let us own that the very unlove- 
 liness of their temper, the severity of their discipline, and their diifain 
 of sentiment, were indispensable to the great work of founding the 
 colonies on an enduring basis ; and that if they had come here to 
 indite poems and romances, to dream of Utopias and Arcadias, and 
 to dance around Maypoles, their mention in history would have been 
 
HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION. XI 
 
 a brief one, and their place in the respect of mankind far different 
 from what it now is. 
 
 There were other influences unfavorable to the growth of litera- 
 ture, which aifected not only New England, but the other colonies 
 as well. There were few libraries, scanty means for the communi- 
 cation of ideas, and a want of literary centres. These indispensable 
 elements could come only with the accumulation of wealth, the 
 establishment of social order, and the opportunity for leisure. But 
 the greatest obstacle was in the very condition of the people as colo- 
 nists. They were Englishmen, but without a country. They had 
 left the society, traditions, and history which made them proud of 
 their lineage, and they had nothing, so far, as a substitute for these 
 sources of inspiration. 
 
 Daniel Webster, speaking of the British empire, said, " She has 
 dotted the whole surface of the globe with her possessions and mili- 
 tary posts, whose morning drum-beat following the sun, and keeping 
 company with the hours, circles the earth daily with one continuous 
 and unbroken strain of the martial airs of England." But where in 
 that majestic round will you find any English literature in any colony 
 that is still a colony, which does not depend upon the favorable 
 judgment of English critics, and derive its support from the inhab- 
 itants of the British isles ? 
 
 " Who reads an American book ? " was the scornful question that 
 was asked about us some forty years ago by Sydney Smith ; but who 
 has seen or read the literature of Montreal, Quebec, or Halifax ? 
 of Calcutta or Bombay ? of Melbourne, Cape Town, Dunedin, or 
 Hong Kong ? Whatever buds of genius appear in those distant 
 outposts of British civilization are transplanted to bloom in the 
 heart of the empire. Literature, like the vine, requires something 
 stable to cling to, and grows greenest when it adorns the structures 
 and institutions that are venerable for their antiquity or for their 
 patriotic associations. 
 
 Our early literature is interesting only to antiquarians and stu- 
 dents of church history : there were few books written in America 
 during the seventeenth century which the readers of our day, espe- 
 
Xll HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION. 
 
 cially the younger ones, would peruse, except as a task. This is set 
 down with a knowledge of the value of Winthrop's Journal and Let- 
 ters, of Bradford's History of the Plymouth Colony, of Wood's New 
 England Prospect, of Cotton Mather's laborious ecclesiastical his- 
 tory, of Ward's quaint pamphlet, and some other works, as founda- 
 tions. 
 
 The first book printed in America was the Bay Psalm Book, 
 compiled by the apostle Eliot, aided by Rev. Richard Mather 
 and Rev. Thomas Weld. The work was done by Stephen 
 Daye, in 1640, at Cambridge, on a press set up in the president's 
 house. He was remembered for his work by the government. In 
 the Records of the Colony, December, 1641, may be seen an order 
 in these words : " Stephen Daye, being the first that set upon print- 
 ing, is allowed three hundred acres of land where it may be con- 
 venient, without prejudice to any town." Not much can be said in 
 favor of the poetry of the Bay Psalm Book. The verses have but 
 little grace, and less melody. As a sample of 
 
 " The stretched metre of an antique song," 
 
 we give some lines, in vphich David bewails his desolate condition. 
 
 From Psalm Ixxxviii. 
 Thy fierce wrath over mee doth goe, 
 thy terrors they doe mee difmay, 
 Encompafle mee about they doe, 
 clofe mee together all the day. 
 Lover & friend a far thou haft 
 removed off away from mee, 
 & mine acquaintance thou haft caft 
 into darkfom obfcuritee. 
 
 From Psalm civ. 
 
 For beafts hee makes the grafle to grow, 
 herbs alfo for mans good : 
 that hee may bring out of the earth 
 what may be for their food: 
 
HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION. Xlll 
 
 Wine alfo that mans heart may glad, 
 
 & oyle their face to bright : 
 
 and bread which to the heart of man 
 
 may it fupply with might. 
 
 Gods trees are fappy : his planted 
 
 Cedars of Lebanon : 
 
 Where birds doe neft : as for the Storke, 
 
 Firres are her manfion. 
 
 The wilde Goates refuge are the hills: 
 
 rocks Conies doe inclofe. 
 
 The Moone hee hath for feafons fet, 
 
 the Sun his felting knows. 
 
 Not more than half a dozen copies of the original edition of this 
 book are known to be extant. 
 
 The Journal and Letters of Governor Winthrop are more interest- 
 ing in matter and more simple and effective in manner than any 
 works that have been preserved of this period. The Journal is at 
 once a history of the church, town, and colony. We give a short 
 specimen from his defence, made after the election of Governor 
 Thomas Dudley. 
 
 " The great questions that have troubled the country, are about 
 the authority of the magistrates and the liberty of the people. It is 
 yourselves that have called us to this office, and, being called by 
 you, we have our authority from God, in the way of an ordinance, 
 such as hath the image of God eminently stamped upon it, the con- 
 tempt and violation whereof hath been vindicated with examples of 
 divine vengeance. I entreat you to consider, that when you choose 
 magistrates, you take them from among yourselves, men subject to 
 like passions as you are. Therefore when you see infirmities in us, 
 you should reflect upon your own, and that would make you bear 
 the more with us, and not be severe censurers of the failings of your 
 magistrates when you have continual experience of the like infirmi- 
 ties in yourselves and others." 
 
 His letters contain many beautiful passages. We print an extract 
 from his farewell to his wife, when about starting to this country. 
 
 " It goeth very near my heart to leave thee ; but I know to whom 
 I have committed thee, even to him who loves thee much better than 
 
XIV HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION. 
 
 any husband can, who hath taken account of the hairs of thy head, 
 and puts all thy tears in his bottle, who can, and (if it be for his 
 glory) will, bring us together again with peace and comfort. O, how 
 it refresheth my heart to think that I shall yet again see thy sweet 
 face in the land of the living ! that lovely countenance that I have 
 so much delighted in and beheld with so great content. . . . 
 Yet if all these hopes should fail, blessed be our God that we are 
 assured we shall meet one day, if not as husband and wife, yet in a 
 better condition. Let that stay and comfort thy heart. Neither can 
 the sea drown thy husband, nor enemies destroy, nor any adversity 
 deprive thee of thy husband or children. Therefore I will only take 
 thee now and my sweet children in mine arms, and kiss and embrace 
 you all, and so leave you with my God. Farewell ! farewell ! 
 
 The " Simple Cobler of Aggawam," by the Rev. Nathaniel Ward, 
 of Ipswich, written in 1645, and printed in London in 1647, is a pro- 
 duction very characteristic of the times. It contains a satire upon 
 the prevailing extravagance of women's dress (a theme not wholly 
 obsolete yet), a furious attack upon the toleration of theological 
 errors, some counsel to the English people upon the civil war then 
 beginning, two or three vigorous and sensible letters to King 
 Charles I., and various shots at the Baptists and lesser sectaries 
 that disturbed the serenity of the colony. This is a sentence of his 
 upon allowing freedom of religious opinions : 
 
 " I dare averre that God doth no where in his word tolerate Chris- 
 tian States to give Tolerations to such adversaries of his Truth, if 
 they have power in their hands to suppresse them." 
 
 Here is another sentence in the author's favorite style : " Truth 
 does not grow old (non senescit veritas). No man ever saw a gray 
 hair on the head or beard of any Truth, wrinkle or morphew on its 
 face ; the bed of Truth is green all the year long." 
 
 The title of the " Simple Cobler " is a misnomer, for the author 
 is neither simple nor amusing, but is painfully pedantic ; his sen- 
 tences are crammed with Latin, and he delights in barbarous words 
 of his own coining. In striving for wit he seldom gets farther than a 
 play upon words. For example, read the following : 
 
HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION. XV 
 
 " It is a more common than convenient saying, that nine Taylors 
 make a man ; it were well if nineteene could make a woman to her 
 minde : if Taylors were men indeed, well furnished but with meer 
 morall principles, they would disdain to be led about like Apes by 
 such mymick Marmosets. It is a most unworthy thing for men that 
 have bones in them to spend their lives in making fidle-cases for 
 futilous womens phansies, which are the very pettitoes of infirmity, 
 the gyblets of perquisquilian toyes." 
 
 But, in spite of all these evident blemishes, the " Simple Cobler", 
 was a vigorous writer, with a power of clear statement, and no lack 
 of forcible illustration. 
 
 One sentence of his shows that he appreciated the critic's func- 
 tion. In these days, when the bobolink is reproached because it is 
 not an eagle, it may not be amiss to quote : " It is musick to me to 
 heare every Dity speak its spirit in its apt tune ; every breast to sing 
 its proper part, and every creature to expresse itself in its naturall 
 note ; should I heare a Mouse roare like a Beare, a Cat lowgh like 
 an Oxe, or a Horse whistle like a Redbreast, it would scare 
 mee." 
 
 Mistress Anne Bradstreet, daughter of Governor Thomas Dud- 
 ley, and wife of Simon Bradstreet, secretary of the colony, wrote a 
 volume of poems that was printed in 1647, and seems to have excited 
 great admiration. Mrs. Bradstreet was a learned woman, and ap- 
 pears to have aimed at putting a compendium of what was known 
 of history, philosophy, and 'religion, into ten-syllabled verse. 
 First comes a dialogue between " the four elements " personified, 
 Earth, Air, Fire, and Water ; next, one between " the four humors " 
 in the constitution of man, Choler, Blood, Melancholy, and Phlegm. 
 Then appear " the four ages of man," " the four seasons of the 
 year," and " the four monarchies of the world " (the Assyrian, Per- 
 sian, Grecian, and Roman). New and Old England next discourse 
 together upon the civil war then arising between the king and the 
 Commons ; and then a collection of elegies and epitaphs ends the 
 book. 
 
 It would seem that some discussion had taken place, even at that 
 
XVI HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION. 
 
 early day, upon the proper sphere of woman, for Mistress Anne 
 says, 
 
 "I am obnoxious to each carping tongue 
 
 Who says my hand a needle better fits, 
 A poet's pen all scorn I should thus wrong, 
 
 For such despite they cast on Female wits : 
 If what I do prove well, it won't advance, 
 They'll say it's stoPn, or else it was by chance." 
 
 We print a few lines from " An Elegie upon that Honourable and 
 renowned Knight, Sir Philip Sidney, who was untimely slain at the 
 Siege of Zutphen, Anno 1586." 
 
 "When England did enjoy her Halsion dayes 
 Her noble Sidney wore the Crown of Bayes : 
 As well an honour to our British Land 
 As she that sway'd the scepter with her hand. 
 Mars and Minerva did in one agree, 
 Of Arms and Arts he should a pattern be, 
 Calliope with Terpsichore did sing, 
 Of Poesie and of Musick he was King. 
 
 "O, brave Achilles, I wish some Homer would * 
 Engrave in Marble with Characters of gold 
 The valiant feats thou didst on Flanders coast, 
 Which at this day fair Belgia may boast. 
 The more I say the more thy worth I stain, 
 Thy fame and praise are far beyond my strain. 
 O, Z^ttphen, Zutphen, that most fatal city, 
 Made famous by thy death, much more the pity : 
 Ah, in his blooming prime death pluckt this rose, 
 Ere he was ripe his thread cut Atropos." 
 
 It is quite needless to observe that Mrs. Bradstreet's poems are 
 rather hard reading, and that the patient gleaner will find few blos- 
 soms among all the briery sheaves. 
 
 Let us turn to a great name in New England history to Cotton 
 Mather, who above all men was an epitome of the learning, the theo- 
 logical subtilty, the political opinions, and the credulity of the 
 
 * The rhyme would seem to indicate that the sound of 1 in " would" had not then 
 wholly silent. 
 
HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION. XV11 
 
 age. His family might almost bo called Levitical, since ten mem- 
 bers of it within three generations were settled ministers of 
 the gospel in Massachusetts. He was the son of a venerated 
 clergyman, and may be said to have had his nurture and train- 
 ing in the sanctuary. His industry as a writer was amaz- 
 ing, his published works chiefly sermons and memoirs being 
 three hundred and eighty-two in number. His principal work is 
 commonly called the " Magnalia ; " its full title is " Magnalia Christi 
 Americana," the meaning of which is best expressed by a para- 
 phrase, " the great things wrought by Christ for the American 
 church." It'contains a detailed account of the settlement of the 
 New England colonies ; lives of the governors, other magistrates, 
 and clergy ; the principal events in the Indian and French wars ; a 
 treatise upon special providences, including a great number of ac- 
 counts of God's judgments by shipwreck, lightning, and sudden 
 death, and narratives of the trials for witchcraft in Salem and else- 
 where. 
 
 The general tone of the work makes a painful impression upon 
 the mind ; nor is the pervading gloom relieved by the intended 
 amenities of style. Scraps of Latin, Greek, or Hebrew sprinkle 
 nearly every page. Quotations of heathen poetry are forced into 
 unhappy association with polemical theology, in a way almost to 
 recall Virgil and his fellow Romans from the shades to claim their 
 own. And the narration, though intelligible enough, often hobbles 
 along until the reader fancies himself jolting over some of the dread- 
 ful roads that crossed the ancient wilderness. After the fashion of the 
 time he indulges in never-ending quibbles and puns. In his contro- 
 versy with Mr. Calef he must shorten his name to calf. In mentioning 
 President Oakes he hopes he will be transplanted to the heavenly 
 pasture, and he speaks of the students under him as young Druids. 
 Three clergymen came over in the same vessel, named Cotton, 
 Hooker, and Stone. Mather said the people had now something 
 for each of their three great necessities Cotton for their clothing, 
 Hooker for their fishing, and Stone for their building. He after- 
 wards calls the latter a gem, then a flinty and then a lode stone. In 
 b 
 
XV111 HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION. 
 
 the epitaph upon Francis Higginson the passer-by is admonished 
 to be of this order of Franciscans. In the life of Ralph Partridge 
 we see him hunted by Episcopal beak and claw upon the mountains 
 until he makes a flight to America. 
 
 As Cotton Mather was a man of uncommon ability and learning, 
 it is a matter of some difficulty to state the reasons why he occupies 
 a place so much lower in literary than in ecclesiastical annals. What 
 is said of him will apply, with some qualification, to other writers 
 of his time. Parables, emblems, and metaphors were the prevail- 
 ing fashion, both in England and America. To use this pictorial 
 style effectively and with taste, requires an instinctive judgment and 
 sense of the fitness of things which few men in a generation possess. 
 Speakers and writers who are in the habit of employing figurative 
 language, are apt to leave sentences with lame conclusions, because 
 it is not every illustration that can be carried out to a symmetrical 
 close. The image that rises to the mind is often like that seen by 
 the prophet in vision, of which though the countenance was golden, 
 the feet were of clay. 
 
 Michael Wigglesworth was the author of The Day of Doom, or a 
 Poetical Description of the Great and Last Judgment, with a short 
 Discourse about Eternity, and other pieces. This work was very 
 successful at the time, owing more to the subject and to the religious 
 character of the colonists than to the merit of the verses. The style 
 is rugged and tasteless, and if we should give any specimens, even 
 the best, it might be considered as tending to bring sacred things 
 into ridicule. 
 
 Wood's New England Prospect is a lively description of the coun- 
 try and its resources, written in both prose and verse. It hardly 
 belongs to our literature, as the author printed it in London in 1634, 
 after a very brief residence in the colony, and it is doubtful whether 
 he ever returned here. 
 
 There were many learned and able men among the New England 
 clergy, such as Thomas Hooker, Thomas Shepard, John Eliot, and 
 John Cotton ; but their works belong to the history of theology. 
 
 The Plymouth Colony was even less fruitful in literature than the 
 
HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION. XIX 
 
 Colony of the Bay. The latter had a very large number of graduates 
 of old Cambridge and Oxford among its magistrates and clergy. 
 But if the settlers of Plymouth were less educated, they were more 
 tolerant, charitable, and amiable. The annals of the Old Colony 
 were written by its governor, William Bradford ; later, Nathaniel 
 Morton wrote New England's Memorial, based on Bradford's His- 
 tory, and including contemporary elegies and anecdotes. Roger 
 Williams, who has the honor of being the first advocate of liberty of 
 conscience, was the author of controversial tracts only. 
 
 The peculiar genius of the Puritans seems to have attained its high- 
 est development in Jonathan Edwards, who was born in East Wind- 
 sor, Conn., in 1703, graduated at Yale College, and settled as preacher 
 in Northampton, Mass. He was an original metaphysician, equal 
 in sustained power and in clear-sightedness to any modern investi- 
 gator. His works are masterpieces of abstract reasoning, written 
 for thinkers, and are as abstruse and technical as treatises upon the 
 higher mathematics. 
 
 Thomas Hutchinson was the author of a History of Massachu- 
 setts during the period from 1620 to 1691 a very well written, and, 
 in the main, trustworthy work. It was based upon original memoirs, 
 and is regarded as an authority, but, further than that, it calls for no 
 special mention. 
 
 In any just account of our literature, the influence of Harvard 
 College must have a prominent place. Founded in 1636 as a semi- 
 nary for religious teachers, it shared the poverty of the New Eng- 
 land colonies in their day of small things ; but it grew with their 
 growth, and was ready to act its part on the larger field which 
 spread with the increase of wealth and the demand for higher cul- 
 ture. For the first century its standard of scholarship was not very 
 high, but its influence was constant and cumulative. By the end 
 of the eighteenth century there was an army of its graduates in the 
 learned professions, and every one communicated something of the 
 spirit of his alma mater to the society of his neighborhood. Later 
 came Yale, William and Mary, Princeton, and Union Colleges, all 
 centres of active influences. 
 
XX HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION. 
 
 The literary history of the Colony of Virginia does not begin until 
 a later period. The story of its discovery and early settlement was 
 written by the famous .Captain John Smith, who was not permanently 
 identified with its interests, but returned to England. A few expa- 
 triated Englishmen of a classical turn amused themselves by making 
 Latin translations, that afterwards appeared in London ; but there 
 was no printing press to strike off, no booksellers to publish, no 
 public to read or enjoy literature, in Virginia. Bancroft, under the 
 date of 1674, says, "The generation now in existence were chiefly 
 the fruit of the soil ; they were children of the woods, nurtured in 
 the freedom of the wilderness, and dwelling in lonely cottages, scat- 
 tered along the streams. No newspapers entered their houses ; no 
 printing press furnished them a book. They had no recreations but 
 such as Nature provides in her wilds, no education but such as 
 parents in the desert could give their offspring." 
 
 Elsewhere the historian mentions the boast of the governor, Sir 
 William Berkeley, that there was not a printing press in all Virginia. 
 
 In Pennsylvania there was liberty of the press, but the influence 
 of Quakerism was even less favorable to literature than Puritanism 
 had been. And, besides, there was no college like Harvard in 
 Penn's otherwise thriving colony. 
 
 In New York the mixed origin of the people, the succession of 
 conflicting governments, and other circumstances, kept back the 
 development of literature until a comparatively recent period. 
 
 With the growing discontent of the colonies, the literature of the 
 eighteenth century began to assume a new phase. Those who were 
 engaged in manufactures and commerce began to demand freedom 
 of action. The clergy, except the members of the English church, 
 were universally active in resisting the royal claims over the colo- 
 nies. The sense of wrong indited petitions to Parliament, and 
 stimulated discussion upon the duties of rulers and the rights of 
 their subjects. Slowly new theories were evolved. Some thinkers, 
 like Jefferson and Paine, had pondered over the doctrines of Rous- 
 seau and other French philosophers. Others, like Franklin, Quincy, 
 Otis, and the Adamses, had been applying the reasoning of Hamp- 
 
HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION. XXI 
 
 den and the English patriots to the case of the colonies. It was a 
 period of great intellectual activity, but of activity directed exclusively 
 to one subject. Of general literature, whether history, essay, poem, 
 or story, the country was almost barren. Besides the works of a 
 few well-known writers, and the printed sermons (of which great 
 numbers doubtless remain in country parsonages for future ex- 
 plorers), the intellectual efforts of the period were entirely ephemeral. 
 Not a line of the brilliant speeches of James Otis remains ; not a 
 syllable of the eloquence of Patrick Henry ; none of the massive 
 arguments of John Adams. The energies of men were spent in 
 action. The fancies of the poet and the arts of the rhetorician were 
 laid aside with the scholar's gown. Men lived poems, radiated elo- 
 quence, and exemplified philosophy. 
 
 The cause of liberty in America was indebted probably more to 
 Thomas Paine than to any writer of the time. His Common 
 Sense, which was published in January, 1776, says Dr. Rush, 
 "burst upon the world with an effect which has rarely been pro- 
 duced by types and paper, in any age or country." In December, 
 of the same year, when the utmost depression prevailed, the first 
 number of his Crisis appeared. The first sentence has been "famil- 
 iar in our mouths as household words " ever since : " These are the 
 times that try men's souls." This was read at the head of every 
 regiment, and revived the drooping spirits of the troops. The im- 
 partial historian must declare that liberty owes nearly as much to 
 the courageous advocacy of Paine as to the military services of 
 Washington. 
 
 Unless we feel an interest in the causes that led to the revolu- 
 tionary war, and in the arguments by which the patriotic fathers 
 upheld their action, we shall not need to dwell long on this period. 
 As in all times of excitement, ballads, songs, and versified gibes 
 were quite plenty, and those who are fond of this species of litera- 
 ture will find a collection of them in Duyckinck's Cyclopaedia. Be- 
 sides these, there were the verses of Phillis Wheatley, a negro 
 woman, sold as a slave, and educated in Bostofi, verses 
 that were remarkable considering the birth and education of 
 
XX11 HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION. 
 
 the authoress, but of little positive value to-day. There was one 
 other author who has some claims upon our consideration 
 Philip Freneau. He was an active, not to say virulent, political 
 writer, and the author of many poems. His prose works are no 
 longer interesting, and his poems have been so completely eclipsed 
 in later times that they are seldom read. The Indian Burying 
 Ground, on page 593, contains the best lines we have been able to 
 find in his poems. 
 
 Mention should be made of Alexander Wilson, the ornithologist, 
 a man of brilliant parts, devoted to his chosen pursuits, and a master 
 of a beautiful style of writing. He will always share the regard of 
 the world with his great contemporary, Audubon. 
 
 The Federalist is the name of a series of papers, written chiefly 
 by James Madison and Alexander Hamilton, upon the Constitution 
 of this country. The work is an invaluable one to lawyers and 
 statesmen, and should not be overlooked by the student of history. 
 
 The prominent novelist of the last century was Charles Brockden 
 Brown, born in Philadelphia in 1771. He was a man of unques- 
 tioned ability, and will have a place in all histories of our literature. 
 His novels, however, are formed upon the model of William God- 
 win's Caleb Williams, and, though powerful and absorbing in in- 
 terest, are at the same time repulsive to the last degree. The hero 
 is always involved in the meshes of fate, either the witness or the 
 victim of unspeakable atrocities, which no human foresight could 
 avert. The influence of such morbid productions is neither exhila- 
 rating nor improving, and for that reason we have made no extracts 
 from them in this volume, but refer the reader to the cyclopaedias. 
 
 William Clifton, born in Philadelphia in 1772, was possessed of 
 fine poetical powers, and has left many agreeable poems, which barely 
 miss excellence. In a larger collection he would be sure of a place. 
 
 There will always be a charm in the prose of Franklin ; Jefferson 
 will always have some readers, and students of history may pore 
 over the writings of a few other contemporary authors ; but our liter- 
 ature has its real beginning with BRYANT and IRVING. When 
 Thanatopsis was printed in the North American Review, and The 
 
HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION. XX111 
 
 Sketch Book was printed in New York, the day of commonplace 
 rhymes, and of dull and pedantic essayists, was done. 
 
 It is proper, however, that we should mention the names of a few 
 literary periodicals, which were published near the beginning of this 
 century. They do not contain many articles of permanent value, 
 but their influence was powerful in moulding the public taste, and in 
 preparing the way for the authors who were to follow. Among the 
 first, and by far the best, of these early magazines, was The Farmer's 
 Museum, established in Walpole, N. H., in 1793, by Isaiah Thomas 
 and David Carlisle. Among its early contributors was Joseph Den- 
 nie, a native of Boston, and a graduate of Harvard College, who in 
 1796 became the responsible editor, and who called to his aid a circle 
 of the brighest wits and best writers of the time. Royal Tyler, 
 Thomas G. Fessenden, David Everett, and Isaac Story were among 
 the corps. Dennie, among other things, wrote a series of pleasant 
 essays, entitled The Lay Preacher, which were very much admired. 
 In 1799 he removed to Philadelphia, and the next year commenced 
 a literary periodical in that city called The Port Folio, edited by 
 Oliver Olclschool. This was devoted to belles lettres and criticism, 
 and was addressed wholly to cultivated readers. It contained elab- 
 orate treatises upon the poems of Gray and others, and many of the 
 poems and epigrams printed in its columns were in French or Span- 
 ish. Thomas Moore, who was then living in the United States, con- 
 tributed original poems for its pages. Dennie died about the end 
 of the year 1811, but The Port Folio was continued under the man- 
 agement of other editors until '1827. The essays of The Lay 
 Preacher were collected in a volume published at Walpole in 1796, 
 and another edition appeared in Philadelphia in 1817 ; but the work 
 has now fallen into almost total neglect. 
 
 There was an earlier venture, the American Museum, started in 
 Philadelphia, in 1787, by Matthew Carey, an Irish emigrant. This 
 was a meritorious and useful periodical, but could hardly be styled 
 literary. It was a repository of old and new matter, chiefly designed 
 for the instruction of the people in domestic .economy and in their 
 practical duties under the new constitution. The editor, among 
 
XXIV HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION. 
 
 other things, reprinted Thomas Paine's Common Sense, Trumbull's 
 McFingal, and a rather tedious poem by David Humphreys. The 
 undertaking appears to have had the valuable aid of Benjamin 
 Franklin and of Dr. Benjamin Rush. The Museum was continued 
 until 1799. 
 
 Another magazine was published in Philadelphia from 1803 to 
 1808, conducted, with considerable ability, by the celebrated novel- 
 ist, Charles Brockden Brown. It was called The Literary Magazine 
 and American Register. In 1813 The Analectic Magazine was 
 commenced in Philadelphia, remembered chiefly as being edited by 
 Washington Irving. This was mainly a compilation from foreign 
 sources, although Irving wrote for it several able critical articles and 
 biographies of naval commanders. 
 
 Isaiah Thomas, already mentioned in connection with The Farm- 
 er's Museum, published The Massachusetts Magazine from 1789 to 
 1796. 
 
 In New York, in 1811, was published The American Review, 
 edited by Robert Walsh. This was the first quarterly established 
 in this country. It continued for two years only. 
 
 One other magazine in this period deserves mention, and that is 
 The Monthly Anthology, issued in Boston from 1803 to 1811. It 
 was founded by a club (first of the series of Mutual Admiration 
 Societies of the city) purely for the love of literature. It was con- 
 ducted without reward, and the printer was magnanimously paid by 
 the contributors. It numbered among its members Rev. William 
 Emerson, father of the essayist 'and poet, Judge William Tudor, 
 author of the Life of James Otis, Rev. William E. Channing, the 
 famous preacher and essayist, Richard H. Dana, the poet, Dr. J. C. 
 Warren, Dr. James Jackson, Dr. J. S. J. Gardiner, and others. To 
 this club Boston owes the Athenaeum Library, and Gallery. There 
 are valuable critical and didactic articles in the Anthology, but it 
 would not be considered a very brilliant magazine in our clay. We 
 give an extract from a poem by Thomas Paine (not the Thomas of 
 the Age of Reason and the Rights of Man, but a Boston Thomas, 
 who afterwards had his name changed to Robert Treat Paine, Jr., 
 
HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION. XXV 
 
 because he had not, he said, a Christian name). The poem was 
 delivered before the Phi Beta Kappa Society at Cambridge in 1797, 
 and the reviewer in the Anthology, without rating it very high, con- 
 sidered that the poem, on the whole, was the best that had been 
 written in the country at that time. 
 
 [Frcm The Ruling Passion.] 
 "To fame unknown, to happier fortune born, 
 The blythe SAVOYARD hails the peep of morn; 
 And while the fluid gold his eye surveys, 
 The hoary GLACIERS fling their diamond blaze ; 
 GENEVA'S broad lake rushes from its shores, 
 ARVE gently murmurs and the rough RHONE roars. 
 'Mid the cleft ALPS his cabin peers from high, 
 Hangs o'er the clouds and perches on the sky. 
 O'er fields of ice, across the headlong flood, 
 From cliff to cliff he bounds in fearless mood. 
 While, far beneath, a night of tempest lies, 
 Deep thunder mutters, harmless lightning flies ; 
 While far above, from battlements of snow, 
 Loud torrents tumble on the world below ; 
 On rustic reed he wakes a merrier tune 
 Than the lark warbles on the ' Ides of June.' 
 Far off let Glory's clarion shrilly swell ; 
 He loves the music of \\vspipe as well. 
 Let shouting millions crown the hero's head, 
 And PRIDE her tessellated pavement tread; 
 More happy far, this denizen of air 
 Enjoys what NATURE condescends to spare ; 
 His days are jocund, undisturbed his nights; 
 His spouse contents him, and his mule delights." 
 
 A few years later, in 1815, the North American Review was com- 
 menced. It was conducted mainly by the coterie that had main- 
 tained the Anthology. The country had become independent and 
 prosperous. Public and private libraries were doing their silent but 
 prodigious work. The tone of public sentiment was hopeful and 
 patriotic. The Review became a leader of public opinion, and pro- 
 moted the interests of learning and the development of taste. When 
 we remember that most of its early contributors have been active 
 
XXvi HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION. 
 
 men within the memory of the present generation, and that one of 
 them, Richard H. Dana, Sen., still survives with unimpaired facul- 
 ties, we shall be sensible of the short space of time in which the bulk 
 of our literature has been created. The venerable Review also sur- 
 vives, like an ancient line-of-battle ship, with a record of brilliant 
 service, and not wholly superseded by the swifter craft of modern 
 build. 
 
 Let us not be misunderstood. All the libraries and learning, all 
 the literary clubs and reviews in the world can never produce a work 
 of genius ; but they create a literary atmosphere in which genius is 
 nourished ; they attract authors and artists to literary centres ; and 
 many minds are brought through these influences to a consciousness 
 of their own powers. 
 
 As we have before mentioned, Bryant is the first of our poets, and 
 Irving of our prose writers. From the time of their appearance the 
 enumeration of our authors becomes more difficult, and we can men- 
 tion only a few conspicuous names. With all our disadvantages, 
 and in spite of the-absence of an international copyright law, our lit- 
 erary fields show abundant culture and fruit. We are inclined to 
 think that this is our Elizabethan age, and that the names of our 
 chief poets will be hereafter remembered as the constellation of 
 the nineteenth century. Bryant, Longfellow, WJiittier, Lowell, 
 Holmes, and Emerson are already classic on both sides of the 
 'Atlantic, and have their assured place in history. There are many 
 others who, if they do not eventually come into the first rank, will 
 have affectionate remembrance. Among novelists and romancers 
 the world will not forget Cooper, Hawthorne, nor Mrs. Stowe. 
 Prescott, Motley, and Parkman are secure for this age in the fields 
 of their historic labors. The classic oratory of Webster, Everett, 
 Wirt, Calhoun, and Sumner will only perish with the history of their 
 times. Future generations, we like to believe, will turn over the 
 pages of many of our brilliant essayists with the delight we feel in 
 the fancies of Lamb and Leigh Hunt. 
 
 In literature, as in life, there is an ever-moving procession. At the 
 most we can give only an instantaneous view of living writers and their 
 
HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION. XXV11 
 
 works, and before the picture can be prepared for exhibition we may 
 find the grouping and perspective all wrong. Immature geniuses 
 have begun to dwindle, and some venerable reputations to grow dim ; 
 monuments fondly thought to be more enduring than bronze have 
 begun to crumble ; the wisdom we reverenced is growing obsolete, 
 and the humor we relished has gone, like the expression from poor 
 Yorick's skull ; while new men with strange names are coming to 
 take the leading places without the least consideration for the elders 
 whom they crowd into the background. Even while we write, and 
 before the printer has done his work, new poems, new histories, and 
 new travels may be appearing, which will totally disarrange the best- 
 considered estimates of contemporary literature. Some author, 
 inconspicuous hitherto, may blaze with a new and unexpected lustre. 
 The attraction of some great genius may draw the thoughts and 
 emotions of men into new channels, and leave our present favorites 
 in hopeless neglect until the turn of the tide. 
 
 The booksellers tell us that the lifetime of books does not exceed 
 thirty years. (We do not refer to novels and tales, which the public 
 expects fresh daily, like muffins.) It will be in vain to look on their 
 shelves to-day for a volume bearing the date of 1840, unless it is one 
 of the few that have become classic, in which case it will be catalogued 
 as Vol. of the Complete Works of . If it were only the worth- 
 less books that are whelmed in oblivion, there would be some satisfac- 
 tion in the sure though slow vengeance which overtakes dulness and 
 pretension. But there are notable exceptions. The reader of this 
 volume will find on pages 378-9 several poems that are imaginative, 
 thoughtful, and delicately wrought. It will be surprising, perhaps, 
 to learn that he cannot find a copy of the volume from which they 
 were taken in any bookstore in America. There are numerous 
 instances of the same kind in this collection, well known to those 
 who have made a study of the subject, instances which furnish 
 some justification for the existence of Hand-books. 
 
 With these reflections in mind we are willing to abandon the task 
 we had proposed, of making a preliminary survey of contemporary 
 literature. It will perhaps be sufficient if we make some observa- 
 
XXviii HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION. 
 
 tions upon the character and tendencies of the current thought and 
 the prevailing style of the time. 
 
 It is obvious that our literature has to a great extent adopted the 
 thought and reflected the changing taste of the mother country. 
 Every English master has been acknowledged here as faithfully as 
 in London. A collection of our articles in chronological order, 
 whether in prose or verse, will hardly need any marginal dates, 
 since the style will enable us to fix the period to which it belongs. 
 Even to this day the independence of this country has not been 
 achieved as far as literature is concerned. Admirable works in 
 many departments have been written here, and a feeling of nation- 
 ality is beginning to penetrate literary classes ; but we have not 
 produced a half dozen authors who are not almost wholly indebted 
 to English models. All the stately, heroic lines of the provincial 
 period, as well as the poems for college anniversaries, still in vogue, 
 are so many tributes to Pope. The Lay Preacher, by Dennie, and 
 the Letters of a British Spy, by Wirt, were only heartfelt acknowl- 
 edgments to the Addisonian essayists. Wordsworth, without being 
 directly imitated (which, considering his occasional tendency to 
 prosiness, is fortunate), has strongly influenced most of our poets. 
 New York gave its homage to Byron in Willis's Lady Jane, and in 
 Halleck's Fanny, and in Marco Bozzaris ; and lately a new echo of 
 his ringing verse comes from Californian sierras. Were Tennyson 
 to claim his own laurels, many of our bards would find their brows as 
 bare as Caesar's. But this is an ungracious theme. 
 
 One thing more should be said, however ; and that is, our great 
 indebtedness to English scholarship seems likely to continue. 
 While education is more generally diffused in the United States, 
 conspicuous scholarship is far more frequent in England. Literary 
 labor is poorly paid in this country, unless one is willing to become 
 a buffoon, or has an alacrity in sinking to the level of " sensational " 
 writing. It is the demand for cheap books that has made the profes- 
 sion of authorship a beggarly one ; and until literature as a profes- 
 sion is remunerative, it will not retain the best minds permanently 
 in its service. The few men of genius half a dozen in a genera- 
 
HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION. XXIX 
 
 tion will write because they must, and they will have their reward. 
 But the maintenance of a national literature requires the cooperation 
 of a great body of men of talent, and these are left to starve in this 
 country in the present state of affairs. As long as the results of an 
 English scholar's labor can be imported and used without payment, 
 the American scholar can find no market in his own country. Two 
 thirds of all our reviewing, condensing, translating, and other literary 
 work, are done for us in England. This transfers the power and 
 influence also. We shall some time learn that if we are ever to have 
 a national literature we must make the condition of a professional 
 literary class comfortable and honorable by providing that an author's 
 property in his works shall be acknowledged and guarantied between 
 the nations. 
 
 The progress of events has greatly changed the character of mod- 
 ern literature. The great discoveries in physical science have not 
 only given birth to an immense number of special treatises, but have 
 affected our thinking, supplied us with new words for the new ideas, 
 and furnished illustrations for philosophers and poets. Our essay- 
 ists, preachers, and lecturers have resources at hand which the 
 fathers of our literature had never dreamed of. And while investi- 
 gation has been silently pointing out the errors of the past, and 
 building our knowledge on sure foundations, the experiments of nat- 
 ural philosophers, as in spectrum-analysis, for instance, and the 
 observations of astronomers, have been de-magnetizing our common 
 figures of speech (once suited to the world's childhood) and raising our 
 conceptions of the grandeur of the universe. The mind deals with 
 vaster measures of space and time, and man has thereby grown in 
 intellectual and moral stature. And as thought has expanded, so 
 language, the instrument of thought, or rather its body, has had a 
 corresponding development. Whoever shall write a great poem 
 hereafter will have at his hand virtually a new and living vocabulary. 
 The reenforced and perfected language, like an armory of burnished 
 weapons, old and new, waits for the master, who can display its 
 accumulated stores. 
 
 Another influence, which is slowly but powerfully affecting our 
 
XXX HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION. 
 
 literature, is the doctrine of equality in political affairs and economic 
 relations. The point of separation between us and the English peo- 
 ple is where democracy and Christianity meet in asserting the rights 
 of man as man against prescription and the accidents of birth. As 
 long as we are loyal to the ideas on which our government rests, 
 the ideas which alone give us an individuality among nations, which 
 have cast out slavery and left the republic firm, and which are to 
 overthrow all other intrenched privileges of special classes, we can 
 look forward hopefully to the development of a national character, 
 and of a national literature in harmony with it. . 
 
 A change in the observer's point of view is a very important fact. 
 And it is clear that if the experiment of free government is to be 
 permanently successful, much of the history as well as the political 
 and moral philosophy of the world must be re-written for us. It is 
 one thing that the issue of a battle shall bring a nation of peasants, 
 united and content, to the foot of one man exalted on a throne, and 
 quite another that the same people shall gain by their own swords 
 the right to be greatly free, to be educated for their responsibilities, 
 and .to enter upon the illimitable career of progress. The beliefs of 
 the historian and the faith of the bard will color, if not wholly con- 
 trol, their accounts of such a struggle and their celebration of the 
 victory. We have therefore a right to expect from our 'authors that 
 they shall be animated by a spirit in harmony with our national 
 ideas, and by a faith in the future of our institutions. Without this, 
 there is not even a beginning for a national literature. Kings and 
 courts may interest us like mediaeval castles, but the philosophical 
 American will think more of his forty million fellow sovereigns, and 
 of the influences which are to make them fit rulers over themselves. 
 In this view the ideal historian is not only an impartial observer, but 
 a believer in humanity, and in the perfectibility of institutions for 
 humanity's sake. History will be the record of the progress of 
 ideas, of the gradual elimination of error and wrong, and so a proph- 
 ecy of ultimate justice and tranquillity. 
 
 In looking over the body of modern literature we notice the 
 absence of dramatic works. A little over two hundred years ago the 
 
HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION. XXXI 
 
 noblest poetry, the profoundest views of life, the wisest maxims of 
 statesmanship, as well as ihe most masterly studies of character, 
 were to be found in plays. The theatre degenerated as education be- 
 came more general, and poetry was gradually superseded by prose in 
 dramatic literature. The last classical plays were Talfourd's, unless 
 we except Lord Lytton's Richelieu ; and The Lady of Lyons was about 
 the last of the sentimental class. Plays are still written by scholars ; 
 the plays of Epes Sargent, George H. Boker, and of George H. Cal- 
 vert, in this country, are admirable compositions. But acting dramas 
 are no longer a part of literature. A new Shakespeare could not get a 
 play represented on the modern stage unless it were a melodrama or 
 a burlesque. Even then, the manager at the first rehearsal would 
 cut out every speech on which the dramatist prided himself, every 
 gem of sentiment and epigrammatic turn, every flower of song. " To 
 be or not to be," " What a piece of work is man ! " " Hark ! the lark 
 at heaven's gate sings," " All the world's a stage," would be found 
 as so many scraps of paper in the waste-basket. A play, being no 
 longer a literary work, is " reduced," as in fractions, " to its lowest 
 terms." Action is the thing ; and as a ship of war that had before 
 moved on in beauty, a stately pile of canvas towers, now, when the 
 snemy nears, takes in her light sails, sends down her slender spars, 
 and strips to fighting trim, so the serious play, to suit the impatient 
 temper of audiences, is shorn of its graces and its fine sentiments, 
 and is made a mere exhibition of the conflict of human passions in 
 their most tumultuous form. The most inveterate of play-goers may 
 be safely challenged to repeat a single line from any modern work 
 that has delighted him. He may recall an attitude or a tableau, but 
 not a sentence worth remembering. 
 Once, for the pensive Milton, 
 
 "gorgeous Tragedy 
 In sceptred pall came sweeping by ; " 
 
 now, it is an infuriated being with skirts and sleeves tucked up, rush- 
 ing across the stage and brandishing a butcher's knife. 
 
 The novel has gained in character and influence as much as the 
 drama has lost. The demand for entertainment seems rather to 
 
XXX11 HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION. 
 
 have grown with the world's growth, until now it is certain that the 
 genius of our century has found its highest expression in prose fic- 
 tion. The novel, as well as literature in general, has shared in the 
 increased refinement of manners and elevation of moral tone. It is 
 no longer true that the better class of novels minister to impure 
 tastes, or are calculated to give false views of life. Public sentiment 
 will not tolerate any work that is not free from immoral tendencies ; 
 and although multitudes of weak and frivolous novels, and a great 
 many of questionable tendencies, still find readers, yet the current is 
 daily stronger in favor of those works in which purity of character 
 and noble aims in life are inculcated. 
 
 Rightly viewed, the ideal novel is a creation of a high order. The 
 opportunity it offers to a man of genius is practically without limit. 
 So long as the author can hold his readers by their interest in the 
 unfolding of his story, he can give time to studies of character, to 
 lively sketches of manners, to historical scenes, or to discussions 
 upon letters, philosophy, or art. Some of the most brilliant and 
 suggestive writing of our times, worthy of the first essayists and 
 thinkers, may be found interspersed in the pages of modern novels.* 
 The authors of these works naturally represent all shades of opin- 
 ions ; the various religious sects as well as the schools of philosophy 
 and politics have all pressed fiction into their service. But we can 
 learn the character and doctrinal drift of such works through the 
 newspapers and reviews, and can then make choice of such fiction 
 for our entertainment as will be in harmony with our settled convic- 
 tions, and can advise the young and inexperienced to avoid those 
 which are calculated to disseminate false principles or low views of 
 duty. It is true in this department of literature as in the arena of 
 philosophic controversy, that error can be safely tolerated as long as 
 truth is left free to combat it. 
 
 The judicious public will not understand us as approving the indis- 
 criminate and continual reading of novels to which so many young 
 people are addicted. Used at proper intervals, and only for relaxa- 
 
 * The reader is referred to the admirable work on Books and Reading, by President 
 Noah Porter, of Yale College. 
 
HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION. XXX111 
 
 tion and amusement, a well-written and high-toned novel, especially 
 of the historical kind, has a most favorable influence upon the facul- 
 ties restoring elasticity and freshness after study, filling the mind 
 with noble images, tending to the improvement of the taste, and aid- 
 ing in the acquirement of a fluent and effective style, both in writing 
 and speaking. 
 
 It is too soon yet to characterize the style and to apprehend clearly 
 the tendencies of our time. We can say in general that what is 
 truly excellent, and is likely to endure, is so from its basis of thought 
 and from its accord with the immutable laws of nature and of man. 
 If we are sure of anything, it is that the popularity which is estab- 
 lis.hed upon a trick of expression, or an insincerity of any kind, is 
 short lived. The world has done with imaginary woes, and with 
 fictitious sentiment of all hues, from blue to rosy. That life is real 
 and earnest is as true in the domain of imagination as in the world 
 of fact. Among our younger writers, and in certain periodicals, the 
 prevailing tendencies are not altogether healthy. There is still an 
 impression among many readers that sentences made up of hints 
 and suggestions ; sentences stuck over with pet epithets, until they 
 have an enamelled look ; sentences that are constructed with a view 
 to make the thought stammer and hesitate, are models of good 
 taste. It is especially true in Boston, and perhaps in other cities, 
 that there is a tendency, common to literary, pictorial, and musical 
 art, as well as in the manners and speech of " society," which con- 
 trols the taste and shapes the productions of the time. This is the 
 influence which makes a goose waddling under a scraggy willow (by 
 a French brook) a better subject for a landscape painter than the 
 Domes of the Yo Semite. This is the spirit which pronounces any 
 direct and manly utterance vulgar, and prefers the etching in of a 
 thought by some soft-voiced stammerer. The writer of this school 
 is praised for his " delicate " traits of style, even though there may 
 be scarcely a ripple of mirth, and never a gleam of wit on the 
 placid stream of his prose. 
 
 This is the spirit which has made the art criticism of many 
 of the newspapers contemptible ; which induces young authors 
 c 
 
XXXIV HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION. 
 
 to strive for conceits, prettinesses, and affectations, and to con- 
 sider a sentence beautiful only when, as Turner said of Guide's 
 Mater Dolorosa, it is "polished to inanity." This is the spirit 
 which in music prefers the nice form of expression to the thought 
 itself; which sets the technical proficiency of the player and singer 
 above the God-given feeling by virtue of which they are artists 
 at all. 
 
 Traits of this kind are among the surest signs of intellectual 
 decay. The student of English literature ought to be warned that 
 not all the authors in a Hand-book are models for imitation ; that 
 extraneous characteristics of style are peculiar to each author, and 
 cannot be put on by another like a second-hand garment ; that 
 solid thought and unaffected feeling are the things chiefly val- 
 uable in any literary composition, and that graces of manner, like 
 those of the person, are most winning when unconsciously worn. 
 
LIST OF WRITERS 
 
 IN VARIOUS DEPARTMENTS OF LITERATURE, NOT INCLUDED IN 
 THIS COLLECTION. 
 
 ABBOTT, JACOB Author of Juvenile Miscel. Works. . . 1803- 
 
 ABBOTT, JOHN S. C Historian 1805- 
 
 ADAMS, CHARLES FRANCIS Statesman and Diplomatist 1807- 
 
 ADAMS, CHARLES FRANCIS, JR. . . . Political and Miscellaneous Writer. . . 
 
 ADAMS, HANNAH Historian of the Jews 1755-1831 
 
 ADAMS, JOHN Poet 1704-1740 
 
 ADAMS, NEHEMIAH Theologian 1806- 
 
 ADAMS, SAMUEL Political Writer 1722-1803 
 
 ADAMS, WM. T. (Oliver Optic). . . Tales and Travels 1822- 
 
 AGASSIZ, Louis Geologist and Naturalist 1807- 
 
 AINSLEE, HEW Poet 1792- 
 
 ALCOTT. AMOS BRONSON Philosopher . . 1799- 
 
 ALCOTT, LOUISA M Author of Tales and Sketches 
 
 ALCOTT, WILLIAM A Writer upon Hygiene 1798-1859 
 
 ALDRICH, JAMES Poet 1810-1856 
 
 ALEXANDER, ARCHIBALD Theologian 1772-1851 
 
 ALEXANDER, JAMES WADDELL. . . . Theologian 1804-1859 
 
 ALEXANDER, JOSEPH A Theologian. 1809-1860 
 
 ALEXANDER, STEPHEN Astronomer 1806- 
 
 ALGER, WILLIAM R Theologian 1822- 
 
 ALLEN, JOSEPH H Theological and Miscellaneous Writer % . 1812- 
 
 ALLEN, WILLIAM Author of Biographical Dictionary. . . 1784-1868 
 
 ALLIBONE, S. AUSTIN Bibliographer 1816- 
 
 ALSOP, RICHARD Poet 1761-1815 
 
 AMORY, THOMAS C Biographer and Miscellaneous Writer. . 
 
 ANGELL, GEORGE T. . . Jurist 
 
 ANTHON, CHARLES Editor of Classics. 1797-1867 
 
 ANTHON. JOHN Jurist 1784-1863 
 
 ARMSTRONG, JOHN Historian and Biographer 1758-1843 
 
 ARNOLD, GEORGE Poet -1865 
 
 ARTHUR, TIMOTHYS Author of Tales, &c 1809- 
 
 AUSTIN, WILLIAM Essayist and Miscellaneous Writer. . . 1778-1841 
 
 BACHE. ALEXANDER DALLAS. . . . Physicist 1806-1867 
 
 BACHE, FRANKLIN Medical and Scientific Writer 1792-1864 
 
 BAIRD, ROBERT Theologian 1798-1863 
 
 BAKER, GEORGE M. Dramatist 1832- 
 
 BALDWIN, JOHN D Historical Writer 1810- 
 
 BALLOU, HOSEA Theologian 1771-1852 
 
 XXXV 
 
XXXVI LIST OF WRITERS. 
 
 BALLOU, MATURIN M Miscellaneous Writer. 1822- 
 
 BANCROFT, AARON Theologian and Annalist 1755-1839 
 
 BARBER, JOHN W Historian 1798- 
 
 BARNARD, HENRY Writer on Education 1811- 
 
 BARNARD, JONATHAN G Writer on Military Science 1815- 
 
 BARNES, ALBERT Theologian 1798-1870 
 
 BARTLETT, JOHN RUSSELL. Philologist 1805- 
 
 BARTLETT, JOSEPH Poet and Satirist 1762-1827 
 
 BARTOL, CYRUS A Theologian 1813- 
 
 BARRY, JOHN S Historian of Massachusetts 1802-1870 
 
 BARTRAM, WILLIAM Traveller 1739-1823 
 
 BEDELL, GEORGE T Theologian 1793-1834 
 
 BEECHER, CATHERINE E Miscellaneous Writer 1800- 
 
 BEECHER, CHARLES Theologian 1810- 
 
 BEECHER, EDWARD Theologian. 1804- 
 
 BEECHER, LYMAN Theologian 1775-1863 
 
 BELKNAP, JEREMY Theologian, and Hist, of New Hamp. . 1744-1798 
 
 BELLAMY, JOSEPH Theologian 1719-1790 
 
 BENJAMIN. PARK Journalist and Poet 1309-1864 
 
 BENTON, THOMAS H Annalist and Political Writer 1782-1853 
 
 BETHUNE, GEORGE W Theological and Miscellaneous Writer. . 1805- 
 
 BIGELOW, JACOB Medical and Miscellaneous Writer. . . 1787- 
 
 BIGELOW, JOHN Journalist 1817- 
 
 BIGLOW, WILLIAM Poet and Journalist 1773-1844 
 
 BLAIR, JAMES. Theologian 1660-1743 
 
 BLEECKER, ANN ELIZA- Poet 1752-1783 
 
 BONAPARTE, CHARLES LUCIEN. . . . Ornithologist 1803-1857 
 
 BOOTH, MARY L Translator. , 1831- 
 
 BOTTA, ANNE C. (LYNCH) Poet 
 
 BOWDITCH, NATHANIEL. Mathematician 1773-1838 
 
 BOWEN, FRANCIS Metaphysical and Historical Writer. . . 1811- 
 
 BOWLES, SAMUEL Journalist 1826- 
 
 BRACE, CHARLES L Philanthropist. 1826- 
 
 BRACKENRIDGE, HENRY M Political Writer. 1786-1871 
 
 BRACKEN-RIDGE, HUGH HENRY. . . . Poet and Satirist 1748-1816 
 
 BRADFORD, ALDEN Historian and Biographer. 1765-1843 
 
 BRADFORD, WILLIAM Annalist 1538-1657 
 
 BRADSTREET, ANNE Poet . . 1612-1672 
 
 BRAINERD, JOHN G. C Poet 1796-1828 
 
 BRECKINRIDGE, ROBERT J Theological and Miscellaneous Writer. . iSoo- 
 
 BRIGGS, CHARLES F Novelist and Miscellaneous Writer, about 1812- 
 
 BRISTED, CHARLES ASTOR Miscellaneous Writer 1820- 
 
 BROOKS, CHARLES T Poet 1813- 
 
 BROOKS, JAMES G Journalist 1801-1841 
 
 BROOKS, MARIA (GOWEN) Poet 1795-1845 
 
 BROWN, CHARLES BROCKDEN Novelist 1771-1810 
 
 BROWNE, CHAS. F. (Artemus Ward). . Humorist 1834-1867 
 
 BROWNE, JOHN Ross Traveller and Humorist 1817- 
 
 BROWNELL, H. H Poet 
 
 BUCKINGHAM, JOSEPH T Journalist 1770-1861 
 
 BUCKMINSTER, JOSEPH S Theological and Miscellaneous Writer. . 1784-1812 
 
 BULFINCH, STEPHEN G Poet and Theologian 1809-1870 
 
 BULFINCH, THOMAS Miscellaneous 1796-1867 
 
 BURLEIGH, WILLIAM H Poet. ..,,.. 1812-1871 
 
LIST OF WRITERS. XXXV11 
 
 BURRITT, ELIHU Advocate of Peace, &c. 1811- 
 
 BUSH, GEORGE. Theologian 1796-1859 
 
 BUTLER, WILLIAM ALLEN Poet and Satirist 1825- 
 
 BYLES, MATHER. Poet and Theologian 1706-1788 
 
 BYRD, WILLIAM Narrator of Expedition in Virginia. . . 1674-1744 
 
 CABOT, J. ELIOT Writer on Art 
 
 CALDWELL, CHARLES Medical and Miscellaneous Writer. . . 1772-1853 
 
 CALLEXDER, JOHN Annalist 1707-1748 
 
 CALVERT, GEORGE H Post, Dramatist, and Essayist .... 1803- 
 
 CAMPUELL, JACOB Poet 1760-1788 
 
 CANFIELD, FRANCESCA A Poet 1803-1823 
 
 CAREY, HENRY C Writer on Political Economy 1793- 
 
 CAREY, MATTHEW. Political Writer 1760-1839 
 
 CARTER, ROBERT Journalist 
 
 CARY, PHCEBE. Poet 1825-1871 
 
 CASS, LEWIS Political Writer 1782-1862 
 
 CHADBOURN, PAUL A. Philosophical and Miscellaneous Writer. 
 
 CHANNING, WILLIAM H Theological and Miscellaneous Writer. . 1810- 
 
 CHAPIX, EDWI.V H Theologian, &c. 1814- 
 
 CHASE, PHILANDER. Theological and Miscellaneous Writer. . 1775-1852 
 
 CHEEVER, GEORGE B . Theological and Miscellaneous Writer. 1807- 
 
 CHESEBRO, CAROLINE. Author of Tales, &c. 
 
 CHILD, FRANCIS J Miscellaneous Writer 
 
 CHOULES, JOHN O Miscellaneous Writer 1801-1856 
 
 CLAP, THOMAS Pres, Yale Col., Matlu and Writ on Eth. 1703-1767 
 
 CLARK, WILLIS G Ed.tor and Poet 1810-1841 
 
 CLARKE, JAMES FREEMAN Theological and Miscellaneous Writer. . iSio- 
 
 CLARKE, MCDONALD Poet 1798-1842 
 
 CLIFTON, WILLIAM Poet 1772-1799 
 
 CLINTON, DE WITT Statesman and Political Writer. .... 1769-1828 
 
 COLDEN, CADWALADER Annalist and Natural Philosopher. . . . 1688-1776 
 
 COLLYER, ROBERT Theologian 1823- 
 
 COLMAN, BENJAMIN Theologian and Poet 10 73-i747 
 
 COLMAN, HENRY Agricultural Writer. 1785-1849 
 
 COLTON, CALVIN Biographical and Miscellaneous Writer. 1789-1859 
 
 COLTON, WALTER Miscellaneous Writer. 1797-1851 
 
 COOKE, JOHN ESTEN Novelist and Biographer. 1830- 
 
 COOKE, PHILIP P Post 1816-1850 
 
 COOPER, SUSAN FENIMORE Miscellaneous Writer. 1815- 
 
 COOPSR, THOMAS. Natural Philosopher and Jurist .... 1759-1839 
 
 CONRAD, ROBERT T Dramatist 1810-1858 
 
 CONWAY, MONCURS D Miscellaneous Writer. 
 
 COTTON, JOHN Theologian 1585-1652 
 
 COXE, ARTHUR CLEVELAND Poet 1818- 
 
 COXE, TENCH Political Economist 1755-1824 
 
 COZZEN.S FREDERICK S Author of Humorous Sketches. .... 1818-1869 
 
 CRANCH, WILLIAM Jurist. 1769-1555 
 
 CREVECCEUR, HECTOR ST. JOHN. . . Author of Letters of an Am. Farmer. . 1731-1813 
 
 CROSWELL, WILLIAM Poet 1804-1851 
 
 CUMMINS, MARIA S Novelist 1827- 
 
 CURTIS, GEORGE T Jurist and Biographer 1812- 
 
 QSHING, CALEB Jurist and Diplomatist 1800- 
 
 CUTTER, GEORGE W Poet -1865 
 
XXXviii LIST OF WRITERS. 
 
 DANA, CHARLES A Journalist 1819- 
 
 DANA, JAMES D Physicist 1813- 
 
 DANB, NATHAN Jurist 1752-1835 
 
 DARLINGTON, WILLIAM Botanist 1782-1863 
 
 DAVIDSON, LUCRETIA M Poet 1808- 
 
 DAVIDSON, MARGARET M Poet 1823-1837 
 
 DAVIES, CHARLES, Mathematician 1798- 
 
 DAVIES, SAMUEL. Theologian 1723-1761 
 
 DAVIS, MATTHEW L Political Writer 1766-1850 
 
 DAVVES, RUFUS Post 1803-1859 
 
 DAY, JEREMIAH Mathematician and Metaphysician. . . 1773-1867 
 
 DEANE, CHARLES Antiquarian 1813- 
 
 DEARBORN, HENRY A. S Historical and Miscellaneous Writer. . 1783-1851 
 
 DE Bow, JAMES D. B Journalist, &c 1820 1867 
 
 DE MILLE, JAMES Novelist 
 
 DENNIE, JOSEPH Essayist i768-i8v2 
 
 DERBY, GEORGE H Humorist 1824-1861 
 
 DE VERE, MAXIMILIAN SCHELE. . . Miscellaneous Writer 1820- 
 
 DEXTER, HENRY M. Theologian 1821- 
 
 DICKINSON, ANNA E Reformer. 1842- 
 
 DICKINSON, JOHN Poliiical Writer 1732-1802 
 
 DILLON, JOHN B Historian, t , 1807- 
 
 Dix, JOHN A Orator and Miscellaneous Writer. . . . 1798- 
 
 DOWLING, JOHN Theologian 1807- 
 
 DOWNING, ANDREW J Landscape Gardener 1815-1852 
 
 DRAKE, DANIEL Medical and Historical Writer. .... 1785-1852 
 
 DRAKE, SAMUEL G Antiquarian 1798- 
 
 DRAPER, LYMAN C Annalist 1815- 
 
 DRAYTON, WILLIAM H Political Writer 1742-1779 
 
 DRINKER, ANNA (Edith May). . . . Poet. 
 
 DUFFIELD, GEORGE Theologian 1794-1868 
 
 DUGANNE, AUGUSTINE J. H Poet and Miscellaneous Writer 1823- 
 
 DUNGLISON, ROBLEY Medical Writer. ^ . . . . 1798-1869 
 
 DUNLAP, WILLIAM Poet and Dramatist 1766-1839 
 
 DUPUY, ELIZA A Tales, &c 
 
 DURIVAGE, FRANCIS A Miscellaneous Writer. 1814- 
 
 DUYCKINCK, EVERT A Ed. Cycl. Am. Lit 1816- 
 
 DUYCKINCK, GEORGE L Ed. Cycl. Am. Lit 
 
 DWIGHT, SERENO E Theologian 1786-1850 
 
 DWIGHT, THEODORE Miscellaneous Writer. 1796-1866 
 
 EDWARDS, BELA B Theologian 1802-1852 
 
 EDWARDS, JONATHAN Theologian and Metaphysician 1703-1758 
 
 EDWARDS, TRYON Theologian 1809- 
 
 EGGLESTON, EDWARD Novelist 
 
 ELDER, WILLIAM Journalist and Miscellaneous Writer. . 1809- 
 
 ELIOT, JOHN Translator of the Indian Bible 1603-1690 
 
 ELIOT, SAMUEL Historian, &c 1821- 
 
 ELLET, ELIZABETH F Novelist, &c 1818- 
 
 ELLIOTT, CHARLES Theologian 2792-1869 
 
 ELLIOTT, CHARLES W Historical Writer 1817- 
 
 ELLIOTT, STEPHEN Botanist and Miscellaneous Writer. . . 1771-1830 
 
 ELLIOTT, WILLIAM (of S. C.) Miscellaneous Writer 1788-1863 
 
 ELLIS, GEORGE E Theological and Historical Writer. . . 1814- 
 
LIST OF WRITERS. XXXIX 
 
 EMBURY, EMMA C Miscellaneous Writer. 1806-1863 
 
 ENGLAND, JOHN Theologian 1786-1842 
 
 ENGLISH, THOMAS DUNN Miscellaneous Writer. 1819- 
 
 EVANS, AUGUSTA J Novelist 1836- 
 
 EVERETT, DAVID Journalist, &c 1770-1813 
 
 EWBANK, THOMAS Writer on Mechanics 1792-1870 
 
 F AIRFIELD, SUMNER L Poet 1803-1844 
 
 FAY, THEODORE S Novelist, &c. . 1807- 
 
 FESSENDEN, THOMAS G Poet and Satirist 1771-1837 
 
 FIELD, HENRY M Miscellaneous Writer 1822- 
 
 FINNEY, CHARLES G Theologian 1792- 
 
 FLAGG, EDMUND Novelist 1815- 
 
 FLAGG, WILSON Writer on Natural History 
 
 FLANDERS, HENRY Jurist . 
 
 FLINT, AUSTIN Medical Writer. 1824- 
 
 FLINT, CHARLES L Agricultural Writer 1824- 
 
 FLINT, TIMOTHY Historian, Novelist, and Misc. Writer. . 1780-1840 
 
 FOLGER, PETER Poet 1617-1690 
 
 FOLLEN, CHARLES Theologian, &c 1796-1840 
 
 FOLLEN, ELIZA LEE Miscellaneous Writer 1787-1860 
 
 FOSTER, S.TEPHEN C Song Writer. 1826-1864 
 
 FOWLER, ORSON S Phrenologist 1809- 
 
 FRANCIS, JOHN W Medical and Miscellaneous Writer. . . 1789-1861 
 
 FRISBIE, LEVI Poet and Miscellaneous Writer 1783-1822 
 
 FROTHINGHAM, NATHANIEL L. . . . Poet and Theologian 1793-1870 
 
 FROTHINGHAM, RICHARD, JR. . . . Historian 1812- 
 
 FRY, WILLIAM H Musical and Miscellaneous Writer. . . 1815-1864 
 
 FULLER, RICHARD Theologian 1804- 
 
 FURNESS, WILLIAM H Theologian 1802- 
 
 GALLAGHER, WILLIAM D Poet 1808- 
 
 GALLATIN, ALBERT Statesman and Political Writer 1761-1849 
 
 GANNETT, EZRA S Theologian ; . . 1801-1871 
 
 GARRISON, WILLIAM L Reformer 1804- 
 
 GAYARRE, CHARLES E. A Historian 1805- 
 
 GILES, HENRY .Essayist and Critic 1809- 
 
 GILMAK, CAROLINE Poet J 794~ 
 
 GILMAN, SAMUEL Miscellaneous Writer. 1791-1858 
 
 GLOVER, CAROLINE GILMAN Poet 1823- 
 
 GODPREY, THOMAS Poet and Dramatist 1736-1763 
 
 GODKIN, EDWARD L Journalist 1831- 
 
 GOODRICH, CHAUNCEY A Theologian and Lexicographer 1790-1860 
 
 GOODRICH, FRANK B Miscellaneous Writer 1826- 
 
 GOODRICH, SAMUEL G. (Peter Parley). Juvenile and Miscellaneous Writer. . . 1793-1860 
 
 GOOKIN, DANIEL Historian of the Indians. ..*.... 1612-1687 
 
 GOULD, AUGUSTUS A Naturalist 1805-1866 
 
 GOULD, HANNAH F Poet 1789- 
 
 GRAY, ASA Botanist. ... 1810- 
 
 GRAYDON, ALEXANDER Memoirs. 1752-1818 
 
 GREELEY, HORACE Journalist 1811- 
 
 GREEN, JACOB. Physicist 1790-1841 
 
 GREEN, JOSEPH Comic Poet 1706-1780 
 
 GREENE, CHARLES GORDON. . . . Journalist 1804- 
 
Xl LIST OF WRITERS. 
 
 GREENE, WILLIAM B Writer on Finance and Metaphysics. . 
 
 GREENLEAF, SIMON Jurist 1783-1853 
 
 GREENWOOD, FRANCIS W. P Theologian 1 797-1843 
 
 GRIGSBY, HUGH BLAIR Political Writer 1806- 
 
 GRISWOLD, RUFUS W Editor of American Literature 1815-1857 
 
 GROSS, SAMUEL D Medical Writer 1805- 
 
 GUILD, CURTIS Travels 
 
 GUROWSKI, ADAM DE Political Writer 1805-1866 
 
 HACKETT, HORATIO B Theological and Miscellaneous Writer. . 1808- 
 
 HALE, NATHAN Journalist 1784-1863 
 
 HALE, SARAH J. (BUELL) Poet and Miscellaneous Writer 1790- 
 
 HALL, JAMES Author of Western Sketches, &c. . . . 1793-1868 
 
 HALL, LOUISA J Poet 1802- 
 
 HALLECK, HENRY W Writer on Military topics 1814-1872 
 
 HALPINE, CHARLES G Poet and Humorist 1829-1868 
 
 HARBAUGH, HENRY Theologian 1817-1867 
 
 HARE, ROBERT Chemist 1781-1858 
 
 HARPER, ROBERT G Political Writer 1765-1825 
 
 HARRIS, THADDEUS M Theological and Miscellaneous Writer. . 1768-1842 
 
 HARRIS, THADDEUS WILLIAM. . . . Entomologist 1795-1856 
 
 HAVEN, ALICE B Novelist 1828-1863 
 
 HAVEN, GILBERT Theologian 
 
 HAWES, JOEL Theologian 1789-1867 
 
 HAWKS, FRANCIS L Theologian, Jurist, and Miscel. Writer. 1798-1866 
 
 HAY, JOHN Poet and Miscellaneous Writer 1839- 
 
 HAYES, ISAAC I Arctic Explorer 1832- 
 
 HAYNE, PAUL H Poet 1831- 
 
 HENRY, JOSEPH Physicist 1797- 
 
 HENRY, PATRICK Orator 1736-1799 
 
 HENTZ, CAROLINE LEE. Novelist and Dramatist 1800-1856 
 
 HERBERT, HENRY WILLIAM Miscellaneous Writer. 1807-1858 
 
 HEYWOOD, J. H Theologian and Poet 
 
 HICKOK, LAURENS P Theologian and Metaphysician. .' . . . 1798- 
 
 HILL, THOMAS Theologian and Naturalist 1818- 
 
 HILLHOUSE, JAMES A Poet 1789-1841 
 
 HILLIARD, FRANCIS Jurist 1808- 
 
 HIRST, HENRY B Poet 1813- 
 
 HITCHCOCK, EDWARD Geologist and Theologian 1793-1864 
 
 HOBART, JOHN HENRY Theologian 1775-1830 
 
 HOFFMAN, DAVID Jurist and Essayist 1784-1854 
 
 HOLMES, ABIEL Theologian and Historian 1763-1837 
 
 HONEYWCOD, ST. JOHN Poet 1763-1798 
 
 HOOKER, THOMAS Theologian 1586-1647 
 
 HOOKER, HERMAN Theologian 1806-1865 
 
 HOOPER, LUCY. . .' Poet 1816-1841 
 
 HOPKINS, JOHN HENRY Theological and Miscellaneous Writer. . 1792- 
 
 HOPKINS, LEMUEL. Poet 1750-1801 
 
 HOPKINS, SAMUEL Author of a System o f Divinity 1721-1803 
 
 HOPKINSON, FRANCIS Poet and Humorist 1738-1791 
 
 HOPKINSON, JOSEPH Jurist and Poet 1770-1842 
 
 HOSACK, DAVID Medical and Miscellaneous Writer. . . 1769-1835 
 
 HOSMER, WILLIAM H. C Poet 1814- 
 
 HOYT, RALPH Poet 1810- 
 
LIST OF WRITERS. xli 
 
 HUBBARD, WILLIAM Historian 1628-1704 
 
 HUDSON, HENRY N Editor of Shakespeare 1814- 
 
 HUMPHREYS, DAVID Poet and Biographer 1752-1818 
 
 HUNT, FREEMAN. Writer upon Finance 1804-1856 
 
 HUNTINGTON, FREDERIC D Theologian 1819- 
 
 HUNTINGTON, JEDEDIAH V Poet and Novelist 1815-1862 
 
 HURLBUT, WILLIAM HENRY, .... Miscellaneous Writer 1827- 
 
 HUTCHINSON, THOMAS Historian 1711-1780 
 
 INGERSOLL, CHARLES J Historian and Political Writer 1782-1862 
 
 INGERSOLL, JOSEPH R Political Writer 1786-1868 
 
 INGRAHAM, JOSEPH H Romance Writer, &c 1809-1866 
 
 JACKSON, JAMES Medical Writer 1777-1867 
 
 JAMES, HENRY Theologian and Metaphysician 1811- 
 
 JAY, JOHN Jurist and Political Writer 1745-1829 
 
 JAY, WILLIAM Jurist and Political Writer 1789-1858 
 
 JARVES, JAMES JACKSON Writer on Art 1818- 
 
 JARVIS, SAMUEL F Theologian 1786-1851 
 
 JETER, JEREMIAH 13 Theologian 1802- 
 
 JONES, GEORGE Miscellaneous Writer 1800-1870 
 
 JONES, JAMES A Miscellaneous Writer 1790-1853 
 
 JONES, JOHN B Author of Tales and Sketches 1810- 
 
 JONES, WILLIAM A Essayist 1817- 
 
 JUDSON, EMILY (CHUBBUCK) Poet and Miscellaneous Writer. . . . 1817-1854 
 
 JUNKIN, GEORGE Theologian 1790-1868 
 
 KANE, ELISHA K Arctic Explorer. 1820-1857 
 
 KELLOGG, ELIJAH . Author of Tales, &c 
 
 KENRICK, FRANCIS P Theologian 1797-1863 
 
 KENT, JAMES Jurist 1763-1847 
 
 KETTELL, SAMUEL Miscellaneous Writer 1800-1855 
 
 KIMBALL, RICHARD B Novelist 1816- 
 
 KINGSLEY, JAMES L Miscellaneous Writer. 1778-1852 
 
 KINNEY, ELIZABETH C Poet 
 
 KINNEY, JULIA H. (SCOTT) Poet 1809-1842 
 
 KIRK, EDWARD N Theologian 1802- 
 
 KIRK, JOHN FOSTER Historian 1820- 
 
 KIRKLAND, CAROLINE M Miscellaneous Writer 1801-1864 
 
 KNAPP, FRANCIS Poet 1.672- 
 
 KNAPP, SAMUEL L Miscellaneous Writer 1783-1838 
 
 KNEELAND, SAMUEL Naturalist 1821- 
 
 KNIGHT, HENRY C Poet 1788-1835 
 
 KNIGHT, SARAH Jour, on Horseback from Bost. to N. Y. 1666-1727 
 
 KREBS, JOHN M Theologian 1804-1867 
 
 LANMAN, CHARLES Biographer jgig- 
 
 LATIMER, MARY E. (WORMELEY). . Novelist 1822- 
 
 LAWRENCE, WILLIAM B Jurist 1800- 
 
 LEA, HENRY C Historical Writer 1825- 
 
 LEDYARD, JOHN Traveller 1751-1789 
 
 LEE, ARTHUR Political Writer 1740-1792 
 
 LEE, ELIZA BUCKMINSTER Memoirs and Tales 1794- 
 
 LEE, HANNAH F Novels and Tales 1780-1865 
 
Xlli LIST OF WRITERS. 
 
 LEE, HENRY Memoirs 1756-1818 
 
 LEE, RICHARD HENRY Orator and Statesman. . . , 1732-1794 
 
 LEGGETT, WILLIAM Political Writer 1802-1840 
 
 LESLIE, ELIZA Novelist and Au. of Tales and Sketches. 1787-1856 
 
 LEWIS, ALONZO Poet 1824- 
 
 LEWIS, TAYLER Theologian 1802- 
 
 LIEBER, FRANCIS Writer on Public Law 1800- 
 
 LINN, JOHN BLAIR Poet and Miscellaneous Writer 1777-1804 
 
 LIPPINCOTT, SARA J Poet and Miscellaneous Writer 1823- 
 
 LIVERMORE, ABIEL A Theologian 1811- 
 
 LIVINGSTON, EDWARD Jurist 1764-1836 
 
 LIVINGSTON, WILLIAM Political Writer and Poet 1723-1790 
 
 LOCKE, D. R. (Nasby) Political Satirist 1833- 
 
 LOGAN, JAMES, Philosopher 1674-1751 
 
 LOOMIS, ELIAS Physicist 1830- 
 
 LOSSING, BENSON J Illustrator of History. 1813- 
 
 LOTHROP, SAMUEL K Miscellaneous Writer. 1804- 
 
 LORD, ELEAZAR Theologian 1788-1871 
 
 Low, SAMUEL Poet 1765- 
 
 LOWELL, ANNA C Miscellaneous Writer 
 
 LUDLOW, FITZHUGH Magazine Writer 1837-1870 
 
 MACILVAINE, CHARLES R Theologian 1798- 
 
 MACKENZIE, R. SHELTON Miscellaneous Writer 1809- 
 
 MACKIE, JOHN MILTON Miscellaneous Writer 1813- 
 
 MADISON, JAMES Statesman and Political Writer 1751-1813 
 
 MAHAN, DENNIS H Writer on Military Science 1802-1871 
 
 MANNING, JACOB M Theologian 
 
 MANSFIELD, EDWARD D Jurist and Miscellaneous Writer. . . . 1801- 
 
 MARSHALL, JOHN Jurist and Biographer 1755-1835 
 
 MASON, JOHN M Theologian and Pulpit Orator 1770-1829 
 
 MATHER, COTTON Theologian and Annalist. 1663-1728 
 
 MATHER, INCREASE Theologian 1639-1723 
 
 MATTHEWS, CORNELIUS Poet and Miscellaneous Writef. . . . 1817- 
 
 MAURY, MATTHEW F. ............ Physical Geographer iSoS- 
 
 MAYER, BRANTZ Traveller 1809- 
 
 MAYO, SARAH C. E Poet 1819-1848 
 
 MAYO, WILLIAM S Traveller 1812- 
 
 McCLURG, JAMES Medical and Miscellaneous Writer. . . 1747-1825 
 
 McCoRD, LOUISA S Poet 1810- 
 
 McGEE, THOMAS D'ARCY. Miscellaneous Writer 1825-1868 
 
 MclNTOSH, MARIA J Novelist 1803- 
 
 MCK.ENZIE, ALEXANDER S Traveller and Biographer 1803-1848 
 
 MCLELLAN, ISAAC, JR Poet 1810- 
 
 McMiCHAEL, MORTON Journalist 1807- 
 
 MILBURN, WILLIAM H Miscellaneous Writer 1823- 
 
 MILES, PLINY Miscellaneous Writer 1818-1865 
 
 MILLER, SAMUEL Theologian 1769-1850 
 
 MINOT, GEORGE R Historian 1758-1802 
 
 MITCHELL, ORMSBY MACK Astronomer 1810-1862 
 
 MITCHELL, SAMUEL L Writer on Natural Science.' 1764-1831 
 
 MOORE, CLEMENT C Poet and Professor of Bib. Literature. . 1779-1863 
 
 MOORE, FRANK Historical Writer, &c 1828- 
 
 MOKRIS, EDWARD JOY Travels 1815- 
 
LIST OF WRITERS. xliii 
 
 MORRIS, GoutERNEUR Political Writer 1752-1816 
 
 MORSE, JEDIDIAH Theologian, Geographer, and Annalist. 1761-1826 
 
 MORTON, NATHANIEL Annalist 1613-1685 
 
 MORTON, SAMUEL G Medical Writer 1799-1851 
 
 MORTON, SARAH W. (APTHORP). . . Poet 1759-1846 
 
 MOUNTFORD, WILLIAM Miscellaneous Writer. 1838- 
 
 MUHLENBERG, WILLIAM A Theologian and Poet about 1800- 
 
 MUNFORD, WILLIAM Poet and Dramatist, 1775-1825 
 
 MUNSELL, JOEL Annalist 1808- 
 
 MURRAY, LINDLEY Grammarian, &c 1745-1826 
 
 MURRAY, NICHOLAS Theological and Miscellaneous Writer. . 1802-1861 
 
 MURRAY, W. H. H Theological and Miscellaneous Writer. . 1840- 
 
 MYERS, P. HAMILTON Novelist 1812- 
 
 NACK, JAMES Poet 1807- 
 
 NEAL, JOSEPH C Author of Sketches 1807-1847 
 
 NEVILLE, MORGAN Journalist, &c 1786-1859 
 
 NEVIN, JOHN W Theologian 1803- 
 
 NEWCOMB, HARVEY Poet and Miscellaneous Writer. . . . 1803-1863 
 
 NEWELL, ROBERT H Poet and Miscellaneous Writer. . . . 1836- 
 
 NOAH, MORDECAI M Journalist and Dramatist 1785-1851 
 
 NOBLE, Louis L Poet and Miscellaneous Writer. . . . 1812- 
 
 NORDHOFF, CHARLES Miscellaneous Writer 1830- 
 
 NORMAN, BENJAMIN M Traveller 1809-1860 
 
 NORTON, CHARLES ELIOT Miscellaneous Writer 
 
 NORTON, JOHN Theologian 1606-1663 
 
 NOTT, ELIPHALET Theological and Miscellaneous Writer. . 1773-1866 
 
 NOTT, JOSIAH C Ethnologist 1804- 
 
 NOURSE, JAMES D Miscellaneous Writer 1816-1854 
 
 NOYES, GEORGE R Theol., Trans. Hebrew Scriptures, &c. . 1798-1868 
 
 O'BRIEN, FITZ JAMES Poet and Magazinist 1829-1862 
 
 QLIN, STEPHEN Theologian 1797-1851 
 
 OLMSTED, DENISON Astronomer 1791-1859 
 
 OLMSTED, FREDERICK LAW Traveller, and Writer on Landscape Gar. 1822- 
 
 OSBORXE, LAUGHTON Poet about 1807- 
 
 OSGOOD, FRANCES (SARGENT). . . Poet 1812-1850 
 
 OSGOOD, SAMUEL Theologian 1812- 
 
 OTIS, HARRISON GRAY Orator and Political Writer 1765-1848 
 
 OWEN, ROBERT DALE Political and Miscellaneous Writer. . . 1801- 
 
 PAINE, ROBERT TREAT, JR Poet 1773-1811 
 
 PAINE, THOMAS . . Political Writer 1737-1809 
 
 PALFREY, SARAH H Poet and Novelist 
 
 PALMER, RAY Theologian and Poet 1808- 
 
 PARKE, JOHN Translator and Poet 1750- 
 
 PARKER, JOEL Jurist and Political Writer. 1795- 
 
 PARKER, JOEL. Theologian 1799- 
 
 PARSONS, THEOPHILUS Jurist 1750-1813 
 
 PARSONS, THEOPHILUS Jurist and Theologian 1797- 
 
 PARTON, SARA P. (WILLIS) Novelist and Essayist 1811- 
 
 PEABODY, ANDREW P Theologian and Miscellaneous Writer. . 1811- 
 
 PEABODY, ELIZABETH P. ...... Miscellaneous Writer 1804- 
 
 PEABODY, OLIVER W. B Miscellaneous Writer 1799-1840 
 
xliv 
 
 LIST OF WRITERS. 
 
 PEABODY, WILLIAM B. O Miscellaneous Writer '. . 1799-1847 
 
 PEIRCE, BENJAMIN Mathematician and Astronomer. . . . 1809- 
 
 PERKINS, SAMUEL Historical Writer 1767-1850 
 
 PERRY, NORA Poat 
 
 PETERS, RICHARD Jurist 1744-1828 
 
 PETERS, SAMUKL Author of Burlesque History of Conn. . 1735-1817 
 
 PHELPS, ALMIRA H. (LINCOLN). . . . Author of Educational Works 1793- 
 
 PHELPS, ELIZABETH STUART. . . . Tales, &c 1815-1852 
 
 PHELPS, SYLVANUS DKYUEN Poet 1816- 
 
 PHILLEO, CALVIN W Novelist 1822-1858 
 
 PICKERING, HENRY Poet 1781-1838 
 
 PICKERING, JOHN Jurist and Philologist 1777-1846 
 
 PICKERING, OCTAVIUS Jurist 1792-1868 
 
 PIERCE, BRADFORD K Theological and Miscellaneous Writer. 1819- 
 
 PIKE, ALBERT Poet 1809- 
 
 PIKE, MRS. FREDERICK A Novelist 1819- 
 
 PINKNEY, WILLIAM Orator and Political Writer. 1764-1822 
 
 PISE, CHARLES CONSTANTINE. . . . Theologian and Miscellaneous Writer. 1802-1866 
 
 PLUMER, WILLIAM S Theologian 1802- 
 
 POLLARD, EDWARD A Political Writer 
 
 POND, ENOJH Theologian 1791- 
 
 POOLE, WILLIAM F Bibliographer 1821- 
 
 POORE, BENJAMIN PERLEY Journalist and Miscellaneous Writer. . 1820- 
 
 PORTER, EBENEZER Theologian 1772-1834 
 
 POTTER, ALONZO Theological and Miscellaneous Writer. 1800-1865 
 
 PRAY, ISAAC C Post and Dramatist 1813-1869 
 
 PRENTICE, GEORGE D Journalist, Wit, and Poet 1802-1870 
 
 PRESTON, WILLIAM C Orator and Political Writer 1794-1860 
 
 PRIME, SAMUEL J Theological and Miscellaneous Writer. 1812- 
 
 PRIME, WILLIAM C Traveller 1825- 
 
 PRINCE, THOMAS Annalist 1687-1758 
 
 PROCTOR, EDNA DEAN Poet and Miscellaneous Writer. . . . 
 
 PUTNAM, MARY LOWELL Historical Writer and Essayist 1810- 
 
 RAFINESQUE, CONSTANTINE S. . . . Botanist 1784-1842 
 
 RAMSAY, DAVID Historian 1749-1815 
 
 RANTOUL, ROBERT, JR Political Writer 1805-1852 
 
 RAY, ISAAC Medical Writer 1807- 
 
 REDFIELD, ISAAC F Jurist 1804- 
 
 REDPATH, JAMES. Journalist 1833- 
 
 REED, HENRY Lecturer on English Literature. . . . 1808-1854 
 
 REED, HOLLIS Theologian and Miscellaneous Writer. 1802- 
 
 REED, WILLIAM B Miscellaneous Writer 1^06- 
 
 REID, MAYNE Tales, &c 1818- 
 
 RICB, N. L Theologian 
 
 RICHARDSON, ABBY SAGB Miscellaneous Writer 
 
 RICHARDSON, ALBERT D Journalist 1833-1869 
 
 RIPLEY, GEORGE Critic, Tlieo. and Miscellaneous Writer. 1802- 
 
 RITTENHOUSE, DAVID Mathematician and Astronomer. . . . 1732-1796 
 
 RIVES, WILLIAM C Miscellaneous Writer 1793-1868 
 
 ROBINSON, EDWARD Theologian 1794-1863 
 
 ROBINSON, FAYETTE Miscellaneous Writer -1859 
 
 ROBINSON.THERESEA.L. (VON JACOB). Poet and Miscellaneous Writer. . . . 1797-1869 
 
 ROBINSON, WILLIAM S Political Writer 1818- 
 
LIST OF WRITERS. xlv 
 
 ROE, AZEL S Novelist 1798- 
 
 ROSE, AQUILA Poet 1695-1723 
 
 ROWSON, SUSANNA Novelist and Dramatist 1762-1824 
 
 RUSH, BENJAMIN Medical, Political, and Miscel. Writer. 1745-1813 
 
 SABINE, LORENZO Historian and Miscellaneous Writer. . 1803- 
 
 SANDERS, FREDERIC Miscellaneous Writer 1807- 
 
 SANDERSON, JOHN Miscellaneous Writer 1783-1844 
 
 SANDS, ROBERT C Poet . . 1799-1832 
 
 SANFORD, EDWARD Poet and Miscellaneous Writer 1805- 
 
 SARGENT, Lucius MANLIUS Author of Tales, and Miscel. Writer. . 1786-1867 
 
 SAVAGE,, JAMES Antiquarian and Annalist 1784- 
 
 SAVAGE, JOHN Poet and Journalist 1828- 
 
 SAY, THOMAS Naturalist 1787-1834 
 
 SCHAFF, PHILIP Theologian 1819- 
 
 SCHMUCKER, SAMUEL M Miscellaneous Writer 1823-1863 
 
 SCHMUCKER, SAMUEL S Theologian *799~ 
 
 SCHOOLCRA FT, HENRY Rows Author of Accounts of N. A. Indians. . 1793-1864 
 
 SCHOULER, WILLIAM Historian 
 
 SCOTT, WILLIAM A Theologian 1833- 
 
 SEARS, BARNAS Theological and Miscellaneous Writer. 1802- 
 
 SEARS, EDMUND H Theologian and Poet 1810- 
 
 SEARS, EDWARD J Critic and Essayist 
 
 SEARS, ROBERT Compiler 1810- 
 
 SECCOMB, JOHN Comic Poet 1708-1792 
 
 SEDGWICK, THEODORE Political Writer ia 1-1859 
 
 SEELVE, JULIUS H 
 
 SEWALL, JONATHAN M Poet 1745-1808 
 
 SEWARD, WILLIAM H Statesman 1801- 
 
 SHARSWOOD, GEORGE Jurist 1810- 
 
 SHAW, JOHN Poet 1778-1809 
 
 SHAW, HENRY W. (Josh Billings). . . Humorist 1818- 
 
 SHAW, LEMUEL Jurist 1781-1861 
 
 SHEDD, WILLIAM G. T Miscellaneous Writer and Theologian. . 1820- 
 
 SHELTON, FREDERICK W Miscellaneous Writer 1814- 
 
 SHEPARD, THOMAS Theologian 1605-1649 
 
 SHILLABER, BENJAMIN P Humorist 1814- 
 
 SHREVE, THOMAS H Poet and Novelist 1808-1853 
 
 SHURTLEFF, NATHANIEL B Antiquarian and Miscellaneous Writer. 1820- 
 
 SILLIMAN, BENJAMIN Physicist 1779-1864 
 
 SMITH, BUCKINGHAM Historical Writer 1810-1871 
 
 SMITH, ELIHU H Medical Writer. Dramatist, &c 1771-1798 
 
 SMITH, ELIZABETH OAKES Poet, &c 
 
 SMITH, HENRY B Theologian 1815- 
 
 SMITH, JEROME V. C Medical and Miscellaneous Writer. . . 1800- 
 
 SMITH, SAMUEL F Theologian and Poet 1808- 
 
 SMITH, SEBA Humorist 1792-1868 
 
 SMITH, WILLIAM Theologian and Miscellaneous Writer. 1726-1803 
 
 SMYTH, THOMAS Theologian 1808- 
 
 SOUTHWORTH, EMMA D. E. N. ... Novelist 1818- 
 
 SPALDING, MARTIN J Theologian 1810-1873 
 
 SPARKS, JARED Historian and Biographer 1789-1866 
 
 SPOONER, LYSANDER Political and Economic Writer 1808- 
 
 SPRAGUE, WILLIAM B Theologian 1795- 
 
xlvi LIST OF WRITERS. 
 
 SPRING, GARDINER Theologian 1785- 
 
 SQUIER, EPHRAIM G Traveller and Archaeologist 1821- 
 
 STAPLES, WILLIAM R Historical Writer 1798-1868 
 
 STAUGHTON, WILLIAM Theological and Miscellaneous Writer. 1770-1829 
 
 STEPHENS, ALEXANDER H Political Writer 1812- 
 
 STEPHENS, ANNE S Novelist and Miscellaneous Writer . . 1813- 
 
 STEPHENS, JOHN L Traveller 1805- 
 
 STEVENS, ABEL Theologian 1815- 
 
 STILES, EZRA Theologian, Biographer, &c 1727-1795 
 
 STOCKTON, THOMAS H Theologian 1808-1868 
 
 STONE, WILLIAM L Journalist and Historical Writer. . . . 1792-1844 
 
 STOKER, DAVID H Writer on Med. and Nat. Science, . . 1804- 
 
 STORRS, RICHARD S Theologian 1821- 
 
 STORY, ISAAC Poet 1774-1803 
 
 STOW, BARON Theologian, i 1801-1869 
 
 STOWE, CALVIN E Theologian 1802- 
 
 STRICKLAND, WILLIAM P Theologian 1809- 
 
 STRONG, NATHAN Theologian 1748-1816 
 
 STROTHER, COLONEL (Porte Crayon). Miscellaneous Writer. 
 
 STUART, MOSES Theologian 1780-1852 
 
 SULLIVAN, JAMES Political Writer 1744-1808 
 
 SULLIVAN, WILLIAM Political Writer 1774-1839 
 
 SUMNER, GEORGE Legal and Miscellaneous Writer. . . . 1817-1863 
 
 SWEAT, MARGARET J. M Miscellaneous Writer 1823- 
 
 SWINTON, WILLIAM Historical and Miscellaneous Writer. . 1833- 
 
 TAPPAN, WILLIAM B Poet 1794-1849 
 
 TEFFT, BENJAMIN F Miscellaneous Writer 1813- 
 
 TENNENT, GILBERT Theologian 1703-1764 
 
 TERHUNB, MARY V. (Marion Harland). Novelist 
 
 THACHER, JAMES Medical Writer and Annalist 1754-1844 
 
 THACHER, PETER Theologian and Miscellaneous Writer. 1752-1802 
 
 THATCHER, BENJAMIN B Miscellaneous Writer 1809-1846 
 
 THAYER, ALEXANDER W Musical Writer '. . . . 
 
 THOMAS, FREDERICK WILLIAM. . . . Poet and Novelist 1808-1866 
 
 THOMAS, ISAIAH Historian of Printing 1749-1831 
 
 THOMPSON, AUGUSTUS C Theological and Miscellaneous Writer. 1812- 
 
 THOMPSON, BENJ. (Count Rumford.) . Natural Philosopher 1753-1814 
 
 THOMPSON, DANIEL P Novelist 1795-1868 
 
 THOMPSON, JOHN R Journalist 1823- 
 
 THOMPSON, JOSEPH P Theological and Miscellaneous Writer. 1819- 
 
 THOMPSON, ZADOCK Naturalist 1796-1856 
 
 TICKNOR, GEORGE Historian of Spanish Literature. . . . 1791-1871 
 
 TILTON, THEODORE Poet and Journalist . . . 1835- 
 
 TODD, JOHN Theologian and Miscellaneous Writer. . 1800- 
 
 TOMES, ROBERT Miscellaneous Writer 1816- 
 
 TOMPSON, BENJAMIN Poet 1642-1714 
 
 TOWNSEND, JOHN K Miscellaneous Writer 1803-1861 
 
 TKAFTON, ADELINE Travels 
 
 TRAI.L, RUSSKLL T Medical Writer 1812- 
 
 TICESCOTT, WILLIAM H Political and Historical Writer 1822- 
 
 TRUMBULL, JAMES HAMMOND. . . . Philologist and Historian 1821- 
 
 TKUMBULL, ROBERT. Theological and Miscellaneous Writer. 1809- 
 
 TUCKER, GEORGE Miscellaneous Writer 1775-1861 
 
LIST OF WRITERS. xlvii 
 
 TUCKER, BEVERLEY N Jurist and Novelist 1784-1851 
 
 TUDOR, WILLIAM Biographer and Miscellaneous Writer. 1779-1830 
 
 TURELL, JANE COLMAN Poet 1708-1735 
 
 TURNBULL, ROBERT Theologian 1809- 
 
 TUTHILL, LOUISA C Author of Tales, &c about 1800- 
 
 TYLER, BENNETT Theologian 1783-1858 
 
 TYLER, ROYAL Jurist, Poet, and Dramatist 1757-1826 
 
 TYNG, STEPHEN H Theologian 1800- 
 
 UPHAM, CHARLES W Historian 1802- 
 
 UPHAM, THOMAS C Metaphysician 1799- 
 
 VAUX, ROBERT Philanthropist 1786-1836 
 
 VERPLANCK, GULIAN C Miscellaneous Writer. 1786-1870 
 
 VICTOR, METTA V. (FULLER). . . . Miscellaneous Writer 1831- 
 
 WAINWRIGHT, JONATHAN M Theologian 1793-1854 
 
 WALKER, AMASA Writer on Political Economy *799~ 
 
 WALKER, JAMES Theologian 1 794~ 
 
 WALLACE, HORACE B Legal and Miscellaneous Writer. . . . 1817-1852 
 
 WALLACE, WILLIAM Ross. Poet 1819- 
 
 WALSH, ROBERT Political and Miscellaneous Writer. . . 1784-1859 
 
 WARD, NATHANIEL (Seep, xiv.) 1570-1653 
 
 WARE, HENRY, JR Theologian and Poet 1794-1843 
 
 WARE, MARY (GREENE) Miscellaneous Writer 1818- 
 
 WARFIELD, CATHARINE A. Poet and Novelist 1817- 
 
 WARNER, SUSAN Novelist 1818- 
 
 WARRE.V, JOHN C Medical Writer 1778-1856 
 
 WARREN, MERCY OTIS Historian and Poet 1728-1815 
 
 WATERHOUSE, BENJAMIN Med. and Naturalist 1754-1846 
 
 WATERSTON, ROBERT C Theologian and Miscellaneous Writer. 1812- 
 
 WATSON, HENRY C Musical and Miscellaneous Writer. . . 1831- 
 
 WEBBER, CHARLES W Author of Border Romances 1819-1856 
 
 WEBSTER, NOAH Lexicographer. 1758-1843 
 
 WEED, THURLOW Journalist 1797- 
 
 WEEMS, MASON L Biographer about 1740-1825 
 
 WEISS, JOHN Theologian and Metaphysician 1818- 
 
 WELBY, AMELIA B Poet 1819-1852 
 
 WELLS, DAVID A '. . . Writer on Political Econ. and Nat. Sci. 1828- 
 
 WETMORE, PROSPER M Miscellaneous Writer. 1798- 
 
 WHARTON, FRANCIS , . Jurist 1820- 
 
 WHEATLEY, PHILLIS Poet 1753-1784 
 
 WHEATON, HENRY Writer on International Law 1785-1848 
 
 WHITE, WILLIAM Theologian, &c 1748-1836 
 
 WHITING, WILLIAM Jurist 1813- 
 
 WHITMAN, SARAH HELEN Poet 1813- 
 
 WHITNEY, ANNE Poet. 
 
 WHITNEY, WILLIAM D Philologist 1827- 
 
 WHITTLESEY, CHARLES Miscellaneous Writer 1808- 
 
 WlGGLESWORTH, MlCHAEL. ..... Poet 1631-1705 
 
 WIGHT. ORLANDO W Miscellaneous Writer 1824- 
 
 WILCOX, CARLOS Poat 1794-1827 
 
 WiLLARD, EMMA C. (HART), .... Author of Educational Works, &c. . . 1787-1870 
 
 WILLARD, SAMUEL. Theologian 1640-1707 
 
LIST OF WRITERS. 
 
 WILLIAMS, ROGER Theologian 1599-1683 
 
 WILLIAMSON, HUGH Historian of North Carolina 1735-1819 
 
 WILSON, ALEXANDER. Ornithologist 1766-1819 
 
 WILSON, HENRY Political Writer. .* 1812- 
 
 WILSON, JAMES GRANT Miscellaneous Writer 1832- 
 
 WINTER, WILLIAM Poet 1836- 
 
 WINTHROP, JOHN Annalist 1538-1649 
 
 WINTHROP, JOHN Natural Philosopher 1714-1765 
 
 WINTHROP, THEODORE. Novelist 1828-1861 
 
 WIRT, WILLIAM Orator and Biographer 1772-1834 
 
 WISE, HENRY A Author of Stories and Sketches 1819-1869 
 
 WITHERSPOON, JOHN Theologian and Political Writer. . . . 1722-1794 
 
 WOOD, ANNE Y. (WILBUR) Miscellaneous Writer 1817- 
 
 WOODBURY, LEVI Jurist and Political Writer 1789-1851 
 
 WOODS, LEONARD Theologian 1774-1854 
 
 Woo LMAN, JOHN Author of an Autobiog. Journal, &c. . 1720-1772 
 
 WORCESTER, JOSEPH E Lexicographer 1784-1865 
 
 WRIGHT, ELIZUR Political and Miscellaneous Writer. . . 1804- 
 
 WYMAN, JEFFRIES. Anatomist 1814- 
 
 YOUMANS, EDWARD L Writer on Science 1828- 
 
 YOUNG, ALEXANDER. Theological and Miscellaneous Writer. 1800-1854 
 
HAND-BOOK 
 
 OF. 
 
 AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 
 
 Benjamin Franklin was born in Boston, January 6 (O. S.), 1706. He was one of the 
 youngest of a family of seventeen children, and received but a limited common school edu- 
 cation. As he early manifested an adventurous disposition, and proposed going to sea, his 
 father bound him as an apprentice to his brother James, who was a printer. His daily 
 employment stimulated his active mind ; he became an assiduous reader, and gradually 
 acquired the power of writing. At the age of seventeen, having quarrelled with his brother, 
 he went to New York and Philadelphia in search of employment. His account of this trip 
 forms an amusing portion of his autobiography, one of the most charming works in the lan- 
 guage. After many vicissitudes he became a successful business man, and constantly grew 
 in public estimation as a philosophic inquirer, a man fertile in wise projects for the general 
 good, and endowed with the clear perceptions and sound judgment of a statesman. 
 
 His first work that attained a general popularity was " Poor Richard's Almanac," which 
 appeared in 1732, and was continued for many years. The homely proverbs which accom- 
 panied the calendars form an epitome of thrift, foresight, and worldly prudence. He learned 
 Latin and several modern languages after he was twenty-seven years old. At the age of 
 forty he commenced the researches in electricity which made his name immortal. But with 
 his active mind and liberal principles he was unable to keep out of political affairs ; and in 
 the long discussions that preceded the revolution he took a leading pan. His mission to 
 the French court, which resulted in bringing the aid of fleets and armies to his struggling 
 countrymen, and his other diplomatic successes in England and on the continent, are mat- 
 ters of history, of which no school-boy is ignorant. He lived on till 1790, the Nestor of the 
 young republic, exerting an influence upon the opinions and character of the people that is 
 without a parallel. 
 
 If his precepts may be considered as tending too much to selfishness, it must not be for- 
 gotten that labor, diligence, and economy were vitally necessary for a new country, and that 
 the accumulation of capital, no less than courage and free principles, was essential to the 
 preservation of the nation's life. Whilst we do ample justice to the wisdom, probity, and 
 beneficence of our great philosopher and statesman, we can yet recognize a higher ideal of 
 character, and we may aspire to a more complete and generous culture than was possible in 
 his time. 
 
 The works of Franklih have been published in ten volumes, edited by the late President 
 Sparks. The autobiography, which first appeared in London, was wantonly garbled by the 
 editor, William Temple Franklin, a grandson of the author. A new version has recently 
 
2 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 appeared, edited by John Bigelow, late United States minister to France, which is 
 beheved to follow the original with literal exactness. The style of this work is inimitable ; 
 it is as simple, direct, and idiomatic as Bunyan's ; it is a style which no rhetorician can assist 
 us to attain, and which the least touch of the learned critic would spoil. 
 
 [Fiom the Autobiography.] 
 
 I WAS put to the grammar school at eight years of age, my father 
 intending to devote me, as the tithe of his sons, to the service of the 
 church. My early readiness in learning to read (which must have 
 been very early, as I do not remember when I could not read), and 
 the opinion of all his friends, that I should certainly make a good 
 scholar, encouraged him in this purpose of his. My uncle Benjamin, 
 too, approved of it, and proposed to give me all his short-hand vol- 
 umes of sermons, I suppose as a stock to set up with, if I would 
 learn his character. I continued, however, at the grammar school 
 not quite one year, though in that time I had risen gradually from 
 the middle of the class of that year to be the head of it, and further 
 was removed into the next class above it, in order to go with that 
 into the third at the end of the year. But my father, in the mean 
 time, from a view of the expense of a college education, which, hav- 
 ing so large a family, he could not well afford, and the mean living 
 many so educated were afterwards able to obtain, reasons that he 
 gave to his friends in my hearing, altered his first intention, took 
 me from the grammar school, and sent me to a school for writing 
 and arithmetic, kept by a then famous, man, Mr. George Brownell, 
 very successful in his profession generally, and that by mild, encour- 
 aging methods. Under him I acquired fair writing 'pretty soon, but 
 I failed in the arithmetic, and made no progress in it. At ten years 
 old I was taken home to assist my father in his business, which was 
 that of a tallow-chandler and soap-boiler ; a business he was not bred 
 to, but had assumed on his arrival in New England, and on finding 
 his dyeing trade would not maintain his family, being in little request. 
 Accordingly, I was employed in cutting wick for the candles, filling 
 the dipping mould and the moulds for cast candles, attending the 
 shop, going of errands, &c. 
 
 I disliked the trade, and had a strong inclination for the sea, but 
 my father declared against it ; however, living near the water, I was 
 much in and about it, learnt early to swim well, and to manage boats ; 
 and when in a boat or canoe with other boys, I was commonly al- 
 lowed to govern, especially in any case of difficulty ; and upon other 
 occasions I was generally a leader among the boys, and sometimes 
 led them into scrapes, of which I will mention one instance, as it 
 
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 3 
 
 shows an early projecting public spirit, though not then justly con- 
 ducted. 
 
 There was a salt marsh that bounded part of the mill-pond, on the 
 edge of which, at high water, we used to stand to fish for minnows. 
 By much trampling, we had made it a mere quagmire. My proposal 
 was to build a wharf there fit for us to stand upon, and I showed my 
 comrades a large heap of stones, which were intended for a new 
 house near the marsh, and which would very well suit our purpose. 
 Accordingly, in the evening, when the workmen were gone, I 
 assembled a number of my play-fellows, and working with them dili- 
 gently like so many emmets, sometimes two or three to a stone, we 
 brought them all away, and built our little wharf. The next morning 
 the workmen were surprised at missing the stones, which were found 
 in our wharf. Inquiry was made after the removers ; we were dis- 
 covered and complained of ; several of us were corrected by our 
 fathers ; and, though I pleaded the usefulness of the work, mine con- 
 vinced me that nothing was useful which was not honest. 
 
 I think you may like to know something of his person and char- 
 acter. He had an excellent constitution of body, was of middle stat- 
 ure, but well set, and very strong ; he was ingenious, could draw 
 prettily, was skilled a little in music, and had a clear, pleasing voice, 
 so that when he played psalm tunes on his violin and sung withal, 
 as he sometimes did in an evening after the business of the day was 
 over, it was extremely agreeable to hear. He had a mechanical 
 genius too, and, on occasion, was very handy in the use of other 
 tradesmen's tools ; but his great excellence lay in a sound under- 
 standing and solid judgment in prudential matters, both in private 
 and public affairs. In the latter, indeed, he was never employed, the 
 numerous family he had to educate and the straitness of his circum- 
 stances keeping him close to his trade ; but I remember well his 
 being frequently visited by leading people, who consulted him for his 
 opinion in affairs of the town or of the church he belonged to, and 
 showed a good deal of respect for his judgment and advice. He was 
 also much consulted by private persons about their affairs when any 
 diniculty occurred, and frequently chosen an arbitrator between con- 
 tending parties. At his table he liked to have, as often as he could, 
 some sensible friend or neighbor to converse with, and always took 
 care to start some ingenious or useful topic for discourse, which 
 might tend to improve the minds of his children. By this means he 
 turned our attention to what was good, just, and prudent in the con- 
 duct of life ; and little or no notice was ever taken of what related to 
 
4 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 the victuals on the table, whether it was well or ill dressed, in or out 
 of season, of good or bad flavor, preferable or inferior to this or that 
 other thing of the kind ; so that I was brought up in such a perfect 
 inattention to those matters as to be quite indifferent what kind of 
 food was set before me, and so unobservant of it, that to this day if 
 I am asked I can scarce tell, a few hours after dinner, what I dined 
 upon. This has been a convenience to me in travelling, where my 
 companions have been sometimes very unhappy for want of a suita- 
 ble gratification of their more delicate, because better instructed, 
 tastes and appetites. . . . 
 
 From a child I was fond of reading, and all the little money that 
 came into my hands was ever laid out in books. Pleased with the 
 Pilgrim's Progress, my first collection was of John Bunyan's works, 
 in separate little volumes. I afterwards sold them to enable me to 
 buy R. Burton's Historical Collections ; they were small chapmen's 
 books, and cheap, forty or fifty in all. My father's little library con- 
 sisted chiefly of books in polemic divinity, most of which I read, and 
 have since often regretted that, at a time when I had such a thirst 
 for knowledge, more proper books had not fallen in my way, since it 
 was now resolved I should not be a clergyman. Plutarch's Lives 
 there was, in which I read abundantly, and I still think that time 
 spent to great advantage. There was also a book of De Foe's, called 
 an Essay on Projects, and another of Dr. Mather's, called Essays to 
 do Good, which perhaps gave me a turn of thinking that had an 
 influence on some of the principal future events of my life. 
 
 This bookish inclination at length determined my father to make 
 me a printer, though he had already one son (James) of that profes- 
 sion. In 1717 my brother James returned from England with a 
 press and letters, to set up his business in Boston. I liked it much 
 better than that of my father, but still had a hankering for the sea. 
 To prevent the apprehended effect of such an inclination, my father 
 was impatient to have me bound to my brother. I stood out some 
 time, but at last was persuaded, and signed the indentures when I 
 was yet but twelve years old. I was to serve as an apprentice till I 
 was twenty-one years of age, only I was to be allowed journeyman's 
 wages during the last year. In a little time I made great proficiency 
 in the business, and became a useful hand to my brother. I now 
 had access to better books. An acquaintance with the apprentices 
 of booksellers enabled me sometimes to borrow a small one, which I 
 was careful to return soon and clean. Often I sat up in my room 
 reading the greatest part of the night, when the book was borrowed 
 
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 5 
 
 in the evening and to be returned early in the morning, lest it should 
 be missed or wanted. 
 
 And after some time an ingenious tradesman, Mr. Matthew 
 Adams, who had a pretty collection of books, and who frequented 
 our printing-house, took notice of me, invited me to his library, and 
 very kindly lent me such books as I chose to read. I now took a 
 fancy to poetry, and made some little pieces ; my brother, thinking 
 it might turn to account, encouraged me, and put me on composing 
 occasional ballads. One was called The Lighthouse Tragedy, and 
 contained an account of the drowning of Captain Worthilake, with 
 his two daughters : the other was a sailor's song, on the taking of 
 Teach (or Blackbeard) the pirate. They were wretched stuff, in the 
 Grub Street ballad style ; and when they were printed he sent me 
 about the town to sell them. The first sold wonderfully, the event 
 being recent, having made a great noise. This flattered my vanity ; 
 but my father discouraged me by ridiculing my performances, and 
 telling me verse-makers were generally beggars. So I escaped 
 being a poet, most probably a very bad one ; but as prose writing 
 has been of great use to me in the course of my life, and was a prin- 
 cipal means of my advancement, I shall tell you how. in such a situ- 
 ation, I acquired what little ability I have in that way. . . . 
 
 About this time I met with an odd volume of the Spectator. It 
 was the third. I had never before seen any of them. I bought it, 
 read it over and over, and was much delighted with it. I thought 
 the writing excellent, and wished, if possible, to imitate it. With 
 this view I took some of the papers, and, making short hints of the 
 sentiment in each sentence, laid them by a few days, and then, with- 
 out looking at the book, tried to complete the papers again, by 
 expressing each hinted sentiment at length, and as fully as it had 
 been expressed before, in any suitable words that should come to 
 hand. Then I compared my Spectator with the original, discov- 
 ered some of my faults, and corrected them. But I found I wanted 
 a stock of words, or a readiness in recollecting and using them, 
 which I thought I should have acquired before that time if I had 
 gone on making verses ; since the continual occasion for words of 
 the same import, but of different length, to suit the measure, or of 
 different sound for the rhyme, would have laid me under a constant 
 necessity of searching for variety, and also have tended to fix that 
 variety in my mind, and make me master of it. Therefore I took 
 some of the tales and turned them into verse, and, after a time, 
 when I had pretty well forgotten the prose, turned them back again. 
 
6 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 I also sometimes jumbled my collections of hints into confusion, 
 and after some weeks endeavored to reduce them into the best 
 order, before I began to form the full sentences and complete the 
 paper. This was to teach me method in the arrangement of thoughts. 
 By comparing my work afterwards with the original, I discovered 
 many faults and amended them ; but I sometimes had the pleasure 
 of fancying that, in certain particulars of small import, I had been 
 lucky enough to improve the method or the language ; and this en- 
 couraged me to think I might possibly in time come to be a tolerable 
 English writer, of which I was extremely ambitious. My time for 
 these exercises and for reading was at night, after work or before it 
 began in the morning, or on Sundays, when I contrived to be in the 
 printing-house alone, evading as much as I could the common 
 attendance on public worship which my father used to exact of 
 me when I was under his care, and which indeed I still thought a 
 duty, though I could not, as it seemed to me, afford time to prac- 
 tise it. ... 
 
 My brother had, in 1720 or 1721, begun to print a newspaper. It 
 was the second that appeared in America, and was called the New 
 England Courant. . . . 
 
 He had some ingenious men among his friends, who amused them- 
 selves by writing little pieces for this paper, which gained it credit 
 and made it more in demand, and these gentlemen often visited us. 
 Hearing their conversations, and their accounts of the approbation 
 their papers were received with, I was excited to try my hand among 
 them ; but, being still a boy, and suspecting that my brother would 
 object to printing anything of mine in his paper if he knew it to be 
 mine, I contrived to disguise my hand, and, writing an anonymous 
 paper, I put it in at night under the door of the printing-house. It 
 was found in the morning, and communicated to his writing friends 
 when they called in as usual. They read it, commented on it in my 
 hearing, and I had the exquisite pleasure of finding it met with their 
 approbation, and that, in their different guesses at the author, none 
 were named but men of some character among us for learning and 
 ingenuity. I suppose now that I was rather lucky in my judges, and 
 that perhaps they were not really so very good ones as I then es- 
 teemed them. . . . 
 
 I have been the more particular in this description of my journey,* 
 and shall be so of my first entry into that city, that you may in your 
 
 * To Philadelphia. 
 
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 7 
 
 mind compare such unlikely beginnings with the figure I have since 
 made there. I was in my working dress, my best clothes being to 
 come round by sea. I was dirty from my journey ; my pockets 
 were stuffed out with shirts and stockings, and I knew no soul, nor 
 where to look for lodging. I was fatigued with travelling, rowing, 
 and want of rest ; I was very hungry, and my whole stock of cash 
 consisted of a Dutch dollar, and about a shilling in copper. The 
 latter I gave the people of the boat for my passage, who at first 
 refused it on account of my rowing ; but I insisted on their taking 
 it. A man being sometimes more generous when he has but a little 
 money than when he has plenty, perhaps through fear of being 
 thought to have but little. 
 
 Then I walked up the street, gazing about, till, near the mar- 
 ket-house, I met a boy with bread. I had made many a meal on 
 bread, and, inquiring where he got it, I went immediately to the 
 baker's he directed me to, in Second Street, and asked for bis- 
 cuit, intending such as we had in Boston ; but they, it seems, 
 were not made in Philadelphia. Then I asked for a three-penny 
 loaf, and was told they had none such. So, not considering or 
 knowing the difference of money, and the greater cheapness nor 
 the names of his bread, I bade him give me three-penny worth 
 of any sort. He gave me, accordingly, three great puffy rolls. 
 I was surprised at the quantity, but took it, and, having no room 
 in my pockets, walked off with a roll under each arm, and eating 
 the other. Thus I went up Market Street as far as Fourth Street, 
 passing by the door of Mr. Read, my future wife's father ; when 
 she, standing at the door, saw me, and thought I made, as I cer- 
 tainly did, a most awkward, ridiculous appearance. Then I turned 
 and went down Chestnut Street, and part of Walnut Street, eating 
 my roll all the way, and, coming round, found myself again at 
 Market Street Wharf, near the boat I came in, to which I went 
 for a draught of the river water ; and, being filled with one of my 
 rolls, gave the other two to a woman and her child that came 
 down the river in the boat with us, and were waiting to go 
 farther. 
 
 Thus refreshed, I walked again up the street, which by this 
 time had many clean-dressed people in it, who were all walking 
 the same way. I joined them, and thereby was led into the great 
 meeting-house of the Quakers, near the market. I sat down among 
 them, and, after looking round a while and hearing nothing said, 
 being very drowsy through labor and want of rest the preceding 
 
8 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 night, I fell fast asleep, and continued so till the meeting broke 
 up, when one was kind enough to rouse me. This was, therefore, 
 the first house I was in, or slept in, in Philadelphia. . . . 
 
 I believe I have omitted mentioning that, in my first voyage from 
 Boston, being becalmed off Block Island, our people set about catch- 
 ing cod, and hauled up a great many. Hitherto I had stuck to my 
 resolution of not eating animal food, and on this occasion I consid- 
 ered, with my master Tryon, the taking every fish as a kind of un- 
 provoked murder, since none of them had, or ever could do us any 
 injury that might justify the slaughter. All this seemed very reason- 
 able. But I had formerly been a great lover of fish, and, when this 
 came hot out of the frying-pan, it smelt admirably well. I balanced 
 some time between principle and inclination, till I recollected that, 
 when the fish were opened, I saw smaller fish taken out of their 
 stomachs ; then thought I, " If you eat one another, I don't see why 
 we mayn't eat you." So I dined upon cod very heartily, and con- 
 tinued to eat with other people, returning only now and then occa- 
 sionally to a vegetable diet. So convenient a thing it is to be a rea- 
 sonable creature, since it enables one to find or make a reason for 
 everything one has a mind to do. ... 
 
 I began now gradually to pay off the debt I was under for the 
 printing-house. In order to secure my credit and character as a 
 tradesman, I took care not only to be in reality industrious and fru- 
 gal, but to avoid all appearances to the contrary. I dressed plainly ; 
 I was seen at no places of idle diversion. I never went out a fishing 
 or shooting ; a book, indeed, sometimes debauched me from my 
 work, but that was seldom, snug, and gave no scandal ; and, to show 
 that I was not above my business, I sometimes brought home the 
 paper I purchased at the stores through the streets on a wheelbar- 
 row. Thus being esteemed an industrious, thriving young man, 
 and paying duly for what I bought, the merchants who imported sta- 
 tionery solicited my custom ; others proposed supplying me with 
 books ; and I went on swimmingly. . . . 
 
 About this time our club meeting, not at a tavern, but in a little 
 room of Mr. Grace's, set apart for that purpose, a proposition was 
 made by me, that, since our books were often referred to in pur dis- 
 quisitions upon the queries, it might be convenient to us to have 
 them all together where we met, that upon occasion they might be 
 consulted ; and by thus clubbing our books to a common library, we 
 should, while we liked to keep them together, have each of us the 
 advantage of using the books of all the other members, which would 
 
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 9 
 
 be nearly as beneficial as if each owned the whole. It was liked 
 and agreed to, and we filled one end of the room with such books 
 as we could best spare. The number was not so great as we 
 expected ; and, though they had been of great use, yet some incon- 
 veniences occurring for want of due care of them, the collection, 
 after about a year, was separated, and each took his books home 
 again. 
 
 And now I set on foot my first project of a public nature that for 
 a subscription library. I drew up the proposals, got them put into 
 form by our great scrivener, Brockden, and, by the help of my friends 
 in the Junto, procured fifty subscribers, of forty shillings each, to 
 begin with, and ten shillings a year for fifty years, the term our com- 
 pany was to continue. We afterwards obtained a charter, the com- 
 pany being increased to one hundred. This was the mother of all 
 the North American subscription libraries, now so numerous. It is 
 become a great thing itself, and continually increasing. These 
 libraries have improved the general conversation of the Americans, 
 made the common tradesmen and farmers as intelligent as most 
 gentlemen from other countries, and perhaps have contributed in 
 some degree to the stand so generally made throughout the colonies 
 in defence of their privileges. . . . 
 
 My scheme of ORDER * gave me the most trouble ; and I found 
 that, though it might be practicable where a man's business was 
 such as to leave him the disposition of his time, that of a journeyman 
 printer, for instance, it was not possible to be exactly observed by a 
 master, who must mix with the world, and often receive people of 
 business at their own hours. Order, too, with regard to places for 
 things, papers, &c., I found extremely difficult to acquire. I had 
 not been early accustomed to it, and, having an exceeding good 
 memory, I was not so sensible of the inconvenience attending want 
 of method. This article, therefore, cost me so much painful atten- 
 tion, and my faults in it vexed me so much, and I made so little 
 progress in amendment, and had such frequent relapses, that I was 
 almost ready to give up the attempt, and content myself with a faulty 
 character in that respect, like the man who, in buying an axe of a 
 smith, my neighbor, desired to have the whole of its surface as bright 
 as the edge. The smith consented to grind it bright for him if he 
 would turn the wheel. He turned, while the smith pressed the broad 
 face of the axe hard and heavily on the stone, which made the turning 
 
 * He had made a table of the virtues, for his use in daily self-examination. 
 
IO HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 of it very fatiguing. The man came every now and then from the 
 wheel to see how the work went on, and at length would take his 
 axe as it was, without further grinding. " No," said the smith, 
 " turn on, turn on ; we shall have it bright by and by ; as yet it is 
 only speckled." " Yes," says the man, " but I think I like a 
 speckled axe best ! " And I believe this may have been the case 
 with many, who, having, for want of some such means as I em- 
 ployed, found the difficulty of obtaining good and breaking bad 
 habits in other points of vice and virtue, have given up the strug- 
 gle, and concluded that " a speckled axe 'was best ; " for some- 
 thing, that pretended to be reason, was every now and then suggest- 
 ing to me that such extreme nicety as I exacted of myself might be 
 a kind of foppery in morals, which, if it were known, would make me 
 ridiculous ; that a perfect character might be attended with the 
 inconvenience of being envied and hated ; and that a benevolent 
 man should allow a few faults in himself, to keep his friends in 
 countenance. 
 
 In truth, I found myself incorrigible with respect to Order; and 
 now I am grown old, and my memory bad, I feel very sensibly 
 the want of it. But, on the whole, though I never arrived at the 
 perfection I had been so ambitious of obtaining, but fell far short 
 of it, yet I was, by the endeavor, a better and a happier man 
 than I otherwise should have been if I had not attempted it ; as 
 those who aim at perfect writing by imitating the engraved copies, 
 though they never reach the wished-for excellence of those copies, 
 their hand is mended by the endeavor, and is tolerable while it 
 continues fair and legible. 
 
 It may be well my posterity should be informed that to this 
 little artifice, with the blessing of God, their ancestor owed the 
 constant felicity of his life, down to his seventy-ninth year,* in 
 which this is written. What reverses may attend the remainder 
 is in the hand of Providence ; but, if they arrive, the reflection 
 on past happiness enjoyed ought to help his bearing them with 
 more resignation. To temperance he ascribes his long-continued 
 health, and what is still left to him of a good constitution ; to 
 industry and frugality, the early easiness of his circumstances 
 and acquisition of his fortune, with all that knowledge that ena- 
 bled him to be a useful citizen, and obtained for him some degree 
 of reputation among the learned ; to sincerity and justice, the con- 
 fidence of his country, and the honorable employs it conferred 
 
 * This was written, therefore, in 1785, the year the doctor returned from Paris. B. 
 
JOHN ADAMS. II 
 
 upon him ; and to the joint influence of the whole mass of the 
 virtues, even in the imperfect state he was able to acquire them, 
 all that evenness of temper, and that cheerfulness in conversation, 
 which makes his company still sought for, and agreeable even to 
 his younger acquaintance. I hope, therefore, that some of my 
 descendants may follow the example and reap the benefit. 
 
 JOHN ADAMS. 
 
 John Adams was born in Braintree, in that part now forming the town of Quincy, October 
 19, 1735. He entered Harvard College at the age of sixteen, having had a meagre prepa- 
 ration under two clerical tutors. The fact that he studied Virgil and Homer painfully after 
 his graduation, is not calculated to give us a very high idea of the state of classical learning 
 in Cambridge at the time. He taught school and afterwards read law in Worcester. He 
 commenced the practice of his profession in his native town at the age of twenty-three, and 
 with many discouragements slowly won his way to the first place among lawyers. He was 
 early a friend of the popular cause against the British government ; but his sense of justice 
 was so strong that he undertook the defence of the soldiers concerned in what has been 
 termed the Boston Massacre, at the risk of his personal popularity and business interests. 
 The kind of courage which we agree to call "pluck" was always the eminent characteristic 
 of the elder Adams. From the time of the discussions upon the Stamp Act until the decla- 
 ration of independence, the life of John Adams is a part of our national history. His 
 patriotism, courage, eloquence, and zeal have been celebrated in sentences which future 
 generations will read with ever-increasing enthusiasm. Nor is there space even to mention 
 his services and honors as diplomatist, vice president, and president ; every school-boy 
 knows his history. 
 
 Mr. Adams lived in an age of action, and had little time for rhetorical arts. But few of 
 his speeches have been preserved. His letters form the most valuable part of his published 
 works, and are among the best in our literature. Those addressed to his wife, in particular, 
 are delightfully frank, tender, and manly. 
 
 In his later days, when the doctrines of the Federalists had become unpopular, Mr. 
 Adams suffered unspeakable indignities from political enemies, and from summer friends ; 
 but before the close of his life the substantial integrity and purity of his character were hon- 
 ored by friends and foes alike, and all the din of party strife was hushed in admiration of 
 his long services and unselfish patriotism. 
 
 The doctrines of his antagonists have thus far prevailed, for the most part, in directing 
 public affairs ; but it is not settled yet that universal suffrage, without restraints upon the 
 ignorant and vicious, will make a republic either perpetual or desirable. 
 
 Mr. Adams died at the ripe age of ninety-one, on the 4th of July, 1826, on the same day 
 with his illustrious friend and rival, Jefferson. 
 
 His Life and Letters have been published, in ten volumes, under the care of his grandson, 
 Hon. Charles Francis Adams. 
 
 [From a Letter to his Wife, July 3, 1776.] 
 
 YESTERDAY the greatest question was decided which ever was 
 debated in America, and a greater, perhaps, never was, nor ever 
 will be, decided among men. A resolution was passed, without 
 one dissenting colony, "that these United Colonies are, and of 
 
12 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 right ought to be, free and independent States, and as such they 
 have, and of right ought to have, full power to make war, conclude 
 peace, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things 
 which other States may rightfully do." You will see, in a few days, 
 a declaration setting forth the causes which have impelled us to this 
 mighty revolution, and the reasons which will justify it in the sight 
 of God and man. A plan of confederation will be taken up in a 
 few days. 
 
 When I look back to the year 1761, and recollect the argument 
 concerning writs of assistance in the superior court, which I have 
 hitherto considered as the commencement of the controversy between 
 Great Britain and America, and run through the whole period from 
 that time to this, and recollect the series of political events, the 
 chain of causes and effects, I am surprised at the suddenness as 
 well as greatness of this revolution. Britain has been filled with 
 folly, and America with wisdom ; at least, this is my judgment. 
 Time must determine. It is the will of Heaven that the two coun- 
 tries should be sundered forever. It maybe the will of Heaven that 
 America shall suffer calamities still more wasting, and distresses yet 
 t more dreadful. If this is to be the case, it will have this good effect 
 at least : it will inspire us with many virtues which we have not, and 
 correct many errors, follies, and vices, which threaten to disturb, 
 dishonor, and destroy us. The furnace of affliction produces refine- 
 \jnent in states as well as individuals. And the new governments we 
 are assuming, in every part, will require a purification from our vices, 
 and an augmentation of our virtues, or they will be no blessings. 
 The people will have unbounded power, and the people are extremely 
 addicted to corruption and venality, as well as the great. But I must 
 submit all my hopes and fears to an overruling Providence, in which, 
 unfashionable as the faith may be, I firmly believe. 
 
 Had a declaration of independency been made seven months ago, 
 it would have been attended with many great and glorious effects. 
 We might before this hour have formed alliances with foreign states. 
 We should have mastered Quebec, and been in possession of 
 Canada. 
 
 You will, perhaps, wonder how such a declaration would have 
 influenced our affairs in Canada ; but if I could write with freedom, 
 I could easily convince you that it would, and explain to you the 
 manner how. Many gentlemen in high stations and of great influ- 
 ence have been duped by the ministerial bubble of commissioners 
 to treat. And in real, sincere expectation of this event, which they 
 
JOHN ADAMS. 13 
 
 so fondly wished, they have been slow and languid in promoting 
 measures for the reduction of that province. Others there are in 
 the colonies who really wished that our enterprise in Canada would 
 be defeated, that the colonies might be brought into dangei and dis- 
 tress between two fires, and be thus induced to submit. Others 
 really wished to defeat the expedition to Canada, lest the conquest 
 of it should elevate the minds of the peopte too much to hearken to 
 those terms of reconciliation which they believed would be offered 
 us. These jarring views, wishes, and designs occasioned an opposi- 
 tion to many salutary measures, which were proposed for the sup- 
 port of that expedition, and caused obstructions, embarrassments, 
 and studied delays, which have finally lost us the province. All 
 these causes, however, in conjunction, would not have disappointed 
 us, if it had not been for a misfortune which could not be foreseen, 
 and, perhaps, could not have been prevented. I mean the preva- 
 lence of the small-pox among our troops. This fatal pestilence com- 
 pleted our destruction. It is a frown of Providence upon us, which 
 we ought to lay to heart. 
 
 But, on the other hand, the delay of this declaration to this time 
 has many great advantages attending it. The hopes of reconcilia- 
 tion, which were fondly entertained by multitudes of honest and well- 
 meaning, though weak and mistaken, people, have been gradually, 
 and at last totally, extinguished. Time has been given for the 
 whole people maturely to consider the great question of indepen- 
 dence, and to ripen their judgments, dissipate their fears, and allure 
 their hopes, by discussing it in newspapers and pamphlets, by de- 
 bating it in assemblies, conventions, committees of safety and inspec- 
 tion, in town and county meetings, as well as in private conversa- 
 tions, so that the whole people, in every colony of the thirteen, have 
 now adopted it as their own act. This will cement the Union, and 
 avoid those heats, and perhaps convulsions, which might have been 
 occasioned by such a declaration six months ago. 
 
 But the day is past. The second day of July, 1776, will be the 
 most memorable epocha in the history of America. I am apt to be- 
 lieve that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great 
 anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the day of 
 deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought 
 to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, 
 guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, from one end of this conti- 
 nent to the other, from this time forward forevermore. 
 
 You will think me transported with enthusiasm ; but I am not 
 
14 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 I am well aware of the toil, and blood, and treasure that it will cost 
 us to maintain this declaration, and support and defend these states. 
 Yet through all the gloom I can see the rays of ravishing light and 
 glory. I can see that the end is more than worth all the means, 
 and that posterity will triumph in that day's transaction, even 
 although we should rue it, which I trust in God we shall not. 
 
 [To Messrs. Jacob B. Taylor, John Yates Cebra, Stuart F. Randolph, R. Riker, and 
 Henry Arcularius, a committee of arrangements of the city corporation of New York.] 
 
 QUINCY, xoth June, 1826. 
 
 GENTLEMEN : Your very polite and cordial letter of invitation, 
 written to me in behalf of the city corporation of New York, has 
 been gratefully received, through the kindness of General J. Morton. 
 
 The anniversary you propose to celebrate, " with increased 
 demonstrations of respect," in which you invite me to participate in 
 person, is an event sanctioned by fifty years of experience, and it 
 will become memorable by its increasing age, in proportion as its 
 success shall demonstrate the blessings it imparts to our beloved 
 country, and the maturity it may attain in the progress of time. 
 
 Not these United States alone, but a mighty continent, the last 
 discovered, but the largest quarter of the globe, is destined to date 
 the period of its birth and emancipation from the 4th of July, 1776. 
 
 Visions of future bliss in prospect, for the better condition of 
 the human race, resulting from this unparalleled event, might be 
 indulged, but sufficient unto the day be the glory thereof; and 
 while you, gentlemen of the committee, indulge with your fellow- 
 citizens of the city of New York in demonstrations of joy and 
 effusions of hilarity worthy the occasion, the wonderful growth 
 of the state whose capital you represent, within the lapse of half 
 a century, cannot fail to convince you that the indulgence of en- 
 thusiastic views of the future must be stamped with any epithet 
 other than visionary. 
 
 I thank you, gentlemen, with much sincerity for the kind invi- 
 tation with which you have honored me, to assist in your demon- 
 strations of respect for the day and all who honor it. And, in 
 default of my personal attendance, give me leave to propose, as 
 a sentiment for the occasion, Long and lasting prosperity to the 
 City and State of New York. 
 
 I am, &c., JOHN ADAMS. 
 
THOMAS JEFFERSON. 15 
 
 THOMAS JEFFERSON. 
 
 Thomas Jefferson was born at Shadwell, in Albemarle County, Virginia, April 2, 1743. 
 He received a classical education at the College of William and Mary, and subsequently 
 studied law. He was successful at the bar, but was soon drawn away from practice into 
 political life. As he had inherited a handsome estate, and had besides a large fortune with 
 his wife, he was able to give his whole time to public affairs. It was remarkable that a 
 man who never made a set speech should have been the most able and most successful poli- 
 tician of his time. It was by his private correspondence that he disseminated his views, 
 and maintained his ascendency as a party leader. Many volumes of his letters have been 
 published, but it is probable that many more will yet be discovered. These, with his 
 Notes on Virginia, and his state papers, constitute his works. His name will forever 
 be connected with the immortal Declaration of Independence, a production that is nearly 
 as conspicuous in literary as in political annals. 
 
 During his whole career, as member of the House of Burgesses, as governor, as member 
 of the Provincial Congress, as secretary of state under Washington, as ambassador, and 
 as president, he adhered, with a singular tenacity, to the doctrines of equality and to popu- 
 lar rights as against prescription. It was owing to him that primogeniture and the law of 
 entail, the chief bulwarks of a landed aristocracy, were abolished by the new constitution of 
 Virginia. His influence as a law reformer made it possible for that state to adopt and 
 maintain a republican form of government. He was firmly opposed to slavery, although a 
 slaveholder, and strove, by legal means, to prevent its increase, and to prepare the way for 
 its abolition. He was averse to titles of honor, and maintained, both in official station and 
 at home, a severe republican simplicity. The later years of his life were devoted, in a great 
 measure, to the establishment of the University of Virginia, an institution in which he took 
 a great and just pride. 
 
 Though the political principles of Jefferson were warmly combated in his day, and by 
 men of high character and undoubted patriotism, yet it is noticeable that his ideas have 
 been most efficient in moulding the institutions and inspiring the legislation of the country. 
 This influence is not inherited by any one party; it has come to pervade all thinking 
 minds. 
 
 The style of Jefferson is easy, natural, and perspicuous. He seldom rises to eloquence, 
 although many of his sentences contain powerful strokes. His manners were very attrac- 
 tive, and his hospitality, at Monticello, was unbounded. He died July 4, 1826, just fifty 
 years after the Declaration. 
 
 Of the several biographies of Jefferson, the best is by H. S. Randall (3 vols., 8vo). His 
 works were published by order of Congress, and fill nine volumes. A new selection of let- 
 ters, including some not before printed, has recently been published by his granddaughter, 
 under the title of The Domestic Life of Jefferson. 
 
 [From the Letters of Jefferson.] 
 THE CHARACTER OF WASHINGTON. 
 
 His mind was great and powerful, without being of the very first 
 order ; his penetration strong, though not so acute as that of a New- 
 ton, Bacon, or Locke ; and, as far as he saw, no judgment was ever 
 sounder. It was slow in operation, being little aided by invention 
 or imagination, but sure in conclusion. Hence the common remark 
 of his officers, of the advantage he derived from councils of war, 
 
tt> HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 where, hearing all suggestions, he selected whatever was best ; and 
 certainly no general ever planned his battles more judiciously. But 
 if deranged during the course of the action, if any member of his 
 plan was dislocated by sudden circumstances, he was slow in a re- 
 adjustment. The consequence was, that he often failed in the field, 
 and rarely against an enemy in station, as at Boston and York. He 
 was incapable of fear, meeting personal dangers with the calmest 
 unconcern. Perhaps the strongest feature in his character was pru- 
 dence, never acting until every circumstance, every consideration, 
 was maturely weighed ; refraining if he saw a doubt, but, when once 
 decided, going through with his purpose, whatever obstacles opposed. 
 His integrity was most pure, his justice the most inflexible, I have 
 ever known, no motives of interest or consanguinity, of friendship or 
 hatred, being able to bias his decision. He was, indeed, in every 
 sense of the words, a wise, a good, and a great man. 
 
 His temper was naturally irritable and high-toned ; but reflection 
 and resolution had obtained a firm and habitual ascendency over it. 
 If ever,- however, it broke its bonds, he was most tremendous in 
 his wrath. 
 
 In his expenses he was honorable, but exact ; liberal in contribu- 
 tions to whatever promised utility, but frowning and unyielding on 
 all visionary projects, and all unworthy calls on his charity. His 
 heart was not warm in its affections, but he exactly calculated every 
 man's value, and gave him a solid esteem proportioned to it. 
 
 His person, you know, was fine, his stature exactly what one 
 would wish, his deportment easy, erect, and noble ; the best horse- 
 man of his age, and the most graceful figure that could be seen on 
 horseback. Although in the circle of his friends, where he might be 
 unreserved with safety, he took a free share in conversation, his 
 colloquial talents were not above mediocrity, possessing neither 
 copiousness of ideas nor fluency of words. In public, when called, 
 on for a sudden opinion, he was unready, short, and embarrassed. 
 Yet he wrote readily, rather diffusely, in an easy and correct style. 
 This he had acquired by conversation with the world, for his educa- 
 tion was merely reading, writing, and common arithmetic, to which 
 he added surveying at a later day. His time was employed in action 
 chiefly, reading little, and that only in agriculture and English 
 history. 
 
 His correspondence became necessarily extensive,, and, with jour- 
 nalizing his agricultural proceedings, occupied most of his leisure 
 hours within doors. 
 
THOMAS JEFFERSON. jg 
 
 On the whole, his character was, in its mass, perfect, in nothing 
 bad, in few points indifferent ; and it may truly be said, that never 
 did nature and fortune combine more perfectly to make a man great, 
 and to place him in the same constellation with whatever worthies 
 have merited from man an everlasting remembrance. For his was 
 the singular destiny and merit of leading the armies of his country 
 successfully through an arduous war, for the establishment of its in- 
 dependence ; of conducting its councils through the birth of a gov- 
 ernment, new in its forms and principles, until it had settled down 
 into a quiet and orderly train; and of scrupulously obeying the laws 
 through the whole of his career, civil and military, of which the his- 
 tory of the world furnishes no other example. 
 
 NAPOLEON. 
 
 I HAVE just finished reading O'Meara's Bonaparte. It places 
 him in a higher scale of understanding than I had allotted him. 
 I had thought him the greatest of all military captains, but an indif- 
 ferent statesman, and misled by unworthy passions. The flashes, 
 however, which escaped from him in these conversations with 
 O'Meara prove a mind of great expansion, although not of distinct 
 development and reasoning. 
 
 He seizes results with rapidity and penetration, but never explains 
 logically the process of reasoning by which he arrives at them. 
 This book, too, makes us forget his atrocities for a moment, in com- 
 miseration of his sufferings. I will not say that the authorities of 
 the world, charged with the care of their country and people, had 
 not a right to confine him for life, as a lion or tiger, on the princi- 
 ples of self-preservation. There was no safety to nations while he 
 was permitted to roam at large. But the putting him to death in 
 cold blood, by lingering tortures of mind, by vexations, insults, and 
 deprivations, was a degree of inhumanity to which the poisonings 
 and assassinations of the school of Borgia and the den of Marat 
 never attained. The book proves, also, that nature had denied him 
 the moral sense, the first excellence of well-organized man. If he 
 could seriously and repeatedly affirm that he had raised himself to 
 power without ever having committed a crime, it proves that he 
 wanted totally the sense of right and wrong. If he could consider 
 the millions of human lives which he had destroyed, or caused to be 
 destroyed ; the desolations of countries by plunderings, burnings, 
 
 2 / 
 
1 8 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 and famine ; the destitutions of lawful rulers of the world, without the 
 consent of their constituents, to place his brothers and sisters on 
 their thrones ; the cutting up of established societies of men, and 
 jumbling them discordantly together again at his caprice ; the demo- 
 lition of the fairest hopes of mankind for the recovery of their rights 
 and amelioration of their condition; and all the numberless train of 
 his other enormities, the man, I say, who could consider all these 
 as no crimes, must have been a moral monster, against whom every 
 hand should have been lifted to slay him. 
 
 [From the Notes on Virginia.] 
 
 IT is difficult to determine on the standard by which the manners 
 of a nation may be tried, whether catholic or particular. It is more 
 difficult for a native to bring to that standard the manners of his 
 own nation, familiarized to him by habit. There must doubtless be 
 an unhappy influence on the manners of our people, produced by the 
 existence of slavery among us. The whole commerce between mas- 
 ter and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, 
 the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading sub- 
 missions on the other. Our children see this, and learn to imitate 
 it for man is an imitative animal. This quality is the germ of all 
 education in him. From his cradle to his grave he is learning to do 
 what he sees others do. If a parent could find no motive either in 
 his philanthropy or his self-love for restraining the intemperance 
 of passion towards his slave, it should always be a sufficient one that 
 his child is present. But generally it is not sufficient. The parent 
 storms ; the child looks on, catches the lineaments of wrath, puts on 
 the same airs in the circle of smaller slaves, gives loose to the worst 
 of passions, and thus nursed, educated, and daily exercised in 
 tyranny, cannot but be stamped by it with odious peculiarities. The 
 man must be a prodigy who can retain his manners and morals un- 
 depraved by such circumstances. And with what execration should 
 the statesman be loaded, who, permitting one half the citizens thus 
 to trample on the rights of the other, transforms those into despots, 
 and these into enemies, destroys the morals of the one part and the 
 amor patria of the other ! For if a slave can have a country in this 
 world, it must be any other in preference to that in which he is born 
 to live and labor for another ; in which he must lock up the facul- 
 ties of his nature, contribute as far as depends on his individual en- 
 deavors to the evamshment of the human race, or entail his own 
 
 \ 
 
THOMAS JEFFERSON. IQ 
 
 miserable condition on the endless generations proceeding from him. 
 With the morals of the people, their industry* also is destroyed. For 
 in a warm climate no man will labor for himself who can make 
 another labor for him. This is so true, that of the proprietors of 
 slaves a very small proportion indeed are ever seen to labor. And 
 can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have re- 
 moved their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people 
 that these liberties are of the gift of God ? that they are not to be 
 violated but with his wrath ? Indeed, I tremble for my country 
 when I reflect that God is just ; that his justice cannot sleep for- 
 ever ; that, considering numbers, nature, and natural means only, 
 a revolution of the wheel of fortune, an exchange of situation, is 
 among possible events ; that it may become probable by supernatu- 
 ral interference. The Almighty has no attribute which can take 
 side with us in such a contest. But it is impossible to be temperate 
 and to pursue this subject through the various considerations of 
 policy, of morals, of history, natural and civil. We must be con- 
 tented to hope they will force their way into every one's mind. 
 I think a change already perceptible, since the origin of the present 
 revolution. The spirit of the master is abating, that of the slave 
 rising from the dust, his condition mollifying, the way, I hope, pre- 
 paring, under the auspices of Heaven, for a total emancipation, and 
 that this is disposed, in the order of events, to be with the consent 
 of the masters, rather than by their extirpation. 
 
 [From a Letter to Mrs. Adams.] 
 
 I COMMUNICATED the letters, according to your permission, to my 
 granddaughter, Ellen Randolph, who read them with pleasure and 
 edification. She is justly sensible of, and flattered by, your kind 
 notice of her, and additionally so by the favorable recollections of 
 our northern visiting friends. If Monticello has anything which has 
 merited their remembrance, it gives it a value the more in our esti- 
 mation ; and could I, in the spirit of your wish, count backward a 
 score of years, it would not be long before Ellen and myself would 
 pay our homage personally to Quincy. But those twenty years ! 
 Alas ! where are they ? With those beyond the flood. Our next 
 meeting must, then, be in the country to which they have flown a 
 country for us not now very distant. For this journey we shall need 
 neither gold nor silver in our purse, nor scrip, nor coats, nor staves. 
 Nor is the provision for it more easy than the preparation has been 
 
2O HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 kind. Nothing proves more than this that the Being who presides 
 over the world is essentially benevolent, stealing from us, one by 
 one, the faculties of enjoyment, searing our sensibilities, leading us, 
 like the horse in his mill, round and round the same beaten circle, 
 
 1 ' To see what we have seen, 
 To taste the tasted, and, at each return, 
 Less tasteful ; o'er our palates to decant 
 Another vintage," 
 
 until, satiated and fatigued with this leaden iteration, we ask our 
 own conge. 
 
 I heard once a very old friend, who had troubled himself with 
 neither poets nor philosophers, say the thing in plain prose, that he 
 was tired of pulling off his shoes and stockings at night, and putting 
 them on again in the morning. The wish to stay here is thus grad- 
 ually extinguished, but not so easily that of returning once in a 
 while to see how things have gone on. Perhaps, however, one of 
 the elements of future felicity is to be a constant and unimpassioned 
 view of what is passing here. If so, this may well supply the wish 
 of occasional visits. Mercier has given us a vision of the year 2440 ; 
 but prophecy is one thing, and history another. On the whole, how- 
 ever, perhaps it is wise and well to be contented with the good 
 things which the Master of the feast places before us, and to be 
 thankful for what we have, rather than thoughtful about what we 
 have not. 
 
 You and I, dear madam, have already had more than an ordinary 
 portion of life, and more, too, of health than the general measure. 
 On this score I owe boundless thankfulness. Your health was, some 
 time ago, not so good as it had been, and I perceive in the letters 
 communicated some complaints still. I hope it is restored; and 
 that life and health may be continued to you as many years as your- 
 self shall wish, is the sincere prayer of your affectionate and respect- 
 ful friend. 
 
 JOHN TRUMBULL. 
 
 John Trumbull was bom in Watertown, Conn., April 24, 1750, and belonged to a family 
 distinguished for ability and character. He entered Yale College at the age of thirteen, 
 although it was said he passed a satisfactory examination for admission when he was seven 
 years old. He was an intimate friend of Timothy Dwight in college and in after life. Iu 
 1771 he was tutor in college for two years, and afterwards read law in the office of John 
 Adams, in Boston. It was a good school for law, and for patriotism likewise. Upon his 
 return to New Haven in 1774, he began the composition of McFingal, the poem by 
 
JOHN TRUMBULL. 21 
 
 which he became famous. This attained a great and deserved popularity. It is obviously 
 an imitation of Hudibras in its structure, epigrammatic turns of thought, and grotesque 
 rhymes. But its spirit is the author's own, and many of its couplets are fully as pungent 
 as those of its prototype. It has been often observed lhat the wit of one generation is rarely 
 appreciated by the next, and this is especially the case when the point of a sentence depends 
 upon a knowledge of contemporaneous persons and events. The jokes that require an ap- 
 pendix for their elucidation are apt to miss fire with the reader. For this reason McFin- 
 gal, which is an embodiment of the spirit of the revolution, and is, in its way, nearly 
 as good as Hudibras, is fast going to oblivion. A few passages only will be remembered. 
 For that matter, how much of Hudibras is read? Trumbull wrote another poem of 
 some length, entitled The Progress of Dulness, a satire upon prevailing errors in train- 
 ing and manners. An edition of his works was published in Hartford in 1820. The 
 McFingal, with notes by B. J. Lossing, was published by G. P. Putnam, New York, 1857. 
 In this reprint the original spelling is preserved. 
 
 Mr. Trumbull was never robust in body, but he lived to an advanced age. He died at 
 Detroit, Michigan, May 12, 1831. 
 
 [Passages from McFingal.] 
 
 WHEN Yankies, skill'd in martial rule, 
 First put the British troops to school ; 
 Instructed them in warlike trade, 
 And new manoeuvres of parade ; 
 The true war-dance of Yanky reels, 
 And manual exercise of heels ; 
 Made them give up, like saints complete, 
 The arm of-flesh and trust the feet, 
 And work, like Christians, undissembling, 
 Salvation out, by fear and trembling, 
 Taught Percy fashionable races, 
 And modern modes of Chevy-chaces, 
 From Boston, in his best array, 
 Great 'Squire McFingal took his way, 
 And, graced with ensigns of renown, 
 Steer'd homeward to his native town. 
 
 Nor only saw he all that was, 
 But much that never came to pass ; 
 Whereby all prophets far outwent he ; 
 Tho' former days produced a plenty ; 
 For any man, with half an eye, 
 What stands before him may espy ; 
 But optics sharp it needs, I ween, 
 To see what is not to be seen. 
 As in the days of antient fame 
 Prophets and poets were the same, 
 
22 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 And all the praise that poets gain 
 Is but for what th' invent and feign, 
 So gain'd our 'Squire his fame by seeing 
 Such things as never would have being. 
 
 But as some musquets so contrive it, 
 As oft to miss the mark they drive at, 
 And tho j well aim'd at duck or plover, 
 Bear wide and kick their owners over, 
 So far'd our 'Squire, whose reas'ning toil 
 Would often on himself recoil, 
 And so much injur'd more his side, 
 The stronger arg'ments he applied ; 
 As old war elephants, dismay' d, 
 Trode down the troops they came to aid, 
 And hurt their own side more in battle, 
 Than less and ordinary cattle. 
 
 All punishments the world can render, 
 Serve only to provoke th' offender ; 
 The will's confirm'd by treatment horrid, 
 As hides grow harder when they're curried. 
 No man e'er felt the halter draw, 
 With good opinion of the law ; 
 Or held in method orthodox 
 His love of justice in the stocks ; 
 Or fail'd to lose, by sheriff's shears, 
 At once his loyalty and ears. 
 
 TIMOTHY DWIGHT. 
 
 Timothy Dwight was born in Northampton, Mass., May 14, 1752. He was a descendant 
 of the famous Jonathan Edwards, and related in blood to other eminent men. He entered 
 Yale College at the age of thirteen, and, upon his graduation, taught school in New Haven. 
 He served as chaplain in the revolutionary army, under General Putnam, and devoted him- 
 self, with great zeal, to the cause of liberty. After some years spent in preaching, he was 
 chosen president of Yale College in 1795, in which office he continued until his death, in 
 1817. His personal influence was unbounded over students and parishioners, and his unre- 
 mitting industry enabled him to accomplish a vast amount of literary labor in addition to 
 his daily duties. He wrote a number of poems, all possessing a certain kind of merit, but 
 not sufficiently inspired to give them a permanent place in literature. His best remembered 
 performance is the patriotic song, beginning, 
 
 " Columbia, Columbia, to glory arise, 
 The queen of the world, and child of the skies." 
 
TIMOTHY DWIGHT. 23 
 
 His principal poems are The Conquest of Canaan, Greenfield Hill (which has a 
 number of felicitous rural scenes), and The Triumph of Infidelity. Besides a number 
 of theological treatises, he wrote four volumes of Travels in New England and New 
 York, the results of his tours in college vacations. This last work is valuable for its pic- 
 tures of scenery and manners in what now seems a remote age. The author had an in- 
 stinctive feeling for the picturesque, but the narrative lacks simplicity, and the descriptions 
 are overladen with epithets. 
 
 THE NOTCH OF THE WHITE MOUNTAINS. 
 
 THE Notch of the White Mountains is a phrase appropriated to a 
 very narrow defile, extending two miles in length, between two huge 
 cliffs, apparently rent asunder by some vast convulsion of nature. 
 The entrance of the chasm is formed by two rocks standing perpen- 
 dicularly at the distance of twenty-two feet from each other one 
 about twenty feet in height, the other about twelve. Half of the 
 space is occupied by the brook mentioned as the head stream of the 
 Saco, the other half by the road. The stream is lost and invisible 
 beneath a mass of fragments partly blown out of the road and partly 
 thrown down by some great convulsion. 
 
 When we entered the Notch we were struck with the wild and 
 solemn appearance of everything before us. The scale on which all 
 the objects in view were formed was the scale of grandeur only. 
 The rocks, rude and ragged in a manner rarely paralleled, were 
 fashioned and filed by a hand operating only in the boldest and most 
 irregular manner. As we advanced, these appearances increased 
 rapidly. Huge masses of granite of every abrupt form, and hoary 
 with moss, which seemed the product of ages, recalling to the mind 
 the saxum vetustum of Virgil, speedily rose to a mountainous height. 
 Before us the view widened fast to the south-east. Behind us it 
 closed almost instantaneously, and presented nothing to the eye but 
 an impassable barrier of mountains. 
 
 About half a mile from the entrance of the chasm we saw, in full 
 view, the most beautiful cascade, perhaps, in the world. It issued 
 from a mountain on the right, about eight hundred feet above the 
 subjacent valley, and at the distance from us of about two miles. The 
 stream ran over a series of rocks almost perpendicular, with a course 
 so little broken as to preserve the appearance of a uniform current, 
 and yet so far disturbed as to be perfectly white. The sun shone, 
 with the clearest splendor, from a station in the heavens the most 
 advantageous to our prospect, and the cascade glittered down the 
 vast steep like a stream of burnished silver. 
 
 At the distance of three quarters of a mile from the entrance we 
 passed a brook, known in this region by the name of The Flume, 
 
24 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 from the strong resemblance to that object exhibited by the chan- 
 nel, which it has worn for a considerable length in a bed of rocks, 
 the sides being perpendicular to the bottom. This elegant piece 
 of water we determined to examine further, and, alighting from our 
 horses, walked up the acclivity perhaps a furlong. The stream fell 
 from a height of two hundred and forty or two hundred and fifty feet 
 over three precipices ; the second receding a small distance from the 
 front of the first, and the third from that of the second. Down the 
 first and second it fell in a single current, and down the third in 
 three, which united their streams at the bottom in a fine basin, 
 formed, by the hand of nature, in the rocks immediately beneath us. 
 It is impossible for a brook of this size to be modelled into more 
 diversified or more delightful forms, or for a cascade to descend over 
 precipices more happily fitted to finish its beauty. The cliffs, to- 
 gether with a level at their foot, furnished a considerable opening, 
 surrounded by the forest. The sunbeams, penetrating through the 
 trees, painted here a great variety of fine images of light, and edged 
 an equally numerous and diversified collection of shadows, both dan- 
 cing on the waters, and alternately silvering and obscuring their 
 course. Purer water was never seen. Exclusively of its murmurs, 
 the world around us was solemn and silent. Everything assumed 
 the character of enchantment, and, had I been educated in the Gre- 
 cian mythology, I should scarcely have been surprised to find an 
 assemblage of Dryads, Naiads, and Oreads sporting on the little 
 plain below our feet. The purity of this water was discernible not 
 only by its limpid appearance, and its taste, but frorh several other 
 circumstances. Its course is wholly over hard granite ; and the 
 rocks and the stones in its bed and at its side, instead of being cov- 
 ered with adventitious substances, were washed perfectly clean, and, 
 by their neat appearance, added not a little to the beauty of the 
 scenery. 
 
 From this spot the mountains speedily began to open with in- 
 creased majesty, and, in several instances, rose to a perpendicular 
 height little less than a mile. The bosom of both ranges was over- 
 spread, in all the inferior regions, by a mixture of evergreens with 
 trees, whose leaves are deciduous. The annual foliage had been 
 already changed by the frost. Of the effects of this change it is, 
 perhaps, impossible for an inhabitant of Great Britain, as I have 
 been assured by several foreigners, to form an adequate conception, 
 without visiting an American forest. When I was a youth, I re- 
 marked that Thomson had entirely omitted, in his Seasons, this fine 
 
TIMOTHY DWIGHT. 25 
 
 part of autumnal imagery. Upon inquiring of an English gentleman 
 the probable cause of the omission, he informed me that no such 
 scenery existed in Great Britain. In this country it is often among 
 the most splendid beauties of nature. All the leaves of trees, which 
 are not evergreens, are, by the first severe frost, changed from their 
 verdure towards the perfection of that color which they are capable 
 of ultimately assuming, through yellow, orange, and red, to a pretty 
 deep brown. As the frost affects different trees, and different leaves 
 of the same tree, in very different degrees, a vast multitude of tinc- 
 tures are commonly found on those of a single tree, and always on 
 those of a grove or forest. These colors also, in all their varieties, 
 are generally full, and, in many instances, are among the most ex- 
 quisite which are found in the regions of nature. Different sorts of 
 trees are susceptible of different degrees of this beauty. Among 
 them the maple is pre-eminently distinguished by the prodigious vari- 
 eties, the finished beauty, and the intense lustre of its hues, varying 
 through all the dyes between a rich green and the most perfect 
 crimson, or, more definitely, the red of the prismatic image. . . . 
 
 I have remarked that the annual foliage on these mountains had 
 been already changed by the frost. Of course the darkness of the 
 evergreens was finely illumined by the brilliant yellow of the birch, 
 the beech, and the cherry, and the more brilliant orange and crimson 
 of the maple. The effect of this universal diffusion of gay and 
 splendid light was to render the preponderating deep green more 
 solemn. 
 
 The mind, encircled by this scenery, irresistibly remembered that 
 the light was the light of decay, autumnal and melancholy. The 
 dark was the gloom of evening, approximating to night. Over the 
 whole the azure of the sky cast a deep, misty blue, blending, towards 
 the summit, every other hue, and predominating over all. 
 
 As the eye ascended these steeps, the light decayed, and grad- 
 ually ceased. In the inferior summits rose crowns of conical firs 
 and spruces. On the superior eminences the trees, growing less 
 and less, yielded to the chilling atmosphere, and marked the limit 
 of forest vegetation. Above, the surface was covered with a mass 
 of shrubs, terminating, at a still higher elevation, in a shroud of 
 dark-colored moss. 
 
 As we passed onward through this singular valley, occasional tor- 
 rents, formed by the rains and dissolving snows at the close of win- 
 ter, had left behind them, in many places, perpetual monuments of 
 their progress in perpendicular, narrow, and irregular paths of itn- 
 
26 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 mense length, where they had washed the precipices naked and 
 white from the summit of the mountain to the base. Wide and deep 
 chasms also met the eye, both on the summits and the sides, and 
 strongly impressed the imagination with the thought that a hand 
 of immeasurable power had rent asunder the solid rocks, and tumbled 
 them into the subjacent valley. Over all, hoary cliffs, rising with 
 proud supremacy, frowned awfully on the world below, and finished 
 the landscape. 
 
 By our side the Saco was alternately visible and lost, and in- 
 creased, almost at every step, by the junction of tributary streams. 
 Its course was a perpetual cascade, and, with its sprightly murmurs, 
 furnished the only contrast to the scenery around us. 
 
 JOEL BARLOW. 
 
 Joel Barlow was born in Reading, Conn., in 1755. He entered Dartmouth College, but 
 completed his education at Yale. During the vacations he served in the army, and was 
 present at the battle of White Plains. Upon his graduation he studied theology, for the 
 purpose of becoming a chaplain, and after six weeks' application (which seems to have been 
 considered sufficient to equip a clergyman militant), he was licensed to preach, and served 
 for the remainder of the war. His Vision of Columbus afterwards expanded into the 
 more pretentious and less pleasing Columbiad was written in camp. He left the church 
 and the army, and was admitted to the bar in 1785. He edited a newspaper at Hartford, 
 and, at the request of the General Association of Congregational Ministers, revised and 
 added to Dr. Watts' s version of the Psalms. One of Barlow's versions, commencing, 
 
 "Along the banks where Babel's current flows," 
 
 retains its place in the hymn books. 
 
 The practical poet next set up a bookstore to dispose of his own wares, which being done 
 he returned to his profession. In 1788 he went to Europe, and remained (mostly in France) 
 seventeen years. It is impossible, in our brief limits, to follow him in his adventures. He 
 was in the midst of the French revolution, and was constantly active with his pen, not for- 
 getting at any time the enterprise and thrift of the true Yankee in accumulating property. 
 On his return to the United S'tates, in 1805, he settled in Washington. He was the object 
 of violent hatred on the part of the Federalists, and his name was linked with Jefferson's 
 and Paine's in a savage attack in verse written by John Quincy Adams. The Columbiad 
 appeared in 1807, a costly and elegant volume. The poem is vigorous and smoothly versi- 
 fied, after the style of Pope and Darwin, but has little of true poetry in all its sonorous lines. 
 The Hasty Puddine, a far more genial composition, was written abroad in 1793, and was 
 dedicated to Mrs. Washington. In 1809 he was about beginning a history of the United 
 States, when his design was interrupted by his appointment as minister to France. In 
 October, 1812, he was sent for by Napoleon, then on his Russian campaign, to meet him 
 at Wilna. His rapid journey across the continent, in the severely cold weather, brought on 
 an inflammation of the lungs, of which he died near Cracow, in Poland, December 22, 1812. 
 From his dying bed he dictated a poem, entitled Advice to a Raven in Russia, a terribly 
 bitter attack upon Napoleon. 
 
JOEL BARLOW. 2/ 
 
 [From The Hasty Pudding, written at Chambery, in Savoy, January, 1793.] 
 
 Omne tulit punctum qui miscuit utile dulci. 
 " He makes a good breakfast who mixes pudding with molasses." 
 
 O, COULD the smooth, the emblematic song 
 
 Flow like thy genial juices o'er my tongue, 
 
 Could those mild morsels in my numbers chime, 
 
 And, as they roll in substance, roll in rhyme, 
 
 No more thy awkward, unpoetic name 
 
 Should shun the muse, or prejudice thy fame ; 
 
 But rising grateful to the accustomed ear, 
 
 All bards should catch it, and all realms revere. 
 
 Assist me first with pious toil to trace 
 
 Through weeks of time thy lineage and thy race ; 
 
 Declare what lovely squaw, in days of yore 
 
 (Ere great Columbus sought thy native shore), 
 
 First gave thee to the world ; her works of fame 
 
 Have lived indeed, but lived without a name. 
 
 Some tawny Ceres, goddess of her days, 
 
 First learned with stones to crack the well-dried maize, 
 
 Through the rough sieve to shake the golden shower, 
 
 In boiling water stir the yellow flour ; 
 
 The yellow flour, bestrewed and stirred with haste, 
 
 Swells in the flood and thickens to a paste, 
 
 Then puffs and wallops, rises to' the brim, 
 
 Drinks the dry knobs that on the surface swim; 
 
 The knobs at last the busy ladle breaks, 
 
 And the whole mass its true consistence takes. 
 
 Could but her sacred name, unknown so long, 
 
 Rise, like her labors, to the son of song, 
 
 To her, to them, I'd consecrate my lays, 
 
 And blow her pudding with the breath of praise. 
 
 Thee the soft nations round the warm Levant 
 
 Polenta call, the French, of course, Polente. 
 
 E'en in thy native regions how I blush 
 
 To hear the Pennsylvanians call thee Mush / 
 
 On Hudson's banks, while men of Belgic spawn 
 
 Insult and eat thee by the name Suppawnj 
 
 All spurious appellations, void of truth. 
 
 I've better known thee from my earliest youth ; 
 
28 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 Thy name is Hasty Pudding, thus my sire 
 Was wont to greet thee fuming from his fire. 
 
 Let the green succotash with thee contend, 
 Let beans and corn their sweetest juices blend, 
 Let butter drench them in its yellow tide, 
 And a long slice of bacon grace their side, 
 Not all the plate, how famed soe'er it be, 
 Can please my palate like a bowl of thee. 
 Some talk of Hoe Cake, fair Virginia's pride ; 
 Rich Johnny Cake this mouth has often tried ; 
 Both please me well, their virtues much the same, 
 Alike their fabric, as allied their fame, 
 Except in dear New England, where the last 
 Receives a dash of pumpkin in the paste, 
 To give it sweetness and improve the taste. 
 But place them all before me, smoking hot 
 The big round dumpling rolling from the pot ; 
 The pudding of the bag, whose quivering breast, 
 With suet lined, leads on the Yankee feast ; 
 The Charlotte brown, within whose crusty sides 
 A belly soft the pulpy apple hides ; 
 The yellow bread whose face like amber glows, 
 And all of Indian that the bake-pan knows, 
 You tempt me not my favorite greets my eyes ; 
 To that loved bowl my spoon by instinct flies. 
 
 Milk, then, with pudding I should always choose ; 
 To this in future I confine my muse, 
 Till she in haste some further hints unfold, 
 Good for the young, nor useless to the old. 
 First in your bowl the milk abundant take, 
 Then drop with care *ilong the silver lake 
 Your flakes of pudding ; these at first will hide 
 Their little bulk beneath the swelling tide ; 
 But when their growing mass no more can sink, 
 When the soft island looms above the brink, 
 Then check your hand ; you've got the portion due 
 So taught my sire, and what he taught is true. 
 
ALEXANDER HAMILTON. 29 
 
 ALEXANDER HAMILTON. 
 
 Alexander Hamilton was born in the Island of Nevis, in the West Indies, January 11, 
 1757. His father was a merchant from Scotland ; his mother was the daughter of a French 
 Huguenot ; and the son appears to have inherited, in equal measure, the vigor and endur- 
 ance of the one race and the address and vivacity of the other. His education was not at 
 all systematic ; but his active mind instinctively found its proper stimulants, and he began 
 to show his great natural powers at an early age. While attending to his studies at Colum- 
 bia College, in New York city, the war broke out, and he entered the patriot army as a 
 captain of artillery. In 1777 he was made aide-de-camp to General Washington, and dis- 
 tinguished himself by his ability in correspondence as well as by active personal service in 
 the field. At the close of the war he commenced the practice of law in New York. His 
 chief work, as an author, was the series of papers entitled The Federalist, of which he 
 wrote the greater number an elaborate exposition of the Constitution of the United 
 States. These papers, though necessarily abstruse in character, are perspicuous in style 
 and powerful in reasoning. He was the first secretary of the treasury, and in that position 
 he displayed unrivalled skill. The sentences of Daniel Webster upon Hamilton's financial 
 ability are worth quoting anew : " He smote the rock of the national resources, and abun- 
 dant streams of revenue gushed forth. He touched the dead corpse of the public credit, and 
 it sprang upon its feet." 
 
 After six years' service Hamilton retired from office, and resumed the practke of his pro- 
 fession. As he had opposed Aaron Burr, first in his endeavors to become president, and 
 afterwards in his canvass for the office of governor of New York, that unscrupulous dema- 
 gogue, maddened by defeat, challenged him to fight a duel. Hamilton fell at the first fire, 
 and died the next day, July 12, 1804. 
 
 It may be doubted whether among the brilliant men of the last century there was any one 
 who was distinguished by so many traits that win the admiration of the world as was Ham- 
 ilton. Ability of the highest order in public affairs, literary skill, oratorical power, per- 
 sonal intrepidity, graceful manners, and a fine presence, have rarely been seen so exempli- 
 fied in combination. 
 
 The extract here given is the concluding portion of a letter upon the treason of Arnold 
 and the death of Andre, written to Colonel John Laurens, of South Carolina. The writings 
 of Hamilton have been published, in seven volumes, by his son. 
 
 [From a Letter to Colonel Laurens.] 
 THE FATE OF ANDRE. 
 
 NEVER, perhaps, did any man suffer death with more justice, or 
 deserve it less. The first step he took after his capture was to 
 write a letter to General Washington, conceived in terms of 
 dignity without insolence, and apology without meanness. The 
 scope of it was to vindicate himself from the imputation of hav- 
 ing assumed a mean character for treacherous or interested pur- 
 poses ; asserting that he had been involuntarily an impostor ; that 
 contrary to his intention, which was to meet a person for intelli- 
 gence on neutral ground, he had been betrayed within our posts, 
 and forced into the vile condition of an enemy in disguise ; solicit- 
 ing only that to whatever rigor policy might devote him, a decency 
 
3O HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 of treatment might be observed due to a person who, though un- 
 fortunate, had been guilty of nothing dishonorable. His request 
 was granted in its full extent; for in the whole progress of the 
 affair he was treated with the most scrupulous delicacy. When 
 brought before the board of officers, he met with every mark of 
 indulgence, and was required to answer no interrogatory which 
 would even embarrass his feelings. On his part, while he care- 
 fully concealed everything that might implicate others, he frankly 
 confessed all the facts relating to himself; and upon his confession, 
 without the trouble of examining a witness, the board made their 
 report. The members were not more impressed with the candor 
 and firmness, mixed with a becoming sensibility, which he dis- 
 played, than he was penetrated with their liberality and politeness. 
 He acknowledged the generosity of their behavior towards him in 
 every respect, but particularly in this, in the strongest terms of 
 manly gratitude. In a conversation with a gentleman who visited 
 him after his trial, he said he flattered himself he had never been 
 illiberal, but if there were any remains of prejudice in his mind, 
 his present experience must obliterate them. 
 
 In one of the visits I made to him (and I saw him several times 
 during his confinement), he begged me to be the bearer of a re- 
 quest to the general for permission to send an opened letter to Sir 
 Henry Clinton. " I foresee my fate," said he, " and though I pre- 
 tend not to play the hero, or to be indifferent about life, yet I am 
 reconciled to whatever may happen, conscious that misfortune, not 
 guilt, has brought it upon me. There is only one thing that dis- 
 turbs my tranquillity. Sir Henry Clinton has been too good to 
 me ; he has been lavish of his kindness ; I am bound to him by 
 too many obligations, and love him too well to bear the thought 
 that he should reproach himself, or others should reproach him, 
 on the supposition of my having conceived myself obliged, by his 
 instructions, to run the risk I did. I would not, for the world, 
 leave a sting in his mind that should embitter his future days." 
 He could scarce finish the sentence, bursting into tears in spite 
 of his efforts to suppress them, and with difficulty collecting him- 
 self enough afterwards to add, " I wish to be permitted to assure 
 him I did not act under this impression, but submitted to a neces- 
 sity imposed upon me, as contrary to my own inclinations as to his 
 orders." His request was readily complied with, and he wrote the 
 letter annexed, with which I dare say you will be as much pleased 
 as I am, both for the sentiment and diction. 
 
ALEXANDER HAMILTON. 3! 
 
 When his sentence was announced to him, he remarked that, 
 since it was his lot to die, there was still a choice in the mode 
 which would make a material difference to his feelings, and he 
 would be happy, if possible, to be indulged with a professional death % 
 He made a second application by letter, in concise but persuasive 
 terms. It was thought that this indulgence, being incompatible 
 with the customs of war, could not be granted ; and it was there- 
 fore determined, in both cases, to evade an answer, to spare him 
 the sensations which a certain knowledge of the intended mode 
 would inflict. 
 
 In going to the place of execution he bowed familiarly, as he went 
 along, to all those with whom he had been acquainted in his con- 
 finement. A smile of complacency expressed the serene fortitude 
 of his mind. Arrived at tl>e fatal spot, he asked, with some emo- 
 tion, " Must I then die in this manner ? " He was told it had been 
 unavoidable. " I am reconciled to my fate," said he, " but not to 
 the mode." Soon, however, recollecting himself, he added, " It 
 will be but a momentary pang ; " and, springing upon the cart, per- 
 formed the last offices to himself with a composure that excited the 
 admiration and melted the hearts of the beholders. Upon being 
 told the final moment was at hand, and asked if he had anything to 
 say, he answered, " Nothing, but to request you will witness to the 
 world that I die like a brave man." Among the extraordinary cir- 
 cumstances that attended him, in the midst of his enemies, he died 
 universally regretted and universally esteemed. 
 
 There was something singularly interesting in the character and 
 fortunes of Andre. To an excellent understanding, well improved 
 by education and travel, he united a peculiar elegance of mind and 
 manners, and the advantage of a pleasing person. It is said he 
 possessed a pretty taste for the fine arts, and had himself attained 
 some proficiency in poetry, music, and painting. His knowledge 
 appeared without ostentation, and embellished by a diffidence that 
 rarely accompanies so many talents and accomplishments, which 
 left you to suppose more than appeared. 
 
 His sentiments were elevated, and inspired esteem ; they had a 
 softness that conciliated affection. His elocution was handsome, 
 his address easy, polite, and insinuating. By his merit he had 
 acquired the unlimited confidence of his general, and was making a 
 rapid progress in military rank and reputation.- But in the height 
 of his career, flushed with new hopes from the execution of a project 
 the most beneficial to his party that could be devised, he was at 
 
32 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 once precipitated from the summit of prosperity, and saw all the ex- 
 pectations of his ambition blasted, and himself ruined. 
 
 The character I have given of him is drawn partly from what I 
 saw of him myself, and partly from information. I am aware that a 
 man of real merit is never seen in so favorable a light as through 
 the medium of adversity. The clouds that surround him are shades 
 that set off his good qualities. Misfortune cuts down the little van- 
 ities that in prosperous times serve as so many spots in his virtues, 
 and gives a tone of humility that makes his worth more amiable. 
 His spectators, who enjoy a happier lot, are less prone to detract 
 from it through envy, and are more disposed by compassion to give 
 him the credit he deserves, and perhaps even to magnify it. 
 
 I speak not of Andre's conduct in this affair as a philosopher, but 
 as a man of the world. The authorized maxims and practices of war 
 are the satires of human nature. They countenance almost every 
 species of seduction as well as violence ; and the general who can 
 make most traitors in the army of his adversary is frequently most 
 applauded. On this scale we acquit Andre', while we would not but 
 condemn him if we were to examine his conduct by the sober rules 
 of philosophy and moral rectitude. It is, however, a blemish on his 
 fame that he once intended to prostitute a flag, about this a man 
 of nice honor ought to have had a scruple, but the temptation 
 was great. Let his misfortunes cast a veil over his error. 
 
 Several letters from Sir Henry Clinton and others were received 
 in the course of the affair, feebly attempting to prove that Andre 
 came out under the protection of a flag, with a passport from a gen- 
 eral officer in actual service, and consequently could not be justly 
 detained. Clinton sent a deputation, composed of Lieutenant Gen- 
 eral Robinson, Mr. Elliot, and Mr. William Smith, to represent, as 
 he said, the true state of Major Andre's case. General Greene met 
 Robinson, and had a conversation with him, in which he reiterated 
 the pretence of a flag, urged Andre's release as a personal favor to 
 Sir Henry Clinton, and offered any friend of ours in their power in 
 exchange. Nothing could have been more frivolous than the plea 
 which was used. The fact was, that besides the time, manner, 
 object of the interview, change of dress, and other circumstances, 
 there was not a single formality customary with flags, and the pass- 
 port was not to Major Andre, but to Mr. Anderson. But had there 
 been, on the contrary, all the formalities, it would be an abuse of lan- 
 guage to say that the sanction of a flag, for corrupting an officer to 
 betray his trust, ought to be respected. So unjustifiable a purpose 
 would not only destroy its validity, but make it an aggravation. 
 
ALEXANDER HAMILTON. 33 
 
 Andre himself had answered the argument by ridiculing and ex- 
 ploding the idea in his examination before the board of officers. It 
 was a weakness to urge it. 
 
 There was, in truth, no way of saving him. Arnold or he must 
 have been the victim ; the former was out of our power. 
 
 It was by some suspected Arnold had taken his measures in such 
 a manner that, if the interview had been discovered in the act, it 
 might have been in his power to sacrifice Andre to his own security. 
 This surmise of double treachery made them imagine Clinton would 
 be induced to give up Arnold for Andre, and a gentleman took occa- 
 sion to suggest the expedient to the latter as a thing that might be 
 proposed by him. He declined it. The moment he had been capa- 
 ble of so much frailty, I should have ceased to esteem him. 
 
 The infamy of Arnold's conduct, previous to his desertion, is only 
 equalled by his baseness since. Besides the folly of writing to Sir 
 Henry Clinton that Andre had acted under a passport from him, and 
 according to his directions while commanding officer at a post, and 
 that therefore he did not doubt he would be immediately sent in, he 
 had the effrontery to write to General Washington in the same spirit, 
 with the addition of a menace of retaliation if the sentence should 
 be carried into execution. " He Jias since acted the farce of sending 
 in his resignation. This man is, in every sense, despicable. In 
 addition to the scene of knavery and prostitution during his com- 
 mand in Philadelphia, which the late seizure of his papers has un- 
 folded, the history of -his command at West Point is a history of 
 little as well as great villanies. He practised every art of pecula- 
 tion, and even stooped to connection with the sutlers of the garrison 
 to defraud the public. 
 
 To his conduct that of the captors of Andre formed a striking 
 contrast. He tempted them with the offer of his watch, his horse, 
 and any sum of money they should name. They rejected his offers 
 with indignation, and the gold that could seduce a man high in the 
 esteem and confidence of his country, who had the remembrance of 
 past exploits, the motives of present reputation and future glory to 
 prop his integrity, had no charms for three simple peasants, leaning 
 only on their virtue and an honest sense of their duty. While Ar- 
 nold is handed down with execration to future times, posterity will 
 repeat with reverence the names of Van Wart, Paulding, and Wil- 
 liams. 
 
 3 
 
34 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 FISHER AMES. 
 
 Fisher Ames was born in Dedham, Massachusetts, April 9, 1758, and died in his native 
 place July 4, 1808. He was a precocious youth, and was sent to Harvard College at the age 
 of twelve. After graduation he spent a few years in teaching, and then entered upon the 
 study of law in Boston. He commenced practice at Dedham in 1781. He was early 
 prominent in his profession, and was equally distinguished as a political speaker and 
 essayist. He was the first member of Congress from his district which included Boston, 
 and he continued to represent it for eight years. During his whole career he was an 
 ardent Federalist a fact which the reader is rarely allowed to forget in any speech, essay, 
 or letter. 
 
 Mr. Ames possessed uncommon vigor of mind ; his memory was stored with literary 
 treasures : his fancy was active, furnishing illustrative images that were as much to the pur- 
 pose as his logic. And such was the effect of his oratory, even upon deliberative bodies, 
 that on one occasion Congress adjourned on motion of Ames's chief opponent in debate, for 
 the alleged reason that the members ought not to be called upon to vote while under the 
 spell of his extraordinary eloquence. The speeches of Mr. Ames that have been preserved 
 fully sustain his great reputation, being vigorous and logical in statement, and adorned 
 with the graces of a lively and learned style. His letters, also, are fresh and charming. 
 When we remember how much was done to influence public opinion by the private cor- 
 respondence of leading men in the last generation, we must lament the decay of letter- 
 writing as a fine art. 
 
 Mr. Ames was a man of amiable temper and irreproachable character ; and though he 
 was idolized by the public, it was only in the light of his home that he was fully known as 
 he was one of the wisest, wittiest, as well as most tender and constant of men. 
 
 His life was written by President Kirkland, fit Harvard College, and his works have 
 been edited by his son, Hon. Seth Ames, justice of the Supreme Court of Massachusetts. 
 (2 vols., 8vo.) 
 
 [Letter to Josiah Quincy.l 
 
 POSTAL FACILITIES. 
 
 February i, 1806. 
 
 MY DEAR SIR : Messrs. Trask and Wheelock, two knights of the 
 currycomb, in Bromfield Lane, and proprietors of the stage through 
 Dedham to Hartford, from a sheer love to the public, are willing to 
 use and abuse their horses to expedite the mail in eighteen hours in 
 summer, provided that Congress will order the postmaster-general 
 to make a contract with them to carry it three times a week. Even 
 love, you know, grows faint if unrequited. Here we sit in darkness ; 
 and instead of having the light of the newspapers the only light men 
 can see to think by, shed dingy and streaked every morning, like 
 Aurora we often have to wait, as they do in Greenland, for the 
 weather and the northern lights. The town stage is often stopped 
 by rain or snow ; the driver forgets to bring the newspapers, or 
 loses them out of his box. This is our bad condition here. How 
 much worse it is ten miles farther from Boston, you may conceive. 
 The darkness might be felt. Now, as the government alone pos- 
 
FISHER AMES. 35 
 
 sesses information, and as the stage horses alone are the pipes for 
 its transmission to the printers, who are the issuing commissaries to 
 the people, we, the people, the rank-and-file men, ask our officers, 
 through Trask and Wheelock, to provide for our accommodation. 
 Let us have food for the mind every other day. 
 
 The middle road is the nearest by twenty or twenty-five miles ; 
 besides, Mr. Dowse lives upon it, and as it is now all turnpike, in 
 fact or on paper, and as fifty miles of it through Connecticut, without 
 granting the petition, might not in any season, if at all, get knowl- 
 edge of Mr. Wright's bill, and his bounty for shooting Englishmen, 
 the public reasons are the strongest imaginable for ordering the 
 postmaster-general to make such a contract. It would not cost 
 much ; and as the increase of mails increases letter- writing, who will 
 say that ultimately it will cost anything? The only sensible 
 economy in farming is to spend money ; it may be so in govern- 
 ment matters. 
 
 To be serious, there can be no doubt the public good requires the 
 arrangement in question, as Sam Brown, George Blake, and Dr. 
 Eustis subscribe the petition. The Worcester road may seem to be 
 attacked, by the conferring the high prerogative of a mail three 
 times a week on a parallel road ; and Granger's bowels may yearn 
 for his imperial city of feathers and wooden trays, which is situated 
 on the route through Springfield. Pray do what you can for these 
 folks, and get others to help you. Even Mr. Randolph ought to 
 promote these views, as it will, no doubt, increase the number of the 
 readers of his speeches. 
 
 Yours, truly, &c. 
 
 [From a Letter to Timothy Pickering.! 
 FRENCH CONQUEST OF EUROPE. 
 
 February 14, 1806. 
 
 LATE events, I confess, lessen my confidence in the military capa- 
 city of resistance of all the foes of France, England not excepted. 
 A fate seems to sweep the prostrate world along that is not to be 
 averted by submission, nor retarded by arms. The British navy 
 stands like Briareus, parrying the thunderbolts, but can hurl none 
 back again ; and if Bonaparte effects his conquest of the dry land, 
 the empire of the sea must in the end belong to him. That he will 
 reign supreme and alone on the continent is to be disputed by 
 
36 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 nobody but Russia ; and if pride, poverty, distance, false ambition, 
 or fools in his cabinet persuade the Emperor Alexander to make a 
 separate peace, France must be Rome, and Russia Parthia, invinci- 
 ble and insignificant. The second Punic war must terminate in that 
 case, for aught I can see, in the ruin of England ; and the world 
 must bow its base neck to the yoke. It will sweat in servitude and 
 grope in darkness perhaps another thousand years ; for the emula- 
 tion of the European states, extinguished by the establishment of 
 one empire, will no longer sustain the arts. They and the sciences 
 will soon become the corrupters of society. It is already doubtful 
 whether the press is not their enemy. 
 
 I make no doubt Bonaparte will offer almost carte blanche to 
 Russia and Austria, saving only his rights as master ; and I greatly 
 fear that Russia will be lured, as Austria will be forced, to abandon 
 Great Britain. Another peace makes Bonaparte master of Europe. 
 
 Russia has soldiers, and they are brave enough ; and I should 
 think so vast an augmentation of the French empire would seem to 
 Alexander to demand the exertion of all his vast energies. Without 
 Pitt's gold this will be a slow and inadequate exertion ; and how 
 Pitt is to get money, if neutrals take this generous opportunity to 
 quarrel with him, I cannot see. . . . 
 
 It has never happened, I believe, for any great length of time, 
 that our American politics have been much governed either by our 
 policy or blunders. Events abroad have imposed both their char- 
 acter and result ; and I see no reason to doubt that this is to be the 
 case more than ever. If France dictates by land and sea, we fall 
 without an effort The wind of the cannon-ball that smashes John 
 Bull's brains out will lay us on our backs', with all our tinsel honors 
 in the dirt. Therefore I think I may, and feel that I must, return 
 to European affairs. 
 
 Two obstacles, and only two, impede the establishment of univer- 
 sal monarchy Russia and the British navy. The military means 
 of the former are vast, her troops numerous and brave. Of money 
 she has little, but a little goes a great way, for everything is cheap. 
 This is owing to the barbarism of her inhabitants. Now, for 
 revenue a highly-civilized state is most favorable ; but for arms, I 
 beg leave to doubt whether men half savage are not best. Not 
 because rude nations have more courage than those that are polished, 
 but because they have not such an invincible aversion to a military 
 life as the sons of luxury and pleasure, and the sons of labor too, in 
 the latter. As society refines, greater freedom of the choice of life 
 
FISHER AMES. 37 
 
 is progressively allowed ; and the endless variety of employments 
 and arts of life attaches men, and almost all men, to the occupa- 
 tions of peace. To bring soldiers into the field, the prince must 
 overbid the allurements of these occupations. He exhausts his 
 treasury without filling his camp. 
 
 But in Russia men are yet cheap, as well as provisions. Little is 
 left to the peasantry to choose, whether they will stand in the ranks 
 or at a work-bench ; and though the emperor may not incline absolute- 
 ly to force men into the army, a sum of money, that John Bull would 
 disdain to accept, would allure them in crowds. 
 
 I amuse myself with inquiring into the existence of physical 
 means to resist France. I seem to forget, though in truth I do not 
 forget, that means twice as great once existed in the hands of the 
 fallen nations. They were divided in counsel, and taken unprepared. 
 Russia, being a single power, and untainted with revolution mania, 
 and plainly seeing her danger, ought to do more than all the rest. Yet, 
 after all, I well know that if small minds preside on great occasions, 
 they are sure to temporize when the worst of all things is to do 
 nothing ; and very possibly the Russian cabinet sages partake of 
 this fatal blockheadship. 
 
 It also seems to me that the science, or at least the practice, of 
 war has greatly changed since Marlborough's days. In 1702 to 
 1709, or 1710, he fought a great battle on a plain of six miles' extent. 
 On gaining the victory, he besieged a fortress as big as an Indian 
 trading post, mined, scaled, battered, and fought six weeks to take 
 it, and then went into winter quarters. Thus the war went on, 
 campaign after campaign, as slowly as the Middlesex Canal, which in 
 eight years has been dug thirty miles. 
 
 The French have done with sieges and field battles. Posts are 
 occupied along the whole frontier line of a country. If the line of 
 defence be less extensive, they pass round it ; if weakened by extent, 
 through it. An immense artillery, light, yet powerful, rains such a 
 horrible tempest on any part that is to be forced, that the defenders 
 are driven back before the charge of the bayonet is resorted to. 
 The lines once forced, the defending army falls back, takes new 
 positions, and again loses them, as before. Thus a country is taken 
 possession of without a battle, and a brave people wonder and blush 
 to find they are slaves. . . . 
 
 I have never believed the volunteers of England worth a day's 
 rations of beef to the island, if invaded. With you, I have assumed 
 it, as a thing absolutely certain, that they would be beaten and 
 
38 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 dispersed by one hundred thousand invading Frenchmen. Improved 
 as the military art now is, and, as I have supposed, far beyond what 
 it was in the Duke of Marlborough's days, it is folly at all times, and 
 infatuation in time of danger, to consider militia as capable of de- 
 fending a country. My hope has been that England would array 
 two hundred and fifty thousand regulars, and perfect their discipline 
 without delay. Without a great land force, I now think, with you, 
 she is in extreme danger. 
 
 After her fall, ours would not cost Bonaparte a blow. We are 
 prostrate already, and of all men on earth the fittest to be slaves. 
 Even our darling avarice would not make a week's resistance to 
 tribute, if the name were disguised ; and I much doubt whether, if 
 France were lord of the navies of Europe, we should reluct at that, 
 or even at the appellation and condition of Helot. 
 
 [Letter to Josiah Quincy.] 
 
 f Februarys, 1 87- 
 
 MY DEAR SIR : As soon as I learned where your salt speech 
 could be found in print with any correctness, I took measures to get 
 it republished. It is in the Repertory of this day, and is I say it 
 without compliment an ornament to its columns. I am as well 
 satisfied with what you do not say, but only hint, as if you had said 
 it in form. Your argument is sound, and the subject is presented in 
 the right point of view. No man seldomer says flattering things to 
 his friends than I do ; and if I had waited a week after reading your 
 speech, I should have been more stingy of praise. ' Having just read 
 it, I cannot wholly suppress my warmth of approbation. Let me 
 repeat that you should not be too modest about getting your speeches 
 into print correctly. It is the public that is argued with ; that pub- 
 lic that always pronounces its judgment and seldom condescends to 
 give its attention ; that is almost always wrong in the hour of delibera- 
 tion, and right in the day of repentance. Federalism is allowed to 
 have little to do with deliberation ; and I am far from certain that 
 popular repentance is often accompanied with saving grace. We 
 are not so truly sorry for the sin, as for its bad success. To get 
 people to think right, therefore, either first or last, is not the most 
 hopeful undertaking in the world. But Federal good sense is never 
 to guide measures. Archimedes might calculate the force of the 
 wind, but could not prevent its blowing. Now, though argument 
 will never turn the weathercock, it may prove how it points. That 
 power which your adversary can use in spite of you is checked by 
 
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 39 
 
 your efforts. If he exerts all his force, and you all yours, his force 
 is reduced to the degree in which he surpasses you, and in that 
 degree you may not be liable to very serious injury. Federalism is 
 not a sword nor a gun ; it is not wings, but a parachute. In this 
 sense the good men in Congress should be on the alert. 
 
 I feel assured that we are to be subjugated by Bonaparte ; and I 
 have a curiosity to know how Randolph and the knowing ones can 
 sit as easy as the fools do, and see him hastening to snatch from 
 their hands the power they are so ready to contend among them- 
 selves about. I saw, in the Repertory of last week, a long piece, of 
 five or six columns, on the causes of the French military superiority, 
 and on the facility of their conquest of the United States, unless we 
 prepare on a great scale. Whether such discussions produce any 
 effect I know not; but if they do not produce any, it must be 
 because our noisy liberty men are eager for power, and perfectly 
 indifferent about the fall of the country from its boasted indepen- 
 dence. J. R.'s boast that he never reads the newspapers is a shrewd 
 sign that he studies them. I hope his real politics are better than 
 Varnum's, whose ignorance blinds him, or than Jefferson's, whose 
 fears make him a slave. But if J. R. was disposed ever so heartily 
 to urge preparations, he could not prevail to have any made. The 
 force of primary popular notions would control Lord Chatham, if he 
 was our premier. I often dare to think our nation began self- 
 government without education for it. Like negroes, freed after 
 having grown up to man's estate, we are incapable of learning and 
 practising the great art of taking care of ourselves. We must be 
 put to school again, I fear, and whipped into wisdom. 
 
 JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 
 
 John Quincy Adams, son of President John Adams, was born in Braintree, July n, 1767. 
 He accompanied his father to Europe in his eleventh year, and thenceforward enjoyed such 
 opportunities for education and travel as have fallen to the lot of but few American youth. 
 He entered the junior class in Harvard College in 1786, and upon his graduation studied 
 law with Chief Justice Parsons. He was admitted to the bar in 1791, but in 1794 he left 
 the profession to begin a public career. His' services as diplomatist, senator, cabinet min- 
 ister, president, and afterwards representative in Congress, can only be alluded to. since 
 few lives have been so marked by striking incidents, or so affected by the vicissitudes of 
 fortune and the fickleness of popular favor. He died in Washington, at the Capitol, Feb- 
 ruary 23, 1848. He was en industrious writer, and throughout his life kept a diary, from 
 which, it is understood, r.mple selections are to be published by his grandson. His lectures 
 on rhetoric, delivered while he was professor at Harvard College, had only a temporary 
 success, lacugh far more learned and accomplished than his father, he was inferior to 
 
4O HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 him in native force and wit, as well as the simplicity and directness of his style. His repu- 
 tation will rest mainly upon his speeches and state papers, and these are of more interest to 
 students of political history than to lovers of letters. In his proper sphere his abilities were 
 of a very high order, if not the highest. Had he possessed more imagination, a more re- 
 fined taste, and more literary skill, he would probably have remained a professor, and the 
 nation would have lost the services of one of its most able, courageous, and high-toned pub- 
 lic men. 
 
 The selections here given are from a report made in the House of Representatives in 
 1833, which embodies the doctrines of the Whig party upon internal improvements, the 
 tariff, and other questions then in controversy. It is probably the ablest statement of 
 the view of public affairs taken by the Whig politicians of that day. 
 
 [From Mr. Adams's Report on Manufactures.] 
 
 IN descending from the general axiom, that in all countries the 
 independent farmers, or wealthy landholders, cultivators of the soil, 
 constitute the best part of the population, to the measures of legisla- 
 tion recommended to Congress for carrying out this principle in the 
 administration of the government, four features are discernible as 
 especially characteristic of the Message [of President Jackson]. 
 First, the abandonment, for the future, of all appropriations of pub- 
 lic moneys to purposes of internal improvement ; second, the prac- 
 tically total dereliction of all protection to domestic industry, whether 
 agricultural, manufacturing, or mechanical ; third, the nullification 
 of all future revenue from the public domains, by the bestowal of 
 them in free donation to voluntary settlers upon them, from the 
 privileged class of citizens, cultivators of the soil, to swell the num- 
 bers of the best part of the population at the expense of all the rest, 
 or to the favored states in which this common property happens to 
 be situated; fourth, the denunciation of the Bank'of the United 
 States, depreciating the value of the stock held in it by the nation, 
 distressing the commercial community with suspicions of the solidity 
 of its funds, and stimulating the profligacy of fraudulent gambling 
 in its stock. In every one of these four particulars the recommen- 
 dations of the Message are in diametrical opposition to the well- 
 established, deliberately-adopted, and long-tried policy by which the 
 Union has hitherto been governed, under the present Constitution 
 of the United States in diametrical opposition to the purposes for 
 which it was formed to the principles upon which it has been 
 administered, and, with the most painful but most undoubting con- 
 viction, the subscribers must add, to the solemn compacts and inde- 
 feasible obligations by which the nation is bound. 
 
 Although the plan of government marked out and delineated in 
 the Message forms a whole system sufficiently consistent with itself, 
 and all derivable from the fundamental position that the wealthy 
 
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 41 
 
 landholders constitute the best part of the population, yet it is ob- 
 servable that in every instance the subordinate principle advanced 
 as the groundwork of each separate recommendation, is, by the terms 
 of the Message, so qualified in the theory as scarcely, if at all, to dif- 
 fer from the views and opinions entertained by the friends of the 
 interest which the recommendation itself is adopted to destroy. 
 Thus, for example, in the recommendation to abandon all future 
 appropriations of the public moneys for purposes of internal im- 
 provement, the only principle avowed is " that the Constitution does 
 not warrant the application of the funds of the general government 
 to objects of internal improvement, which are not national in their 
 character" From this position the most ardent and most liberal 
 friend of internal improvement will not dissent. No appropriation- 
 ever has been asked ; there is not the shadow of a danger that any 
 appropriations of funds ever will be asked, but for objects alleged 
 to be of a national character ; and of their legitimate title to that 
 character, the representatives of the whole people, and of all 
 the state legislatures in Congress assembled, under the control 
 of a qualified negative by the chief magistrate of the Union, 
 all acting under a constant responsibility to their constituents, are 
 qualified and competent judges. That there will be, as there have 
 been, diversities of opinion, whether any specified object of internal 
 improvement is or is not of a national character, may be freely 
 admitted ; and that in all cases where it may be reasonably doubted, 
 the wise and prudent policy of the constituted authorities will induce 
 them rather to withhold than grant the appropriation, is a conclusion 
 deducible not less from the experience of the past than from the con- 
 fidence due to the moral character of the delegated representatives 
 of the nation. That in the great majority of applications for appro- 
 priations in aid of internal improvements, which have been made to 
 Congress, the objects for which they were solicited have been of a 
 national character, could not be, and was not, doubted. Of the ap- 
 propriations made, the subscribers confidently affirm that none can be 
 pointed out which are not unquestionably of that character. If 
 there has been error in the administration of the government, in the 
 application or appropriations to these objects, it has been an error 
 of parsimony, and not of profusion ; a refusal of the public money 
 where it ought to have been granted, and not a bestowal where it 
 ought to have been denied. In the sober and honest discretion of 
 the legislature, under the vigilant supervision of the executive chief, 
 a guard, amply sufficient for the protection of the public resources 
 
42 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 against wasteful or improvident expenditures, has been provided by 
 the Constitution. . . . 
 
 It is, then, with sentiments of deep mortification and of unqualified 
 dissent, that the subscribers have observed the earnest recommen- 
 dations to Congress, in the Message, to abandon the whole system 
 of appropriations for internal improvements which has hitherto been 
 pursued ; which was in the full tide of successful experiment, and 
 which, for a long series of years, has been contributing to increase 
 the comforts, to multiply the enjoyments, and to consolidate the 
 strength and happiness of the American people. To abandon them 
 all, for in no other light can they consider the extraordinary though 
 vague and indefinite commendations of simplicity as the suitable 
 characteristic for the government of a nation of swarming millions 
 of human beings ; the intensely urgent exhortations to Congress to 
 refrain from the exercise of all beneficent powers, which one twen- 
 tieth part of the people may carp and cavil at as doubtful the 
 incomprehensible argument that harmony and union are to be pro- 
 moted by stifling the firm and manly voice of nineteen twentieths 
 of our constituents, to satisfy the brainsick doubts or appease the 
 menacing clamors of less than one twentieth ; and, finally, the direct 
 recommendation to Congress to dispose of all stocks now held by 
 the general government in corporations, whether created by the 
 general or state governments, and to place the proceeds in the 
 treasury. 
 
 In these recommendations, and in the spirit with which they are 
 pressed upon the consideration of Congress, the subscribers can 
 discern nothing less than a proposed revolution of government in 
 this Union a revolution the avowed purpose of which is to reduce 
 the general government to a simple machine. A simple machine ? 
 The universe in which we daily revolve, and which seems to our 
 vision daily to revolve round us, is a simple machine under the guid- 
 ance of an omnipotent hand. The president of the United States, 
 one of the functionaries provided by the Constitution for the ordinary 
 management of the affairs of the government, but not intrusted even 
 with the power of action upon any proposed alteration or amend- 
 ment to the Constitution, undertakes to reduce the general govern- 
 ment to a simple machine, the simplicity of which shall consist of 
 universal beneficence in preserving peace, affording a uniform cur- 
 rency, maintaining the inviolability of contracts, diffusing intelli- 
 gence, and discharging, unfelt, its other (nameless, unenumerated, 
 and undefined) superintending functions. Truly, this simplicity may 
 
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 43 
 
 be aptly compared with that of the government of the universe ; need- 
 ing only an omnipotent hand to guide and regulate its movements, 
 and differing from it, as would seem, only in the self-denial of all 
 power to improve the condition or promote the general welfare of 
 the community, by and for whom this simple machine was ordained. 
 To the subscribers it appears that of all the attributes of government 
 among men, simplicity is the last that deserves commendation. 
 The simplest of all governments is an absolute despotism, and it 
 may confidently be affirmed that in proportion as a government 
 approaches to simplicity will always be its approaches to arbitrary 
 power. It is by the complication of government alone that the free- 
 dom of mankind can be secured ; simplicity is the essential charac- 
 teristic in the condition of all slavery ; and if the people of these 
 United States enjoy a greater share of liberty than any other nation 
 upon earth, it is because, of all the governments upon earth, theirs 
 is the most complicated. The simplicity to which the recommenda- 
 tions of the Message would reduce the machine of government is a 
 simplicity of impotence, an abdication of the power to do good, a 
 divestment of all power in this confederated people to improve their 
 own condition. . . . 
 
 The subscribers believe that this great confederated Union is a 
 union of the people, a union of states, a union of great national 
 interests ; a union of all classes, conditions, and occupations of 
 men ; a union co-extensive with our territorial dominions ; a union 
 for successive ages, without limitation of time. They read in the 
 preamble to the Constitution, that it was ordained and established by 
 the people of the United States, among other great and noble pur- 
 poses, to secure the blessings of liberty to themselves and their 
 posterity. As sovereign states have no posterity, they are incom- 
 petent to enter into any such compact. The people of the United 
 States, in ordaining the Constitution, expressly bound to its obser- 
 vance their posterity as well as themselves. Their posterity that 
 is, the whole people of the United States are the only power on 
 earth competent to dissolve peaceably that compact. It cannot 
 otherwise be dissolved but by force. But to make it perpetual, the 
 first and transcendent duty of all who at any time are called to par- 
 ticipate in the councils of its government, is to harmonize, and not 
 to divide, to co-operate, and not to conflict. 
 
44 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 JOSIAH QUINCY. 
 
 Josiah Quincy, the son of the famous orator of the revolution, Josiah Quincy, Jr., was 
 born in Boston, February 4, 1772. He was graduated at Harvard College in 1790, and 
 commenced the study of law with Judge Tudor; but he was soon engaged in political 
 affairs, and was, during the whole of his long "life, in the noblest sense a public man. He 
 was a member of Congress from 1805 to 1813, a state senator from 1813 to 1821, speaker of 
 the Massachusetts House of Representatives in 1821, judge of the municipal court in 1822, 
 second mayor of Boston, from 1823 to 1828, and president of Harvard College from 1829 to 
 1845, when he retired from office and from active pursuits to enjoy his deserved repose. 
 He was an ardent Federalist, aggressive and uncompromising in temper, spotless in per- 
 sonal character, and possessing the rare combination of brilliant parts and varied learning 
 with eminently practical abilities. He died July i, 1864, leaving a reputation for integrity and 
 high-mmdedness that may be likened to the fame of the noblest historic Romans. His pub- 
 lished works are a Life of Josiah Quincy, Jr., The History of Harvard University, The 
 Journals of Major Samuel Shaw, first American Consul at Canton, with a Life of the Author, 
 History of the Boston Athenaeum, The Municipal History of the Town and City of Boston 
 during Two Centuries, The Life of John Quincy Adams, besides numerous, speeches and 
 addresses. His life, written by his son, Edmund Quincy, has been published in one vol., 
 i2mo. (Boston : J. R. Osgood & Co ). 
 
 The extracts here given are from a speech delivered in Congress upon the embargo that 
 preceded the last war with Great Britain. 
 
 THE EMBARGO. 
 
 WHEN I enter on the subject of the embargo, I am struck with 
 wonder at the very threshold. I know not with what words to ex- 
 press my astonishment. At the time I departed from Massachu- 
 setts, if there was an impression which I thought universal, it was 
 that, at the commencement of this session, an end would be put to 
 this measure. The opinion was not so much that it would be ter- 
 minated as that it was then at an end. Sir, the prevailing sentiment, 
 according to my apprehension, was stronger than this even that 
 the pressure was so great that it could not possibly be long endured ; 
 that it would soon be absolutely insupportable. And this opinion, 
 as I then had reason to believe, was not confined to any one class, 
 or description, or party : even those who were friends of the ex- 
 isting administration, and unwilling to abandon it, were yet satisfied 
 that a sufficient trial had been given to this measure. With these 
 impressions I arrive in this city. I hear the incantations of the 
 great enchanter ; I feel his spell. I see the legislative machinery 
 begin to move. The scene opens, and I am commanded to forget 
 all my recollections, to disbelieve the evidence of my senses, to con- 
 tradict what I have seen, and heard, and felt. I hear that all this 
 discontent was mere party clamor, electioneering artifice ; that the 
 people of New England are able and willing to endure this embargo 
 for an indefinite, unlimited period, some say for six months, some 
 
JOSIAH QUINCY. 45 
 
 a year, some two years. The gentleman from North Carolina [Mr. 
 Macon] told us that he preferred three years of embargo to a war. 
 And the gentleman from Virginia [Mr. Clopton] said expressly that 
 he hoped we should never allow our vessels to go upon the ocean 
 again until the Orders and Decrees of the belligerents were rescinded. 
 In plain English, until France and Great Britain should, in their 
 great condescension, permit. Good Heavens ! Mr. Chairman, are 
 men mad ? Is this house touched with that insanity which is the 
 never-failing precursor of the intention of Heaven to destroy ? The 
 people of New England, after eleven months' deprivation of the 
 ocean, to be commanded still longer to abandon it for an undefined 
 period, to hold their unalienable rights at the tenure of the will 
 of Britain or of Bonaparte ! A people commercial in all aspects, in 
 all their relations, in all their hopes, in all their recollections of the 
 past, in all their prospects of the future ; a people whose first love 
 was the ocean, the choice of their childhood, the approbation of 
 their manly years, the most precious inheritance of their fathers ; 
 in the midst of their success, in the moment of the most exquisite 
 perception of commercial prosperity, to be commanded to abandon 
 it, not for a time limited, but for a time unlimited ; not until they can 
 be prepared to defend themselves there (for that is not pretended), 
 but until their riva^ recede from it ; not until their necessities re- 
 quire, but until foreign nations permit ! I am lost in astonishment, 
 Mr. Chairman. I have not words to express the matchless absurdity 
 of this attempt. I have no tongue to express the swift and headlong 
 destruction which a blind perseverance in such a system must bring 
 upon this nation. 
 
 Mr. Chairman, other gentlemen must take their responsibilities ; 
 I shall take mine. This embargo must be repealed. You cannot 
 enforce it for any important period of time longer. When I speak 
 of your inability to enforce this law, let not gentlemen misunderstand 
 me.' I mean not to intimate insurrections or open defiances of them, 
 although it is impossible to foresee in what acts that " oppression " 
 will finally terminate, which, we are told, " makes wise men mad." 
 I speak of an inability resulting from very different causes. 
 
 The gentleman from North Carolina [Mr. Macon] exclaimed the 
 other day, in a strain of patriotic ardor, " What ! shall not our laws 
 be executed ? Shall their authority be defied ? I am for enforcing 
 them at every hazard." I honor that gentleman's zeal, and I mean 
 no deviation from that true respect I entertain for him when I tell 
 him that, in this instance, " his zeal is not according to knowledge." 
 
46 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 I ask this house, Is there no control to its authority ? Is there no 
 limit to the power of this national legislature ? I hope I shall offend 
 no man when I intimate that two limits exist, NATURE AND THE 
 CONSTITUTION. Should this house undertake to declare that this 
 atmosphere should no longer surround us, that water should cease 
 to flow, that gravity should not hereafter operate, that the needle 
 should not vibrate to the pole, I do suppose, Mr. Chairman, sir, 
 I mean no disrespect to the authority of this house ; I know the 
 high notions some gentlemen entertain on this subject, I do sup- 
 pose,. sir, I hope I shall not offend, I think I may venture to 
 affirm that, such a law to the contrary notwithstanding, the air would 
 continue to circulate, the Mississippi, the Hudson, and the Potomac 
 would hurl their floods to the ocean, heavy bodies continue to de- 
 scend, and the mysterious magnet hold on its course to its celestial 
 cynosure. 
 
 Just as utterly absurd and contrary to nature is it to attempt to 
 prohibit the people of New England, for any considerable length of 
 time, from the ocean. Commerce is not only associated with all the 
 feelings, the habits, the interests, and relations of that people, but the 
 nature of our soil and of our coasts, the state of our population and 
 its mode of distribution over our territory, render it indispensable. 
 We have five hundred miles of sea-coast, all furnished with harbors, 
 bays, creeks, rivers, inlets, basins ; with every variety of invitation 
 to the sea ; with every species of facility to violate such laws as 
 these. Our people are not scattered over an immense surface, at a 
 solemn distance from each other, in lordly retirement,' in the midst 
 of extended plantations and intervening wastes. They are collected 
 on the margin of the ocean, by the sides of rivers, at the heads of 
 bays, looking into the water or on the surface of it for the incitement 
 and the reward of their industry. Among a people thus situated, 
 thus educated, thus numerous, laws prohibiting them from the exer- 
 cise of their natural rights, will have a binding effect not one mo- 
 ment longer than the public sentiment supports them. . . . 
 
 But it has been asked, in debate, " Will not Massachusetts, the 
 cradle of liberty, submit to such privations ? " An embargo liberty 
 was never cradled in Massachusetts. Our Liberty was not so much 
 a mountain as a sea nymph. She was free as air. She could swim 
 or she could run. The ocean was' her cradle. Our fathers met 
 her as she came, like the goddess of beauty, from the waves. They 
 caught her as she was sporting on the beach. They courted her 
 whilst she was spreading her nets upon the rocks. t But an embargo 
 
WILLIAM WIRT. 47 
 
 Liberty, a handcuffed Liberty, a Liberty in fetters, a Liberty traversing 
 between the four sides of a prison and beating her head against the 
 walls, is none of our offspring. We abjure the monster. Its parent- 
 age is all inland. . . . 
 
 Let me ask, Is embargo independence ? Deceive not yourselves. 
 It is palpable submission. Gentlemen exclaim, Great Britain 
 "smites us on one cheek." And what does Administration ? " It 
 turns the other also." Gentlemen say, Great Britain is a robber ; 
 she " takes our cloak" And what says Administration ? " Let her 
 take our coat also." France and Great Britain require you to relin- 
 quish a part of your commerce, and you yield it entirely. Sir, this 
 conduct may be the way to dignity and honor in another world, but 
 it will never secure safety and independence in this. 
 
 WILLIAM WIRT. 
 
 William Wirt was born at Bladensburg, in Maryland, November 8, 1772. He was the 
 son of a Swiss father and a German mother, both of whom died while he was quite young. 
 He received his education in the private school of a Presbyterian clergyman, and, though it 
 is fair to presume that his progress in classical learning was only moderate, we know that 
 he early acquired a taste for reading, and devoured all the contents of the master's library. 
 So rapidly had he gone over his preparatory course, that he was admitted to the bar in Vir- 
 ginia and commenced practice in his twentieth year. At that time, he tells us, his library 
 consisted of Blackstone's Commentaries, two volumes of Don Quixote, and Tristram Shandy. 
 His first step in public life was in being chosen clerk of the Virginia House of Delegates. 
 Soon after he was made chancellor of the eastern district of the state. During his residence 
 in Richmond he wrote The British Spy, a series of papers of very unequal merit. Two of 
 them, one upon Pocahontas, and the other an account of the Blind Preacher, are in his best 
 style, animated, picturesque, and touching. The scientific disquisitions that burden most 
 of the others are of little value. Later appeared another series, entitled The Old Bache- 
 lor. They were labored essays, resembling those of Johnson, Addison, and Steele only in 
 form ; and, in spite of the favorable judgment of Wirt's biographer, Kennedy, they must 
 be considered as dull. They have fallen into total neglect. Wirt's Life of Patrick Henry 
 attained a great popularity. It is not based on those foundations generally thought essen- 
 tial to biography, since Wirt never saw Henry, and could only write according to tradition. 
 Nothing authentic remained of the eloquence that hnd dazzled the generation preceding. 
 But the book was written in a spirit of hearty sympathy, and though the style at times is 
 opsn to critical objections, all things are forgiven to the author, who carries his readers on, 
 with unwearied attention, to the close. 
 
 Wirt was appointed attorney general of the United States in 1817, and held the office 
 twelve years. His forensic speeches were learned, ornate, and fervid. Perhaps the most 
 favorable specimen of his oratory is the speech upon the trial of Aaron Burr, in which occurs 
 the episode of Blennerhasset's Island, a passage dear to generations of school-boys, and 
 lingering like a memory of beauty in maturer years. His discourse upon the lives of Adams 
 and Jefferson, delivered in 1826, was abo a fine production. Upon his retirement from 
 office in 1828, he went to reside in Baltimore, where he spent the remainder of his life. He 
 
48 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 died in Washington, February 18, 1834, while attending the Supreme Court. He was a strik- 
 ingly handsome man, with graceful manners and a musical voice. He was twice married 
 and was happy in his domestic relations. Both in public and in private life his character 
 and conduct were irreproachable. His life was written by the late John P. Kennedy, of 
 Baltimore. 
 
 [From the British Spy.] 
 POCAHONTAS. 
 
 GOOD Heaven ! what an eventful life was hers ! To speak of 
 nothing else, the arrival of the English in her father's dominion 
 must have appeared (as indeed it turned out to be) a most porten- 
 tous phenomenon. It is not easy for us to conceive the amazement 
 and consternation which must have filled her mind and that of her 
 nation at the first appearance of our countrymen. Their great ship, 
 with all her sails spread, advancing in solemn majesty to the shore ; 
 their domestic animals ; their cargo of new and glittering wealth ; 
 and then the thunder and irresistible force of their artillery ; the 
 distant country announced by them, far beyond the great water, of 
 which the oldest Indian had never heard, or thought, or dreamed, 
 all this was so new, so wonderful, so tremendous, that I do seriously 
 suppose the personal descent of an army of Milton's celestial angels, 
 robed in light, sporting in the bright beams of the sun and redoubling 
 their splendor, making divine harmony with their golden harps, or 
 playing with the bolt and chasing the rapid lightning of heaven, 
 would excite not more astonishment in Great Britain than did the 
 debarkation of the English among the aborigines of Virginia. 
 
 Poor Indians ! Where are they now ? Indeed, my dear S., 
 this is a truly afflicting consideration. The people here may say 
 what they please, but, on the principles of eternal truth and justice, 
 they have no right to this country. They say that they have bought 
 it bought it ! Yes, of whom? Of the poor trembling natives 
 who knew that refusal would be vain, and who strove to make a 
 merit of necessity by seeming to yield with grace what they knew 
 they had not the power to retain. Such a bargain might appease 
 the conscience of a gentleman of the green bag, " worn and hack- 
 neyed " in the arts and frauds of his profession ; but in Heaven's 
 chancery, my S., there can be little doubt that it has been long since 
 set aside on the ground of duress. 
 
 Poor wretches ! No wonder that they are so implacably vindic- 
 tive against the white people ; no wonder that the rage of resent- 
 ment is handed down from generation to generation ; no wonder 
 they refuse to associate and mix permanently with their unjust and 
 
WILLIAM WIRT. 49 
 
 cruel invaders and exterminators ; no wonder that in the unabating 
 spite and frenzy of conscious impotence, they wage an eternal war, 
 as well as they are able ; that they triumph in the rare opportunity 
 of revenge ; that they dance, sing, and rejoice as the victim shrieks 
 and faints amid the flames, when they imagine all the crimes of their 
 oppressors collected on his head, and fancy the spirits of their in- 
 jured forefathers hovering over the scene, smiling ferocious delight 
 at the grateful spectacle, and feasting on the precious odor as it 
 arises from the burning blood of the white man. 
 
 Yet the people here affect to wonder that the Indians are so very 
 unsusceptible of civilization, or, in other words, that they so obsti- 
 nately refuse to adopt the manners of the white men. Go, Vir- 
 ginians, erase from the Indian nation the tradition of their wrongs ; 
 make them forget, if you can, that once this charming country was 
 theirs ; that over these fields and through these forests their be- 
 loved forefathers once, in careless gayety, pursued their sports and 
 hunted their game ; that every returning day found them the sole, 
 the peaceful, the happy proprietors of this extensive and beautiful 
 domain. Make them forget, too, if you can, that in the midst of all 
 this innocence, simplicity, and bliss, the white man came ; and lo ! 
 the animated chase, the feast, the dance, the song of fearless, 
 thoughtless joy were over ; that, ever since, they have been made 
 to drink of the bitter cup of humiliation ; treated like dogs ; their 
 lives, their liberties, the sport of the white men ; their country and 
 the graves of their fathers torn from them in cruel succession un- 
 til, driven from river to river, from forest to forest, and, through a 
 period of two hundred years, rolled back nation upon nation, they 
 find themselves fugitives, vagrants, and strangers in their own coun- 
 try, and look forward to the certain period when their descendants 
 will be totally extinguished by wars, driven, at the point of the bay- 
 onet, into the western ocean, or reduced to a fate still more deplor- 
 able and horrid, the condition of slaves. Go, administer the cup of 
 oblivion to recollections and anticipations like these, and then you 
 will cease to complain that the Indian refuses to be civilized. But 
 until then, surely it is nothing wonderful that a nation, even yet 
 bleeding afresh from the memory of ancient wrongs, perpetually 
 agonized by new outrages, and goaded into desperation and madness 
 at the prospect of the certain ruin which awaits their descendants, 
 should hate the authors of their miseries, of their desolation, their 
 destruction, should hate their manners, hate their color, their lan- 
 guage, their name, and everything that belongs to them. No ; never 
 4 
 
5O HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 until time shall wear out the history of their sorrows and their suf- 
 ferings, will the Indian be brought to love the white man and to imi- 
 tate his manners. 
 
 Great God ! To reflect, my S., that the authors of all these 
 wrongs were our own countrymen, our forefathers, professors of the 
 meek and benevolent religion of Jesus. O, it was impious, it was un- 
 manly, poor, and pitiful ! Gracious Heaven! What had these poor 
 people done ? The simple inhabitants of these peaceful plains, what 
 wrong what injury, had they offered to the English ? My soul melts 
 with pity and shame. 
 
 As for the present inhabitants, it must be granted that they are 
 comparatively innocent ; unless, indeed, they also have encroached 
 under the guise of treaties, which they themselves have previously 
 contrived to render expedient or necessary to the Indians. 
 
 Whether this has been the case or not I am too much a stranger 
 to the interior transactions of this country to decide. But it seems 
 to me that were I a president of the United States, I would glory in 
 going to the Indians, throwing myself on my knees before them, and 
 saying to them, " Indians, friends, brothers, O, forgive my country- 
 men ! Deeply have our forefathers wronged you ; and they have 
 forced us to continue the wrong. Reflect, brothers, it was not our 
 fault that we were born in your country ; but now we have no other 
 home ; we have nowhere else to rest our feet. Will you not, then, 
 permit us to remain ? Can you not forgive even us, innocent as we 
 are ? If you can, O, come to our bosoms, be indeed our brothers, 
 and, since there is room enough for us all, give us' a home in your 
 land, and let us be children of the same affectionate family." I be- 
 lieve that a magnanimity of sentiment like this, followed up by a cor- 
 respondent greatness of conduct on the part of the people of the 
 United States, would go farther to bury the tomahawk and produce 
 a fraternization with the Indians than all the presents, treaties, and 
 missionaries that can be employed, dashed and defeated as these 
 latter means always are by a claim of rights on the part of the white 
 people, which the Indians know to be false and baseless. Let me 
 not be told that the Indians are too dark and 'fierce to be affected by 
 generous and noble sentiments. I will not believe it. Magnanimity 
 can never be lost on a nation which has produced an Alknomok, a 
 Logan, and a Pocahontas. 
 
WILLIAM WIRT. 5 I 
 
 [From the same.] 
 THE BLIND PREACHER. 
 
 IT was one Sunday, as I travelled through the County of Orange, 
 that my eye was caught by a cluster of horses tied near a ruinous 
 old wooden house in the forest, not far from the roadside. Having 
 frequently seen such objects before, in travelling through these 
 states, I had no difficulty in understanding that this was a place of 
 religious worship. 
 
 Devotion alone should have stopped me to join in the duties of the 
 congregation ; but I must confess that curiosity to hear the preacher 
 of such a wilderness was not the least of my motives. On enter- 
 ing, I was struck with his preternatural appearance. He was a tall 
 and very spare old man ; his head, which was covered with a white 
 linen cap, his shrivelled hands, and his voice, were all shaking under 
 tbe influence of a palsy, and a few moments ascertained to me that 
 he was perfectly blind. 
 
 The first emotions which touched my breast were those of mingled 
 pity and veneration. But, ah ! . . . how soon were all my 
 feelings changed ! The lips of Plato were never more worthy of a 
 prognostic swarm of bees than were the lips of this holy man. It 
 was a day of the administration of the sacrament, and his subject, of 
 course, was the passion of our Saviour. I had heard the subject 
 handled a thousand times ; I had thought it exhausted long ago. 
 Little did I suppose that, in the wild woods of America, I was to 
 meet with a man whose eloquence would give to this topic a new and 
 more sublime pathos than I had ever before witnessed. 
 
 As he descended from the pulpit to distribute the mystic symbols, 
 there was a peculiar, a more than human solemnity in his air and 
 manner which made my blood run cold, and my whole frame shiver. 
 
 He then drew a picture of the sufferings of our Saviour ; his trial 
 before Pilate, his ascent up Calvary, his crucifixion, and his death. 
 I knew the whole history, but never, until then, had I heard the 
 circumstances so selected, so arranged, so colored. It was all new, 
 and I seemed to have heard it for the first time in my life. His 
 enunciation was so deliberate that his voice trembled on every sylla- 
 ble, and every heart in the assembly trembled in unison. His pecu- 
 liar phrases had that force of description that the original scene 
 appeared to be, at that moment, acting before our eyes. We saw 
 the very faces of the Jews ; the staring, frightful distortions of malice 
 and rage ; we saw the buffet. My soul kindled with a flame of 
 
52 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 indignation, and my hands were involuntarily and convulsively 
 clinched. 
 
 But when he came to touch on the patience, the forgiving meek- 
 ness, of our Saviour ; when he drew, to the life, his blessed eyes 
 streaming in tears to heaven ; his voice breathing to God a soft and 
 gentle prayer of pardon on his enemies, " Father, forgive them, for 
 they know not what they do," the voice of the preacher, which had 
 all along faltered, grew fainter and fainter, until, his utterance being 
 entirely obstructed by the force of his feelings, he raised his hand- 
 kerchief to his eyes, and burst into a loud and irrepressible flood of 
 grief. The effect is inconceivable. The whole house resounded 
 with the mingled groans, and sobs, and shrieks of the congregation. 
 
 It was some time before the tumult had subsided so far as to per- 
 mit him to proceed. Indeed, judging by the usual, but fallacious, 
 standard of my own weakness, I began to be very uneasy for the 
 situation of the preacher. For I could not conceive how he would 
 be able to let his audience down from the height to which he had 
 wound them, without impairing the solemnity and dignity of his sub- 
 ject, or perhaps shocking them by the abruptness of the fall. But, 
 no ; the descent was as beautiful and sublime as the elevation had 
 been rapid and enthusiastic. 
 
 The first sentence with which he broke the awful silence was a 
 quotation from Rousseau, " Socrates died like a philosopher, but 
 Jesus Christ like a God." 
 
 I despair of giving you any idea of the effect produced by this 
 short sentence, unless you could perfectly conceive the whole man- 
 ner of the man, as well as the peculiar crisis in the discourse. Never 
 before did I completely understand what Demosthenes meant by 
 laying such stress on delivery. You are to bring before you the 
 venerable figure of the preacher ; his blindness, constantly recalling 
 to your recollection old Homer, Ossian, and Milton, and associating 
 with his performance the melancholy grandeur of their geniuses ; 
 you are to imagine that you hear his slow, solemn, well-accented 
 enunciation, and his voice of affecting, trembling melody ; you are 
 to remember the pitch of passion and enthusiasm to which the con- 
 gregation were raised ; and then the few minutes of portentous, 
 death-like silence which reigned throughout the house ; the preacher, 
 removing his white handkerchief from his aged face, even yet wet from 
 the recent torrent of his tears, and slowly stretching forth the pal- 
 sied hand which holds it, begins the sentence, " Socrates died like 
 a philosopher " then pausing, raising his other hand, pressing 
 
HENRY CLAY. 53 
 
 them, both clasped together, with warmth and energy to his breast, 
 lifting his " sightless balls " to heaven, and pouring his whole soul 
 into his tremulous voice, "but Jesus Christ like a God!" If he had 
 been indeed and in truth an angel of light, the effect could scarcely 
 have been more divine. 
 
 Whatever I had been able to conceive of the sublimity of Massil- 
 lon, or the force of Bourdaloue, had fallen far short of the power 
 which I felt from the delivery of this simple sentence. The blood 
 which just before had rushed in a hurricane upon my brain, and, in 
 the violence and agony of my feelings, had held my whole system iu 
 suspense, now ran back into my heart, with a sensation which I 
 cannot describe a kind of shuddering, delicious horror! The 
 paroxysm of blended pity and indignation to which I had been trans- 
 ported, subsided into the deepest self-abasement, humility, and ado- 
 ration. I had just been lacerated and dissolved by sympathy for our 
 Saviour as a fellow-creature, but now, with fear and trembling, I 
 adored him as "a God." 
 
 HENRY CLAY. 
 
 Henry Gay was born in Hanover County, near Richmond, Va., April 12, 1777. His 
 father died in his infancy, and his mother, having married again (1792), emigrated to Ken- 
 tucky. The lad was employed four years in the office of the clerk of the Chancery Court, 
 and there acquired, among other things, a handsome style of penmanship. While in this 
 place he attracted the attention of Chancellor Wythe, who employed him as an amanuensis, 
 and gave him good counsel upon his reading and study. He obtained a license to practise 
 law before he was twenty-one years of age, and then removed to Lexington, Ky., 
 where he opened an office. His fine person, engaging manners, and enthusiastic temper 
 gained him hosts of friends and clients. After service in the state legislature, he was 
 elected to the United States Senate to fill an unexpired term in 1806, and again in 1809. In 
 181 1 he was elected a member of the national House of Representatives for the first time, and 
 was immediately chosen speaker. This was at the time when war with Great Britain was in 
 prospect, and Mr. Clay threw the whole weight of his personal and official influence in favor 
 of the war party. He remained in Congress and in the speaker's chair until January, 1814, 
 when he was made one of the commissioners whose efforts finally brought about a satisfac- 
 tory peace by the treaty of Ghent. Being elected again a member of Congress, in 1815, he 
 was again chosen speaker. With the exception of a single term, during which he resumed 
 the practice of law to repair some pecuniary losses, he remained in Congress till 1824, when, 
 having been an unsuccessful candidate for the presidency, he resigned to accept the place of 
 secretary of state under John Quincy Adams. As Mr. Clay gave the deciding vote in favor 
 of Adams, the election having devolved upon the house, his acceptance of the highest 
 office under the man whom his vote had made president raised a storm of obloquy through- 
 out the country. John Randolph termed the transaction a "a coalition between a Puritan 
 and a blackleg ." The phrase " bargain and corruption " was bandied about, and. notwith- 
 standing the denial of both Adams and Clay, and the corroborative testimony of La Fayette 
 
54 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 (to whom Clay had, in advance, declared his determination to vote for Adams), an impres- 
 sion was made upon the public mind that was never wholly removed. 
 
 In 1831 Mr. Clay was again chosen senator, and in 1832 was again defeated as a presi- 
 dential candidate. He was brought forward again in the convention held at Harrisburg in 
 December, 1839, and was undoubtedly the first choice of a large plurality of his party ; but 
 in the end General Harrison obtained the nomination. In 1842 he took leave of the Senate 
 in a speech of great power and feeling, a portion of which is here given. He was again 
 an unsuccessful candidate for the presidency in 1844. The opposition of Clay to the an- 
 nexation of Texas lost him southern support, and the rise of the third party, based upon 
 opposition to slavery, threw the plurality of several great northern states against him. 
 Once more, in 1848, Mr. Clay's hopes were deferred, and, this time, forever ; the doctrine 
 of expediency again prevailed, and the hero of the Mexican war received the coveted 
 nomination. 
 
 Mr. Clay's farewell to the Senate proved not to be final, for he appeared again in 1849, 
 and remained a member until his death, which occurred June 29, 1852. 
 
 The nature of Mr. Clay's mind, no less than the circumstances of his life, made him a 
 practical rather than a speculative man, a student of human nature rather than of books, a 
 ready debater rather than a finished orator. Few men have been so marked out by nature 
 as popular leaders, and few have had the boldness to originate and contend for a system of 
 domestic and foreign policy with such undaunted perseverance. The great idea of Mr. 
 Clay was to develop home manufactures, and create home markets for the results of industry 
 by means of a protective tariff. 
 
 In the light of his numerous failures to attain the place of chief magistrate, it is clearly 
 evident that talents, statesmanship, and public services go for nothing in the estimation of 
 party managers, and that the ambitious aspirant may be assured that his very gifts will 
 weigh him down and make him fail in the race with the mediocrity that fortune may bring 
 out against him. 
 
 The purely literary merit of Mr. Clay's speeches is not very high, but his ideas are clearly 
 and forcibly expressed, and the generous enthusiasm of his nature breaks out at times in 
 passages of true eloquence. His works have been published, with a memoir by the Rev. 
 Calvin Colton, in six volumes. 
 
 [From his Farewell Address to the United States Senate' in 1842.] 
 
 FROM 1806, the period of my entrance upon this noble theatre, 
 with short intervals, to the present time, I have been engaged in the 
 public councils, at home or abroad. Of the services rendered 
 during that long and arduous period of my life it does not become 
 me to speak. History, if she deign to notice me, and posterity, if the 
 recollection of my humble actions shall be transmitted to posterity, 
 are the best, the truest, and the most impartial judges. When death 
 has closed the scene, their sentence will be pronounced, and to that 
 I commit myself. My public conduct is a fair subject for the criti- 
 cism and judgment of my fellow-men ; but the motives by which I 
 have been prompted are known only to the great Searcher of the 
 human heart and to myself; and I trust I may be pardoned for 
 repeating a declaration made some thirteen years ago, that, whatever 
 errors and doubtless there have been many may be discovered 
 in a review of my public service, I can with unshaken confidence 
 
HENRY CLAY. 55 
 
 appeal to that divine Arbiter for the truth of the declaration, that I 
 have been influenced by no impure purpose, no personal motive ; 
 have sought no personal aggrandizement ; but that in all my public 
 acts I have had a single eye directed, and a warm and devoted heart 
 dedicated, to what, in my best judgment, I believed the true interests, 
 the honor, the union, and the happiness of my country required. 
 
 During that long period, however, I have not escaped the fate 
 of other public men, nor failed to incur censure and detraction of 
 the bitterest, most unrelenting, and most malignant character ; and 
 though not always insensible to the pain it was meant to inflict, I 
 have borne it in general with composure, and without disturbance 
 here [pointing to his breast], waiting, as I have done, in perfect and 
 undoubting confidence for the ultimate triumph of justice and of 
 truth, and the entire persuasion that time would settle all things as 
 they should be, and that whatever wrong or injustice I might ex- 
 perience at the hands of man, He to whom all hearts are open, and 
 fully known, would, by the inscrutable dispensations of his provi- 
 dence, rectify all error, redress all wrong, and cause ample justice to 
 be done. 
 
 But I have not, meanwhile, been unsustained. Everywhere 
 throughout the extent of this great continent, I have had cordial, 
 warm-hearted, faithful, and devoted friends, who have known me, 
 loved me, and appreciated my motives. To them, if language were 
 capable of fully expressing my acknowledgments, I would now offer 
 all the return I have the power to make for their genuine, dis- 
 interested, and persevering fidelity and devoted attachment, the 
 feelings and sentiments of a heart overflowing with never-ceasing 
 gratitude. If, however, I fail in suitable language to express my 
 gratitude to them for all the kindness they have shown me, what 
 shall I say, what can I say, at all commensurate with those feelings 
 of gratitude with which I have been inspired by the state whose 
 humble representative and servant I have been in this chamber? 
 
 I emigrated from Virginia to the State -of Kentucky, now nearly 
 forty-five years ago ; I went as an orphan boy, who had not yet 
 attained the age of majority ; who had never recognized a father's 
 smile, nor felt his warm caresses ; poor, penniless, without the 
 favor of the great, with an imperfect and neglected education, hardly 
 sufficient for the ordinary business and common pursuits of life ; but 
 scarce had I set my foot upon her generous soil when I was 
 embraced with parental fondness, caressed as though I had been a 
 favorite child, and patronized with liberal and unbounded munif- 
 
56 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 icence. From that period the highest honors of the state have 
 been freely bestowed upon me ; and when, in the darkest hour of 
 calumny and detraction, I seemed to be assailed by all the rest of 
 the world, she interposed her broad and impenetrable shield, repelled 
 the poisoned shafts that were aimed for my destruction, and vin- 
 dicated my good name from every malignant and unfounded asper- 
 sion. I return with indescribable pleasure to linger a while longer, 
 and mingle with the warm-hearted and whole-souled people of that 
 state ; and when the last scene shall forever close upon me, I hope 
 that my earthly remains will be laid under her green sod with those 
 of her gallant and patriotic sons. . . . 
 
 I go from this place under the hope that we shall, mutually, 
 consign to perpetual oblivion whatever personal collisions may at 
 any time unfortunately have occurred between us, and that our 
 recollections shall dwell in future only on those conflicts of mind 
 with mind, those intellectual struggles, those noble exhibitions of 
 the powers of logic, argument, and eloquence, honorable to the 
 Senate and to the nation, in which each has sought and contended 
 for what he deemed the best mode of accomplishing one common 
 object the interest and the happiness of our beloved country. 
 To these thrilling and delightful scenes it will be my pleasure and 
 my pride to look back in my retirement with unmeasured satis- 
 faction. . . . 
 
 In retiring, as I am about to do, forever, from the Senate, suffer 
 me to express my heartfelt wishes that all the great and patriotic 
 objects of the wise framers of our Constitution may be fulfilled ; that 
 the high destiny designed for it may be fully answered ; and that its 
 deliberations, now and hereafter, may eventuate in securing the 
 prosperity of our beloved country, in maintaining its rights and 
 honor abroad, and upholding its interests at home. I retire, I know, 
 at a period of infinite distress and embarrassment. I wish I could 
 take my leave of you under more favorable auspices ; but without 
 meaning at this time to say whether on any or on whom reproaches 
 for the sad condition of the country should fall, I appeal to the 
 Senate and to the world to bear testimony to my earnest and con- 
 tinued exertions to avert it, and to the truth that no blame can 
 justly attach to me. 
 
 May the most precious blessings of heaven rest upon the whole 
 Senate and each member of it, and may the labors of every one re- 
 dound to the benefit of the nation and the advancement of his own 
 fame and renown. And when you shall retire to the bosom of your 
 
JAMES KIRKE PAULDING. 57 
 
 constituents,. may you receive that most cheering and gratifying of all 
 human rewards their cordial greeting of, "Well done, good and 
 faithful servant." 
 
 And now, Mr. President and Senators, I bid you all a long, a 
 lasting, and a friendly farewell. 
 
 JAMES KIRKE PAULDING. 
 
 James Kirke Paulding was born in Pleasant Valley, Dutchess County, N. Y., August 
 22, 1779. With the exception of some assistance from the village school, he was self- 
 taught. He went to the city of New York while still a youth, and obtained employ- 
 ment through the aid of William Irving, who had married his sister. Becoming intimate 
 with Washington Irving, a younger brother of William, he turned his attention to literature, 
 and in connection with his since illustrious friend he published Salmagundi, a series of 
 satirical papers. We have space only to give the titles of his numerous works : The Divert- 
 ing History of John Bull and Brother Jonathan, 1812 ; The Lay of the Scotch Fiddle, a 
 parody upon Scott's Lay of the Last Minstrel, 1813; The United States and England, a 
 political pamphlet, 1814; Letters from the South by a Northern Man, 1817; The Back- 
 woodsman, a poem, 1818 ; anew series of Salmagundi, 1819 ; a Sketch of Old England by a 
 New England Man, 1822 ; John Bull in America, 1824. His first novel, Konigsmarke, was 
 published in 1823 ; Merry Tales of the Three Wise Men of Gotham, in 1826 ; The Travel- 
 ler's Guide, in 1828 ; Tales of the Good Woman, in 1829 ; The Book of St. Nicholas, in 
 1830. Then appeared, in 1831, his best work, and the one by which his name will be 
 remembered, The Dutchman's Fireside. This is a genuine, life-like story, full of stirring 
 incidents, of picturesque scenes and striking characters, for which the author's early ex- 
 periences had furnished the abundant materials. The amiable and whimsical peculiarities 
 of the Dutch settlers, the darker traits of Indian character, and the vicissitudes of frontier 
 life have rarely been more powerfully sketched. In 1832 he published another successful 
 novel, Westward Ho ! In 1835 appeared his Life of Washington, for youth, a well-con- 
 sidered and valuable work. The next year he published Slavery in the United States, a 
 treatise in which the institution is warmly defended. From 1837 to 1841 he held the post of 
 secretary of the navy. Upon his retirement he wrote two more novels, The Old Con- 
 tinental, 1846, and The Puritan and his Daughter, 1849. He died April 6, 1860. 
 
 [From the Dutchman's Fireside.] 
 THE HERO SETS OUT FOR THE WILDERNESS. 
 
 EARLY next morning, ere the tints of the bright morning reddened 
 the eastern sky or the birds had left their perches among the 
 clustering foliage, all things being ready, Sybrandt launched his 
 light canoe on the smooth mirror of the Hudson, and, assisted by 
 the dusky Charon, old Tjerck, paddled away upward towards the 
 sources of that majestic river. The first day they occasionally 
 saw, along its low, luxuriant borders, some scattered indications of 
 the footsteps of the white man, and heard, amid the high, towering 
 forests at a distance in the uplands, the axe of the first settler, the 
 
58 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 crash of the falling tree, the barking of the deep-mouthed hound, 
 and the report of a solitary, distant gun, repeated over and over by 
 the echoes, never perhaps awakened thus before. A rude hut, the 
 first essay towards improvement upon the Indian wigwam, appeared 
 here and there at long intervals along the shores, the image of 
 desertion and desolation, but teeming with life. As they passed 
 along, the little, half-clothed, white-haired urchins poured forth, 
 gazing and shouting at the passing strangers. Gradually these 
 evidences of the progress of that roving, adventurous race, which is 
 sending forth its travellers, its merchants, its scholars, its warriors, 
 and its missionaries, armed with the sword and the Bible, into every 
 region of the peopled earth, ceased altogether. Nature displayed 
 herself naked before them, and the innocent earth exhibited her 
 beauties in all the careless, unstudied simplicity of our first parents, 
 ere the sense of guilt taught them to blush and be ashamed. There 
 was silence on the earth, on the waters, and in the air, save when 
 the Creator's voice spoke in the whirlwind, the thunder, the raging 
 of the river when the full-charged clouds poured their deluge into its 
 placid bosom. 
 
 Night, which in the crowded haunts of men is the season of 
 silence and repose, was here far more noisy than the day. It was 
 then that the prowling freebooters of the woods issued from their 
 recesses to seek their prey and hymn their shrill or growling vespers 
 to the changeful moon or the everlasting stars, those silent witnesses 
 of what mortals wish to hide. As they toiled upward in the moon- 
 light evenings against the current, which every day became more 
 rapid in approaching towards the falls, they were hailed from the 
 shore at intervals by the howl of the wolves, the growling of the 
 bears, and the cold, cheerless quaverings of the solitary screech-owl. 
 When, tired with the labors of the day, they drew their canoe to the 
 shore and lay by for the night, their only safety was in lighting a fire 
 and keeping it burning all the time. This simple expedient furnishes 
 the sole security against the ferocious hunger of these midnight 
 marauders, who stay their approach at a certain distance, where 
 they stand and utter their cry, and glare with their eyes, a mark for 
 the woodsman, who takes his aim directly between these two balls 
 of living fire. . 
 
 A RIVER VOYAGE IN FORMER TIMES. 
 
 CATALINA, accompanied by her father, embarked on board of the 
 good ship Watervliet, whereof was commander Captain Baltus Van 
 
JAMES KIRKE PAULDING. 59 
 
 Slingerland, a most experienced, deliberative, and circumspective 
 skipper. This vessel was noted for making quick passages, wherein 
 she excelled the much-vaunted Liverpool packets ; seldom being 
 more than three weeks in going from Albany to New York, unless 
 when she chanced to run on the flats, for which, like her worthy 
 owners, she seemed to have an instinctive preference. Captain 
 Baltus was a navigator of great sagacity and courage, having been 
 the first man that ever undertook the dangerous voyage between the 
 two cities without asking the prayers of the church and making his 
 will. Moreover, he was so cautious in all his proceedings that he 
 took nothing for granted, and would never be convinced that his 
 vessel was near a shoal or a sand-bank until she was high and dry 
 aground. When properly certified by ocular demonstration, he 
 became perfectly satisfied, and set himself to smoking till it pleased 
 the waters to rise and float him off again. His patience under an 
 accident of this kind was exemplary ; his pipe was his consolation 
 more effectual than all the precepts of philosophy. 
 
 It was a fine autumnal morning, calm, still, clear, and beautiful. 
 The forests, as they nodded or slept quietly on the borders of the 
 pure river, reflected upon its bosom a varied carpet, adorned with 
 every shade of color. The bright yellow poplar, the still brighter 
 scarlet maple, the dark-brown oak, and the yet more sombre ever- 
 green pine and hemlock, together with a thousand various trees and 
 shrubs, of a thousand varied tints, all mingled in one rich, inex- 
 pressibly rich garment, with which Nature seemed desirous of hiding 
 her faded beauties and approaching decay. The vessel glided 
 slowly with the current, now and then assisted by a little breeze, 
 that for a moment rippled the surface and filled the sails, and then 
 died away again. In this manner they approached the Overslaugh, 
 a place infamous in all past time for its narrow, crooked channel, 
 and the sand-banks with which it is infested. The vigilant Van 
 Slingerland, in view of possible contingencies, replenished his pipe, 
 and inserted it in the button-holes of his Dutch pea-jacket, to be ready 
 on an emergency. 
 
 " Boss," said the ebony Palinurus, who presided over the destinies 
 of the good sloop Watervliet, " boss, don't you tink I'd better put 
 about ? I tink we're close to the Overslaugh, now." 
 
 Captain Baltus very leisurely walked to the bow of the vessel, and, 
 after looking about a little, replied, " Leetle furder, a leetle furder, 
 Brom ; no occasion to pe in zuch a hurry pefore you are zure 
 of a ting." 
 
6O HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 Brom kept on his course, grumbling a little in an undertone, until 
 the sloop came to a sudden stop. The captain then bestirred him- 
 self to let go the anchor. 
 
 " No fear, boss ; she won't run away." 
 
 "Very well," quoth Captain Baltus ; I am zatisfied now, berfectly 
 zatisfied. We are certainly on de Overslaugh." 
 
 " As clear as mud," answered Brom. The captain then proceeded 
 to light his pipe, and Brom followed his example. Every quarter of 
 an hour a sloop would glide past in perfect safety, warned of the 
 precise situation of the bar by the position of the Watervliet, and 
 added to the vexation of our travellers at being thus left behind. 
 But Captain Baltus smoked away, -now and then ejaculating, "Ay, 
 ay ; de more hashte de lesch shpeed ; we shall see py and py." 
 
 As the tide ebbed, the vessel which had grounded on the extremity 
 of the sand-bank gradually heeled on one side, until it was difficult 
 to keep the deck, and Colonel Vancour suggested the propriety of 
 going on shore until she righted again. 
 
 " Why, where's de uze, den," replied Captain Baltus, " of daking 
 all tis drouble, boss ? We shall pe off in dwo or dree tays at most. 
 It will pe vull moon tay after to-morrow." 
 
 "Two or three days ! " exclaimed the colonel. " If I thought so, 
 I would go home and wait for you." 
 
 " Why, where's de uze, den, of daking zo much drouble, golonel ? 
 You'd only have to gome pack again." 
 
 " But why don't you lighter your vessel or carry out an anchor ? 
 She seems just on the edge of the bank, almost ready to slide into 
 the deep water." 
 
 " Why, where's de uze, den, of daking zo much drouble, den ? 
 She'll get off herzelf one of deze days, golonel. You are well off 
 here ; netting to do, and de young woman dare can knid you a bair 
 of stogings to bass de dime." 
 
 " But she can't knit stockings," said the colonel, smiling. 
 
 " Not knid stogings ! Py main zoul, den, what is zhe goot vor ? 
 Den zhe must zmoke a bipe ; dat is de next pest way of bassing de 
 dime." 
 
 " But she don't smoke, either, captain." 
 
 " Not zmoke, nor kni4 stogings ? Where was zhe prought ub, 
 den ? I wouldn't have her vor my wife iv zhe had a whole zloop vor 
 her vortune. I don't know what zhe gan do to bass de dime dill 
 next vull moon, put go to zleep ; dat is de next pest ding to knidding 
 and zmoking." 
 
JOSEPH STORY. 6l 
 
 Catalina was highly amused at Captain Baltus's enumeration of 
 the sum total of her resources for passing the time. Fortunately, 
 however, the next rising of the tide floated them off, and the vessel 
 proceeded gallantly on her way, with a fine north-west breeze, which 
 carried her on with almost the speed of a steamboat. In the course 
 of a few miles they overtook and passed several sloops that had left 
 th'e Watervliet aground on the Overslaugh. 
 
 JOSEPH STORY. 
 
 Joseph Story was born in Marblehead, Mass., September 18, 1779. He received his 
 education at Harvard College, graduating in 1798, and then commenced the study of law. 
 He published a. volume of poems in 1804, but, as the book was not successful, he "took a 
 lawyer's farewell of the muse," and devoted his time to legal learning. He was elected a 
 member of the state legislature in 1805, and was chosen a representative in Congress in 
 1809. In politics he sided with the republicans, the supporters of Jefferson, although some 
 independent votes showed that he was not altogether a partisan. In 1811 he was appointed 
 by Madison an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, a place which he 
 occupied thirty-four years. Upon the establishment of the Dane law professorship in Cam- 
 bridge, in 1829, he was called to the chair, and continued to deliver lectures during the vaca- 
 tions of the Supreme Court until his death. He was as distinguished for his industry as for 
 his learning, and contributed more volumes to the literature of law than any modern author. 
 Besides the vast number of reports of cases decided in his long term of service, he wrote a 
 Commentary on the Constitution, and treatises on the Conflict of Laws, Bailments, Agency, 
 Partnership, and numerous other topics. He still found time for other literary works, con- 
 sisting mainly of orations and reviews. These were embodied in a collection of Miscel- 
 laneous Writings, published, after his death, by his son and biographer. 
 
 The style of Judge Story is clear, flowing, and often elegant. His legal knowledge was 
 undoubtedly great, but his opinions are somewhat diffuse, and lack the point that charac- 
 terizes some less known authors. 
 
 He died at Cambridge, September 10, 1845. 
 
 The extract here given is from an oration delivered before the Phi Beta Kappa Society, of 
 Harvard College. 
 
 CLASSICAL LEARNING. 
 
 THE importance of classical learning to professional education is 
 so obvious, that the surprise is, that it could ever have become mat- 
 ter of disputation. I speak not of its power in refining the taste, in 
 disciplining the judgment, in invigorating the understanding, or in 
 warming the heart with elevated sentiments, but of its power of 
 direct, positive, necessary instruction. Until the eighteenth cen- 
 tury the mass of science, in its principal branches, was deposited in 
 the dead languages, and much of it still reposes there. To be igno- 
 rant of these languages is to shut out the lights of former times, or 
 to examine them only through the glimmerings of inadequate trans- 
 
62 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 lations. What should we say of the jurist who never aspired to 
 learn the maxims of law and equity which adorn the Roman codes ? 
 What of the physician who could deliberately surrender all the 
 knowledge heaped up for so many centuries in the Latinity of conti- 
 nental Europe ? What of the minister of religion who should choose 
 not to study the Scriptures in the original tongue, and should be 
 content to trust his faith and his hopes, for time and for eternity, to 
 the dimness of translations, which may reflect the literal import, but 
 rarely can reflect, with unbroken force, the beautiful spirit of the 
 text ? 
 
 I pass over all consideration of the written treasures of antiquity 
 which have survived the wreck of empires and dynasties ; of monu- 
 mental trophies and triumphal arches ; of palaces of princes and 
 temples of the gods. I pass over all consideration of those admired 
 compositions in which wisdom speaks as with a voice from heaven ; 
 of those sublime efforts of poetical genius which still freshen, as they 
 pass from age to age, in undying vigor ; of those finished histories 
 which still enlighten and instruct governments in their duty and 
 their destiny ; of those matchless orations which roused nations to 
 arms, and chained senates to the chariot-wheels of all-conquering 
 eloquence. These all may now be read in our vernacular tongue. 
 Ay, as one remembers the face of a dead friend by gathering up the 
 broken fragments of his image ; as one listens to the tale of a dream 
 twice told ; as one catches the roar of the ocean in the ripple of a 
 rivulet ; as one sees the blaze of noon in the first glimmer of twi- 
 light. There is not a single nation, from the north' to the south of 
 Europe, from the bleak shores of the Baltic to the bright plains of 
 immortal Italy, whose literature is not embedded in the very elements 
 of classical learning. The literature of England is, in an emphatic 
 sense, the production of her scholars ; of men who have cultivated 
 letters in her universities, and colleges, and grammar schools ; of 
 men who thought any life too short, chiefly because it left some relic 
 of antiquity unmastered, and any other fame humble, because it faded 
 in the presence of Roman and Grecian genius. He who studies 
 English literature without the lights of classical learning, loses half 
 the charms of its sentiments and style, of its force and feelings, of 
 its delicate touches, of its delightful allusions, of its illustrative asso- 
 ciations. Who, that reads the poetry of Gray, does not feel that it 
 is the refinement of classical taste which gives such inexpressible 
 vividness and transparency to his diction ? Who, that reads the 
 concentrated sense and melodious versification of Dryden and Pope, 
 
WASHINGTON ALLSTON. 63 
 
 does not perceive in them the disciples of the old school, whose 
 genius was inflamed by the heroic verse, the terse satire, and the 
 playful wit of antiquity ? Who, that meditates over the strains of 
 Milton, does not feel that he drank deep at 
 
 " Siloa's brook, that flowed 
 Fast by the oracle of God, " 
 
 that the fires of his magnificent mind were lighted by coals from an- 
 cient altars ? 
 
 It is no exaggeration to declare that he who proposes to abolish 
 classical studies proposes to render, in a great measure, inert and 
 unedifying the mass of English literature for three centuries ; to rob 
 us of the glory of the past, and much of the instruction of future 
 ages ; to bind us to excellences which few may hope to equal, and 
 none to surpass ; to annihilate associations which are interwoven 
 with our best sentiments, and give to distant times and countries a 
 presence and reality, as if they were in fact his own. 
 
 WASHINGTON ALLSTON. 
 
 Washington Allston was born in Charleston, S. C, November 5, 1779. He was prepared 
 for college at a private school in Newport, R. I., and was graduated at Harvard in 1800. 
 Being determined to devote himself to art, he sold his property, and passed three years as 
 a student of the Royal Academy in London. He pursued his studies for several years 
 afterwards in Rome. It was at this period that Washington Irving met him, and recorded 
 his impressions of him: "There was something, to me, inexpressibly engaging in the 
 appearance and manners of Allston. I do not think I have ever been more completely cap- 
 tivated on a first acquaintance. He was of a light and graceful form, with large blue eyes 
 and black silken hair waving and curling around a pale, expressive countenance. Everything 
 about him bespoke the man of intellect and refinement. His conversation was copious, ani- 
 mated, and highly graphic, warmed by a genial sensibility and benevolence, and enlivened, 
 at times, by a chaste and gentle humor." 
 
 Allston was married in 1809 to a sister of Rev. Dr. Channing, and lived in Boston two 
 years. He then returned to Europe, and remained abroad until 1818. His longest poem, 
 "The Sylphs of the Seasons," was published in London, 1813, the year in which his wife 
 died. In 1830 he was married to a sister of the poet Dana, and lived in Cambridgeport 
 from that time until his death in 1843. Monaldi. an Italian romance of singular power and 
 marked individuality, was published in 1831. His Lectures on Art, four in number, did not 
 appear until after his death. 
 
 During his residence in Cambridgeport, he came under the observation of another author, 
 Professor Lowell, whose poetical portrait of him, in later years, is worth setting against 
 Irving's affectionate sketch : " So refined was his whole appearance, so fastidiously neat 
 his apparel, but with a neatness that seemed less the result of care and plan than a some- 
 thing as proper to the man as whiteness to the lily, that you would at once have classed 
 him with those individuals, rarer than great captains, and almost as rare as great poets, 
 whom Nature sends into the world to fill the arduous office of gentleman. ... A nimbus 
 
64 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 of hair, fine as an infant's, and early white, showing refinement of organization and the 
 predominance of the spiritual over the physical, undulated and floated around a face that 
 seemed like pale flame, and over which the flitting shades of expression chased each other, 
 fugitive and gleaming as waves upon a field of rye. . . . Here was a man all soul, whose 
 body seemed a lamp of finest clay, whose service was to feed, with magic oils, rare and fra- 
 grant, that wavering fire which hovered over it." 
 
 This is not the place to discuss Allston's merits as an artist ; it is sufficient to say that, in 
 the judgment of many competent critics, he is the greatest painter of our English race. 
 His writings, both in prose and poetry, have so much of imagination and force, and are set 
 forth in such a pure and fitting style, that we can but regret that he produced so little. 
 His fastidious taste kept him so long retouching and refining both pictures and poems that 
 a single lifetime was not sufficient for the completion of any large number of either. A col- 
 lection of his poems and lectures was made by his brother-in-law, R. H. Dana. Moualdi 
 is still to be found on the shelves of booksellers, in a separate volume. 
 
 [From The Sylphs of the Seasons.] 
 
 THEN spake the Sylph of Spring serene : 
 " 'Tis I thy joyous heart, I ween, 
 
 With sympathy shall move ; 
 For I with living melody 
 Of birds, in choral symphony, 
 First waked thy soul to poesy, 
 
 To piety, and love. 
 
 " When thou, at call of vernal breeze, 
 And beckoning bough of budding trees, 
 
 Hast left thy sullen fire, 
 And stretched thee in some mossy dell, 
 And heard the browsing wether's bell, 
 Blithe echoes rousing from their cell 
 
 To swell the tinkling choir, 
 
 " Or heard from branch of flowering thorn 
 The song of friendly cuckoo warn 
 
 The tardy-moving swain ; 
 Hast bid the purple swallow hail, 
 And seen him now through ether sail, 
 Now sweeping downward o'er the vale, 
 
 And skimming now the plain ; 
 
 "Then, catching with a sudden glance, 
 The bright and silver-clear expanse 
 Of some broad river's stream, 
 
WASHINGTON ALLSTON. 65 
 
 Behold the boats adown it glide, 
 And motion wind again the tide, 
 Where, chained in ice, by winter's pride, 
 Late rolled the heavy team ; 
 
 " Or, lured by some fresh-scented gale, 
 That wooed the moored fisher's sail 
 
 To tempt the mighty main, 
 Hast watched the dim, receding shore, 
 Now faintly seen the ocean o'er, 
 Like hanging cloud, and now no more 
 
 To bound the sapphire plain ; 
 
 " Then, wrapped in night, the scudding bark 
 (That seemed, self-poised amid the dark, 
 
 Through upper air to leap), 
 Beheld, from thy most fearful height, 
 The rapid dolphin's azure light 
 Cleave, like a living meteor bright, 
 
 The darkness of the deep ; 
 
 " 'Twas mine the warm, awakening hand, 
 That made thy grateful heart expand, 
 
 And feel the high control 
 Of Him, the mighty Power, that moves 
 Amid the waters and the groves, 
 And through his vast creation proves 
 
 His omnipresent soul ; 
 
 " Or, brooding o'er some forest rill, 
 Fringed with the early daffodil 
 
 And quivering maiden-hair, 
 When thou hast marked the dusky bed, 
 With leaves and water-rust o'erspread, 
 That seemed an amber light to shed 
 
 On all was shadowed there ; 
 
 " And thence, as by its murmur called, 
 The current traced to where it brawled 
 
 Beneath the noontide ray, 
 And there beheld the checkered shade 
 5 
 
66 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 Of waves, in many a sinuous braid, 
 That o'er the sunny channel played, 
 With motion ever gay ; 
 
 " 'Twas I to these the magic gave, 
 That made thy heart a willing slave, 
 
 To gentle Nature bend, 
 And taught thee how, with tree and flower, 
 And whispering gale, and dropping shower, 
 In converse sweet to pass the hour, 
 
 As with an early friend ; 
 
 " That 'mid the noontide, sunny haze 
 Did in thy languid bosom raise 
 
 The raptures of the boy, 
 When, waked as if to second birth, 
 Thy soul through every pore looked forth, 
 And gazed upon the beauteous earth 
 
 With myriad eyes of joy ; 
 
 " That made thy heart, like His above, 
 To flow with universal love 
 
 For every living thing. 
 And, O, if I, with ray divine, 
 Thus tempering, did thy soul refine, 
 Then let thy gentle heart be mine, 
 
 And bless the Sylph of Spring." 
 
 SONNET 
 
 OF A FALLING GROUP IN THE LAST JUDGMENT OF MICHAEL ANGELO, I 
 SISTINE CHAPEL. 
 
 How vast, how dread, o'erwhelming, is the thought 
 Of space interminable ! to the soul 
 
 A circling weight that crushes into nought 
 Her mighty faculties ! a wondrous whole, 
 
 Without or parts, beginning, or an end ! 
 
 How fearful, then, on desperate wings to send 
 
 The fancy e'en amid the waste profound ! 
 
 Yet, born as if all daring to astound, 
 
WASHINGTON ALLSTON. 6/ 
 
 Thy giant hand, O Angelo, hath hurled 
 E'en human forms, with all their mortal weight, 
 Down the dread void, fall endless as their fate ! 
 
 Already now they seem from world to world 
 For ages thrown ; yet doomed, another past, 
 Another still to reach, nor e'er to reach the last 
 
 AMERICA TO GREAT BRITAIN. 
 
 ALL hail, thou noble land, 
 Our fathers' native soil ; 
 O, stretch thy mighty hand, 
 
 Gigantic grown by toil, 
 O'er the vast Atlantic wave to our shore ! 
 For thou with magic might 
 Canst reach to where the light 
 Of Phoebus travels bright 
 The world o'er! 
 
 The genius of our clime, 
 
 From his pine-embattled steep, 
 Shall hail the guest sublime ; 
 
 While the Tritons of the deep 
 
 With their conchs the kindred league shall proclaim. 
 Then let the world combine, 
 O'er the main our naval line 
 Like the milky-way shall shine 
 Bright in fame. 
 
 Though ages long have passed 
 
 Since our fathers left their home, 
 Their pilot in the blast, 
 
 O'er untra veiled seas to roam, 
 Yet lives the blood of England in our veins ; 
 And shall we not proclaim 
 That blood of honest fame 
 Which no tyranny can tame 
 By its chains ? 
 
 While the language free and bold 
 Which the Bard of Avon sung, 
 
68 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 In which our Milton told 
 
 How the vault of heaven rung 
 When Satan, blasted, fell with his host ; 
 While this, with reverence meet, 
 Ten thousand echoes greet, 
 From rock to rock repeat 
 Round our coast ; 
 
 While the manners, while the arts, 
 
 That mould a nation's soul, 
 Still cling around our hearts, 
 
 Between let Ocean roll, 
 Our joint communion breaking with the sun : 
 Yet still from either beach 
 The voice of blood shall reach, 
 More audible than speech, 
 " We are One." 
 
 JOHN JAMES AUDUBON. 
 
 John James Audubon, the son of an admiral in the French navy, was born on a planta- 
 tion in Louisiana, May 4, 1780. Nature had destined him to be her enthusiastic student 
 and interpreter. He was passionately fond of birds from his infancy, and began to draw 
 and color at a very early age. He was sent to France to be educated, and passed some 
 time in the studio of the eminent painter David. He returned to America, and lived in 
 Pennsylvania, and afterwards in Kentucky, supporting himself by trade/ but devoting most 
 of his time, and all his thoughts, to the prosecution of his favorite studies. After encoun- 
 tering difficulties, and meeting with accidents enough to have checked the enthusiasm of 
 ordinary men, his great work was accomplished. His Birds of America is a monument of 
 genius and industry ; the designs are exquisite, every bird appearing with its native sur- 
 roundings. Nor are they merely correct in form and color ; on the contrary, they are shown 
 in characteristic attitudes or in natural motion, and every figure is instinct with life. The 
 letter-press descriptions mostly concern us. They are simply perfect, equally removed from 
 the insipidity of a so-called "popular " style and from the scientific dryness that usually marks 
 the mere naturalist. His own personal adventures are modestly told, and give a rare charm to 
 the work. It will readily be imagined that it is very difficult to make selections that will do 
 justice to such an author. Scattered through his volumes are many touches of nature, and 
 hints of scenery that are inimitable especially because they are the unconscious utterances of 
 a soul highly susceptible to beauty, and without the least vain desire of parading its emotions. 
 
 The extract here given is by no means the best specimen of the author's powers, but it 
 was chosen mainly because it contains a vivid description of a marvellous fact in nature. 
 
 THE PASSENGER PIGEON. 
 
 THE passenger pigeon, or, as it is usually named in America, the 
 wild pigeoa, moves with extreme rapidity, propelling itself by quickly 
 
JOHN JAMES AUDUBON. 69 
 
 repeated flaps of the wings, which it brings more or less near to the 
 body, according to the degree of velocity which is required. . . . 
 
 Their great power of flight enables them to survey and pass over 
 an astonishing extent of country in a very short time. This is proved 
 by facts well known in America. Thus pigeons have been killed in 
 the neighborhood of New York, with their crops full of rice, which 
 they must have collected in the fields of Georgia and Carolina, these 
 districts being the nearest in which they could possibly have procured 
 a supply of that kind of food. As their power of digestion is so 
 great that they will decompose food entirely in twelve hours, they 
 must in this case have travelled between three hundred and four 
 hundred miles in six hours, which shows their speed to be, at an 
 average, about one mile in a minute. A velocity such as this would 
 enable one of these birds, were it so inclined, to visit the European 
 continent in less than three days. . . . 
 
 The multitudes of wild pigeons in our woods are astonishing. 
 Indeed, after having viewed them so often, and under so many cir- 
 cumstances, I even now feel inclined to pause, and assure myself 
 that what I am going to relate is fact. Yet I have seen it all, and 
 that, too, in the company of persons who, like myself, were struck 
 with amazement. 
 
 In the autumn of 1813 I left my house at Henderson, on the banks 
 of the Ohio, on my way to Louisville. In passing over the Barrens, 
 a few miles beyond Hardensburg, I observed the pigeons flying from 
 north-east to south-west, in greater numbers than I thought I had 
 ever seen them before, and feeling an inclination to count the flocks that 
 might pass within the reach of my eye in one hour, I dismounted, 
 seated myself on an eminence, and began to mark with my pencil, 
 making a dot for every* flock that passed. In a short time, find- 
 ing the task which I had undertaken impracticable, as the birds 
 poured in in countless multitudes, I rose, and counting the dots 
 then put down, found that one hundred and sixty-three had been 
 made in twenty-one minutes. I travelled on, and still met more the 
 farther I proceeded. The air was literally filled with pigeons ; the 
 light of noonday was obscured as by an eclipse ; and the continued 
 buzz of wings had a tendency to lull my senses to repose. 
 
 Whilst waiting for dinner at Young's inn, at the confluence of Salt 
 River with the Ohio, I saw, at my leisure, immense legions still going 
 by, with a front reaching far beyond the Ohio on the west, and the 
 beech wood forests directly on the east of me. Not a single bird 
 alighted, for not a nut or acorn was that year to be seen in the neigh- 
 
7O HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 borhood. They consequently flew so high, that different trials to 
 reach them with a capital rifle proved ineffectual ; nor did the reports 
 disturb them in the least. I cannot describe to you the extreme 
 beauty of their aerial evolutions, when a hawk chanced to press upon 
 the rear of a flock. At once, like a torrent, and with a noise like 
 thunder, they rushed into a compact mass, pressing upon each other 
 towards the centre. In these almost solid masses, they darted for- 
 ward in undulating and angular lines, descended and swept close 
 over the earth with inconceivable velocity, mounted perpendicularly 
 so as to resemble a vast column, and, when high, were seen wheeling 
 and twisting within their continued lines, which then resembled the 
 coils of a gigantic serpent. 
 
 Before sunset I reached Louisville, distant from Hardensburg 
 fifty-five miles. The pigeons were still passing in undiminished 
 numbers, and continued to do so for three days in succession. The 
 people were all in arms. The banks of the Ohio were crowded with 
 men and boys, incessantly shooting at the pilgrims, which there flew 
 lower as they passed the river. Multitudes were thus destroyed. 
 For a week or more, the population fed on no other flesh than that 
 of pigeons, and talked of nothing but pigeons. The atmosphere, 
 during this time, was strongly impregnated with the peculiar odor 
 which emanates from the species. 
 
 As soon as the pigeons discover a sufficiency of food to entice 
 them to alight, they fly round in circles, reviewing the country below. 
 During their evolutions, on such occasions, the dense mass which 
 they form exhibits a beautiful appearance, as it changes its direction, 
 now displaying a glistening sheet of azure, when the backs of the 
 birds come simultaneously into view, and anon suddenly presenting 
 a mass of rich, deep purple. They then pass lower, over the woods, 
 and for a moment are lost among the foliage, but again emerge, and 
 are seen gliding aloft. They now alight ; but the next moment, as if 
 suddenly alarmed, they take to wing, producing by the flappings of 
 their wings a noise like the roar of distant thunder, and sweep through 
 the forests to see if danger is near. Hunger, however, soon brings 
 them to the ground. When alighted, they are seen industriously 
 throwing up the withered leaves in quest of the fallen mast. The 
 rear ranks are continually rising, passing over the main body, and 
 alighting in front, in such rapid succession, that the whole flock 
 seems still on wing. The quantity of ground thus swept is aston- 
 ishing ; and so completely has it been cleared, that the gleaner who 
 might follow in their rear would find his labor completely lost 
 
JOHN JAMES AUDUBON. 7 1 
 
 Whilst feeding, their avidity is at times so great, that in attempting 
 to swallow a large acorn or nut, they are seen gasping for a long 
 while, as if in the agonies of suffocation. 
 
 On such occasions, when the woods are filled with these pigeons, 
 they arc killed in immense numbers, although no apparent diminu- 
 tion ensues. About the middle of the day, after their repast is 
 finished, they settle on the trees, to enjoy rest and digest their food. 
 On the ground they walk with ease, as well as on the branches, fre- 
 quently jerking their beautiful tail, and moving the neck backward 
 and forward in the most graceful manner. As the sun begins to 
 sink beneath the horizon, they depart en masse for the roosting-place, 
 which not unfrequently is hundreds of miles distant, as has been 
 ascertained by persons who have kept an account of their arrivals 
 and departures. 
 
 Let us now inspect their place of nightly rendezvous. One of 
 these curious roosting-places, on the banks of the Green River, in 
 Kentucky, I repeatedly visited. It was, as is always the case, in a 
 portion of the forest where the trees were of great magnitude, and 
 where there was little underwood. I rode through it upwards of 
 forty miles, and, crossing it in different parts, found its average 
 breadth to be rather more than three miles. My first view of it was 
 about a fortnight subsequent to the period when they had made 
 choice of it, and I arrived there nearly two hours before sunset. 
 
 Many trees two feet in diameter, I observed, were broken off at 
 no great distance from the ground; and the branches of many of 
 the largest and tallest had given way, as if the forest had been swept 
 by a tornado. Everything proved to me that the number of birds 
 resorting to this part of the forest must be immense beyond concep- 
 tion. As the period of their arrival approached, their foes anxiously 
 prepared to receive them. Some were furnished with iron pots con-' 
 taining sulphur, others with torches of pine knots, many with poles, 
 and the rest with guns. The sun was lost to our view, yet not a 
 pigeon had arrived. Everything was ready, and all eyes were gazing 
 on the clear sky, which appeared in glimpses amidst the tall trees. 
 Suddenly there burst forth a general cry of, " Here they come ! " 
 The noise which they made, though yet distant, reminded me of a 
 hard gale at sea passing through the rigging of a close-reefed vessel. 
 As the birds arrived and passed over me, I felt a current of air that 
 surprised me. Thousands were soon knocked down by the pole-men. 
 The birds continued to pour in. The fires were lighted, and a mag- 
 nificent, as well as wonderful and almost terrifying, sight presented 
 
72 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 itself. The pigeons, arriving by thousands, alighted everywhere, 
 one above another, until solid masses, as large as hogsheads, were 
 formed on the branches all round. Here and there the perches gave 
 way under the weight with a crash, and falling to the ground, de- 
 stroyed hundreds of the birds beneath, forcing down the dense 
 groups with which every stick was loaded. It was a scene of uproar 
 and confusion. I found it quite useless to speak, or even to shout, to 
 those persons who were nearest to me. Even the reports of the guns 
 were seldom heard, and I was made aware of the firing only by see- 
 ing the shooters reloading. 
 
 The uproar continued the whole night ; and as I was anxious to 
 know to what distance the sound reached, I sent off a man, accus- 
 tomed to perambulate the forest, who, returning two hours after- 
 wards, informed me he had heard it distinctly when three miles dis- 
 tant from the spot. Towards the approach of day, the noise in 
 some measure subsided, long before objects were distinguishable, 
 the pigeons began to move off in a direction quite different from 
 that in which they had arrived the evening before, and at sunrise all 
 that were able to fly had disappeared. The howlings of the wolves 
 now reached our ears, and the foxes, lynxes, cougars, bears, rac- 
 coons, opossums, and polecats were seen sneaking off, whilst eagles, 
 and hawks of different species, accompanied by a crowd of vultures, 
 came to supplant them, and enjoy their share of the spoil. 
 
 WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING. 
 
 William Ellery Channing was born at Newport, R. L, April 7, 1780. He was pre- 
 pared for college under the tuition of his uncle, the Rev. Henry Channing, at New London, 
 Conn., and entered Harvard in 1794. After graduation he spent some time as a tutor in 
 a private family in Richmond, Va. He studied theology at Cambridge, and subsequent- 
 ly, in 1803, became pastor of the Federal Street Church, in Boston. Not long after oc- 
 curred the separation between the two wings of the Congregational church, and Channing 
 became the leader of the Unitarian party. His fame as a spiritually-minded and powerful 
 preacher constantly increased, and the sphere of his influence widened. He made a tour of 
 Europe in 1822, and returned refreshed and strengthened to his parochial duties. He first 
 became widely known as a writer by his admirable critical articles on Napoleon, Milton, and 
 Fenelon, published in the Christian Examiner. The appearance of these essays marked a 
 new era in American letters. No periodical in the country had, up to that time, contained 
 such elaborate articles, clothed in a style of such elegant simplicity, animated by such high 
 moral principles, and evincing such imaginative power and cultivated taste. They took 
 rank at once with the best productions of English thought, and are to-day unsurpassed in 
 many respects, except by the weightier judgments of Carlyle. His religious doctrines 
 led him to espouse with ardor the anti-slavery cause, to protest against the settlement of 
 international disputes by appeals to arms, and to strive for the education and elevation of 
 
WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING. 73 
 
 the laboring classes. From boyhood his sense of right and duty was strong, and his 
 fidelity to his inward convictions unwavering. He was not renowned as a logician or as 
 a thinker upon abstract subjects ; but his enthusiasm, purity of character, and deep nat- 
 ural piety gave him an ascendency over his hearers such as few preachers have possessed. 
 
 In his youth he was a passionate admirer of Shakespeare ; in maturity his love for Milton 
 increased ; in later years he found more pleasure in the philosophic poetry of Wordsworth. 
 By the succession of these preferences the drift of his mind is indicated. 
 
 Miss Sedgwick, who met him in 1826, says, "There is a superior light in his mind that 
 sheds a pure, bright gleam on everything that comes from it. He talks freely upon common 
 topics, but they seem no longer to be common topics when he speaks of them. There is the 
 influence of the sanctuary, the holy place, about him." 
 
 He died at Bennington, Vt., of a typhus fever, contracted while making an excursion, 
 October 2, 1842. His works are published in six volumes, i2mo. His biography was written 
 by his nephew, Rev. William H. Channing, published in 1848. 
 
 [From the Essay on Milton.] 
 
 MILTON'S fame rests chiefly on his poetry, and to this we naturally 
 give our first attention. By those who are accustomed to speak of 
 poetry as light reading, Milton's eminence in this sphere may be 
 considered only as giving him a high rank among the contributors 
 to public amusement. Not so thought Milton. Of all God's gifts 
 of intellect, he esteemed poetical genius the most transcendent. He 
 esteemed it in himself as a kind of inspiration, and wrote his great 
 works with something of the conscious dignity of a prophet. We 
 agree with Milton in his estimate of poetry. It seems to us the 
 divinest of all arts ; for it is the breathing or expression of that 
 principle or sentiment which is deepest and sublimest in human 
 nature ; we mean, of that thirst or aspiration, to which no mind is 
 wholly a stranger, for something purer and lovelier, something more 
 powerful, lofty, and thrilling, than ordinary and real life affords. No 
 doctrine is more common among Christians than that of man's im- 
 mortality ; but it is not so generally understood that the germs or 
 principles of his whole future being are now wrapped up in his soul, 
 as the rudiments of the future plant in the seed. As a necessary 
 result of this constitution, the soul, possessed and moved by these 
 mighty though infant energies, is perpetually stretching beyond what 
 is present and visible, struggling against the bounds of its earthly 
 prison-house, and seeking relief and joy in imaginings of unseen and 
 ideal being. This view of our nature, which has never been fully 
 developed, and which goes farther towards explaining the contradic- 
 tions of human life than all others, carries us to the very foundation 
 and sources of poetry. He who cannot interpret by his own con- 
 sciousness what we now have said, wants the true key to works of 
 genius. He has not penetrated those secret recesses of the soul 
 where poetry is born and nourished, and inhales immortal vigor, and 
 
74 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 wings herself for her heavenward flight. In an intellectual nature, 
 framed for progress and for higher modes of being, there must be 
 creative energies, powers of original and ever-growing thought ; and 
 poetry is the form in which these energies are chiefly manifested. 
 It is the glorious prerogative of this art, that it "makes all things 
 new " for the gratification of a divine instinct. It indeed finds its 
 elements in what it actually sees and experiences, in the worlds of 
 matter and mind ; but it combines and blends these into new forms 
 and according to new affinities ; breaks down, if we may so say, the 
 distinctions and bounds of nature ; imparts to material objects life, 
 and sentiment, and emotion, and invests the mind with the powers 
 and splendors of the outward creation ; describes the surrounding 
 universe in the colors which the passions throw over it, and depicts 
 the soul in those modes of repose or agitation, of tenderness or sub- 
 lime emotion, which manifest its thirst for a more powerful and joy- 
 ful existence. To a man of a literal and prosaic character, the mind 
 may seem lawless in these workings ; but it observes higher laws 
 than it transgresses the laws of the immortal intellect ; it is trying 
 and developing its best faculties ; and in the objects which it de- 
 scribes, or in the emotions which it awakens, anticipates those states 
 of progressive power, splendor, beauty, and happiness, for which it 
 was created. 
 
 We accordingly believe that poetry, far from injuring society, is 
 >ne of the great instruments of its refinement and exaltation. It 
 lifts the mind above ordinary life, gives it a respite from depressing 
 cares, and awakens the consciousness of its affinity with what is 
 pure and noble. In its legitimate and highest efforts, it has the 
 same tendency and aim with Christianity ; that is, to spiritualize our 
 nature. True, poetry has been made the instrument of vice, the 
 pander of bad passions ; but, when genius thus stoops, it dims its 
 fires, and parts with much of its power ; and even when poetry is 
 enslaved to licentiousness or misanthropy, she cannot wholly forget 
 her true vocation. Strains of pure feeling, touches of tenderness, 
 images of innocent happiness, sympathies with suffering virtue, 
 bursts of scorn or indignation at the hollowness of the world, pas- 
 sages true to our moral nature, often escape in an immoral work, and 
 show us how hard it is for a gifted spirit to divorce itself wholly from 
 what is good. Poetry has a natural alliance with our best affections. 
 It delights in the beauty and sublimity of the outward creation and 
 of the soul. It indeed portrays, with terrible energy, the excesses 
 of the passions ; but they are passions which show a mighty nature, 
 
WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING. 75 
 
 which are full of power, which command awe, and excite a deep 
 though shuddering sympathy. Its great tendency and purpose is, to 
 carry the mind beyond and above the beaten, dusty, weary walks of 
 ordinary life, to lift it into a purer element, and to breathe into it 
 more profound and generous emotion. It reveals to us the loveli- 
 ness of nature, brings back the freshness of early feeling, revives 
 the relish of simple pleasures, keeps unquenched the enthusiasm 
 which warmed the spring-time of our being, refines youthful love, 
 strengthens our interest in human nature by vivid delineations of its 
 tenderest and loftiest feelings, spreads our sympathies over all 
 classes of society, knits us by new ties with universal being, and, 
 through the brightness of its prophetic visions, helps faith to lay 
 hold on the future life.^ 
 
 We are aware that it is objected to poetry that it gives wrong 
 views and excites false expectations of life, peoples the mind with 
 shadows and illusions, and builds up imagination on the ruins of 
 wisdom. That there is a wisdom against which poetry wars, the 
 wisdom of the senses, which makes physical comfort and gratifica- 
 tion the supreme good, and wealth the chief interest of life, we do 
 not deny ; nor do we deem it the least service which poetry renders 
 to mankind, that it redeems them from the thraldom of this earth- 
 born prudence. But, passing over this topic, we would observe that 
 the complaint against poetry, as abounding in illusion and deception, 
 is in the main groundless. In many poems there is more of truth 
 than in many histories and philosophic theories. The fictions of 
 genius are often the vehicles of the sublimest verities, and its 
 flashes often open new regions of thought, and throw new light on 
 the mysteries of our being. In poetry, when the letter is falsehood, 
 the spirit is often profoundest wisdom. And, if truth thus dwells in 
 the boldest fictions of the poet, much more may it be expected in his 
 delineations of life ; for the present life, which is the first stage of 
 the immortal mind, abounds in the materials of poetry, and it is the 
 high office of the bard to detect this divine element among the 
 grosser labors and pleasures of our earthly being. The present life 
 is not wholly prosaic, precise, tame, and finite. To the gifted eye it 
 abounds in the poetic. The affections, which spread beyond our- 
 selves and stretch far into futurity ; the workings of mighty passions, 
 which seem to arm the soul with an almost superhuman energy ; the 
 innocent and irrepressible joy of infancy ; the bloom, and buoyancy, 
 and dazzling hopes of youth ; the throbbings of the heart, when it first 
 wakes to love, and dreams of a happiness too vast for earth ; woman, 
 
76 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 with her beauty, and grace, and gentleness, and fulness of feeling, and 
 depth of affection, and blushes of purity, and the tones and looks 
 which only a mother's heart can inspire, these are all poetical. It 
 is not true that the poet paints a life which does not exist. He only ex- 
 tracts and concentrates, as it were, life's ethereal essence, arrests and 
 condenses its volatile fragrance, brings together its scattered beauties, 
 and prolongs its more refined but evanescent joys. And in this he 
 does well ; for it is good to feel that life is not wholly usurped by 
 cares for subsistence and physical gratifications, but admits, in 
 measures which may be indefinitely enlarged, sentiments and de- 
 lights worthy of a higher being. This power of poetry to refine our 
 views of life and happiness, is more and more needed as society 
 advances. It is needed to withstand the encroachments of heartless 
 and artificial manners, which make civilization so tame and un- 
 interesting. It is needed to counteract the tendency of physical 
 science, which, being now sought, not as formerly, for intellectual 
 gratification, but for multiplying bodily comforts, requires a new 
 development of imagination, taste, and poetry, to preserve men from 
 sinking into an earthly, material, Epicurean life. . . . 
 
 We should not fulfil our duty were we not to say one word on 
 what has been justly celebrated the harmony of Milton's versifica- 
 tion. His numbers have the prime charm of expressiveness. They 
 vary with, and answer to, the depth, or tenderness, or sublimity of 
 his conceptions, and hold intimate alliance with the soul. Like 
 Michael Angelo, in whose hands the marble was said to be flexible, 
 he bends our language, which foreigners reproach with hardness, 
 into whatever forms the subject demands. Ail the treasures of 
 sweet and solemn sound are at his command. Words, harsh and 
 discordant in the writings of less gifted men, flow through his poetry 
 in a full stream of harmony. This power over language is not to be 
 ascribed to Milton's musical ear. It belongs to the soul. It is a 
 gift or exercise of genius, which has power to impress itself on what- 
 ever it touches, and finds or frames, in sounds, motions, and material 
 forms, correspondences and harmonies with its own fervid thoughts 
 and feelings. 
 
 We close our remarks on Milton's poetry with observing, that it is 
 characterized by seriousness. Great and various as are its merits, 
 it does not discover all the variety of genius which we find in 
 Shakespeare, whose imagination revelled equally in regions of mirth, 
 beauty, and terror, now evoking spectres, now sporting with fairies, 
 and now " ascending the highest heaven of invention." Milton was 
 
WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING. 77 
 
 cast on times too solemn and eventful, was called to take part in 
 transactions too perilous, and had too perpetual need of the presence 
 of high thoughts and motives, to indulge himself in light and gay 
 creations, even had his genius been more flexible and sportive. But 
 Milton's poetry, though habitually serious, is always healthful, and 
 bright, and vigorous. It has no gloom. He took no pleasure in 
 drawing dark pictures of life ; for he knew by experience that there 
 is a power in the soul to transmute calamity into an occasion and 
 nutriment of moral power and triumphant virtue. We find nowhere 
 in his writings that whining sensibility and exaggeration of morbid 
 feeling which makes so much of modern poetry effeminating. If he 
 is not gay, he is not spirit-broken. His L' Allegro proves that he 
 understood thoroughly the bright and joyous aspects of nature ; and 
 in his Penseroso, where he was tempted to accumulate images of 
 gloom, we learn that the saddest views which he took of creation are 
 such as inspire only pensive musing or lofty contemplation. . . . 
 It is objected to his prose writings, that the style is difficult 
 and obscure, abounding in involutions, transpositions, and Latin- 
 isms ; that his protracted sentences exhaust and weary the mind, 
 and too often yield it no better recompense than confused and indis- 
 tinct perceptions. We mean not to deny that these charges have 
 some grounds ; but they seem to us much exaggerated ; and, when 
 we consider that the difficulties of Milton's style have almost sealed 
 up his prose writings, we cannot but lament the fastidiousness and 
 effeminacy of modern readers. We know that simplicity and per- 
 spicuity are important qualities of style ; but there are vastly nobler 
 and more important ones, such as energy and richness, and in these 
 Milton is not surpassed. The best style is not that which puts the 
 reader most easily and in the shortest time in possession of a 
 writer's naked thoughts, but that which is the truest image of a 
 great intellect, which conveys fully and carries farthest into other 
 souls the conceptions and feelings of a profound and lofty spirit. To 
 be universally intelligible is not the highest merit. A great mind 
 cannot, without injurious constraint, shrink itself to the grasp of 
 common passive readers. Its natural movement is free, bold, and 
 majestic, and it ought not to be required to part with these at- 
 tributes, that the multitude may keep pace with it. A full mind will 
 naturally overflow in long sentences, and, in the moment of inspira- 
 tion, when thick-coming thoughts and images crowd upon it, will 
 often pour them forth in a splendid confusion, dazzling to common 
 readers, but kindling to congenial spirits. There are writings which 
 
78 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 are clear through their shallowness. We must not expect in the 
 ocean the transparency of the calm inland stream. For ourselves, 
 we love what is called easy reading perhaps too well, especially in 
 our hours of relaxation ; but we love, too, to have our faculties 
 tasked by master spirits. We delight in long sentences, in which a 
 great truth, instead of being broken up into numerous periods, is 
 spread out in its full proportions, is irradiated with variety of illustra- 
 tion and imagery, is set forth in a splendid affluence of language, and 
 flows like a full stream, with a majestic harmony which fills at once 
 the ear and the soul. Such sentences are -worthy and noble man- 
 ifestations of a great and far-looking mind, which grasps at once vast 
 fields of thought, just as the natural eye takes in, at a moment, wide 
 prospects of grandeur and beauty. We would not, indeed, have all 
 compositions of this character. Let abundant provision be made for 
 the common intellect. Let such writers as Addison an honored 
 name " bring down philosophy from heaven to earth." But let 
 inspired genius fulfil its higher function of lifting the prepared mind 
 from earth to heaven. Impose upon it no strict laws, for it is its 
 own best law. Let it speak in its own language, in tones which suit 
 its own ear. Let it not lay aside its natural port, or dwarf itself that 
 it may be comprehended by the surrounding multitude. If not 
 understood and relished now, let it place a generous confidence in 
 other ages, and utter oracles which futurity will expound. 
 
 DANIEL WEBSTER. 
 
 Daniel Webster was born in Salisbury, N. H., January 18, 1782. His early education 
 was obtained in district schools, under great difficulties. At the age of fourteen he was 
 sent to Phillips Academy, in Exeter, N. H., but remained only a year, on account of the 
 poverty of the family. He pursued his studies under the care of a clergyman in a neighbor- 
 ing town, and entered Dartmouth College in 1797. He finished his course with credit, hav- 
 ing acquired a tolerable knowledge of the classical languages, as well as of history and Eng- 
 lish literature. He was the foremost man of his class, though not the highest in academic 
 rank. He was preceptor of an academy in Fryeburg, Me., for a short time, and then com- 
 menced the study of law in his native town. He completed his preliminary legal education 
 in the office of Christopher Gore, in Boston, was admitted to the bar in 1805, and, return- 
 ing to New Hampshire, commenced practice in Boscawen, and afterwards in Portsmouth. 
 He took a prominent place in his profession at once, and in 1812 was elected a member of 
 Congress. In 1816 he declined a re-election, and removed to Boston. For seven years he 
 devoted himself to his profession, and soon established his reputation as the ablest advocate 
 in the United States. It was in this period that he distinguished himself in the famous case, 
 of Dartmouth College against the usurpations of the New Hampshire legislature. Nor was 
 his intellectual activity confined to legal discussions : the two hundredth anniversary of the 
 landing of the Pilgrims (1820) gave him an opportunity such as few orators have had, and 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER. 79 
 
 his genius illustrated the themes it suggested in sentences that are as immortal as the 
 memory of the event. 
 
 In 1822 he was elected a representative in Congress from the Boston district, in which 
 place he remained until, in 1828, he was chosen a senator. He continued to represent the 
 state in the Senate for twelve years, when he was appointed secretary of state by President 
 Harrison. During these eighteen years of public life his fame was steadily rising, spread- 
 ing, deepening, until he was no longer the favorite of Boston merely, but was everywhere 
 acknowledged the foremost of constitutional lawyers and of parliamentary debaters, and 
 without a peer in the higher fields of classic and patriotic oratory. The oration at the lay- 
 ing of the corner-stone of Bunker Hill Monument in 1825, the eulogy upon Adams and Jef- 
 ferson in 1826, the speech upon the trial of the murderers of Stephen White, and the reply to 
 Hayne, of South Carolina, in the debate upon " nullification," in 1830, are beyond parallel 
 in this century. Eloquence, we are told, is no longer fashionable in England ; but it has 
 been nearly a hundred years since that country has witnessed such a magnificent display 
 from any of its public men as this generation remembers in the many great efforts of 
 Webster. 
 
 In 1845 he returned to the Senate, and remained in that position until 1850, when he was 
 appointed secretary of state by President Fillmore. He resigned his office in the summer 
 of 1852, on account of failing health, and retired to his country-seat in Marshfield, where he 
 died October 24 of the same year. 
 
 Mr. Webster and his friends had considered, with some reason, that his talents and ser- 
 vices entitled him to the nomination of his party for the presidency. His claims were 
 pressed strongly at the national convention of the Whig party, in 1848, but he was set aside 
 that his party might avail itself of the military reputation of General Taylor. In 1850 he 
 made a speech in favor of the Compromise measures, including the Fugitive Slave Law, 
 which had the effect of alienating many of his warmest friends throughout the northern 
 states, and was the commencement of a fierce controversy that embittered the remainder 
 of his life. In 1852 the Whig National Convention again set him aside, and nominated 
 General Scott for president : and it was noticeable that the members from the southern 
 states, for whose interests Mi. Webster had sacrificed so much, hardly gave him the poor 
 compliment of a single vote. It did not need this instance, however, to assure us that there 
 is no sentiment of gratitude in politics. 
 
 The intellect of Mr. Webster had a firm basis of common sense. His grasp of facts, and 
 his power of arranging them in argument, was prodigious. In abstract reasoning he was 
 not so strong ; it was when his feet were planted upon the earth that he showed his power. 
 His imagination re-enforced and illuminated his reason ; his conceptions and his figurative 
 illustrations often approached the sublime ; but he had little of the fancy and few of the 
 graces that adorn the decorous speech of an inferior order of men. His style was the nat- 
 ural expression of his great thoughts ; it was based on good models, but it was imitated from 
 no master, and it is itself beyond the reach of imitation. No rhetorician could forge a char- 
 acteristic Websterian sentence, any more than he could palm off a fabricated Shakspearian 
 line. The conceptions of the orator, like those of the poet, are cast into their enduring 
 forms while red hot. His delivery was in perfect keeping with what he had to utter full 
 of majesty, and fitted less to please than to command. His manner had a wonderful im- 
 pressiveness, that reminded us of the saying (attributed to Emerson) that it makes a vast 
 difference in the force of a sentence whether there is a man behind it or no. 
 This man, so highly endowed, sent into the world with such a form, such a face, such a 
 presence, would have appeared to be the consummate flowering of our race ; and we must 
 lament that he could not see, as we now see, how exalted was his position as a man of 
 genius, and how little lustre his name could receive from any official title. 
 
 In the light of the tremendous events of the last ten years, the history of the attempts at 
 conciliation, previous to 1860, is full of instruction. The topic belongs to the historian 
 and the moralist, rather than to the literary critic ; but some mention of it could not be 
 omitted in any fair view of Webster's career as a public man. Let us be thankful for the 
 
8O HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 grand works he has left, and rejoice that, in spite of some errors, cruelly expiated, we find 
 in his character so much that is worthy of admiration. His works were published, with a 
 memoir by Edward Everett, in six volumes. Two volumes of his correspondence have 
 been published since ; also a biography, in one volume, by George T. Curtis. 
 
 ADDRESS TO THE SURVIVORS OF THE BATTLE OF BUNKER HILL. 
 
 VENERABLE men : You have come down to us from a former 
 generation. Heaven has bounteously lengthened out your lives 
 that you might behold this joyous day. You are now where you 
 stood fifty years ago this very hour, with your brothers and your 
 neighbors, shoulder to shoulder in the strife of your country. Be- 
 hold how altered ! The same heavens are indeed over your heads ; 
 the same ocean rolls at your feet ; but all else, how changed ! You 
 hear now no roar of hostile cannon ; you see no mixed volumes of 
 smoke and flame rising from burning Charlestown. The ground 
 strewed with the dead and the dying ; the impetuous charge ; the 
 steady and successful repulse ; the loud call to repeated assault ; 
 the summoning of all that is manly to repeated resistance ; a thou- 
 sand bosoms freely and fearlessly bared in an instant to whatever 
 of terror there may be in war and death, all these you have wit- 
 nessed, but you witness them no more. All is peace. The heights 
 of yonder metropolis, its towers and roofs, which you then saw filled 
 with wives, and children, and countrymen in distress and terror, and 
 looking with unutterable emotions for the issue of the combat, have 
 presented you to-day with the sight of its whole happy population, 
 come out to welcome and greet you with a universal jubilee. Yon- 
 der proud ships, by a felicity of position appropriately lying at the 
 foot of this mount, and seeming fondly to cling around it, are not 
 means of annoyance to you, but your country's own means of dis- 
 tinction and defence. All is peace ; and God has granted you this 
 sight of your country's happiness ere you slumber in the grave for- 
 ever. He has allowed you to behold and to partake the reward of 
 your patriotic toils, and he has allowed us, your sons and country- 
 men, to meet you here, and, in the name of the present generation, 
 in the name of your country, in the name of liberty, to thank you. 
 
 But, alas ! you are not all here. Time and the sword have thinned' 
 your ranks. Prescott, Putnam, Stark, Brooks, Read, Pomeroy, 
 Bridge ! our eyes seek for you in vain amidst this broken band. 
 You are gathered to your fathers, and live only to your country in 
 her grateful remembrance, and your own bright example. But let 
 us not too much grieve that you have met the common fate of men. 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER. 8 1 
 
 You lived &t teast long enough to know that your work had been 
 nobly and successfully accomplished. You lived to see your coun- 
 try's independence established, and to sheathe your swords from 
 war. On the light of liberty you saw arise the light of peace, like 
 
 " another morn, 
 Risen on mid-noon," 
 
 and tlie sky on which you closed your eyes was cloudless. 
 
 But, ah ! him, the first great martyr in this great cause ; him, 
 the premature victim of his own self-devoting heart ; him, the head 
 of our civil councils, and the destined leader of our military bands ; 
 whom nothing brought hither but the unquenchable fire of his own 
 spirit ; him, cut off by Providence in the hour of overwhelming 
 anxiety and thick gloom ; falling ere he saw the star of his country 
 rise ; pouring out his generous blood like water before he knew 
 whether it would fertilize a land of freedom or of bondage. How 
 shall I struggle with the emotions that stifle the utterance of thy 
 name. Our poor work may perish, but thine shall endure. This 
 monument may moulder away ; the solid ground it rests upon may 
 sink down to a level with the sea ; but thy memory shall not fail. 
 Wheresoever among men a heart shall be found that beats to the 
 transports of patriotism and liberty, its aspirations shall be to claim 
 kindred with thy spirit. . . . 
 
 Veterans ! you are the remnant of many a well-fought field. 
 You bring with you marks of honor from Trenton and Monmouth, 
 from Yorktown, Camclen, Bennington, and Saratoga. Veterans of 
 half a century ! when, in your youthful days, you put everything at 
 hazard in your country's cause, good as that cause was, and san- 
 guine as youth is, still your fondest hopes did not stretch onward to 
 an hour like this. At a period to which you could not reasonably 
 hope to arrive, at a moment of national prosperity such as you could 
 never have foreseen, you are now met here to enjoy the fellowship 
 of old soldiers, and to receive the overflowings of a universal 
 gratitude. 
 
 But your agitated countenances and your heaving breasts inform 
 me that even this is not an unmixed joy. I perceive that a tumult 
 of contending feelings rushes upon you. The images of the dead, 
 as well as the persons of the living, throng to your embraces. The 
 scene overwhelms you, and I turn from it. May the Father of all 
 mercies smile upon your declining years and bless them ; and when 
 you shall here have exchanged your embraces, when you shall once 
 6 
 
82 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 more have pressed the hands which have been so often extended to 
 give succor in adversity or grasped in the exultation of victory, 
 then look abroad into this lovely land, which your young valor de- 
 fended, and mark the happiness with which it is filled ; yea, look 
 abroad into the whole earth, and see what a name you have contrib- 
 uted to give to your country, and what a praise you have added to 
 freedom, and then rejoice in the sympathy and gratitude which beam 
 upon your last days from the improved condition of mankind. 
 
 CONCLUSION OF THE ORATION AT PLYMOUTH UPON THE ANNIVER- 
 SARY OF THE LANDING OF THE PILGRIMS, 1820. 
 
 THE hours of this day are rapidly flying, and this occasion will 
 soon be past. Neither we nor our children can expect to behold its 
 return. They are in the distant regions of futurity ; they exist only 
 in the all-creating power of God. who shall stand here, a hundred 
 years hence, to trace, through us, their descent from the Pilgrims, 
 and to survey, as we have now surveyed, the progress of their coun- 
 try during the lapse of a century. We would anticipate their con- 
 currence with us in our sentiments of deep regard for our common 
 ancestors. We would anticipate and partake the pleasure with 
 which they will then recount the steps of New England's advance- 
 ment. On the morning of that day, although it will not disturb us 
 in our repose, the voice of acclamation and gratitude, commencing 
 on the Rock of Plymouth, shall be transmitted through millions of 
 the sons of the Pilgrims, till it lose itself in the murmurs of the 
 Pacific Seas. 
 
 We would leave, for the consideration of those who shall then 
 occupy our places, some proof that we hold the blessings transmitted 
 from our fathers in just estimation ; some proof of our attachment 
 to the cause of good government, and of civil and religious liberty ; 
 some proof of a sincere and ardent desire to promote everything 
 which may enlarge the understandings and improve the hearts of 
 men. And when, from the long distance of one hundred years, they 
 shall look back upon us, they shall know, at least, that we possessed 
 affections which, running backward, and warming with gratitude for 
 what our ancestors have done for our happiness, run forward also to 
 our posterity, and meet them with cordial salutation, ere yet they 
 have arrived on the shore of being. 
 
 Advance, then, ye future generations ! We would hail you, as 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER. 83 
 
 you rise in your long succession, to fill the places which we now fill, 
 and to taste the blessings of existence where we are passing, and 
 soon shall have passed, our own human duration. We bid you wel- 
 come to this pleasant land of the fathers. We bid you welcome to 
 the healthful skies and the verdant fields of New England. We 
 greet your accession to the great inheritance which we have enjoyed. 
 We welcome you to the blessings of good government and religious 
 liberty. We welcome you to the treasures of science and the de- 
 lights of learning. We welcome you to the transcendent sweets 
 of domestic life, to the happiness of kindred, and parents, and chil- 
 dren. We welcome you to the immeasurable blessings of rational 
 existence, the immortal hope of Christianity, and the light of ever- 
 lasting truth. 
 
 [From the speech upon the trial of Knapp, for the murder of Stephen White, at Salem, 
 
 Mass., 1830.] 
 
 THE deed was executed with a degree of self-possession and 
 steadiness equal to the wickedness with which it was planned. 
 The circumstances, now clearly in evidence, spread out the whole 
 scene before us. Deep sleep had fallen on the destined victim, and 
 on all beneath his roof. A healthful old man, to whom sleep was 
 sweet, the first sound slumbers of the night held him in their soft 
 but strong embrace. The assassin enters, through the window 
 already prepared, into an unoccupied apartment. With noiseless 
 foot he paces the lonely hall, half lighted by the moon ; he winds 
 up the ascent of the stairs, and reaches the door of the chamber. 
 Of this he moves the lock, by soft and continued pressure, till it 
 turns on its hinges without noise ; and he enters, and beholds his 
 victim before him. The room was uncommonly open to the admis- 
 sion of light. The face of the innocent sleeper was turned from 
 the murderer, and the beams of the moon, resting on the gray locks 
 of his aged temple, showed him where to strike. The fatal blow 
 is given, and the victim passes, without a struggle or a motion, from 
 the repose of sleep to the repose of death ! It is the assassin's 
 purpose to make sure work, and he yet plies the dagger, though it 
 was obvious that life had been destroyed by the blow of the blud- 
 geon. He even raises the aged arm, that he may not fail in his 
 aim at the heart, and replaces it again over the wounds of the 
 poniard. To finish the picture, he explores the wrist for the pulse. 
 He feels for it, and ascertains that it beats no longer. It is accom- 
 
84 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 plished. The deed is done. He retreats, retraces his steps to the 
 window, passes out through it as he came in, and escapes. He 
 has done the murder. No eye has seen him, no ear has heard 
 him. The secret is his own, and it is safe. 
 
 Ah, gentlemen, that was a dreadful mistake. Such a secret can 
 be safe nowhere. The whole creation of God has neither nook 
 nor corner where the guilty can bestow it, and say it is safe. Not 
 to speak of that eye which glances through all disguises, and be- 
 holds everything as in the splendor of noon, such secrets of guilt 
 are never safe from detection even by men. True it is, generally 
 speaking, that "murder will out." True it is that Providence 
 hath so ordained, and doth so govern things, that those who break 
 the great law of Heaven by shedding man's blood seldom suc- 
 ceed in avoiding discovery. Especially in a case exciting so much 
 attention as this, discovery must come, and will come, sooner or 
 later. A thousand eyes turn at once to explore every man, every 
 thing, every circumstance connected with the time and place ; a thou- 
 sand ears catch every whisper ; a thousand excited minds intensely 
 dwell on the scene, shedding all their light, and ready to kindle the 
 slightest circumstance into a blaze of discovery. Meantime the 
 guilty soul cannot keep its own secret. It is false to itself, or, 
 rather, it feels an irresistible impulse of conscience to be true to 
 itself. It labors under its guilty possession, and knows not what 
 to do with it. The human heart was not made for the residence 
 of such an inhabitant. It finds itself preyed on by a torment 
 which it dares not acknowledge to God nor man. A vulture is 
 devouring it, and it can ask no sympathy or assistance either from 
 heaven or earth. The secret which the murderer possesses soon 
 comes to possess him, and, like the evil spirits of which we read, 
 it overcomes him, and leads him whithersoever it will. He feels 
 it beating at his heart, rising to his throat, and demanding disclo- 
 sure. He thinks the whole world sees it in his face, reads it in 
 his eyes, and almost hears its workings in the very silence of his 
 thoughts. It has become his master. It betrays his discretion, it 
 breaks down his courage, it conquers his prudence. When suspi- 
 cions from without begin to embarrass him, and the net of circum- 
 stances to entangle him, the fatal secret struggles with still greater 
 violence to burst forth. It must be confessed, it will be confessed ; 
 there is no refuge from confession but suicide and suicide is con- 
 fession. 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER. 8$ 
 
 THE UNION. PERORATION OF SECOND SPEECH ON FOOT'S RESO- 
 LUTION, IN REPLY TO HAYNE. 
 
 MR. PRESIDENT: I have thus stated the reasons of my dissent to 
 the doctrines which have been advanced and maintained. I am con- 
 scious of having detained you and the Senate much too long. I 
 was drawn into the debate with no previous deliberation such as is 
 suited to the discussion of so grave and important a subject. But 
 it is a subject of which my heart is full, and I have not been will- 
 ing to suppress the utterance of its spontaneous sentiments. I can- 
 not, even now, persuade myself to relinquish it without expressing 
 once more my deep conviction that, since it respects nothing less 
 than the union of the states, it is of most vital and essential impor- 
 tance to the public happiness. I profess, sir, in my careeer hitherto, 
 to have kept steadily in view the prosperity and honor of the whole 
 country, and the preservation of our Federal Union. It is to that 
 union we owe our safety at home, and our consideration and dignity 
 abroad. It is to that union that we are chiefly indebted for what- 
 ever makes us most proud of our country. That union we reached 
 only by the discipline of our virtues in the severe school of adver- 
 sity. It had its origin in the necessities of disordered finance, pros- 
 trate commerce, and ruined credit. Under its benign influences 
 these great interests immediately awoke, as from the dead, and 
 sprang forth with newness of life. Every year of its duration has 
 teemed with fresh proofs of its utility and its blessings ; and al- 
 though our territory has stretched out wider and wider, and our 
 population spread farther and farther, they have not outrun its 
 protection or its benefits. It has been to us all a copious foun- 
 tain of national, social, and personal happiness. 
 
 I have not allowed myself, sir, to look beyond the union, to 
 see what might lie hidden in the dark recess behind. I have not 
 coolly weighed the chances of preserving liberty when the bonds 
 that unite us together shall be broken asunder. I have not accus- 
 tomed myself to hang over the precipice of disunion, to see whether, 
 with my short sight, I can fathom the depth of the abyss below ; 
 nor could I regard him as a safe counsellor in the affairs of this 
 government whose thoughts should be mainly bent on consider- 
 ing, not how the union may be best preserved, but how tolerable 
 might be the condition of the people when it should be broken up 
 and destroyed. While the union lasts, we have high, exciting, 
 gratifying, prospects spread out before us, for us and our children. 
 
86 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 Beyond that I seek not to penetrate the veil. God grant that in 
 my day, at least, that curtain may not rise. God grant that on my 
 vision never may be opened what lies behind. When my eyes 
 shall be turned to behold for the last time the sun in heaven, 
 may I not see him shining on the broken and dishonored fragments 
 of a once glorious union; on states dissevered, discordant, bel- 
 ligerent ; on a land rent with civil feuds, or drenched, it may be, 
 in fraternal blood ! Let their last feeble and lingering glance 
 rather behold the gorgeous ensign of the republic, now known 
 and honored throughout the earth, still full high advanced, its arms 
 and trophies streaming in their original lustre, not a stripe erased 
 or polluted, nor a single star obscured, bearing for its motto no 
 such miserable interrogatory as, " What is all this worth ? " nor 
 those other words of delusion and folly, " Liberty first, and Union 
 afterwards ; " but everywhere, spread all over in characters of living 
 light, blazing on all its ample folds, and as they float over the sea 
 and over the land, and in every wind under the whole heavens, 
 that other sentiment, dear to every true American heart Liberty 
 and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable. 
 
 JOHN CALDWELL CALHOUN. 
 
 
 John Caldwell Calhoun was born in Abbeville District, S. C, March 18, 1782. His 
 early instruction was received at home ; but at the age of nineteen he was induced to com- 
 mence classical study, and in two years he was admitted into the junior class in Yale Col- 
 lege. He was a remarkable scholar, and the vigor and maturity of his mind gave abundant 
 promise of his future eminence. He studied law and commenced practice in his native 
 place, but soon abandoned his profession for a public career. After two terms of service in 
 the state legislature he was elected a member of Congress, where he took his seat in 
 November, 1811. His attitude towards the party in power was a wholly independent one, 
 and he was as often allied with the opposition as with the administration. Thus, while he 
 was an ardent advocate for the war with Great Britain, he was an early friend of internal 
 improvements, and an advocate for a United States bank. Upon the accession of Monroe to 
 the presidency, Mr. Calhoun was made secretary of state. As a member of the cabinet he 
 warmly opposed the conduct of General Jackson in his Florida campaign, and at the next 
 general election, which resulted in favor of Adams, having maintained a neutrality between 
 the rival candidates, he was himself elected vice-president. The youthful reader will need 
 to be reminded that this took place when the electoral college was a substantial^ body 
 chosen to elect the president and vice-president, and before "national conventions" and 
 "general tickets " had been invented to turn one of the provisions of the Constitution into a 
 quadrennial farce. 
 
 Mr. Calhoun was a^ain elected vice-president in 1828. It was during this period that 
 the country was divided between the rival theories of "protection" and "free trade," and 
 that South Carolina resolved to " nullify " the acts of the general government, and to forci- 
 
JOHN CALDWELL CALHOUN. 8/ 
 
 bly prevent the collection of duties on imported goods within her boundaries. This course 
 of proceeding was undoubtedly inspired by Calhoun, who was the great advocate of "State 
 Rights ; " and in the brilliant debate that occurred between Colonel Hayne, of South Carolina, 
 and Mr. Webster, of Massachusetts, the real object of the latter's attack was the vice- 
 president in the chair. The conflict between the state and nation, as is known, was avoided 
 by a compromise in 1833, which was the enactment of a tariff bill with a sliding scale of duties, 
 under which protection was to cease in ten years. 
 
 Mr. Calhoun, being elected to the Senate again, joined with Clay in his attack upon 
 President Jackson for removing the deposits of public, money into the custody of certain 
 designated banks. He was the author of the bill proposing to punish postmasters for ad- 
 mitting anti-slavery documents into the mails. He advocated the admission of Texas, and 
 opposed the admission of Michigan. When, in the financial crisis of 1837, all the banks' 
 suspended specie payments, he separated from the whigs on the bank question, and sup- 
 ported the proposition of President Van Buren for the establishment of an independent 
 treasury. On this occasion there was a renowned passage-at-arms between him and Clay ; 
 the speeches on both sides are the best specimens of oratory of these great rivals. Having 
 left the Senate in 1843, Mr. Calhoun was, in 1844, appointed secretary of state by President 
 Tyler, when he immediately negotiated the annexation of Texas, and promised to place our 
 forces on the border to repel any invasion from Mexico. The annexation was not actually 
 consummated, however, until the coming in of President Polk. 
 
 In 1845 Mr. Calhoun appeared again in the Senate, and strongly opposed the war with 
 Mexico, provoked by the annexation of Texas, at least so far as carrying it on by the inva- 
 sion of Mexican territory. He attacked the Wilmot Proviso, prohibiting slavery in any ter- 
 ritory that should be acquired from Mexicoj and, so far from temporizing on the great ques- 
 tion that divided the north and the south, advocated the policy of "forcing the issue with 
 the north." With these convictions he labored incessantly to unite southern statesmen in 
 order to check the rising power of the northern states ; and, when the contest upon the 
 Compromise measures of 1850 came, he prepared a speech advocating radical changes in the 
 constitution in order to establish an equilibrium between the two sections. He was unable 
 to deliver it, and died shortly after, March 31, 1850. 
 
 The intellect of Calhoun was best shown in the discussion of abstract principles, and in 
 carrying out, with logical directness, his constructions of constitutional law. Slavery was 
 the corner-stone of his ideal commonwealth, and the doctrine of state rights, with a rigid 
 limitation of the powers of the Federal government, was the only effectual bulwark of 
 slavery. While others pursued the tortuous course of expediency, his movements were in 
 a right line. With one great and controlling principle in view, he did not care what politi- 
 cian's schemes he crossed, or with which party his action for the time chanced to coincide. 
 For his personal popularity he cared as little as he did for the views of opponents. Well 
 was he named the " Iron Man," for of all the statesmen of his era he had the clearest vision, 
 the most remorseless logic (granting his premises) and the most unswerving determination 
 of purpose. As may be inferred, the style of the orator was in harmony with the nature of 
 the man. Imagination, fancy, grace, and the arts of rhetoric had no place in his intellectual 
 system. But his arguments always set the strongest of his adversaries to thinking, and left 
 friends and foes alike with a feeling of admiration for his power. His private life was with- 
 out stain, and his home, where he was the biblical patriarch, was always a hospitable and 
 pleasant resort. His works, with a memoir by Richard K. Cralle, have been published in 
 six volumes. 
 
 [From the speech on the Force Bill, in the Senate, February, 1833.] 
 STATE SOVEREIGNTY. 
 
 NOTWITHSTANDING all that has been said, I may say that neither 
 the senator from Delaware [Mr. Clayton], nor any other who has 
 
88 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 spoken on the same side, has directly and fairly met the great ques- 
 tion at issue : Is this a federal union ? a union of states, as distinct 
 from that of individuals ? Is the sovereignty in the several states, 
 or in the American people in the aggregate ? The very language 
 which we are compelled to use when speaking of our political institu- 
 tions affords proof conclusive as to its real character. The terms 
 "union," "federal," "united," all imply a combination of sovereignties, 
 a confederation of states. They are never applied to an association 
 of individuals. Who ever heard of the United State of New York, 
 of Massachusetts, or of Virginia ? Who ever heard the ter.m federal or 
 union applied to the aggregation of individuals into one community ? 
 Nor is the other point less clear that the sovereignty is- in the 
 several states, and that our system is a union of twenty-four sov- 
 ereign powers, under a constitutional compact, and not of a divided 
 sovereignty between the states severally and the United States. In 
 spite of all that has been said, I maintain that sovereignty is in its 
 nature indivisible. It is the supreme power in a state, and we might 
 just as well speak of half a square, or half of a triangle, as of half a 
 sovereignty. It is a gross error to confound the exercise of sov- 
 ereign powers with sovereignty itself, or the delegation of such 
 powers with the surrender of them. A sovereign may delegate his 
 powers to be exercised by as many agents as he may think proper, 
 under such conditions and with such limitations as he may impose ; 
 but to surrender any portion of his sovereignty to another is to an- 
 nihilate the whole. The senator from Delaware [Mr. Clayton] calls 
 this metaphysical reasoning, which, he says, he cannot comprehend. 
 If by metaphysics he means that scholastic refinement which makes 
 distinctions without difference, no one can hold it in more utter con- 
 tempt than I do ; but if, on the contrary, he means the power of 
 analysis and combination, that power which reduces the most com- 
 plex idea into its elements, which traces causes to their first prin- 
 ciple, and, by the power of generalization and combination, unites 
 the whole in one harmonious system, then, so far from deserving 
 contempt, it is the highest attribute of the human mind. It is the 
 power which raises man above the brute which distinguishes his 
 faculties from mere sagacity, which he holds in common with inferior 
 animals. It is this power which has raised the astronomer from 
 being a mere gazer at the stars to the high intellectual eminence of a 
 Newton or a Laplace, and astronomy itself from a mere observation 
 of insulated facts into that noble science which displays to our 
 admiration the system of the universe. And shall this high power 
 
JOHN CALDWELL CALHOUN. 89 
 
 of the mind, which has effected such wonders when directed to the 
 laws which control the material world, be forever prohibited, under 
 a senseless cry of metaphysics, from being applied to the' high pur- 
 pose of political science and legislation ? I hold them to be subject 
 to laws as fixed as matter itself, and to be as fit a subject for the 
 application of the highest intellectual power. Denunciation may, 
 indeed, fall upon the philosophical inquirer into these first principles, 
 as it did upon Galileo and Bacon when they first unfolded the great 
 discoveries which have immortalized their names ; but the time will 
 come when truth will prevail in spite -of prejudice and denunciation, 
 and when politics and legislation will be considered as much a science 
 as astronomy and chemistry. 
 
 [From a speech in reply to John Randolph in favor of a war with Great Britain, delivered 
 in Congress, 1811.] 
 
 SIR, I am not insensible to the weighty importance of the proposi- 
 tion, for the first time submitted to this house, to compel a redress 
 of our long list of complaints against one of the belligerents. Ac- 
 cording to my mode of thinking, the more serious the question, the 
 stronger and more unalterable ought to be our convictions before we 
 give it our support. War, in our country, ought never to be resorted 
 to but when it is clearly justifiable and necessary ; so much so as 
 not to require the aid of logic to convince our understandings, nor 
 the ardor of eloquence to inflame our passions. There are many 
 reasons why this country should never resort to war but for causes 
 the most urgent and necessary. It is sufficient that, under a govern- 
 ment like ours, none but such will justify it in the eyes of the people ; 
 and were I not satisfied that such is the present case, I certainly 
 would be no advocate of the proposition now before the house. 
 
 Sir, I might prove the war, should it ensue, justifiable, by the ex- 
 press admission of the gentleman from Virginia ; and necessary, by 
 facts undoubted, and universally admitted such as he did not pre- 
 tend to controvert. The extent, duration, and character of the injuries 
 received, the failure of those peaceful means heretofore resorted to for 
 the redress of our wrongs, are my proofs that it is necessary. Why 
 should I mention the impressment of our seamen ; depredations on 
 every branch of our commerce, including the direct export trade, 
 continued for years, and made under laws which professedly under- 
 take to regulate our trade with other nations ; negotiation resorted 
 to, again and again, till it is become hopeless ; the restrictive system 
 
gO HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 persisted in to avoid war, and in the vain expectation of returning 
 justice ? The evil still grows, and, in each succeeding year, swells 
 in extent and pretension beyond the preceding. The question, even 
 in the opinion and by the admission of our opponents, is reduced to 
 this single point : Which shall we do abandon or defend our own 
 commercial and maritime rights, and the personal liberties of our 
 citizens employed in exercising them ? These rights are vitally 
 attacked, and war is the only means of redress. The gentleman 
 from Virginia has suggested none, unless we consider the whole of 
 his speech as recommending patient and resigned submission as the 
 best remedy. Sir, which alternative this house will embrace it is 
 not for me to say. I hope the decision is made already, by a higher 
 authority than the voice of any man. It is not for the human 
 tongue to instil the sense of independence and honor. This is the 
 work of nature a generous nature, that disdains tame submission 
 to wrongs. . . . 
 
 The first argument of the gentleman which I shall notice is the 
 unprepared state of the country. Whatever weight this argument 
 might have in a question of immediate war, it surely has little in that 
 of preparation for it. If our country is unprepared, let us remedy 
 the evil as soon as possible. Let the gentleman submit his plan ; 
 and, if a reasonable one, I doubt not it will be supported by 
 the house. 
 
 But, sir, let us admit the fact and the whole force of the argu- 
 ment. I ask, whose is the fault ? Who has been a member, for 
 many years past, and seen the defenceless state of his country even 
 near home, under his own eyes, without a single endeavor to remedy 
 so serious an evil ? Let him not say, " I have acted in a minority." 
 It is no less the duty of the minority than a majority to endeavor to 
 defend the country. For that purpose we are sent here, and not for 
 that of opposition. 
 
 We are next told of the expense of the war, and that the people 
 will not pay taxes. 
 
 Why not? Is it from want of means? What, with a million 
 tons of shipping, a commerce of a hundred million dollars an- 
 nually, manufactures yielding a yearly product of a hundred and 
 fifty million dollars, and agriculture of thrice that amount, shall we 
 be told the country wants capacity to raise and support ten thousand 
 or fifteen thousand additional regulars ? No ; it has the ability ; 
 that is admitted ; and will it not have the disposition? Is not the 
 cause a just and necessary one ? Shall we then utter this libel on 
 
JOHN CALDWELL CALHOUN. QI 
 
 the people ? Where will proof be found of a fact so disgraceful ? It 
 is answered In the history of the country twelve or fifteen years 
 ago. The case is not parallel. The ability of the country is greatly 
 increased since. The whiskey tax was unpopular. But on this, as 
 well as my memory serves me, the objection was not to the tax or 
 its amount, but the mode of collection. The people were startled 
 by the number of officers ; their love of liberty shocked with the 
 multiplicity of regulations. We, in the spirit of imitation, copied 
 from the most oppressive part of European laws on the subject of 
 taxes, and imposed on a young and virtuous people all the severe 
 provisions made necessary by corruption and long-practised eva- 
 sions. If taxes should become necessary, I do not hesitate to say 
 the people will pay cheerfully. It is for their government and their 
 cause, and it would be their interest and their duty to pay. But it 
 may be, and I believe was said, that the people will not pay taxes, 
 because the rights violated are not worth defending, or that the 
 defence will cost more than the gain. Sir, I here enter my solemn 
 protest against this low and " calculating avarice " entering this hall 
 of legislation. It is only fit for shops and counting-houses, and 
 ought not to disgrace the seat of power by its squalid aspect. 
 Whenever it touches sovereign power, the nation is ruined. It is 
 too short-sighted to defend itself. It is a compromising spirit, 
 always ready to yield a part to save the residue. It is too timid to 
 have in itself the laws of self-preservation. It is never safe but 
 under the shield of honor. There is, sir, one principle necessary to 
 make us a great people to produce not the form, but real spirit of 
 union ; and that is, to protect every citizen in the lawful pursuit of 
 his business. He will then feel that he is backed by the govern- 
 ment that its arm is his arm and will rejoice in its increased 
 strength and prosperity. Protection and patriotism are reciprocal. 
 This is the way which has led nations to greatness. Sir, I am not 
 versed in this calculating policy, and will not, therefore, pretend to 
 estimate in dollars and cents the value of national independence. I 
 cannot measure in shillings and pence the misery, the stripes, and 
 the slavery of our impressed seamen ; nor even the value of our 
 shipping, commercial and agricultural losses, under the Orders in 
 Council and the British system of blockade. In thus expressing 
 myself, I do not intend to condemn any prudent estimate of the 
 means of a country before it enters on a war. This is wisdom 
 the other, folly. The gentleman from Virginia has not failed to 
 touch on the calamity of war, that fruitful source of declamation by 
 
92 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 which humanity is made the advocate of submission. If he desires 
 to repress the gallant ardor of our countrymen by such topics, let 
 me inform him that true courage regards only the cause, that it is 
 just and necessary ; and that it contemns the sufferings and dangers 
 of war. If he really wishes to promote the cause of humanity, let 
 his eloquence be addressed to Lord Wellesley or Mr. Perceval, and 
 not the American Congress. Tell them, if they persist in such 
 daring insult and injury to a neutral nation, that, however inclined 
 to peace, it will be bound in honor and safety to resist; that 
 their patience and endurance, however great, wilf be exhausted ; 
 that the calamity of war will ensue ; and that they, in the opinion of 
 the world, will be answerable for all its devastation and misery. 
 Let a regard to the interests of humanity stay the hand of injustice, 
 and my life on it, the gentleman will not find it difficult to dissuade 
 his country from rushing into the bloody scenes of war. 
 
 WASHINGTON IRVING. 
 
 Washington Irving was born in the city of New York, April 3, 1783. He received only 
 a common school education, which ended in his sixteenth year, and thenceforward his mind 
 had its own development. He read Robinson Crusoe, and a collection of voyages, and after- 
 wards Chaucer, and Spenser, and other English classics : he studied law for a time, made 
 river excursions, and travelled over his island-home in search of adventures with great 
 assiduity. Civilization had then extended no farther than Chambers Street. Dutch houses, 
 with stoops and gables, were common, and the streets were bordered with rows of tall pop- 
 lars, like troops in skirmish lines. The valiant burgomasters of Peter Stuyvesant's time 
 were not so remote as they now seem. Spuyten-Duyvel Creek and Hell Gate were in 
 regions of mystery. The island, the broad bay, and the north river, with 'its noble shores, 
 were all rich in traditions connected with the settlement of the country and the changes that 
 had occurred among the people and their rulers. In the Author's Account of Himself, pre- 
 fixed to the Sketch Book, we see glimpses of his rambling disposition, and understand how 
 he acquired that perfect knowledge of the country, with its customs and legends, which gives 
 to the History of New York, and to the tales of Rip Van Winkle and Sleepy Hollow, their 
 peculiar charm. 
 
 In 1802 he began to write for a newspaper, conducted by his brother, Dr. Peter Irving. 
 Being threatened with pulmonary disease, he sailed for Europe in 1804, landing at Bor- 
 deaux, and visiting Genoa, Sicily, Naples, Rome, and Paris, and from thence journeying 
 through Brussels, Maestricht, and Rotterdam to London. It was at Rome that he met All- 
 ston, and for a time thought of being a painter. He returned to New York in 1806, re- 
 sumed the study of law, and was admitted to the bar ; but it does not appear that he ever 
 practised his profession. 
 
 In company with his brother William and James K. Paulding, he engaged in a serial pub- 
 lication, entitled Salmagundi. It was filled with clever satire upon the follies of the day, 
 and was immediately successful. The next venture of Irving was the publication of his His- 
 tory of New York, which is, perhaps, the most unique, perfectly rounded, and elaborately 
 sustained burlesque in our literature. It has enough of sober history to ballast it, and its 
 
WASHINGTON IRVING. 93 
 
 ludicrous incidents and studies of the whimsical .traits of Dutch character are painted with a 
 grave air of verity that keeps the reader in a perpetual but never tiresome chuckle. It is 
 amusing now to read that the descendants of the old families, whose names figure in the 
 book, as well as members of the Historical Society, and critics like Verplanck, were angry 
 with the author, and gravely condemned the pleasantry as a wrong to the memory of the 
 Dutch forefathers. 
 
 He conducted the Analectic Magazine in Philadelphia for two years, and contributed 
 many articles that afterwards appeared in the Sketch Book and other later volumes. 
 
 He served for a short time as aide-de-camp to Governor Tompkins in 1814, and, at the 
 end of the war, went to Europe for the benefit of his health. His life for the next seven- 
 teen years was full of interest, but its events cannot be compressed within the narrow space 
 allotted to a single author in our collection. After making a tour of the continent, he enjoyed 
 a season of literary companionship in London, and of wanderings through England and 
 Scotland, when he was suddenly thrown upon his own resources by the failure of his brother's 
 house in New York, in which all his property had been placed. 
 
 He wrote the Sketch Book, and sent it to New York, where it was published, in 1818, in a 
 serial form. It was subsequently published in London by Murray; but this was brought 
 about by the persuasion of Scott (who had read and enjoyed an American copy of the 
 Knickerbocker) after Murray had once declined it. This work was at once accepted as 
 classic, and the author's reputation was placed upon a permanent basis. The judicious 
 variety of subjects, the delicate pathos and humor, the freshness of feeling, and the exquisite 
 finish of style it exhibited, together with the fact that it was the work of an author born and 
 reared in a country supposed to possess neither learning nor refinement, made the appear- 
 ance of the Sketch Book a literary event. His next work, Bracebridge Hall, written in 
 Paris, where the author had been a companion of Moore, appeared in London in 1822. 
 Though successful, it was thought to be over-refined in style. The following winter was 
 spent in Dresden (where he was much in gay society, and took part in private theatricals), 
 and the next season in Paris, where he was the friend and adviser of J. Howard Payne, the 
 dramatist. In December, 1824, he published the Tales of a Traveller. He was commis- 
 sioned in 1825, by Alexander H. Everett, then minister to Spain, to make translations of 
 newly-discovered papers, in Madrid, referring to Columbus. This led to the composition 
 of the admirable History of the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus, published in 
 1828, followed by the Voyages and Discoveries of the Companions of Columbus. During 
 his residence in Spain he also collected the materials for the Conquest of Grenada, The 
 Alhambra, Legends of the Conquest of Spain, and Mahomet and his Successors. In 1829 
 he was appointed secretary of legation to the American embassy, in London, and in 1832 
 returned to New York, where he was welcomed at a public dinner. He next made a trip 
 beyond the Mississippi, and shortly after gave to the public A Tour on the Prairies. This 
 was followed by Astoria, The Adventures of Captain Bonneville, and a volume of miscel- 
 lanies, entitled Wolfert's Roost. In 1841 he published the Life of Margaret Davidson, 
 with an edition of her poetical works. The next year he was appointed minister to Spain. 
 On his return, four years later, he published his biography of Oliver Goldsmith. His last 
 and most elaborate work is his Life of Washington, in five volumes. 
 
 The last years of Irving's life were spent at his country-seat, "Sunnyside," near Tarry- 
 town, N. Y., the scene of his Legend of Sleepy Hollow. He was never married. In his 
 youth he was betrothed to Miss Matilda Hoffman, who died in her eighteenth year. He 
 remained faithful to her memory, and her Bible, kept for so many years, was upon a table 
 at his bedside when he died. He enjoyed the society of loving relatives and friends, for 
 whom he always kept open house ; and he retained his self-denying, cheerful temper, his 
 simple tastes, and unostentatious habits to the last. His death occurred November 28, 1859. 
 His Letters and Memoirs have been given to the world by his nephew, Pierre M. Irving. 
 
 It is not difficult to assign Irving's place among our authors. Thackeray happily spoke 
 of him as "the first ambassador whom the New World of Letters sent to the Old." In our 
 lighter literature he is without a rival as an artist. He is equally happy in his delineations 
 
94 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 of scenery and character : he moves us to tears or to laughter at his pleasure. His works 
 have all an admirable proportion ; nothing necessary is omitted, and needless details are 
 avoided. He never fatigues us by learned antithesis, nor by the parallelism of proverbial 
 philosophers. In short, we can say that his style is absolutely unrivalled in its fluency, 
 grace, and picturesque effect. The vivacity of his youth never wholly deserted him ; al- 
 though he ceased writing humorous works, it served to animate his graver histories, and to 
 give them a charm which the mere annalist could not attain. His life, on the whole, was 
 fortunate ; his fame came in season for him to enjoy it ; his works brought him his bread, 
 honestly earned, and not merely the monumental stone. Other authors may perhaps excite 
 more of our wonder or reverence, but Irving will be remembered with delight and love. 
 
 [From Knickerbocker's History of New York.] 
 A DUTCH GOVERNOR. 
 
 THE renowned Wouter (or Walter) Van Twiller was descended 
 from a long line of Dutch burgomasters, who had successively dozed 
 away their lives, and grown fat upon the bench of magistracy in 
 Rotterdam, and who had comported themselves with such singular 
 wisdom and propriety that they were never either heard or talked of 
 which, next to being universally applauded, should be the object 
 of ambition of all magistrates and rulers. There are two opposite 
 ways by which some men make a figure in the world ; one by talk- 
 ing faster than they think, and the other by holding their tongues 
 and not thinking at all. By the first, many a smatterer acquires the 
 reputation of a man of quick parts ; by the other many a dunder- 
 pate, like the owl, the stupidest of birds, comes to be considered the 
 very type of wisdom. This, by the way, is a casual remark, which 
 I would not, for the universe, have it thought I apply to Governor 
 Van Twiller. It is true he was a man shut up within himself, like 
 an oyster, and rarely spoke except in monosyllables ; but then it was 
 allowed he seldom said a foolish thing. So invincible was his gravity 
 that he was never known to laugh, or even to smile, through the 
 whole course of a long and prosperous life. Nay, if a joke were 
 uttered in his presence, that set light-minded hearers in a roar, it 
 was observed to throw him into a state of perplexity. Sometimes 
 he would deign to inquire into the matter, and when, after much ex- 
 planation, the joke was made as plain as a pike-staff, he would con- 
 tinue to smoke his pipe in silence, and at length, knocking out the 
 ashes, would exclaim, "Well, I see nothing in all that to laugh 
 about." 
 
 With all his reflective habits, he never made up his mind on a 
 subject. His adherents accounted for this by the astonishing mag- 
 nitude of his ideas. He conceived every subject on so grand a scale 
 that he had not room in his head to turn it over and examine both 
 
WASHINGTON IRVING. 95 
 
 sides of it. Certain it is, that if any matter were propounded to 
 him on which ordinary mortals would rashly determine at first 
 glance, he would put on a vague, mysterious look, shake his capa- 
 cious head, smoke some time in profound silence, and' at length 
 observe that " he had his doubts about the matter ; " which^ gained 
 him the reputation of a man slow of belief, and not easily imposed 
 upon. What is more, it gained him a lasting name, for to this habit 
 of the mind has been attributed his surname of Twiller, which is 
 'said to be a corruption of the original Twijfler, or, in plain Eng- 
 lish, Doubter. 
 
 The person of this illustrious old gentleman was formed and pro- 
 portioned as though it had been moulded by the hands of some 
 cunning Dutch statuary, as a model of majesty and lordly grandeur. 
 He was exactly five feet six inches in height, and six feet five inches 
 in circumference. His head was a perfect sphere, and of such stu- 
 pendous dimensions, that dame Nature, with all her sex's inge- 
 nuity, would have been puzzled to construct a neck capable of sup- 
 porting it ; wherefore she wisely declined the attempt, and settled it 
 firmly on the top of his backbone, just between his shoulders. His 
 body was oblong, and particularly capacious at bottom, which was 
 wisely ordered by Providence, seeing that he was a man of seden- 
 tary habits, and very averse to the idle labor of walking. His legs 
 were short, but sturdy in proportion to the weight they had to sus- 
 tain ; so that when erect he had not a little the appearance of a beer 
 barrel on skids. His face, that infallible index of the mind, pre- 
 sented a vast expanse, unfurrowed by any of those lines and angles 
 which disfigure the human countenance with what is termed expres- 
 sion. Two small gray eyes twinkled feebly in the midst, like two 
 stars of lesser magnitude in a hazy firmament, and his full-fed cheeks, 
 which seemed to have taken toll of everything that went into his 
 mouth, were curiously mottled and streaked with dusky red, like a 
 spitzenberg apple. 
 
 His habits were as regular as his person. He daily took his four 
 stated meals, appropriating exactly an hour to each ; he smoked and 
 doubted eight hours, and he slept the remaining twelve of the four 
 and twenty. Such was the renowned Wouter Van Twiller a true 
 philosopher, for his mind was either elevated above, or tranquilly 
 settled below, the cares and perplexities of this world. He had 
 lived in it for years, without feeling the least curiosity to know 
 whether the sun revolved round it, or it round the sun ; and he had 
 watched, for at least half a century, the smoke curling from his pipe 
 
96 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 to the ceiling, without once troubling his head with any of those nu- 
 merous theories by which a philosopher would have perplexed his 
 brain, in accounting for its rising above the surrounding atmosphere. 
 
 In his council he presided with great state and solemnity. He sat 
 in a huge chair of solid oak, hewn in the celebrated forest of the 
 Hague, fabricated by an experienced timberman of Amsterdam, and 
 curiously carved about the arms and feet into exact imitations of 
 gigantic eagle's claws. Instead of a sceptre he swayed a long Turk- 
 ish pipe, wrought with jasmine and amber, which had been presented 
 to a stadtholder of Holland, at the conclusion of a treaty with one 
 of the petty Barbary powers. In this stately chair would he sit, and 
 this magnificent pipe would he smoke, shaking his right knee with a 
 constant motion, and fixing his eye for hours together upon a little 
 print of Amsterdam, which hung in a black frame against the oppo- 
 site wall of the council chamber. Nay, it has even been said, that 
 when any deliberation of extraordinary length and intricacy was 
 on the carpet, the renowned Wouter would shut his eyes for full two 
 hours at a time, that he might not be disturbed by external objects ; 
 and at such times the internal commotion of his mind was evinced 
 by certain regular guttural sounds, which his admirers declared were 
 merely the noise of conflict made by his contending doubts and 
 opinions. . . . 
 
 The very outset of the career of this excellent magistrate was dis- 
 tinguished by an example of legal acumen that gave flattering presage 
 of a wise and equitable administration. The morning after he had 
 been installed in office, and at the moment that he was making his 
 breakfast from a prodigious earthen dish, filled with milk and Indian 
 pudding, he was interrupted by the appearance of Wandle Schoon- 
 hoven, a very important old burgher of New Amsterdam, who com- 
 plained bitterly of one Barent Bleecker, inasmuch as he refused to 
 come to a settlement of accounts, seeing that there was a heavy bal- 
 ance in favor of the said Wandle. Governor Van Twiller, as I have 
 already observed, was a man of few words ; he was likewise a mor- 
 tal enemy to multiplying writings or being disturbed at his break- 
 fast. Having listened attentively to the statement of Wandle 
 Schoonhoven, giving an occasional grunt as he shovelled a spoonful 
 of Indian pudding into his mouth, either as a sign that he relished 
 the dish or comprehended the story, he called unto him his con- 
 stable, and, pulling out of his breeches pocket a huge jackknife, de- 
 spatched it after the defendant as a summons, accompanied by his 
 tobacco-box as a warrant. 
 
WASHINGTON IRVING. 97 
 
 This summary process was as effectual in those simple days as 
 was the seal ring of the great Haroun Alraschid among the true be- 
 lievers. The two parties being confronted before him, each pro- 
 duced a book of accounts, written in a language and character that 
 would have puzzled any but a High Dutch commentator, or a learned 
 decipherer of Egyptian obelisks. The sage Wouter took them one 
 after the other, and having poised them in his hands, and attentively 
 counted over the number of leaves, fell straightway into a very great 
 doubt, and smoked for half an hour without saying a word. At 
 length, laying his finger beside his nose, and shutting his eyes for a 
 moment, with the air of a man who has just caught a subtle idea by 
 the tail, he slowly took his pipe from his mouth, puffed forth a column 
 of tobacco smoke, and with marvellous gravity counted over the 
 leaves and weighed the books : it was found that one was just as 
 thick and as heavy as the other therefore it was the final opinion 
 of the court that the accounts were equally balanced; therefore 
 Wandle should give Barent a receipt, and Barent should give Wan- 
 die a receipt, and the constable should pay the costs. 
 
 This decision, being straightway made known, diffused general joy 
 throughout New Amsterdam, for the people immediately perceived 
 that they had a very wise and equitable magistrate to rule over them. 
 But its happiest effect was, that not another lawsuit took place 
 throughout the whole of his administration, and the office of consta- 
 ble fell into such decay that there was not one of those losel scouts 
 known in the province for many years. I am the more particular in 
 dwelling on this transaction, not only because I deem it one of the 
 most sage and righteous judgments on record, and well worthy the 
 attention of modern magistrates, but because it was a miraculous 
 event in the history of the renowned Wouter being the only time 
 he was ever known to come to a decision in the whole course of his life. 
 
 [From The Sketch Book.] 
 EVENING IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY. 
 
 THE sound of casual footsteps had ceased from the abbey. I could 
 only hear, now and then, the distant voice of the priest repeating the 
 evening service, and the faint responses of the choir ; these paused 
 for a time, and all was hushed. The stillness, the desertion and 
 obscurity that were gradually prevailing around gave a deeper and 
 more solemn interest to the place, 
 7 
 
98 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 " for in the silent grave no conversation, 
 No joyful tread of friends, no voice of lovers, 
 No careful father's counsel nothing's heard, 
 For nothing is, but all oblivion, 
 Dust, and an endless darkness." 
 
 Suddenly the notes of the deep-laboring organ burst upon the ear, 
 falling with doubled and redoubled intensity, and rolling, as it were, 
 huge billows of sound. How well do their volume and grandeur 
 accord with this mighty building ! With what pomp do they swell 
 through its vast vaults, and breathe their awful harmony through 
 these caves of death, and make the silent sepulchre vocal ! And 
 now they rise in triumph and acclamation, heaving higher and higher 
 their accordant notes, and piling sound on sound. And now they 
 pause, and the soft voices of the choir break out into sweet gushes 
 of melody ; they soar aloft, and warble along the roof, and seem to 
 play about these lofty vaults like the pure airs of heaven. Again the 
 pealing organ heaves 'its thrilling thunders, compressing air into 
 music, and rolling it forth upon the soul. What long-drawn ca- 
 dences ! What solemn, sweeping concords ! It grows more and 
 more dense and powerful ; it fills the vast pile, and seems to jar the 
 very walls ; the ear is stunned, the senses are overwhelmed. And 
 now it is winding up in full jubilee ; it is rising from the earth to 
 heaven ; the very soul seems rapt away and floated upwards on this 
 swelling tide of harmony. 
 
 I sat for some time lost in that kind of reverie which a strain of 
 music is apt sometimes to inspire : the shadows of evening were 
 gradually thickening round me ; the monuments began to cast deeper 
 and deeper gloom, and the distant clock again gave token of the 
 slowly waning day. 
 
 I rose and prepared to leave the abbey. As I descended the 
 flight of steps which lead into the body of the building, my eye was 
 caught by the shrine of Edward the Confessor, and I ascended the 
 small staircase that conducts to it, to take from thence a general 
 survey of this wilderness of tombs. The shrine is elevated upon a 
 kind of platform, and close around it are the sepulchres of various 
 kings and queens. From this eminence the eye looks down between 
 pillars and funeral trophies to the chapels and chambers below, 
 crowded with tombs, where warriors, prelates, courtiers, and states- 
 men lie mouldering in their " beds of darkness." Close by me stood 
 the great chair of coronation, rudely carved of oak, in the barbarous 
 taste of a remote and Gothic age. The scene seemed almost as if 
 
WASHINGTON IRVING. 99 
 
 contrived, with theatrical artifice, to produce an effect upon the be- 
 holder. Here was a type of the beginning and the end of human 
 pomp and power ; here it was literally but a step from the throne to 
 the sepulchre. Would not one think that these incongruous me- 
 mentos had been gathered together as a lesson to living greatness 
 to show it, even in the moment of its proudest exaltation, the 
 neglect and dishonor to which it must soon arrive ; how soon that 
 crown which encircles its brow must pass away, and it must lie down 
 in the dust and disgraces of the tomb, and be trampled upon by the 
 feet of the meanest of the multitude. For, strange to tell, even the 
 grave is here no longer a sanctuary. There is a shocking levity in 
 some natures, which leads them to sport with awful and hallowed 
 things ; and there are base minds which delight to revenge on the 
 illustrious dead the abject homage and grovelling servility which 
 they pay to the living. The coffin of Edward the Confessor has 
 been broken open, and his remains despoiled of their funereal orna- 
 ments ; the sceptre has been stolen from the hand of the imperious 
 Elizabeth, and the effigy of Henry the Fifth lies headless. Not a 
 royal monument but bears some proof how false and fugitive is the 
 homage of mankind. Some are plundered, sQme mutilated, some 
 covered with ribaldry and insult all more or less outraged and 
 dishonored. 
 
 The last beams of day were now faintly streaming through the 
 painted windows in the high vaults above me ; the lower parts of the 
 abbey were already wrapped in the obscurity of twilight. The 
 chapels and aisles grew darker and darker. The effigies of the 
 kings faded into shadows ; the marble figures of the monuments 
 assumed strange shapes in the uncertain light ; the evening breeze 
 crept through the aisles like the cold breath of the grave ; and even 
 the distant footfall of a verger, traversing the Poets' Corner, had 
 something strange and dreary in its sound. I slowly retraced my 
 morning's walk, and as I passed out at the portal of the cloisters, the 
 door, closing with a jarring noise behind me, filled the whole build- 
 ing with echoes. 
 
 I endeavored to form some arrangement in my mind of the objects 
 I had been contemplating, but found they were already fallen into 
 indistinctness and confusion. Names, inscriptions, trophies had all 
 become confounded in my recollection, though I had scarcely taken 
 my foot from off the threshold. What, thought I, is this vast assem- 
 blage of sepulchres but a treasury of humiliation, a huge pile of 
 reiterated homilies on the emptiness of renown, and the certainty 
 
IOO HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 of oblivion ! It is, indeed, the empire of Death ; his great shadowy 
 palace, where he sits in state, mocking at the relics of human glory, 
 and spreading dust and forgetfulness on the monuments of princes. 
 How idle a boast, after all, is the immortality of a name ! Time is 
 ever silently turning over his pages ; we are too much engrossed by 
 the story of the present to think of the characters and anecdotes 
 that gave interest to the past ; and each age is a volume thrown 
 aside to be speedily forgotten. The idol of to-day pushes the hero 
 of yesterday out of our recollection, and will, in turn, be supplanted 
 by his successor of to-morrow. " Our fathers," says Sir Thomas 
 Browne, " find their graves in our short memories, and sadly tell us 
 how we may be buried in our survivors." 
 
 History fades into fable ; fact becomes clouded with doubt and 
 controversy ; the inscription moulders from the tablet ; the statue 
 falls from the pedestal. Columns, arches, pyramids, what are they 
 but heaps of sand, and their epitaphs but characters written in the 
 dust ? What is the security of a tomb, or the perpetuity of an em- 
 balmment ? The remains of Alexander the Great have been scat- 
 tered to the wind, and his empty sarcophagus is now the mere curi- 
 osity of a museum. " The Egyptian mummies, which Cambyses or 
 time hath spared, avarice now consumeth ; Mizraim cures wounds, 
 and Pharaoh is sold for balsams." 
 
 What, then, is to insure this pile, which now towers above me, from 
 sharing the fate of mightier mausoleums ? The time must come 
 when its gilded vaults, which now spring so loftily, shall lie in rub- 
 bish beneath the feet ; when, instead of the sound of melody and 
 praise, the wind shall whistle through the broken arches, and the 
 owl hoot from the shattered tower when the garish sunbeam shall 
 break into these gloomy mansions of death, and the ivy twine round 
 the fallen column, and the fox-glove hang its blossoms about the 
 nameless urn, as if in mockery of the dead. Thus man passes away ; 
 his name perishes from record and recollection ; his history is as a 
 tale that is told, and his very monument becomes a ruin. 
 
 [From Legend of Sleepy Hollow.] 
 PORTRAIT OF THE SCHOOLMASTER. 
 
 IN this by-place of Nature there abode, in a remote period of 
 American history, that is to say, some thirty years since, a worthy 
 wight of the name of Ichabod Crane ; who sojourned, or, as he ex- 
 
WASHINGTON IRVING. IOI 
 
 pressed it, " tarried," in Sleepy Hollow, for the purpose of instruct- 
 ing the children of the vicinity. He was a native of Connecticut, a 
 state which supplies the Union with pioneers for the mind as well 
 as for the forest, and sends forth yearly its legions of frontier woods- 
 men and country schoolmasters. The cognomen of Crane was not 
 inapplicable to his person. He was tall, but exceedingly lank, with 
 narrow shoulders, long arms and legs, hands that dangled a mile out 
 of his sleeves, feet that might have served for shovels, and his whole 
 frame most loosely hung together. 
 
 His head was small, and flat at top, with huge ears, large green 
 glassy eyes, and a long snipe nose, so that it looked like a weather- 
 cock, perched upon his spindle neck, to tell which way the wind 
 blew. To see him striding along the profile of a hill on a windy day, 
 with his clothes bagging and fluttering about him, one might have 
 mistaken him for the genius of famine descending upon the earth, 
 or some scarecrow eloped from a cornfield. 
 
 His school-house was a low building of one large room, rudely 
 constructed of logs, the windows partly glazed and partly patched 
 with leaves of old copy-books. It was most ingeniously secured, at 
 vacant hours, by a withe twisted in the handle of the door, and stakes 
 set against the window-shutters, so that, though a thief might get in 
 with perfect ease, he would find some embarrassment in getting out 
 an idea most probably borrowed by the architect, Yost Van Houten, 
 from the mystery of an eel-pot. The school-house stood in a rather 
 lonely but pleasant situation, just at the foot of a woody hill, with a 
 brook running close by, and a formidable birch tree growing at one 
 end of it. 
 
 From hence the low murmur of his pupils' voices, conning over 
 their lessons, might be heard in a drowsy summer's day, like the 
 hum of a bee-hive, interrupted now and then by the authoritative 
 voice of the master in the tone of menace or command, or, peradven- 
 ture, by the appalling sound of the birch as he urged some tardy 
 loiterer along the flowery path of knowledge. Truth to say, he was 
 a conscientious man, and ever bore in mind the golden maxim, 
 " Spare the rod and spoil the child." Ichabod Crane's scholars cer- 
 tainly were not spoiled. 
 
 In addition to his other vocations, he was the singing-master of 
 the neighborhood, and picked up many bright shillings by instructing 
 the young folks in psalmody. It was a matter of no little vanity to 
 him, on Sundays, to take his station in front of the church gallery, 
 with a band of chosen singers, where, in his own mind, he completely 
 
IO2 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 carried away the palm from the parson. Certain it is, his voice re- 
 sounded far above all the rest of the congregation, and there are 
 peculiar quavers still to be heard in that church, and which may 
 even be heard half a mile off, quite to the opposite side of the mill- 
 pond, on a still Sunday morning, which are said to be legitimately 
 descended from the nose of Ichabod Crane. 
 
 Thus, by divers little makeshifts in that ingenious way which is 
 commonly denominated " by hook and by crook," the worthy peda- 
 gogue got on tolerably enough, and was thought, by all who under- 
 stood nothing of the labor of headwork, to have a wonderfully easy 
 time of it. 
 
 A DUTCH HEIRESS. 
 
 AMONG the musical disciples who assembled, one evening in each 
 week, to receive his instructions in psalmody, was Katrina Van Tas- 
 sel, the daughter and only child of a substantial Dutch farmer. She 
 was a blooming lass of fresh eighteen ; plump as a partridge, ripe 
 and melting and rosy-cheeked as one of her father's peaches, and 
 universally famed not merely for her beauty, but her vast expecta- 
 tions. She was withal a little of a coquette, as might be perceived 
 even in her dress, which was a mixture of ancient and modern fash- 
 ions, as most suited to set off her charms. She wore the ornaments 
 of pure yellow gold, which her great-great-grandmother had brought 
 over from Saardam, the tempting stomacher of the olden time, and 
 withal a provokingly short petticoat, to display the prettiest foot and 
 ankle in the country round. 
 
 ANTICIPATIONS. 
 
 THE pedagogue's mouth watered as he looked upon this sumptuous 
 promise of luxurious winter fare. In his devouring mind's eye, he 
 pictured to himself every roasting-pig running about with a pudding 
 in his belly, and an apple in his mouth ; the pigeons were snugly 
 put to bed in a comfortable pie, and tucked in with a coverlet of 
 crust ; the geese were swimming in their own gravy ; and the ducks 
 pairing cosily in dishes like snug married couples, with a decent 
 competency of onion sauce. In the porkers he saw carved out the 
 future sleek side of bacon, and juicy, relishing ham ; not a turkey 
 but he beheld daintily trussed up, with its gizzard under its wing, 
 and, peradventurej a necklace of savory sausages ; and even bright 
 
WASHINGTON IRVING. IO3 
 
 chanticleer himself lay sprawling on his back, in a side dish, with 
 uplifted claws, as if craving that quarter which his chivalrous spirit 
 disdained to ask while living. 
 
 As the enraptured Ichabod fancied all this, and as he rolled his 
 great green eyes over the fat meadow lands, the rich fields of wheat, 
 of rye, of buckwheat, and Indian corn, and the orchards burdened 
 with ruddy fruit, which surrounded the warm tenement of Van Tas- 
 sel, his heart yearned after the damsel who was to inherit these do- 
 mains, and his imagination expanded with the idea how they might 
 be readily turned into cash, and the money invested in immense 
 tracts of wild land and shingle palaces in the wilderness. Nay, his 
 busy fancy already realized his hopes, and presented to him the 
 blooming Katrina, with a whole family of children, mounted on the 
 top of a wagon loaded with household trumpery, with pots and ket- 
 tles dangling beneath ; and he beheld himself bestriding a pacing 
 mare, with a colt at her heels, setting out for Kentucky, Tennessee, 
 or the Lord knows where. 
 
 A LANDSCAPE. 
 
 THUS feeding his mind with many sweet thoughts and " sugared 
 suppositions," he journeyed along the sides of a range of hills which 
 look out upon some of the goodliest scenes of the mighty Hudson. 
 The sun gradually wheeled his broad disk down into the west. The 
 wide bosom of the Tappan Zee lay motionless and glassy, excepting 
 that here and there a gentle undulation waved and prolonged the 
 blue shadow of the distant mountain. A few amber clouds floated 
 in the sky, without a breath of air to move them. The horizon was 
 of a fine golden tint, changing gradually into a pure apple-green, 
 and from that into the deep blue of the mid-heaven. 
 
 A slanting ray lingered on the woody crests of the precipices that 
 overhung some parts of the river, giving greater depth to the dark- 
 gray and purple of their rocky sides. A sloop was loitering in the 
 distance, dropping slowly down with the tide, her sail hanging use- 
 lessly against the mast ; and as the reflection of the sky gleamed 
 along the still water, it seemed as if the vessel was suspended in 
 the air. 
 
104 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 JOHN PIERPONT. 
 
 John Pierpont was born in Litchfield, Conn., April 6, 1785. He received his education 
 at Yale College, graduating in 1804, and then passed four years as a teacher in South 
 Carolina. He studied law in the then famous school at Litchfield, and commenced 
 practice at Newburyport, Mass. He had neither the means nor the inclination to wait for 
 the slow tide of success in his laborious profession, and was induced to go into mercantile 
 business with his brother-in-law, Mr. Lord, and John Neal. Though the firm prosperd 
 for a while, the rapid decline in prices after the war of 1812 swamped their little capital in a 
 few months. Mr. Pierpont then studied for the ministry, and was settled over Hollis Street 
 Church, in Boston. His ardent advocacy of the temperance and anti-slavery causes dis- 
 pleased a portion of his congregation, and at length, in 1845, he asked for a dismissal, and 
 removed to Troy, N. Y. He remained in his new field of labor four years, when he accepted 
 a call from a church in Medford, Mass. In his later years he became a spiritualist, and no 
 longer acted with his former Unitarian brethren. He was employed for a few years in the 
 Treasury Department at Washington, in making a digest of decisions. He died at Medford, 
 August 27, 1866. 
 
 He was a man of great talent in many directions. He had great mechanical skill, es- 
 pecially in engraving and in turning delicate figures. One of his inventions, says John 
 Neal, "the 'Pierpont or Doric Stove,' was a bit of concrete philosophy a cast-iron syl- 
 logism of itself, so classically just in its proportions, and so eminently characteristic, as to be 
 a type of the author." Mr. Neal thinks that his first choice, the law, would have been his 
 true sphere, and that he would have been a leader in the profession if he had been willing to 
 wait. His first poem, The Portrait, written at Newburyport, has some vigorous lines, 
 though in palpable imitation of the style of Campbell. The Airs of Palestine, published in 
 Baltimore after his mercantile failure, contains many beautiful passages. Of hymns for 
 ordinations and dedications he wrote a great number that still hold their place in the collec- 
 tions for public worship. He wrote also a great many odes for various occasions, as well as 
 poems upon reformatory subjects. 
 
 Few of his pieces have the completeness that belongs to enduring works ; but in almost all 
 of them there are traces of the true fire, and here and there are couplets that any poet might 
 be proud to own. 
 
 Mr. Pierpont was tall and vigorous in person, very animated in conversation, and full of 
 an ultra-apostolic zeal. He was thoroughly honest, fearless, and outspoken. With more 
 suavity and more tact he would have had a pleasanter pathway through the world ; but then 
 he would not have been John Pierpont. 
 
 His life-long friend, John Neal, contributed an interesting brief memoir of him to the 
 Atlantic Monthly, December, 1866. 
 
 PASSING AWAY. A DREAM. 
 
 WAS it the chime of a tiny bell 
 
 That came so sweet to my dreaming ear, 
 
 Like the silvery tones of a fairy's shell 
 That he winds, on the beach, so mellow and clear, 
 
 When the winds and the waves lie together asleep, 
 
 And the Moon and the Fairy are watching the deep, 
 
 She dispensing her silvery light, 
 
 And he his notes as silvery quite, 
 
JOHN PIERPONT. 
 
 While the boatman listens and ships his oar, 
 To catch the music that comes from the shore ? 
 Hark ! the notes, on my ear that play, 
 Are set to words : as they float, they say, 
 " Passing away ! passing away ! " 
 
 But no ; it was not a fairy's shell, 
 
 Blown on the beach, so mellow and clear ; 
 Nor was it the tongue of a silver bell, 
 Striking the hour, that filled my ear, 
 As I lay in my dream ; yet was it a chime 
 That told of the flow of the stream of time. 
 For a beautiful clock from the ceiling hung, 
 And a plump little girl, for a pendulum, swung 
 (As you've sometimes seen, in a little ring 
 That hangs in his cage, a canary bird swing) ; 
 And she held to her bosom a budding bouquet, 
 And, as she enjoyed it, she seemed to say, 
 " Passing away ! passing away ! " 
 
 O, how bright were the wheels, that told 
 
 Of the lapse of time, as they moved round slow ; 
 And the hands, as they swept o'er the dial of gold, 
 
 Seemed to point to the girl below. 
 And lo ! she had changed : in a few short hours 
 Her bouquet had become a garland of flowers, 
 That she held in her outstretched hands, and flung 
 This way and that, as she, dancing, swung 
 In the fulness of grace and of womanly pride, 
 That told me she soon was to be a bride ; 
 Yet then, when expecting her happiest day, 
 In the same sweet voice I heard her say, 
 " Passing away ! passing away ! " 
 
 While I gazed at that fair one's cheek, a shade 
 Of thought, or care, stole softly over, 
 
 Like that by a cloud in a summer's day made, 
 Looking down on a field of blossoming cloven 
 
 The rose yet lay on her cheek, but its flush 
 
 Had something lost of its brilliant blush ; 
 
IO6 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 And the light in her eye, and the light on the wheels, 
 That marched so calmly round above her, 
 
 Was a little dimmed, as when Evening steals 
 
 Upon Noon's hot face. Yet one couldn't but love her, 
 
 For she looked like a mother whose first babe lay 
 
 Rocked on her breast, as she swung all day ; 
 
 And she seemed, in the same silver tone, to say, 
 " Passing away ! passing away ! " 
 
 While yet I looked, what a change there came ! 
 
 Her eye was quenched, and her cheek was wan : 
 Stooping and staffed was her withered frame, 
 
 Yet, just as busily, swung she on ; 
 The garland beneath her had fallen to dust ; 
 The wheels above her were eaten with rust ; 
 The hands, that over the dial swept, 
 Grew crooked and tarnished, but on they kept, 
 And still there came that silver tone 
 From the shrivelled lips of the toothless crone 
 (Let me never forget till my dying day 
 The tone or the burden of her lay), 
 
 " Passing away ! passing away ! " 
 
 HYMN. 
 
 WRITTEN FOR THE OPENING OF THE INDEPENDENT CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH IN 
 BARTON SQUARE, SALEM, DECEMBER 7, 1824. 
 
 O THOU, to whom in ancient time 
 
 The lyre of Hebrew bards was strung, 
 Whom kings adored in song sublime, 
 
 And prophets praised with glowing tongue, 
 
 Not now on Zion's height, alone, 
 
 Thy favored worshipper may dwell ; 
 Nor where, at sultry noon, thy Son 
 
 Sat, weary, by the -patriarch's well. 
 
 From every place below the skies, 
 
 The grateful song, the fervent prayer, 
 
 The incense of the heart, may rise 
 To Heaven, and find acceptance there. 
 
RICHARD HENRY DANA. IO/ 
 
 In this thy house, whose doors we now 
 
 For social worship first Unfold, 
 To thee the suppliant throng shall bow, 
 
 While circling years on years are rolled. 
 
 To thee shall Age, with snowy hair, 
 
 And Strength and Beauty, bend the knee, 
 And Childhood lisp, with reverent air, 
 
 Its praises and its prayers to thee. 
 
 O Thou, to whom in ancient time 
 
 The lyre of prophet bards was strung, 
 To thee, at last, in every clime 
 
 Shall temples rise and praise be sung. 
 
 RICHARD HENRY DANA. 
 
 Richard Henry Dana was born at Cambridge, Mass., November 15, 1787. He remained 
 three years in Harvard College, and afterwards finished the usual collegiate education at 
 Newport, R. I. He was admitted to the bar in 1811. He did not remain in the profession 
 long, being drawn by his natural tastes into literary pursuits. He aided in establishing the 
 North American Review in 1814, and in 1818 was one of its editors. In 1821-2 he pub- 
 lished the Idle Man, in numbers. His principal poem, The Buccaneer, appeared in 1827, 
 and was recognized as a production of originality and power. His collected works in prose 
 and verse were published in two volumes in 1850. He edited the works and wrote the 
 memoir of his brother-in-law, Allston. He has also written a series of lectures upon 
 Shakespeare, which have been delivered in many of our principal cities. Mr. Dana is still 
 living in a serene old age, passing his summers at his sea-side home in Manchester, 
 Mass., and his winters in Boston. He is seldom seen now in public, but the frequenters 
 of classical concerts and of Emerson's lectures will long remember his intellectual features 
 and long, silvery hair. 
 
 The works of Mr. Dana are not numerous, nor popular. His ideas, whether in poems or 
 essays, are addressed to the thinking few, and have undoubtedly done mu<jh to mould the 
 public taste. His literary life began when the rhymed couplets of Pope were thought to be 
 the highest form of poetical expression ; he has lived to see the decline of that artificial 
 school, and the rise of the nobler philosophical poetry of Wordsworth and his successors. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY STANZAS OF THE BUCCANEER. 
 
 THE island lies nine leagues away. 
 
 Along its solitary shore, 
 Of craggy rock and sandy bay, 
 
 No sound but ocean's roar, 
 
 Save, where the bold, wild sea-bird makes her home, 
 Her shrill cry coming through the sparkling foam. 
 
IO8 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 But when the light winds lie at rest, 
 
 And on the glassy, heaving sea 
 The black duck, with her glossy breast, 
 
 Sits swinging silently, 
 How beautiful ! no ripples break the reach, 
 And silvery waves go noiseless up the beach. 
 
 And inland rests the green, warm dell ; 
 
 The brook comes tinkling down its side ; 
 From out the trees the Sabbath bell 
 
 Rings cheerful, far and wide, 
 Mingling its sound with Heatings of the flocks, 
 That feed about the vale amongst the rocks. 
 
 Nor holy bell nor pastoral bleat 
 
 In former days within the vale ; 
 Flapped in the bay the pirate's sheet ; 
 
 Curses were on the gale : 
 
 Rich goods lay on the sand, and murdered men ; 
 Pirate and wrecker kept their revels then. 
 
 But calm, low voices, words of grace, 
 
 Now slowly fall upon the ear ; 
 A quiet look is in each face, 
 
 Subdued and holy fear ; 
 Each motion's gentle ; all is kindly done. 
 Come, listen, how from crime this isle was ' won. 
 
 THE LITTLE BEACH BIRD. 
 
 THOU little bird, thou dweller by the sea, 
 Why takest thou its melancholy voice ? 
 Why, with that boding cry 
 O'er the waves dost thou fly ? 
 O, rather, bird, with me 
 Through the fair land rejoice ! 
 
 Thy flitting form comes ghostly dim and pale, 
 As driven by a beating storm at sea ; 
 
RICHARD HENRY DANA. 
 
 Thy cry is weak and scared, 
 As if thy mates had shared 
 The doom of us. Thy wail 
 What does it bring to me ? 
 
 Thou call'st along the sand, and haunt'st the surge, 
 Restless and sad ; as if, in strange accord 
 With motion, and with roar, 
 Of waves that drive to shore, 
 One spirit did ye urge 
 The Mystery the Word. 
 
 Of thousands thou both sepulchre and pall, 
 Old Ocean, art ! A requiem o'er the dead, 
 From out thy gloomy cells 
 A tale of mourning tells 
 Tells of man's woe and fall, 
 His sinless glory fled. 
 
 Then turn thee, little bird, and take thy flight 
 Where the complaining sea shall sadness bring 
 Thy spirit never more ; 
 Come, quit with me the shore, 
 For gladness and the light 
 Where birds of summer sing. 
 
 [From the Husband's and Wife's Grave.] 
 
 O, LISTEN, man ! 
 
 A voice within us speaks that startling word, 
 " Man, thou shalt never die ! " Celestial voices 
 Hymn it unto our souls ; according harps, 
 By angel fingers touched when the mild stars 
 Of morning sang together, sound forth still 
 The song of our great immortality ; 
 Thick clustering orbs, and this our fair domain, 
 The tall, dark mountains, and the deep-toned seas, 
 Join in this solemn, universal song. 
 O, listen, ye, our spirits ; drink it in 
 From all the air ! 'Tis in the gentle moonlight ; 
 
IIO HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 'Tis floating 'midst day's setting glories ; Night, 
 
 Wrapped in her sable robe, with gentle step 
 
 Comes to our bed, and breathes it in our ears. 
 
 Night and the dawn, bright day and thoughtful eve, 
 
 All time, all bounds, the limitless expanse, 
 
 So one vast mystic instrument, are touched 
 
 By an unseen, living Hand, and conscious chords 
 
 Quiver with joy in this great jubilee. 
 
 The dying hear it ; and as sounds of earth 
 
 Grow dull and distant, wake their passing souls 
 
 To mingle in this heavenly harmony. 
 
 [From Domestic Life,] 
 CHILDREN. 
 
 " HEAVEN lies about us in our infancy," says Wordsworth. And 
 who of us that is not too good to be conscious of his own vices, 
 who has not felt rebuked and humbled under the clear and open 
 countenance of a child ? Who that has not felt his impurities foul 
 upon him in the presence of a sinless child ? These feelings make 
 the best lesson that can be taught a man, and tell him, in a way 
 which all else he has read or heard never could, how paltry is all the 
 show of intellect compared with a pure and good heart. He that 
 will humble himself, and go to a child for instruction, will come away 
 a wiser man. 
 
 If children can make us wiser, they surely can make us better. 
 There is no one more to be envied than a good-natured man watch- 
 ing the workings of children's minds, or overlooking their play, 
 their eagerness, curious about everything, making out by a quick 
 imagination what they see but a part of their fanciful combina- 
 tions and magic inventions, creating out of ordinary circumstances 
 and the common things which surround them, strange events and 
 little worlds, and these all working in mystery to form matured 
 thought, is study enough for the most acute minds, and should 
 teach us, also, not too officiously, to regulate what we so little under- 
 stand. The still musing and deep abstraction in which they some- 
 times sit, affect us as a playful mockery of older heads. These little 
 philosophers have no foolish system, with all its pride and jargon, 
 confusing their brains. Theirs is the natural movement of the soul, 
 
RICHARD HENRY DANA. Ill 
 
 intense with new life, and busy after truth, working to some purpose, 
 though without a noise. 
 
 When children are lying about, seemingly idle and dull, we, who 
 have become case-hardened by time and satiety, forget that they are 
 all sensation, that their outstretched bodies are drinking in from 
 the common sun and air, that every sound is taken note of by the 
 ear, that every floating shadow and passing form come and touch at 
 the sleepy eye, and that the little circumstances and the material 
 world about them make their best school, and will be the instructors 
 and formers of their characters for life. 
 
 And it is delightful to look on and see how busily the whole acts, 
 with its countless parts fitted to each other, and moving in harmony. 
 There are none of us who have stolen softly behind a child when la- 
 boring in a sunny corner digging a liliputian well, or fencing in a 
 six-inch barn-yard, and listened to his soliloquies and his dialogues 
 with some imaginary being, without our hearts being touched by it. 
 Nor have we observed the flush which crossed his face when finding 
 himself betrayed, without seeing in it the delicacy and propriety of 
 the after man. 
 
 A man may have many vices upon him, and have walked long in 
 a bad course, yet if he has a love for children, and can take pleasure 
 in their talk and play, there is something still left in him to act upon 
 something which can love simplicity and truth. I have seen one 
 in whom some low vice had become a habit, make himself the play- 
 thing of a set of riotous children, with as much delight on his coun- 
 tenance as if nothing but goodness had ever been expressed in it ; 
 and have felt as much of kindness and sympathy towards him as I 
 have of revolting towards another who has gone through life with 
 all due propriety, with a cold and supercilious bearing towards 
 children, which makes them shrinking and still. I have known one 
 like the latter attempt to court an open-hearted child, who would 
 draw back with an instinctive aversion ; and I have felt as if there 
 were a curse upon him. Better to be driven out from among men 
 than to be disliked of children. 
 
112 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 JAMES FENIMORE COOPER. 
 / 
 
 James Fenimore Cooper was born in Burlington, N. J., September 15, 1789. His father, 
 Judge William Cooper, became possessed of large tracts of land in the State of New York, 
 on the shores of Lake Otsego, and removed there during the infancy of our author. The 
 prominent position he occupied as a gentleman of wealth, culture, and energy in a new 
 country, is brought to view in the character of Judge Temple, in The Pioneers. Young 
 Cooper was sent to Yale College at the age of thirteen, but he does not appear to have 
 made any figure there, and at the end of his third year he entered the United States navy 
 as a common sailor. After two years' service he was promoted to the rank of midshipman, 
 and eventually to that of lieutenant. Upon his marriage, in 1811, he left the service, and 
 soon after commenced his career as an author. 
 
 The novel-reading public had been accustomed to depend wholly upon foreign literature ; 
 no works of fiction worth reading had been produced in the United States, except the pow- 
 erful but intensely disagreeable novels of Charles Brockden Brown. The early home of 
 Cooper had been upon the border of the wilderness ; he knew Indians and hunters, and 
 was familiar with all the incidents of frontier life. During his term of naval service he had 
 acquired a thorough knowledge of sailors and of nautical affairs. When a fortunate accident 
 turned his attention to writing, his mind was stored with vivid pictures of the woods and 
 of the scenery of the sea ; and he produced in rapid succession a series of fascinating novels, 
 abounding in stirring incidents, and presenting some characters new to the world oT fiction. 
 The effect upon the public mind was prodigious ; the novels were received with an enthu- 
 siasm of which the present generation can have but a faint idea. His works are too numer- 
 ous to be mentioned in detail ; in any one of the last edition, in thirty-two volumes, can be 
 seen a complete list. The most popular sea novels are The Pilot and The Red Rover. The 
 Spy, a tale of the revolutionary war, is his best work, and the one by which he first be- 
 came known. The tales of frontier life are numerous, and nearly all excellent : The Pio- 
 neers, The Deerslayer, The Pathfinder, The Prairie, The Last of the Mohicans, are among 
 the best. There seems to be little falling off in the popularity of Cooper, notwithstanding 
 the advent of the great novelists of later date. His tales have a permanent charm, since they 
 are based upon nature, and are constructed with great skill. In some elements, however, 
 their merit is unequal : his original characters are not numerous, and the same people, under 
 different names, reappear in successive stories as in a masquerade ; besides, as Lowell says, 
 
 " The women he draws, from one model don't vary ; 
 All sappy as maples, and flat as a prairie." 
 
 If Cooper had been content to please his countrymen with his delightful fictions, his life 
 would have been far happier. But he was a man of decided opinions, and had plenty of the 
 talent for criticism, as well as the courage to present his strictures in a blunt way. In Home- 
 ward Bound, and Home as Found, and other works, he commented upon blemishes in our 
 national character with so little reserve as to draw upon him a storm of newspaper abuse. 
 He retorted by prosecutions for libel, and at one time had about twenty suits on hand. 
 He generally gained his cases, but the results were barren of honor or profit. His History 
 of the United States Navy also caused a controversy, because it was alleged he had not 
 been quite just in his allotment of praise to the different commanders. 
 
 He died at Cooperstown, New York, September 14, 1851. 
 
 Cooper was a tall and robust man, very animated in expression, and, though always con- 
 scious of his birth and social rank, showed a generous and kindly nature. 
 
 The reader must make allowances for the difficulty of giving an adequate idea of his power 
 as a writer by the presentation of detached scenes. 
 
JAMES FENIMORE COOPER. 113 
 
 [From The Pilot.] 
 A CHASE AND BRUSH IN THE ENGLISH CHANNEL. 
 
 AN involuntary cry of pleasure burst from the lips of Katherine, 
 as she followed his directions, and first beheld the frigate through 
 the medium of the fluctuating colors of the morning. The undulat- 
 ing outlines of the lazy ocean, which rose and fell heavily against the 
 bright boundary of the heavens, was without any relief to distract 
 the eye as it fed eagerly on the beauties of the solitary ship. She 
 was riding sluggishly on the long seas, with only two of her lower 
 and smaller sails spread, to hold her in command ; but her tall masts 
 and heavy yards were painted against the fiery sky in strong lines 
 of deep black, while even the smallest cord in the mazes of her rig- 
 ging might be distinctly traced, stretching from spar to spar with the 
 beautiful accuracy of a picture. At moments, when her huge hull 
 rose on a billow, and was lifted against the background of sky, its 
 shape and dimensions were brought into view ; but these transient 
 glimpses -were soon lost as it settled into the trough, leaving the waving 
 spars bowing gracefully towards the waters, as if about to follow the 
 vessel into the bosom of the deep. As a clearer light gradually stole 
 on the senses, the delusion of colors and distance vanished together, 
 and when a flood of day preceded the immediate appearance of the 
 sun, the ship became plainly visible within a mile of the cutter, her 
 black hull checkered with ports, and her high, tapering masts exhib- 
 iting their proper proportions and hues. 
 
 "The fog rises!" cried Griffith; "give us but the wind for an 
 hour, and we shall run her out of gun-shot." 
 
 "These ninetys are very fast off the wind," returned the captain, 
 in a low tone, that was intended only for the ears of his first lieuten- 
 ant and the pilot ; "and we shall have a struggle for it." 
 
 The quick eye of the stranger was glancing over the movements 
 of his enemy, while he answered, 
 
 " He finds we have the heels of him already ! he is making ready, 
 and we shall be fortunate to escape a broadside ! Let her yaw a 
 little, Mr. Griffith ; touch her lightly with the helm ; if we are raked, 
 sir, we are lost ! " 
 
 The captain sprang on the taffrail of his ship with the activity of 
 a younger man, and in an instant he perceived the truth of the other's 
 conjecture. 
 
 Both vessels now ran for a few minutes, keenly watching each 
 8 
 
114 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 other's motions, like two skilful combatants ; the English ship mak- 
 ing slight deviations from the line of her course, and then, as her 
 movements were anticipated by the otner, turning as cautiously in 
 the opposite direction, until a sudden and wide sweep of her huge 
 bows told the Americans plainly on which tack to expect her. Cap- 
 tain Munson made a silent but impressive gesture with his arm, as 
 if the crisis were too important for speech, which indicated to the 
 watchful Griffith the way he wished the frigate sheered, to avoid the 
 weight of the impending danger. Both vessels whirled swiftly up 
 to the wind, with their heads towards the land ; and as the huge 
 black side of the three-decker, checkered with its triple batteries, 
 frowned full upon her foe, it belched forth a flood of fire and smoke, 
 accompanied by a bellowing roar, that mocked the surly meanings 
 of the sleeping ocean. The nerves of the bravest man in the frigate 
 contracted their fibres as the hurricane of iron hurtled by them, and 
 each eye appeared to gaze in stupid wonder, as if tracing the flight 
 of the swift engines of destruction. But the voice of Captain Mun- 
 son was heard in the din, shouting, while he waved his hat earnestly 
 in the required direction, " Meet her ! meet her with the helm, boy ! 
 meet her, Mr. Griffith, meet her ! " 
 
 Griffith had so far anticipated this movement as to have already 
 ordered the head of the frigate to be turned in its former course, 
 when, struck by the unearthly cry of the last tones uttered by his 
 commander, he bent his head, and beheld the venerable seaman 
 driven through the air, his hat still waving, his gray hair floating in 
 the wind, and his eye set in the wild look of death. 
 
 The ship which the American frigate had now to oppose, was a 
 vessel of near her own size and equipage ; and when Griffith looked 
 at her again, he perceived that she had made her preparations to 
 assert her equality in manful fight. 
 
 Her sails had been gradually reduced to the usual quantity, and, 
 by certain movements on her decks, the lieutenant and his constant 
 attendant, the pilot, well understood that she only wanted to lessen 
 her distance a few hundred yards to begin the action. 
 
 " Now spread everything," whispered the stranger. 
 
 Griffith applied the trumpet to his mouth, and shouted, in a voice 
 that was carried even to his enemy, "Let fall out with your booms 
 sheet home hoist away of everything ! " 
 
 The inspiring cry was answered by a universal bustle. Fifty met 
 flew out on the dizzy heights of the different spars, while broad sheets 
 
JAMES FENIMORE COOPER. 11$ 
 
 of canvas rose as suddenly along the masts, as if some mighty bird 
 were spreading its wings. The Englishman instantly perceived his 
 mistake, and he answered the artifice by a roar of artillery. Griffith 
 watched the effects of the broadside with an absorbing interest as 
 the shot whistled above his head ; but when he perceived his masts 
 untouched, and the few unimportant ropes only that were cut, he 
 replied to the uproar with a burst of pleasure. 
 
 A few men were, however, seen clinging with wild frenzy to the 
 cordage, dropping from rope to rope, like wounded birds fluttering 
 through a tree, until they fell heavily into the ocean, the sullen ship 
 sweeping by them in a cold indifference. At the next instant the spars 
 and masts of their enemy exhibited a display of men similar to their 
 own, when Griffith again placed the trumpet to his mouth, and shouted 
 aloud, " Give it to them ; drive them from their yards, boys ; scat- 
 ter them with your grape ; unreeve their rigging ! " 
 
 The crew of the American wanted but little encouragement to 
 enter on this experiment with hearty good will, and the close of his 
 cheering words was uttered amid the deafening roar of his own 
 cannon. The pilot had, however, mistaken the skill and readiness 
 of their foe ; for, notwithstanding the disadvantageous circumstances 
 under which the Englishman increased his sail, the duty was steadily 
 and dexterously performed. 
 
 The two ships were now running rapidly on parallel lines, hurling 
 at each other their instruments of destruction with furious industry, 
 and with severe and certain loss to both, though with no manifest 
 advantage in favor of either. Both Griffith and the pilot witnessed 
 with deep concern this unexpected defeat of their hopes ; for they 
 could not conceal from themselves that each moment lessened their 
 velocity through the water, as the shot of the enemy stripped the 
 canvas from the yards, or dashed aside the lighter spars in their 
 terrible progress. 
 
 " We find our equal here," said Griffith to the stranger. " The 
 ninety is heaving up again like a mountain ; and if we continue to 
 shorten sail at this rate, she will soon be down upon us ! " 
 
 " You say true, sir," returned the pilot, musing ; " the man shows 
 judgment as well as spirit ; but " 
 
 He was interrupted by Merry, who rushed from the forward part 
 of the vessel, his whole face betokening the eagerness of his spirit 
 and the importance of his intelligence. 
 
 " The breakers ! " he cried, when nigh enough to be heard amid 
 the din ; " we are running dead on a ripple, and the sea is white not 
 two hundred yards ahead." 
 
Il6 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 The pilot jumped on a gun, and bending to catch a glimpse through 
 the smoke, he shouted, in those close, clear, piercing tones, that could 
 be even heard among the roaring of the cannon, 
 
 " Port, port your helm ! we are on the Devil's Grip ! Pass up the 
 trumpet, sir ; port your helm, fellow ; give it them, boys give it to 
 the proud English dogs ! " 
 
 Griffith unhesitatingly relinquished the symbol of his rank, fasten- 
 ing his own firm look on the calm but quick eye of the pilot, and 
 gathering assurance from the high confidence he read in the counte- 
 nance of the stranger. The seamen were too busy with their cannon 
 and their rigging to regard the new danger ; and the frigate entered 
 one of the dangerous passes of the shoals, in the heat of a severely 
 contested battle. The wondering looks of a few of the older sailors 
 glanced at the sheets of foam that flew before them, in doubt whether 
 the wild gambols of the waves were occasioned by the shot of the 
 enemy, when suddenly the noise of cannon was succeeded by the 
 sullen wash of the disturbed element, and presently the vessel glided 
 out of her smoky shroud, and was boldly steering in the centre of the 
 narrow passages. 
 
 For ten breathless minutes longer the pilot continued to hold an 
 uninterrupted sway, during which the vessel ran swiftly by ripples 
 and breakers, by streaks of foam and darker passages of deep water, 
 when he threw down his trumpet, and exclaimed, 
 
 " What threatened to be our destruction has proved our salvation. 
 Keep yonder hill crowned with wood, one point open from the church 
 tower at its base, and steer east by north ; you will run through these 
 shoals on that course in an hour, and by so doing 'you will gain five 
 leagues of your enemy, who will have to double their trail." . . . 
 
 Every officer in the ship, after the breathless suspense of uncer- 
 tainty had passed, rushed to those places where a view might be 
 taken of their enemies. The ninety was still steering boldly onward, 
 and had already approached the two-and-thirty, which lay a helpless 
 wreck, rolling on the unruly seas, that were rudely tossing her on 
 their wanton billows. The frigate last engaged was running along 
 the edge of the ripple, with her torn sails flying loosely in the air, 
 her ragged spars tottering in the breeze, and everything above her 
 hull exhibiting the confusion of a sudden and unlooked-for check to 
 her progress. The exulting taunts and mirthful congratulations of 
 the seamen, as they gazed at the English ships, were, however, soon 
 forgotten in the attention that was required to their own vessel. 
 The drums beat the retreat, the guns were lashed, the wounded 
 
JAMES FENIMORE COOPER. 1 1/ 
 
 again removed, and every individual able to keep the deck was re- 
 quired to lend his assistance in repairing the damages of the frigate 
 and securing her masts. 
 
 The promised hour carried the ship safely through all the dangers, 
 which were much lessened by daylight ; and by the time the sun had 
 begun to fall over the land, Griffith, who had not quitted the deck 
 during the day, beheld his vessel once more cleared of the confusion 
 of the chase, and ready to meet another foe. 
 
 [From The Pioneers.] 
 APPEARANCE OF LEATHER-STOCKING. ' 
 
 THERE was a peculiarity in the manner of the hunter that attracted 
 the notice of the young female, who had been a close and interested 
 observer of his appearance and equipments from the moment he 
 came into view. He was tall, and so meagre as to make him seem 
 above even the six feet that he actually stood in his stockings. On his 
 head, which was thinly covered with lank, sandy hair, he wore a cap 
 made of fox skin, resembling in shape the one we have already de- 
 scribed, although much inferior in finish and ornaments. His face 
 was skinny, and thin almost to emaciation ; but yet it bore no signs 
 of disease ; on the contrary, it had every indication of the most 
 robust and enduring health. The cold and exposure had, together, 
 given it a color of uniform red. His gray eyes were glancing 
 under a pair of shaggy brows, that overhung them in long hairs of 
 gray mingled with their natural hue ; his scraggy neck was bare, 
 and burnt to the same tint with his face ; though a small part of a 
 shirt collar, made of the country check, was to be seen above the 
 overdress he wore. A kind of coat, made of dressed deer skin, with 
 the hair on, was belted close to his lank body, by a girdle of colored 
 worsted. On his feet were deer skin moccasons, ornamented with 
 porcupines' quills, after the manner of the Indians, and his limbs 
 were guarded with long leggings of the same material as the moc- 
 casons, which gartering of the knees of his tarnished buckskin 
 breeches had obtained for him among the settlers the nickname of 
 Leather-stocking. Over his left shoulder was slung a belt of deer 
 skin, from which depended an enormous ox horn, so thinly scraped, 
 as to discover the powder it contained. The larger end was fitted 
 ingeniously and securely with a wooden bottom, and the other was 
 stopped tight by a little plug. A leathern pouch hung before him, 
 from which, as he concluded his last speech, he took a small measure, 
 
Il8 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 and filling it accurately with powder, he commenced reloading the 
 rifle, which, as its butt rested on the snow before him, reached nearly 
 to the top of his fox-skin cap. 
 
 THE ARREST OF LEATHER-STOCKING. 
 
 THE whole group were yet in the fulness of their surprise, when 
 a tall form stalked from the gloom into the circle, treading down the 
 hot ashes and dying embers with callous feet, and standing over the 
 light, lifted his cap, and exposed the bare head and weather-beaten 
 features of the Leather-stocking. For a moment he gazed at the 
 dusky figures who surrounded him, more in sorrow than in anger, 
 before he spoke. 
 
 " What would ye with an old and helpless man ? " he said. " You've 
 driven God's creaters from the wilderness, where his providence had 
 put them for his own pleasure : and you've brought in the troubles 
 and diviltries of the law, where no man was ever known to disturb 
 another. You have driven me, that have lived forty long years of 
 my appointed time in this very spot, from my home and the shelter 
 of my head, lest you should put your wicked feet and nasty ways in 
 my cabin. You've driven me to burn these logs, under which I've 
 eaten and drunk the first of Heaven's gifts, and the other of the 
 pure springs for the half of a hundred years ; and to mourn the ashes 
 under my feet, as a man would weep and mourn for the children of 
 his body. You've rankled the heart of an old man, that has never 
 harmed you or your'n, with bitter feelings towards his kind, at a 
 time when his thoughts should be on a better world ; and you've 
 driven him to wish that the beasts of the forests, who never feast on 
 the blood of their own families, was his kindred and race : and now, 
 when he has come to see the last brand of his hut, before it is melted 
 into ashes, you follow him up, at midnight, like hungry hounds on the 
 track of a worn-out and dying deer. What more would ye have ? for 
 I am here one too many. I come to mourn, not to fight ; and, if it 
 is God's pleasure, work your will on me." 
 
 LEATHER-STOCKING'S SENTENCE. 
 
 " NATHANIEL BUMPPO," commenced the judge, making the cus- 
 tomary pause. 
 
 The old hunter, who had been musing again with his head on the 
 bar, raised himself, and cried, with a prompt, military tone, 
 
JAMES FENIMOKE COOPER. 
 
 " Here." 
 
 The judge waved his hand for silence, and proceeded : 
 
 " In forming their sentence, the court have been governed as much 
 by the consideration of your ignorance of the laws, as by a strict 
 sense of the importance of punishing such outrages as this of which 
 you have been found guilty. They have therefore passed over the 
 obvious punishment of whipping on the bare back, in mercy to your 
 years ; but, as the dignity of the law requires an open exhibition of 
 the consequences of your crime, it is ordered that you be conveyed 
 from this room to the public stocks, where you are to be confined 
 for one hour ; that you pay a fine to the state of one hundred dollars ; 
 and that you be imprisoned in the jail of this county for one calendar 
 month ; and furthermore, that your imprisonment do not cease until 
 the said fine shall be paid. I feel it my duty, Nathaniel Bumppo " 
 
 " And where should I get the money ? " interrupted the Leather- 
 stocking, eagerly ; " where should I get the money ? You'll take 
 away the bounty on the painters, because I cut the throat of a deer ; 
 and how is an old man to find so much gold or silver in the woods ? 
 No, no, judge : think better of it, and don't talk of shutting me up in 
 a jail for the little time I have to stay." 
 
 " If you have anything to urge against the passing of the sentence, 
 the court will yet hear you," said the judge, mildly. 
 
 " I have enough to say ag'in it," cried Natty, grasping the bar, on 
 which his fingers were working with a convulsed motion. "Where 
 am I to get the money ? Let me out into the woods and hills, where 
 I've been used to breathe the clear air, and though I'm threescore 
 and ten, if you've left game enough in the country, I'll travel night 
 and day but I'll make you up the sum afore the season is over. Yes, 
 yes you see the reason of the thing, and the wickedness of shut- 
 ting up an old man, that has spent his days, as one may say, where 
 he could always look into the windows of heaven." 
 
 " I must be governed by the law " 
 
 " Talk not to me of law, Marmaduke Temple," interrupted the 
 hunter. " Did the beast of the forest mind your laws when it was 
 thirsty and hungering for the blood of your own child ? She was 
 kneeling to her God for a greater favor than I ask, and he heard 
 her ; and if you now say no to my prayers, do you think he will be 
 deaf?" 
 
 " My private feelings must not enter into " 
 
 " Hear me, Marmaduke Temple," interrupted the old man, with 
 melancholy earnestness, "and hear reason. I've travelled these 
 
I2O HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 mountains when you was no judge, but an infant in your mother's 
 arms ; and I feel as if I had a right and a privilege to travel them 
 ag'in afore I die. Have you forgot the time that you come on to the 
 lake shore, when there wasn't even a jail to lodge in ? and didn't I 
 give you my own bear skin to sleep on, and the fat of a noble buck to 
 satisfy the cravings of your hunger ? Yes, yes ; you thought it no 
 sin then to kill a deer. And this I did, though I had no reason to 
 love you ; for you had never done anything but harm to them that 
 loved and sheltered me. And now, will you shut me up in your 
 dungeons to pay me for my kindness ? A hundred dollars ! where 
 should I get the money ? No. no ; there's them that says hard 
 things of you, Marmaduke Temple, but you ain't so bad as to wish 
 to see an old man die in a prison because he stood up for the right. 
 Come, friend, let me pass ; it's long sin' I've been used to such 
 crowds, and I crave to be in the woods ag'in. Don't fear me, judge 
 I bid you not to fear me ; for if there's beaver enough left on the 
 streams, or the buckskins will sell for a shilling apiece, you shall 
 have the last penny of the fine. Where are ye, pups ? Come away, 
 dogs ! come away ! We have a grievous toil to do for our years, but 
 it shall be done ; yes, yes, I've promised it, and it shall be done." 
 
 " There must be an end to this," said the judge, struggling to over- 
 come his feelings. " Constable, lead the prisoner to the stocks. Mr. 
 Clerk, what stands next on the calendar ? " 
 
 Natty seemed to yield to his destiny, for he sank his head on his 
 chest, and followed the officer from the court-room in silence. 
 
 CATHARINE M. SEDGWICK. 
 
 Catharine Maria Sedgwick, daughter of Judge Theodore Sedgwick, was born in Stock- 
 bridge, Mass., on the 28th day of December, 1789. She was descended from a family in 
 which talent was hereditary, and the influence of her distinguished father and brothers early 
 directed her attention to literature. Her first work, A New England Tale, was published 
 in 1822. This was followed, in 1824, by Redwood, and in 1827 by Hope Leslie, the best 
 of her novels, and especially valuable as a picture of primitive manners, and as a transcript 
 of the thought and opinion of a now half-forgotten age. Clarence : A Tale of the Present 
 Day, appeared in 1830 ; The Linwoods, a romance of the revolution, in 1835. She also 
 wrote a series of popular works, of which the principal ones are, Live and Let Live, The 
 Poor Rich Man and Rich Poor Man, Means and Ends, and Home. Having made a 
 European tour, she published, on her return in 1841, her Letters from Abroad to Kindred 
 at Home. Her Memoir of Lucretia Maria Davidson appeared in Sparks's American Biog- 
 raphy. Her last novel, published in 1857, was entitled Married or Single. A biography 
 of Joseph Curtis, a philanthropist of New York, published in 1858, was her last work. 
 
CATHARINE M. SEDGWICK. 121 
 
 This extended list, together with magazine articles and miscellanies, forms a noble record 
 of a long and useful life. She died at Stockbridge, July 20, 1867. 
 
 Miss Sedgwick's style was very attractive ; her love of nature was strong, and her sym- 
 pathies were ready and active. Her novels had a very wide popularity, both in English 
 and in the many languages into which they were translated, and a number of them are 
 eagerly read by the new generations. A collection of her letters, with a brief narrative to 
 connect them, has lately been published by Miss Dewey. The specimens here given are 
 from that work. 
 
 THE RIVER ST. LAWRENCE. 
 
 5th July, On board the Ontario. 
 
 WE have been sitting on the roof of the ladies' cabin, and by the 
 light of this beautiful crescent, which now " seems to shine just to 
 pleasure us," watching our winding path through the " Thousand 
 Isles." The heavens are yet brightened by the parting smiles of 
 day. The verdant islands are of every size and form some stretch- 
 ing for miles in length, and some so small that they seem destined 
 for a race of fairies ; some in clusters, like the " solitary set in fami- 
 lies," and some like beautiful vestals in single loveliness. The last 
 streak of daylight has faded from the west, and the blush on the 
 waters is followed by the reflection of the "far blue arch" and its 
 starry host. The fishermen's lights are kindling along the margin 
 of the river ; our mate says we are having a " most righteous time." 
 Captain Vaughan, whose simplicity and unostentatious kindness 
 have won their way to all our hearts, has fired his signal-gun for us 
 several times, that we might hear the reverberations amidst these 
 islands. The mate says, " Don't they hollow well ? " They do, in- 
 deed, as if we wakened the spirits of their deep solitudes to send us 
 back our greeting. . . . 
 
 We are seated vis-a-vis in our little boat with one small sail. 
 The boat has freight enough to keep it steady, and, though this is 
 very little, it occupies a great portion of our room, so that we are 
 obliged to sit on boards, without the amelioration of a cushion, al- 
 ' most as compactly as we should in a stage-coach. The St. Law- 
 rence presents an appearance quite novel to us. It resembles one 
 of our rivers when brim full from a freshet. We have already passed 
 two of the Rapids. The river usually descends so much as to give 
 great velocity to the current before you come to the Rapids. You 
 find yourself suddenly impelled forward as if by an unseen and invis- 
 ible hand ; the banks seem flying from you ; still your passage, 
 though almost as fleet, is as noiseless as that of the planets in their 
 orbits. Suddenly you pass into the waters that are foaming over 
 their hidden bed of rocks. The boatmen throw themselves prostrate 
 
122 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 in the bottom of the boat to avoid the dashing billows, their oars 
 being useless in these agitated waters. The skilful steersman 
 strains every nerve at the helm to guide the boat in its difficult 
 path. It seems very perilous to my cowardly nerves, but it is not so, 
 as is proved by the rare occurrence of accidents. 
 
 LAYING THE CORNER-STONE OF BUNKER HILL MONUMENT. 
 
 BOSTON, June 17, 1825. 
 
 To MR. CHARLES SEDGWICK : The great day has arrived, and is 
 as beautiful as if Heaven smiled on our patriotic celebration. The 
 city was never so full, half so full, the people say. There are hun- 
 dreds vainly inquiring for a lodging. The Common is spread with 
 tents to shelter the militia of the adjacent towns. It is expected that 
 a hundred thousand people will be present. Mr. Webster expects 
 to make fifteen thousand people hear him. He and his wife sent me 
 an invitation to go in their party, so that I think I shall be sure to 
 be among the hearers the select few. ... I was last evening 
 at a party at Mrs. Ouincy's, to meet the general (Lafayette) ; was 
 twice shook by his well-shaken hand. It is a pleasure, certainly, to 
 grasp a hand that has been the instrument of so noble a heart ; but 
 the pleasure is scarcely individual, for the hand is extended with as 
 little personal feeling as the eyes of a picture are directed. . . . 
 
 Saturday. I am " one of the survivors who fought, bled, and died 
 on Bunker Hill." I can only give you generals. The oration was 
 in Mr. Webster's best style of manly eloquence. There were some 
 very fine strokes of genius in it ; but you will see 'it, and judge for 
 yourselves. You will find from the papers that all the world was 
 there some say seventy-five thousand, some one hundred thou- 
 sand. We went at nine, and did not get home till after four, so that, 
 except for the pleasure of the remembrance, the balance was rather 
 on the painful side. But when I think of that magnificent man ; of 
 the cloud of witnesses ; of those old weather-beaten survivors, with 
 their palsied limbs and nerveless arms, once strong, and raised in 
 their might for us ; of the good Lafayette, looking with the benignity 
 of a blessed spirit upon the countless multitude ; of the old man's 
 prayer ; of the union of voices pouring out their praise, when I 
 think of all these things, I am grateful that I was permitted to see 
 and hear. 
 
LYDIA HUNTLEY SIGOURNEY. 123 
 
 LYDIA (HUNTLEY) SIGOURNEY. 
 
 Lydia (Huntley) Sigourney was born in Norwich, Conn., September i, 1791. She early 
 manifested poetic talent, and composed verses at the age of seven. She received a careful 
 education, with such advantages as the country then afforded. In her nineteenth year she 
 removed to Hartford, and opened a young ladies' school. Her first volume, entitled Moral 
 Pieces in Prose and Verse, appeared not long after. In 1819 she was married to Mr. 
 Charles Sigourney, of Hartford, and lived in that city for the remainder of her life. She 
 was a most prolific writer, having published no less than forty-five volumes, consisting of 
 poems, biographies, tales, and miscellanies. [The reader will find a list in Duyckinck's 
 Cyclopaedia, vol. ii., p. 137.] Mrs. Sigourney's poems have a musical flow, and are inspired 
 with deep religious feeling; her thoughts are not profound, but are expressed in clear 
 phrase, and are frequently enlivened by poetic fancy. Many of her productions have the 
 qualities that should preserve them, and a judicious collection would undoubtedly be wel- 
 come, especially with religious readers. Her death occurred June 10, 1865. 
 
 [From the Daily Counsellor.] 
 AUGUST XI. 
 
 "Thou, O God, didst send a plentiful rain, whereby thou didst confirm thine inheritance, 
 when it was weary." Psalms Ixviii. 9. 
 
 I MARKED at morn the thirsty earth, 
 
 By lingering drought oppressed, 
 Like sick man in his fever heat, 
 
 With parching brow and breast ; 
 But evening brought a cheering sound 
 
 Of music o'er the pane ; 
 The voice of heavenly showers, that said, 
 
 O, blessed, blessed rain. 
 
 The pale and suffocating plants, 
 
 That bowed themselves to die, 
 Imbibed the pure, reprieving drops, 
 
 Sweet gift of a pitying sky ; 
 The fern and heath upon the rock, 
 
 And the daisy on the plain, 
 Each whispered to their new-born buds, 
 
 O, blessed, blessed rain. 
 
 The herds that o'er the wasted fields 
 
 Roamed with dejected eye, 
 To find their verdant pasture brown, 
 
 Their crystal brooklet dry, 
 
124 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 Rejoiced within the mantling pool, 
 
 To stand refreshed again, 
 Each infant ripple leaping high 
 
 To meet the blessed rain. 
 
 The farmer sees his crisping corn, 
 
 Whose tassels swept the ground, 
 Uplift once more a stately head, 
 
 With hopeful beauty crowned ; 
 While the idly lingering water-wheel, 
 
 Where the miller ground his grain, 
 Turns gayly round, with a dashing sound, 
 
 At the touch of the blessed rain. 
 
 Lord, if our drooping souls too long 
 
 Should close their upward wing, 
 And the adhesive dust of earth 
 
 All darkly round them cling, 
 Send thou such showers of quickening grace, 
 
 That the angelic train 
 Shall to our grateful shout respond, 
 
 O, blessed, blessed rain ! 
 
 NIAGARA. 
 
 FLOW on forever, in thy glorious robe 
 Of terror and of beauty. Yea, flow on, 
 Unfathomed and resistless. God hath set 
 His rainbow on thy forehead, and the cloud 
 Mantled around thy feet. And he doth give 
 Thy voice of thunder power to speak of him 
 Eternally, bidding the lip of man 
 Keep silence, and upon thine altar pour 
 Incense of awe-struck praise. 
 
 Earth fears to lift 
 
 The insect-trump that tells her trifling joys 
 Or fleeting triumphs, 'mid the peal sublime 
 Of thy tremendous hymn. Proud Ocean shrinks 
 Back from thy brotherhood, and all his waves 
 
LYDIA HUNTLEY SIGOURNEY. 12$ 
 
 Retire abashed. For he hath need to sleep 
 Sometimes, like a spent laborer, calling home 
 His boisterous billows from their vexing play, 
 To a long, dreary calm ; but thy strong tide 
 Faints not, nor e'er with failing heart forgets 
 Its everlasting lesson night nor day. 
 The morning stars, that hailed creation's birth, 
 Heard thy hoarse anthem, mixing with their song 
 Jehovah's name ; and the dissolving fires, 
 That wait the mandate of the day of doom 
 To wreck the earth, shall find it deep inscribed 
 Upon thy rocky scroll. 
 
 The lofty trees 
 
 That list thy teaching, scorn the lighter lore 
 Of the too fitful winds ; while their young leaves 
 Gather fresh greenness from thy living spray, 
 Yet tremble at the baptism. Lo ! yon birds, 
 How bold they venture near, dipping their wing 
 In all thy mist and foam. Perchance 'tis meet 
 For them to touch thy garment's hem, or stir 
 Thy diamond wreath, who sport upon the cloud, 
 Unblamed, or warble at the gate of heaven 
 Without reproof. But as for us, it seems 
 Scarce lawful, with our erring lips, to talk 
 Familiarly of thee. Methinks, to trace 
 Thine awful features with our pencil's point, 
 Were but to press on Sinai. 
 
 Thou dost speak 
 
 Alone of God, who poured thee as a drop 
 From his right hand bidding the soul that looks 
 Upon thy fearful majesty be still, 
 Be humbly wrapped in its own nothingness, 
 And lose itself in him. 
 
126 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 THE SPIRIT OF BEAUTY. 
 
 SPIRIT of Beauty, who dost love to dwell 
 In the pure chalice of yon new-born flower, 
 
 That unrepining shares my wintry cell, 
 And from my hand receives the mimic shower ; 
 
 Spirit, who hoverest o'er the babe's repose, 
 Where guardian angels bend with viewless kiss, 
 
 Counting the innocence no guile that knows 
 A faint reflection of their higher bliss ; 
 
 Spirit, who on the humblest lip doth rest, 
 That uttereth words of kindness, and art seen 
 
 In the calm sunshine of the lowly breast, 
 Garnering its treasure in a clime serene ; 
 
 Spirit, who, 'mid the smile of holy age 
 
 Closing its course in hope, dost make abode, 
 
 Though Time hath ploughed the brow with tyrant rage, 
 And scattered snows where sunny tresses flowed ; 
 
 Sweet spirit, trembling through the loneliest star 
 That the storm-driven mariner descries, 
 
 And from the rushlight, when its beam afar 
 Eye of his cot the wayworn peasant spies ; 
 
 Blest spirit, touch our hearts, and as the child, 
 Who toward his parents' home doth singing hie, 
 
 Espies some wanderer, shivering on the wild, 
 And leads him onward with a pitying eye, 
 
 So point us to our Father. He who bade 
 Thee in this wilderness his way prepare, 
 
 And by thy pure, refining influence aid 
 
 Upward to him first perfect and first fair. 
 
CHARLES SPRAGUE. I2/ 
 
 CHARLES SPRAGUE. 
 
 Charles Sprague was born in Boston, October 25, 1791. He entered into mercantile life 
 at a very early age, and is indebted for his intellectual cultivation solely to his own efforts. 
 He was appointed cashier of the Globe Bank in 1825, and held the office until 1864, when 
 he retired from active life. He obtained the prize offered for an ode for the opening of the 
 Park Theatre, in New York, in 1821, and subsequently wrote for a number of similar occa- 
 sions. The ode recited at the Shakespeare celebration in Boston, in 1823, has been greatly 
 admired ; it is a carefully elaborated poem, and gives pictures of the prominent creations of 
 the great dramatist in a vivid light. In 1825, on the Fourth of July, he delivered the annual 
 oration before the municipal authorities of Boston. This production has been "got by 
 heart" by more than one generation. The sentiment is elevated and philanthropic; the 
 style animated and smoothly finished, though with rather too much of formal antithesis in 
 its balanced periods. No one of the line of civic orators has had such a popular success. 
 In 1830 he wrote an ode for the centennial celebration of the city, from which some pas- 
 sages are here printed. His poems are few in number, but are graceful and melodious. 
 Mr. Sprague is still living (1872), with unimpaired mental faculties, and takes a lively 
 ' interest in the literature and affairs of the day. His writings have been published in one 
 volume, i2mo. Boston, 1850. 
 
 [From Centennial Ode.] 
 XV. 
 
 I VENERATE the Pilgrim's cause, 
 
 Yet for the red man dare to plead 
 We bow to Heaven's recorded laws, 
 
 He turned to Nature for a creed ; 
 Beneath the pillared dome, 
 
 We seek our God in prayer ; 
 Through boundless woods he loved to roam, 
 
 And the Great Spirit worshipped there. 
 But one, one fellow-throb with us he felt ; 
 To one divinity with us he knelt ; 
 Freedom, the self-same freedom we adore, 
 Bade him defend his violated shore. 
 
 He saw the cloud ordained to grow 
 
 And burst upon his hills in woe ; 
 
 He saw his people withering by, 
 
 Beneath the invader's evil eye ; 
 Strange feet were trampling on his fathers' bones ; 
 
 At midnight hour he woke to gaze 
 
 Upon his happy cabin's blaze, 
 And listen to his children's dying groans. 
 
 He saw, and, maddening at the sight, 
 
 Gave his bold bosom to the fight ; 
 
128 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 To tiger rage his soul was driven ; 
 
 Mercy was not nor sought nor given ; 
 The pale man from his lands must fly ; 
 He would be free or he would die. 
 
 XIX. 
 
 Alas ! for them their day is o'er, 
 
 Their fires are out from hill and shore ; 
 
 No more for them the wild deer bounds ; 
 
 The plough is on their hunting grounds ; 
 
 The pale man's axe rings through their woods ; 
 
 The pale man's sail skims o'er their floods ; 
 
 Their pleasant springs are dry ; 
 Their children look ! by power oppressed, 
 Beyond the mountains of the west 
 
 Their children go to die. 
 
 XXI. 
 
 Cold, with the beast he slew, he sleeps ; 
 
 O'er him no filial spirit weeps ; 
 No crowds throng round, no anthem-notes ascend, 
 To bless his coming and embalm his end ; 
 Even that he lived, is for his conqueror's tongue ; 
 By foes alone his death-song must be sung ; 
 
 No chronicles but theirs shall tell 
 His mournful doom to future times ; 
 
 May these upon his virtues dwell, 
 And in his fate forget his crimes. 
 
 THE WINGED WORSHIPPERS. 
 
 ADDRESSED TO TWO SWALLOWS THAT FLEW INTO CHAUNCY PLACE CHURCH DURING 
 DIVINE SERVICE. 
 
 GAY, guiltless pair, 
 What seek ye from the fields of heaven ? 
 
 Ye have no need of prayer, 
 Ye have no sins to be forgiven. 
 
 Why perch ye here, 
 Where mortals to their Maker bend ? 
 
 Can your pure spirits fear 
 The God ye never could offend ? 
 
CHARLES SPRAGUE. I2Q 
 
 Ye never knew 
 The crimes for w.hich we come to weep ; 
 
 Penance is not for you, 
 Blessed wanderers of the upper deep. 
 
 To you 'tis given 
 To wake sweet Nature's untaught lays ; 
 
 Beneath the arch of heaven 
 To chirp away a life of praise. 
 
 Then spread each wing 
 Far, far above, o'er lakes and lands, 
 
 And join the choirs that sing 
 In yon blue dome not reared with hands. 
 
 Or, if ye stay 
 To note the consecrated hour, 
 
 Teach me the airy way, 
 And let me try your envied power. 
 
 Above the crowd, 
 On upward wings could I but fly, 
 
 I'd bathe in yon bright cloud, 
 And seek the stars that gem the sky. 
 
 'Twere heaven indeed, 
 Through fields of trackless light to soar, 
 
 On Nature's charms to feed, 
 And Nature's own great God adore. 
 
 [From an Oration, delivered July 4, 1825.] 
 FATE OF THE INDIANS. 
 
 ROLL back the tide of time : how powerfully to us applies the 
 promise, " I will give thee the heathen for an inheritance ! " Not 
 many generations ago, where you now sit, circled with all that exalts 
 and embellishes civilized life, the rank thistle nodded in the wind, 
 and the wild fox dug his hole unscared. Here lived and loved another 
 race of beings. Beneath the same sun that rolls over our heads, the 
 Indian hunter pursued the panting deer ; gazing on the same moon 
 that smiles for you, the Indian lover wooed his dusky mate. Here 
 9 
 
I3O HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 the wigwam blaze beamed on the tender and the helpless, the 
 council-fire glared on the wise and the daring. Now they dipped their 
 noble limbs in your sedgy lakes, and now they paddled the light 
 canoe along your rocky shores. Here they warred ; the echoing 
 whoop, the bloody grapple, the defying death-song, all were here ; 
 and, when the tiger strife was over, here curled the smoke of peace. 
 Here, too, they worshipped ; and from many a dark bosom went up 
 a pure prayer to the Great Spirit. He had not written his laws for 
 them on tables of stone, but he had traced them on the tables of 
 their hearts. The poor child of nature knew not the God of revela- 
 tion, but the God of the universe he acknowledged in everything 
 around. He beheld him in the star that sank in beauty behind his 
 lowly dwelling, in the sacred orb that flamed on him from his mid- 
 day throne ; in the flower that snapped in the morning breeze, in the 
 lofty pine that had defied a thousand whirlwinds ; in the timid 
 warbler that never left its native grove, in the fearless eagle whose 
 untired pinion was wet in clouds ; in the worm that crawled at his 
 foot, and in his own matchless form, glowing with a spark of that 
 light, to whose mysterious source he bent, in humble though blind 
 adoration. 
 
 And all this has passed away. Across the ocean came a pilgrim 
 bark, bearing the seeds of life and death. The former were sown 
 for you, the latter sprang up iri the path of the simple native. Two 
 hundred years have changed the character of a great continent, and 
 blotted forever from its face a whole peculiar people. Art has 
 usurped the bowers of nature, and the anointed children of educa- 
 tion have been too powerful for the tribes of the ignorant. Here and 
 there a stricken few remain ; but how unlike their bold, untamed, 
 untamable progenitors ! The Indian, of falcon glance and lion 
 bearing, the theme of the touching ballad, the hero of the pathetic 
 tale, is gone ! and his degraded offspring crawl upon the soil where 
 he walked in majesty, to remind us how miserable is man when the 
 foot of the conqueror is on his neck. 
 
 As a race, they have withered from the land. Their arrows are 
 broken, their springs are dried up, their cabins are in the dust. 
 Their council-fire has long since gone out on the shore, and their 
 war-cry is fast dying away to the untrodden west. Slowly and sadly 
 they climb the distant mountains, and read their doom in the setting 
 sun. They are shrinking before the mighty tide which is pressing 
 them away ; they must soon hear the roar of the last wave which 
 will settle over them forever. Ages hence, the inquisitive white 
 
CHARLES SPRAGUE. 13! 
 
 man, as he stands by some growing city, will ponder on the structure 
 of their disturbed remains, and wonder to what manner of person 
 they belonged. They will live only in the songs and chronicles of 
 their exterminators. Let these be faithful to their rude virtues as 
 men, and pay tribute to their unhappy fate as a people. 
 
 [From an Address, delivered in 1827.] 
 EVILS OF INTEMPERANCE. 
 
 THE ruinous consequences of wide-spread intemperance to a peo- 
 ple governing themselves, can hardly be overrated. If there be on 
 earth one nation more than another, whose institutions must draw 
 their life-blood from the individual purity of its citizens, that 
 nation is our own. Rulers by divine right, and nobles by hereditary 
 succession, may, perhaps, tolerate with impunity those depraving 
 indulgences which keep the great mass abject. Where the many 
 enjoy little or no power, it were a trick of policy to wink at those 
 enervating vices which would rob them of both the ability and the 
 inclination to enjoy it. But in our own country, where almost every 
 man, however humble, bears to the omnipotent ballot-box his full 
 portion of the sovereignty ; where, at regular periods, the ministers 
 of authority, who went forth to rule, return to be ruled, and lay down 
 their dignities at the feet of the monarch multitude ; where, in 
 short, public sentiment is the absolute lever that moves the political 
 world the purity of the people is the rock of political safety. We 
 may boast, if we please, of our exalted privileges, and fondly imagine 
 that they will be eternal; but whenever those vices shall abound 
 which undeniably tend to debasement, steeping the poor and the 
 ignorant still lower in poverty and ignorance, and thereby destroy- 
 ing that wholesome mental equality which can alone sustain a self- 
 ruled people, it will be found, by woful experience, that our happy 
 system of government, the best ever devised for the intelligent and 
 good, is the very worst to be intrusted to the degraded and vicious. 
 The great majority will then truly become a many-headed monster, 
 to be tamed and led at will. The tremendous power of suffrage, like 
 the strength of the eyeless Nazarite, so far from being their protec- 
 tion, will but serve to pull down upon their heads the temple their 
 ancestors reared for them. Caballers and demagogues will find it an 
 easy task to delude those who have deluded themselves, and the 
 freedom of the people will finally be buried in the grave of their 
 
132 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 virtues. National greatness may survive ; splendid talents and 
 brilliant victories may fling their delusive lustre abroad these can 
 illuminate the darkness that hangs round the throne of a despot ; 
 but their light will be like the baleful flame that hovers over decay- 
 ing mortality, and tells of the corruption that festers beneath. The 
 immortal spirit will have gone ; and along our shores, and among 
 our hills r those shores made sacred by the sepulchre of the Pilgrim, 
 those hills hallowed by the uncoffined bones of the patriot, even 
 there, in the ears of their degenerate descendants, shall ring the 
 last knell of departed liberty. 
 
 ALEXANDER HILL EVERETT. 
 
 Alexander Hill Everett was born in Boston, March 19, 1792, and was educated at Harvard 
 College, graduating in his fifteenth year, the youngest member of his class, and the highest 
 in scholastic rank. He studied law in the office of John Quincy Adams, and afterwards 
 accompanied that gentleman to St. Petersburgh as an attache to the embassy. Upon his 
 return to Boston he divided his attention between law and politics, and though living in a 
 city of Federalists, was a strong supporter of the war with Great Britain. He was secretary 
 of legation in the mission to Holland, and afterwards charge d'affaires. While abroad, he 
 wrote a work entitled, Europe, or General Survey of the Political Situation of the Principal 
 Powers, with Conjectures on their Future Prospects. In 1822, he published a criticism of 
 the views of Malthus on Population. He was appointed minister to Spain in 1825 and on 
 his return, in 1829, became editor of the North American Review, to which he had been for 
 some years a prominent contributor. He was a member of the state legislature for five years, 
 but he was defeated as a candidate for Congress, having given his support to General Jack- 
 son, in oppostion to the views then prevailing in Massachusetts. He was elected president 
 of Jefferson College, in Louisiana, in 1840, but the state of his health compelled him to resign 
 the post. Two volumes of his miscellaneous writings were published, the first in 1845, the 
 next in 1847. He was appointed by President Polk commissioner to China, and died at 
 Canton, May 29, 1847. 
 
 The reader of Mr. Everett's essays cannot fail to perceive that he was a man of ex- 
 traordinary talents and accomplishments. His fame has been overshadowed by the great 
 reputation of his younger brother, Edward ; but whatever distinction the latter acquired in 
 his longer and more fortunate career, it is not certain that he was at all superior, either 
 in native force, or in variety or extent of culture. The style of Alexander is more natural 
 and agreeable, partaking less of the laborious stateliness of oratory, than of the easy and 
 fluent diction of a quiet scholar. If his convictions had inclined him to side with the 
 dominant party, and he could have had the kind of intellectual training by which states- 
 men are developed, his place in our history would have been quite different. But he has 
 written enough to secure him a permanent place in the regard of all scholars, and to warrant 
 the assertion that he was hardly second in ability or in learning to any of the illustrious men 
 of the last generation. 
 
ALEXANDER HILL EVERETT. 133 
 
 [From a paper upon Madame de Stael, in the North American Review, January, 1821.] 
 THE CHARACTER OF NAPOLEON BONAPARTE. 
 
 IF we merely look at his political and military successes, it is 
 evident that the production of such effects, in an age like this, de- 
 mands intellectual powers of the highest order. An Attila or a 
 Gengis Khan may ravage half the globe, without any qualities but 
 brutal courage and a wild barbarian energy of mind and body ; but 
 to establish a dominion, though merely military, over an enlightened 
 continent like Europe, is an achievement of a different sort ; and 
 supposes, in addition to the virtues of a great commander, a natural 
 dignity and elevation of mind. Is it possible that a vulgar spirit 
 should raise itself, by its own efforts, from the lowest ranks in the 
 army, to the throne of one of the most powerful and civilized nations 
 in Europe ; and should then push the greatness of this nation to a 
 point which it never reached before, and extend its influence over a 
 great part of the continent ? But, independently of the proofs, drawn 
 from these prodigious results, of the naturally elevated character of 
 their author, he has given others in abundance, still more direct and 
 decisive. Was it a vulgar spirit that projected and completed the 
 noblest code of laws that the world has yet seen, as much superior 
 to the undigested mass of the Justinian collection, as the universe 
 is to the chaos out of which it was formed ? Was it a vulgar spirit 
 that brought together, with so perfect a taste, the finest specimens 
 of the art from all other countries, and opened them to the world 
 with such princely magnificence, in the unrivalled gallery of the 
 Louvre ? Finally, was it a vulgar spirit that could find time amid the 
 various and numberless occupations of the most active life that man 
 ever led, to take an interest in almost every department of knowl- 
 edge, and to obtain a sufficient acquaintance with all, to be able to 
 converse upon them with satisfaction and credit ? 
 
 Bonaparte was certainly little in some points, as in the importance 
 which he attached towards the close of his reign to the childish 
 foppery of court etiquette. But almost every character is, to a cer- 
 tain extent, a union of inconsistencies ; and the prevailing vices of 
 this personage were of the exactly opposite description. Ambition 
 of the wildest and most extravagant stamp was the ruling passion of 
 his mind. Had this disposition been controlled, in its practical 
 operation, by the influence of moral feelings or principles, it might 
 have produced the happiest results for its possessor and the world. 
 But morality, whether founded in principle or feeling, seems to have 
 
134 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 been a thing of which he had no notion whatever. We find no 
 traces in his history of benevolent sentiments, in any of their various 
 forms ; and he trampled under foot the endearing relations of blood 
 and birth, with the same savage indifference which he showed for 
 the just rights of individuals, with whom he was unconnected. 
 His mother was not allowed to sit in his reception-room ; and his 
 brothers were persecuted by him with such relentless severity, that 
 some of them fled from his presence, and the rest were ready to 
 expire under its terrors. Lucien, whose influence contributed so 
 much to give him his power, found it expedient to retire into volun- 
 tary exile. To serve his political purposes, he divorced and broke 
 the heart of an amiable and affectionate wife, who had been his com- 
 panion and benefactress in his humbler fortunes'; and he imposed on 
 his brothers sacrifices of the same kind, to serve not their views, 
 but his own. . . . 
 
 The only intellectual vice of Bonaparte was extravagance ; and it 
 was this that caused his ruin. With all his contempt for the rights 
 and feelings of others, he might have maintained himself to the last, 
 and transmitted his sceptre to a long line of descendants, had he 
 known how to temper the wildness of his ambition with even a 
 moderate infusion of good sense and discretion. This defect in 
 his understanding had been observed by those who were acquainted 
 with him, before he had betrayed its existence to the public by the 
 incredible follies that marked the close of his reign. General 
 Moreau, as we are told by Madame de Stael, observed at his 
 residence on the Delaware, upon hearing of the failure of some at- 
 tempt at conspiracy in France, " The French have not the art of 
 managing this sort of business ; but there is one conspirator, to 
 whose machinations he must ultimately fall a victim I mean 
 himself." 
 
 [From the North American Review, January, 1829.] 
 PASSAGES FROM A REVIEW OF IRVING'S COLUMBUS. 
 
 THIS is one of those works which are at the same time the delight 
 of readers and the despair of critics. It is as nearly perfect in its 
 kind, as any work well can be ; and there is, therefore, little or 
 nothing left for the reviewer but to write at the bottom of every 
 page, as Voltaire said he should be obliged to do, if he published a 
 commentary on Racine, Pulchre ! bene ! optime / . . . 
 
 Mr. Irving shares, in some degree, the merit and the glory that 
 
WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 135 
 
 belong to the industrious hero of the present work, that of leading 
 the way in a previously unexplored and untrodden path of intellectual 
 labor. He is the first writer of purely cis-Atlantic origin and educa- 
 tion, who succeeded in establishing a high and undisputed reputa- 
 tion, founded entirely on literary talent and success. This was the 
 opinion expressed by a very judicious and discerning writer in the 
 Edinburgh Review, upon the first publication of the Sketch Book ; 
 and it is, as we conceive, a substantially correct one. . . . 
 
 Thoroughly labored and highly finished as they all are, Mr. 
 Irving's works will hardly be surpassed in their way. Other writers 
 may, no doubt, arise, in the course of time, who will exhibit in 
 verse or prose a more commanding talent. Some western Homer, 
 Shakespeare, Milton, Corneille, or Calderon may irradiate our* liter- 
 ary world with a flood of splendor, that shall throw all other great- 
 ness into the shade. This, or something like it, may or may not 
 happen ; but even if it should, it can never be disputed that the mild 
 and beautiful genius of Mr. Irving was the morning star that led up 
 the march of our heavenly host ; and that he has a fair right, much 
 fairer certainly than the great Mantuan, to assume the proud device, 
 Primus ego in patriam. To have done this, we repeat, is a singu- 
 lar triumph, far higher than that of merely adding another name to a 
 long list of illustrious predecessors, who flourished in the same 
 country. It implies not merely taste and talent, but originality, the 
 quality which forms the real distinction, if there be one, between 
 what we call geniits, and every other degree of intellectual power ; 
 the quality, in comparison with which, as Sir Walter Scott justly 
 observes, all other literary accomplishments are as dust in the 
 balance. 
 
 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. - 
 
 William Cullen Bryant was born at Cummington, Mass., November 3, 1794. He was 
 carefully educated under the advice of his father, who was a man of superior talents and 
 attainments. Like most poets, he began rhyming early, and two productions of his were 
 published in a thin volume while he was under fourteen years of age. He entered Williams 
 College in 1810, but remained only two years, and then commenced the study of law. After 
 being admitted to the bar, he continued in the profession nearly ten years, when, in 1825, 
 he removed to New York city, and thenceforth gave his time to literary pursuits. He 
 became connected with the Evening Post in 1826, and is still (1872) one of the editors and 
 proprietors of that journal. His residence is at Roslyn, L. I. He has made several visits 
 to Europe, and has travelled extensively in this country. He has published accounts of his 
 various journeys, which show his keen observation and enjoyment of nature. In his youth 
 he was associated with R. C. Sands and G. C. Verplanck in editing The Talisman ; and he 
 has written much and ably in prose in his long career. But his fame as a poet has over- 
 
136 HAND-BOOK 'OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 shadowed his prose works. The verse of Bryant is characterized by smoothness and ele- 
 gance, but its polish is not superficial ; there are no meaningless lines tolerated for melody 
 alone ; the current of thought and the results of poetic observation are so arranged by a 
 nice instinct, that one might suppose the combination had been predestined. Bryant has 
 been said to be an imitator of Wordsworth ; and it is true that his poems are characterized 
 by the same intense love of nature, especially of mountains, forests, and streams, the same 
 contemplative mood, the same exclusion of human passions, the same absence of gayety and 
 humor, which we find in the philosophical poet of England ; but the nature Bryant has loved 
 is under American and not English skies, and he has been indebted to no master for his 
 inspiration nor for his artistic culture. The poem which is, perhaps, the highest expres- 
 sion of his genius, and the best known of any American poem, is Thanatopsis, written at 
 the age of nineteen, and first published in the North American Review. There is not, 
 probably, an educated man now living among our English race in whose mind this solemn 
 and beautiful meditation is not associated with "the last bitter hour." Its pictured 
 phrases occur at every coming up of the grisly thought that haunts us all. Its serene philos- 
 ophy has touched thousands who could never reason calmly for themselves upon the inev- 
 itable order of nature. It leaves a clear impression upon the memory that defies the blur 
 of misquotation, for its well chosen words are united by the cohesive power of genius, like 
 the cemented blocks of Old World temples, into imperishable forms. 
 
 Mr. Bryant has recently laid the world of English readers under new obligations by his 
 admirable translations of the Iliad and Odyssey. Blank verse, to be sure, has not much of the 
 music of the original hexameters, but their spirit has never been more faithfully presented. 
 
 The poet has probably been the severest critic upon his own productions. We cannot 
 recall a single poem which we could wish omitted from the collection. 
 
 THANATOPSIS. 
 
 To him who in the love of nature holds 
 Communion with her visible forms, she speaks 
 A various language ; for his gayer hours 
 She has a voice of gladness, and a smile 
 And eloquence of beauty, and she glides 
 Into his darker musings with a mild 
 And healing sympathy, that steals away 
 Their sharpness ere he is aware. When thoughts 
 Of the last bitter hour come like a blight 
 Over thy spirit, and sad images 
 Of the stern agony, and shroud, and pall, 
 And breathless darkness, and the narrow, house, 
 Make thee to shudder, and grow sick at heart ; 
 Go forth, under the open sky, and list 
 To nature's teachings, while from all around, 
 Earth and her waters, and the depths of air, 
 Comes a still voice :|Yet a few days and thee 
 The all-beholding sun shall see no more 
 In all his course ; nor yet in the cold ground, 
 Where thy pale form was laid, with many tears, 
 
WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 
 
 Nor in the embrace of ocean, shall exist 
 
 Thy image. Earth, that nourished thee, shall claim 
 
 Thy growth, to be resolved to earth again, 
 
 And lost each human trace, surrendering up 
 
 Thine individual being, shalt thou go 
 
 To mix forever with the elements, 
 
 To be a brother to the insensible rock 
 
 And to the sluggish clod, which the rude swain 
 
 Turns with his share, and treads upon. The oak 
 
 Shall send his roots abroad, and pierce thy mould. 
 
 Yet not to thine eternal resting-place 
 
 Shalt thou retire alone nor couldst thou wish 
 
 Couch more magnificent. Thou shalt lie down 
 
 With patriarchs of the infant world with kings, 
 
 The powerful of the earth the wise, the good, 
 
 Fair forms, and hoary seers of ages past, 
 
 All in one mighty sepulchre. The hills, 
 
 Rock-ribbed and ancient as the sun, the vales 
 
 Stretching in pensive quietness between ; 
 
 The venerable woods rivers that move 
 
 In majesty, and the complaining brooks 
 
 That make the meadows green ; and, poured round all, 
 
 Old ocean's gray and melancholy waste, 
 
 Are but the solemn decorations all 
 
 Of the great tomb of man. The golden sun, 
 
 The planets, all the infinite host of heaven, 
 
 Are shining on the sad abodes of 'death, 
 
 Through the still lapse of ages. All that tread 
 
 The globe are but a handful to the tribes 
 
 That slumber in its bosom. Take the wings 
 
 Of morning, traverse Barca's desert sands, 
 
 Or lose thyself in the continuous woods 
 
 Where rolls the Oregon, and hears no sound 
 
 Save his own dashings yet, the dead are there ; 
 
 And millions in those solitudes, since first 
 
 The flight of years began, have laid them down 
 
 In their last sleep the dead reign there alone. 
 
 So shalt thou rest and what if thou withdraw 
 
 Unheeded by the living, and no friend 
 
 Take note of thy departure ? All that breathe 
 
138 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 Will share thy destiny. The gay will laugh 
 When thou art gone, the solemn brood of care 
 Plod on, and each one as before will chase 
 His favorite phantom ; yet all these shall leave 
 Their mirth and their employments, and shall come 
 And make their bed with thee. As the long train 
 Of ages glide away, the sons of men, 
 The youth in life's green spring, and he who goes 
 In the full strength of years, matron, and maid, 
 And the sweet babe, and the gray-headed man, 
 Shall one by one be gathered to thy side, 
 By those who, in their turn, shall follow them. 
 
 So live that when thy summons comes to join 
 The innumerable caravan, that moves 
 To that mysterious realm, where each shall take 
 His chamber in the silent halls of death, 
 Thou go not like the quarry-slave at night 
 Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed 
 By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave 
 Like one who wraps the drapery of his coudi 
 About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams. 
 
 TO A WATER-FOWL. 
 
 WHITHER, midst falling dew, 
 
 While glow the heavens with the last steps of day, 
 Far through their rosy depths dost thou pursue 
 
 Thy solitary way ? 
 
 Vainly the fowler's eye 
 
 Might mark thy distant flight to do thee wrong, 
 As darkly painted on the crimson sky, 
 
 Thy figure floats along. 
 
 Seek'st thou the plashy brink 
 
 Of weedy lake, or marge of river wide, 
 
 Or where the rocking billows rise and sink 
 On the chafed ocean side ? 
 
WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 139 
 
 There is a power whose care 
 
 Teaches thy way along that pathless coast, 
 The desert and illimitable air, 
 
 Lone wandering, but not lost. 
 
 AH day thy wings have fanned, 
 
 At that far height, the cold, thin atmosphere, 
 Yet stoop not, weary, to the welcome hand, 
 
 Though the dark night is near. 
 
 And soon that toil shall end ; 
 
 Soon shalt thou find a summer home, and rest, 
 And scream among thy fellows ; reeds shall bend, 
 
 Soon, o'er thy sheltered nest. 
 
 Thou'rt gone ; the abyss of heaven 
 
 Hath swallowed up thy form, yet on my heart 
 
 Deeply hath sunk the lesson thou hast given, 
 And shall not soon depart. 
 
 He who, from zone to zone, 
 
 Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight, 
 In the long way that I must tread alone, 
 
 Will lead my steps aright. 
 
 GREEN RIVER. 
 
 WHEN breezes are soft and skies are fair, 
 I steal an hour from study and care, 
 And hie me away to the woodland scene, 
 Where wanders the stream with waters of green, 
 As if the bright fringe of herbs on its brink 
 Had given their stain to the wave they drink, 
 And they, whose meadows it murmurs through, 
 Have named the stream from its own fair hue. 
 
 Yet pure its waters its shallows are bright 
 With colored pebbles and sparkles of light, 
 And clear the depths where its eddies play, 
 And dimples deepen and whirl away, 
 And the plane-tree's speckled arms o'ershoot 
 
I4O HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 The swifter current that mines its root, 
 
 Through whose shifting leaves, as you walk the hill, 
 
 The quivering glimmer of sun and rill 
 
 With a sudden flash on the eye is thrown, 
 
 Like the ray that streams from the diamond-stone. 
 
 O, loveliest there the spring days come, 
 
 With blossoms, and birds, and wild bees' hum ; 
 
 The flowers of summer are fairest there, 
 
 And freshest the breath of the summer air ; 
 
 And sweetest the golden autumn day 
 
 In silence and sunshine glides away. 
 
 Yet fair as thou art, thou shunnest to glide, 
 Beautiful stream, by the village side ; 
 But windest away from haunts of men, 
 To quiet valley and shaded glen, 
 And forest, and meadow, and slope of hill, 
 Around thee, are lonely, lovely, and still. 
 Lonely save when, by thy rippling tides, 
 From thicket to thicket the angler glides ; 
 Or the simpler comes with basket and book, 
 For herbs of power on thy banks to look ; 
 Or haply, some idle dreamer, like me, 
 To wander, and muse, and gaze on thee. 
 Still save the chirp of birds that feed 
 On the river cherry and seedy reed, 
 And thy own wild music gushing out 
 With mellow murmur and fairy shout, 
 From dawn to the blush of another day, 
 Like traveller singing along his way. 
 That fairy music I never hear, 
 Nor gaze on those waters so green and clear, 
 And mark them winding away from sight, 
 Darkened with shade or flashing with light, 
 While o'er them the vine to its thicket clings, 
 And the zephyr stoops to freshen his wings, 
 But I wish that fate had left me free 
 To wander these quiet haunts with thee, 
 Till the eating cares of earth should depart, 
 And the peace of the scene pass into my heart ; 
 And I envy thy stream as it glides along, 
 
WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 14! 
 
 Through its beautiful banks in a trance of song. 
 
 Though forced to drudge for the dregs of men, 
 
 And scrawl strange words with the barbarous pen, 
 
 And mingle among the jostling crowd, 
 
 Where the sons of strife are subtle and loud ; 
 
 I often come to this quiet place, 
 
 To breathe the airs that ruffle thy face, 
 
 And gaze upon thee in silent dream, 
 
 For in thy lonely and lovely stream 
 
 An image of that calm life appears 
 
 That won my heart in my greener years. 
 
 THE EVENING WIND. 
 
 SPIRIT that breathest through my lattice, thou 
 
 That cool'st the twilight of the sultry day, 
 Gratefully flows thy freshness round my brow ; 
 
 Thou hast been out upon the deep at play, 
 Riding all day the wild blue waves till now, 
 
 Roughening their crests, and scattering high their spray, 
 And swelling the white sail. I welcome thee 
 To the scorched land, thou wanderer of the sea. 
 
 Nor I alone a thousand bosoms round 
 
 Inhale thee in the fulness of delight ; 
 And languid forms rise up, and pulses bound 
 
 Livelier at coming of the wind of night ; 
 And, languishing to hear thy grateful sound, 
 
 Lies the vast inland stretched beyond the sight. 
 Go forth into the gathering shade ; go forth, 
 God's blessing breathed upon the fainting earth. 
 
 Go, rock the little wood-bird in his nest, 
 
 Curl the still waters, bright with stars, and rouse 
 
 The wide old wood from his majestic rest, 
 Summoning from the innumerable boughs 
 
 The strange, deep harmonies that haunt his breast ; 
 Pleasant shall be thy way where meekly bows 
 
 The shutting flower, and darkling waters pass, 
 
 And where the o'ershadowing branches sweep the grass. 
 
142 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 The faint old man shall lean his silver head 
 To feel thee ; thou shalt kiss the child asleep, 
 
 And dry the moistened curls that overspread 
 
 His temples, while his breathing grows more deep ; 
 
 And they who stand about the sick man's bed, 
 Shall joy to listen to thy distant sweep, 
 
 And softly part his curtains to allow 
 
 Thy visit, grateful to his burning brow. 
 
 Go but the circle of eternal change, 
 Which is the life of nature, shall restore, 
 
 With sounds and scents from all thy mighty range, 
 Thee to thy birthplace of the deep once more ; 
 
 Sweet odors in the sea-air, sweet and strange, 
 Shall tell the homesick mariner of the shore ; 
 
 And, listening to thy murmur, he shall deem 
 
 He hears the rustling leaf and running stream. 
 
 THE DEATH OF THE FLOWERS. 
 
 THE melancholy days are come, the saddest of the year, 
 
 Of wailing winds, and naked woods, and meadows brown and sear, 
 
 Heaped in the hollows of the grove the autumn leaves lie dead ; 
 
 They rustle to the eddying gust, and to the rabbit's tread. 
 
 The robin and the wren are flown, and from the shrubs the jay, 
 
 And from the wood-top calls the crow through all the gloomy day. 
 
 Where are*the flowers, the fair young flowers, that lately sprang and 
 
 stood 
 
 In brighter light, and softer airs, a beauteous sisterhood ? 
 Alas ! they all are in their graves ; the gentle race of flowers 
 Are lying in their lowly beds, with the fair and good of ours. 
 The rain is falling where they lie, but the cold November rain 
 Calls not from out the gloomy earth the lovely ones again. 
 
 The wind-flower and the violet, they perished long ago, 
 
 And the brier-rose and the orchis died amid the summer glow ; 
 
 But on the hill the golden rod, and the aster in the wood, 
 
 And the yellow sunflower by the brook, in autumn beauty stood, 
 
WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 143 
 
 Till fell the frost from the clear, cold heaven, as falls the plague on men, 
 And the brightness of their smile was gone, from upland, glade, and 
 glen. 
 
 And now, when comes the calm, mild day, as still such days will 
 
 come, 
 
 To call the squirrel and the bee from out their winter home ; 
 When the sound of dropping nuts is heard, though all the trees are 
 
 still, 
 
 And twinkle in the smoky light the waters of the rill, 
 The south wind searches for the flowers whose fragrance late he bore, 
 And sighs to find them in the wood and by the stream no more. 
 
 And then I think of one who in her youthful beauty died, 
 The fair meek blossom that grew up and faded by my side ; 
 In the cold moist earth we laid her when the forest cast the leaf, 
 And we wept that one so lovely should have a life so brief. 
 Yet not unmeet it was that one like that young friend of ours, 
 So gentle and so beautiful, should perish with the flowers. 
 
 THE FUTURE LIFE. 
 
 How shall I know thee in the sphere which keeps 
 
 The disembodied spirits of the dead, 
 When all of thee that time could wither sleeps 
 
 And perishes among the dust we tread ? 
 
 For I shall feel the sting of ceaseless pain 
 If there I meet thy gentle presence not ; 
 
 Nor hear the voice I love, nor read again 
 In thy serenest eyes the tender thought. 
 
 Wilt not thine own meek heart demand me there ? 
 
 That heart whose fondest throbs to me were given ? 
 My name on earth was ever in thy prayer, 
 
 Shall it be banished from thy tongue in heaven ? 
 
 In meadows fanned by heaven's life-breathing wind, 
 In the resplendence of that glorious sphere, 
 
 And larger movements of the unfettered mind, 
 Wilt thou forget the love that joined us here ? 
 
144 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 The love that lived through all the stormy past, 
 And meekly with my harsher nature bore, 
 
 And deeper grew, and tenderer to the last, 
 Shall it expire with life, and be no more ? 
 
 A happier lot than mine, and larger light, 
 
 Await thee there : for thou hast bowed thy will 
 
 In cheerful homage to the rule of right, 
 And lovest all, and renderest good for ill. 
 
 For me, the sordid cares in which I dwell, 
 
 Shrink and consume my heart, as heat the scroll ; 
 
 And wrath has left its scar that fire of hell 
 Has left its frightful scar upon my soul. 
 
 Yet though thou wear'st the glory of the sky, 
 Wilt thou not keep the same beloved name, 
 
 The same fair thoughtful brow, and gentle eye, 
 Lovelier in heaven's climate, yet the same ? 
 
 Shalt thou not teach me, in that calmer home, 
 The wisdom that I learned so ill in this, 
 
 The wisdom which is love, till I become 
 Thy fit companion in that land of bliss ? 
 
 ORVILLE DEWEY. 
 
 Orville Dewey was born in Sheffield, Mass., March 28, 1794. He was graduated at Wil- 
 liams College in 1814, and afterwards studied theology at Andover Seminary. He became 
 a Unitarian in belief, and has since been a distinguished preacher in that denomination. 
 He was at first an assistant to Dr. Channing, in Boston, for two years, and was then settled 
 in New Bedford for ten years. He removed to New York in 1835, where he preached until 
 1842, and afterwards from 1844 to 1848, when he retired to his native town, and prepared 
 courses of lectures upon The Problem of Human Life and Destiny, and The Education of 
 the Human Race. In 1858 he was again settled in Boston over the New South Church, 
 in Summer Street, where he remained until, a few years ago, the church was taken down to 
 make room for business warehouses. 
 
 He has since resided at Sheffield, Mass. 
 
 His works were published in three vols., 8vo., New York, 1847. The discourses of Dr. 
 Dewey are full of profound thought, of strong religious convictions, and are written in a 
 solidly attractive style. 
 
ORVILLE DEWEY. 145 
 
 [From an Address delivered at Cambridge in 1830.] 
 THE RELATIONS OF GENIUS AND STUDY. 
 
 WHAT is poetry ? What is this mysterious thing but one form in 
 which human nature expresses itself? What is it but embodying, 
 what is it but " showing up," in all its moods, from the lowliest to 
 the loftiest, the same deep and impassioned but universal mind, 
 which is alike and equally the theme of philosophy ? What does 
 poetry tell us but that which was already in our own hearts ? What 
 are all its intermingled lights and shadows ; what are its gorgeous 
 clouds of imagery, and the hues of its distant landscapes ; what are 
 its bright and blessed visions, and its dark pictures of sorrow and 
 passion, but the varied reflection of the beautiful and holy, and yet 
 overshadowed, and marred, and afflicted nature within us ? And 
 how then is poetry any more inscrutable than our own hearts are 
 inscrutable. To whom or to what, let us ask again, does poetry ad- 
 dress itself? To what, in its heroic ballads, in its epic song, in its 
 humbler verse, in its strains of love, or pity, or indignation, to 
 what does it speak but to human nature, but to the common mind 
 of all the world ? And its noblest productions, its Iliads, its Ham- 
 lets and Lears, the whole world has understood the rude and the 
 refined, the anchorite and the throng of men. There is poetry in 
 real life, and in the humblest life. There is " unwritten poetry ; " 
 there is poetry in prose ; there is poetry in all living hearts. 
 
 Let him be the true poet who shall find it, sympathize with it, and 
 bring it to light. He that does so, must deeply study human nature. 
 He that does so, must, whether he knows it or not, be a philosopher. 
 
 . . He must wait almost in prayer at the oracle within ; he 
 must write the very language of his own soul ; he must write no 
 rash response from the shrines of idolized models ; but asking, ques- 
 tioning, listening to the voice within as he writes ; and then will the 
 deepest philosophy take the form of the noblest inspiration. 
 
 And what more does the eloquent man, let us ask again what 
 more does he than express that which, in greater or less power, is 
 within us all ? He creates nothing. He is but an interpreter of 
 what God has created within us. He only gives it language. In 
 the old Puritan phrase, as true in philosophy as in religion, he is 
 " but an instrument." He but unlocks the sources of feeling, and it 
 flows of itself. And the key which is to open for him a way to the 
 hearts of others, is a profound study, a deep knowledge, an exquisite 
 sense of what is in his own heart. . . . 
 10 
 
146 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 "The young man," it is often said, "has genius enough, if he 
 would only study." Now the truth is, as I shall take the liberty 
 to state it, that genius will study ; it is that in the mind which 
 does study ; that is the very nature of it. I care not to say that 
 it will always use books. All study is not reading, any more 
 than all reading is study. By study, I mean but let one of the 
 noblest geniuses and hardest students of any age define it for me : 
 " Study," says Cicero, "is the persistent and intense occupation of 
 mind directed with a strong effort of will to any subject, such as 
 philosophy, poetry, geometry, letters." Such study, such intense 
 mental action, and nothing else, is genius. And so far as there 
 is any native predisposition about this enviable character of mind, 
 it is a predisposition to that action. That is the only test of the 
 original bias ; and he who does not come to that point, though 
 he may have shrewdness, and readiness, and parts, never had a 
 genius. No need to waste regrets upon him, as that he never 
 could be induced to give his attention or study to anything; he 
 never had that which he is supposed to have lost. For attention 
 it is, though other qualities belong to this transcendent power, 
 attention it is, that is the very soul of genius : not the fixed 
 eye, not the poring over a book, but the fixed thought. It is, in 
 fact, an action of the mind which is steadily concentrated upon 
 one idea, or one series of ideas, which collects in one point 
 the rays of the soul, till they search, penetrate, and fire the whole 
 train of its thoughts. And while the fire burns within, the out- 
 ward man may indeed be cold, indifferent, negligent, absent in 
 appearance; he may be an idler, or a wanderer, apparently with- 
 out aim or intent: but still the fire burns within. And what 
 though "it bursts forth," at length, as has been said, "like vol- 
 canic fires, with spontaneous, original, native force?" It only 
 shows the intenser action of the elements beneath. What though 
 it breaks like lightning from the cloud ? The electric fire had 
 been collecting in the firmament through many a silent, calm, and 
 clear day. What though the might of genius appears in one de- 
 cisive blow, struck in some moment of high debate, or at the 
 crisis of a nation's peril ? That mighty energy, though it may 
 have heaved in the breast of a Demosthenes, was once a feeble 
 infant's thought. A mother's eye watched over its dawning. A 
 father's care guarded its early growth. It soon trod with youth- 
 ful step the halls of learning, and found other fathers to wake and 
 to watch for it even as it finds them here. It went on; but 
 
EDWARD EVERETT. 147 
 
 silence was upon its path, and the deep strugglings of the inward 
 soul marked its progress, and the cherishing powers of nature 
 silently ministered to it. The elements around breathed upon it, 
 and " touched it to finer issues." The golden ray of heaven fell 
 upon it, and ripened its expanding faculties. The slow revolutions 
 of years slowly added to its collected treasures and energies, till, 
 in its hour of glory, it stood forth embodied in the form of living, 
 commanding, irresistible eloquence ! The world wonders at the 
 manifestation, and says, " Strange, strange that it should come 
 thus unsought, unpremeditated, unprepared." But the truth is, 
 there is no more a miracle in i.t than there is in the towering of the 
 pre-eminent forest tree, or in the flowing of the mighty and irresist- 
 ible river, or in the wealth and the waving of the boundless 
 harvest. 
 
 Fathers and guardians of our youthful learning, behold it here 
 the germ of all that glorious power, in the strong, generous, 
 and manly spirits of the rising youth around you, and say, if you 
 would relinquish an office so honored, and so to be rewarded, for 
 the sceptre of any other dominion. Youthful aspirants after intel- 
 lectual eminence, forget, forget, I entreat you, banish, banish for- 
 ever, the weak and senseless idea, that anything will serve your 
 purpose but study, intense, unwearied, absorbing study. 
 
 
 EDWARD EVERETT. 
 
 Edward Everett was born in Dorchester, Mass., April n, 1794. He entered Harvard 
 College at the age of thirteen, and was graduated with the highest honors. On leaving col- 
 lege he was appointed tutor, and at the same time he pursued the study of divinity. He 
 was settled in Boston as pastor of Brattle Street Church, and very soon attracted great atten- 
 tion by his forcible and scholarly discourses. In 1814 he was appointed professor of Greek 
 literature at Cambridge, and was allowed time for travel and study abroad before commen- 
 cing his duties. He spent four years in Europe, visiting the principal cities and seats of 
 learning, and extending his researches into a wide range of subjects. On his return, he 
 gave a brilliant series of college lectures, and, besides, conducted the North American 
 Review. In 1824 he delivered an oration before the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Harvard. 
 The occasion was distinguished by the presence of Lafayette, and the orator's reference to 
 the nation's guest in the closing paragraph was especially happy. Indeed the whole oration, 
 as we can readily believe, produced an extraordinary effect. It was as carefully studied as 
 though it were to be judged in silence by critical readers, and was pronounced with an 
 energy, tempered with unobtrusive art, which literary men are apt to neglect, and by which 
 literary audiences, just as readily as the unlearned, are surprised into enthusiasm. In 1824 
 he was elected a member of Congress, and continued to represent his district for ten years, 
 when he was chosen governor. After serving four terms, he was defeated in 1839, by Marcus 
 
148 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 Morton, by a majority of one vote. In 1841 he was appointed minister to England by 
 President Harrison. Upon his return to the United States, in 1845, he was chosen 
 president of Harvard University ; but he found the routine irksome, and resigned at the end 
 of three years. He was appointed secretary of state by President Fillmore, to fill the 
 vacancy caused by the death of Daniel Webster. 
 
 In the spring of 1853 he was cl.osena member of the United States Senate, but his health 
 was so much impaired by the duties and anxieties of the office that he resigned in May, 1854. 
 He became deeply interested in the plan of purchasing Mount Vernon, and delivered his 
 oration on Washington in all the principal cities of the country for the benefit of the fund. 
 The amount so contributed by him for this patriotic purpose exceeded fifty thousand dollars. 
 He died in Boston, January 15, 1865. 
 
 It is evident from this brief summary that Mr. Everett was a man of rare powers and 
 rarer cultivation. He might truly say, " What could I have done unto my vineyard that I 
 have not done unto it?" From his infancy he seemed to have been marked out for a 
 scholar, and through his life he enjoyed exceptional advantages in acquiring knowledge, and 
 the best use of his naturally brilliant faculties. His orations were composed for widely dif- 
 fering occasions, but in each case the treatment is so masterly that one would think the sub- 
 ject then in hand had been the special study of his life. But his care did not cease with the 
 preparation ; his voice, gestures, and cadences were always in harmony with his theme, so 
 that he was absolute master of his audience. It is seldom that the literary annalist has to 
 record a career in which the preacher and essayist is developed by natural growth into the 
 statesman and diplomatist, while his scholastic tastes and habits grow in parallel lines, and 
 the man at threescore is an epitome of the knowledge and an exemplar of the eloquence of 
 his generation. 
 
 Mr. Everett's political career, though an honorable one, was not highly successful in all 
 respects. He was a cold man, and was not in the least popular, except in academic circles, 
 when off the platform. He was naturally a conservative, and success more frequently waits 
 upon the advocate of positive ideas ; and, besides, at the time of his senatorial career con- 
 servatism was no longer in accordance with the temper of the majority in his state. Though 
 he might not have been deficient in moral courage, and he certainly took no pains to con- 
 ceal his opinions, he was at times placed where downright Saxon would have been more to 
 the purpose than his gracefully turned phrases. His natural sensitiveness and his excessive 
 refinement made him shrink from the personal sacrifices which a popular leader must make, 
 and from the sharp contests with opponents in high places which it is political suicide 
 to shun. 
 
 Everett's works are always interesting to the reader. Open a volume at random, and the 
 thought at once engages attention. It is true we do not find passages, like those in Web- 
 ster's speeches, which come upon us like thunder strokes ; but, on the other hand, there are 
 fewer arid spaces. Webster is often uninteresting, if not dull, for pages together. Everett, 
 if he never astonishes, never fails to delight. 
 
 Mr. Everett's works are comprised in four vols. 8vo. He edited also the works of Web- 
 ster, and wrote an introductory biography. 
 
 A PICTURE OF A MODEL FARM. 
 
 As a work of art, I know few things more pleasing to the eye, or 
 more capable of affording scope and gratification to a taste for the 
 beautiful, than a well-situated, well-cultivated farm. A man of 
 refinement will hang with never wearied gaze on a landscape by 
 Claude or Salvator ; the price of a section of the most fertile land in 
 the west would not purchase a few square feet of the canvass on 
 which these great artists have depicted a rural scene. But nature 
 
EDWARD EVERETT. 149 
 
 has forms and proportions beyond the painter's skill ; her divine 
 pencil touches the landscape with living lights and shadows never 
 mingled on his palette. What is there on earth which can more 
 entirely charm the eye or gratify the taste than a noble farm ? It 
 stands upon a southern slope, gradually rising with variegated ascent 
 from the plain, sheltered from the north-western winds by woody 
 heights, broken here and there with moss-covered boulders, which 
 impart variety and strength to the outline. The native forest has 
 been cleared from the greater part of the farm, but a suitable portion, 
 carefully tended, remains in wood for economical purposes, and to 
 give a picturesque effect to the landscape. The eye ranges round 
 three fourths of the horizon over a fertile expanse bright with the 
 cheerful waters of a rippling stream, a generous river, or a gleaming 
 lake ; dotted with hamlets, each with its modest spire ; and, if the 
 farm lies in the vicinity of the coast, a distant glimpse, from the 
 high grounds, of the mysterious, everlasting sea, completes the 
 prospect. It is situated off the high road, but near enough to the 
 village to be easily accessible to the church, the school-house, the 
 post-office, the railroad, a sociable neighbor, or a travelling friend. It 
 consists in due proportion of pasture and tillage, meadow and wood- 
 land, field and garden. A substantial dwelling, with everything for 
 convenience and nothing for ambition, with the fitting appendages 
 of stable, and barn, and corn-barn, and other farm buildings, not forget- 
 ting a spring-house with a living fountain of water, occupies, upon a 
 gravelly knoll, a position well chosen to command the whole estate. 
 A few acres on the front and on the sides of the dwelling, set apart 
 to gratify the eye with the choicer forms of rural beauty, are adorned 
 with a stately avenue, with noble solitary trees, with graceful clumps, 
 shady walks, a velvet lawn, a brook murmuring over a pebbly bed, 
 here and there a grand rock, whose cool shadow at sunset streams 
 across the field ; all displaying, in the real loveliness of nature, the 
 original of those landscapes, of which art in its perfection strives to 
 give us the counterfeit presentment. Animals of select breed, such 
 as Paul Potter, and Morland, and Landseer, and Rosa Bonheur 
 never painted, roam the pastures, or fill the hurdles and the stalls ; 
 the plough walks in rustic majesty across the plain, and opens the 
 genial bosom of the earth to the sun and air ; nature's holy sacra- 
 ment of seed-time is solemnized beneath the vaulted cathedral sky ; 
 silent dews, and gentle showers, and kindly sunshine, shed their 
 sweet influence on the teeming soil ; springing verdure clothes the 
 plain ; golden wavelets, driven by the west wind, run over the joyous 
 
I5O HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 wheat-field ; the tall maize flaunts in her crispy leaves and nodding 
 tassels ; while we labor and while we rest, while we wake and while 
 we sleep, God's chemistry, which we cannot see, goes on beneath 
 the clods ; myriads and myriads of vital cells ferment with elemental 
 life ; germ, and stalk, and leaf, and flower, and silk, and tassel, and 
 grain, and fruit, grow up from the common earth ; the mowing 
 machine and the reaper mute rivals of human industry perform 
 their gladsome task ; the well-piled wagon brings home the ripened 
 treasures of the year ; the bow of promise fulfilled spans the fore- 
 ground of the picture, and the gracious covenant is redeemed, that 
 while the earth remaineth, summer and winter, and heat and cold, 
 and day and night, and seed-time and harvest, shall not fail. 
 
 THE USES OF ASTRONOMY. 
 
 THERE is much, in every way, in the city of Florence, to excite 
 the curiosity, to kindle the imagination, and to gratify the taste. 
 Sheltered on the north by the vine-clad hills of Fiesole, whose 
 Cyclopean walls carry back the antiquary to ages before the Roman, 
 before the Etruscan, power, the flowery city (Fiorenza) covers the 
 sunny banks of the Arno with its stately palaces. Dark and frown- 
 ing piles of medieval structure ; a majestic dome, the prototype of St. 
 Peter's ; basilicas which enshrine the ashes of some of the mightiest 
 of the dead ; the stone where Dante stood to gaze on the campanile; 
 the house of Michael Angelo, still occupied by a descendant of his 
 lineage and name his hammer, his chisel, his , dividers, his manu- 
 script poems, all as if he had left them but yesterday ; airy bridges, 
 which seem not so much to rest on the earth as to hover over the 
 waters they span ; the loveliest creations of ancient art, rescued 
 from the grave of ages again to " enchant the world ; " the breath- 
 ing marbles of Michael Angelo, the glowing canvas of Raphael and 
 Titian ; museums filled with medals and coins of every age, from 
 Cyrus the Younger, and gems, and amulets, and vases from the 
 sepulchres of Egyptian Pharaohs coeval with Joseph, and Etruscan 
 Lucumons that swayed Italy before the Romans ; libraries stored 
 with the choicest texts of ancient literature ; gardens of rose, and 
 orange, and pomegranate, and myrtle ; the very air you breathe languid 
 with music and perfume such is Florence. But among all its 
 fascinations addressed to the sense, the memory, and the heart, 
 there was none to which I more, frequently gave a meditative hour, 
 
 
EDWARD EVERETT. 15 I 
 
 during a year's residence, than to the spot where Galileo Galilei sleeps 
 beneath the marble floor of Santa Croce ; no building on which I 
 gazed with greater reverence than I did upon the modest mansion 
 at Arcetri, villa at once and prison, in which that venerable sage, by 
 command of the Inquisition, passed the sad closing years of his life ; 
 the beloved daughter on whom he had depended to smooth his 
 passage to the grave laid there before him ; the eyes with which he 
 had discovered worlds before unknown quenched in blindness : 
 
 Ahime ! quegli occhi si son fatti oscuri, 
 Che vidr piu di tutti i tempi antichi, 
 E luce fftr dei secoli futuri. 
 
 That was the house " where," says Milton (another of those of 
 whom the world was not worthy), " I found and visited the famous 
 Galileo, grown old, a prisoner to the Inquisition for thinking on 
 astronomy otherwise than as the Dominican and Franciscan licen- 
 sers thought." Great Heavens ! what a tribunal, what a culprit, what 
 a crime ! Let us thank God, my friends, that we live in the nine- 
 teenth century. Of all the wonders of ancient and modern art, 
 statues, and paintings, and jewels, and manuscripts, the admiration 
 and the delight of ages, there was nothing which I beheld with 
 more affectionate awe than that poor rough tube, a few feet in 
 length, the work of his own hands, that very " optic glass " through 
 which the " Tuscan Artist " viewed the moon, 
 
 "At evening from the top of Fesol6 
 Or in Valdarno, to descry new lands, 
 Rivers, or mountains, in her spotty globe ; " 
 
 that poor little spy-glass (for it is scarcely more) through which the 
 human eye first distinctly beheld the surface of the moon first dis- 
 covered the phases of Venus, the satellites of Jupiter, and the seem- 
 ing handles of Saturn first penetrated the dusky depths of the 
 heavens first pierced the clouds of visual error, which from the 
 creation of the world involved the system of the universe. 
 
 There are occasions in life in which a great mind lives years of 
 rapt enjoyment in a moment. I can fancy the emotions of Galileo, 
 when, raising the newly-constructed telescope to the heavens, he saw 
 fulfilled the grand prophecy of Copernicus, and beheld the planet 
 Venus crescent like the moon. It was such another moment as 
 that when the immortal printers of Mentz and Strasburg received 
 the first copy of the Bible into their hands, the work of their divine 
 art; like that when Columbus, through the gray dawn of the I2th 
 
152 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 of October, 1492 (Copernicus, at the age of eighteen, was then a 
 student at Cracow), beheld the shores of San Salvador ; like that 
 when the law of gravitation first revealed itself to the intellect of 
 Newton ; like that when Franklin saw by the stiffening fibres of the 
 hempen cord of his kite, that he held the lightning in his grasp ; like 
 that when Leverrier received back from Berlin the tidings that the 
 planet predicted by him was found. . . . 
 
 Yes, noble Galileo, thou art right E pur si muove. "It does 
 move." Bigots may make thee recant it but it moves neverthe- 
 less. Yes, the earth moves, and the planets move, and the mighty 
 waters move, and the empires of men move, and the world of 
 thought moves, ever onward and upward to higher facts and bolder 
 theories. The Inquisition may seal thy lips, but they can no more 
 stop the progress of the great truth propounded by Copernicus and 
 demonstrated by thee, than they can stop the revolving earth ! 
 
 Close now, venerable sage, that sightless, tearful eye ; it has seen 
 what man never before saw it has seen enough. Hang up that 
 poor little spy-glass ; it has done its work. Not Herschel nor Rosse 
 has comparatively done more. Franciscans and Dominicans deride 
 thy discoveries now, but the time will come when from two hundred 
 observatories in Europe and America the glorious artillery of science 
 shall nightly assault the skies, but they shall gain no conquests in 
 those glittering fields before which thine shall be forgotten. Rest in 
 peace, great Columbus of the heavens, like him scorned, persecuted, 
 broken-hearted ; in other ages, in distant hemispheres, when the 
 votaries of science, with solemn acts of consecration, shall dedicate 
 their stately edifices to the cause of knowledge and truth, thy name 
 shall be mentioned with honor ! 
 
 CONCLUSION OF THE ORATION AT CAMBRIDGE, IN 1824. 
 
 MEANTIME the years are rapidly passing away, and gathering 
 importance in their course. With the present year will be com- 
 pleted the half century from that most important era in human 
 history, the commencement of our revolutionary war. The jubilee 
 of our national existence is at hand. The space of time, that has 
 elapsed from that momentous date, has laid down in the dust, which 
 the blood of many of them had already hallowed, most of the great 
 men to whom, under Providence, we owe our national existence and 
 privileges. A few still survive among us, to reap the rich fruits of 
 their labors and sufferings ; and one has yielded himself to the 
 
EDWARD EVERETT. 153 
 
 united voice of a people, and returned in his age to receive the 
 gratitude of the nation to whom he devoted his youth. It is re- 
 corded on the pages of American history, that when this friend of 
 our country applied to our commissioners at Paris, in 1776, for a 
 passage to America, they were obliged to answer him (so low and 
 abject was then our dear native land), that they possessed not the 
 means nor the credit sufficient for providing a single vessel, in all 
 the ports of France. Then, exclaimed the youthful hero, " I will 
 provide my own ; " and it is a literal fact, that when all America was 
 too poor to offer him so much as a passage to our shores, he left, in 
 his tender youth, the bosom of home, of happiness, of wealth, of 
 rank, to plunge in the dust and blood of our inauspicious struggle. 
 
 Welcome, friend of our fathers, to our shores ! Happy are our 
 eyes that behold those venerable features. Enjoy a triumph such as 
 never conqueror or monarch enjoyed the assurance that through- 
 out America there is not a bosom which does not beat with joy and 
 gratitude at the sound of your name. You have already met and 
 saluted, or will soon meet the few that remain of the ardent patriots, 
 prudent counsellors, and brave warriors, with whom you were as- 
 sociated in achieving our liberty. But you have looked round in 
 vain for the faces of many who would have lived years of pleasure 
 on a day like this, with their old companion in arms and brother in 
 peril. Lincoln, and Greene, and Knox, and Hamilton are gone ; 
 the heroes of Saratoga and Yorktown have fallen before the only 
 foe they could not meet. Above all, the first of heroes and of men, 
 the friend of your youth, the more than friend of his country, rests 
 in the bosom of the soil he redeemed. On the banks of his 
 Potomac he lies in glory and peace. You will revisit the hospitable 
 shades of Mount Vernon, but him whom you venerated as we did, 
 you will not meet at its door. His voice of consolation, which 
 reached you in the Austrian dungeons, cannot now break its 
 silence, to bid you welcome to his own roof. But the grateful children 
 of America will bid you welcome in his name. Welcome, thrice 
 welcome, to our shores ; and whithersoever throughout the limits of 
 the continent your course shall take you, the ear that hears you 
 shall bless you, the eye that sees you shall bear witness to you, 
 and every tongue exclaim, with heartfelt joy, Welcome, welcome, 
 Lafayette ! 
 
154 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 JOSEPH RODMAN DRAKE. 
 
 Joseph Rodman Drake was bom in New York city, August 7, 1795. The death of his 
 father left the family in adverse circumstances ; the young poet, however, obtained a good 
 education, and commenced the study of medicine. He was married, a few months after 
 coming of age, to the daughter of a wealthy merchant, and so had no further struggles for 
 a livelihood. In 1819 the symptoms of consumption appeared, and he went to New Orleans 
 to pass the winter. The mild climate had no power to arrest the disease ; he returned home 
 in the spring, and died on the 2ist day of September following. Drake began writing 
 verses, mostly of a satirical sort, which were published in the New York Evening Post, 
 and signed "Croaker." Soon after, he was joined in this pleasantry by Fitz-Greene Hal- 
 leek, and their productions appeared as the work of a partnership, " Croaker & Co." One 
 of the "Croaker " pieces was Drake's poem, here printed, The American Flag. The Cul- 
 prit Fay, which is the longest and best of his poems, was written, it is said, in three days. 
 It is a bright and delicate conceit ; and though Shakespeare and earlier poets furnished most 
 of the "properties" (in stage parlance), the scenery is local, and the management of the 
 story, without the introduction of any mortals, is the author's own. It is too long for inser- 
 tion in this volume, and at the same time it is injured by mutilation. The reader will need 
 no further suggestion to take and enjoy it as a whole. Speculations upon what might have 
 happened are not always satisfactory, but it is easy to believe that if Drake had lived long 
 enough to mature his powers and perfect his art, he would have occupied a very high place 
 among poets. In the specimens of Halleck's poetry there are some feeling and beautiful 
 stanzas addressed to the memory of Drake. The Culprit Fay is to be found in the book- 
 stores, but no complete collection of the author's poems has been published. 
 
 THE CULPRIT FAY. 
 III. 
 
 'Tis the hour of fairy ban and spell ; 
 The wood-tick has kept the minutes well ; 
 He has counted them all with click and stroke 
 Deep in the heart of the mountain oak, 
 And he has awakened the sentry elve, 
 
 Who sleeps with him in the haunted tree, 
 To bid him ring the hour of twelve, 
 
 And call the fays to their revelry ; 
 ' Twelve small strokes on his tinkling bell 
 ('Twas made of the white snail's pearly shell), 
 " Midnight comes, and all is well ; 
 Hither, hither, wing your way ; 
 'Tis the dawn of the fairy-day." 
 
 IV. 
 
 They come from beds of lichen green, 
 They creep from the mullein's velvet screen ; 
 
JOSEPH RODMAN DRAKE. I $5 
 
 Some on the backs of beetles fly 
 
 From the silver tops of moon-touched trees, 
 Where they swung in their cobweb hammocks high, 
 
 And rocked about in the evening breeze ; 
 Some from the hum-bird's downy nest, 
 
 They had driven him out by elfin power, 
 And, pillowed on plumes of his rainbow breast, 
 
 Had slumbered there till the charmed hour ; 
 Some had lain in the scoop of the rock, 
 
 With glittering ising-stars inlaid ; 
 And some had opened the four-o'-clock, 
 
 And stole within its purple shade. 
 And now they throng the moonlight glade, 
 
 Above, below, on every side, 
 Their little minim forms arrayed 
 
 In the tricksy pomp of fairy pride. 
 
 xxv. 
 
 He put his acorn helmet on ; 
 
 It was plumed of the silk of the thistle-down ; 
 
 The corselet-plate, that guarded his breast, 
 
 Was once the wild bee's golden vest ; 
 
 His cloak, of a thousand mingled dyes, 
 
 Was formed of the wings of butterflies ; 
 
 His shield was the shell of a lady-bug queen, 
 
 Studs of gold on a ground of green ; 
 
 And the quivering lance which he brandished bright 
 
 Was the sting of a wasp he had slain in fight. 
 
 Swift he bestrode his firefly steed ; 
 
 He bared his blade of the bent-grass blue ; 
 He drove his spurs of the cockle-seed, 
 
 And away like a glance of thought he flew, 
 To skim the heavens, and follow far 
 The fiery trail of the rocket-star. 
 
 XXVII. 
 
 Up to the vaulted firmament 
 His path the firefly courser bent, 
 And at every gallop on the wind, 
 He flung a glittering spark behind ; 
 
156 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 He flies like a feather in the blast 
 
 Till the first light cloud in heaven is past. 
 
 But the shapes of air have begun their work, 
 
 And a drizzly mist is round him cast ; 
 He cannot see through the mantle murk, 
 
 He shivers with cold, but he urges fast ; 
 Through storm and darkness, sleet and shade, 
 
 He lashes his steed and spurs amain, 
 
 For shadowy hands have twitched the rein, 
 And flame-shot tongues around him played, 
 And near him many a fiendish eye 
 Glared with a fell malignity, 
 And yells of rage, and shrieks of fear, 
 Came screaming on his startled ear. 
 
 XXVIII. 
 
 His wings are wet around his breast, 
 
 The plume hangs dripping from his crest, 
 
 His eyes are blurred by lightning's glare, 
 
 And his ears are stunned with the thunder's blare ; 
 
 But he gave a shout, and his blade he drew, 
 
 He thrust before and he struck behind, 
 Till he pierced their cloudy bodies through, 
 
 And gashed their shadowy limbs of wind : 
 Howling the misty spectres flew ; 
 
 They rend the air with frightful cries, 
 For he has gained the welkin blue, 
 
 And the land of clouds beneath him lies. 
 
 XXXI. 
 
 But, O, how fair the shape that lay 
 
 Beneath a rainbow bending bright ! 
 She seemed to the entranced Fay 
 
 The loveliest of the forms of light ; 
 Her mantle was the purple rolled 
 
 At twilight in the west afar ; 
 'Twas tied with threads of dawning gold, 
 
 And buttoned with a sparkling star. 
 Her face was like the lily roon, 
 
 That veils the vestal planet's hue ; 
 
JOSEPH RODMAN DRAKE. 157 
 
 Her eyes two beamlets from the moon, 
 
 Set floating in the welkin blue. 
 Her hair is like the sunny beam, 
 And the diamond gems which round it gleam 
 Are the pure drops of dewy even 
 That ne'er have left their native heaven. 
 
 THE AMERICAN FLAG. 
 
 WHEN Freedom from her mountain height 
 
 Unfurled her standard to the air, 
 She tore the azure robe of night, 
 
 And set the stars of glory there ; 
 She mingled with its gorgeous dyes 
 The milky baldric of the skies, 
 And striped its pure, celestial white 
 With streakings of the morning light ; 
 Then from his mansion in the sun 
 She called her eagle-bearer down, 
 And gave into his mighty hand 
 The symbol of her chosen land. 
 
 / 
 
 in. 
 
 Flag of the brave, thy folds shall fly, 
 The sign of hope and triumph high ! 
 When speaks the signal trumpet tone, 
 And the long line comes gleaming on 
 (Ere yet the life-blood, warm and wet, 
 Has dimmed the glistening bayonet) 
 Each soldier eye shall brightly turn 
 To where thy sky-born glories burn, 
 And as his springing steps advance, 
 Catch war and vengeance from the glance. 
 And when the cannon-mouthings loud 
 Heave in wild wreaths the battle-shroud, 
 And gory sabres rise and fall 
 Like shoots of flame on midnight's pall, 
 
158 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 Then shall thy meteor glances glow, 
 And cowering foes shall sink beneath 
 
 Each gallant arm that strikes below 
 That lovely messenger of death. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Flag of the seas, on ocean wave 
 Thy stars shall glitter o'er the brave ; 
 When death, careering on the gale, 
 Sweeps darkly round the bellied sail, 
 And frighted waves rush wildly back 
 Before the broadside's reeling rack, 
 Each dying wanderer of the sea 
 Shall look at once to heaven and thee, 
 And smile to see thy splendors fly 
 In triumph o'er his closing eye. 
 
 V. 
 Flag of the free heart's hope and home, 
 
 By angel hands to valor given, 
 Thy stars have lit the welkin dome, 
 
 And all thy hues were born in heaven. 
 Forever float that standard sheet ! 
 
 Where breathes the foe, but falls before us, 
 With Freedom's soil' beneath our feet, 
 
 And Freedom's banner streaming o'er us ? 
 
 FITZ-GREENE HALLECK. 
 
 Fitz-Greene Halleck was born in Guilford, Conn., July 8, 1795. He removed to New 
 York at the age of eighteen, and entered a banking-house as clerk, and afterwards became 
 book-keeper in the office of John Jacob Astor. On the death of Mr. Astor, in 1848, he 
 retired to his native town, where he resided until his death, which occurred Novem- 
 ber 19, 1867. 
 
 Some of his earliest productions were printed with Drake's, and signed " Croaker & Co." 
 The poet did not consider them worth preserving, though their local hits made them popu- 
 lar at the time. His longest poem is entitled Fanny ; it is not above mediocrity. Marco 
 Bozzaris is, doubtless, his most brilliant lyric, and perhaps should have been printed here, 
 except that all schoolboys know it, and every collection contains it. The Jife of Halleck 
 appears devoid of incident, and his productions are in a very narrow compass. Still his ver- 
 sification is finished, and his poems have a telling quality, like those of his favorite, Camp- 
 bell ; and his name bids fair to outlast many that are connected with more pretentious 
 works. 
 
FITZ-GREENE HALLECK. 159 
 
 [From a poem on Burns.] 
 
 His is that language of the heart, 
 
 In which the answering heart would speak, 
 
 Thought, word, that bids the warm tear start, 
 Or the smile light the cheek. 
 
 And his that music, to whose tone 
 
 The common pulse of man keeps time, 
 In cot or castle's mirth or moan, 
 
 In cold or sunny clime. 
 
 And who hath heard his song, nor knelt 
 
 Before its spell with willing knee, 
 And listened, and believed, and felt 
 
 The poet's mastery 
 
 O'er the mind's sea, in calm and storm, 
 O'er the heart's sunshine and its showers, 
 
 O'er passion's moments bright and warm, 
 O'er reason's dark, cold hours, 
 
 On fields where brave men " die or do," 
 In halls where rings the banquet's mirth, 
 
 Where mourners weep, where lovers woo, 
 From throne to cottage hearth ? 
 
 What sweet tears dim the eye unshed, 
 
 What wild vows falter on the tongue, 
 When " Scots wha hae wi' Wallace bled," 
 
 Or " Auld Lang Syne " is sung ! 
 
 Pure hopes, that lift the soul above, 
 
 Come with his Cotter's hymn of praise, 
 And dreams of youth, and truth, and love, 
 
 With " Logan's " banks and braes. 
 
 And when he breathes his master lay 
 
 Of Alloway's witch-haunted wall, 
 All passions in our frames of clay 
 
 Come thronging at his call. 
 
 Imagination's world of air, 
 And our own world, its gloom and glee, 
 
I6O HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 Wit, pathos, poetry, are there, 
 And death's sublimity. 
 
 And Burns, though brief the race he ran, 
 Though rough and dark the path he trod, 
 
 Lived died in form and soul a Man, 
 The image of his God. 
 
 Through care, and pain, and want, and woe, 
 With wounds that only death could heal, 
 
 Tortures the poor alone can know, 
 The proud alone can feel, 
 
 He kept his honesty and truth, 
 His independent tongue and pen, 
 
 And moved, in manhood as in youth, 
 Pride of his fellow-men. 
 
 Strong sense, deep feeling, passions strong, 
 A hate of tyrant and of knave, 
 
 A love of right, a scorn of wrong, 
 Of coward and of slave, 
 
 A kind, true heart, a spirit high, 
 That could not fear and would not bow, 
 
 Were written in his manly eye 
 And on his manly brow. 
 
 Praise to the bard ! his words are driven, 
 Like flower-seeds by the far winds sown, 
 
 Where'er, beneath the sky of heaven, 
 The birds of fame have flown. 
 
 Praise to the man ! a nation stood 
 Beside his coffin with wet eyes, 
 
 Her brave, her beautiful, her good, 
 As when a loved one dies. 
 
 And still, as on his funeral day, 
 
 Men stand his cold earth-couch around, 
 
 With the mute homage that we pay 
 To consecrated ground. 
 
FITZ-GREENE HALLECK. l6l 
 
 And consecrated ground it is, 
 
 The last, the hallowed home of one 
 Who lives upon all memories, 
 
 Though with the buried gone. 
 
 Such graves as his are pilgrim shrines, 
 Shrines to no code or creed confined 
 
 The Delphian vales, the Palestines, 
 The Meccas of the mind. 
 
 ON THE DEATH OF JOSEPH RODMAN DRAKE, OF NEW YORK, 
 SEPTEMBER, l82O. 
 
 "The good die first, 
 
 And they whose hearts are dry as summer dust 
 Burn to the socket." WORDSWORTH. 
 
 GREEN be the turf above thee, 
 
 Friend of my better days, 
 None knew thee but to love thee, 
 
 Nor named thee but to praise. 
 
 Tears fell, when thou wert dying, 
 
 From eyes unused to weep, 
 And long where thou art lying, 
 
 Will tears the cold turf steep. 
 
 When hearts whose truth was proven, 
 
 Like thine, are laid in earth, 
 There should a wreath be woven, 
 
 To tell the world their worth. 
 
 And I, who woke each morrow 
 
 To clasp thy hand in mine, 
 Who shared thy joy and sorrow, 
 
 Whose weal and woe were thine, 
 
 It should be mine to braid it 
 
 Around thy faded brow ; 
 But I've in vain essayed it, 
 
 And feel I cannot now. 
 II 
 
l62 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 While memory bids me weep thee, 
 Nor thoughts nor words are free, 
 
 The grief is fixed too deeply 
 That mourns a man like thee. 
 
 JOHN PENDLETON KENNEDY. 
 
 John Pendleton Kennedy was born in Baltimore, Md., October 25, 1795, and received 
 his education at the College of Baltimore. He was admitted to the bar in 1816. He 
 entered political life in 1820, as a member of the House of Delegates. He was a representa- 
 tive in Congress for several terms, and was one of the recognized leaders of the Whig party. 
 His first attempts in literature were in the columns of a periodical, entitled The Red Book. 
 Swallow Barn, a volume of sketches of rural life in Virginia, was published in 1832. Horse- 
 shoe Robinson, a story of the revolution, appeared in 1835. This is a novel of considerable 
 merit, founded upon actual events, and dealing with historical personages. In 1849 he gave 
 to the public an elaborate Life of William Wirt, in two vols., 8vo. He has besides pub- 
 lished occasional discourses, &c. Mr. Kennedy was a fluent and often elegant writer, and 
 showed, in his descriptions, a love of the beautiful and a refined taste. He continued to 
 reside in his native city, and took a deep interest in its welfare. He was one of the trustees 
 selected by Mr. Peabody for the institute of letters and art established in Baltimore. He 
 died August 18, 1870. His life, written by the late Henry T. Tuckerman, appeared the 
 same year. 
 
 [From Horse-shoe Robinson.] 
 
 A SCHOLAR'S COUNTRY HOUSE. 
 
 THE site of the Dove Cote was eminently picturesque. It was an 
 area of level ground, containing, perhaps, two acres, on the summit 
 of a hill that, on one side, overhung the Rockfish River, and on the 
 other rose by a gentle sweep from the champaign country below. 
 This summit might have been as much as two, hundred feet above 
 the bed of the stream, and was faced on that side by a bold, rocky 
 precipice, not absolutely perpendicular, but broken into stages or 
 platforms, where grassy mould had accumulated, and where the 
 sweet-brier, and the laurel, and clusters of the azalea, shot up in pro- 
 fuse luxuriance. The fissures of the crag had also collected their 
 handful of soil, and gave nourishment to struggling vines, and every- 
 where the ash or pine, and not unfrequently the dogwood, took. pos- 
 session of such spots upon the rocky wall, as these adventurous and 
 cliff-loving trees had found congenial to their nature. The opposite 
 or northern bank of the river had an equal elevation, and jutted for- 
 ward so near to the other as to leave between them a cleft, which 
 suggested the idea of some sudden abruption of the earth in those 
 early paroxysms that geologists have deemed necessary to account 
 for some of the features of our continent Below was heard the 
 
JOHN PENDLETON KENNEDY. 163 
 
 ceaseless prattle of the waters, as they ran over and amongst the 
 rocks which probably constituted the debris formed in the convul- 
 sion that opened this chasm. It was along through this obscure dell 
 that the road, with which my reader is acquainted, found place be- 
 tween the margin of tke stream and the foot of the rocks. The gen- 
 eral aspect of the country was diversified by high knolls and broken 
 masses of mountain land, and the Dove Cote itself occupied a sta- 
 tion sufficiently above the surrounding district to give it a prospect 
 eastward of several miles in extent. From this point the eye might 
 trace the valley of the Rockfish by the abrupt hill-sides that hemmed 
 it in, and by the growth of sombre pines that coated the steeps 
 where nothing else could find a foothold. Not far below, in this 
 direction, was to be seen the Fawn's Tower, a singular pinnacle of 
 rock, which had acquired its name from the protection it was said 
 to have afforded to a young deer against the assault of the hounds, 
 the hard-pressed animal, as the tradition relates, having gained this 
 insulated point by a bound that baffled the most adventurous of his 
 pursuers, and admiration of the successful boldness of the leap hav- 
 ing won from the huntsman the favor that spared his life. . . . 
 
 The mansion itself partook of the character of the place. It was 
 perched to use a phrase peculiarly applicable to its position 
 almost immediately at that point where the terrace made an angle 
 with the cliff, being defended by a stone parapet, through which an 
 iron wicket opened upon a flight of rough-hewn steps, that termi- 
 nated in a pathway leading down to the river. 
 
 The main building was of stone, consisting of one lofty story, and 
 capped with a steep roof, which curved so far over the front as to 
 furnish a broad rustic porch that rested almost upon the ground. 
 The slim pillars of this porch were concealed by lattice-work, which 
 was overgrown with creeping vines ; and the windows of the con- 
 tiguous rooms, on either side of a spacious hall, opened to the floor, 
 and looked out upon the lawn and upon the quiet landscape far be- 
 yond. One of these apartments was also accessible through the 
 eastern gable by a private doorway shaded by a light veranda, and 
 was appropriated by Lindsay to his library. This portal seemed 
 almost to hang over the rock, having but the breadth of the terrace 
 between it and the declivity, and showing no other foreground than 
 the parapet, whiclvwas here a necessary defence against the cliff, and 
 from which the romantic dell of the river was seen in all its wildness. 
 
 There were other portions of the mansion constructed in the 
 same style of architecture, united to this in such a manner as to 
 
1 64 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 afford an uninterrupted communication, and to furnish a range of 
 chambers for the use of the family. A rustic effect was everywhere 
 preserved. Stacks of chimneys shot up in grotesque array, and 
 heavy, old-fashioned windows looked quaintly down from the peaked 
 roof. Choice exotics, planted in boxes, were tastefully arranged 
 upon the lawn ; cages with singing-birds were suspended against the 
 wall, and the whole mass of building, extending along the verge of 
 the cliff, so as to occupy the entire diameter of the semicircle, per- 
 haps one hundred and fifty feet, sorted by its simplicity of costume, 
 if I may so speak, and by its tidy beauty, with the close-shaven 
 grass-plot and its trim shades. 
 
 Above the whole, flinging their broad and gnarled arms against 
 the chimney- tops, and forming a pleasing contrast with the artificial 
 embellishments of this spot, some ancient oaks, in primeval mag- 
 nificence, reared their time-honored trunks, and no less sheltered 
 the habitation from the noontide heats than they afforded an asylum 
 to the ringdove and his mate, or to the countless travellers of the 
 air that here stopped for rest or food. 
 
 Such was the general aspect of the Dove Cote a spot where a 
 philosopher might glide through life in unbroken contemplation ; 
 where a wearied statesman might betake himself to reassemble the 
 scattered forces of intellect for new enterprises ; where the artist 
 might, repair to study with advantage the living graces of God's own. 
 painting ; and where young beauty might bud and bloom amongst 
 the most delicate and graceful forms of earth. 
 
 The interior of the dwelling was capacious and comfortable. Its 
 furniture, suitable to the estate of the owner, was plain, and adapted 
 to a munificent rather than to an ostentatious hospitality. It was 
 only in the library that evidence might be seen of large expense. 
 Here the books were ranged from the floor to the ceiling, with 
 scarcely an interval, except where a few choice paintings had found 
 space, or the bust of some ancient worthy. One or two ponderous 
 lounging chairs stood in the apartment ; and the footstep of th& 
 visitor was dulled into silence by the soft nap of (what, in that day, 
 was a rare and costly luxury) a Turkey carpet. This was, in all 
 respects, an apartment of ease, and it was provided with every incen- 
 tive to beguile a student into silent and luxurious communion with 
 the spirit of the sages around him whose subtlest thoughts and 
 holiest breathings, whose most volatile fancies, had been caught up, 
 fixed, and turned into tangible substance, more indestructible than 
 adamant, by the magic of letters. 
 
JAMES GATES PERCIVAL. 1 6$ 
 
 I have trespassed on the patience of my reader to give him a 
 somewhat minute description of the Dove Cote, principally because 
 I hope thereby to open his mind to a more adequate conception 
 of the character of Philip Lindsay. By looking at a man in his 
 own dwelling, and observing his domestic habits, I will venture 
 to affirm it shall scarcely, in any instance, fail to be true that, if 
 there be seen a tasteful arrangement of matters necessary to his 
 comfort ; if his household be well ordered, and his walks clean 
 and well rolled, and his grass-plots neat ; and if there be no slov- 
 enly inattention to repairs, but thrift' against waste, and plenty for 
 all ; and if to these be added habits of early rising and comely 
 attire ; and, above all, if there be books, many books, well turned 
 and carefully tended, that man is one to warm up at the com- 
 ing of a gentleman ; to open his doors to him ; to take him to 
 his heart, and to do him the kindnesses of life. He is a man to 
 hate what is base, and to stand apart from the mass, as one who 
 will not have his virtue tainted. He is a man, moreover, whose 
 worldly craft may be so smothered and suppressed, in the predom- 
 inance of the household affections, that the skilful and designing, 
 alas ! may practise with success their plans against him. 
 
 JAMES GATES PERCIVAL. 
 
 James Gates Percival was born in the parish of Kensington and town of Berlin, Conn., 
 September 15, 1795. He entered Yale College at the age of sixteen, and a year after his 
 graduation began the study of medicine. He was not successful as a practitioner, principal- 
 ly because the profession was distasteful to him. He was for a brief period a professor at 
 West Point, and afterwards a surgeon connected with the recruiting service in Boston. He 
 removed to New Haven in 1827, where he revised the translation of Malte Brim's Geog- 
 raphy, and assisted Dr. Noah Webster in the preparation of his quarto Dictionary. In 
 1834 he was appointed by the governor to make a geological survey of the state. The 
 work proved much greater than was expected, and his report was not published until 1842. 
 In 1853 he went to Wisconsin to make a similar survey of that state, and remained .there 
 until his death, which occurred at Hazel Green, May 2, 1857. 
 
 Dr. Percival was an eminent scholar, not only in his special pursuits, but in linguistic 
 studies. He was familiar with many ancient languages, and with the dialects of the Norse, 
 Gaelic, Sclavonic, and other modern tongues. His poems, which are numerous, were 
 generally written in haste, and with little revision. A few editions were published at inter- 
 vals, but they did not meet with popular success, and the poet was for most of his life 
 miserably poor. His constitutional melancholy was intensified by his failure to receive 
 sympathy and applause ; and some of his bitter lines, with the interpretation which his mis- 
 fortunes furnish, leave a most painful impression. 
 
 Percival's poetry (though more highly esteemed forty years ago) fails to answer the 
 reader's expectations, or to hold the attention beyond half a dozen pages. He undoubtedly 
 
1 66 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 had a perception of the beauty of nature, and there are frequent glimpses of this beauty in 
 his poems ; but they are fragmentary, scattered hints, rather than completed pictures, and 
 remind us of the "broken crockery" school in the sister art of music. His thoughts, or, 
 rather, his phrases, deflected by the turning corners of rhyme, run away with him, taking a 
 new direction in every verse, and leading into eddies of words that even his friend the 
 lexicographer could not have helped him out of, and that make the perplexed reader wonder 
 where, when, and how the many-jointed sentence is going to end. Percival had his poetic 
 visions, doubtless, but he forgot that the word poet means maker, and he neglected the con- 
 tinuous labor and thought that might have shaped his glowing conceptions into forms of 
 enduring beauty. His name and his works belong to the literary history of the country, but 
 only a few of his simpler poems will remain to justify in some measure his reputation among 
 his contemporaries. 
 His poems are published in two volumes, iSmo., by J. R. Osgood & Co., Boston. 
 
 THE CORAL GROVE. 
 
 DEEP in the wave is a coral grove, 
 
 Where the purple mullet and gold-fish rove, 
 
 Where the sea-flower spreads its leaves of blue, 
 
 That never are wet with falling dew, 
 
 But in bright and changeful beauty shine, 
 
 Far down in the green and glassy brine. 
 
 The floor is of sand like the mountain drift, 
 
 And the pearl-shells spangle the flinty snow ; 
 
 From coral rocks the sea plants lift 
 
 Their boughs, where the tides and billows flow ; 
 
 The water is calm and still below, 
 
 For the winds and waves are absent there, 
 
 And the sands are bright as the stars that glow 
 
 In the motionless fields of upper air : 
 
 There, with its waving blade of green, , 
 
 The sea-flag streams through the silent water, 
 
 And the crimson leaf of the dulse is seen 
 
 To blush, like a banner bathed in slaughter : 
 
 There, with a light and easy motion, 
 
 The fan-coral sweeps through the clear, deep sea ; 
 
 And the yellow and scarlet tufts of ocean 
 
 Are bending like corn on the upland lea ; 
 
 And life, in rare and beautiful forms, 
 
 Is sporting amid those bowers of stone, 
 
 And is safe, when the wrathful spirit of storms 
 
 Has made the top of the wave his own : 
 
 And when the ship from his fury flies, 
 
 Where the myriad voices of ocean roar, 
 
 When the wind-god frowns in the murky skies, 
 
JAMES GATES PERCIVAL. l6/ 
 
 AncJ demons are waiting the wreck on shore, 
 Then far below, in the peaceful sea, 
 The purple mullet and gold-fish rove, 
 Where the waters murmur tranquilly, 
 Through the bending twigs of the coral grove. 
 
 EVENING. 
 
 O EVENING ! thou art lovely : in thy dress 
 Of sober gray I woo thee, when thy star 
 Comes o'er the hazy hills, that rise afar, 
 When tender thoughts upon my spirit press, 
 And with the whispering gales and fanning airs 
 The quiet swelling of my bosom pairs ; 
 And by the lake that lieth motionless, 
 Low in the secret hollow, where the shade, 
 By bending elms and drooping willows made, 
 Displays its peaceful canopy, and gives 
 A moving picture to the lymph below, 
 Where float the sapphire sky, the clouds of snow, 
 The evening streaks, and every swarm that lives 
 And murmurs in the dun air, and the leaves 
 That quiver in the breath of night, and shine 
 With slowly gathered drops, and boughs that play, 
 Rising and falling gently, he who grieves 
 For some deep-wounding sorrow, as is mine, 
 In such a lonely shade his head may lay, 
 And on the scented grass and flowers recline, 
 And gaze upon the lingering light of day. 
 
 REIGN OF MAY. 
 
 I FEEL a newer life in every gale ; 
 
 The winds that fan the flowers, 
 And with their welcome breathings fill the sail, 
 
 Tell of serener hours, 
 Of hours that glide unfelt away 
 Beneath the sky of May. 
 
 The spirit of the gentle south wind calls 
 From his blue throne of air, 
 
1 68 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 And where his whispering voice in music falls, 
 
 Beauty is budding there ; 
 The bright ones of the valley break 
 Their slumbers and awake. 
 
 The waving verdure rolls along the plain, 
 
 And the wide forest weaves, 
 To welcome back its playful mates again, 
 
 A canopy of leaves ; 
 And from its darkening shadow floats 
 A gush of trembling notes. 
 
 Fairer and brighter spreads the reign of May ; 
 
 The tresses of the woods 
 With the light dallying of the west wind play, 
 
 And the full-brimming floods, 
 As gladly to their goal they run, 
 Hail the returning sun. 
 
 JOHN GORHAM PALFREY. 
 
 John Gorham Palfrey was born in Boston, May 2, 1796, and was graduated at Harvard 
 College in 1815. He studied for the ministry, and was ordained as pastor of the Brattle 
 Street Church, in Boston, succeeding Edward Everett in that position. In 1831 he was 
 appointed a professor in the Divinity School at Cambridge, and held the chair till 1839, wh en 
 he resigned, and left the clerical profession. He was editor of the x Ncrth American Review 
 from 1835 to 1842. He was secretary of the commonwealth from 1844 to 1847, when he was 
 chosen a representative in Congress. At that session the contest between the north and 
 south for the speakership was unusually violent. Robert C. Winthrop was the candidate of 
 the Whigs, and Howell Cobb of the Democrats. Dr. Palfrey, who was a distinctive anti- 
 slavery man, and had previously emancipated certain slaves which he had inherited from a 
 southern relative, persistently voted for a third party candidate, so that Mr. Cobb was 
 elected. 
 
 This action caused great excitement in Massachusetts, and when Dr. Palfrey was brought 
 forward for re-election, after seventeen trials in which there was no choice, he was defeated. 
 He retired from public life from that time, although he has since been postmaster of Boston. 
 
 His earlier and professional works are, Evidences of Christianity, two vols., 8vo. (1843) ; 
 Lectures on the Jewish Scriptures and Antiquities, four vols., 8vo. (1838-52) ; also a 
 Harmony of the Gospels, and various sermons and lectures. His last work, which is more 
 properly within our view, is his History of New England, a full, able, and mainly fair 
 account of the beginnings of the eastern colonies. The work consists of three volumes, 
 bringing the nairative down to 1688. 
 
 Dr. Palfrey's style is clear and exact ; if it is considered as lacking in vivacity, it shows 
 conscientious care, and is free from the verbiage that sometimes passes for rhetorical orna- 
 ment. He resides at Cambridge, Mass. 
 
JOHN GORHAM PALFREY. 169 
 
 [From the History of New England.] 
 ABORIGINAL INHABITANTS. 
 
 THESE people held a low place on the scale of humanity. Even 
 their physical capacities contradicted the promise of their external 
 conformation. Supple and agile, so that it was said they would run 
 eighty or a hundred miles in a day, and back again in the next two, 
 they sank under continuous labor. The lymphatic temperament 
 indicated the same preponderance in them of "vegetative nature" 
 which marked other animals of the same continent. They scarcely 
 wept or smiled. Their slender appetites required small indulgence. 
 They could support life on the scantiest quantity of food, and the 
 innutritious stimulus of tobacco seemed almost enough to supply 
 its place ; though at times a gormandizing rage seemed to possess 
 them, and they would be as ravenous in abundance as they were 
 capable of being abstemious under necessity. . . . 
 
 Their demeanor, so grave when exposed to notice, was apt to be 
 taken for an indication of self-respect, but was equally susceptible of 
 being interpreted as betokening a mere stolid vacuity of emotion and 
 thought. . . . 
 
 For food the natives had fish and game ; nuts, roots, and berries 
 (and, in the last resort, acorns), which grew wild ; and a few cul- 
 tivated vegetables. In the winter they shot, or snared, or caught in 
 pitfalls, the moose, the bear, and the deer ; in the summer still less 
 trouble procured for them a variety of birds ; in both seasons, at 
 favorable times, the sea and the rivers afforded some supplies. . . . 
 
 Tobacco they cultivated for luxury, using it only in the way of 
 smoking. For food they raised maize, or Indian corn, the squash, 
 the pumpkin, the bean now called Seiva-bean, and a species of sun- 
 flower, whose esculent tuberous root resembled the artichoke in 
 taste. It has been asserted, but without probability, that they had 
 cucumbers and watermelons. One tool sufficed for their wretched 
 husbandry a hoe, made of a clam-shell or a moose's shoulder-blade, 
 fastened into a wooden handle. . . . 
 
 Fish were taken with lines or nets, the cordage of which was 
 made of twisted fibres of the dogbane, or of sinews of the deer. 
 Hooks were fashioned of sharpened bones of fishes and birds. 
 
 Flesh and fish were cooked by roasting before a fire on the point 
 of a stake, broiling on hot coals or stones, or boiling in vessels of 
 stone, earth, or wood. Water was made to boil, not by hanging the 
 vessel over a fire, but by the immersion in it of heated stones. The 
 
HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 Indians had not the art of making bread. They boiled their corn 
 either alone into hominy, or else mixed with beans, in which case the 
 compound was called succotash; or they ate the parched kernels 
 whole ; or with a stone pestle and a wooden mortar they broke them 
 up into meal, which, moistened with water into a paste, they called 
 nookhik. With a little of this preparation carried in a bag at the 
 girdle, and a similar frugal outfit of tobacco, they were provisioned for 
 a journey. Corn was laid up for winter supply in holes dug in the 
 earth, and lined on the sides, bottom, and top with bark. The Indian 
 did not feed at regular hours, but whenever hunger prompted, or the 
 state of his supplies allowed. He knew no drink but water, except 
 when he could flavor it with the sweet juice, for which, in spring, he 
 tapped the rock-maple tree. . . . 
 
 His axe, hatchet, chisel, and gouge were of hard stone, brought to 
 a sort of edge by friction upon another stone. The helve of the axe 
 or hatchet was attached either by a cord drawn tight around a groove 
 in the stone, or by being cleft while still unsevered from the tree, 
 and left to grow till it closed fast around the inserted tool. Bows 
 were strung with the sinews and twisted entrails of the moose and 
 the deer. Arrows were tipped with bone, with claws of the larger 
 species of birds, or with those artificially shaped triangular pieces 
 of flint, which are now often found in the fields. Spears were of 
 similar contrivance. Besides the stone hatchet, as a weapon of 
 offence, was the tomahawk, which was merely a wooden club, two 
 feet or more in length, terminating in a heavy knob. Mats served 
 as hangings for houses, and, with or without skins, according to the 
 season, as couches for repose, for which latter use they were laid 
 upon planks raised a foot or two from the ground. Vessels of 
 basket-work, of baked earth, or of hollowed wood or stone, com- 
 pleted the scanty inventory of household furniture. Personal orna- 
 ments consisted of greasy paint laid in streaks upon the skin ; of 
 mantles and head-gear made of feathers ; of ear-rings, nose-rings, 
 bracelets, and necklaces of bone, shells, or shining stones, and of 
 pieces of native copper, sometimes in plates, sometimes strung 
 together so as to make a kind of fringe. The pipe, with its bowl of 
 soft stone set upon a stem of hard wood two feet long, and often 
 elaborately carved and ornamented, was a personal object of special 
 consideration. The precious metals were unknown, as well as the 
 preparation of the ores of those employed in the useful arts. . . . 
 
 In the absence of gold and silver, they adopted a currency of what 
 was called wampum, or wampumpeag. It consisted of cylindrical 
 
JOHN GORHAM PALFREY. 17! 
 
 pieces of shells of the testaceous fishes, a quarter of an inch long and 
 in diameter less than a pipe-stem, drilled lengthwise so as to be strung 
 upon a thread. The beads of a white color, rated at half the value 
 of the black or violet, passed each as the equivalent of a farthing in 
 transactions between the natives and the planters. They were used 
 for ornament as well as for coin, and ten thousand have been known 
 to be wrought into a single war-belt four inches wide. They are 
 said to have been an invention and manufacture of the Nar- 
 ragansetts, and from them to have come into circulation among 
 the other tribes. . . . 
 
 His habits as a hunter and a warrior demanded and provided a 
 peculiar discipline for that class of the faculties which the phrenol- 
 ogists call perceptive. His quick sense readily detected changes in 
 the appearance of surrounding objects, and discerned their bearing 
 on the purpose of the hour. He tracked his game or his enemy by 
 indications on the surface of the ground, in the motions of trees, in 
 faint sounds without significance to another ear. No wonders of 
 nature or of art stimulated his dull curiosity, or lighted up his vacant 
 eye. But while his own countenance was rarely seen to express 
 emotion, he was skilled to read the passions of others in their aspect. 
 
 Beyond this little range, it is surprising to observe how destitute 
 he was of mental culture or capacity. The proceedings of the second 
 generation before his own were as unknown to him as the events of 
 the ancient world. In ballads, songs, or some other rhythmical 
 form of legend, most communities inherit some kindling traditions 
 of the past. The New England Indian had nothing of the kind, nor 
 of any other poetry. . . . 
 
 There has been a disposition to attribute to the red man the power 
 of eloquent speech. Never was a reputation so cheaply earned. A 
 few allusions to familiar appearances in nature, and to habits of 
 animals, constitute nearly all his topics for oratorical illustration. 
 Take away his commonplaces of the mountain and the thunder, the 
 sunset and the waterfall, the eagle and the buffalo, the burying of 
 the hatchet, the smoking of the calumet, and the lighting of the 
 council-fire, and the material for his pomp of words is reduced with- 
 in contemptible dimensions. His best attempts at reasoning or 
 persuasion have been his simplest statements of facts, themselves 
 sometimes, no doubt, sufficiently affecting. But whatever may be 
 thought of those most favorable specimens of his oratory in other 
 parts of North America, which must be allowed to be for the most 
 part of doubtful authenticity, certain it is that there is no recorded 
 
HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 harangue of a New England Indian which can assert a claim to 
 praise. Occasions enough occurred for creditable exhibitions in this 
 field. But the gift of impressive speech was not his. 
 
 HORACE MANN. 
 
 Horace Mann was born in Franklin, Mass., May 4, 1796. His parents were poor, and 
 his early life was a season of hard work, with few of the circumstances that give to boyhood 
 its long-remembered charms. He fitted for college in six months, by an amount of labor 
 that did him a lifelong injury, and entered the sophomore class in Brown University at the 
 age of twenty. He studied law and settled in Dedham, but afterwards removed to Boston. 
 He was elected to the State Senate in 1836, and the following year was chosen secretary of 
 the State Board of Education. The school system of Massachusetts, in its present effi- 
 ciency, was almost wholly created by his heroic efforts and personal sacrifices. Ignorance 
 and routine stood in the way, and his diary records only a series of struggles, made under 
 all kinds of discouragements. He continued in this office for twelve years, during which 
 time he made a series of annual reports, which form a library of educational science. Upon 
 the death of John Quincy Adams, he was chosen to represent his district in Congress, and 
 remained in that service six years, giving his whole heart and soul to the anti-slavery cause. 
 In 1853 he was invited to Ohio, to become president of Antioch College, at Yellow Springs. 
 His life there was full of anxiety and toil. The college was new, in debt, and wanting in 
 almost all things. Many of the people with whom he was associated did not share in 
 his aspirations for a high standard of attainment. Physical discomforts were numerous 
 and annoying. He lived to see great improvements in the college, but not until he was 
 worn out, mind and body, by his life of excessive labor. He died August 2, 1859. His 
 remains rest in a burying-ground at Providence, R. I. His statue in bronze (not so artistic 
 as might be desired) stands in the State House yard, in Boston, opposite to that of 
 Webster. 
 
 The writings of Mann are full of good sense and apt illustration, and are clear, and often 
 elegant in style. Specimens could have been taken which would have better exhibited the 
 higher powers of his mind, but the one here printed is a useful part of our history to remem- 
 ber. His life, written by his wife, with selections from his works, has been published, in 
 3 vols., i2mo., by Lee & Shepard, Boston. 
 
 HOW SCHOOL-HOUSES WERE SOMETIMES BUILT. 
 
 THE voice of nature forbids the infliction of annoyance, discom- 
 fort, pain upon a child while engaged in study. If he actually suf- 
 fers from position, or heat, or cold, or fear, not only is a portion of 
 the energy of his mind withdrawn from his lesson, all of which 
 should be concentrated upon it, but at that undiscriminating age 
 the pain blends itself with the study, makes part of the remembrance 
 of it, and thus curiosity and the love of learning are deadened, or 
 
HORACE MANN. 173 
 
 turned away towards vicious objects. This is the philosophy of 
 children's hating study. We insulate them by fear ; we touch them 
 with non-conductors, and then, because they emit no spark, we 
 gravely aver that they are non-electric bodies. If possible, pleasure 
 should be made to flow like a sweet atmosphere around the early 
 learner, and pain be kept beyond the association of ideas. You 
 cannot open blossoms with a north-east storm. The buds of 
 the hardiest plants will wait for the genial influences of the sun, 
 though they perish while waiting. The first practical application 
 of these truths, in relation to our common schools, is to school-house 
 architecture a subject so little regarded, yet so vitally important. 
 The construction of school-houses involves, not the love of study 
 and proficiency only, but health and length of life. I have the testi- 
 mony of many eminent physicians to this fact. They assure me that 
 it is within their own personal knowledge, that there is annually loss 
 of life, destruction of health, and such anatomical distortion as ren- 
 ders life hardly worth possessing, growing out of the bad construc- 
 tion of our school-houses. Nor is this evil confined to a few of them 
 only ; it is a very general calamity. I have seen many school- 
 houses, in central districts of rich and populous towns, where each 
 seat connected with a desk consisted only of an upright post or 
 pedestal, jutting up out of the floor, the upper end of which was 
 only about eight or ten inches square, without side-arms or back- 
 board, and some of them so high that the feet of the children in vain 
 sought after the floor. They were beyond soundings. Yet, on the 
 hard top of these stumps the masters and misses of the school must 
 balance themselves, as well as they can, for six hours in a day. All 
 attempts to preserve silence in such a house are not only vain, but 
 cruel. Nothing but absolute impalement could keep a live child 
 still on such a seat, and you would hardly think him worth living 
 if it could. The pupils will resort to every possible bodily evolution 
 for relief; and after all, though they may change the place, they keep 
 the pain. I have good reasons for remembering one of another class 
 of school-houses, which the scientific would probably call the sixth 
 order of architecture, the wicker-work order ; summer houses for 
 winter residences, where there never was a severely cold day with- 
 out the ink's freezing in the pens of the scholars while they were 
 writing ; and the teacher was literally obliged to compromise between 
 the sufferings of those who were exposed to the cold of the win- 
 dows and those exposed to the heat of the fire, by not raising the 
 thermometer of the latter above ninety degrees, until that of the 
 
HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 former fell below thirty. A part of the children suffered the arctic 
 cold of Captains Ross and Parry, and a part the torrid heat of the 
 Landers, without, in either case, winning the honors of a discoverer. 
 It was an excellent place for the teacher to illustrate one of the facts 
 in geography, for five steps would have carried him through the five 
 zones. Just before my present circuit, I passed a school-house, the 
 roof of which, on one side, was trough-like, and down towards the 
 eaves there was a large hole, so that the whole operated like a tun- 
 nel to catch all the rain and pour it into the school-room. At first, 
 I did not know but it might be some apparatus designed to explain 
 the Deluge. I called and inquired of the mistress if she and her 
 little ones were not sometimes drowned out. She said she should 
 be, only that the floor leaked as badly as the roof, and drained off 
 the water. And yet a healthful, comfortable school-house can be 
 erected as cheaply as one which, judging from its construction, you 
 would say had been dedicated to the evil genius of deformity and 
 suffering. There is another evil in the construction of our school- 
 houses, whose immediate consequences are not so bad, though their 
 remote ones are infinitely worse. No fact is now better estab- 
 lished, than that a man cannot live without a supply of about a gal- 
 lon of fresh air every minute, nor enjoy good health, indeed, without 
 much more. The common air, as is now well known, is mainly 
 composed of two ingredients, one only of which can sustain life. 
 The action of the lungs upon the vital portion of the air changes 
 its very nature, converting it from a life-sustaining to a life- 
 destroying element. As we inhale a portion of the atmosphere, 
 it is healthful ; the same portion, as we exhale it, is poisonous. 
 Hence ventilation in rooms, especially where large numbers are 
 collected, is a condition of health and life. Privation admits of 
 no excuse. To deprive a child of comfortable clothes, or whole- 
 some food, or fuel, may sometimes, possibly, be palliated. These 
 cost money, and often draw hardly upon the scanty resources of 
 the poor. But what shall we say of stinting and starving a child 
 in regard to the prime necessary of life fresh air ? of holding 
 his mouth, as it were, lest he should obtain a sufficiency of that 
 vital element which God, in his munificence, has poured out, a 
 hundred miles deep, all around the globe ? Of productions, reared 
 or transported by human toil, there may be a dearth. At any 
 rate, frugality in such things is commendable. But to put a child 
 on short allowances out of this sky-full of air is enough to make 
 a miser weep. It is as absurd as it would have been for Noah, 
 
WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT. 175 
 
 while the torrents of rain were still descending, to have put his 
 family upon short allowances of water. This vast quantity of air 
 was given us to supersede the necessity of ever using it at second 
 hand. Heaven has ordained this matter with adorable wisdom. 
 That very portion of the air which we turn into poison by respir- 
 ing it, becomes the aliment of vegetation. What is death to us, 
 is life to all verdure and flovverage. And again, vegetation rejects 
 the ingredient which is life to us. Thus the equilibrium is forever 
 restored, or, rather, it is never destroyed. In this perpetual circuit, 
 the atmosphere is forever renovated, and made the sustainer of life, 
 both for the animal and vegetable worlds. 
 
 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT. 
 
 William Hickling Prescott was born at Salem. Mass., May 4, 1796. He entered Harvard 
 College in 1811, and had intended on graduation to study law, but an injury to one of his eyes, 
 received while in college, so far impaired his sight that his plans in life were changed. He 
 sailed to Europe to consult eminent oculists, but received no benefit from their treatment. 
 After two years he returned home and commenced literary studies, with the aid of a reader 
 and amanuensis. His first work, the History of Ferdinand and Isabella, appeared in 1837, 
 having cost the author more than ten years of labor. The Conquest of Mexico was pub- 
 lished in 1843, and the Conquest of Peru in 1847. He next undertook the History .of 
 Philip II. ; two volumes were published in 1855, and a third in 1858. The work was unfin- 
 ished at the time of his death, which occurred in Boston, January 28, 1859. 
 
 By common consent, Prescott is accorded the first place among our historians. In spite 
 of his partial blindness, his surroundings were highly fortunate. He inherited a good, but 
 not a great intellect, had scholastic training, abundant wealth, the aid of friendly criticism, 
 and the choice of new and untrodden fields. His histories are based on a thorough study 
 of original documents, and are composed with exceeding care. Contrary to the usual ten- 
 dency, his fondness for pictorial effect seemed to increase, and his last work is, more than 
 any former one, filled with brilliant scenes and episodes. But he was not a philosopher, and 
 made no attempt to deduce the political and moral laws of history ; and, besides, he is often 
 cool in the narration of atrocities which would make most men's sentences blaze with indig- 
 nation. 
 
 Besides the histories mentioned, he wrote a continuation of Robertson's History of 
 Charles V., giving an account of the cloister life of that monarch. He published, also, a 
 volume of miscellanies, mostly essays, written for the North American Review. 
 
 Mr. Prescott was a tall and handsome man, with singularly pleasing manners and 
 thoroughly amiable character. His habits were methodical, and his ample fortune enabled 
 him to gratify his tastes. He had three residences, all charming in their way, one in 
 Beacon Street, Boston, facing the Common, one at Lynn, with a magnificent ocean view, 
 and another at Pepperell, the home of his grandfather, who commanded the American forces 
 at the battle of Bunker Hill. His migrations accorded with the seasons ; and, such was the 
 perfection of his domestic arrangements, that he had only to wish for a change, and, like 
 Prince Houssain with his magic carpet, he found himself in the desired place, with his 
 necessary books, and other conveniences, ready to his hand. His library in Boston was a 
 beautiful room, filled with treasures of literature and art. The visitor, upon entering, might 
 
1/6 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 be surprised to find the author absent, but, if it was a favorable time, a section of the shelves 
 swung open, disclosing a passage to the plain upper room where the real work of the author 
 was done. 
 
 The reader will see a reference to a pair of swords, that belonged to Mr. Prescott, in the 
 first chapter of Thackeray's Virginians. The swords are now in the rooms of the Massa- 
 chusetts Historical Society. 
 
 Prescott's histories have a great and undiminished popularity, both in England and 
 America. In a single year over forty thousand volumes of his works were sold by his Bos- 
 ton publishers. They belong to that small class of books which have a solid basis of fact, 
 and at the same time the fascination of romance. 
 
 [From the History of Phillip II.] 
 THE BATTLE OF LEPANTO. 
 
 IT was two hours before dawn on Sunday, the memorable 7th 
 of October (1571), when the fleet weighed anchor. The wind had 
 become lighter, but it was still contrary, and the galleys were in- 
 debted for their progress much more to their oars than their sails. 
 By sunrise they were abreast of the Curzolari, a cluster of huge 
 rocks, or rocky islets, which on the north defends the entrance 
 of the Gulf of Lepanto. The fleet moved laboriously along, while 
 every eye was strained to catch the first glimpse of the hostile 
 navy. At length the watch on the fore-top of the Real called out 
 " A sail ! " and soon after declared that the whole Ottoman fleet 
 was in sight. Several others, climbing up the rigging, confirmed 
 his report, and in a few moments more word was sent to the 
 same effect by Andrew Doria, who commanded on the right. 
 There was no longer any doubt, and Don John, ordering his pen- 
 non to be displayed at the mizzen-peak, unfurled the great stan- 
 dard of the League, given by the pope, and directed a gun to be 
 fired, the signal for battle. The report, as it ran along the rocky 
 shores, fell cheerily on the ears of the confederates, who, raising 
 their eyes towards the consecrated banner, filled the air with their 
 shouts. 
 
 The principal captains now came on board the Real, to receive 
 the last orders of the commander-in-chief. Even at this late hour, 
 there were some who ventured to intimate their doubts of the ex- 
 pediency of engaging the enemy in a position where he had a 
 decided advantage. But Don John cut short the discussion. " Gen- 
 tlemen," he said, "this is the time for combat, not for counsel." 
 He then continued the dispositions he was making for the attack. 
 He had already given to each commander of a galley written in- 
 structions as to the manner in which the line of battle was to be 
 formed in case of meeting the enemy. The armada was now dis- 
 
WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT. 1 77 
 
 posed in that order. It extended on a front of three miles. Far 
 on the right a squadron of sixty-four galleys was commanded by 
 the Genoese admiral, Andrew Doria, a name of terror to the 
 Moslems. The centre, or battle, as it was called, consisting of 
 sixty- three galleys, was led by John of Austria, who was supported 
 on the one side by Colonna, the captain general of the pope, and on 
 the other by the Venetian captain general, Veniero. Immediately 
 in the rear was the galley of the Grand-Commander Requesens, 
 who still remained near the person of his former pupil, though a 
 difference which arose between them on the voyage, fortunately 
 now healed, showed that the young commander-in-chief was wholly 
 independent of his teacher in the art of war. 
 
 The left wing was commanded by the noble Venetian Barbarigo, 
 whose vessels stretched along the yfctolian shore, to which he ap- 
 proached as near as, in his ignorance of the coast, he dared to ven- 
 ture, so as to prevent his being turned by the enemy. Finally, the 
 reserve, consisting of thirty-five galleys, was given to the brave 
 Marquis of Santa Cruz, with directions to act in any quarter where 
 he thought his presence most needed. The smaller craft, some of 
 which had now arrived, seem to have taken little part in the action, 
 which was thus left to the galleys. 
 
 Each commander was to occupy so much space with his galley 
 as to allow room for manoeuvring it to advantage, and yet not 
 enough to allow the enemy to break the line. He was directed to 
 single out his adversary, to close with him at once, and board as 
 soon as possible. The beaks of the galleys were pronounced to be 
 a hinderance rather than a help in action. They were rarely strong 
 enough to resist a shock from an antagonist, and they much inter- 
 fered with the working and firing of the guns. Don John had the 
 beak of his vessel cut away. The example was followed throughout 
 the fleet, and, as it is said, with eminently good effect. It may seem 
 strange that this discovery should have been reserved for the crisis 
 of a battle. . . . 
 
 The Ottoman fleet came on slowly and with difficulty. For, 
 strange to say, the wind, which had hitherto been adverse to the 
 Christians, after lulling for a time suddenly shifted to the opposite 
 quarter, and blew in the face of the enemy. As the day advanced, 
 moreover, the sun, which had shonft in the eyes of the confederates, 
 gradually shot its rays into those of the Moslems. Both circum- 
 stances were of good omen to the Christians, and the first was re- 
 garded as nothing short of a direct interposition from Heaven. 
 12 
 
HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 Thus ploughing its way along, the Turkish armament, as it came 
 more into view, showed itself in greater strength than had been 
 anticipated by the allies. It consisted of nearly two hundred and 
 fifty royal galleys, most of them of the largest class, besides a num- 
 ber of smaller vessels in the rear, which, like those of the allies, 
 appear scarcely to have come into action. The men on board, of 
 every description, were computed at not less than a hundred and 
 twenty thousand. The galleys spread out, as usual with the Turks, 
 in the form of a regular half-moon, covering a wider extent of sur- 
 face than the combined fleets, which they somewhat exceeded in 
 number. They presented, indeed, as they drew near, a magnificent 
 array, with their gilded and gaudily-painted prows, and their myriads 
 of pennons and streamers fluttering gayly in the breeze ; while the 
 rays of the morning sun glanced on the polished scimitars of Da- 
 mascus, and on the superb aigrettes of jewels which sparkled in the 
 turbans of the Ottoman chiefs. 
 
 In the centre of the extended line, and directly opposite to the 
 station occupied by the captain-general of the League, was the huge 
 galley of Ali Pacha. The right of the armada was commanded by 
 Mahomet Sirocco, viceroy of Egypt, a circumspect as well as a cou- 
 rageous leader ; the left by Uluch Ali, dey of Algiers, the redoubt- 
 able corsair of the Mediterranean. Ali Pacha had experienced a 
 difficulty like that of Don John, as several of his officers had strongly 
 urged the inexpediency of engaging so formidable an armament as 
 that of the allies. But Ali, like his rival, was young and ambitious. 
 He had been sent by his master to fight the enemy, and no remon- 
 strances, not even those of Mahomet Sirocco, for whom he had great 
 respect, could turn him from his purpose. 
 
 He had, moreover, received intelligence that the allied fleet was 
 much inferior in strength to what it proved. In this error he was for- 
 tified by the first appearance of the Christians, for the extremity of 
 their left wing, commanded by Barbarigo, stretching behind the 
 ^tolian shore, was hidden from his view. As he drew nearer, and 
 saw the whole extent of the Christian lines, it is said his countenance 
 fell. If so, he still did not abate one jot of his resolution. He spoke 
 to those around him, with the same confidence as before, of the result 
 of the battle. He urged his rowers to strain every nerve. Ali was 
 a man of more humanity in his nature than often belonged to his na- 
 tion. His galley-slaves were all, or nearly all, Christian captives, 
 and he addressed them in this brief and pithy manner : " If your 
 countrymen are to win this day, Allah will give you the benefit of it, 
 
WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT. 179 
 
 yet if I win it, you shall certainly have your freedom. If you feel 
 that I do well by you, do then the like by me." . . . 
 
 When the foremost vessels of the Turks had come within cannon 
 shot, they opened their fire on the Christians. The firing soon 
 ran along the whole of the Turkish line, and was kept up, with- 
 out interruption, as it advanced. Don John gave orders for trumpet 
 and atabal to sound the signal for action, which was followed by 
 the simultaneous discharge of such of the guns in the combined 
 fleet as could be brought to bear on the enemy. The Spanish com- 
 mander had caused the galleazzas, those mammoth war ships, of 
 which some account has been already given, to be towed half a mile 
 ahead of the fleet, where they might intercept the advance of the 
 Turks. As the latter came abreast of them, the huge galleys deliv- 
 ered their broadsides right and left, and their heavy ordnance pro- 
 duced a startling effect. Ali Pacha gave orders for his galleys to 
 open their line and pass on either side, without engaging these mon- 
 sters of the deep, of which he had no experience. Even so, their 
 heavy guns did considerable damage to several of the nearest ves- 
 sels, and created some confusion in the pacha's line of battle. They 
 were, however, but unwieldy craft, and, having accomplished their 
 object, seem to have taken no further part in the combat. 
 
 The action began on the left wing of the allies, which Mahomet 
 Sirocco was desirous of turning. This had been anticipated by Bar- 
 barigo, the Venetian admiral, who commanded in that quarter. To 
 prevent it, as we have seen, he lay with his vessels as near the coast 
 as he dared. Sirocco, better acquainted with the surroundings, saw 
 there was space enough for him to pass, and darting by with all the 
 speed that oars could give him, he succeeded in doubling on his 
 enemy. Thus placed between two fires,. the extreme of the Christian 
 left fought at terrible disadvantage. No less than eight galleys went 
 to the bottom, and several others were captured. The brave Bar- 
 barigo, throwing himself into the heat of the fight, without availing 
 himself of his defensive armor, was pierced in the eye by an arrow, 
 and, reluctant to leave the glory of the field to another, was borne to 
 his cabin. The combat still continued, with unabated fury, on the 
 part of the Venetians. They fought like men who felt that the war 
 was theirs, and who were animated not oniy by the thirst for glory, 
 but for revenge. 
 
 Far on the Christian right a manoeuvre, similar to that so success- 
 fully executed by Sirocco, was attempted by Uluch Ali, the dey of 
 Algiers. Profiting by his superiority in numbers, he endeavored to 
 turn the right wing of the confederates. It was in this quarter that 
 
l8O HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 Andrew Doria commanded. He had foreseen this movement of his 
 enemy, and he succeeded in foiling it. It was a trial of skill between 
 the two most accomplished seamen in the Mediterranean. Doria 
 extended his line so far to the right, indeed, to prevent being sur- 
 rounded, that Don John was obliged to remind him that he left the 
 centre too much exposed. His dispositions were so far unfortunate 
 for himself that his own line was thus weakened, and afforded some 
 vulnerable points to his assailant. These were soon detected by the 
 eagle eye of Uluch Ali, and, like the king of birds swooping on his 
 prey, he fell on some galleys separated by a considerable interval 
 from their companions, and, sinking more than one, carried off the 
 great Capitana of Malta in triumph as his prize. 
 
 While the combat opened thus disastrously to the allies, both on 
 the right and on the left, in the centre they may be said to have 
 fought with doubtful fortune. Don John had led his division gal- 
 lantly forward. But the object on which he was intent was an en- 
 counter with Ali Pacha, the foe most worthy of his sword. The 
 Turkish commander had the same combat no less at heart. The 
 galleys of both were easily recognized, not only from their position, 
 but from their superior size and richer decoration. The one, more- 
 over, displayed the holy banner of the League, the other the great 
 Ottoman standard. This, like the ancient standard of the caliphs, 
 was held sacred in its character. It was covered with texts from 
 the Koran, emblazoned in letters of gold, and had the name of Allah 
 inscribed upon it no less than twenty-eight thousand nine hundred 
 times. It was the banner of the sultan, having passed from father 
 to son since the foundation of the imperial dynasty, and was never 
 seen in the field unless the grand seignior or his lieutenant was 
 there in person. 
 
 Both the chiefs urged on their rowers to the top of their speed. 
 Their galleys soon shot ahead of the rest of the line, driven through 
 the boiling surges as by the force of a tornado, and closed with a 
 shock that made every timber crack and the two vessels quiver to 
 their very keels. So powerful, indeed, was the impetus they re- 
 ceived, that the pacha's galley, which was considerably the larger 
 and loftier of the two, was thrown so far upon its opponent that 
 the prow reached the fourth bench of rowers. As soon as the ves- 
 sels were disengaged from each other, and those on board had re- 
 covered from the shock, the work of death began. Don John's chief 
 strength consisted of some three hundred Spanish arquebusiers, 
 culled from the flower of his infantry. Ali, on the other hand, was 
 
WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT. l8l 
 
 provided with an equal number of janizaries. He was followed by 
 a smaller vessel, in which two hundred more were stationed as a 
 corps de reserve. He had, moreover, a hundred archers on board. 
 The bow was still as much in use with the Turks as with the other 
 Moslems. 
 
 The pacha opened at once on his enemy a terrible fire of cannon 
 and musketry. It was returned with equal spirit and much more 
 effect, for the Turks were observed to shoot over the heads of their 
 adversaries. The Moslem galley was unprovided with the defences 
 which protected the sides of the Spanish vessels, and the troops, 
 crowded together on the lofty prow, presented an easy mark to their 
 enemies' balls. But though numbers of them fell at every discharge, 
 their places were soon supplied by those in reserve. They were 
 enabled, therefore, to keep up an incessant fire, which wasted the 
 strength of the Spaniards, and as both Christian and Mussulman 
 fought with indomitable spirit, it seemed doubtful to which side vic- 
 tory would incline. . . . 
 
 Thus the fight raged along the whole extent of the entrance to the 
 Gulf of Lepanto. The volumes of vapor rolling heavily over the 
 waters effectually shut out from sight whatever was passing at any 
 considerable distance, unless when a fresher breeze dispelled the 
 smoke for a moment, or the flashes of the heavy guns threw a tran- 
 sient gleam on the dark canopy of battle. If the eye of the spectator 
 could have penetrated the cloud of smoke that enveloped the com- 
 batants, and have embraced the whole scene at a glance, he would 
 have perceived them broken up into small detachments, separately 
 engaged one with another, independently of the rest, and indeed 
 ignorant of all that was doing in other quarters. 
 
 The contest exhibited few of those large combinations and skilful 
 manoeuvres to be expected in a great naval encounter. It was rather 
 an assemblage of petty actions, resembling those on land. The gal- 
 leys, grappling together, presented a level arena, on which soldier 
 and galley-slave fought hand to hand, and the fate of the engagement 
 was generally decided by boarding. As in most hand-to-hand con- 
 tests, there was an enormous waste of life. The decks were loaded 
 with corpses, Christian and Moslem lying promiscuously together in 
 the embrace of death. Instances are recorded where every man on 
 board was slain or wounded. It was a ghastly spectacle, where 
 blood flowed in rivulets down the sides of the vessels, staining the 
 waters of the gulf for miles around. 
 
 It seemed as if a hurricane had swept over the sea, and covered 
 
1 82 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 it with the wreck of the noble armaments which a moment before 
 were so proudly riding on its bosom. Little had they now to remind 
 one of their late magnificent array, with their hulls battered, their 
 masts and spars gone or splintered by the shot, their canvas cut 
 into shreds and floating wildly on the breeze, while thousands of 
 wounded and drowning men were clinging to the floating fragments, 
 and calling piteously for help. Such was the wild uproar which suc- 
 ceeded the Sabbath-like stillness that two hours before had reigned 
 over these beautiful solitudes. 
 
 The left wing of the confederates, commanded by Barbarigo, had 
 been sorely pressed by the Turks, as we have seen, at the beginning 
 of the fight. Barbarigo himself had been mortally wounded. His 
 line had been turned. Several of his galleys had been sunk. But 
 the Venetians gathered courage from despair. By incredible efforts 
 they succeeded in beating off their enemies. They became the assail- 
 ants in their turn. Sword in hand, they carried one vessel after 
 another. The Capuchin was seen in the thickest of the fight, waving 
 aloft his crucifix, and leading the boarders to the assault. The 
 Christian galley-slaves, in some instances, broke their fetters and 
 joined their countrymen against their masters. Fortunately the 
 vessel of Mahomet Sirocco, the Moslem admiral, was sunk, and, 
 though extricated from the water himself, it was only to perish by 
 the sword of his conqueror, Giovanni Contarini. The Venetian 
 could find in his heart no mercy for the Turk. 
 
 The fall of their commander gave the final blow to his followers. 
 Without further attempt to prolong the fight, they fled before the 
 avenging swords of the Venetians. Those nearest the land endeav- 
 ored to escape by running their vessels ashore, where they aban- 
 doned them as prizes to the Christians. Yet many of the fugitives, 
 before gaining the land, perished miserably in the waves. 
 
 Barbarigo, the Venetian admiral, who was still lingering in agony, 
 heard the tidings of the enemy's defeat, and uttering a few words 
 expressive of his gratitude to Heaven, which had permitted him to 
 see this hour, he breathed his last 
 
 During this time the combat had been going forward in the centre 
 between the two commanders-in-chief, Don John and Ali Pacha, 
 whose galleys blazed with an incessant fire of artillery and musketry, 
 that enveloped them like " a martyr's robe of flames." The parties 
 fought with equal spirit, though not with equal fortune. 
 
 Twice the Spaniards had boarded their enemy, and both times 
 they had been repulsed with loss. Still their superiority in the use 
 
WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT. 183 
 
 of fire-arms would have given them a decided advantage over their 
 opponents, if the loss they had inflicted had not been speedily re- 
 paired by fresh re-enforcements. More than once the contest between 
 the two chieftains was interrupted by the arrival of others to take 
 part in the fray. They soon, however, returned to each other, as if 
 unwilling to waste their strength on a meaner enemy. Through the 
 whole engagement, both commanders exposed themselves to danger 
 as freely as any common soldier. In such a contest even Philip 
 must have admitted that it would be difficult for his brother to find, 
 with honor, a place of safety. Don John received a wound in the 
 foot. It was a slight one, however, and he would not allow it to be 
 dressed till the action was over. 
 
 Again his men were mustered, and a third time the trumpets 
 sounded to the attack. It was more successful than the preced- 
 ing. The Spaniards threw themselves boldly into the Turkish 
 galley. They were met with the same spirit as before by the 
 janizaries. Ali Pacha led them on. Unfortunately, at this moment 
 he was struck in the head by a musket-ball, and stretched sense- 
 less in the gangway. His men fought worthily of their ancient 
 renown. But they missed the accustomed voice of their com- 
 mander. After a short but ineffectual struggle against the fiery 
 impetuosity of the Spaniards, they were overpowered, and threw 
 down their arms. The decks were loaded with the bodies of the 
 dead and the dying. Beneath these was discovered the Turkish 
 commander-in-chief, severely wounded, but perhaps not mortally. 
 He was drawn forth by some Castilian soldiers, who, recognizing 
 his person, would at once have despatched him. But the disabled 
 chief, having rallied from the first effects of his wound, had sufficient 
 presence of mind to divert them from their purpose, by pointing out 
 the place below where he had deposited his money and jewels ; 
 and they hastened to profit by the disclosure before the treasure 
 should fall into the hands of their commanders. 
 
 Ali was not so successful with another soldier, who came up soon 
 after, brandishing his sword, and preparing to plunge it into the 
 body of the prostrate commander. It was in vain that the latter 
 endeavored to turn the ruffian from his purpose. He was a convict, 
 one of those galley-slaves whom Don John had caused to be un- 
 chained from the oar and furnished with arms. He could not believe 
 that any treasure would be worth so much as the head of the pacha. 
 Without further hesitation, he dealt him a blow which severed it 
 from his shoulders ; then, returning to his galley, he laid the bloody 
 
1 84 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 trophy before Don John. But he had miscalculated on his recom- 
 pense. His commander gazed on it with a look of pity mingled 
 with horror. He may have thought of the generous conduct of Ali 
 to his Christian captives, and have felt that he deserved a better 
 fate. He coldly inquired " of what use such a present could be to 
 him," and then ordered it to be thrown into the sea. Far from the 
 order being obeyed, it is said the head was stuck on a pike and 
 raised aloft on board of the captured galley. At the same time the 
 banner of the Crescent was pulled down, while that of the Cross, run 
 up in its place, proclaimed the downfall of the pacha. 
 
 The sight of the sacred ensign was welcomed by the Christians 
 with a shout of " Victory ! " which rose high above the din of battle. 
 The tidings of the death of Ali soon passed from mouth to mouth, 
 giving fresh heart to the confederates, but falling like a knell on the 
 ears of the Moslems. Their confidence was gone ; their fire slack- 
 ened ; their efforts grew weaker and weaker. They were too far 
 from shore to seek an asylum there, like their comrades on the right. 
 They had no resource but to prolong the combat or to surrender. 
 Most preferred the latter. Maiiy vessels were carried by boarding ; 
 others were sunk by the victorious Christians. Ere four hours had 
 elapsed, the centre, like the right wing of the Moslems, might be said 
 to be annihilated. 
 
 Still the fight was lingering on the right of the confederates, where, 
 it will be remembered, Uluch Ali, the Algerine chief, had profited 
 by Doria's error in extending his line so far as greatly to weaken it. 
 Uluch Ali, attacking it on its most vulnerable quarter, had suc- 
 ceeded, as we have seen, in capturing and destroying 'several vessels, 
 and would have inflicted still heavier losses on his enemy, had it not 
 been for the seasonable succor received from the Marquis of Santa 
 Cruz. This brave officer, who commanded the reserve, had already 
 been of much service to Don John when the Real was assailed by 
 several Turkish galleys at once during his combat with Ali Pacha, 
 for at this juncture the Marquis of Santa Cruz arriving, and beating 
 off the assailants, one of whom he afterwards captured, enabled the 
 commander-in-chief to resume his engagement with the pacha. 
 
 No sooner did Santa Cruz learn the critical situation of Doria, 
 than, supported by Cardonna, " general " of the Sicilian squadron, 
 he pushed forward to his relief. Dashing into the midst of the melee, 
 the two commanders fell like a thunderbolt on the Algerine galleys. 
 Few attempted to withstand the shock. But in their haste to avoid 
 it, they were encountered by Doria and his Genoese galleys. Thus 
 
WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT. 185 
 
 beset on all sides, Uluch Ali was compelled to abandon his prizes, 
 and provide for his own safety by flight. He cut adrift the Maltese 
 Capitana, which he had lashed to his stern, and on which three hun- 
 dred corpses attested the desperate character of her defence. As 
 tidings reached him of the discomfiture of the centre and of the death 
 of Ali Pacha, he felt that nothing remained but to make the best of 
 his way from the fatal scene of action, and save as many of his own 
 ships as he could. And there were no ships in the Turkish fleet 
 superior to his, or manned by men under more perfect discipline, 
 for they were the famous corsairs of the Mediterranean, who had 
 been rocked from infancy on its waters. 
 
 Throwing out his signals for retreat, the Algerine was soon to be 
 seen, at the head of his squadron, standing towards the north, under 
 as much canvas as remained to him after the battle, and urged for- 
 ward through the deep by the whole strength of his oarsmen. Doria 
 and Santa Cruz followed quickly in his wake. But he was borne on 
 the wings of the wind, and soon distanced his pursuers. Don John, 
 having disposed of his own assailants, was coming to the support 
 of Doria, and now joined in the pursuit of the viceroy. A rocky 
 headland, stretching far into the sea, lay in the path of the fugitive, 
 and his enemies hoped to intercept him there. Some few of his ves- 
 sels were stranded on the rocks. But the rest, near forty in num- 
 ber, standing more boldly out to sea, safely doubled the promontory. 
 Then, quickening their flight, they gradually faded from the horizon, 
 their white sails, the last thing visible, showing in the distance like a 
 flock of Arctic sea-fowl on their way to their native homes. . . . 
 
 It was, indeed, a sanguinary battle, surpassing, in this particular, 
 any sea fight of modern times. The loss fell much the most heavily 
 on the Turks. There is the usual discrepancy about numbers, but 
 it may be safe to estimate their loss at nearly twenty-five thousand 
 slain and five thousand prisoners. What brought most pleasure to 
 the hearts of the conquerors was the liberation of twelve thousand 
 Christian captives, who had been chained to the oar on board the 
 Moslem galleys, and who now came forth, with tears of joy stream- 
 ing down their haggard cheeks, to bless their deliverers. 
 
 The loss of the allies was comparatively small less than eight 
 thousand. That it was so much smaller than that of their enemies, 
 may be referred in part to their superiority in the use of fire-arms ; 
 in part also to their exclusive use of these instead of employing bows 
 and arrows, weapons on which, though much less effective, the 
 Turks, like the other Moslem nations, seemed to have greatly relied. 
 
1 86 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 Lastly, the Turks were the vanquished party, and in their heavier 
 losses suffered the almost invariable lot of the vanquished. 
 
 As to their armada, it may almost be said to have been annihilated. 
 Not more than forty galleys escaped out of near two hundred and 
 fifty which entered the action. One hundred and thirty were taken 
 and divided among the conquerors. The remainder, sunk or burned, 
 were swallowed up by the waves. To counterbalance all this, the 
 confederates are said to have lost not more than fifteen galleys, 
 though a much larger number, doubtless, were rendered unfit for 
 service. This disparity affords good evidence of the inferiority of 
 the Turks in the construction of their vessels, as well as in the nau- 
 tical skill required to manage them. A great amount of booty, in 
 the form of gold, jewels, and brocade, was found on board several 
 of the prizes. The galley of the commander-in-chief alone is stated 
 to have contained one hundred and seventy thousand gold sequins 
 a large sum, but not large enough, it seems, to buy off his 
 life. . . . 
 
 Another youth was in that fight who, then humble and unknown, 
 was destined one day to win laurels of a purer and more enviable 
 kind than those which grow on the battle-field. This was Cer- 
 vantes, who, at the age of twenty-four, was serving on board the 
 fleet as a common soldier. He had been confined to his bed by a 
 fever, but, notwithstanding the remonstrances of his captain, he in- 
 sisted, on the morning of the action, not only on bearing arms, but 
 on being stationed in the post of danger. And well did he perform 
 his duty there, as was shown by two wounds on the breast, and by 
 another in the hand, by which he lost the use of' it. Fortunately 
 it was the left hand. The right yet remained to indite those immor- 
 tal productions, which were to be known as household words, not 
 only in his own land, but in every quarter of the civilized world. 
 
 FRANCIS WAYLAND. 
 
 Francis Wayland was born in the city of New York, March n, 1796. He received his 
 education at Union College, and gave three years to the study of medicine, in Troy, N. Y., 
 but, having joined the Baptist church, he changed his original intention, and entered An- 
 dover Theological Seminary. He was tutor four years at Union College, and was afterwards 
 settled in Boston as pastor of the First Baptist Church, where he remained five years. He 
 was a professor at Union College for a few months, and was then (1827) chosen president of 
 Brown University, at Providence, R. I. His great practical talents, no less than his high 
 qualities of intellect and commanding personal influence, were soon felt in the prosperity and 
 
FRANCIS WAYLAND. l8/ 
 
 advanced standing of the institution. He brought about a change in the collegiate instruc- 
 tion, by which special courses were open to students, with corresponding degrees for profi- 
 ciency. He resigned his office in 1855, and died at Providence, September 30, 1865. 
 
 Dr. Wayland was a man of remarkable power and originality of thought, and his tastes 
 and studies inclined him to the pursuit of fundamental truths. His style was a reflex of his 
 mental traits, clear, cogent, and direct. His greatest work was his Elements of Moral 
 Science, which has long been a standard text book. He also wrote the Elements of Politi- 
 cal Economy, a Treatise on Intellectual Philosophy, Limitations of Human Responsibility, 
 a Life of Adoniram Judson, the missionary, Thoughts on the Collegiate System of the 
 United States, besides several volumes of sermons. His sermon on the Moral Dignity of 
 the Missionary Enterprise is a powerful production, noble in its leading motive, and rising 
 into passages of true eloquence. 
 
 Dr. Wayland was tall in stature, with a dignified presence, a massive, overhanging brow, 
 and deep set eyes. His manners were simple and affable, though habitually grave. 
 
 [From a Sermon on the Duties of an American Citizen.] 
 THE BIBLE AND THE ILIAD. 
 
 OF all the books with which, since the invention of writing, this 
 world has been deluged, the number of those is very small which 
 have produced any perceptible effect on the mass of human char- 
 acter. By far the greater part have been, even by their contem- 
 poraries, unnoticed and unknown. Not many a one has made its 
 little mark upon the generation that produced it, though it sunk 
 with that generation to utter forgetfulness. But, after the cease- 
 less toil of six thousand years, how few have been the works, the 
 adamantine basis of whose reputation has stood unhurt among the 
 fluctuations of time, and whose impression can be traced through 
 successive centuries, on the history of our species ! 
 
 When, however, such a work appears, its effects are absolutely 
 incalculable ; and such a work, you are aware, is the Iliad of Homer. 
 Who can estimate the results produced by the incomparable efforts 
 of a single mind ? who can tell what Greece owes to this first-born 
 of song ? Her breathing marbles, her solemn temples, her unri- 
 valled eloquence, and her matchless verse, all point us to that 
 transcendent genius, who, by the very splendor of his own efful- 
 gence, woke the human intellect from the slumber of ages. It was 
 Homer who gave laws to the artist ; it was Homer who inspired 
 the poet ; it was Homer who thundered in the senate ; and, more 
 than all, it was Homer who was sung by the people ; and hence 
 a nation was cast into the mould of one mighty mind, and the land 
 of the Iliad became the region of taste, the birthplace of the arts. 
 
 Nor was this influence confined within the limits of Greece. 
 Long after the sceptre of empire had passed westward, genius still 
 held her court on the banks of the Ilyssus, and from the country 
 
1 88 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 of Homer gave laws to the world. The light, which the blind old 
 man of Scio had kindled in Greece, shed its radiance over Italy ; 
 and thus did he awaken a second nation into intellectual existence. 
 And we may form some idea of the power which this one work has 
 to the present day exerted over the mind of man, by remarking, that 
 " nation after nation, and century after century, has been able to 
 do little more than transpose his incidents, new name his charac- 
 ters, and paraphrase his -sentiments." 
 
 But, considered simply as an intellectual production, who will 
 compare the poems of Homer with the Holy Scriptures of the Old 
 and New Testament ? Where in the Iliad shall we find simplicity 
 and pathos which shall vie with the narrative of Moses, or maxims 
 of conduct to equal in wisdom the Proverbs of Solomon, or sub- 
 limity which does not fade away before the conceptions of Job or 
 David, of Isaiah or St. John ? But I cannot pursue this compar- 
 ison. I feel that it is doing wrong to the mind which dictated the 
 Iliad, and to those other mighty intellects on whom the light of the 
 holy oracles never shined. Who that has read his poem has not 
 observed how he strove in vain to give dignity to the mythology of 
 his time ? Who has not seen how the religion of his country, una- 
 ble to support the flight of his imagination, sunk powerless beneath 
 him ? It is the unseen world, where the master spirits of our race 
 breathe freely, and are at home ; and it is mournful to behold the 
 intellect of Homer striving to free itself from the conceptions of 
 materialism, and then sinking down in hopeless despair, to weave 
 idle tales about Jupiter and Juno, Apollo and Diana. But the diffi- 
 culties under which he labored are abundantly illustrated by the 
 fact that the light which poured upon the human intellect taught 
 other ages how unworthy was the religion of his day, of the man 
 who was compelled to use it. " It seems to me," says Longinus, 
 " that Homer, when he describes dissensions, jealousies, tears, im- 
 prisonments, and other afflictions to his deities, hath, as much as was 
 in his power, made the men of the Iliad gods, and the gods men. 
 To men, when afflicted, death is the termination of evils ; but he 
 hath made not only the nature, but the miseries, of the gods 
 eternal." 
 
 If, then, so great results have flowed from this one effort of a sin- 
 gle mind, what may we not expect from the combined efforts of 
 several, at least his equals in power, over the human heart ? If that 
 one genius, though groping in the thick darkness of absurd idolatry, 
 wrought so glorious a transformation in the character of his coun- 
 
HUGH SWINTON LEGARE. 1 89 
 
 trymen, what may we not look for from the universal dissemination 
 of those writings, on whose authors was poured the full splendor of 
 eternal truth ? If unassisted human nature, spell-bound by a child- 
 ish mythology, have done so much, what may we not hope for from 
 the supernatural efforts of pre-eminent genius, which spake as it 
 was moved by the Holy Ghost ? 
 
 HUGH SWINTON LEGARE. 
 
 Hugh Swinton Legare (pronounced Legree) was born in Charleston, S. C, January 2, 
 1797, and was graduated at South Carolina College, Columbia. He commenced his legal 
 studies in Charleston, and in 1818 went to Europe to complete his education in the history 
 and philosophy of law. He returned to his native city with a high reputation for scholar- 
 ship, both in ancient and modern literature, and soon entered into public life. He was a 
 member of the state legislature for several years, until in 1830 he was made attorney general 
 of the state. In 1833 he was appointed charge d 1 affaires at Brussels, where he remained 
 three years. On his return he was elected a member of Congress, and upon the accession 
 of President Tyler, in 1841, was appointed attorney general of the United States. He 
 accompanied the president to Boston on the occasion of the completion of Bunker Hill 
 monument, and, being seized with a sudden illness, died June 20, 1844, at the house of his 
 friend and classmate, the late George Ticknor. 
 
 The writings of Mr. Legare consist of notes from his journal, a few speeches, and articles 
 written for the Southern Quarterly Review, and were published in 1846, in two volumes, 8vo., 
 with a memoir. The biographer was more enthusiastic than judicious. The learning of 
 Mr. Legare was unusual for a lawyer and politician, but it had not borne much fruit. His 
 essays are thoughtful and interesting, but have no special brilliancy of style, and lack fire as 
 well as imaginative power. 
 
 [From an Article on Sir Philip Sydney.] 
 INFLUENCE OF PURITANISM ON LITERATURE. 
 
 WITH the exception of Surrey, Wyatt, and Sackville, meritorious, 
 but still inferior poets, two centuries had passed away without pro- 
 ducing a single name worthy to be had in remembrance by posterity. 
 Chaucer and Gower, as we observed on a former occasion, had 
 hitherto found as few successors as Dante and Petrarch ; while, in 
 both countries, the national literature, after this period of darkness, 
 " burst forth with sudden blaze " about the same time, or at no great 
 interval. It is not improbable that this coincidence in so striking a 
 state of facts was produced by some general cause at least, by 
 some cause common both to Italy and England. But however that 
 may be, the revival of poetry had to encounter in the latter an 
 obstacle altogether unknown in the former country. This was the 
 rigorous, self-mortifying fanaticism of the Puritans. We do not 
 mean to derogate from the merit of the sect, whose stern discipline, 
 
I9O HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 
 like that of their archetypes in heathen antiquity, the Stoics, was so 
 
 admirably fitted for a period of trial and fiery persecution, and taught 
 so many patriots and heroes to think, to act, and to die, as becomes 
 men devoted to duty and to liberty. We are too well aware what 
 the world what we in particular, owe to the Long Parliament, and 
 who they were that most zealously promoted the reforms which it 
 made in the constitutional law of England. . . . 
 
 But highly as we appreciate the political services of these great 
 men, we must be allowed to dissent from some of. their views of 
 human nature. Their imaginations were so strongly possessed with 
 what they considered as the abominations of idolatry in those "gay 
 religions full of pomp and gold," from which they were desirous of 
 purging England, that they could tolerate in the church nothing but 
 the most absolute simplicity of forms, and the severest spirituality 
 in worship. The same modes of thought were naturally extended 
 to other subjects. In this vale of tears, how absurd, how criminal 
 was it to be gay ! How could a being, accountable for every idle 
 thought, indulge his fancy, with impunity, in vain and chimerical 
 figments, in foolish dreams of what he never could expect, or should 
 never wish to see realized ! . . . 
 
 Our answer to the dogmas of this school is the same that was 
 made to the Stoics two thousand years ago. They aim at a degree 
 of perfection if apathy is perfection quite inconsistent with the 
 nature of man and his relation to the world about him. They treat 
 him as if he were n.Q-body, but all understanding a mere mathe- 
 matical machine, whose only object is to know, whose only business 
 is to reason, and whose whole conduct in life is to be a sort of practi- 
 cal demonstration. All instructive impulse, however generous ; all 
 uncalculating affection, however sweet and consoling ; all feeling, in 
 short, unguarded, natural feeling, is unworthy of a rational being, 
 much more of a supremely wise man. According to this theory, 
 taste, and the sense of beauty and of melody, were given us in vain. 
 Imagination is no part of our original nature, but a consequence, 
 rather, and proof of its corruption. Nature is lovely in vain. Nay, it is 
 worse than in vain that she has poured her bounties forth with such 
 a lavish hand, and covered the earth with odors, fruits, and flowers, 
 with so many sources of enjoyment with so many scenes of 
 magnificence and attraction, ail but to delude, to insnare, and to 
 destroy us ! Everything about us, and within us, and above us, is 
 full of poetry, for everything is full of sublimity and beauty, 
 everything is calculated to inspire admiration or awaken love in 
 
WILLIAM WARE. IQI 
 
 rational creatures, and in them alone. Yet, to enjoy the very pleas- 
 ures, to cultivate the very perceptions and faculties that most dis- 
 tinguish them from the brutes that perish, is folly, or worse, in the 
 opinions of those who talk, in the loftiest strain, of the privileges 
 and pre-eminence of human reason. . . . 
 
 True poetry, like true eloquence, is the voice of nature appeal- 
 ing to the heart with its utmost sublimity and power. Its precepts 
 differ from those of philosophy only in their effect. Instead of 
 teaching merely, it persuades, elevates, inspires. It excites a feel- 
 ing where the other leaves only an opinion or a maxim. It proposes 
 examples of ideal excellence, and raises virtue into heroism. 
 
 WILLIAM WARE. 
 
 William Ware was born in Hingham, Mass., August 3, 1797, and was graduated at Har- 
 vard College in 1816. He entered the ministry, and preached in New York for sixteen years. 
 He is the author of three historical romances that have gained for him a permanent reputa- 
 tion. The first (published in 1836) is Zenobia, or the Fall of Palmyra, a series of letters 
 purporting to be written by a Roman, in which the splendors of the desert city, and its final 
 overthrow by the Emperor Aurelian, are described. The work shows an intimate acquaint- 
 ance not only with the history, but with the private life and manners of the age, and its style 
 is vivid and picturesque. The second (1838) is entitled Probus, and is a sequel of the nar- 
 rative of Zenobia. The third (1841) is Juiian, a picture of the scenes and events in Judea 
 during the latter years of Jesus Christ. Zenobia is the most brilliant of the series, but all 
 possess a high order of merit. 
 
 Mr. Ware was afterwards settled over a church in West Cambridge, but resigned on 
 account of ill health in 1845. He died at Cambridge, February 19, 1852. 
 
 [From Zenobia. ] 
 THE APPROACH TO PALMYRA. 
 
 UPON this boundless desert, which stretches from the Anti- 
 Libanus almost to the very walls of Palmyra, we now soon entered. 
 The scene which it presented was more dismal than I can describe. 
 A red moving sand, or hard and baked by the heat of a sun such 
 as Rome never knows, low gray rocks just rising here and there 
 above the level of the plain, with now and then the dead and glitter- 
 ing trunk of a vast cedar, whose roots seemed as if they had out- 
 lasted centuries ; the bones of camels and elephants, scattered on 
 either hand, dazzling the sight by reason of their excessive whiteness ; 
 at a distance, occasionally an Arab of the desert, for a moment 
 surveying our long line, and then darting off to his fastnesses 
 these were the objects which, with scarce any variation, met our 
 
I Q2 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 eyes during the four wearisome days that we dragged ourselves over 
 this wild and inhospitable region. A little after the noon of the 
 fourth day, as we started on our way, having refreshed ourselves 
 and our exhausted animals at a spring which here poured out its 
 warm but still grateful waters to the traveller, my ears received the 
 agreeable news that towards the east there could now be discerned 
 the dark line, which indicated our approach to the verdant tract that 
 encompasses the great city. Our own excited spirits were quickly 
 imparted to our beasts, and a more rapid movement soon revealed 
 into distinctness the high land and waving groves of palm trees 
 which mark the site of Palmyra. 
 
 It was several miles before we reached the city, that we suddenly 
 found ourselves, landing, as it were, from a sea upon an island or 
 continent in a rich and thickly peopled country. The roads 
 indicated an approach to a great capital, in the increasing numbers 
 of those who thronged them, meeting and passing us, overtaking us, 
 or crossing our way. Elephants, camels, and the dromedary, which 
 I had before seen only' in the amphitheatres, I here beheld as the 
 native inhabitants of the soil. 
 
 Frequent villas of the rich and luxurious Palmyrenes, to which 
 they retreat from the greater heats of the city, now threw a lovely 
 charm over the scene. Nothing can exceed the splendor of these 
 sumptuous palaces. Italy itself has nothing which surpasses them. 
 
 The new and brilliant costumes of the persons whom we met, 
 together with the rich housings or the animals they rode, served 
 greatly to add to all this beauty. I was still entranced, as it were, 
 by the objects around me, and buried in reflection, when I was 
 roused by the shout of those who led the caravan, and who had 
 attained the summit of a little rising ground, saying, " Palmyra ! 
 Palmyra ! " 
 
 I urged forward my steed, and in a moment the most wonderful 
 prospect I ever beheld no, I cannot except even Rome burst 
 upon my sight. Flanked by hills of considerable elevation on the 
 east, the city filled the whole plain below as far as the eye could 
 reach, both towards the north and towards the south. This im- 
 mense plain was all one vast and, boundless city. It seemed to me 
 to be larger than Rome. Yet I knew very well that it could not be 
 that it was not. And it was some time before I understood the 
 true character of the scene before me, so as to separate the city 
 from the country, and the country from the city, which here wonder- 
 fully interpenetrate each other ; and so confound and deceive the 
 
WILLIAM WARE. 193 
 
 observer. For the city proper is so studded with groups of lofty 
 palm trees, shooting up among its temples and palaces, and on the 
 other hand, the plain in its immediate vicinity is so thickly adorned 
 with magnificent structures of the purest marble, that it is not easy, 
 nay, it is impossible at the distance at which I contemplated the whole, 
 to distinguish the line which divided the one from the other. It was 
 all city and all country, all country and all city. Those which lay 
 before me I was ready to believe were the Elysian Fields. I 
 imagined that I saw under my feet the dwellings of purified men 
 __ajid. of gods.. Certainly they were too glorious for the mere earth- 
 born. There was a central point, however, which chiefly fixed my 
 attention, where the vast Temple of the Sun stretched upwards its 
 thousand columns of polished marble to the heavens, in its match- 
 less beauty casting into the shade every other work of art of which 
 the world can boast. I have stood before the Parthenon, and have 
 almost worshipped that divine achievement of the immortal Phidias. 
 But it is a toy by the side of this bright crown of the eastern capital. 
 I have been at Milan, at Ephesus, at Alexandria, at Antioch ; but in 
 neither of those renowned cities have I beheld anything that I can 
 allow to approach in united extent, grandeur, and most consummate 
 beauty, this almost more than work of man. On each side of this, 
 the central point, there rose upward slender pyramids, pointed 
 obelisks, domes of the most graceful proportions, columns, arches, 
 and lofty towers, for number and for form beyond my power to describe. 
 These buildings, as well as the walls of the city, being all either of 
 white marble, or of some stone as white, and being everywhere in 
 their whole extent interspersed, as I have already said, with multi- 
 tudes of overshadowing palm trees, perfectly filled and satisfied my 
 sense of beauty, and made me feel for the moment as if in such a 
 scene I should love to dwell, and there end my days. Nor was I 
 alone in these transports of delight. All my fellow-travellers seemed 
 equally affected ; and from the native Palmyrenes, of whom there 
 were many among us, the most impassioned and boastful exclama- 
 tions broke forth. " What is Rome to this ? " they cried. " Fortune 
 is not constant. Why may not Palmyra be what Rome has been 
 mistress of the world ? Who more fit to rule than the great Zenobia ? 
 A few years may see great changes. Who can tell what shall come 
 to pass ? " These, and many such sayings, were uttered by those 
 around me, accompanied by many significant gestures and glances 
 of the eye. I thought of them afterwards. We now descended the 
 hill, and the long line of our caravan moved on towards the city. 
 
 13 
 
194 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 A BREAKFAST-ROOM. 
 
 I WAS shown to a different apartment from that in which we had 
 supped, but opening into it. It was a portico rather than a room, 
 being on two sides open to the shrubbery, with slender Ionic pillars 
 of marble supporting the ceiling, all joined together by the light 
 interlacings of the most gorgeous creeping plants. Their odors 
 filled the air. A fountain threw up, in the most graceful forms, its 
 clear water, and spread all around an agreeable coolness. Standing 
 at those points where flights of steps led down to the walks and 
 plats of grass and flowers, which wound about the palace, the eye 
 wandered'pver the rich scene of verdure and blossom which they 
 presented, and then rested where it can never rest too often or too 
 long upon the glittering shafts of the Temple of the Sun. This 
 morning prospect, from the single point, I thought was reward 
 enough for my long voyage and hot journey over the desert. 
 
 THE STREETS. 
 
 THE streets, seen now under the advantages of a warm morning 
 sun, adding a beauty of its own to whatever it glanced upon, showed 
 much more brilliantly than ours of Rome. 
 
 There is, in tlie first place, a more general sumptuousness in 
 equipage and ctress, very striking to the eye of a Roman. Not, per- 
 haps, that more wealth is displayed, but the forms and the colors 
 through which it displays itself are more various, more tasteful, 
 more gorgeous. Nothing can exceed, nothing equals, it is said, any- 
 wjiere in the world/ the state of the queen and her court ; and this 
 infects, if I may use so harsh a word, the whole city. So that, 
 though with far less of real substantial riches than we have, their 
 extravagance and luxury are equal, and their taste far before us. 
 Then everything wears a newer, fresher ,look\ than in Rome. The 
 buildings of the republic, which many are so desirous to preserve, 
 and whole streets even of ante-Augustan architecture, tend to spread 
 around here and there in Rome a gloom, to me full of beauty and 
 poetry, but still gloom. Here all is bright and gay. The build- 
 ings of marble ; the streets paved and clean ; frequent fountains 
 of water throwing up their foaming jets, and shedding around a 
 delicious coolness ; temples, and palaces of the nobles, or of 
 wealthy Palmyrene merchants, altogether present a more brilliant 
 
WILLIAM WARE. 1 95 
 
 assemblage of objects than I suppose any other city can boast. 
 Then conceive, poured through these long lines of beautiful edifices, 
 among these temples and fountains, a population drawn from every 
 country of the far East, arrayed in every variety of the most showy 
 and fanciful costume, with the singular animals, rarely seen in our 
 streets, but here met at every turn elephants, camels, and drome- 
 daries, to say nothing of the Arabian horses, with their jewelled 
 housings, with every now and then a troop of the queen's cavalry, 
 moving along to the sound of their clanging trumpets conceive, I 
 say, this ceaseless tide of various animal life poured along among 
 the proud piles, and choking the ways, and you will have some faint 
 glimpse of the strange and imposing reality. l 
 
 THE QUEEN. 
 
 WE had been here not many minutes, before the shouts of the 
 people, and the braying of martial music, and the confused sound of 
 an approaching multitude, showed that the queen was near. Troops 
 of horse, variously caparisoned, each more brilliantly as it seemed 
 than another, preceded a train of sumptuary elephants and camels, 
 these, too, richly dressed, but heavily loaded. Then came the body- 
 guard of the queen, in armor of complete steel ; and then the 
 chariot of Zenobia, drawn by milk-white Arabians. So soon as she 
 appeared, the air resounded with the acclamations of the countless 
 multitudes. Every cry of loyalty and affection was heard from ten 
 thousand mouths, making a music such as filled the heart almost 
 to breaking. 
 
 It was to me a moment inexpressibly interesting. I could not 
 have asked for more, than for the first time to see this great woman 
 just as I now saw her. I cannot, at this time, even speak of her 
 beauty, and the imposing, yet sweet dignity of her manner ; for it 
 was with me, as I suppose it was with all the diviner beauty of 
 the emotions and sentiments which were working at her heart and 
 shone out in the expressive language of her countenance, took away 
 all power of narrowly scanning complexion, feature, and form. Her 
 look was full of love for her people. She regarded them as if they 
 were her children. She bent herself fondly towards them, as if 
 nothing but the restraints of form withheld her from throwing her- 
 self into their arms. This was the beauty which filled and agitated 
 .me. I was more than satisfied. 
 
196 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 RUFUS CHOATE. 
 
 Rufus Choate was born in Essex, Mass., October i, 1799. He received his education at 
 Dartmouth College, and was graduated with the highest honors of his class in 1819. After 
 a year's service as tutor he commenced the study of law, and was for a year in the office of 
 William Wirt. at Washington. He was admitted to the Essex County bar in 1824, and 
 practised at Danvers, and soon after at Salem. His eminent abilities, conscientious indus- 
 try and zeal soon brought him into notice. He was elected a member of Congress in 1832, 
 but after one term of service he declined a re-election, and removed to Boston, as a more invit- 
 ing field for professional distinction. In 1841 he was chosen to succeed Daniel Webster in the 
 United States Senate, and at the close of his term returned to the bar. After the dissolu- 
 tion of the whig party, although he had been decidedly opposed to slavery, he supported 
 Mr. Buchanan and the democrats, alleging that the triumph of the new republican party 
 would lead to a dissolution of the Union. But he took no further active part in politics. 
 In 1859, being in failing health, he undertook a voyage to Europe, but by the advice of the 
 surgeon he left the ship at Halifax, and died there, July 13. 
 
 Mr. Choate was a man of brilliant intellect, strong in reason no less than in imagination, a 
 scholar by instinct and by habit, a master of all the arts of oratorical fence, full of playful 
 repartee and of unexpected, dazzling wit, and possessing a power over audiences never sur- 
 passed, if equalled, in this country. His efforts at the bar were wholly extemporaneous ; his 
 look of flashing intelligence, his melodious sentences, rich in learned allusions, and his won- 
 derful voice, that persuaded and commanded by turns, will be only matters of tradition. 
 Fortunately a few of his orations and discourses have been preserved, and from them posterity 
 will gather some hints of the fascination which this extraordinary man exerted. His mind 
 was so full, his fancy so exuberant, his choice of words so adjusted to the subtilest shades of 
 meaning, that he gave a splendor to the commonest themes, and transformed a country 
 justice's court, for the time, into a tribunal as august as the King's Bench. His pathetic 
 utterances will never be forgotten by those who heard them. His eyes brimming with 
 sensibility, and the melancholy beauty of his tones, gave to sentences like those in the 
 eulogy on Webster a melting charm that was beyond the actor's art. 
 
 Teachers of rhetoric will probably say, with justice, that his sentences are too long and 
 involved, and that his very affluence begets perplexity. But any advice to students to avoid 
 such faults is quite superfluous. Choate's was a tropical nature, fertile to profusion ; and 
 the sentences of luxuriant growth are its spontaneous expression. It would be just as much 
 to the point to advise pupils to avoid imitating Shakespeare or Jeremy Taylor We cannot 
 prescribe rules for mental processes. The compact and brilliant phrases of Emerson, and 
 the many-membered sentences of Choate, are alike proper to the men, as are the keen, 
 philosophic look of the one, and the inspired and irresistible presence of the other. 
 
 Mr. Choate was fortunate in his domestic relations, and the glimpses of his private life, 
 seen in his published letters, show that he was loved even more than he was admired. 
 
 His life and selections from his writings, edited by Professor S. G. Brown, have been 
 published in two volumes, 8vo., Boston, Little, Brown & Co. 
 
 [From the Eulogy on Daniel Webster.] 
 
 AND, therefore, it were fitter that I should ask of you, than speak 
 to you, concerning him. Little, indeed, anywhere can be added now 
 to that wealth of eulogy that has been heaped upon his tomb. 
 Before he died, even, renowned in two hemispheres, in ours he 
 seemed to be known with a universal nearness of knowledge. He 
 walked so long and so conspicuously before the general eye ; his 
 
RUFUS CHOATE. 
 
 actions, his opinions, on all things which had been large enough to 
 agitate the public mind for the last thirty years and more, had had 
 importance and consequences so remarkable anxiously waited for, 
 passionately canvassed, not adopted always into the particular meas- 
 ure, or deciding the particular vote of government or the country, 
 yet sinking deep into the reason of the people a stream of influence 
 whose fruits it is yet too soon for political philosophy to appreciate 
 completely ; an impression of his extraordinary intellectual endow- 
 ments, and of their peculiar superiority in that most imposing and 
 intelligible of all forms of manifestation, the moving of others' minds 
 by speech this impression had grown so universal and fixed, and 
 it had kindled curiosity to hear him and read him so wide and so 
 largely indulged ; his individually altogether was so absolute and so 
 pronounced, the force of will no less than the power of genius ; the 
 exact type and fashion of his mind, not less than its general magni- 
 tude, were so distinctly shown through his musical transparent 
 style ; the exterior of the man, the grand mystery of brow and eye, 
 the deep tones, the solemnity, the sovereignty, as of those who would 
 build states, where every power and every grace did seem to set its 
 seal had been made, by personal observation, by description, by the 
 exaggeration, even, of those who had felt the spell, by art, the 
 daguerreotype, and picture, and statue, so familiar to the American 
 eye, graven on the memory like the Washington of Stuart ; the nar- 
 rative of the mere incidents of his life had been so often told by 
 some so authentically and with such skill and had been so literal- 
 ly committed to heart, that when he died there seemed to be little 
 left but to say when and how his change came ; with what dignity, 
 with what possession of himself, with what loving thought forothers^ 
 with what gratitude to God, uttered with unfaltering voice, that it 
 was appointed to him there to die ; to say how thus, leaning on the 
 rod and staff of the promise, he took his way into the great darkness 
 undismayed, till death should be swallowed up of life ; and then to 
 relate how they laid him in that simple grave, and turning and 
 pausing, and joining their voices to the voices of the sea, bade him 
 hail and farewell. 
 
 But there were other fields of oratory on which, under the influence 
 of more uncommon springs of inspiration, he exemplified, in still 
 other forms, an eloquence in which I do not know that he has had a 
 superior among men. Addressing masses by tens of thousands in 
 
198 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 the open air, on the urgent political questions of the day, or de- 
 signated to lead the meditations of an hour devoted to the remem- 
 brance of some national era, or of some incident marking the progress 
 of the nation, and lifting him up to a view of what is, and what is 
 past, and some indistinct revelations of the glory that lies in the 
 future, or of some great historical name, just borne by the nation to 
 his tomb we have learned that then and there, at the base of 
 Bunker Hill, before the corner-stone was laid, and again when from 
 the finished column the centuries looked on him ; in Faneuil Hall, 
 mourning for those with whose spoken or written eloquence of free- 
 dom its arches had so often resounded ; on the rock of Plymouth ; 
 before the Capitol, of which there shall not be one stone left on 
 another, before his memory shall Jiave ceased to live in such 
 scenes, unfettered by the laws of forensic or parliamentary debate ; 
 multitudes uncounted lifting up their eyes to him ; some great his- 
 torical scenes of America around ; all symbols of her glory, and art, 
 and power, and fortune there ; voices of the past, not unheard ; 
 shapes beckoning from the future, not unseen sometimes that 
 mighty intellect, borne upwards to a height and kindled to an 
 illumination which we shall see no more, wrought out, as it were, 
 in an instant, a picture of vision, warning, prediction ; the progress 
 of the nation ; the contrasts of its eras ; the heroic deaths ; the 
 motives to patriotism ; the maxims and arts imperial by which the 
 glory has been gathered and may be heightened wrought out, in 
 an instant, a picture to fade only when all record of our mind 
 shall die. 
 
 In looking over the public remains of his oratory, it is striking to 
 remark how, even in that most sober and massive understanding 
 and nature, you see gathered and expressed the characteristic senti- 
 ments and the passing time of our America. It is the strong old 
 oak which ascends before you ; yet our soil, our heaven, are attested 
 in it as perfectly as if it were a flower that could grow in no other 
 climate and in no other hour of the year or day. Let me instance in 
 one thing only. It is a peculiarity of some schools of eloquence 
 that they embody and utter, not merely the individual genius and 
 character of the speaker, but a national consciousness, a national 
 era, a mood, a hope, a dread, a despair, in which you listen to the 
 spoken history of the time. There is an eloquence of an expiring 
 nation, such as seems to sadden the glorious speech of Demosthenes ; 
 such as breathes grand and gloomy from the visions of the prophets 
 of the last days of Israel and Judah ; such as gave a spell to the ex- 
 
RUFUS CHOATE. IQ9 
 
 pression of Grattan and of Kossuth, the sweetest, most mournful, 
 most awful of the words which man may utter, or which man may 
 hear, the eloquence of a perishing nation. There is another elo- 
 quence, in which the national consciousness of a young or renewed 
 and vast strength, of trust in a dazzling, certain, and limitless future, 
 an inward glorying in victories yet to be won, sounds out, as by voice 
 of clarion, challenging to contest for the highest prize of earth ; such 
 as that in which the leader of Israel in its first days holds up to the 
 new nation the Land of Promise ; such as that which in the well- 
 imagined speeches scattered by Livy over the history of the 
 " majestic series of victories," speaks the Roman consciousness of 
 growing aggrandizement which should subject the world; such as 
 that through which, at the tribunes of her revolution, in the bulletins 
 of her rising soldier, France told to the world her dream of glory. 
 And of this kind somewhat is ours ; cheerful, hopeful, trusting, as 
 befits youth and spring; the eloquence of a state beginning to 
 ascend to the first class of power, eminence, and consideration, and 
 conscious of itself. It is to no purpose that they tell you it is in 
 bad taste ; that it partakes of arrogance and vanity ; that a true 
 national good breeding would not know, or seem to know, whether 
 the nation is old or young ; whether the tides of being are in their 
 flow or ebb ; whether these coursers of the sun are sinking slowly to 
 rest, wearied with a journey of a thousand years, or just bounding 
 from the Orient unbreathed. Higher laws than those of taste 
 determine the consciousness of nations. Higher laws than those of 
 taste determine the general forms of the expression of that con- 
 sciousness. Let the downward age of America find its orators, and 
 poets, and artists to erect its spirit, or grace and soothe its dying ; 
 be it ours to go up with Webster to the rock, the monument, the 
 capitol, and bid " the distant generations hail " ! . . . 
 
 We seem to see his form and hear his deep grave speech every- 
 where. By some felicity of his personal life ; by some wise, deep, or 
 beautiful word spoken or written ; by some service of his own, or 
 some commemoration of the services of others, it has come to pass 
 that "our granite hills, our inland seas and prairies, and fresh, un- 
 bounded, magnificent wilderness ; " our encircling ocean ; the rest- 
 ing place of the Pilgrims ; our new-born sister of the Pacific ; our 
 popular assemblies ; our free schools ; all our cherished doctrines 
 of education, and of the influence of religion, and material policy 
 and law, and the Constitution, give us back his name. What 
 American landscape will you look on ; what subject of American 
 
20O HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 interest will you study ; what source of hope or of anxiety, as an 
 American, will you acknowledge that it does not recall him ? . . . 
 But it is time that this eulogy was spoken. My heart goes back 
 into the coffin there with him, and I would pause. I went it is a 
 day or two since alone, to see again the home which he so dearly 
 loved, the chamber where he died, the grave in which they laid him 
 all habited as when 
 
 " His look drew audience still as night, 
 Or summer's noontide air," 
 
 till the heavens be no more. Throughout that spacious and calm 
 scene all things to the eye showed at first unchanged. The books 
 in the library, the portraits, the table at which he wrote, the scien- 
 tific culture of the land, the course of agricultural occupation, the 
 coming-in of harvests, fruit of the seed his own hand had scattered, 
 the animals and implements of husbandry, the trees planted by him 
 in lines, in copses, in orchards, by thousands, the seat under the 
 noble elm on which he used to sit to feel the south-west wind at 
 evening, or hear the breathings of the sea, or the not less audible 
 music of the starry heavens, all seemed at first unchanged. The 
 sun of a bright day, from which, however, something of the fervors 
 of midsummer were wanting, fell temperately on them all, filled the 
 air on all sides with the utterances of life, and gleamed on the long 
 line of ocean. Some of those whom on earth he loved best still 
 were there. The great mind still seemed to preside ; the great 
 presence to be with you ; you might expect to hear again the rich 
 and playful tones of the voice of the old hospitality. ' Yet a moment 
 more, and all the scene took on the aspect of one great monument, 
 inscribed with his name, and sacred to his memory. And such it 
 shall be in all the future of America ! The sensation of desolate- 
 ness, and loneliness, and darkness, with which you see it now, will 
 pass away ; the sharp grief of love and friendship will become 
 soothed ; men will repair thither as they are wont to commemorate 
 the great days of history ; the same glance shall take in, and the 
 same emotions shall greet and bless the harbor of the Pilgrims, and 
 the tomb of Webster. 
 
GEORGE BANCROFT. 2OI 
 
 GEORGE BANCROFT. 
 
 George Bancroft was born at Worcester, Mass., October 3, 1800 and was graduated at 
 Harvard College in 1817. His college course was but the beginning of his education. He 
 sailed to Europe, and pursued a great variety of studies for five years under the most eminent 
 professors, at Gb'ttingen, Berlin, Heidelberg, Paris, and in several Italian cities, forming 
 acquaintances also with many of the most famous scholars and savants. On his return, he was 
 tutor at Harvard for a year, and was for a short time connected with the Round Hill classi- 
 cal school at Northampton. He was an avowed advocate of universal suffrage and of demo- 
 cratic principles, but he declined at that time to enter public life, as he had formed the design 
 of writing a history of the United States. The first volume of the history appeared in 1834. 
 The second volume was written in Springfield, in which place he resided for three years. 
 In 1838 he was appointed collector of the port of Boston, but neither his official duties nor 
 his party services drew his attention from historical composition, and his third volume was 
 published in 1840. He was an unsuccessful candidate for governor in 1844, and the follow- 
 ing year was appointed secretary of the navy by President Polk. It was due to his efforts 
 that the Naval Academy at Annapolis was established. In 1846 he was appointed minister to 
 England, and remained abroad until 1849, when he returned and resumed his literary work. 
 The fourth and fifth volumes were published in 1852, the sixth in 1854, the seventh in 1858, 
 the eighth in 1860, the ninth in 1866. The work is still unfinished, the last volume 
 bringing the narrative nearly to the close of the revolutionary war. It is understood that 
 the history will be completed to the peace of 1783 with the tenth volume. In 1867 he was 
 appointed minister to Berlin, a position that he still holds (1872). 
 
 Bancroft is the " standard " American historian ; the only one who has succeeded in attract- 
 ing general attention, and in being accepted by all parties as an authority. He takes a 
 philosophic view of events, and endeavors to show that the natural development of our gov- 
 ernment has been in accordance with the principles of the democratic party, as originated by 
 Jefferson, and carried out by Jackson and his successors. He has-been as fair as could be 
 expected from a partisan who had his own theory of politics^establish../^ As a narrative, the 
 work is clear and perspicuous ; but the style, though carefully finished, is not indica- 
 tive of genius. / There are certain episodes, in which the desire for picturesque effect is 
 quite evident ; but the author is learned and laborious, rather than spirited and graphic. 
 Perhaps it is too soon to expect a history of the United States that should unite accuracy 
 in details with dramatic grouping, high moral views, and an imaginative style. The time 
 may come for such a history ; but Bancroft's differs as much from that ideal work as a 
 topographical chart of Venice would differ from a painting by Turner of the domes of that 
 sea-born city. 
 
 It is not intended to depreciate the great merits of our historian ; for it remains true that 
 his work is much the best thus far attempted, and no intelligent American can afford to 
 leave it unread. 
 
 [From the History of the United States.] 
 
 WILLIAM PENN'S TREATY WITH THE INDIANS. 
 
 BENEATH a large elm tree at Shakamaxon, on the northern edge 
 of Philadelphia, William Penn, surrounded by a few friends, in the 
 habiliments of peace, met the numerous delegation of the Lenni 
 Lenape tribes. The great treaty was not for the purchase of lands, 
 but, confirming what Penn had written, and Markham covenanted, 
 its sublime purpose was the recognition of the equal rights of hu- 
 
2O2 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 manity. Under the shelter of the forest, now leafless by the frosts 
 of autumn, Penn proclaimed to the men of the Algonquin race, from 
 both banks of the Delaware, from the borders of the Schuylkill, and, 
 it may have been, even from the Susquehanna, the same simple 
 message of peace and love which George Fox had professed before 
 Cromwell, and Mary Fisher had borne to the Grand Turk. The 
 English and the Indian should respect the same moral law, should 
 be alike secure in their pursuits and their possessions, and adjust 
 every difference by a peaceful tribunal, composed of an equal num- 
 ber of men from each race. " We meet," such were the words of 
 William Penn, " on the broad pathway of good faith and good will ; 
 no advantage shall be taken on either side, but all shall be openness 
 and love. I will not call you children ; for parents sometimes chide 
 their children too severely : nor brothers only ; for brothers differ. 
 The friendship between me and you I will not compare to a chain ; 
 for that the rains might rust, or the falling tree might break. We are 
 the same as if one man's body were to be divided into two parts ; we 
 are all one flesh and blood." The children of the forest were touched 
 by the sacred doctrine, and renounced their guile and their revenge. 
 They received the presents of Penn in sincerity ; and with hearty 
 friendship they gave the belt of wampum. " We will live," said 
 they, " in love with William Penn and his children, as long as the 
 moon and the sun shall endure." This treaty of peace and friend- 
 ship was made under the open sky, by the side of the Delaware, 
 with the sun, and the river, and the forest for witnesses. It was 
 not confirmed by an oath ; it was not ratified by signatures and 
 seals ; no written record of the conference can be found ; and its 
 terms and conditions had no abiding monument but on the heart. 
 There they were written like the law of God, and were never for- 
 gotten The simple sons of the wilderness, returning to their wig- 
 wams, kept the history of the covenant by strings of wampum, and, 
 long afterwards, in their cabins, would count over the shells on a 
 clean piece of bark, and recall to their own memory, and repeat to 
 their children or to the stranger, the words of William Penn. New 
 England had just terminated a disastrous war of extermination ; the 
 Dutch were scarcely ever at peace with the Algonquins ; the laws 
 of Maryland refer to Indian hostilities and massacres, which ex- 
 tended as far as Richmond. Penn came without arms ; he declared 
 his purpose to abstain from violence ; he had no message but peace ; 
 and not a drop of Quaker blood was ever shed by an Indian. . . . 
 In the following year, Penn often met the Indians in council and 
 
GEORGE BANCROFT. 2O3 
 
 at their festivals. He visited them in their cabins, shared the 
 hospitable banquet of hominy and roasted acorns, and laughed, and 
 frolicked, and practised athletic games with the light-hearted, mirth- 
 ful, confiding red man. He spoke with them of religion, and found 
 that the tawny skin did not exclude the instinct of a Deity. " The 
 poor savage people believed in God and the soul without the aid of 
 metaphysics." He touched the secret springs of sympathy, and 
 succeeding generations on the Susquehanna acknowledged his 
 loveliness. 
 
 VIRGINIA IN EARLY TIMES. 
 
 THE genial climate and transparent atmosphere delighted those 
 who had come from the denser air of England. Every object in 
 nature was new and wonderful. The loud and frequent thunder 
 storms were phenomena that had been rarely witnessed in the 
 colder summers of the north ; the forests, majestic in their growth, 
 and free from underwood, deserved admiration for their unrivalled 
 magnificence ; the purling streams and the frequent rivers, flowing 
 between alluvial banks, quickened the ever-pregnant soil into an 
 unwearied fertility ; the strangest and the most delicate flowers grew 
 familiarly in the fields ; the woods were replenished with sweet 
 barks and odors ; the gardens matured the fruits of Europe, of 
 which the growth was invigorated and the flavor improved by the 
 activity of the virgin mould. Especially the birds, with their gay 
 plumage and varied melodies, inspired delight ; every traveller ex- 
 pressed his pleasure in listening to the mocking bird, which carolled 
 a thousand several tunes, imitating and excelling the notes of all its 
 rivals. The humming bird, so brilliant in its plumage, and so 
 delicate in its form, quick in motion, yet not fearing the presence of 
 man, haunting about the flowers like the bee gathering honey, re- 
 bounding from the blossoms into which it dips its bill, and as soon 
 returning " to renew its many addresses to its delightful objects," 
 was ever admired as the smallest and the most beautiful of the 
 feathered race. The rattlesnake, with the terrors of its alarms and 
 the power of its venom ; the opossum, soon to become as celebrated 
 for the care of its offspring as the fabled pelican ; the noisy frog, 
 booming from the shallows like the English bittern ; the flying 
 squirrel ; the myriads of pigeons,* darkening the air with the im- 
 mensity of their flocks, and, as men believed, breaking with their 
 
 * See Audubon, p. 69. 
 
2O4 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 weight the boughs of trees on which they alighted, were all 
 honored with frequent commemoration, and became the subjects of 
 the strangest tales. 
 
 The concurrent relation of all the Indians justified the belief that, 
 within ten days journey towards the setting of the sun, there was a 
 country where gold might be washed from the sand, and where the 
 natives themselves had learned the use of the crucible ; but definite 
 and accurate as were the accounts, inquiry was always bafHed ; and 
 the regions of gold remained for two centuries an undiscovered land. 
 Various were the employments by which the calmness of life was 
 relieved. 
 
 "George Sandys, an idle man, who had been a great traveller, and 
 who did not remain in America, a poet, whose verse was tolerated 
 by Dryden and praised by Izaak Walton, beguiled the ennui of his 
 seclusion by translating the whole of Ovid's Metamorphoses. To 
 the man of leisure, the chase furnished a perpetual resource. It 
 was not long before the horse was multiplied in Virginia ; and to 
 improve that noble animal was early an object of pride, soon to be 
 favored by legislation. Speed was especially valued ; and " the 
 planter's pace" became a proverb. Equally proverbial was the 
 hospitality of the Virginians. Labor was valuable ; land was cheap ; 
 competence promptly followed industry. There was no need of a 
 scramble ; abundance gushed from the earth for all. The morasses 
 were alive with water fowl ; the creeks abounded with oysters, 
 heaped together in inexhaustible beds ; the rivers were crowded 
 with fish ; the forests were nimble with game ; the woods rustled 
 with coveys of quails and wild turkeys, while they tang with the 
 merry notes of the singing birds ; and hogs, swarming like vermin, 
 ran at large in troops. It was " the best poor man's country in the 
 world." " If a happy peace be settled in poor England," it had 
 been said, " then they in Virginia shall be as happy a people as any 
 under heaven." But plenty encouraged indolence. No domestic 
 manufactures were established ; everything was imported from Eng- 
 land. The chief branch of industry, for the purpose of exchanges, 
 was tobacco-planting ; and the spirit of invention was enfeebled by 
 the uniformity of pursuit. 
 
GEORGE BANCROFT. 2O5 
 
 ROGER WILLIAMS. 
 
 WHILE the state was thus connecting by the closest bonds the 
 energy of its faith with its form of government, then appeared in its 
 midst one of those clear minds, which sometimes bless the world by 
 their power of receiving moral truth in its purest light, and of 
 reducing the just conclusions of their principles to a happy and con- 
 sistent practice. In February of the first year of the colony, but a 
 few months after the arrival of Winthrop, and before either Cotton 
 or Hooker had embarked for New England, there arrived at Nan- 
 tasket, after a stormy passage of sixty-six days, " a young minister, 
 godly and zealous, having precious gifts." It was Roger Williams. 
 He was then but a little more than thirty years of age ; but his mind 
 had already matured a doctrine which secures him an immortality 
 of fame, as its application has given religious peace to the American 
 world. He was a Puritan, and a fugitive from English persecution ; 
 but his wrongs had not clouded his accurate understanding ; in the 
 capacious recesses of his mind he had revolved the nature of intoler- 
 ance, and he, and he alone, had arrived at the great principle which 
 is its sole effectual remedy. He announced his discovery under the 
 simple proposition of the sanctity of conscience. The civil magis- 
 trate should restrain crime, but never control opinion ; should pun- 
 ish guilt, but never violate the freedom of the soul. The doctrine 
 contained within itself an entire reformation of theological juris- 
 prudence : it would blot from the statute-book the felony of non-con- 
 formity ; would quench the fires that persecution had so long kept 
 burning ; would repeal every law compelling attendance on public 
 worship ; would abolish tithes and all forced contributions to the 
 maintenance of religion ; would give an equal protection to every 
 form of religious faith ; and never suffer the authority of the civil 
 government to be enlisted against the mosque of the Mussulman or 
 the altar of the fire-worshipper, against the Jewish synagogue or 
 the Roman cathedral. It is wonderful with what distinctness Roger 
 Williams deduced these inferences from his great principle, the con- 
 sistency with which, like Pascal and Edwards, those bold and pro- 
 found reasoners on other subjects, he accepted every fair inference 
 from his doctrines, and the circumspection with which he repelled 
 every unjust imputation. In the unwavering assertion of his views 
 he never changed his position ; the sanctity of conscience was the 
 great tenet, which, with all its consequences, he defended, as he first 
 trod the shores of New England ; and in his extreme old age it was 
 
2O6 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 the last pulsation of his heart. But it placed the young emigrant in 
 direct opposition to the whole system on which Massachusetts was 
 founded ; and gentle and forgiving as was his temper, prompt as 
 he was to concede everything which honesty permitted, he al- 
 ways asserted his belief with temperate firmness and unbending 
 benevolence. 
 
 GEORGE PERKINS MARSH. 
 
 George Perkins Marsh was born in Woodstock, Vt., March 17, 1801, and was graduated 
 at Dartmouth College in 1820. He studied law, and was admitted to the bar at Burlington. 
 He was chosen a representative in Congress in 1842, and remained in service until 1849, 
 when he was appointed minister to Constantinople. In 1852 he was sent on a special mis- 
 sion to Greece. On his return he was almost constantly in public service in his native state 
 until 1861, when he was appointed minister to the Italian government, a position which he 
 now occupies. Mr. Marsh is an eminent scholar in the northern languages of Europe, and 
 holds a high place among philologists. His principal work, entitled Lectures on the Eng- 
 lish Language, is a treatise of great value, and possesses an unusual degree of interest. 
 
 [From Lectures on the English Language.] 
 
 No living language yet possesses a dictionary so complete as to 
 give all the words in use at any one period, still less all those that 
 have belonged to it during the whole extent of its literary history. 
 We cannot, therefore, arrive at any precise results as to the com- 
 parative copiousness of our own and other languages, but there is a 
 reason to think that the vocabulary of English is among the most 
 extensive now employed by man. 
 
 The number of English words not yet obsolete, but found in good 
 authors, or in approved usage by correct speakers, including the 
 nomenclature of science and the arts, does not probably fall short 
 of one hundred thousand. Now there are persons who know this 
 vocabulary in nearly its whole extent, but they understand a large 
 proportion of it much as they are acquainted with Greek or Latin, 
 that is, as the dialect of books, or of special arts or professions, and 
 not as a living speech, the common language of daily and hourly 
 thought. Or if, like some celebrated English and American ora- 
 tors, living and dead, they are able, upon occasion, to bring into 
 the field in the war of words even the half of this vast array of light 
 and heavy troops, yet they habitually content themselves with a much 
 less imposing display of verbal force, and use for ordinary purposes 
 but a very small proportion of the words they have at their com- 
 mand. Out of our immense magazine of words, and their combina- 
 
GEORGE PERKINS MARSH. 2O/ 
 
 tions, every man selects his own implements and weapons, and we 
 should find in the verbal repertory of each individual, were it once 
 fairly laid open to us, a key that would unlock many mysteries of 
 his particular humanity, many secrets of his private history. 
 
 Few writers or speakers use as many as ten thousand words ; or- 
 dinary persons, of fair intelligence, not above three or four thousand. 
 If a scholar were to be required to name, without examination, the 
 authors whose English vocabulary was the largest, he would prob- 
 ably specify the all-embracing Shakespeare, and the all-knowing 
 Milton. And yet in all the works of the great dramatist, there occur 
 not more than fifteen thousand words, in the poems of Milton not 
 above eight thousand. The whole number of Egyptian hieroglyphic 
 symbols does not exceed eight hundred, and the entire Italian ope- 
 ratic vocabulary is said to be scarcely more extensive. 
 
 To those whose attention has not been turned to the subject, 
 these are surprising facts ; but if we run over a few pages of a dic- 
 tionary, and observe how great a proportion of the words are such 
 as we do not ourselves individually use, we shall be forced to con- 
 clude that we each find a very limited vocabulary sufficient for our 
 own purposes. Although we have few words absolutely synony- 
 mous, yet every important thought, image, and feeling has numer- 
 ous allied, if not equivalent, forms of expression, and out of these 
 every man appropriates and almost exclusively employs those which 
 most closely accord with his own mental constitution, his tastes 
 and opinions, the style of his favorite authors, or which best accom- 
 modate themselves to the rest of his habitual phraseology. One 
 man will say a thankful heart, another a grateful spirit / one usually 
 e m pi oys fancy where another would say imagination ; one describes 
 a friend as a person of sanguine temperament, another speaks of 
 him as a man of a hopeful spirit; one regards a winter passage 
 around Cape Horn as a very hazardous voyage, another considers 
 it a peculiarly dangerous trip ; one man begins to build, another 
 commences building. Men of moderate passions employ few epi- 
 thets, with verbs and substantives of mild significations ; excitable 
 men use numerous intensives, and words of strong and stirring 
 meanings. Loose thinkers content themselves with a single expres- 
 sion for a large class of related ideas ; logical men scrupulously 
 select the precise word which corresponds to the thought they utter, 
 and yet among persons of but average intelligence each understands, 
 though not employing, the vocabulary of all the rest. 
 
 It is evident that unity of speech is essential to the unity of a peo- 
 
2O8 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 pie. Community of language is a stronger bond than identity of 
 religion or of government, and contemporaneous nations of one 
 speech, however formally separated by differences of creed or of 
 political organization, are essentially one in culture, one in tendency, 
 one in influence. The fine, patriotic effusion of Arndt, " Was ist 
 des Deutschen Vaterland ? " * was founded upon the idea that the 
 oneness of the German speech implied a oneness of spirit, of inter- 
 est, of aims, and of duties, and the universal acceptance with which 
 the song was received, was evidence that the poet had struck a chord 
 to which every Teutonic heart responded. The national language 
 is the key to the national intellect, the national heart, and it is the 
 special vocation of what is technically called philology, as distin- 
 guished from linguistics, to avail itself of the study of language as a 
 means of knowing, not man in the abstract, but man as collected into 
 distinct communities, informed with the same spirit, exposed to the 
 same moulding influences, and pursuing the same great objects by 
 substantially the same means. We are certainly not authorized to 
 conclude that all the individuals of a nation are altogether alike be- 
 cause they speak the same mother tongue, but their characters pre- 
 sumably resemble each other as nearly as the fragments of the com- 
 mon language which each has appropriated to his own use. Every 
 individual selects from the general stock his own vocabulary, his 
 favorite combinations of words, his own forms of syntax, and thus 
 frames for himself a dialect, the outward expression of which is an 
 index to the inner life of the man. No two Englishmen, Germans, 
 or Frenchmen speak and act in all points alike, yet in character as 
 well as in speech they would generally be found to have more points 
 of sympathy and resemblance with each other than either of them 
 with any man of a different tongue. 
 
 The relations between the grammatical structure or general idiom 
 of a language and the moral and intellectual character of those who 
 speak it, are usually much more uncertain and obscure than the con- 
 nection between the particular words which compose their stock, and 
 the thoughts, habits, and tendencies of those who employ them. 
 Except under circumstances where our mouths are sealed and our 
 thoughts suppressed, from motives of prudence, of delicacy, or of 
 shame, the names of the objects dearest to the heart, the expression 
 of the passions which most absorb us, the nomenclature of the re- 
 ligious, social, or political creeds or parties to which we have attached 
 
 ourselves, will most frequently rise to the lips. Hence it is the 
 
 
 
 * What is the German's fatherland? 
 
THEODORE DWIGHT WOOLSEY. 2CX} 
 
 vocabulary and the phraseological combinations of the man, or class 
 of men, which must serve as the clew to guide us into the secret 
 recesses of their being ; and in spite of occasional exceptions, appar- 
 ent or real, it is generally true that our choice of words, as also of 
 the special or conventional meanings of words, is determined by the 
 character, the ruling passion, the habitual thoughts ; by the life, in 
 short, of the man ; and in this sense Ben Jonson uttered a great 
 and important truth when he said, " Language most shows a 
 man : speak, that I may see thee ! It springs out of the most re- 
 tired and inmost parts of us, and is the image of the parent of it, 
 the mind. No glass renders a man's form and likeness so true as 
 his speech." 
 
 THED@RE DWIGHT WMLSEY. 
 
 Theodore Dwight Woolsey was born in the city of New York, October 31, 1801. He 
 received his education at Yale College, graduating in 1820. He spent two years in the 
 study of theology at Princeton, N. J., and two more as tutor at Yale. In 1831 he was ap- 
 pointed professor of Greek, and in 1846 was chosen president of the college, which place he 
 held until 1871. He has edited several Greek text books, and has been a frequent writer 
 for the reviews, especially the New Englander, which is published at New Haven. He 
 published a treatise upon the elements of International Law in 1860, and one upon Divorce 
 in 1869. A volume of his university sermons appeared in 1871, under the title of The Re- 
 ligion of the Present and the Future. 
 
 Dr. Woolsey has long been conspicuous among American scholars for the extent and 
 thoroughness of his learning, his power of thought, and his clear and admirable style. The 
 moral elevation of his character gives great and almost authoritative weight to his opinions, 
 especially upon questions of public law. During his long connection with the college his 
 personal influence has been constantly on the increase, and he is regarded by the graduates 
 with respect and love. 
 
 [From the Religion of the Present and the Future.] 
 " Other men labored, and ye have entered into their labors." John iv. 38. 
 
 LET us consider, in some of its particulars, this plan of God for 
 the human race that each generation enters into the labors of its 
 predecessors, reaping what they have sown, while at the same time, 
 if it is true to its appointed work, it hands over something more to 
 posterity than it had received. Reflect, then, first, on the labors 
 which the teachers of mankind have undergone, in order that the 
 world might reach its present state of advancement. The class of 
 teachers may be divided into two portions, into such as transmit 
 only and such as only originate. The first act directly on those 
 who are just following them in the order of time ; the others have a 
 
2IO HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 much wider field of direct action ; they are the teachers of all time, 
 " the masters of all who know." To few is it given, out of the whole 
 human race, thus to act over many ages and through many lands. 
 The greatest portio'n either move the thought of their own times in 
 new channels, or, in a more humble office still, simply make known 
 to others what they themselves have learned. Yet all these teachers 
 have labored, and men are entered into their labors. They have 
 labored hard and long. Men, as they enjoy a work of art or give 
 themselves to the study of a work of philosophy, must not suppose 
 that everything flowed smoothly while the composition was going 
 on, or that there were no difficulties in the preparation. " He that 
 goeth forth weeping, bearing precious seed," is the fit motto for all 
 who have employed their minds for the benefit of mankind. What 
 agony of mind have inventors endured ; what anxiety and heart- 
 sickness ; what unfruitful experiments, reaching through long years, 
 have they tried before success crowned their efforts ! The same is 
 true of any work of art which has long kept its place in the heart of 
 a nation or of the world. A work of genius is the essence, it may 
 be, of a whole life, the condensed knowledge, judgment, skill, that 
 make up the man. So, too, in all the sciences, as in the philosophy 
 of thought or of morals, what perplexities has a mind contended 
 with, what hope and patience has it spent, what weighings of evi- 
 dence, what reflection, what consultation have been needed before 
 the painful work of composition began. It must not be supposed 
 that glimpses of truth are vouchsafed to those that skim over the 
 surface of things in the spirit of curiosity or amusement, nor that 
 inventions enter vacant minds unsought and in full perfection ; nor 
 that to the great poet or painter even the labor of composition or of 
 correction, severe as it is, at all compares with that preparatory 
 thought and work on which the whole achievement depended. 
 
 So, also, the other class of teachers whose office it is to put knowl- 
 edge derived from others into form, and to train the minds of their 
 generations they, too, have labored long and earnestly in order to 
 fit themselves for their work. The conscientious instructor has gone 
 through three series of toils ; he has labored hard to learn as he 
 would have his scholars labor, he has qualified himself by still se- 
 verer toil for his special duty, and then comes the new office of im- 
 parting and guiding from day to day, the hardest labor of all, be- 
 cause the fruits of it do not at once appear. 
 
 Now into the labors of these classes of teachers and trainers each 
 new generation of the educated enters. You, my friends, are debtors 
 
THEODORE DWIGHT WOOLSEY. 211 
 
 to the past, and, indeed, to the remote past. For you Aristotle 
 thought his best thoughts, though they may have taken new shapes 
 before they reached your minds ; for you the Greek poets and the 
 English of high renown have sung their strains ; for you art has 
 brought to light its treasures ; for you discoverers have ventured 
 into untrodden seas ; a thousand forgotten names have lived and 
 wrought for your benefit, without whom, it .may be, society would 
 have been far behind its present point of advancement. For you, 
 too, the teacher of the present has spent the best hours of his life, 
 has thought his best thought, has patiently drilled and inculcated, 
 that you may enter into his labors, and may, if you will, go beyond 
 him in cultivation and in wisdom. . . . 
 
 The law of our race, which we have been considering, our depend- 
 ence on the past, and the hope of progress for the future, ought to 
 carry us out of ourselves, to unite us to our species, and to beget 
 within us sympathy with man. " Freely ye have received, freely 
 give," says the Master words which may be applied to all our 
 blessings, as well as to that most necessary one proceeding directly 
 from him. Men have lived in the past for us. In a world of igno- 
 rance, thousands have searched for knowledge as for hid treasures, 
 and their labors have blessed us. In a world of sin, multitudes 
 have lived and died to lay the foundations of order and justice, to 
 reform evils, and to show the path to God. 
 
 Unknown benefactors and teachers, as well as known, have handed 
 down to us all that enriches and purifies the soul. Is it nothing that 
 we are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses ? Or is 
 it nothing that the destinies of the world are in no small degree 
 dependent on each new generation ? Or that the success of all 
 efforts beyond the field of pure science grows, in a great degree, out 
 of the motive with which they were begun ? Let us come, then, into 
 sympathy with the wise and good of the past ; let us pay over to 
 others, in a grateful spirit and with interest, what we have received ; 
 let our aims in life respect the welfare of alL 
 
212 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 HORACE BUSHNELL. 
 
 Horace Bushnell was born April 14, 1802, in Litchfield, Conn., but at ten years of age 
 went to the town of Washington, in the same county, where he was reared. He was grad- 
 uated at Yale College in 1827, 2nd was, for a time, literary editor of the New York Journal 
 of Commerce. In 1829 he was appointed tutor in Yale College, where he remained two 
 years, studying law and afterwards theology. In 1833 ne was settled in Hartford as pastor 
 of the North Congregational Church, where he remained until June, 1859, when he re- 
 signed. His discourses attracted great attention on account of their rare qualities of style 
 and of their suspected heretical tendencies. On one occasion he was brought before the 
 association of Congregational ministers to answer the charge of invalidating the doctrine of 
 the Trinity. He was acquitted, and thereupon published a work in which he maintained 
 that "human language is incapable of expressing, with any exactness, theologic science ; " 
 and that many of the religious controversies have been disputes over mere words or phrases. 
 Neither his tastes nor his mental traits incline him to polemical theology ; not that he is not 
 a logical reasoner, but his nature is a sensitive one, and his discourses all show strong poetic 
 feeling, and a tendency to illustrate spiritual truth by natural images and analogies, rather 
 than to define it in exact formulas by sharp mathematical lines. It will be difficult to find 
 in the sermons of any modern author so many passages of moral and intellectual beauty as 
 Dr. Bushnell's discourses furnish. The current of his thought is strong, but not dogmatic ; 
 his piety is evidently the mainspring of his life, but it has no tinge of asceticism ; his imagi- 
 nation is his strongest intellectual faculty, but it is made subservient to the noblest uses. 
 
 Dr. Bushnell is a man of unpretending and natural manners, of great energy, and with a 
 'certain decision that belongs to the leaders of men. His genius is exemplified in conversa- 
 tion as well as in his works, and he is among the most active and public spirited of citizens. 
 The beautiful park in Hartford was secured, in a great measure, by his efforts. 
 
 We give a list of his works: Christian Nurture, 1847; God in Christ, 1849; Christ in 
 Theology, 1851; Sermons for the New Life, 1858; Nature and the Supernatural, 1858; 
 Christ and his Salvation, 1864 ; Work and Play, 1864 ; The Vicarious Sacrifice, 1866 ; 
 Moral Uses of Dark Things, 1868. In addition to these he has printed essays and ad- 
 dresses upon a wide range of topics, principally in the New Englander. 
 
 He visited Europe in 1845, and in parts of 1856-7 he was in California. 
 
 The extracts here given are from his last volume of sermons sermons so full of beauty 
 and of suggestive thought as to make the task of selection unusually difficult. 
 
 [From Moral Uses of Dark Things.] 
 THE USES OF OBLIVION. 
 
 IT will be obvious to any one at a glance, that God has not made 
 any such thing as a complete remembrance of past ages possible. 
 He writes oblivion against all but a few names and things, and emp- 
 ties the world to give freer space for what is to come. No tongue 
 could recite the whole vast story if it were known, the world could 
 not contain the books if it were written, and no mind, reading the 
 story, could give it possible harbor. Besides, there are things in the 
 past which no tradition can accurately carry, and no words represent. 
 Who that will untwist the subtle motives of action, can do it far 
 enough to make out anything better than a tolerable fiction ? Who 
 can paint a great soul's passion, as that passion, looked upon, painted 
 
HORACE BUSHNELL. 213 
 
 itself? To come down to things more humble, yet by no means 
 less significant, by what words can any one find how to set forth a 
 gait or a voice ? And yet if I could simply see the back of Cato 
 jogging out a-field, or hear one sentence spoken by Caesar's voice, it 
 really seems to me I should get a better knowledge of either, from 
 that single token, than I have gotten yet from all other sources, so 
 very impotent are words to reproduce, or keep in impression the 
 facts and men of history. We have a way of speaking, in which we 
 congratulate ourselves on the score of a distinction between what 
 are called the unhistoric and historic ages. The unhistoric, we 
 fancy, make no history, because they have no written language. 
 But having such a gift, with paper to receive the record of it, and 
 types to multiply that record, and libraries to keep it, and, back of 
 all, a body of learned scribes, who are skilled in writing history as 
 one of the elegant arts, we conclude that now the historic age has 
 come. 
 
 We do not perceive that, in just this manner, we are going to over- 
 write history, and write so much of it that we shall really have none. 
 If we had the whole world's history written out in such detail of art, 
 we could not even make anything of it the historic shelf of our 
 library would girdle the world. What, then, will our written history 
 be to us, after it has gotten fifty millions of years into its record ? 
 for we must not forget that the age we live in is but the world's 
 early morning. Calling it the historic age, then, what are we doing 
 in it but writing in oblivion, as the unhistoric age took it without 
 writing at all ? . . . 
 
 It will be seen that we do not lose our benefit in the past ages 
 because we lose the remembrance of their acts and persons. Do 
 the vegetable growths repine or sicken because they cannot remem- 
 ber the growths of the previous centuries ? Is it not enough that 
 the very soil that feeds them is fertilized by the waste of so many 
 generations mouldering in it ? The principal and best fruits of the 
 past ages come down to us even when their names do not. If they 
 wrought out great inventions, these will live without a history ; if 
 they unfolded great principles of society and duty, great principles 
 do not die ; if they brought their nation forward into power and a 
 better civilization, the advances made are none the less real that 
 their authors are forgotten. Their family spirit passed into their 
 family, and passes down with it. Their manners, and maxims, and 
 ideas flavored their children, then, after them, their children's chil- 
 dren, and so more truly live than they would in a book. . . . 
 
214 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 We all recognize it as the wondrous felicity of certain characters 
 that we know so little about them, and yet seem to know so much, 
 and that of a type so impressive. We say that we wish it were 
 possible to know more, which is very nearly equivalent, not un- 
 likely, if we could see it, to wishing that we knew less. For if 
 their full history were written, so as to answer all inquiries, and 
 bring all circumstances into light, the additions made would rather 
 stale and flatten the great character than raise it ; for one must 
 be a singularly perfect man to be lifted in majesty by picking up the 
 crumbs and saving the small items of his story. What greater 
 injury, in general, can befall a character than to have its story made 
 up in such nice precision as exactly to meet the little curiosities 
 of little minds ? To be so perfectly known argues a sad want of 
 merit, and, if the perfect story is but fiction, amounts to almost a 
 scandal. If Hamlet were known as perfectly as some of the critics 
 will show when they make out his story, he would be Hamlet no 
 longer. If Joan of Arc, not flitting into history and out again, had 
 come abroad duly certificated, with the facts of her biography regu- 
 larly made up, and all her supposed visitations, revelations, debates, 
 bosom struggles, and motives accurately detailed, she would only 
 seem to have been a case for the hospital, and would, in fact, have 
 been sent to the hospital before she had reached the field. She 
 struck, she won the post of leadership, as in God's mission, because 
 she spoke out of mystery, and took the faith of her time by the 
 spell she wrought in its imagination. And she wins a place with us 
 in the same manner, compelling us to supplement her almost un- 
 known story by the faiths and admirations challenged by the won- 
 drous, seemingly divine, force of her action, And therefore it is, I 
 conceive, that when God would paint, or have painted, some highest, 
 grandest miracle of character, setting it forth in a way to have its 
 greatest power of impression, he makes large use of oblivion, brush- 
 ing out and away all the trivialities and petty cumberings of the 
 story. Let the blank spaces be large enough to give imagination 
 play, and, for this, let as much be forgotten as can be, arid save the 
 few grand strokes that are to be the determining lines of the pic- 
 ture ; let the story be so scantily told that we shall often wonder, 
 and sometimes even sigh, that we have so little of it. Only so 
 could a real gospel be written. What we call our gospel is so writ- 
 ten, and no such life as that of a Christ could be otherwise given to 
 the world. A full-written, circumstantial biography would be a mor- 
 tal suffocation of his power. There was no way but to let oblivion 
 
HORACE BUSHNELL. 215 
 
 compose a good part of the story. And if we cannot imagine obliv- 
 ion to be inspired, we can perceive it to be one of the grandest of all 
 evidences of inspiration in the writers, that they could not stoop to 
 over-write and muddle their story by letting their foolish admirations 
 pack it full of detail. How very natural would it have been to write 
 a particular account of the infancy of Jesus, and of the whole thirty 
 years preceding his ministry, telling how he grew, and looked, and 
 acted, and what the people thought of him, calling it, perhaps, the 
 Volume I. of his biography. How often have we regretted this 
 missing picture, and longed to have had it supplied; with how 
 much real wisdom can we probably see in that 'foolish gospel of the 
 infancy which undertook afterwards to supply it. How easily could 
 it have been given by any one of the evangelists. And yet their 
 whole account of the infancy is made up in a few brief sentences. 
 John, the apostle, had Mary, the mother, with him we know not how 
 many years, and she told the story over, how tenderly, how many 
 times. He was getting old, too, when he wrote his gospel, and old 
 men are proverbially garrulous, and yet he says not one word of the 
 infancy, or gives any faintest allusion to Mary's conversations. 
 No ; he has something great to record here, and something which 
 can be fitly honored only in a few bold strokes of narrative, such as 
 will even make the story idealize itself more vividly than words can 
 describe it. Why should he pile it with cargoes of circumstance, 
 when the world itself could not contain the books, and Christ him- 
 self would be written out of his divinity by an itemizing gospel that 
 proposes to enhance his record. On this principle all the gospels 
 were written. 
 
 OF WINTER. 
 
 IT is most remarkable that we have, in our winter, a whole season 
 of the year that bears a look of unbenignity. We cannot say or 
 think that God is cold here to his children, but no reverence can hide 
 it from u>*, in these winter months of the year, that his physical treat- 
 ment is fearfully chill and severe. A pitiless, stern aspect rests upon 
 the world. The forests stand brown and bare. There is no song 
 in their tops ; they only roar and crackle to the blast in their frozen 
 branches. Lake and river bellow to the winds afar, as if monsters, 
 shut under by the freezing, were tearing to be free. The world's body 
 is not dressed, but shrouded rather, looking all the colder that we 
 see it in a laying out of white, unflushed by mortal sympathy. God's 
 
2l6 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 tenderness appears to be quite shut away, or shut in, by his cold. 
 The animals stand crouching in their yards, or under copse or wall, 
 holding their heads low to the storm, as if missing God's pity in it. 
 The little child, whom Christ would have taken up so fondly in his 
 arms, gets stalled in the snows, and, when his hands are freezing, 
 screams imploringly for help ; but help is nowhere, and God's unpity- 
 ing cold goes on to freeze him as remorselessly as if he were a man. 
 The traveller is overtaken at night on the prairie by a howling, wildly 
 driving storm ; all trace of a road is gone ; his point of direction is 
 lost, and he drives still on, still round and round, passing more than 
 once quite near the light which his wife has set in her window. She 
 is praying that God will spare him ; he himself is praying that God 
 will spare him for her dear sake and his children's ; but it is as if 
 the prayers themselves were falling under the snow. Two days 
 afterwards he and his exhausted team are found upright and stiff 
 in a snow-bed miles away. 
 
 Physically speaking, this is the picture of God's winter. Does 
 it represent him ? Certainly it does in some true sense, though 
 not in any such general and complete sense as to yield a just 
 conception of him. Many of God's doings and appointments do 
 not represent his feeling or disposition, but they only represent 
 the more truly his counsel, his purpose, his ends of discipline, 
 his modes of compelling industry, begetting reflection, setting 
 fast habits of attention, consolidating attributes of strength, that 
 are wanted to compose a manly character. 
 
 In this manner we shall see that God is represented rather by 
 the moral uses of winter, than by winter itself. ' Turning our 
 thoughts in this direction, then, we shall find enough to satisfy 
 us ; nay, we shall see the benignity of God unfolded here, if not 
 more tenderly, yet more convincingly, than in any of the softer sea- 
 sons of the year. . . . 
 
 Many think it a great misfortune that our excellent fathers did not 
 push their way farther south, at their landing, and seek out a softer 
 and more genial clime. There is no greater folly, as facts most con- 
 clusively show. If there be any people on earth who have reason to 
 accuse their climate, it is they who enjoy a perennial season of 
 growth and verdure, and a soft and sunny sky throughout the year. 
 There it is that mind also is soft, enervated by ease and luxury. 
 There it is that eternity offers beauty and bloom to minds that can- 
 not be moved by their attraction, and virtue by her stern require- 
 ments to souls too much relaxed by habits of ease and passion, to be 
 
MARK HOPKINS. 2 1/ 
 
 guided by sentiments of high responsibility. After all, the best fa- 
 vors of God are those which take on shapes of rigor and necessity, 
 and prepare the strongest hunger in us for the good of a world invis- 
 ible. The advantages of the body are poor and mean compared 
 with the advantages of character and religion. Understanding thus 
 our want, we shall thank God most for the frosts, and the snows, and 
 the sleet, and the bleak winds, and the raw, dank seasons inter- 
 spacing the cold. We shall be like the trees, coated in gems of ice 
 and glittering in thankfulness before him. For the winter of the 
 body is, in some very true sense, the summer of the mind. What 
 softer clime, then, shall the sons of New England envy wading 
 to their temples on the hills through wintery snows, gathered at their 
 firesides in domestic mutualities and pleasures, trained to close 
 economy and patient industry by the even balance of growth and 
 expenditure, rugged in their virtues as in their religious convictions, 
 and knowing how to gild the rigors of time with glories of future 
 expectation ? Whom, again we ask, of all that bask in the warmth 
 of skies more genial, have they to envy ? 
 
 MARK HOPKINS. 
 
 Mark Hopkins was born in Stockbridge, Mass., February 4, 1802. He received his edu- 
 cation at Williams College, where he was subsequently a tutor. He studied medicine, and, 
 after taking his degree, removed to New York city, and commenced practice. In 1830 he 
 returned to Williams as professor of moral philosophy and rhetoric, and in 1836 was chosen 
 president of the college, a position which he held until 1872. 
 
 Among his published works are, Lectures on the Evidences of Christianity (1846), Mis- 
 cellaneous Essays and Discourses (1847), Lectures on Moral Science (1862), Love as Law, 
 and the Law of Love (1863), and Baccalaureate Sermons and Occasional Discourses. 
 
 Dr. Hopkins is a man of remarkable vigor, and combines high intellectual qualities with 
 great practical and administrative talents. That Williams College has maintained so high 
 a rank among its contemporaries, while its income has been so small compared with that of 
 Harvard or Yale, is, in a great measure, owing to his wise management and to the confi- 
 dence felt in his character, and in his high aims for the institution. 
 
 [From an Oration, delivered December 22, 1853.] 
 THE LAW OF MORAL AND INTELLECTUAL INFLUENCE. 
 
 GOD has so constituted this world, and, doubtless, the universe, 
 that he who aims at and secures the highest good in any department 
 or sphere, will also incidentally, and so best, secure the greatest 
 amount of subordinate good. This is the general law, and whatever 
 exceptions to it there may seem to be are accidental and temporary. 
 
2l8 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 In this principle lies the secret of the unconscious power wielded by 
 our fathers. 
 
 Upon the general illustration of a proposition so broad as this, we 
 cannot now enter. It must suffice to notice its application in organic 
 systems, where there is mutual relation and interaction of parts. In 
 these, that which is highest is indeed formed by the lower, but when 
 formed it reacts upon that lower, and becomes necessary to its per- 
 fection. Thus the brain, the highest and most central part of the 
 body, is that to which all the other parts are subordinate ; but this 
 reacts, and ministers a pervading and vital influence to every inferior 
 part, essential both to their functions and growth, and the perfection 
 of the brain will both imply and secure that of every inferior part. 
 
 So in the tree. For the purposes of its own growth and well 
 being, it forms the leaves highest and last ; but it is only as these 
 expand freely in the air and sunlight that the. roots will strike them- 
 selves deepest, and the trunk be enlarged, and the vitality prolonged. 
 The tree grows from its top. And here is the model of political and 
 social growth. Society is built up like an individual. Like a tree, 
 it grows from its top. Let the nutritive and circulatory movements 
 of society flow freely on and up to the quickening and expansion of 
 an intellectual life, and that will so react as we see it doing in our 
 day, by the application of science to art, as to give to the material 
 interests themselves a range and power entirely unknown before. 
 And then let the top still expand into the higher air and purer light 
 of beauty, and of moral and religious truth, and in every fibre at the 
 root will be felt the upward movement ; and there will descend nutri- 
 tive power and regulative principles, causing a growth that will defy 
 the touch of time, that time will only strengthen and enlarge. The 
 elaborated wisdom of sages will descend and diffuse itself into all the 
 currents of thought, and reach the springs and motives of action, and 
 will eliminate evils by those gradual organic revolutions which come 
 on like the tide, but which no human power can set back. 
 
 The difficulty with past civilizations has been that they did not 
 form an adequate top. The products of the physical and intellectual 
 life circulated in and for themselves, and hence plethora, stagnation, 
 debility, spasms, and dissolution. This is the stereotyped round in 
 which families and nations perish through prosperity. But if these 
 products might flow on and up, if the affections might distribute 
 them rather than appetite, benevolence rather than ostentation, and 
 principle rather than fashion and caprice ; if they might minister to 
 a pure and spiritual religion, and be controlled and distributed by 
 
MARK HOPKINS. 
 
 that, it is not foi the imagination to depict the beauty and blessed- 
 ness that would pervade society. 
 
 Particularly do we believe that there would spring from this a 
 higher culture of all that pertains to beauty, and only from this a 
 permanent civil liberty. 
 
 There has been an impression that the virtues of our fathers were 
 stern and repulsive of beauty. And so is the mountain-top stern, 
 where the storms wrestle, and the snow abides, and the ice congeals ; 
 but from that mountain-top conies the beauty that looks up at its 
 base, and that skirts the stream on its long way to the ocean. So 
 will the sterner virtues always melt into beauty when the storms and 
 cold, with which they have to contend, have passed away. Beauty 
 is of God, and it cannot be that he who has woven the web of light 
 in its colors, and so wrought its golden threads into the tissue of 
 nature, who paints the flower, and unfurls the banner of sunset, 
 should not delight in all beauty, and that it should not proceed from 
 all godlikeness. We believe, indeed, that only as there are with 
 God himself, the high and stern mountains of a holiness and justice 
 unapproachable, does there proceed from him the smile that makes 
 the violet glad. Neither Christ nor his apostles concerned them- 
 selves with art ; they did not even speak of it. The struggle with 
 moral evil was too earnest. Let this be overcome, and the alliance 
 between the arts and the baser passions dissolved, and there would 
 spring up in connection with the industry, and science, and wealth 
 that religion would produce, a diffused beauty in nature and in art 
 of which we have now no conception. . . . 
 
 The principles that were cabined in the Mayflower, the same 
 once enclosed by the walls of an upper chamber in Jerusalem, and 
 that two hundred and thirty-three years ago this day, were first 
 breathed into the atmosphere of this continent from Plymouth Rock, 
 have seemed to abide in it there as a mighty spell, and have so dif- 
 fused and mingled themselves with it everywhere, that the whole 
 people breathe them in as with the very breath of their life,' and so 
 that no chemistry of tyranny, civil or ecclesiastical, can ever get 
 them out. They were never as strong as they are to-day. They 
 make little show of unity by great convocations. They affect no 
 pomp, and provide no prizes for a worldly ambition. They are in 
 the world under the same aspect and conditions as Christ himself 
 was as spiritual Christianity, and truth, and civil liberty have 
 always been. Wealth does not gravitate towards them ; fashion has 
 no affinity for them. The votaries of these more often detach them- 
 
22O HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 selves and float to other centres. In their simplicity they stand, 
 like the heavens, unpropped by visible pillars. They seem, if not 
 born, yet, as it were, born again for this continent and this age, and 
 for that oceanic breadth and depth of movement which is clearly be- 
 fore society and the church. They ally themselves with all that is 
 peculiar in our free institutions, with all that is most simple and 
 grand in the works of God, with all that is free and mighty in the 
 movements of the elements, with all that is comprehensive in charity, 
 and great in effort and self-sacrifice. 
 
 LYDIA MARIA CHILD. 
 
 Lydia Maria Child, daughter of David Francis, was born in Medford, Mass., February 
 n, 1802. Her first book, a story of the early settlement of the country, entitled Hobomok, 
 was published in 1824. The next year appeared The Rebels, a Tale of the Revolution. 
 She was married, in 1828, to David Lee Child, an editor and author of some note. She was 
 an advocate of the anti-slavery cause in its early and unpopular days, and wrote several 
 volumes upon the morals of the question. In 1836 she published a romance, entitled Philo- 
 thea ; a striking and beautiful picture of Athenian society in the time of Pericles. She has 
 written a great number of stories for young people, in which she has displayed a remarkable 
 faculty to interest and instruct. Excepting Hans Christian Andersen, she is almost without 
 a rival in this field. She is the author of a work on the Condition of Women in different 
 Ages of the World ; also of a philosophical treatise, in three volumes, entitled The Progress 
 of Religious Ideas. She has written a Life of Isaac T. Hopper, a benevolent Friend. 
 Letters from New York is a volume containing some of her contributions to the Anti- Slavery 
 Standard. 
 
 Mrs. Child is a woman of strong and generous impulses, with a lively sense of beauty, 
 especially fond of music, and of tracing fanciful analogies between its subtile suggestions and 
 the sister arts, believing in absolute truth and justice, but somewhat too enthusiastic to 
 preserve always the just balance of judgment. Her works apparently refle'ct her own nature, 
 and bring the reader and author face to face. In the haste of composition there are occa- 
 sional slips, and among so many works there is not a uniform standard of merit ; still 
 there are few authors that have added so much to the pleasure and to the moral culture 
 of our generation. It is to be hoped that a revised edition of her works may be published, 
 as many of them are now out of print. 
 
 In the Fable for Critics, there is a playful passage upon this author, under the name of 
 Philothea, which is, on the whole, a warm tribute to her noble qualities. We can give only 
 the concluding lines : 
 
 " Yes, a great soul 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, 
 'Tis 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 I " 
 
LYDIA MARIA CHILD. 221 
 
 [From Letters from New York.] 
 PROGRESS OF MORAL IDEAS. 
 
 March 29, 1844. 
 
 THERE have always been a large class of thinkers who deny that 
 the world makes any progress. They say we move in a circle ; 
 that evils are never conquered, but only change their forms. In 
 proof of this doctrine, they remind us that the many are now as 
 effectually kept in subjection to the few, by commercial fraud and 
 diplomatic cunning, as they once were by sword and battle-axe. 
 This class of reasoners are uncomfortable to the hopeful soul, the 
 more so because they can easily bring forward an array of facts, from 
 which, in the very nature of the case, it is impossible to evolve the 
 good and evil separately, to weigh them accurately, and justly de- 
 termine the results of each on the whole destiny of man. These 
 unbelievers point to the past, whose records are deeply graven, and 
 seen of all men, though they relate only to the externals of human 
 history ; while those who believe in perpetual progress found their 
 faith mainly on the inward growth and unwritten history of the 
 soul. They see within all events a spiritual essence, subtle, expan- 
 sive, and noiseless as light, and from the roseate gleam resting 
 on the horizon's edge, they predict that the sun will rise to its 
 zenith, and veil the whole earth in transfigured glory. 
 
 It is the mission of the prophet to announce, rather than to 
 prove ; yet facts are not wanting to prove that mankind have made 
 progress. Experience is not always at discord with hope ; perhaps 
 it is never so, if we could read history as the Omniscient reads it. 
 Doubtless the world does move in circles, and good and evil, re- 
 produced in new forms, bear a continual check-and-balance relation 
 to each other. But the circles in which we move rise in a perpet- 
 ually ascending series, and evil will finally be overcome with good. 
 The very fierceness of the conflict shows that this consummation is 
 approaching. There never was a time when good and evil, truth 
 and falsehood, were at work with such miraculous activity. To 
 those who look on the surface, it may seem as if the evil and false 
 were gaining the victory, because the evil and the false are always 
 more violent and tumultuous than the good and true. The tor- 
 nado blusters, and the atmosphere is still, but the atmosphere pro- 
 duces and sustains a thousand fold more than the tornado destroys. 
 The good and the true work for eternity in a golden silence. 
 
 The very uproar of evil, at the present time, is full of promise, for 
 
222 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 all evil must be made manifest, that it may be cured. To this end 
 divine Providence is continually exerted, both in the material and the 
 spiritual world. If the right proportions of the atmosphere are dis- 
 turbed, the discord manifests in thunder and lightning, and thus is 
 harmony restored. To the superstitious it sounds like the voice of 
 wrath, but it is only universal love restoring order to the elements. 
 
 November 7, 1844. 
 
 A FRENCH writer describes November as " the month in which 
 Englishmen hang and drown themselves." No wonder they are 
 desperate when they have an almost permanent fog superadded to 
 the usual gloomy accompaniments of retreating summer. In early 
 life I loved scenes that were tinged with sadness, because they in- 
 vited to repose the exuberant gayety of my own spirit. 
 
 " In youth we love the darksome lawn, 
 
 Brushed by the owlet's wing ; 
 Then twilight is preferred to dawn, 
 And autumn to the spring. 
 
 " Sad fancies do we then affect, 
 In luxury of disrespect 
 To our own prodigal excess 
 Of too familiar happiness." 
 
 But now, alas ! I have no joyousness to spare, and I would fain bor- 
 row from the outward that radiance which no longer superabounds 
 within. 
 
 I felt this oppressively the other day, when I went over to Staten 
 Island. Here and there, in the desolate fields, a long withered leaf 
 fluttered on some dried cornstalk, standing up like Memory in the 
 lone stubble-field of the Past, where once had been the green bud- 
 ding hopes and the golden harvests of fruition. The woods, which 
 I had seen in the young leafiness of June, in the verdant strength 
 of summer, and in their rich autumnal robe, were now scantily 
 dressed in most dismal brown. Some of the trees had dropped the 
 decaying vesture, and stood in distinct relief against the cold, gray 
 sky. But I found pleasure in their unclothed beauty, its character 
 was so various. The boughs of no two trees ever have the same 
 arrangements. Nature always produces individuals; she never 
 produces classes. Man is at war with her laws when he seeks to 
 arrange opinions into classes, under the name of sects, or employ- 
 ments into classes on account of sex, color, or condition, 
 
LYDIA MARIA CHILD. 223 
 
 The woods of Staten Island are very beautiful in their infinitely 
 various shading, from the deepest to the liveliest green. But neither 
 here nor anywhere else in the State of New York have I seen such 
 a noble growth of trees as in New England. When I think of the 
 magnificent elms of Northampton and Springfield, the kings of the 
 forest here dwindle into mere dwarfs in comparison. This slight 
 association of thought brought vividly before my inward eye the pic- 
 turesque valley of the Connecticut. I saw Mount Tom looking at 
 me gray and cold in the distance. I saw old Holyoke in various 
 garbs ; fantastic, grand, or lovely, as mists, cloud-shadows, storm, or 
 sunlight cradled themselves on his rugged breast. There always 
 seemed to me something peculiarly Christian in the character of 
 mountain scenery, forever pointing upward, rising with such serene 
 elevation above the earth, and overlooking the whole with such all- 
 embracing vision. In the groves I think of Dryads, by the ocean 
 I have many fancies of Nereids and Tritons, but never do I 
 think of 
 
 "Those lightsome foot maids, 
 The Oreads, that frequent the lifted mountains." 
 
 There is something in the quiet grandeur of the everlasting hills 
 that rises above the classic into the holy. 
 
 Their presence could never quite reconcile me to the absence of 
 the sea. My soul always yearns for that great type of power and 
 freedom ; its ever-recurring tides chained by the law of Necessity, 
 its mighty and restless waves fighting with the strength and energy 
 of Free Will the fierce old conflict that keeps our nature forever 
 striving and forever bound ; forever one hand winged and the other 
 chained. 
 
 But the mountains remind us of no such battles. They raise us 
 to the region where necessity and will are one. Calmly they breathe 
 into us the religious sentiment, and we receive it in unconscious 
 quietude ; like Wordsworth's shepherd, who 
 
 "Had early learned 
 
 To reverence the volume which displays 
 The mystery, the life which cannot die ; 
 But in the mountains did he feet his faith. 
 There did he see the writing. All things there 
 Breathed immortality, revolving life ; 
 There littleness was not : and the least things 
 Seemed infinite." 
 
 Filled with such emotions, I greet the mountains with reverent 
 love when I enter Massachusetts from the west, and see them rising 
 
224 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 up all round the horizon, in undulating lines, as if left there by re- 
 treating waves. At every turn of the road they tower before you, 
 veiled in the blue mist of distance. Look which way you will, " you 
 cannot get shut of them," as New Yorkers say. In this respect they 
 have often reminded me of remarkably clear visions of inward light, 
 guiding me in my spiritual pilgrimage through perilous seasons of 
 doubt and conflict ; so high above my own unaided intellectual per- 
 ceptions, that they served not merely as a candle for the present 
 moment, but remain like brilliant beacon-lights over the wide 
 waters of the future. 
 
 LEONARD BACON. 
 
 Leonard Bacon was born in Detroit, Mich., February 19, 1802. His father was a native 
 of Connecticut, and had been sent to the West as a missionary to the Indians. He was 
 graduated at Yale College in 1820, and, after pursuing a theological course at Andover, was 
 settled, in 1825, as pastor of the Centre Church, in New Haven. His connection with the 
 church has not been severed, although he has held a chair in the university for some years. 
 In 1866 he was appointed professor of didactic theology, and is now lecturer on church 
 polity and American church history. 
 
 Dr. Bacon is one of the characteristic products of Puritan training in New England, and 
 has long been one of the ablest and most widely known of preachers. He is a man of great 
 energy and intellectual power, possessed of more than ordinary vivacity and facility of ex- 
 pression, and a temper that friends call uncompromising, but which might be thought pug- 
 nacious in a layman. 
 
 His published sermons are very numerous, and so are his contributions to religious 
 periodicals. In everything he has written it is apparent that he has something to say, and 
 his clear sentences never leave any doubt of his meaning. He is not fond of rhetorical arts, 
 and his scope, as well as his modes of illustration, are somewhat limited ; but there are few 
 preachers who have done more thorough and conscientious work, or who have wielded such 
 a great and beneficent influence. 
 
 He published the Life and Writings of Baxter, in 1835, two vols. 8vo., and Slavery Dis- 
 cussed in Essays, 1846. His articles in the New Englander, and the Bibliotheca Sacra, 
 especially those upon ecclesiastical history, are very valuable. A selection from his many 
 sermons would be prized by religious readers. 
 
 [From an Oration before the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Dartmouth College, July 30, 1845.] 
 A LIBERAL EDUCATION. 
 
 AT the outset, it is worth our while to recollect distinctly what we 
 mean by liberal education. It is that higher and general education 
 in science and in letters which is distinguished from common educa- 
 tion on the one hand and from professional education on the other. 
 There is the common education of American citizens, for which the 
 system of common schools is established. Such an education com- 
 prehends those rudiments of knowledge without which the citizen, 
 in every employment, is degraded below his proper level. Every 
 
LEONARD BACON. 225 
 
 citizen must be able to read, to write, to keep accounts, and must 
 have some knowledge of the geography, institutions, and laws of his 
 country, and of its relations to the rest of the world, or he is not fit 
 to be a citizen. Besides this education common to all the people, 
 there is also that particular education by which each individual is to 
 be qualified for his own particular occupation in society ; and this we 
 call professional education. Of two boys who are together at the 
 common school, and equal in all that constitutes the education there 
 acquired, one, at the age of sixteen, enters a watchmaker's shop as 
 an apprentice ; the other, at the same age, enters an attorney's 
 office as a clerk. The one learns how to handle the tools of his 
 trade ; he learns much about the mechanism of the various kinds of 
 timepieces, and not a little about the qualities of different metals 
 and metallic compounds ; and at the same time, by constant practice, 
 he acquires the skill necessary for the nice and diversified operations 
 of his art. The other learns how to draw writs, declarations, and 
 pleadings, contracts, deeds, and wills ; he learns the routine of courts 
 and of legal practice ; he learns the meaning of law phrases ; he 
 learns the nature of various kinds of testimony, and the processes of 
 law logic ; he reads law books, and becomes familiar with authorities, 
 and skilful in finding and applying precedents. Each of these two 
 men has acquired what may be called a professional education. The 
 watchmaker indeed is a mechanic, and the lawyer is considered as 
 belonging to one of the learned professions ; but if neither of them 
 has learned anything except what lies directly in the line of his own 
 particular trade or employment, neither of them can be said to be 
 liberally educated. . . . 
 
 A liberally educated man, then, is one whose faculties have been 
 disciplined, and whose mind has been expanded and quickened, not 
 only by that kind of knowledge which is common to the citizens of 
 an enlightened country, and by that which is essential to his own. 
 particular occupation in the world, but also by an enlarged circuit of 
 free study in the various departments of learning and of science. It 
 is for this liberal education, and not for what is sometimes called a 
 practical education, that colleges are established by public or by 
 private munificence. Yet a liberal education and a college educa- 
 tion are not, in all instances, precisely the same thing. A man may 
 be liberally educated nay, with proper effort, he may liberally 
 educate himself in retirement, without the helps and excitements 
 of a public institution. And on the other hand, a man may have all 
 these advantages, and may get through a four years' course of 
 15 
 
226 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 lessons, lectures, and examinations, and may even by some accident 
 come out at the end with a college diploma, and after all have no 
 education worthy to be called liberal none that has had the effect 
 of imparting enlargement and freedom to the mind, and of giving 
 new vigor and symmetry to the various faculties by various culture. 
 
 There is a common prejudice which associates the idea of a liberal 
 education exclusively, or almost exclusively, with the three learned 
 professions, as they are called. But this is only a prejudice. In 
 truth, there is no profession which a liberally educated man may 
 not adorn. He may enter the pulpit, he may plead at the bar, he 
 may practise the healing art, he may aspire to serve his country in a 
 political career ; or, with equal propriety, he may return to his paternal 
 acres, or may engage in commerce, or in any honest business. He 
 is not limited in his choice. . . . 
 
 Every liberally educated man ought to be a better man in his pro- 
 fession than if he were not thus educated. It is naturally and rea- 
 sonably demanded of the minister of the gospel, who has enjoyed 
 the invigorating discipline and the liberalizing culture of classical 
 and scientific studies, that all this shall make him more accurate, 
 more skilful, and more powerful in the exhibition of religious truth. 
 With the same propriety it is expected of the lawyer or physician 
 whose professional studies have been preceded by a liberal training, 
 that the value of that previous training shall be seen in his earlier 
 and higher professional eminence. . . . 
 
 The man who has been liberally educated is prepared to liberal- 
 ize and elevate any profession which it may be his lot to pursue. If 
 there were nothing of the nature of liberal education in the com- 
 munity, the constant tendency of every profession, not excepting the 
 learned professions, would be to sink into a mere trade, and to 
 involve no knowledge but the knowledge of technicalities. The 
 trade of practising law may be acquired without learning much of 
 the science of law in any large and liberal view, or of the relations of 
 that science to other departments of the field of universal knowledge ; 
 but if all lawyers were educated in that way, how soon would the 
 practice of law become nothing better than a low trade of pettifog- 
 ging ! So a certain trade of curing diseases may be learned by 
 learning a few formulas, the names and more obvious symptoms of 
 a few diseases, and the names and qualities of a few medicines, with- 
 out acquiring any apprehension of those wide and various sciences 
 into which a perfect knowledge of the healing art resolves itself; and 
 if all physicians were educated in this way, the profession would be 
 
RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 22/ 
 
 continually sinking to a lower level, and in time the community 
 would be delivered over to the healing skill of quacks and grannies. 
 So every profession may be acquired and practised as a mere trade ; 
 and on the other hand, any mechanical trade acquired and pursued 
 by a man of well-informed and cultivated mind, bringing all his 
 faculties to bear upon his proper business, becomes a liberal profes- 
 sion. One part, then, of the influence of the liberally educated man, 
 in whatever iemployment, should be to bring into his profession 
 large views of its relations to society and to the universal range of 
 knowledge, and thus to counteract its tendency to mere technicality 
 and unintelligent tradition. 
 
 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 Ralph Waldo Emerson was born in Boston, May 25, 1803. His father, the Rev. William 
 Emerson, was a member of the Anthology Club, mentioned in the introduction of this work. 
 He was graduated at Harvard College in 1821, and after teaching school for some years he 
 entered the ministry in 1826. In 1829 he was settled in Boston as successor of the Rev. 
 Henry Ware. He left the church and the ministry in 1832, on account of a change in his 
 opinions, and then sailed to Europe, where he remained a year. Upon his return he com- 
 menced his career as a lecturer, and soon after took up his residence at Concord. The 
 historic town has gained thereby a new and, perhaps, more lasting distinction. 
 
 With some authors, lecturing is an occasional employment or recreation ; Emerson is a 
 lecturer only, born and developed for that function. When one series of topics has engaged 
 his thoughts for a sufficient length of time, and has been retouched in the course of succes- 
 sive readings before the public, it is laid aside for the printer, and appears as a volume of his 
 works. The field is not suffered to lie fallow long ; soon a new crop appears, to go through 
 the same changes to delight the circles of his admirers, and to be gathered into fair 
 sheaves at last. This is the history of all his prose works. 
 
 Though there is room for differences of opinion as to the soundness of Mr. Emerson's 
 methods, and of the value of the philosophical results he presents, there can- be no question 
 as to his high rank among writers. And it is humiliating to remember that for years his 
 name was scarcely mentioned, even in so-called literary periodicals, without a sneer. He 
 was stigmatized as an imitator of Carlyle, when, in truth, he has hardly any qualities in com- 
 mon with that iconoclast. Writers who had finished the literature of the primer, and 
 were commencing Tupper, thought Emerson's Oriental similes to be excellent matter for 
 diversion ; the learning that transcended their horn-book experience they hooted at ; and 
 the sentences so crystallized as to be insoluble by their chemistry they called riddles. All 
 this only proved that genius is never recognized at first sight, and that though hemlock has 
 gone out of fashion, the multitude is hardly more just to its philosophers now than the 
 Athenian public was to Socrates. 
 
 Emerson is not a philosopher solely ; he stands rather on the height where poetry and 
 philosophy meet He never argues and never pursues with strictness a train of thought. 
 He is a disciple of no one master neither of Plato, Kant, nor Comte. He has estab- 
 lished no school, intellectual or moral But with wonderfully sharp perception he has 
 looked into the vast drama of the universe, the mystery of existence, and the powers of the 
 soul. With equal acuteness he has observed the manifestations of nature in plants and 
 animals. And in a long lifetime he has mastered and assimilated the wisdom of centuries. 
 
228 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 His vivid imagination supplies him with figures that are as brilliant and enduring as 
 diamonds. But all he sees is with a poet's eye. The course of empires, the development 
 of the arts, the learning of scholars, the beauty of landscapes, furnish hints to his all- 
 absorbing mind ; but the separate ideas never coalesce into a system. His essays are full of 
 golden veins and imbedded gems ; a whole dictionary of quotations could be made from 
 them. His poems have the same qualities, and sparkle with aphoristic lines ; but his 
 sense of melody or his command of metre is limited, and his verses sometimes have a simple 
 and rustic monotony of cadence, like the oft-repeated plaint of a wild bird. 
 The strongest trait in Mr. Emerson's nature is his worship of the beautiful : 
 
 "Aught unsavory or unclean 
 Hath my insect never seen," 
 
 is his claim for his Humble-Bee. The thoughts of death and distress as well as of what is 
 vile and uncomely are silently shut out. The universe for him is kosmos, in its sense of beauty. 
 
 The opinions of Mr. Emerson are nowhere clearly set down ; and it is scarcely worth the 
 time here to attempt an analysis, or to note his divergence from Christian doctrines. Those 
 who are sufficiently cultivated to be influenced by him will be certain to have also sufficient 
 intelligence to judge for themselves. 
 
 Mr. Emerson's works consist of Essays, first and second series, Miscellanies, Repre- 
 sentative Men, English Traits, Poems, Conduct of Life, and Society and Solitude, each in 
 one volume (Boston, J. R. Osgood & Co.) He also contributed a portion of the Memoir 
 of Margaret Fuller. He still gives some time to periodical writing, and the reading world 
 will hope that the intimation conveyed in the poem entitled Terminus (Atlantic Monthly, 
 January, 1867) may long wait for a literal fulfilment. 
 
 [From Nature, in the volume of Miscellanies.] 
 LANGUAGE. 
 
 WORDS are signs of natural facts. The use of natural history is 
 to give us aid in supernatural history : the use of the outer creation, 
 to give us language for the beings and changes of the inward crea- 
 tion. Every word which is used to express a moral or intellectual 
 fact, if traced to its root, is found to be borrowed from some material 
 appearance. Right means straight; wrong means twisted. Spirit 
 primarily means wind; transgression, the crossing of a line; super- 
 cilious, the raising of the eyebrow. We say the heart to express 
 emotion, the head to denote thought ; and thought and emotion are 
 words borrowed from sensible things, and now appropriated to 
 spiritual nature. Most of the process by which this transformation 
 is made is hidden from us in the remote time when language was 
 framed ; but the same tendency may be daily observed in children. 
 Children and savages use only nouns, or names of things, which they 
 convert into verbs, and apply to analogous mental acts. 
 
 But this origin of all words that convey a spiritual import so 
 conspicuous a fact in the history of language is our least debt to 
 nature. It is not words only that are emblematic ; it is things 
 which are emblematic. Every natural fact is a symbol of some 
 
RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 22Q 
 
 spiritual fact. Every appearance in nature corresponds to some 
 state of the mind, and that state of the mind can only be described 
 by presenting that natural appearance as its picture. An enraged 
 man is a lion, a cunning man is a fox, a firm man is a rock, a learned 
 man is a torch. A lamb is innocence ; a snake is subtle spite ; 
 flowers express to us the delicate affections. Light and darkness 
 are our familiar expression for knowledge and ignorance ; and heat 
 for love. Visible distance behind and before us is respectively our 
 image of memory and hope. . . . 
 
 Because of this radical correspondence between visible things and 
 human thoughts, savages, who have only what is necessary, con- 
 verse in figures. As we go back in history, language becomes more 
 picturesque, until its infancy, when it is all poetry ; or all spiritual 
 facts are represented by natural symbols. The same symbols are 
 found to make the original elements of all languages. It has more- 
 over been observed, that the idioms of all languages approach each 
 other in passages of the greatest eloquence and power. And as this 
 is the first language, so it is the last. This immediate dependence 
 of language upon nature, this conversion of an outward phenomenon 
 into a type of somewhat in human life, never loses its power to 
 affect us. It is this which gives that piquancy to the conversation 
 of a strong-natured farmer or backwoodsman which all men relish. 
 
 A man's power to connect his thought with its proper symbol, 
 and so to utter it, depends on the simplicity of his character, that is, 
 upon his love of truth, and his desire to communicate it without 
 loss. The corruption of man is followed by the corruption of lan- 
 guage. When simplicity of character and the sovereignty of ideas 
 are broken up by the prevalence of secondary desires, the desire of 
 riches, of pleasure, of power, and of praise, and duplicity and false- 
 hood take place of simplicity and truth, the power over nature as an 
 interpreter of the will is in a degree lost ; new imagery ceases to be 
 created, and old words are perverted to stand for things which are 
 not ; a paper currency is employed when there is no bullion in the 
 vaults. In due time, the fraud is manifest, and words lose all 
 power to stimulate the understanding or the affections. Hundreds 
 of writers may be found in every long-civilized nation, who for a short 
 time believe, and make others believe, that they see and utter 
 truths, who do not of themselves clothe one thought in its natural 
 garment, but who feed unconsciously on the language created by the 
 primary writers of the country, those, namely, who hold primarily 
 on nature. 
 
23O HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 But wise men pierce this rotten diction, and fasten words again to 
 visible things ; so that picturesque language is at once a command- 
 ing certificate that he who employs it, is a man in alliance with 
 truth and God. The moment our discourse rises above the ground 
 line of familiar facts, and is inflamed with passion or exalted by 
 thought, it clothes itself in images. A man conversing in earnest, if 
 he watch his intellectual processes, will find that a material image, 
 more or less luminous, arises in his mind, contemporaneous with 
 every thought, which furnishes the vestment of the thought. Hence 
 good writing and brilliant discourse are perpetual allegories. This 
 imagery is spontaneous. It is the blending of experience with the 
 present action of the mind. It is proper creation. It is the work- 
 ing of the original cause through the instruments he has already 
 made. 
 
 These facts may suggest the advantage which country-life pos- 
 sesses, for a powerful mind, over the artificial and curtailed life of 
 cities. We know more from nature than we can at will com- 
 municate. Its light flows into the mind evermore, and we forget its 
 presence. The poet, the orator, bred in the woods, whose senses 
 have been nourished by their fair and appeasing changes, year after 
 year, without design and without heed, shall not lose their lesson 
 altogether, in the roar of cities or the broil of politics. Long hereafter, 
 amidst agitation and terror in national councils, in the hour of revo- 
 lution, these solemn images shall reappear in their morning lustre, 
 as fit symbols and words of the thoughts which the passing events 
 shall awaken. At the call of a noble sentiment, again the woods 
 wave, the pines murmur, the river rolls and shines, and the cattle 
 low upon the mountains, as he saw and heard them in his infancy. 
 And with these forms, the spells of persuasion, the keys of power 
 are put into his hands. 
 
 We are thus assisted by natural objects in the expression of 
 particular meanings. But how great a language to convey such 
 pepper-corn informations ! Did it need such noble races of crea- 
 tures, this profusion of forms, this host of orbs in heaven, to furnish 
 man with the dictionary and grammar of his municipal speech? 
 Whilst we use this grand cipher to expedite the affairs of our pot 
 and kettle, we feel that we have not yet put it to its use, neither are 
 able. We are like travellers using the cinders of a volcano to roast 
 their eggs. Whilst we see that it always stands ready to clothe what 
 we would say, we cannot avoid the question whether the characters 
 are not significant of themselves. Have mountains, and waves, and 
 
RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 23! 
 
 skies, no significance but what we consciously give them, when we 
 employ them as emblems of our thoughts ? The world is emblem- 
 atic. Parts of speech are metaphors, because the whole of nature 
 is a metaphor of the human kind. The laws of moral nature answer 
 to those of matter as face to face in a glass. . . . 
 
 In like manner, the memorable words of history, and the proverbs 
 of nations, consist usually of a natural fact, selected as a picture or 
 parable of a moral truth. Thus ; A rolling stone gathers no moss ; 
 A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush ; A cripple in the right 
 way will beat a racer in the wrong ; Make hay while the sun 
 shines ; 'Tis hard to carry a full cup even ; Vinegar is the son of 
 wine ; The last ounce broke the camel's back ; Long-lived trees make 
 roots first ; and the like. In their primary sense these are trivial 
 facts, but we repeat them for the value of their analogical import. 
 What is true of proverbs is true of all fables, parables, and allegories. 
 
 This relation between the mind and matter is not fancied by some 
 poet, but stands in the will of God, and so is free to be known by all 
 men. It appears to men, or it does not appear. When in fortunate 
 hours we ponder this miracle, the wise man doubts, if, at all other 
 times, he is not blind and deaf ; 
 
 " Can these things be, 
 And overcome us like a summer's cloud, 
 Without our special wonder ? " 
 
 for the universe becomes transparent, and the light of higher laws 
 than its own shines through it. 
 
 [From Society and Solitude.] 
 DOMESTIC LIFE. 
 
 THE perfection of the providence for childhood is easily acknowl- 
 edged. The care which covers the seed of the tree under tough 
 husks and stony cases provides for the human plant the mother's 
 breast and the father's house. The size of the nestler is comic, and 
 its tiny beseeching weakness is compensated perfectly by the happy 
 patronizing look of the mother, who is a sort of high reposing 
 Providence towards it. Welcome to the parents the puny struggler, 
 strong in its weakness, his little arms more irresistible than the 
 soldier's, his lips touched with persuasion which Chatham and 
 Pericles in manhood had not. His unaffected lamentations when he 
 lifts up his voice on high, or, more beautiful, the sobbing child, 
 
232 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 the face all liquid grief, as he tries to swallow his vexation, soften 
 all hearts to pity, and to mirthful and clamorous compassion. The 
 small despot asks so little that all reason and all nature are on his 
 side. His ignorance is more charming than all knowledge, and his 
 little sins more bewitching than any virtue. His flesh is angels' 
 flesh, all alive. " Infancy," said Coleridge, " presents body and 
 spirit in unity ; the body is all animated." All day, between his 
 three or four sleeps, he cooes like a pigeon-house, sputters, and spurs, 
 and puts on his faces of importance ; and when he fasts, the little 
 Pharisee fails not to sound his trumpet before him. By lamplight 
 he delights in shadows on the wall ; by daylight, in yellow and 
 scarlet. Carry him out of doors he is overpowered by the light 
 and by the extent of natural objects, and is silent. Then present- 
 ly begins his use of his ringers, and he studies power, the lesson of 
 race. First it appears in no great harm, in architectural tastes. Out 
 of blocks, thread-spools, cards, and checkers, he will build his 
 pyramid with the gravity of Palladio. With an acoustic apparatus 
 of whistle and rattle he explores the laws of sound. But chiefly, 
 like his senior countrymen, the young American studies new and 
 speedier modes of transportation. Mistrusting the cunning of his 
 small legs, he wishes to ride on the necks and shoulders of all flesh. 
 The small enchanter nothing can withstand, no seniority of age, 
 no gravity of character ; uncles, aunts, grandsires, grandams, fall an 
 easy prey : he conforms to nobody, all conform to him ; all caper, and 
 make mouths, and babble, and chirrup to him. On the strongest 
 shoulders he rides, and pulls the hair of laurelled heads. 
 
 " The childhood," said Milton, " shows the man, as morning shows 
 the day." The child realizes to every man his own earliest remem- 
 brances, and so supplies a defect in our education, or enables us to 
 live over the unconscious history with a sympathy so tender as to 
 be almost personal experience. 
 
 Fast almost too fast for the wistful curiosity of the parents, 
 studious of the witchcraft of curls, and dimples, and broken words 
 the little talker grows to a boy. He walks daily among wonders : 
 fire, light, darkness, the moon, the stars, the furniture of the house, 
 the red tin horse, the domestics, who, like rude foster-mothers, be- 
 friend and feed him, the faces that claim his kisses, are all in turn 
 absorbing ; yet warm, cheerful, and with good appetite, the little 
 sovereign subdues them without knowing it ; the new knowledge is 
 taken up into the life of to-day, and becomes the means of more. 
 The blowing rose is a new event ; the garden full of flowers is Eden 
 
RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 233 
 
 over again to the small Adam ; the rain, the ice, the frost, make 
 epochs in his life. What a holiday is the first snow in which Two- 
 shoes can be trusted abroad ! , 
 
 What art can paint or gild any object in after-life with the glow 
 which Nature gives to the first baubles of childhood ! St. Peter's 
 cannot have the magical power over us that the red and gold 
 covers of our first picture-book possessed. How the imagination 
 cleaves to the warm glories of that tinsel even now ! What enter- 
 tainments make every day bright and short for the fine freshman ! 
 The street is old as nature ; the persons all have their sacredness. 
 His imaginative life dresses all things in their best. His fears 
 adorn the dark parts .with poetry. He has heard of wild horses and 
 of bad boys, and with a pleasing terror he watches at his gate for the 
 passing of those varieties of each species. The first ride into the 
 country, the first bath in running water, the first time the skates 
 are put on, the first game out of doors in moonlight, the books of 
 the nursery, are new chapters of joy. The Arabian Nights' Enter- 
 tainments, the Seven Champions of Christendom, Robinson Cru- 
 soe, and the Pilgrim's Progress, what mines of thought and 
 emotion, what a wardrobe to dress the whole world withal, are in 
 this encyclopaedia of young thinking ! And so by beautiful traits, 
 which, without art, yet seem the masterpiece of wisdom, provoking 
 the love that watches and educates him, the little pilgrim prosecutes 
 the journey through nature which he has thus gayly begun. He 
 grows up the ornament and joy of the house, which rings to his 
 glee, to rosy boyhood. 
 
 [Selections from May-Day.] 
 DAUGHTER of Heaven and Earth, coy Spring, Or vagrant booming of the air, 
 
 With sudden passion languishing, 
 Maketh all things softly smile, 
 Painteth pictures mile en mile, 
 Holds a cup with cowslip-wreaths, 
 Whence a smokeless incense breathes. 
 Girls are peeling the sweet willow, 
 Poplar white, and Gilead tree, 
 And troops of boys 
 Shouting with whoop and hilloa, 
 And hip, hip, three times three. 
 The air is full of whistlings bland ; 
 What was that I heard 
 Out of the hazy land? 
 Harp of the wind, or song of bird, 
 Or clapping of shepherd's hands, 
 
 Voice of a meteor lost in day ? 
 
 Such tidings of the starry sphere 
 
 Can this elastic air convey. 
 
 Or haply 'twas the cannonade 
 
 Of the pent and darkened lake, 
 
 Cooled by the pendent mountain's shade, 
 
 Whose deeps, till beams of noonday break, 
 
 Afflicted moan, and latest hold 
 
 Even into May the iceberg cold. 
 
 Was it a squirrel's pettish bark, 
 
 Or clarionet of jay ? or, hark, 
 
 Where yon wedged line the Nestor leads, 
 
 Steering north with raucous cry 
 
 Through tracts and provinces of sky, 
 
 Every night alighting down 
 
234 
 
 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 In new landscapes of romance, 
 Where darkling feed the clamorous clans 
 By lonely lakes to men unknown. 
 Come the tumult whence it will, 
 Voice of sport, or rush of wings, 
 It is a sound, it is a token 
 That the marble sleep is broken, 
 And a change has passed on things. 
 
 April cold with dropping rain 
 
 Willows and lilacs brings again, 
 
 The whistle of returning birds, 
 
 And trumpet-lowing of the herds. 
 
 The scarlet maple-keys betray 
 
 What potent blood hath modest May ; 
 
 What fiery force the earth renews, 
 
 The wealth of forms, the flush of hues; 
 
 Joy shed in rosy waves abroad 
 
 Flows from the heart of Love, the Lord. 
 
 Ah ! well I mind the calendar, 
 Faithful through a thousand years, 
 Of the painted race of flowers, 
 Exact to days, exact to hours, 
 Counted on the spacious dial 
 Yon broidered zodiac girds. 
 I know the pretty almanac 
 
 Of the punctual coming-back, 
 
 On their due days, of the birds. 
 
 I marked them yestermorn, 
 
 A flock of finches darting 
 
 Beneath the crystal arch, 
 
 Piping as they flew, a march, 
 
 Belike the one they used in parting 
 
 Last year from yon oak or larch ; 
 
 Dusky sparrows in a crowd, 
 
 Diving, darting northward free, 
 
 Suddenly betook them all, 
 
 Every erne to his hole in the wall, 
 
 Or to his niche in the apple tree. 
 
 I greet with joy the choral trains 
 
 Fresh from palms and Cuba's canes. 
 
 Best gems of Nature's cabinet, 
 
 With dews of tropic morning wet, 
 
 Beloved of children, bards, and Spring, 
 
 O birds, your perfect virtues bring, 
 
 Your song, your forms, your rhythmic flight 
 
 Your manners for the heart's delight ; 
 
 Nestle in hedge, or barn, or roof, 
 
 Here weave your chamber weather-proof; 
 
 Forgive our harms, and condescend 
 
 To man, as to a lubber friend, 
 
 And, generous, teach his awkward race 
 
 Courage, and probity, and grace ! 
 
 [From The Problem.] 
 
 THE hand that rounded Peter's dome, 
 And groined the aisles of Christian Rome, 
 Wrought in a sad sincerity ; 
 Himself from God he could not free ; 
 He builded better than he knew ; 
 The conscious stone to beauty grew. 
 
 Earth proudly wears the Parthenon, 
 As the best gem upon her zone ; 
 
 And Morning opes with haste her lids, 
 To gaze upon the Pyramids ; 
 O'er England's abbeys bends the sky, 
 As on its friends, with kindred eye ; 
 For, out of Thought's interior sphere, 
 These wonders rose to upper air ; 
 And Nature gladly gave them place, 
 Adopted them into her race, 
 And granted them an equal date 
 With Andes and with Ararat. 
 
 HYMN. 
 SUNG AT THE COMPLETION OF THE CONCORD MONUMENT, APRIL 19, 1836. 
 
 BY the rude bridge that arched the flood, 
 Their flag to April's breeze unfurled, 
 
 Here once the embattled farmers stood, 
 And fired the shot heard round the world. 
 
RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 235 
 
 The foe long since in silence slept ; 
 
 Alike the conqueror silent sleeps ; 
 And Time the ruined bridge has swept 
 
 Down the dark stream which seaward creeps. 
 
 On this green bank, by this soft stream, 
 
 We set to-day a votive stone, 
 That memory may their deed redeem, 
 
 When, like our sires, our sons are gone. 
 
 Spirit, that made those heroes dare 
 
 To die, or leave their children free, 
 Bid Time and Nature gently spare 
 
 The shaft we raise to them and thee. 
 
 GOOD BY. 
 
 GOOD BY, proud world ! I'm going home ; 
 
 Thou art not my friend, and I'm not thine. 
 Long through the weary crowds I roam ; 
 
 A river-ark on the ocean brine, 
 Long I've been tossed like the driven foam; 
 But now, proud world, I'm going home. 
 
 Good by to Flattery's fawning face ; 
 To Grandeur with his wise grimace ; 
 To upstart Wealth's averted eye ; 
 To supple Office, low and high ; 
 To crowded halls, to court and street ; 
 To frozen hearts and hasting feet ; 
 To those who go, and those who come ; 
 Good by, proud world ! I'm going home. 
 
 I am going to my own hearth -stone, 
 Bosomed in yon green hills alone 
 A secret nook in a pleasant land, 
 Whose groves the frolic fairies planned ; 
 Where arches green, the livelong day, 
 Echo the blackbird's roundelay, 
 And vulgar feet have never trod 
 A spot that is sacred to thought and God. 
 
236 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 O, when I am safe in my sylvan home, 
 I tread on the pride of Greece and Rome ; 
 And when I am stretched beneath the pines, 
 Where the evening star so holy shines, 
 I laugh at the lore and the pride of man, 
 At the sophist schools, and the learned clan ; 
 For what are they all, in their high conceit, 
 When man in the bush with God may meet ? 
 
 ORESTES AUGUSTUS BROWNSON. 
 
 Orestes Augustus Brownson was born at Stockbridge, Vt., September 16, 1803. He was 
 early inclined to religious and philosophical discussion, and has since sought truth through 
 every conceivable avenue of approach. Commencing with the creed of New England Con- 
 gregationalism, he joined the Presbyterian church at the age of nineteen, while attending an 
 academy. After some struggles he became, in 1825, a Universalist minister, preaching and 
 writing in his usual strong and aggressive style. He next gave his sympathies to the social 
 reforms proposed by Robert Owen ; but, finding progress slow in that direction, he was 
 attracted by the influence of Dr. Channing, and was pastor of a Unitarian society. In this 
 period he enlarged his acquaintance with languages, literature, and philosophy. This phase 
 of thought lasted until 1836, when he organized a new society in Boston for " Christian 
 union and progress." In 1838 he established the Boston Quarterly Review, which he edited 
 for five years. In 1840 he published Charles Elwood, or the Infidel Converted, a strongly 
 "medicated" novel, as the Autocrat's friend would have termed it. Having gone the 
 round of speculative ideas in theology, he began to experience a mental reaction, and in 1844 
 joined the Roman Catholic church. In the same year he commenced the publication of 
 Brownson's Quarterly Review, which was continued until 1864. The following is a list of his 
 later works, though, perhaps, not complete : The Spirit Rapper (1854) ; The Convert (1857) ; 
 The American Republic, its Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny (1865) ;, Liberalism and 
 the Church (1869). He removed from Boston about the year 1854 and has since resided 
 in and near New York. 
 
 Dr. Brownson is an exceedingly able and acute reasoner, and a clear and forcible writer. 
 As might be expected, his religious convictions permeate nearly every sentence. With 
 most authors there are certain fields on which there is a truce to controversy ; but Dr. 
 Brownson, with more logic, perhaps, but with less amenity, treats every subject, from met- 
 aphysics to an album sonnet, in its relations to the church ; and it is almost impossible to 
 give the best specimens of his style without introducing topics that do not belong in a col- 
 lection of literature. 
 
 [From a Review, published October, 1846.] 
 WAR AND LOYALTY. 
 
 OUR orators have invested the Fourth of July with so many dis- 
 turbing associations that our citizens are gradually becoming less 
 and less disposed to greet its annual return with those festivities 
 which it was the hope of our fathers would continue to mark it 
 through all generations to come. Still, it is a day sacred in the affec- 
 
ORESTES AUGUSTUS BROWNSON. 237 
 
 tions of every American citizen, and it cannot come round without 
 exciting lively emotions of gratitude and joy to every American 
 heart. The birth of a nation is an event to be remembered, and the 
 day on which it takes its rank in the family of independent nations 
 is well deserving to be set apart by some service at once joyous and 
 solemn, recounting the glory which has been won, the blessings 
 which have been received, and pointing to the high destiny and 
 grave responsibilities to which the new people are called. The ora- 
 tions ordinarily given on our national anniversary are of that pecu- 
 liar sort which, it is said, neither gods nor men can tolerate. They 
 are tawdry and turgid, full of stale declamation about liberty, ful- 
 some and disgusting glorifications of ourselves as a people, or 
 uncalled-for denunciations of those states and empires that have not 
 seen proper to adopt political institutions similar to our own. Yet 
 we may, perhaps, be too fastidious in our taste, and too sweeping in 
 our censures. Boys will be boys, and dulness will be dulness, and 
 when either is installed " orator of the day," the performance must 
 needs be boyish or dull. But when the number of orations annually 
 called forth by our national jubilee, from all sorts of persons, through- 
 out the length and breadth of the land, is considered, we may rather 
 wonder that so many are produced which do credit to their authors, 
 and fall not far below the occasion, than that there are so few. All 
 are not mere school-boy productions ; all are not patriotism on tiptoe, 
 nor eloquence on stilts. Every year sends out not a few which, for 
 their sound sense, deep thought, subdued passion, earnest spirit, 
 manly tone, and chaste expression, deserve an honorable place in 
 our national literature. There are and perhaps as large a pro- 
 portion as we ought to expect Fourth of July orators who, while 
 they indulge in not unseemly exultations, forget to disgust us with 
 untimely rant about self-government, the marvellous virtue and intel- 
 ligence of the masses, and the industrial miracles they are daily 
 performing ; who show by their reserve, rather than by their noisy 
 declamation, that they have American hearts and confidence in 
 American patriotism and American institutions. A people not fac- 
 titiously great has no occasion to speak of its greatness, and true 
 patriotism expresses itself in deeds not words. . . . 
 
 Their patriotism has no suspicions, no jealousies, no fears, no 
 self-consciousness. It is too deep for words. It is silent, majestic ; 
 it is where the country is, does what she bids, and, though sacrificing 
 all upon her altars, never dreams that it is doing anything extraor- 
 dinary. There is, perhaps, more of this genuine patriotism in the 
 
238 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 American people than strangers, or even we ourselves, commonly 
 suppose. The foam floats on the surface, and is whirled hither and 
 thither by each shifting breeze, but below are the sweet, silent, deep 
 waters* 
 
 It may be said that war is unjustifiable, because if all would prac- 
 tise justice there could be no war. Undoubtedly, if all men and 
 nations were wise and just, wars would cease. We might then, in 
 very deed, " beat our swords into ploughshares and our spears into 
 pruning-hooks," and learn war no more. We should not in vision 
 only, but in reality, possess universal peace. So, if all individuals 
 understood and practised the moral and Christian virtues in their 
 perfection, there would be no occasion for penal codes, and a police 
 to enforce them. If no wrongs or outrages were committed, there 
 would be none to be repressed or punished. If there were no 
 diseases, there would be none to cure. If the world were quite 
 another world than it is, it would be. But so long as the world 
 is what it is, so long as men fail to respect the rights of men, the 
 penal code and police will be necessary ; so long as diseases obtain, 
 the physician and his drugs, nauseous as they are, will be indispen- 
 sable ; and so long as nation continues to encroach on nation, the 
 aggrieved party will have the right to be compelled to defend and 
 avenge itself by an appeal to arms, terrible as that appeal may be. 
 The evils of war are great, but not the greatest. It is a greater evil 
 to lose national freedom, to become the tributaries or the slaves of 
 the foreigner, to see the sanctity of our homes invaded, our altars 
 desecrated, and our wives and children made the prey of the ruthless 
 oppressor. These are evils which do not die with us, but may descend 
 upon our posterity through all coming generations. The man that 
 will look tamely on and see altars and homes denied, all that is sacred 
 and dear wrested from him, and his country stricken from the roll 
 of nations, has as little reason to applaud himself for his morals as 
 for his manhood. No doubt philanthropy may weep over the 
 wounded and the dying, but it is no great evil. It is appointed unto 
 all men to die, and, so far as the death itself is concerned, it matters 
 not whether it comes a few months earlier or a few months later, on 
 the battle-field or in our own bed-chambers. The evil is not in dying, 
 but in dying unprepared. If prepared and the soldier, fighting by 
 command of his country in her cause, may be prepared it is of 
 little consequence whether the death may come in the sabre-cut or 
 leaden bullet, or in that of disease or old age. The tears of the sen- 
 
ROBERT MONTGOMERY BIRD. 239 
 
 timentalist are lost upon him who is conscious of his responsibilities, 
 that he is commanded to place duty before death, and to weigh no 
 danger against fidelity to his God and to his country. Physical pain 
 is not worth counting. Accumulate all that you can imagine, the 
 Christian greets it with joy when it lies in the pathway of his duty. 
 He who cannot take his life in his hand, and pausing not for an 
 instant before the accumulated torture of years, rush in, at the call 
 of duty, where blows fall thickest, and blows fall heaviest, deserves 
 rebuke for his moral weakness rather than commendation for his 
 peaceable disposition. 
 
 ROBERT MONTGOMERY BIRD. 
 
 Robert Montgomery Bird was born in Newcastle, Del., in the year 1803. He received 
 his classical and professional education in Philadelphia, and for many years resided in that 
 city. He was the author of several novels of more than ordinary merit, among which are, 
 Calavar, a Tale of the Conquest of Mexico ; The Infidel, or the Fall of Mexico; Nick of 
 the Woods, or the Jibbenainosay, a story of life in Kentucky in early times ; The Ad- 
 ventures of Robin Day. He wrote three tragedies, one of which, The Gladiator, has been 
 made popular by the acting of Mr. Forrest. The tragedies have never been printed, two 
 of them, at least, being Mr. Forrest's property. Calavar contains many beautiful descrip- 
 tive passages, and is believed to present a faithful picture of the ancient city as it was before 
 the conquest. Nick of the Woods is full of startling border adventures, and, though it has 
 suffered in consequence of the horde of later imitations, it shows originality and power in the 
 author. 
 
 Dr. Bird left the field of literature at an early age, retired to his native place, and died 
 there in January, 1854. 
 
 [From Calavar.] 
 VIEW OF MEXICO FROM THE MOUNTAINS. 
 
 " I HAVE heard that the cold which freezes men to death begins by 
 setting them to sleep. Sleep brings dreams, and dreams are often 
 most vivid and fantastical before we have yet been wholly lost in 
 slumber. Perhaps 'tis this most biting and benumbing blast that 
 brings me such phantoms. Art thou not very cold ? " " Not very, 
 senor. Methinks we are descending ; and now the winds are not 
 so frigid as before." " I would to Heaven, for the sake of us all, that 
 we were descended yet lower, for night approaches, and still we are 
 stumbling among these clouds that seem to separate us from earth, 
 without yet advancing us nearer to heaven." While the cavalier 
 was yet speaking, there came from the van of the army, very far in 
 the distance, a shout of joy, that was caught up by those who toiled 
 in his neighborhood, and continued by the squadrons that brought 
 up the rear, until finally lost among the echoes of remote cliffs. He 
 
240 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 pressed forward with the animation shared by his companions, and 
 still leading Jacinto, arrived at last at a place where the mountain 
 dipped downwards with so sudden and so precipitous a declivity as 
 to interpose no obstacle to the vision. The mists were rolling away 
 from his feet in huge wreaths, which gradually, as they became 
 thinner, received and transmitted the rays of an evening sun, and 
 were lighted up with a golden and crimson radiance glorious to be- 
 hold, and increasing every moment in splendor. As this superb cur- 
 tain was parted before him, as if by cords that went up to heaven, 
 and surged voluminously aside, he looked over the heads of those 
 that thronged the side of the mountain beneath, and saw, stretching 
 away like a picture touched by the hands of angels, the fair valley 
 imbosomed among those romantic hills, whose shadows were steal- 
 ing visibly over its western slopes, but leaving all the eastern por- 
 tion dyed with the tints of sunset. The green plains, studded with 
 yet greener woodlands ; the little mountains raising their fairy-like 
 crests ; the lovely lakes, now gleaming like floods of molten silver, 
 where they stretched into the sunshine, and now vanishing away, 
 in a shadowy expanse, under the gloom of the growing twilight ; 
 the structures that rose vaguely and obscurely, here from their ver- 
 dant margins, and there from their very bosom, as if floating on 
 their placid waters, seeming at one time to present the image of a 
 city crowned with towers and pinnacles, and then broken by some 
 agitation of the element, or confused by some vapor swimming 
 through the atmosphere into the mere fragments and phantasms 
 of edifices, these, seen in that uncertain and fading light, and at 
 that misty and enchanting distance, unfolded such a spectacle of 
 beauty and peace, as plunged the neophyte into a reverie of rapture. 
 The trembling of the page's hand, a deep sigh that breathed from 
 his lips, recalled him to consciousness, without, however, dispelling 
 his delight. " By the cross which I worship," he cried, " it fills 
 me with amazement to think that this cursed and malefactious 
 earth doth contain a spot that is so much like a paradise. Now 
 do I remember me of the words of the Senor Gomez, that no man 
 could conceive of heaven till he had looked upon the valley of 
 Mexico an expression which at that time I considered very 
 absurd, and somewhat profane ; yet, if I am not now mistaken, I 
 shall henceforth, doubtless, when figuring to my imagination the 
 seats of bliss, begin by thinking of this very prospect." 
 
S4i 
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 
 
 ' 
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE."^ 
 
 Nathaniel Hawthorne was born in Salem, Mass., July 4, 1804. His father, a shipmaster, 
 died in Havana when the future author was six years old. At the age of ten, on account 
 of feeble health, he was sent to live on a farm in Maine. Pie entered Bowdoin College, and 
 received his degree in 1825. His first publication was a collection of stories he had written 
 for periodicals, entitled Twice-told Tales. It appeared in 1837, an( ^ though it was praised 
 by the author's classmate, Longfellow, and by other friends, it made no impression upon the 
 public. A fact like this causes no surprise to those familiar with the history of literature. 
 A second volume appeared in 1842. From 1838 to 1841 he held a subordinate office in the 
 Boston custom-house. He joined the Brook Farm association, in West Roxbury, aftor 
 leaving the custom-house, and the fruit of his experience appeared some time after (1852) 
 in the Blithedale Romance. He did not remain with the association long, but married and 
 took up his residence at Concord, in the old parsonage house, which has been made historic 
 by his Mosses from an Old Manse. In 1846 he was appointed surveyor of the port of 
 Salem, and, while residing there, wrote the romance which established his reputation. This 
 was The Scarlet Letter, probably the most imaginative, picturesque, and powerful work of 
 the kind in this century. The introduction to the romance contains a series of portraits of 
 the superannuated and decayed officials whom he found on duty in the custom-house. There 
 is no denying the sharpness and vigor of these sketches, but, as the subjects of them were 
 still living, the operation was as cruel as the experiments of Magendie in vivisection. In 
 1849, having lost his office by the change in politics, he removed to Lenox, where he wrote 
 The House of the Seven Gables, which appeared in 1851. In 1852 he returned to Concord, 
 and there he wrote the biography of his college friend, Franklin Pierce, then a candidate 
 for the presidency. Mr. Pierce, upon his accession to office, gave him the place of consul to 
 Liverpool. In 1857 our author resigned his office, and travelled upon the continent. Upon 
 his return home he published an Italian romance, called The Marble Faun, in 1860; also 
 a volume of his impressions of England, under the title of Our Old Home, 1863. He wrote 
 also, at different times, several juvenile works, which bear the unmistakable stamp of his 
 genius ; among them are, The Snow Image, The Wonder Book, Tanglewood Tales, and 
 True Stories from History and Biography. His complete works are published by Messrs. 
 ]. R. Osgood & Co., Boston. 
 
 He died at Plymouth, N. H., May 19, 1864, whither he had gone for recreation, in com- 
 pany with his friend, Ex-President Pierce. 
 
 Since his death, six volumes of his Note Books have been published, and a posthumous 
 romance, entitled Septimius Felton, has appeared in the Atlantic Monthly. 
 
 Nothing could be more remote from the ordinary pictures of life and manners as shown in 
 the modern novel, than the romances of Hawthorne. Boston, as he paints it, is as far away 
 as old Troy. They are striking and life-like figures which we see involved in the magical 
 web of his story, but the art of the romancer throws upon them a film of distance, so that 
 we seem contemplating phantasms. An air of mystery broods over every scene, whether it 
 is in a many-gabled house or in the depths of the original forest. The reader feels a tingling 
 in the silence of his room, as in the days when his boyish terrors were roused by stories of 
 ghosts. He feels that he is entering a realm over which shines a 
 
 "light that never was on sea or land," 
 
 where the flowers are like their semblances in wax, where the sounds of laughter have 
 ceased to echo, and where the grave people, each burdened with his sin or his sorrow, walk 
 about like the unresting throng in the hall of Eblis, each holding his hand over his ever- 
 burning heart. But all is managed with such profound art, and with such an exquisite 
 mastery of language, that the fascination of the story can neither be questioned nor 
 resisted. 
 
 16 
 
242 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 Shakespeare, Scott, and Dickens create characters, and place them before us clothed in 
 their proper figures, and using their proper and characteristic speech. Hawthorne reverses 
 the process, and taking the ideal person for granted, shows him as upon a dissecting table, 
 and lays bare every throbbing nerve and every secret fibre of his soul. 
 
 The judicious critic in time comes to hesitate about giving estimates of greater and less. 
 It is not easy to compare the dissimilar, but convenient rather to take refuge in the saying 
 of Paul, "One star differeth from another star in glory." The genius of Hawthorne was 
 unique ; as the Germans say of Jean Paul Richter, he was HaiutJiorne tfie Only: his niche 
 in the temple of fame will not be claimed by another. 
 
 [From Twice-told Tales.] 
 DAVID SWAN. A FANTASY. 
 
 WE can be but partially acquainted even with the events which 
 actually influence our course through life, and our final destiny. 
 There are innumerable other events if such they may be called 
 which come close upon us, yet pass away without actual results, 
 or even betraying their near approach, by the reflection of any light 
 or shadow across our minds. Could we know all the vicissitudes 
 of our fortunes, life would be too full of hope and fear, exultation 
 or disappointment, to afford us a single hour of true serenity. This 
 idea may be illustrated by a page from the secret history of David 
 Swan. 
 
 We have nothing to do with David until we find him, at the age 
 of twenty, on the high road from his native place to the city of 
 Boston, where his uncle, a small dealer in the grocery line, was to 
 take him behind the counter. Be it enough to say, that he was a 
 native of New Hampshire, born of respectable parents, and had 
 received an ordinary school education, with a classic finish by a year 
 at Gilmanton Academy. After journeying on foot from sunrise till 
 nearly noon of a summer's day, his weariness and the increasing 
 heat determined him to sit down in the first convenient shade, and 
 await the coming up of the stage coach. As if planted on purpose 
 for him, there soon appeared a little tuft of maples, with a delight- 
 ful recess in the midst, and such a fresh, bubbling spring, that it 
 seemed never to have sparkled for any wayfarer but David Swan. 
 Virgin or not, he kissed it with his thirsty lips, and then flung him- 
 self along the brink, pillowing his head upon some shirts and a 
 pair of pantaloons, tied up in a striped cotton handkerchief. The 
 sunbeams could not reach him ; the dust did not yet rise from the 
 road, after the heavy rain of yesterday ; and his grassy lair suited 
 the young man better than a bed of down. The spring murmured 
 drowsily beside him ; the branches waved dreamily across the blue 
 sky overhead ; and a deep sleep, perchance hiding dreams within 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE, 243 
 
 its depths, fell upon David Swan. But we are to relate events which 
 he did not dream of. 
 
 While he lay sound asleep in the shade, other people were wide 
 awake, and passed to and fro, afoot, on horseback, and in all sorts 
 of vehicles, along the sunny road by his bed-chamber. Some looked 
 neither to the right hand nor the left, and knew not that he was 
 there ; some merely glanced that way without admitting the slum- 
 berer among their busy thoughts ; some laughed to see how soundly 
 he slept ; and several, whose hearts were brimming full of scorn, 
 ejected their venomous superfluity on David Swan. A middle-aged 
 widow, when nobody else was near, thrust her head a little way into 
 the recess, and vowed that the young fellow looked charming in his 
 sleep. A temperance lecturer saw him, and wrought poor David 
 into the texture of his evening's discourse as an awful instance of dead 
 drunkenness by the road-side. But censure, praise, merriment, scorn, 
 and indifference, were all one, or rather all nothing, to David Swan. 
 
 He had slept only a few moments, when a brown carriage, drawn 
 by a handsome pair of horses, bowled easily along, and was brought 
 to a stand-still nearly in front of David's resting-place. A linchpin 
 had fallen out, and permitted one of the wheels to slide off. The 
 damage was slight, and occasioned merely a momentary alarm to an 
 elderly merchant and his wife, who were returning to Boston in the 
 carriage. While the coachman and a servant were replacing the 
 wheel, the lady and gentleman sheltered themselves beneath the 
 maple trees, and there espied the bubbling fountain, and David Swan 
 asleep beside it. Impressed with the awe which the humblest 
 sleeper usually sheds around him, the merchant trod as lightly as 
 the gout would allow ; and his spouse took good heed not to rustle 
 her silk gown lest David should start up all of a sudden. 
 
 " How soundly he sleeps ! " whispered the old gentleman. " From 
 what a depth he draws that easy breath ! Such sleep as that, 
 brought on without an opiate, would be worth more to me than half 
 my income, for it would support health and an untroubled mind." 
 
 " And youth besides," said the lady. " Healthy and quiet age 
 does not sleep thus. Our slumber is no more like this than our 
 wakefulness." 
 
 The longer they looked the more did this elderly couple feel in- 
 terested in the unknown youth, to whom the wayside and a maple 
 shade were as a secret chamber, with the rich gloom of damask cur- 
 tains brooding over him. 
 
 Perceiving that a stray sunbeam glimmered down upon his face, 
 
244 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 the lady contrived to twist a branch aside, so as to intercept it ; and 
 having done this little act of kindness, she began to feel like a 
 mother to him. 
 
 " Providence seems to have laid him here," whispered she to her 
 husband, " and to have brought us hither to find him, after our dis- 
 appointment in our cousin's son. Methinks I can see a likeness to 
 our departed Henry. Shall we wake him ? " 
 
 " To what purpose ? " said the merchant, hesitating. " We know 
 nothing of the youth's character." 
 
 " That open countenance ! " replied his wife, in the same hushed 
 voice, yet earnestly. " This innocent sleep ! " 
 
 While these whispers were passing, the sleeper's heart did not 
 throb, nor his breath become agitated, nor his features betray the 
 least token of interest ; yet Fortune was bending over him, just 
 ready to let fall a burden of gold. The old merchant had lost his 
 only son, and had no heir to his wealth, except a distant relative, 
 with whose conduct he was dissatisfied. In such cases, people 
 sometimes do stranger things than to act the magician, and awaken 
 a young man to splendor, who fell asleep in poverty. 
 
 " Shall we not waken him ? " repeated the lady, persuasively. 
 
 " The coach is ready, sir," said the servant, behind. 
 
 The old couple started, reddened, and hurried away, mutually 
 wondering that they should ever have dreamed of doing anything 
 so very ridiculous. The merchant threw himself back in the car- 
 riage, and occupied his mind with the plan of a magnificent asylum 
 for unfortunate men of business. Meanwhile David Swan enjoyed 
 his nap. 
 
 The carriage could not have gone above a mile or two, when a 
 pretty young girl came along, with a tripping pace, which showed 
 precisely how her little heart was dancing in her bosom. Perhaps 
 it was this merry kind of motion that caused is there any harm in 
 saying it ? her garter to slip its knot. Conscious that the silken 
 girth if silk it were was relaxing its hold, she turned aside into 
 the shelter of the maple trees, and there found a young man asleep 
 by the spring ! Blushing as red as any rose, that she should have 
 intruded into a gentleman's bedchamber, and for such a purpose, 
 too, she was about to make her escape on tiptoe. But there was 
 peril near the sleeper. A monster of a bee had been wandering 
 overhead, buzz, buzz, buzz, now among the leaves, now flashing 
 through the strips of sunshine, and now lost in the dark shade, 
 till finally he appeared to be settling on the eyelid of David Swan. 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 245 
 
 The sting of a bee is sometimes deadly. As free-hearted as she 
 was innocent, the girl attacked the intruder with her handkerchief, 
 brushed him soundly, and drove him from beneath the maple 
 shade. How sweet a picture ! This good deed accomplished, 
 with quickened breath, and a deeper blush, she stole a glance at 
 the youthful stranger, for whom she had been battling with a 
 dragon in the air. 
 
 " He is handsome ! " thought she, and blushed redder yet. 
 
 How could it be that no dream of bliss grew so strong within 
 him that, shattered by its very strength, it should part asunder, 
 and allow him to perceive the girl among its phantoms ? Why, 
 at least, did no smile of welcome brighten upon his face ? She was 
 come, the maid whose soul, according to the old and beautiful 
 idea, had been severed from his own, and whom, in all his vague 
 but passionate desires, he yearned to meet. Her only could he love 
 with a perfect love ; him only could she receive into the depths 
 of her heart ; and now her image was faintly blushing in the foun- 
 tain by his side : should it pass away, its happy lustre would never 
 gleam upon his life again. 
 
 " How sound he sleeps ! " murmured the girl. 
 
 She departed, but did not trip along the road so lightly as when 
 she came. 
 
 Now this girl's father was a thriving country merchant in the 
 neighborhood, and happened, at that identical time, to be looking 
 out for just such a young man as David Swan. Had David formed 
 a wayside acquaintance with the daughter, he would have become 
 the father's clerk, and all else in natural succession. So here, again, 
 had good fortune the best of fortunes stolen so near that her 
 garments brushed against him ; and he knew nothing of the matter. 
 
 The girl was hardly out of sight, when two men turned aside be- 
 neath the maple shade. Both had dark faces, set off by cloth caps, 
 which were drawn dbwn aslant over their brows. Their dresses 
 were shabby, yet had a certain smartness. These were a couple of 
 rascals, who got their living by whatever the devil sent them, and 
 now, in the interim of other business, had staked the joint profits 
 of their next piece of villany on a game of cards, which was to have 
 been decided here under the trees. But finding David asleep by the 
 spring, one of the rogues whispered to his fellow, 
 
 " Hist ! Do you see that bundle under his head ? " 
 
 The other villain nodded, winked, and leered. 
 
 " I'll bet you a horn of brandy," said the first, "that the chap has 
 
246 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 either a pocket-book, or a snug little hoard of small change, stowed 
 away amongst his shirts. And if not there, we shall find it in his 
 pantaloons pocket." 
 
 " But what if he wakes ? " said the other. 
 
 His companion thrust aside his waistcoat, pointed to the handle 
 of a dirk, and nodded. 
 
 " So be it," muttered the second villain. 
 
 They approached the unconscious David, and, while one pointed 
 the dagger towards his heart, the other began to search the bundle 
 beneath his head. Their two faces, grim, wrinkled, and ghastly with 
 guilt and fear, bent over their victim, looking horrible enough to be 
 mistaken for fiends, should he suddenly awake. Nay, had the villains 
 glanced aside into the spring, even they would hardly have known 
 themselves as reflected there. But David Swan had never worn a 
 more tranquil aspect, even when asleep on his mother's breast. 
 
 " I must take away the bundle," whispered one. 
 ~" If he stirs I'll strike," muttered the other. 
 
 But at this moment a dog, scenting along the ground, came in 
 beneath the maple trees, and gazed alternately at eacli of these wicked 
 men, and then at the quiet sleeper. He then lapped out of the 
 fountain. 
 
 " Pshaw ! " said one villain. " We can do nothing now. The 
 dog's master must be close behind." 
 
 " Let's take a drink and be off," said the other. 
 
 The man with the dagger thrust back the weapon into his bosom, 
 and drew forth a pocket pistol, but not of that kind which kills by a 
 single discharge. It was a flask of liquor, with a block-tin tumbler 
 screwed upon the mouth. Each drank a comfortable dram, and left 
 the spot, with so many jests, and such laughter at their unaccom- 
 plished wickedness, that they might be said to have gone on their 
 way rejoicing. In a few hours they had forgotten the whole affair, 
 nor once imagined that the recording angel had written down the 
 crime of murder against their souls, in letters as durable as eternity. 
 As for David Swan, he still slept quietly, neither conscious of the 
 shadow of death when it hung over him, nor of the glow of renewed 
 life when that shadow was withdrawn. 
 
 He slept, but no longer so quietly as at first. An hour's repose 
 had snatched, from his elastic frame, the weariness with which many 
 hours of toil had burdened it. Now he stirred ; now moved his lips, 
 without a sound ; now talked, in an inward tone, to the noonday 
 spectres of his dream. But a noise of wheels came rattling louder 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 
 
 and louder along the road, until it dashed through the dispersing 
 mist of David's slumber and there was the stage coach. He 
 started up, with all his ideas about him. 
 
 " Halloo, driver ! Take a passenger ? " shouted he. 
 
 " Room on top," answered the driver. 
 
 Up mounted David, and bowled away merrily towards Boston, 
 without so much as a parting glance at that fountain of dream-like 
 vicissitude. He knew not that a phantom of Wealth had thrown a 
 golden hue upon its waters, nor that one of Love had sighed softly 
 to their murmur, nor that one of Death had threatened to crimson 
 them with his blood all, in the brief hour since he lay down to 
 sleep. Sleeping or waking, we hear not the airy footsteps of the 
 strange things that almost happen. Does it not argue a superin- 
 tending Providence, that, while viewless and unexpected events 
 thrust themselves continually athwart our path, there should still 
 be regularity enough, in mortal life, to render foresight even par- 
 tially available ? 
 
 [From Mosses from an Old Manse.] 
 DESCRIPTION OF THE MANSE. 
 
 BETWEEN two tall gate-posts of rough-hewn stone (the gate itself 
 having fallen from its hinges at some unknown epoch), we beheld 
 the gray front of the old parsonage, terminating the vista of an 
 avenue of black ash trees. It was now a twelvemonth since the 
 funeral procession of the venerable clergyman, its last inhabitant, 
 had turned from that gateway towards the village bury ing-ground. 
 The wheel track, leading to the door, as well as the whole breadth 
 of the avenue, was almost overgrown with grass, affording dainty 
 mouthfuls to two or three vagrant cows and an old white horse, who 
 had his own living to pick up along the roadside. The glimmering 
 shadows, that lay half asleep between the door of the house and the 
 public highway, were a kind of spiritual medium, seen through which, 
 the edifice had not quite the aspect of belonging to the material 
 world. Certainly it had little in common with those ordinary abodes, 
 which stand so imminent upon ( the road that every passer-by can 
 thrust his head, as it were, into the domestic circle. From these 
 quiet windows the figures of passing travellers looked too remote 
 and dim to disturb the sense of privacy. In its near retirement and 
 accessible seclusion, it was the very spot for the residence of a cler- 
 gyman ; a man not estranged from human life, yet enveloped, in the 
 
HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 midst of it, with a veil woven of intermingled gloom and brightness. 
 It was worthy to have been one of the time-honored parsonages of 
 England, in which, through many generations, a succession of holy 
 occupants pass from youth to age, and bequeath each an inheritance 
 of sanctity to pervade the house and hover over it, as with an at- 
 mosphere. . . . 
 
 In furtherance of my design, and as if to leave me no pretext for 
 not fulfilling it, there was, in the rear of the house, the most delight- 
 ful little nook of a study that ever offered its snug seclusion to a 
 scholar. It was here that Emerson wrote " Nature ; " for he was 
 then an inhabitant of the Manse, and used to watch the Assyrian 
 dawn and the Paphian sunset and moonrise, from the summit of our 
 eastern hill. When I first saw the room, its walls were blackened 
 with the smoke of unnumbered years, and made still blacker by the 
 grim prints of Puritan ministers that hung around. These worthies 
 looked strangely like bad angels, or, at least, like men who had 
 wrestled so continually and so sternly with the devil, that somewhat 
 of his sooty fierceness had been imparted to their own visages. 
 They had all vanished now ; a cheerful coat of paint, and golden- 
 tinted paper hangings, lighted up the small apartment, while the 
 shadow of a willow tree, that swept against the overhanging eaves, 
 attempered the cheery western sunshine. In place of the grim 
 prints, there was the sweet and lovely head of one of Raphael's 
 Madonnas, and two pleasant little pictures of the Lake of Como. 
 The only other decorations were a purple vase of flowers, always 
 fresh, and a bronze one containing graceful ferns. My books few, 
 and by no means choice, for they were chiefly such waifs as chance 
 had thrown in my way stood in order about the room, seldom to 
 be disturbed. 
 
 The study had three windows, set with little old fashioned panes 
 of glass, each with a crack across it. The two on the western side 
 looked, or rather peeped, between the willow branches, down into 
 the orchard, with glimpses of the river through the trees. The third, 
 facing northward, commanded a broader view of the river, at a spot 
 where its hitherto obscure waters gleam forth into the light of his- 
 tory. It was at this window that tbe clergyman, who then dwelt in 
 the Manse, stood watching the outbreak of a long and deadly strug- 
 gle between two nations. He saw the irregular array of his parish- 
 ioners on the farther side of the river, and the glittering line of the 
 British on the hither bank ; he awaited, in an agony of suspense, the 
 rattle of the musketry. It came and there needed but a gentle 
 wind to sweep the battle smoke around this quiet house. . . . 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 249 
 
 Come ; we have pursued a somewhat devious track in our walk to 
 the battle-ground. Here we are, at the point where the river was 
 crossed by the old bridge, the possession of which was the immedi- 
 ate object of the contest. On the hither side grow two or three elms, 
 throwing a wide circumference of shade, but which must have been 
 planted at some period within the threescore years and ten that 
 have passed since the battle-day. On the farther shore, overhung 
 by a clump of elder-bushes, we discern the stone abutment of the 
 bridge. Looking down into the river, I once discovered some heavy 
 fragment of the timbers, all green with half a century's growth of 
 water-moss ; for, during that length of time, the tramp of horses 
 and human footsteps have ceased along this ancient highway. The 
 stream has here about the breadth of twenty strokes of a swimmer's 
 arm a space not too wide, when the bullets were whistling across. 
 Old people, who dwell hereabouts, will point out the very spots, on 
 the western bank, where our countrymen fell down and died ; and, 
 on this side of the river, an obelisk of granite has grown up from the 
 soil that was fertilized with British blood. 
 
 ASSABETH RIVER. 
 
 OR it might be that Ellery Channing came up the avenue, to join 
 me in a fishing excursion on the river. Strange and happy times 
 were those, when we cast aside all irksome forms and straitlaced 
 habitudes, and delivered ourselves up to the free air, to live like the 
 Indians, or any less conventional race, during one bright semicircle 
 of the sun. Rowing our boat against the current, between wide 
 meadows, we turned aside into the Assabeth. A more lonely stream 
 than this, for a mile above its junction with the Concord, has never 
 flowed on earth nowhere, indeed, except to lave the interior regions 
 of a poet's imagination. It is sheltered from the breeze by woods 
 and a hillside, so that elsewhere there might be a hurricane, and 
 here scarcely a ripple across the shaded water. The current lingers 
 along so gently, that the mere force of the boatman's will seems suf- 
 ficient to propel his craft against it. It comes flowing softly through 
 the midmost privacy and deepest heart of a wood, which whispers 
 it to be quiet, while the stream whispers back again from its 
 sedgy borders, as if river and wood were hushing one another to 
 sleep. . . . 
 
 We drew up our skiff at some point where the overarching shade 
 formed a natural bower, and there kindled a fire with the pine-cones 
 
25O HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 and decayed branches that lay strewn plentifully around. Soon the 
 smoke ascended among the trees, impregnated with a savory incense, 
 not heavy, dull, and surfeiting, like the steam of cookery within 
 doors, but sprightly and piquant. The smell of our feast was akin 
 to the woodland odors with which it mingled ; there was no sacrilege 
 committed by our intrusion there ; the sacred solitude was hospita- 
 ble, and granted us free leave to cook and eat, in the recess that was 
 at once our kitchen and banqueting hall. It is strange what humble 
 offices may be performed, in a beautiful scene, without destroying 
 its poetry. Our fire, red gleaming among the trees, and we beside 
 it, busied with culinary rites and spreading out our meal on a moss- 
 grown log, all seemed in unison with the river gliding by, and the 
 foliage rustling over us. And, what was strangest, neither did our 
 mirth seem to disturb the propriety of the solemn woods ; although 
 the hobgoblins of the old wilderness, and the will-o'-the-wisps that 
 glimmered in the ma"rshy places, might have come trooping to share 
 our table-talk, and have added their shrill laughter to our merriment. 
 It was the very spot in which to utter the extremest nonsense, or 
 the profoundest wisdom or that ethereal product of the mind which 
 partakes of both, and may become one or the other, in correspond- 
 ence with the faith and insight of the auditor. . . . 
 
 I have forgotten whether the song of the cricket be not as early a 
 token of autumn's approach as any other, that song, which may 
 be called an audible stillness ; for. though very loud and heard afar, 
 yet the mind does not take note of it as a sound, so completely is its 
 individual existence merged among the accompanying characteris- 
 tics of the season. Alas ! for the pleasant summer-time ! In August, 
 the grass is still verdant on the hills and in the valleys ; the foliage 
 of the trees is as dense as ever, and as green ; the flowers gleam 
 forth in richer abundance along the margin of the river, and by the 
 stone walls, and deep among the woods ; the days, too, are as fervid 
 now as they were a month ago, and yet, in every breath of wind, 
 and in every beam of sunshine, we hear the whispered farewell, and 
 behold the parting smile, of a dear friend. There is a coolness amid 
 all the heat ; a mildness in the blazing noon. Not a breeze can stir 
 but it thrills us with the breath of autumn. A pensive glory is seen 
 in the far golden gleams, among the shadows of the trees. The 
 flowers even the brightest of them, and they are the most gor- 
 geous of the year have this gentle sadness wedded to their pomp, 
 and typify the character of the delicious time, each within itself. 
 The brilliant Cardinal flower has never seemed gay to me. 
 
WILLIAM R. WILLIAMS. 25 I 
 
 WILLIAM R. WILLIAMS. 
 
 William R. Williams was born in the city of New York, October 14, 1804, and was grad- 
 uated at Columbia College in 1822. He pursued the study of the law for three years, and 
 commenced practice with bright prospects ; but he gave up the profession he had chosen, 
 and became a minister in the Baptist denomination. He was settled as pastor of the 
 Amity Street Baptist Church, in New York, in 1831, and still remains in that position. His 
 sermons are remarkable for their vigor and directness of style, and exhibit the results of a 
 wide range of reading in general literature, as well as in ecclesiastical history and doctrines. 
 He has published a collection of miscellanies, entitled The Conservative Principle in Litera- 
 ture, and other essays (1850), Lectures on the Lord's Prayer (1851), Religious Progress 
 (1851), besides a number of occasional discourses. A sermon preached by him during the 
 late civil war attracted considerable attention. An article on Pascal, in the Baptist Quar- 
 terly, January, 1872, may be cited as a specimen of a clear and attractive style of narration, 
 and an admirable summary of character. 
 
 The long service of this eminent divine in one church, although he has frequently declined 
 offers to fill more conspicuous positions, shows the estimation in which he is held, as well as 
 the inherent nobleness and modesty of the man. 
 
 [From a Discourse delivered in 1847.] 
 " Scatter thou the people that delight in war." Psalm Ixviii. 30. 
 
 THE literary classes of a nation may have their share in the woes 
 of our text. The true rulers of a people are often less the men 
 recognized as magistrates and monarchs by the ensigns of office, but 
 rather the popular authors who give coloring to the tastes and sen- 
 timents, and shape to the principles of their times. Wearing no 
 tiara, wielding no sceptre, they are yet often really throned as rulers 
 in the mind of the nation and the age. When these, as such in 
 authority, feed a taste for war, reckless of right, and greedy only of 
 glory and plunder, they sin, and God holds them answerable for the 
 homes from which they lure the adventurous son or husband enlist- 
 ing for a soldier's perils, and answerable for the darker desolation of 
 the abodes into which war carries pollution and remorseless carnage. 
 Poetry has too much made the fray, and the banner, and nodding 
 plume, the resounding march, -and the murderous volley, its favor- 
 ite themes, careless of the right or wrong of the quarrel. And 
 one of the many causes of contention that Virtue and Piety have 
 with the drama, especially in modern times, is its love of slaughter, 
 and the insane profusion with which it assumes to expend human 
 life like water, and gluts and fires an admiring crowd with its specta- 
 cles of imaged suicide and murder. Into these things a God of jus- 
 tice will search. . . . 
 
 See the memorials of the far-travelled and victorious legions of 
 ancient Rome in the days of her republican might and her imperial 
 
252 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 pride, then turn to trace, if you can, the features of that terrible 
 nation, who so excelled and so delighted in war ; in the effeminate, 
 treacherous, and vindictive Italian, who has passion without power, 
 and feeling without principle, his animal sensibilities, as nurtured 
 amid the nudities of exquisite statuary and matchless painting to a re- 
 fined delicacy of taste, educated until they have outgrown the moral, 
 and left behind no delicacy whatever of moral feelings. Their Vir- 
 gil boasted once, in the days of warlike power, that other people 
 might better carve and better paint, but Romans were born to rule. 
 The curse of Providence on the mad love of military rapine has 
 inverted the boast of their poet. The modern Roman carves and 
 paints, but rule he cannot, himself or others. The bayonets of Aus- 
 tria govern him, and the Swiss mercenaries are the guards of his 
 pontiff. The assassin has replaced the warrior, the fiddler the states- 
 man, and for the severe virtue of her Cato and the simple patriotism 
 of her Cincinnatus, you see a nation without conscience, without 
 dignity, and without power, getting up melodramatic conspiracies 
 and sanguinary outbreaks, but without the pith and manhood to 
 recover their freedom. They who delighted in war, how are they 
 scattered, although the arches and the pillars yet stand that tell of 
 their old manhood, and enterprise, and renown ; and under the 
 shadow of Trajan's column and the arch of Titus clamors the men- 
 dicant and lurks the assassin ! 
 
 The old Sclavi, once a formidable people, whose name in their 
 own language signified " glory," were at first terrible in their brave, 
 fierce invasions, but became, in their time and turn, vanquished and 
 captives ; and now their national name is, in our own and several 
 European languages, the term to describe the bondman, the man 
 not only who has lost peace, but who has lost freedom also. Yes, 
 our very word " slave," is a standing memorial of the great retribu- 
 tive law of our text, " the scatterer scattered," the prowler preyed 
 upon, the troubler caught in the pitfall he has dug. So, turn to the 
 European ancestors of the race with whom is waged our present 
 contest. So, see Spain, once the mightiest and bravest nation of 
 Europe, now at home poor, though her universal exchequer once 
 was gorged with the wealth of both the Indies, and in her colonies, 
 once the scene of the valor of a Pizarro and a Cortez, see her race 
 now how spent and abject ! In times nearer our own, how dread- 
 fully were the invasions of revolutionary and imperial France re- 
 quited in her own capital, twice entered by an enemy, and in the fate 
 of her own great Captain, coming at first, as it was predicted of 
 
FREDERIC HENRY HEDGE. 2$3 
 
 Cyrus, " upon princes as upon mortar, and as the potter treadeth 
 clay," afterwards fretting himself to death within the circuit of his 
 narrow island prison how did God seem reading a fresh comment, 
 for a new and forgetful generation, on this old and forgotten law of 
 his providence. 
 
 FREDERIC HENRY HEDGE. 
 
 Frederic Henry Hedge was born in Cambridge, Mass., December 12, 1805. His father 
 was a professor of logic and metaphysics in Harvard College. The son accompanied Mr. 
 George Bancroft to Europe, and studied at German schools. He returned to this country 
 in 1823, and was graduated at Harvard College in 1825. He studied theology at the Cam- 
 bridge school, and was settled, in 1828, as pastor of a church in West Cambridge. In 1835 
 he removed to Bangor, Me., where he remained fifteen years. In 1847 he made a tour of 
 Europe, and spent a winter in Italy. In 1850 he was settled as pastor of a church in Provi- 
 dence, and remained there until 1856, when he removed to Brookline, Mass., where he still 
 resides. He was chosen professor in the theological school at Cambridge in 1857. He 
 has been a contributor to the Examiner, the Atlantic Monthly, and other religious and lit- 
 erary periodicals. His principal work is The Prose Writers of Germany, which is a careful 
 selection from the most eminent authors, beginning with Luther, with an original biography 
 of each. Many of the translations were made by him also. His life has been one of great 
 activity, and a collection of his printed sermons, orations, discourses, reviews, and essays 
 would occupy a large space. Dr. Hedge is far from being a diffuse writer, however ; his 
 style is compact and sinewy, and he challenges his reader's most thoughtful attention. He 
 is considered one of the most thorough scholars, as he is one of the ablest and most effective 
 writers, in the Unitarian denomination. N. B. Since the above was written, Dr. Hedge 
 has been appointed Professor of German in Harvard College. 
 
 [From an article upon Irony, in the Atlantic Monthly.] 
 THE IRONY OF NATURE. 
 
 WE began with the irony of spirit ; let us round the swift synopsis 
 with a glance at the ironies of nature. 
 
 As such I reckon, for one thing, the close reserve with which 
 nature baffles the scrutiny of science, and hides from curious eyes 
 the final secret of her births. From time immemorial the inscruta- 
 ble mother has been playing a game of inverted blind-man's-buff 
 with her inquisitive children. She bandages their eyes, and bids 
 them catch her if they can. Her explorers chase her hither and 
 thither, but their eyes are holden that they should not know her. When 
 any one thinks he has caught her, it is only a part of her drapery 
 which she yields to his clutches, never herself. " Science," says the 
 Persian mystic, " puts her finger in her mouth and cries because the 
 mystery of being will not reveal itself." The physiologist searches 
 for the secret of life. What is it that discriminates animated from 
 inanimate being ? Function. In the lowest as in the highest, in 
 
254 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 the rhizopod as in the angel, it is function that distinguishes life from 
 death. But where is the functionary ? Where sits the performer 
 who plays the many-stringed or the one-stringed instrument? No 
 dissection could ever show. What becomes of him when the instru- 
 ment stops ? No observation could ever report. Performer and 
 performance are indistinguishably one. Between the instrument 
 played and the instrument suddenly stopped there is no perceptible 
 difference, except the fact of ability or inability still to perform. Yet 
 is the difference infinite between life and death. The ontologist 
 searches for the primal substance. Behind all the wrappers that 
 envelop it, beneath all the acts that represent it, he would stand face 
 to face with the ultimate fact. Is it matter ? With microscope, and 
 knife, and crucible he interrogates sensible forms. Is it spirit ? 
 With unsparing analysis he interrogates consciousness ; and finds 
 himself at last, in whatever direction he seeks, after all his probing, 
 face to face with nothing. And " nothing " is the answer with 
 which the irony of nature responds alike to physicist and metaphysi- 
 cian, when the search transcends the prescribed bound. The Ixion 
 of Greek mythology is an ever-fit symbol of all endeavors to lay hold 
 of the absolute. Ixion is in love with Juno, the queen of the empy- 
 rean ; he thinks to embrace her, and embraces a cloud. Transcen- 
 dentalism experiences the same illusion, and experiences something 
 of Ixion's penalty of endless rotation, forever traversing the same 
 cycle, from spirit to matter, and round to spirit again, on the wheel 
 to which her serpentine subtleties have bound her. 
 
 " Tortos Ixionis angues 
 Immanemque rotam." 
 
 Philosophy chases, nature hides, forever inviting, forever baffling 
 investigation. " Nature," wrote Goethe, in the midst of his re- 
 searches, "we are surrounded and clasped by her, unable to step out 
 of her, and unable to go farther into her. Unbidden and unwarned, 
 she takes us up into her circling dance, and whirls herself forth with 
 us until we are exhausted, and sink from her arms. . . . We 
 live in the midst of her, and are strangers to her ; she converses 
 with us unceasingly, and never betrays her secret. We act upon 
 her continually, and yet have no power over her. She lives alto- 
 gether in her children ; and the mother, where is she ? " 
 
 A deeper irony lurks in the swift termination with which nature 
 limits all beauty, satisfaction, life. 
 
 All beauty resides in surfaces merely ; it is constituted by lines 
 and angles, of which the least disturbance dissipates the vision. All 
 
FREDERIC HENRY HEDGE. 255 
 
 natural beauty is a phantasmagory, an unreal mockery, to which a 
 sentiment in the soul of the beholder gives all its effect. The glories 
 of sunset, the witchery of rose and gold that lures like the gates of 
 heaven, what is it but vibrations of an invisible ether struggling 
 through moisture and made visible by impediment ? Obstruction in 
 the object, abstraction in the subject, explains the whole secret of 
 the gorgeous cheat. The moon-silvered expanse of ocean seen from 
 your balcony at Newport or Nahant, a vision that draws the soul 
 from the body and laps it in elysium, what is it but a remnant of 
 that setting sun received second-hand and mixed with unsavory brine ? 
 
 The moon on the wave is beautiful, and beautiful the landscape 
 bathed in its light. But encounter that orb at dead of night on a 
 desolate road when past the full, just risen above the horizon and 
 level with your eye, gibbous, lurid, portentous, what irony glares 
 in it ! what a tale it tells of a blasted, worn-out, ruined world ! 
 
 All human beauty is but skin deep, and scarcely that. A little 
 roughening of the cuticle will mar the fairest face, and change beauty 
 to hideousness. What fearful irony leers upon us from the human 
 skull ! This was the head, this the divine countenance, of some 
 Helen, some Aspasia or Cleopatra, some Agnes of Meran or Mary 
 of Scotland, on whose eyelids hung the destinies of nations, for 
 whose lips the lords of the earth thought the world well lost, from 
 whose lineaments painters drew their presentment of the Queen of 
 Heaven. How was this cruel metamorphosis wrought ? Simply by 
 stripping off the surface. The miraculous bulb was peeled, a layer 
 of tissue removed, and behold the grinning horror ! [ " Get you to 
 my lady's chamber ; tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this favgr- 
 she must come." ^^^T \^ 
 
 The saying of the poet, " A thing of beauty is a joy forever," is 
 true only when predicated of the image in the mind and of intellec- 
 tual contemplation. The beauty of things is a phantom ; the enjoy- 
 ment the senses have of it, a slippery illusion. A beautiful phenom- 
 enon is actually seen but for a moment. A little while, and though 
 present to the eye it is seen no more, as a strain of music ceases to 
 be heard when unduly prolonged. Only the thought survives the 
 image in the mind. As mere sensation, the enjoyment of beauty is 
 fleeting, like all our enjoyments ; the more intense, the more evanes- 
 cent. It is a bitter irony of nature that, whilst grief may last for 
 days and months, all pleasure is momentary. The best that life 
 yields in that kind is an equilibrium of mild content, a poise between 
 joy and pain. Disturb that equilibrium by dropping a sorrow into 
 
256 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 the scale, and long time is required to restore the balance. Disturb 
 the equilibrium by adding a new joy, and how soon the beam is 
 straight ! We get used and indifferent to our joys ; we do not get 
 used to our pains. And yet nature can bear a greater accession of 
 sorrow than of pleasure. Strange to say, the heart will sooner 
 break with joy than grief. On the plane of physical experience there 
 are painful sensations, which, beyond a certain point of aggravation, 
 are fatal, as the strain of the rack has sometimes proved. And 
 there are pleasurable sensations which would be fatal if greatly 
 intensified or prolonged. But note this curious fact, that before the 
 limit of endurance in the latter case is reached the pleasure turns to 
 pain, which shows how limited is physical enjoyment. Bodily pain, 
 on the contrary, never breaks into any falsetto of pleasure, but 
 keeps " due on " its dolorous road till anguish deepens into death. 
 
 Of mental emotions, joy in itself is more fatal than sorrow ; the 
 only reason why men oftener pine to death than rejoice to death is 
 because occasions of extreme grief are more frequent than occasions 
 of excessive joy. 
 
 " If ever," says Faust, in his bargain with Mephistopheles, " if 
 ever I shall say to the passing moment, ' Tarry, thou art so beauti- 
 ful,' then you may lay fetters on me, and I will gladly go to per- 
 dition." . . . 
 
 Meanwhile, nature pursues her course, regardless alike of joy and 
 grief. No sympathy has she with sad or gay, no care to adjust her 
 aspects with our experience, her seasons with our need, or to match 
 with her sky the weather in the soul. She smiles her blandest on 
 the recent battle-field where the hopes of a thousand homes lie with- 
 ered, and she smites with her tornadoes the ungathered harvest in 
 which the bread of a thousand homes has ripened. She refuses a 
 glint of her sunlight to the ship befogged on a lee shore, and pours 
 it in full splendor on the finished, irreparable wreck. Prodigal of 
 life, she is every moment teeming with births innumerable, and still 
 the drift of death accumulates on the planet. This earth of our 
 abode is all compact of extinct creations, every creature on it a sar- 
 cophagus of perished lives, every existence purchased and maintained 
 by sumless deaths. The outstretched landscape, refulgent in the 
 bright June morning, dew-gemmed, vocal with the ecstasies of wel- 
 coming birds, suggestive of eternal youth, is a funeral pageant, a 
 part of the fatal procession which takes us with it as we gaze. The 
 fresh enamel laid on by the laughing hours, the festive sheen, the 
 universal face of joy, "the bridal of the earth and sky," when ana- 
 
WILLIAM GILMORE SIMMS. 257 
 
 lyzed, turns to a thin varnish spread over mould and corruption. 
 And amid the myriad-voiced psalm of life that makes the outgoings 
 of the morning glad, is heard, if we listen, the sullen ground-tone of 
 mortality with which nature accompanies all her music. 
 
 WILLIAM GILMORE SIMMS. 
 
 William Gilmore Simms was born in Charleston, S. C., April 17, 1806. He received but 
 a limited education in one of the grammar schools of the city, and was for some time a clerk 
 in a drug house ; but at the age of eighteen he commenced the study of law. He was mar- 
 ried at twenty, and at twenty-two was admitted to the bar. After practising a year, he pur- 
 chased an interest in a newspaper ; but this proved a losing venture, as the doctrine of 
 "nullification " was in the ascendant, and Simms was then an advocate for the maintenance 
 of the Federal Union. He resolved to retrieve his foi tunes by literary labors, and from that 
 time forward he published, with almost every year, a poem, a novel, a history, or a biography. 
 No writer of modern times has excelled him in industry ; but the rapidity with which his 
 works were produced has had its usual effect. None of them show the matured and sym- 
 metrical design which marks a work of art, still less the hand of a master in their execution. 
 There are passages of description in many of his novels that are vivid and picturesque, but 
 the style is often redundant, lacking in repose, and scarcely ever free from provincialisms. 
 The characters are like the lay figures of the studio, useful in exigencies and effective in 
 tableaux, but devoid of interest in themselves. The best of his novels are of the historical 
 kind, in which southern life in early times is painted, such as The Yemassee and Guy Rivers. 
 The most of them are irredeemably dull, at least for readers who value their time, and they 
 must surely sink into neglect. 
 
 Among his more solid works are the History of South Carolina, and the lives of Generals 
 Francis Marion and Nathanael Greene, Captain John Smith, founder of the Virginia co!ony, 
 and the Chevalier Bayard. Most of his poems, some fourteen in the whole, are out of 
 print. The best of them is said to be Atalantis, published in New York in 1833. He was 
 also an indefatigable writer for periodicals, having been editor of several southern reviews, 
 and a contributor to a great number of northern magazines. The student who is curious in 
 such matters will find in Appleton's Cyclopaedia, Vol. XIV., p. 668, a list of nearly sixty 
 volumes of his works. 
 
 Mr. Simms received a considerable fortune by his second marriage, and his works un- 
 doubtedly yielded him a handsome income. He was a man of frank and hearty manners and 
 amiable character. He died at Savannah, June n, 1870. 
 
 The extract here given is from the Life of Marion. The work of selection is much like 
 giving a sample from a piece of cloth ; his style has a certain level quality, that neither 
 kindles our enthusiasm, nor falls below a respectable mediocrity. 
 
 [From the Life of Marion.] 
 
 MARION'S career, as a partisan, in the thickets and swamps of 
 Carolina, is abundantly distinguished by the picturesque ; but it was 
 while he held his camp at Snow's Island, that it received its highest 
 colors of romance. . . . 
 
 Art had done little to increase the comforts or the securities of 
 his fortress. It was one, complete to his hands, from those of 
 17 
 
258 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 nature such a one as must have delighted the generous English 
 outlaw of Sherwood forest ; insulated by deep ravines and rivers, a 
 dense forest of mighty trees, and interminable undergrowth. The 
 vine and brier guarded his passes. The laurel and the shrub, the 
 vine and sweet scented jessamine, roofed his dwelling, and clambered 
 up between his closed eyelids and the stars. Obstructions, scarcely 
 penetrable by any foe, crowded the pathway to his tent ; and no 
 footstep, not practised in the secret, and "to the manner born," 
 might pass unchallenged to his midnight rest. The swamp was his 
 moat ; his bulwarks were the deep ravines, which, watched by sleep- 
 less rifles, were quite as impregnable as the castles on the Rhine. 
 Here, in the possession of his fortress, the partisan slept secure. . . . 
 
 His movements were marked by equal promptitude and wariness. 
 He suffered no risks from a neglect of proper precaution. His 
 habits of circumspection and resolve ran together in happy unison. 
 His plans, carefully considered beforehand, were always timed with 
 the happiest reference to the condition and feelings of his men. To 
 prepare that condition, and to train those feelings, were the chief 
 employment of his repose. He knew his game, and how it should 
 be played, before a step was taken or a weapon drawn. When he 
 himself, or any of his parties, left the island upon an expedition, 
 they advanced along no beaten paths. They made them as they 
 went. He had the Indian faculty in perfection, of gathering his 
 course from the sun, from the stars, from the bark and tops of 
 trees, and such other natural guides, as the woodman acquires only 
 through long and watchful experience. Many of the trails, thus 
 opened by him, upon these expeditions, are now the ordinary avenues 
 of the country. On starting, he almost invariably struck into the 
 woods, and seeking the heads of the larger watercourses, crossed 
 them at their first and small beginnings. He destroyed the bridges 
 where he could. He preferred fords. The former not only facil- 
 itated the progress of less fearless enemies, but apprised them of his 
 own approach. If speed was essential, a more direct, but not less 
 cautious route was pursued. . . . 
 
 The secrecy with, which Marion conducted his expeditions was, 
 perhaps, one of the causes of their frequent success. He intrusted 
 his schemes to nobody, not even his most confidential officers. He 
 consulted with them respectfully, heard them patiently, weighed 
 their suggestions, and silently approached his conclusions. They 
 knew his determinations only from his actions. He left no track 
 behind him, if it were possible to avoid it. He was often vainly 
 
WILLIAM GILMORE SIMMS. 259 
 
 hunted after by his own detachments. He was more apt at finding 
 them than they him. His scouts were taught a peculiar and shrill 
 whistle, which, at night, could be heard at a most astonishing dis- 
 tance. We are reminded of a signal of Roderick Dhu : 
 
 " He whistled shrill, 
 And he was answered from the hill ; 
 Wild as the scream of the curlew, 
 From crag to crag the signal flew." 
 
 His expeditions were frequently long, and his men, hurrying forth 
 without due preparation, not unfrequently suffered much privation 
 from want of food. To guard against this danger, it was their habit 
 to watch his cook. If they saw him unusually busied in preparing 
 supplies of the rude, portable food, which it was Marion's custom to 
 carry on such occasions, they knew what was before them, and pro- 
 vided themselves accordingly. In no other way could they arrive at 
 their general's intentions. His favorite time for moving was with 
 the setting sun, and then it was known that the march would con- 
 tinue all night. . . . 
 
 These marches were made in all seasons. His men were badly 
 clothed in homespun, a light wear which afforded little warmth. 
 They slept in the open air, and frequently without a blanket. Their 
 ordinary food consisted of sweet potatoes, garnished, on fortunate 
 occasions, with lean beef. . . . 
 
 Their swords, unless taken from the enemy, were made out of 
 mill saws, roughly manufactured by a forest blacksmith. His scouts 
 were out in all directions, and at all hours. They did the double 
 duty of patrol and spies. They hovered about the posts of the 
 enemy, crouching in the thicket, or darting along the plain, picking 
 up prisoners, and information, and spoils together. They cut off 
 stragglers, encountered patrols of the foe, and arrested his supplies 
 on the way to the garrison. Sometimes the single scout, buried in 
 the thick tops of the tree, looked down upon the march of his 
 legions, or hung, perched over the hostile encampment till it slept, 
 then slipping down, stole through the silent host, carrying off a 
 drowsy sentinel, or a favorite charger, upon which the daring spy 
 flourished conspicuous among his less fortunate companions. 
 
26O HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 : HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. 
 
 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was born in Portland, Me., February 27, 1807. His 
 recollections of 
 
 " The beautiful town 
 That is seated by the sea " 
 
 are gathered in the touching poem, My Lost Youth. He was graduated in 1825 at Bowdoin 
 College, in the same class with Hawthorne. The next year he was appointed professor of 
 modern languages at Bowdoin, and was allowed the customary leave of absence, that he 
 might make the tour of Europe. On his return he commenced the duties of his chair. 
 While professor at Bowdoin he translated the Coplas de Manrique, and was a contributor 
 to the North American Review. His first original work, entitled Outre Mer, containing 
 his notes of travel, published in 1835, showed refinement of style, and many delicate traits 
 of observation, which were immediately recognized by critical readers. In 1835 he was 
 appointed to a similar professorship at Harvard College, as a successor to Mr. George 
 Ticknor; upon which he made a second visit to Europe, and was absent two years. On 
 his return he commenced his college duties, and held the place until 1854. In 1839 appeared 
 his romance Hyperion, a book that is glowing with poetic thought and instinct with poetic ex- 
 pression. In the same year was published Voices of the Night, a collection that embraces 
 many of his most widely known poems. From that time he was universally acknowledged 
 to be, if not the first, the most popular living poet. Ballads and Other Poems, was printed 
 in 1841, Poems on Slavery in 1842, The Spanish Student, a play, in 1843, Poets and Poetry 
 of Europe in 1845, The Belfry of Bruges in 1845, Evangeline in 1847, Kavanagh, a novel, 
 in 1849, Seaside and Fireside in 1849, The Golden Legend in 1851, The Song of Hiawatha 
 in 1855, The Courtship of Miles Standish in 1858, Tales of a Wayside Inn, 1863, Flower 
 de Luce in 1866, a translation of The Divine Comedy of Dante in 1867, The New England 
 Tragedies in 1868, The Divine Tragedy in 1871, Three Books of Song in 1872. 
 
 It is remarkable to observe that every volume has made a positive addition to our stock 
 of ideal portraits and poetical imagery. We might conceive of a Longfellow Gallery, better 
 known and more fondly cherished than the picture galleries of kings. There, in the place of 
 honor hangs Evangeline, sweetest of rustic heroines, turning her sad face away from the 
 desolate Grand Pre. Opposite is the Puritan damsel, Priscilla, with her bashful, clerical 
 lover, and the fiery little captain. In the next panel is the half-frozen sound, over which 
 skims the bold Norseman. There, under the chestnut tree, stands the swart blacksmith, all 
 the love of a father brimming in his eyes. There leans the vast glacier, gleaming in fatal 
 beauty, along whose verge toils upwards the youth with Excelsior on his banner. There 
 the airy Preciosa is dancing away the scruples of the archbishop. Here is pictured the 
 Belfry of Bruges, and the groups of people listening to the heavenly chime of its bells. 
 There, shivering in a wintry sea, is the Hesperus, a helpless wreck, driving upon Norman's 
 Woe. Yonder stands Albert DUrer, in a street of his beloved, quaint old Nuremberg. 
 There, on the sculptured stairway, is the Clock, ticking its eternal Forever ! never ! Never ! 
 forever! There saunters the dreamy-eyed Sicilian, his dainty mustaches spread like a 
 swallow's wings. Behold the busy throngs about that huge hulk, and see the proud master 
 waving his hand as the signal for the launch 1 By that empty cradle sits the mother think- 
 ing of the dead lamb of her flock. Yonder looms up Strasburg spire, while spirits of the air 
 circle round its pinnacles, and the miracle play goes on below. That is Paul Revere, gallop- 
 ing in the gray of the morning along the road to Concord. In that green spot, with the 
 limitless prairie beyond, stands Hiawatha, looking gloomily westward, whither his path leads 
 him. Lastly, we see a broad frame, on which we read in golden letters the legend, The 
 Divine Tragedy. Let us not lightly raise the veil. 
 
 Poetry, like music, has some strains suited to every mood of mind, and awakens a sense 
 
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. 26 1 
 
 of beauty in the simple hearts of the uncultured, as well as in the strong souls of the great 
 and wise ; and therefore each possessor of the divine gift attracts his separate followers, and 
 addresses different faculties. But Longfellow is well nigh universal in his sympathies, and 
 so is beloved of all men. If it is urged that one poet is more profoundly imaginative, an- 
 other more witty or more glowing, it can still be said that his images fill the horizon of widely 
 different minds, and that his verse has a grace, melody, and variety that leave no room for 
 criticism. Every emotion that stirs us finds a response in some of his poems, and we see 
 that his nice art has seized upon the picturesque in nature to form an appropriate setting to 
 each thought. The poetry of Longfellow furnishes, probably, the most signal proof of the 
 benefits conferred by poets upon mankind. It is a gospel of good will set to music. It 
 has carried "sweetness and light " to thousands of homes. It is blended with our holiest 
 affections and our immortal hopes. 
 
 [From Outre Mer.] 
 THE JOURNEY INTO SPAIN. 
 
 I PASSED by moonlight the little River Bidasoa, which forms the 
 boundary between France and Spain ; and when the morning broke, 
 found myself far up among the mountains of San Salvador, the most 
 westerly links of the great Pyrenean chain. The mountains around 
 me were neither rugged nor precipitous, but they rose one above an- 
 other in a long, majestic swell, and the trace of the ploughshare was 
 occasionally visible to their summits. They seemed entirely desti- 
 tute of forest scenery ; and as the season of vegetation had not yet 
 commenced, their huge outlines lay black, and barren, and desolate 
 against the sky. But it was a glorious morning, and the sun rose 
 up into a cloudless heaven, and poured a flood of gorgeous splendor 
 over the mountain landscape, as if proud of the realm he shone upon. 
 The scene was enlivened by the dashing of a swollen mountain 
 brook, whose course we followed for miles down the valley, as it 
 leaped onward to its journey's end, now breaking into a white cas- 
 cade, and now foaming and chafing beneath a rustic bridge. Now 
 and then we rode through a dilapidated town, with a group of idlers 
 at every corner, wrapped in tattered brown cloaks, and smoking 
 their little paper cigars in the sun ; then would succeed a desolate 
 tract of country, cheered only by the tinkle of a mule bell, or the 
 song of a muleteer ; then we would meet a solitary traveller mounted 
 on horseback, and wrapped in the ample folds of his cloak, with a 
 gun hanging at the pommel of his saddle. Occasionally, too, among 
 the bleak, inhospitable hills, we passed a rude little chapel, with a 
 cluster of ruined cottages around it; and whenever our carriage 
 stopped at the relay, or loitered slowly up the hillside, a crowd of 
 children would gather around us, with little images and crucifixes 
 for sale, curiously ornamented with ribbons and little bits of 
 tawdry finery. . . . 
 
262 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 On the following morning we left the town, long before day- 
 break, and during our forenoon's journey the postilion drew up at an 
 inn, on the southern slope of the Sierra de San Lorenzo, in the 
 province of old Castile. The house was an old, dilapidated tene- 
 ment, built of rough stone, and coarsely plastered upon the outside. 
 The tiled roof had long been the sport of wind and rain, the motley 
 coat of plaster was broken and time-worn, and the whole building 
 sadly out of repair ; though the fanciful mouldings under the eaves, 
 and the curiously carved wood-work that supported the little balcony 
 over the principal entrance, spoke of better days gone by. The whole 
 building reminded me of a dilapidated Spanish Don, down at the 
 heel and out at the elbows, but with here and there a remnant of 
 former magnificence peeping through the loopholes of his tattered 
 cloak. 
 
 A wide gateway ushered the traveller into the interior of the 
 building, and conducted him to a low-roofed apartment, paved with 
 round stones, and serving both as a court-yard and a stable. It 
 seemed to be a neutral ground for man and beast a little republic, 
 where horse and rider had common privileges, and mule and 
 muleteer lay cheek by jowl. In one corner a poor jackass was 
 patiently devouring a bundle of musty straw ; in another, its master 
 Jay sound asleep, with his saddle-cloth for a pillow; here a group of 
 muleteers were quarrelling over a pack of dirty cards, and there the 
 village barber, with a self-important air, stood laving the alcalde's chin 
 from the helmet of Mambrino. On the wall a little taper glimmered 
 feebly before an image of St. Anthony ; directly opposite these a 
 leathern wine-bottle hung by the neck from a pair of ox-horns ; and 
 the pavement below was covered with a curious medley of boxes, 
 and bags, and cloaks, and pack-saddles, and sacks of grain, and 
 skins of wine, and all kinds of lumber. 
 
 A small door upon the right led us into the inn kitchen. It was a 
 room about ten feet square, and literally all chimney ; for the hearth 
 was in the centre of the floor, and the walls sloped upwards in the 
 form of a long, narrow pyramid, with an opening at the top for the 
 escape of the smoke. Quite round this little room ran a row of 
 benches, upon which sat one or two grave personages smoking 
 paper cigars. Upon the hearth blazed a handful of fagots, whose 
 bright flame danced merrily among a motley congregation of pots 
 and kettles, and a long wreath of smoke wound lazily up through the 
 huge tunnel of the roof above. The walls were black with soot, and 
 ornamented with sundry legs of bacon, and festoons of sausages ; 
 
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. 263 
 
 and as there were no windows in this dingy abode, the only light 
 which cheered the darkness within came flickering from the fire 
 upon the hearth, and the smoky sunbeams that peeped down the 
 long-necked chimney. 
 
 [From Hyperion.] 
 
 " WHERE should the scholar live ? In solitude, or in society ? In 
 the green stillness of the country, where he can hear the heart of 
 Nature beat ; or in the dark, gray town, where he can hear and feel 
 the throbbing heart of man ? I will make answer for him, and 
 say, in the dark, gray town. O, they do greatly err, who think that 
 the stars are all the poetry which cities have ; and therefore that the 
 poet's only dwelling should be in sylvan solitudes, under the green 
 roof of trees. Beautiful, no doubt, are all the forms of Nature, when 
 transfigured by the miraculous power of poetry ; hamlets and 
 harvest-fields, and nut-brown waters, flowing ever under the forest, 
 vast and shadowy, with all the sights and sounds of rural life. But 
 after all, what are these but the decorations and painted scenery 
 in the great theatre of human life ? What are they but the coarse 
 materials of the poet's song ? Glorious, indeed, is the world of God 
 around us, but more glorious the world of God within us. There 
 lies the land of song ; there lies the poet's native land. The river 
 of life, that flows through streets tumultuous, bearing along so many 
 gallant hearts, so many wrecks of humanity ; the many homes and 
 households, each a little world in itself, revolving round its fireside, 
 as a central sun ; all forms of human joy and suffering, brought into 
 that narrow compass ; and to be in this, and be a part of this, act- 
 ing, thinking, rejoicing, sorrowing, with his fellow-men such, such 
 should be the poet's life. If he would describe the world, he 
 should live in the world. The mind of the scholar, if you would 
 have it large and liberal, should come in contact with other minds. 
 It is better that his armor should be somewhat bruised by rude 
 encounters even, than hang forever rusting on the wall. Nor will 
 his themes be few or trivial, because apparently shut in between the 
 walls of houses, and having merely the decorations of street scenery. 
 A ruined character is as picturesque as a ruined castle. There are 
 dark abysses and yawning gulfs in the human heart, which can be 
 rendered passable only by bridging them over with iron nerves and 
 sinews, as Challey bridged the Sarine in Switzerland, and Telford 
 the sea between Anglesea and England, with chain bridges. These 
 
264 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 are the great themes of human thought not green grass, and 
 flowers, and moonlight. Besides, the mere external forms of Nature 
 we make our own, and carry with us everywhere by the power of 
 memory." 
 
 " I fear, however," interrupted Flemming, "that in towns the soul 
 of man grows proud. He needs at times to be sent forth, like the 
 Assyrian monarch, into green fields, ' a wondrous wretch and weed- 
 less,' to eat green herbs, and be wakened and chastised by the rain 
 shower and winter's bitter weather. Moreover, in cities there is 
 danger of the soul's becoming wed to pleasure, and forgetful of its 
 high vocation. There have been souls dedicated to heaven from 
 childhood, and guarded by good angels as sweet seclusions for holy 
 thoughts, and prayers, and all good purposes, wherein pious wishes 
 dwelt like nuns, and every image was a saint ; and yet in life's 
 vicissitudes, by the treachery of occasion, by the thronging passions 
 of great cities, have become soiled and sinful. They resemble those 
 convents on the River Rhine, which have been changed to taverns ; 
 from whose chambers the pious inmates have long departed, and in 
 whose cloisters the footsteps of travellers have effaced the images of 
 buried saints, and whose walls are written over with ribaldry and 
 the names of strangers, and resound no more with holy hymns, but 
 with revelry and loud voices." 
 
 " Both town and country have their dangers," said the Baron, 
 " and therefore, wherever the scholar lives, he must not forget his 
 high vocation." 
 
 THE ARSENAL AT SPRINGFIELD. 
 
 THIS is the Arsenal. From floor to ceiling, 
 Like a huge organ, rise the burnished arms ; 
 
 But from their silent pipes no anthem pealing 
 Startles the villages with strange alarms. 
 
 Ah ! what a sound will rise, how wild and dreary, 
 When the death-angel touches those swift keys ! 
 
 What loud lament and dismal Miserere 
 Will mingle with their awful symphonies ! 
 
 I hear even now the infinite fierce chorus, 
 
 The cries of agony, the endless groan, 
 Which, through the ages that have gone before us, 
 
 In long reverberations reach our own. 
 
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. 26$ 
 
 On helm and harness rings the Saxon hammer, 
 Through Cimbric forest roars the Norseman's song, 
 
 And loud, amid the universal clamor, 
 
 O'er distant deserts sounds the Tartar gong. 
 
 I hear the Florentine, who from his palace 
 Wheels out his battle-bell with dreadful din, 
 
 And Aztec priests upon their teocallis 
 
 Beat the wild war-drums made of serpent's skin ; 
 
 The tumult of each sacked and burning village ; 
 
 The shout that every prayer for mercy drowns ; 
 The soldiers' revels in the midst of pillage ; 
 
 The wail of famine in beleaguered towns ; 
 
 The bursting shell, the gateway wrenched asunder, 
 
 The rattling musketry, the clashing blade ; 
 And ever and anon, in tones of thunder, 
 
 The diapason of the canonnade. 
 
 Is it, O man, with such discordant noises, 
 
 With such accursed instruments as these, 
 Thou drownest Nature's sweet and kindly voices, 
 
 And jarrest the celestial harmonies ? 
 
 Were half the power, that fills the world with terror, 
 Were half the wealth, bestowed on camps and courts, 
 
 Given to redeem the human mind from error, 
 There were no need of arsenals or forts : 
 
 The warrior's name would be a name abhorred ! 
 . And every nation, that should lift again 
 Its hand against a brother, on its forehead 
 Would wear forevermore the curse of Cain ! 
 
 Down the dark future, through long generations, 
 The echoing sounds grow fainter and then cease ; 
 
 And like a bell, with solemn, sweet vibrations, 
 
 I hear once more the voice of Christ say, " Peace ! " 
 
 Peace ! and no longer from its brazen portals 
 
 The blast of War's great organ shakes the skies ! 
 
 But beautiful as songs of the immortals, 
 The holy melodies of love arise. 
 
266 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 A PSALM OF LIFE. 
 WHAT THE HEART OF THE YOUNG MAN SAID TO THE PSALMIST. 
 
 TELL me not, in mournful numbers, 
 
 Life is but an empty dream ! 
 For the soul is dead that slumbers, 
 
 And things are not what they seem. 
 
 Life is real ! Life is earnest ! 
 
 And the grave is not its goal : 
 Dust thou art, to dust returnest, 
 
 Was not spoken of the soul. 
 
 Not enjoyment, and not sorrow, 
 
 Is our destined end or way ; 
 But to act, that each to-morrow 
 
 Find us farther than to-day. 
 
 Art is long, and Time is fleeting, 
 
 And our hearts, though stout and brave, 
 
 Still, like muffled drums, are beating 
 Funeral marches to the grave. 
 
 In the world's broad field of battle, 
 
 In the bivouac of life, 
 Be not like dumb, driven cattle ! 
 
 Be a hero in the strife ! 
 
 Trust no Future, howe'er pleasant ! 
 
 Let the dead Past bury its dead ! 
 Act, act in the living Present ! 
 
 Heart within, and God o'erhead ! 
 
 Lives of great men all remind us 
 We can make our lives sublime, 
 
 And, departing, leave behind us 
 
 Footprints on the sands of time ; 
 
 Footprints, that perhaps another, 
 
 Sailing o'er life's solemn main, 
 A forlorn and shipwrecked brother, 
 
 Seeing, shall take heart again. 
 
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. 267 
 
 Let us, then, be up and doing, 
 
 With a heart for any fate ; 
 Still achieving, still pursuing, 
 
 Learn to labor and to wait. 
 
 THE BELEAGUERED CITY. 
 
 I HAVE read, in some old, marvellous tale, 
 Some legend strange and vague, 
 
 That a midnight host of spectres pale 
 Beleaguered the walls of Prague. 
 
 Beside the Moldau's rushing stream, 
 
 With the wan moon overhead, 
 There stood, as in an awful dream, 
 
 The army of the dead. 
 
 White as a sea-fog, landward bound, 
 
 The spectral camp was seen, 
 And, with a sorrowful, deep sound, 
 
 The river flowed between. 
 
 No other voice nor sound was there, 
 
 No drum, nor sentry's pace ; 
 The mist-like banners clasped the air, 
 
 As clouds with clouds embrace. 
 
 But when the old cathedral bell 
 Proclaimed the morning prayer, 
 
 The white pavilions rose and fell 
 On the alarmed air. 
 
 Down the broad valley fast and far 
 
 The troubled army fled ; 
 Up rose the glorious morning star, 
 
 The ghastly host was dead. 
 
 I have read, in the marvellous heart of man, 
 That strange and mystic scroll, 
 
 That an army of phantoms vast and wan 
 Beleaguer the human soul. 
 
268 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 Encamped beside Life's rushing stream, 
 
 In Fancy's misty light, 
 Gigantic shapes and shadows gleam 
 
 Portentous through the night. 
 
 Upon its midnight battle-ground 
 
 The spectral camp is seen, 
 And, with a sorrowful, deep sound, 
 
 Flows the River of Life between. 
 
 No other voice nor sound is there, 
 ' In the army of the grave ; 
 No other challenge breaks the air, 
 But the rushing of Life's wave. 
 
 And when the solemn and deep church-bell 
 
 Entreats the soul to pray, 
 The midnight phantoms feel the spell, 
 
 The shadows sweep away. 
 
 Down the broad Vale of Tears afar 
 
 The spectral camp is fled ; 
 Faith shineth as a morning star, 
 
 Our ghastly fears are dead, w 
 
 THE OLD CLOCK ON THE STAIRS. 
 
 L'6ternit6 est une pendule, dont le balancier dit et redit sans cesse ces deux mots seule- 
 ment, dans le silence des tombeaux: "Toujours ! jamais ! Jamais ! toujours ! " 
 
 JACQUES BRIDAINB. 
 
 SOMEWHAT back from the village street 
 
 Stands the old-fashioned country-seat. 
 
 Across its antique portico 
 
 Tall poplar trees their shadows throw, 
 
 And from its station in the hall 
 
 An ancient timepiece says to all, 
 
 " Forever never ! 
 
 Never forever ! " 
 
 Half way up the stairs it stands, 
 And points and beckons with its hands 
 From its case of massive oak, 
 Like a monk, who, under his cloak, 
 
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. 269 
 
 Crosses himself, and sighs, alas ! 
 
 With sorrowful voice to all who pass, 
 
 " Forever never ! 
 
 Never forever ! " 
 
 By day its voice is low and light ; 
 
 But in the silent dead of night, 
 
 Distinct as a passing footstep's fall, 
 
 It echoes along the vacant hall, 
 
 Along the ceiling, along the floor, 
 
 And seems to say, at each chamber-door, 
 
 " Forever never ! 
 
 Never forever ! " 
 
 Through days of sorrow and of mirth, 
 Through days of death and days of birth, 
 Through every swift vicissitude 
 Of changeful time, unchanged it has stood, 
 And as if, like God, it all things saw, 
 It calmly repeats those words of awe, 
 
 " Forever never ! 
 
 Never forever ! " 
 
 In that mansion used to be 
 Free-hearted Hospitality ; 
 His great fires up the chimney roared ; 
 The stranger feasted at his board ; 
 But, like the skeleton at the feast, 
 That warning timepiece never ceased, 
 
 " Forever never ! 
 
 Never forever ! " 
 
 There groups of merry children played, 
 
 There youths and maidens dreaming strayed ; 
 
 O, precious hours ! O, golden prime, 
 
 And affluence of love and time ! 
 
 Even as a miser counts his gold, 
 
 Those hours the ancient timepiece told, 
 
 " Forever never ! 
 
 Never forever ! " 
 
2/O HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 From that chamber, clothed in white, 
 The bride came forth on her wedding night ; 
 There, in that silent room below, 
 The dead lay in his shroud of snow ; 
 And in the hush that followed the prayer, 
 Was heard the old clock on the stair, 
 
 " Forever never ! 
 
 Never forever ! " 
 
 All are scattered now and fled, 
 Some are married, some are dead ; 
 And when I ask, with throbs of pain, 
 " Ah ! when shall they all meet again ? " 
 As in the days long since gone by, 
 The ancient timepiece makes reply, 
 
 " Forever never ! 
 
 Never forever ! " 
 
 Never here, forever there, 
 Where all parting, pain, and care, 
 And death, and time shall disappear, - 
 Forever there, but never here ! 
 The horologe of Eternity 
 Sayeth this incessantly, 
 
 " Forever never ! 
 
 Never forever ! " 
 
 THE FIRE OF DRIFT-WOOD. 
 
 DEVEREUX FARM, NEAR MARBLEHEAD 
 
 WE sat within the farm-house old, 
 Whose windows, looking o'er the bay, 
 
 Gave to the sea-breeze, damp and cold, 
 An easy entrance, night and day. 
 
 Not far away we saw the port, 
 
 The strange, old-fashioned, silent town, 
 The lighthouse, the dismantled fort, 
 
 The wooden houses, quaint and brown. 
 
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. 
 
 We sat and talked until the night, 
 Descending, filled the little room ; 
 
 Our faces faded from the sight, 
 Our voices only broke the gloom. 
 
 We spake of many a vanished scene, 
 Of what we once had thought and said, 
 
 Of what had been, and might have been, 
 And who was changed, and who was dead ; 
 
 And all that fills the hearts of friends, 
 When first they feel, with secret pain, 
 
 Their lives thenceforth have separate ends, 
 And never can be one again ; 
 
 The first slight swerving of the heart, 
 That words are powerless to express, 
 
 And leave it still unsaid in part, 
 Or say it in too great excess. 
 
 The very tones in which we spake 
 Had something strange, I could but mark ; 
 
 The leaves of memory seemed to make 
 A mournful rustling in the dark. 
 
 Oft died the words upon our lips, 
 
 As suddenly, from out the fire 
 Built of the wreck of stranded ships, 
 
 The flames would leap and then expire. 
 
 And, as their splendor flashed and failed, 
 We thought of wrecks upon the main, 
 
 Of ships dismasted, that were hailed 
 And sent no answer back again. 
 
 The windows, rattling in their frames, 
 The ocean, roaring up the beach, 
 
 The gusty blast, the bickering flames, 
 All mingled vaguely in our speech ; 
 
 Until they made themselves a part 
 Of fancies floating through the brain, 
 
 The long-lost ventures of the heart, 
 That send no answers back again. 
 
2/2 
 
 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 O, flames that glowed ! O, hearts that yearned ! 
 
 They were indeed too much akin, 
 The drift-wood fire without that burned, 
 
 The thoughts that burned and glowed within. 
 
 HIAWATHA'S SAILING. 
 
 "GiVE me of your bark, O Birch Tree '. 
 Of your yellow bark, O -Birch Tree ! 
 Growing by the rushing river, 
 Tall and stately in the valley ! 
 I a light canoe will build me, 
 Build a swift Cheemaun for sailing, 
 That shall float upon the river, 
 Like a yellow leaf in Autumn, 
 Like a yellow water-lily ! 
 
 "Lay aside your cloak, O Birch Tree I 
 Lay aside your white-skin wrapper, 
 For the Summer-time is coming, 
 And the sun is warm in heaven, 
 And you need no white-skin wrapper ! " 
 
 Thus aloud cried Hiawatha 
 In the solitary forest, 
 By the rushing Taquamenaw, 
 When the birds were singing gayly, 
 In the Moon of Leaves were singing, 
 And the sun, from sleep awaking, 
 Started up and said, " Behold me I 
 Geezis, the great Sun, behold me 1 " 
 
 And the tree with all its branches 
 Rustled in the breeze of morning, 
 Saying, with a sigh of patience, 
 " Take my cloak, O Hiawatha ! " 
 
 With his knife the tree he girdled ; 
 Just beneath its lowest branches, 
 Just above the roots, he cut it, 
 Till the sap came oozing outward ; 
 Down the trunk, from top to bottom, 
 Sheer he cleft the bark asunder, 
 With a wooden wedge he raised it, 
 Stripped it from the trunk unbroken. 
 
 "Give me of your boughs, O Cedar! 
 Of your strong and pliant branches, 
 My canoe to make more steady, 
 Make more strong and firm beneath me ! ' 
 
 Through the summit of the Cedar 
 Went a sound, a cry of horror, 
 Went a murmur of resistance ; 
 But it whispered, bending downward, 
 " Take my boughs, O Hiawatha 1 " 
 
 Down he hewed the boughs of cedar, 
 Shaped them straightway to a framework, 
 Like two bows he formed and shaped 
 
 them, 
 Like two bended bows together. 
 
 " Give me of your roots, O Tamarack I 
 Of your fibrous roots, O Larch Tree ! 
 My canoe to bind together, 
 So to bind the ends together 
 That the water may not enter, 
 That the river may not wet me ! " 
 
 And the Larch, with all its fibres, 
 Shivered in the air of morning, 
 Touched his forehead with its tassels, 
 Said, with one long sigh of sorrow, 
 "Take them all, O Hiawatha ! " 
 
 From the earth he tore the fibres, 
 Tore the tough roots of the Larch Tree, 
 Closely sewed the bark together, 
 Bound it closely to the framework. 
 
 " Give me of your balm, O Fir Tree ! 
 Of your balsam and your resin, ^ 
 
 So to close the seams together 
 That the water may not enter, 
 That the river may not wet me ! " 
 
 And the Fir Tree, tall and sombre, 
 Sobbed through all its robes of darkness, 
 Rattled like a shore with pebbles, 
 Answered wailing, answered weeping, 
 " Take my balm, O Hiawatha ! " 
 
 And he took the tears of balsam, 
 Took the resin of the Fir Tree, 
 Smeared therewith each seam and fissure, 
 Made each crevice safe from water. 
 
 "Give me of your quills, O Hedgehog! 
 All your quills, O Kagh, the Hedgehog ! 
 I will make a necklace of them, 
 Make a girdle for my beauty, 
 And two stars to deck her bosom ! " 
 
 From a hollow tree the Hedgehog 
 With his sleepy eyes looked at him, 
 Shot his shining quills, like arrows, 
 Saying, with a drowsy murmur, 
 
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. 
 
 273 
 
 Through the tangle of his whiskers, 
 "Take my quills, O Hiawatha !" 
 
 From the ground the quills he gathered, 
 All the little shining arrows, 
 Stained them red and blue and yellow, 
 With the juice of roots and berries ; 
 Into his canoe he wrought them, 
 Round its waist a shining girdle, 
 Round its bows a gleaming necklace, 
 On its breast two stars resplendent. 
 
 Thus the Birch Canoe was builded 
 In the valley, by the river, 
 In the bosom of the forest ; 
 And the forest's life was in it, 
 All its mystery and its magic, 
 AH the lightness of the birch tree, 
 A.H the toughness of the cedar, 
 AH the larch's supple sinews ; 
 And it floated on the river 
 kike a yellow leaf in Autumn, 
 Like a yellow water-lily. 
 
 Paddles none had Hiawatha, 
 Paddles none he had or needed, 
 For his thoughts as paddles served hita, 
 And his wishes served to guide him ; 
 Swift or slow at will he glided, 
 Veered to right or left at pleasure. 
 
 Then he called aloud to Kwasind, 
 
 To his friend, the strong man, Kwasind, 
 Saying, " Help me clear this river 
 Of its sunken logs and sand-bars." 
 
 Straight into the river Kwasind 
 Plunged as if he were an otter, 
 Dived as if he were a beaver, 
 Stood up to his waist in water, 
 To his arm-pits in the river, 
 Swam and shouted in the river, 
 Tugged at sunken logs and branches, 
 With his hands he scooped the sand-bars, 
 With his feet the ooze and tangle. 
 
 And thus sailed my Hiawatha 
 Down the rushing Taquamenaw, 
 Sailed through all its bends and windings, 
 Sailed through all its deeps and shallows, 
 While his friend, the strong man, Kwasind, 
 Swam the deeps, the shallows waded. 
 
 Up and down the river went they, 
 In and out among its islands, 
 Cleared its bed of root and sand-bar, 
 Dragged the dead trees from its channel, 
 Made its passage safe and certain, 
 Made a pathway for the people, 
 From its springs among the mountains, 
 To the waters of Pauwating, 
 To the bay of Taquamenaw. 
 
 SEA-WED. 
 
 WHEN descends on the Atlantic 
 
 The gigantic 
 
 Storm-wind of the equinox, 
 Landward in his wrath he scourges 
 
 The toiling surges, 
 Laden with sea-weed from the rocks : 
 
 Ev^r drifting, drifting, drifting 
 
 On the shifting 
 
 Currents of the restless main ; 
 Till in sheltered coves, and reaches 
 
 Of sandy beaches, 
 All have found repose again. 
 
 From Bermuda's reefs ; from edges 
 
 Of sunken ledges, 
 In some far off, bright Azore ; 
 From Bahama, and the dashing, 
 
 Silver-flashing 
 Surges of San Salvador ; 
 
 From the tumbling surf, that buries 
 
 The Orkneyan skerries, 
 Answering the hoarse Hebrides : 
 And from wrecks of ships, and drifting 
 
 Spars, uplifting 
 On the desolate, rainy seas ; 
 
 18 
 
 So when storms of wild emotion 
 
 Strike the ocean 
 Of the poet's soul, oelong 
 From each cave and rocky fastness, 
 
 In its vastness, 
 Floats some fragment of t song: 
 
 From the far-off isles enchanted, 
 
 Heaven has planted 
 With the golden fruit of Truth ; 
 From the flashing surf, whose vision 
 
 Gleams Elysian 
 In the tropic clime of Youth ; 
 
274 
 
 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 From the strong Will, and the Endeavor 
 
 That forever 
 
 Wrestles with the tides of Fate ; 
 From the wreck of Hopes far-scattered, 
 
 Tempest-shattered, 
 Floating waste and desolate ; 
 
 Ever drifting, drifting, drifting 
 
 On the shifting 
 
 Currents of the restless heart ; 
 Till at length in books recorded, 
 
 They, like hoarded 
 Household words, no more depart. 
 
 THE DAY IS DONE. 
 
 THE day is done, and the darkness 
 Falls from the wings of Night, 
 
 As a feather is wafted downward 
 From an eagle in his flight. 
 
 <* 
 
 I see the lights of the village 
 
 Gleam through the rain and the mist, 
 
 And a' feeling of sadness comes o'er me 
 
 That my soul cannot resist : 
 
 % 
 
 A feeling of sadness and longing, 
 
 That is not akin to pain, 
 And resembles sorrow only 
 
 As the mist resembles the rain. 
 }fk 
 Come, read to me some poem, 
 
 Some simple and heartfelt lay. 
 That shall soothe this restless feeling, 
 
 And banish the thoughts of day. 
 
 Not from the rrand old masters, 
 Not from the bards sublime, 
 
 Whose distant footsteps echo 
 Through the corridors of Time. 
 
 For, like strains of martial music, 
 Their mighty thoughts suggest 
 
 Life's endless toil and endeavor ; 
 And to-night I long for rest ^ 
 
 Read from some humbler poet, 
 
 Whose songs gushed from his heart, 
 
 As showers from the clouds of summer, 
 Or tears from the eyelids start ; 
 
 Who, through long days of labor, 
 
 And nights devoid of ease, 
 Still heard in his soul the music 
 
 Of wonderful melodies. 
 
 -r 
 
 Such songs have power to quiet 
 
 The restless pulse of care, 
 And come like the benediction 
 
 That follows after prayer. 
 
 Then read from the treasured volume 
 
 The poem of thy choice, 
 And lend to the rhyme of the poet 
 
 The beauty of thy vpice. 
 
 And the night shall be filled with music, 
 And the cares, that infest the day, 
 
 Shall fold their tents, like the Arabs, 
 And as silently steal away. 
 
 THE CHILDREN'S HOUR. 
 
 BETWEEN the dark and the daylight, 
 When the night is beginning to lower, 
 
 Comes a pause in the day's occupations, 
 That is known as the Children's Hour. 
 
 From my study I see in the lamplight, 
 Descending the broad hall stair, 
 
 Grave Alice, and laughing Allegra, 
 And Edith with golden hair. 
 
 I hear in the chamber above me 
 
 The patter of little feet, 
 The sound of a door that is opened, 
 
 And voices soft and sweet 
 
 A whisper, and then a silence : 
 Yet I know by their merry eyes 
 
 They are plotting and planning together 
 To take me by surprise. 
 
GEORGE LUNT. 
 
 275 
 
 A sudden rush from the stairway, 
 A sudden raid from the hall I 
 
 By three doors left unguarded 
 They enter my castle wall ! 
 
 They climb up into my turret 
 O'er the arms and back of my chair ; 
 
 If I try to escape, they surround me ; 
 They seem to be everywhere. 
 
 They almost devour me with kisses, 
 Their arms about me entwine, 
 
 Till I think of the Bishop of Bingen 
 In his, Mouse-Tower on the Rhine 1 
 
 Do you think, O blue-eyed banditti, 
 Because you have scaled the wall, 
 
 Such an old mustache as I am 
 Is not a match for you all I 
 
 I have you fast in my fortress, 
 And will not let you depart, 
 
 But put you down into the dungeon 
 In the round-tower of my heart. 
 
 And there will I keep you forever, 
 
 Yes, forever and a day, 
 Till the walls shall crumble to ruin, 
 
 And moulder in dust away I 
 
 GEORGE LUNT. 
 
 George Lunt was born in Newburyport, Mass., in the year 1807. He was graduated 
 at Harvard College in 1824, studied law, and commenced practice in his native town. He 
 removed to Boston in 1848, when he was appointed United States district attorney. He 
 has written a number of poems of more than ordinary merit, but it is chiefly by his strong and 
 manly prose that he has won his place among authors. Mr. Lunt has been a constant con- 
 tributor to the newspaper press, and for many years was editor of the Boston Courier, and 
 many of his published essays appeared first in that paper. Mr. Lunt is a strong conserva- 
 tive in his opinions, and, like other earnest men, does not allow his readers to miss the les- 
 sons which he draws from history for their benefit. His style is vigorous and often elo- 
 cjtient, showing the culture of a scholar as well as the power of sustained thought. 
 A volume of his poems was published in 1839. The Age of Gold, a poem, appeared in 1843, 
 Culture in 1845, The Dove and the Eagle in 1851, Lyric Poems in 1854, Julia in 1855, 
 Eastford, a novel, in 1855, Three Eras of New England in 1857, Radicalism in Religion, 
 Philosophy, and Social Life, in 1858, The Origin of the Late War, traced from the Begin- 
 ning of the Constitution to the Revolt of the Southern States in 1867. 
 
 [From Three Eras of New England.] 
 
 FOR never again can there be such preparation and such a result. 
 No unexplored continent is again to cheer the eye of the long- 
 baffled and almost despondent mariner now doubted, as if it must 
 be only some delusive aoud, and now rehailed with the joyful cry 
 of " Land ! " as it rises, low and distant, under the eyelids of the 
 morning, along the dim horizon of the dreary main. Never again, 
 by some yet unborn Columbus, will a new world be given to the 
 kingdom of Castile and Leon. Never again will human memorials 
 be emblazoned with the enduring record of all their 
 
 " better fortitude 
 Of patience and heroic martyrdom." 
 
 
2/6 HAXD-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 Never will be re-lighted the gospel-kindling fires of Smithfield ; 
 never be re-written a like affecting story of the unexampled exile of 
 Leyden ; never such a history of that one perilous traverse of the 
 unknown deep; instead of the southern verdure which hope had 
 fondly anticipated and portrayed, to picture the bare, blank aspect 
 of that wild, inhospitable sand cape, to tell of the half-timorous yet 
 half-hostile greeting of the savage, of the biting and bitter welcome 
 of winter, and all from which the heart shrinks, as the eye wanders 
 over that simple narrative of dangers where there was no fear, and 
 sufferings where there was no despair. For my own part, I care 
 little for the natural imperfections of such men. It is superfluous to 
 defend the founders of New England. A vain and thankless task 
 is his, who attempts to under-estimate their virtues, or to detract from 
 the majestic proportions of the gray fathers of the people. Their 
 personal faults passed with them into the grave ; their just princi- 
 ples and noble actions survived and blossomed into a living harvest 
 of sacred and immortal memory. . . . 
 
 If nothing else had ever been written in their favor, there are two 
 records, at least, which will last forever to their praise. When the 
 first colony which fled from the persecutions of home, on the eve 
 of their departure for their future habitation in the wilderness, was 
 now about to bid that final and most affecting farewell to those 
 hospitable arms, which Christian Holland had opened for their 
 refuge, the magistrates of Leyden solemnly declared that during their 
 residence of twelve years, which we well know were years of almost 
 unparalleled trials and privations, " these English " had not troubled 
 the city with a single suit or any sort of controversy ;'and the great- 
 est historian in England, regarding their religious opinions with dis- 
 dain, and their political tendencies with a strongly-defined and sys- 
 tematic hostility, yet pronounced, " so absolute was the authority of 
 the crown, that the precious spark of liberty had been kindled by the 
 Puritans alone, and it was to this sect that the English owe the whole 
 freedom of their constitution. 
 
 [From the Uses and Abuses of the Daily Press.] 
 
 AND what would we not gladly give for some old newspapers, 
 which suggest themselves as amongst the possibilities of the imagi- 
 nation ? Bring us in, if you please, a file of the Crusader. I 
 should like to look over again the telegraphic report of that stir- 
 ring sermon of Peter the Hermit, which raised Europe out of itself, 
 
GEORGE LUNT. 
 
 and sent the flower and chivalry and the yeomanry of Christendom, 
 for a cause of the heart, if not of the understanding, to do battle 
 and perish, piously and thankfully, on the burning plains of Syria. 
 Let us read, as they transpired, the events of that pictured nar- 
 rative, which has intermingled with the tissue of the world's his- 
 tory one broidered filament of golden romance, lasting as its 
 annals, and, now and forever, twining itself inextricably around 
 all the social relations of civilized life. What price would be too 
 dear, for an Independent Press, for example, or the Daily 
 Clarion, of the period, proclaiming, in trumpet tones, its denun- 
 ciation of that brutal Henry of England, who made a shambles 
 of his loves ; or of his still bloodier daughter, who slew the inno- 
 cent for their faith? . . . 
 
 Or, what should we say to the Puritan Recorder, of 1620, 
 faintly portraying the inexpressible emotions of Carver, and Brad- 
 ford, and Brewster, and Standish, and the rest, as they launched 
 upon the scarcely traversed ocean of their pilgrimage, to brave 
 the commingled yet conflicting elements of the coming winter and 
 the unknown sea, and left, with lingering looks, the home of their 
 human aifections, that they might peacefully commune, in the exile 
 of a savage land, with the dearer home of their souls ! 
 
 And yet who would care to see glittering blazonry of human 
 history sobered down the homely daub of utilitarian philosophy, 
 or reduced within the petty compass of a pen-and-ink sketch ? 
 Who would wish that all the sacred and tender mysteries of life 
 should be accurately sounded, and surveyed, and mapped out 
 before his eyes, and every gleaming headland on the vast ocean 
 of time, taken in its bearings and distances, with the clear and 
 sober certainty of geometrical analysis ? I rejoice that there is yet 
 something uncertain, secret, mysterious, indefinable, grand alto- 
 gether out of the scope of the peering researches and shallow 
 philosophy, and hasty, unreflecting speculations of the day. I re- 
 joice that there are yet left gaps and fissures, along the .royal 
 highway of Time, beyond all engineering art to level and subdue, 
 which only Imagination can fill up with her own deepening colors, 
 and people with forms, and shapes, and fancies of her own legiti- 
 mate creation. 
 
2/8 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 <^KATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS^ 
 
 Nathaniel Parker Willis was born in Portland, Me., January 20, 1807. He was grad- 
 uated at Yale College in 1827. Some of his most popular poems, including his Scripture 
 Sketches, were written while he was in college. He established the American Monthly 
 Magazine in 1828, which, after an existence of two or three years, was merged in the New 
 York Mirror. A small volume of 'his Fugitive Poetry was published in Boston in 1829. 
 He went to Europe in 1831, and while on his tour wrote a series of letters for the Mirror, 
 entitled Pencillings by the Way. His journey ended in England in 1835, where the Pencil- 
 lings were published, in a collected form, in three volumes, and where the author was married. 
 His next work, Inklings of Adventure, appealed in 1836, and was republished in the United 
 States. The following year Mr. Willis returned home, and settled at Gienmary, near 
 Owego, N. Y. After two years he revisited England, and, in 1840, published Letters 
 from Under a Bridge, and, shortly after, Loiterings of Travel, also two dramas, entitled 
 Two Ways of Dying for a Husband. In 1845 he published another collection of sketches, 
 entitled Dashes at Life with a Free Pencil. About a year later the Home Journal was 
 established by our author, in connection with Mr. George P. Morris, the song-writer. He 
 published, in 1848, a collection, entitled Poems of Early and After Years. The remaining 
 works of Mr. Willis are mostly reprinted from the columns of the Journal. They are Rural 
 Letters (1849), People I Have Met (1850), Life Here and There (1850), Hurry Graphs 
 (1851), Memoranda of a Life of Jenny Lind (1851), Fun Jottings (1853), A Health Trip to 
 the Tropics (1853), A Summer Cruise in the Mediterranean (1853), Famous Persons and 
 Places (1854), Out Doors at Idlewild (1854), The Rag Bag (1855), Paul Fane, a novel 
 (1856), The Convalescent (1860). 
 
 His health had been delicate for many years, as may be inferred from some of the titles 
 of his works, but the disease had been resisted and kept in check by country life and active 
 habits. He died in January, 1867. 
 
 Mr. Willis had great natural gifts. His perceptions were quick ; his instinctive sense of 
 color and of harmony pervades both prose and verse ; his spirits were so lively that He could 
 never be dull, whatever other offences he might commit. His landscapes and rural scenes 
 are so exquisitely painted that we are sure his love of country life was his strongest feeling. 
 But he could never have been a studious recluse ; there was always a telegraph or carrier- 
 pigeon, or letter, or what not something that brought the news and gossip of the great 
 world, and told the interesting hermit what "society " thought of his latest letter or poem. 
 This same " society " is answerable for the author's most serious faults. His early stories 
 and sketches abound in stanhopes, blooded horses, champagne, star-eyed poets, and glorious 
 damsels. That style of writing, flippant, Frencky, and dashing (and fascinating too, as we 
 must allow it to be), would seem to have originated with Bulwer's Pelham, if that self-satis- 
 fied Adonis had ever taken the trouble to write anything. To play the double role of hard- 
 working author and squire of dames, to correct proof in the morning when one is meditating 
 the bans mots for the evening, is too much of a burden. And we rather wonder, in view of 
 the life he must have led, that he retained, as he did, his early freshness of feeling, and 
 wrote so much that was admirable. That his pictures should reflect too faithfully the super- 
 ficial glitter of fashion, the unworthy ambitions of artificial life, and, above all, the affecta- 
 tions that mark the speech and the manners of " society," was not to be avoided. Genius 
 has no business with such people. 
 
 The Fable for Critics, which we have quoted before, contains a witty sketch of our author, 
 in which there are a few lines, referring to the Letters from Under a Bridge, that show a 
 warm appreciation. 
 
 " No volume I know to read under a tree 
 More truly delicious than his A FA brt, 
 
NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 279 
 
 With the shadows of leaves flowing over your book, 
 Like ripple-shades netting the bed of a brook ; 
 With June coming softly your shoulder to look over, 
 Breezes waiting to turn every leaf of your book over, 
 And Nature to criticise still as you read, 
 The page that bears that is a rare one indeed." 
 
 The Scripture scenes have been the most popular of Willis's poems, and they have the 
 merit of preserving the pathos and much of the simplicity of the original narrations. 
 
 Mr. Willis had a kindly and generous nature, full of sympathy, especially to young 
 writers. He was doubtless annoyed by the receipt of letters, from all sorts of people, as 
 successful authors always are ; but, unlike some of his brethren, he always had a kind, sen- 
 sible, and judicious answer to give. There are many who will remember this trait with deep 
 gratitude. 
 
 THE BELFRY PIGEON. 
 
 ON the cross-beam, under the Old South bell, 
 
 The nest of a pigeon is builded well. 
 
 In summer and winter that bird is there, 
 
 Out and in with the morning air : 
 
 I love to see him track the street, 
 
 With his wary eye and active feet ; 
 
 Circling the steeple with easy wings, 
 
 Till across the dial his shadow has passed, 
 
 And the belfry edge is gained at last. 
 
 'Tis a bird I love, with its brooding note, 
 
 And the trembling throb in its mottled throat ; 
 
 There's a human look in its swelling breast, 
 
 And the gentle curve of its lowly crest ; 
 
 And I often stop with the fear I feel 
 
 He runs so close to the rapid wheel. 
 
 Whatever is rung on that noisy bell 
 
 Chime of the hour or funeral knell 
 
 The dove in the belfry must hear it well. 
 
 When the tongue swings out to the midnight moon, 
 
 When the sexton cheerily rings for noon, 
 
 When the clock strikes clear at morning light, 
 
 When the child is waked with " nine at night," 
 
 When the chimes play soft in the Sabbath air, 
 
 Filling the spirit with tones of prayer, 
 
 Whatever tale in the bell is heard, 
 
 He broods on his folded feet unstirred, 
 
2SO HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 Or, rising half in his rounded nest, 
 
 He takes the time to smooth his breast, 
 
 Then drops again with filmed eyes, 
 
 And sleeps as the last vibration dies. 
 
 Sweet bird ! I would that I could be 
 
 A hermit in the crowd like thee ! 
 
 With wings to fly to wood and glen, 
 
 Thy lot like mine is cast with men ; 
 
 And daily, with unwilling feet, 
 
 I tread, like thee, the crowded street ; 
 
 But, unlike me, when day is o'er, 
 
 Thou canst dismiss the world and soar, 
 
 Or, at a half-felt wish for rest, 
 
 Canst smooth the feathers on thy breast^ 
 
 And drop, forgetful, to thy nest. 
 
 [From Melanie.] 
 IV. 
 
 A CALM and lovely paradise 
 
 Is Italy, for minds at ease. 
 The sadness of its sunny skies 
 
 Weighs not upon the lives of these. 
 The ruined aisle, the crumbling fane, 
 
 The broken column, vast and prone 
 It may be joy, it may be pain, 
 
 Amid such wrecks to walk alone. 
 The saddest man will sadder be, 
 
 The gentlest lover gentler there 
 As if, whate'er the spirit's key, 
 
 It strengthened in that solemn air. 
 
 The heart soon grows to mournful things, 
 
 And Italy has not a breeze 
 But comes on melancholy wings ; 
 
 And even her majestic trees 
 Stand ghostlike in the Caesar's home, 
 
 .As if their conscious roots were set 
 In the old graves of giant Rome, 
 
 And drew their sap all kingly yet ! 
 
SATHAXIEL PARKER WILLIS. 2' I 
 
 And every stone yoor feet beneath 
 
 Is broken from some mighty thooght ; 
 And sculptures in the dost stffl breathe 
 
 The fire with which their fines were wrooght; 
 And sondered arch, and pondered tomb, 
 Stffl thunder back the echo, Rome." 
 
 Yet gayiy o'er Egeria's fount 
 
 The ivy flings its emerald veil, 
 And flowers grow cur on Mama's mount, 
 
 And light-sprung arches span the dale; 
 And soft, from CaracaUa's baths, 
 
 The herdsman's song comes down the breeze, 
 While cfimb his goats the giddy paths 
 
 To grass-grown architrave and frieze ; 
 And gracefully AJbano's bin, 
 
 Carves into the horizon's fine ; 
 And sweetly sings that dassic rffl ; 
 
 And feiriy stands that nameless shrine ; 
 And here, O. many a sultry noon, 
 And starry eve, that happy Jane, 
 
 Came Angelo and Mdanie ! 
 And earth for us was all in tone 
 
 For while Love talked with them, Hope walked 
 afkvl with me. 
 
 SPIRITS. 
 
 THE shadows lay along Broadway 
 Twas near the twilight tide 
 
 And slowly there a hoy fen- 
 Was walking in her pride. 
 
 Alone walked she; but, viewkssry, 
 Walked spirits at her side. 
 
 Peace charmed the street beneath her feet, 
 
 And Honor charmed the air, 
 And aO astir looked kind on her, 
 
 And called her good as feir 
 For aU God ever gave to her 
 
 She kept with chary care. 
 
282 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 She kept with care her beauties rare 
 From lovers warm and true 
 
 For her heart was cold to all but gold, 
 And the rich came not to woo 
 
 But honored well are charms to sell 
 If priests the selling do. 
 
 Now walking there was one more fair 
 
 A slight girl, lily-pale ; 
 And she had unseen company 
 
 To make the spirit quail 
 'Twixt Want and Scorn she walked forlorn, 
 
 And nothing could avail. 
 
 No mercy now can clear her brow, 
 For this world's peace to pray ; 
 
 For, as love's wild prayer dissolved in air, 
 Her woman's heart gave way ! 
 
 But the sin forgiven by Christ in heaven, 
 By man is cursed alway. 
 
 [From Inklings of Adventure.] 
 A SCENE ON NAHANT BEACH. 
 
 WE recline, as it were, in an ebon pyramid, with a hundred feet 
 of floor and sixty of wall, and the fourth side open to the sky. 
 The light comes in mellow and dim, and the sharp edges of the 
 rocky portal seem let into the pearly arch of heaven. The tide 
 is at half ebb, and the advancing and retreating waves, which at 
 first just lifted the fringe of crimson dulse at the lip of the cavern, 
 now dash their spray-pearls on the rock below, the '* tenth " surge 
 alone rallying as if in scorn of its retreating fellows, and, like the 
 chieftain of Culloden Moor, rushing back singly to the contest. 
 And now that the waters reach the entrance no more, come for- 
 ward and look on the sea. The swell lifts ! would you not think 
 the bases of the earth rising beneath it ? It falls ! would you not 
 think the foundation of the deep had given way ? A plain, broad 
 enough for the navies of the world to ride at large, heaves up 
 evenly and steadily as if it would lie against the sky, rests a mo- 
 ment spellbound in its place, and falls again as far the respiration 
 
NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 283 
 
 of a sleeping child not more regular and full of slumber. It is 
 only on the shore that it chafes. Blessed emblem ! it is at peace 
 with itself! The rocks war with a nature so unlike their own, 
 and the hoarse din of their border onsets resounds through the 
 caverns they have rent open ; but beyond, in the calm bosom of 
 the ocean, what heavenly dignity ! What god-like unconsciousness 
 of alarm ! I did not think we should stumble on such a moral 
 in the cave. 
 
 By the deeper base of its hoarse organ, the sea is now playing 
 upon its lowest stops, and the tide is down. Hear ! How it rushes 
 in beneath the rocks, broken and stilled in its tortuous way, till 
 it ends with a washing and dull hiss among the seaweed, and, like 
 a myriad of small tinkling bells, the dripping from the crags is 
 audible. There is fine music in the sea ! 
 
 And now the beach is bare. The cave begins to cool and darken, 
 and the first gold tint of sunset is stealing into the sky, and the 
 sea looks of a changing opal, green, purple, and white, as if its 
 floor were paved with pearl, and the changing light struck up through 
 the waters. And there heaves a ship into the horizon, like a white- 
 winged bird lying with dark breast on the waves, abandoned of 
 the sea breeze within sight of port, and repelled even by the spicy 
 breath that comes with a welcome off the shore. She comes from 
 " merrie England." She is freighted with more than merchandise. 
 The homesick exile will gaze on her snowy sail as she sets in 
 with the morning breeze, and bless it ; for the wind that first filled 
 it on its way swept through the green valley of his home ! What 
 links of human affection brings she over the sea ? How much 
 comes in her that is not in her " bill of lading," yet worth, to the 
 heart that is waiting for it, a thousand times the purchase of her 
 whole venture ! . . . 
 
 Slowly, Thalaba ! Tread gingerly down this rocky descent. So, 
 here we are on the floor of the vasty deep. What a glorious race- 
 course ! The polished and printless sand spreads away before you 
 as far as the eye can see, the surf comes in below, breast high tfre it 
 breaks, and the white fringe of the sliding wave shoots up the beach, 
 but leaves room for the marching of a Persian phalanx on the sands 
 it has deserted. O, how noiselessly runs the wheel, and how dream- 
 ily we glide along, feeling our motion but in the resistance of the 
 wind, and by the trout-like pull of the ribbons by the excited animal 
 before us ! Mark the color of the sand ! White at high-water mark, 
 and thence deepening to a silvery gray as the water has evaporated 
 
284 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 less a slab of Egyptian granite in the obelisk of St. Peter's not 
 more polished and unimpressible. Shell or rock, weed or quicksand, 
 there is none ; and mar or deface its bright surface as you will, it is 
 ever beaten down anew, and washed even of the dust of the foot of 
 man by the returning sea. You may write upon its fine-grained face 
 with a crow-quill, you may course over its dazzling expanse with a 
 troop of chariots. 
 
 CORNELIUS CONWAY FELTON. 
 
 Cornelius Conway Felton was born at Newbury, Mass., November 6, 1807. He was 
 graduated at Harvard College in 1827. He taught a high school in Geneseo, N. Y., for 
 two years, after which he became a tutor in Harvard. In 1832 he was appointed professor 
 of the Greek language, and, two years later, professor of Greek literature. In this con- 
 genial position he remained until, in 1860, he was chosen president of the university.. He 
 made a tour of Europe in 1853-4, an d again in 1858, the last time on account of his failing 
 health. He was in the city of Washington on the occasion of the inauguration of President 
 Buchanan, and was a guest at the National Hotel at the time of the supposed wholesale 
 poisoning, that caused so many deaths. The origin of that mysterious disease will probably 
 never be known, but Professor Felton believed that it was arsenical poison, and he fre- 
 quently declared that he should never recover from its effects. His anticipations proved 
 true; his health gradually declined, and he died Feb. 26, 1862. 
 
 Professor Felton's life was an active one, but most of his time was devoted to the special 
 department he had chosen, and his contributions to original literature are not numerous. 
 He published editions of the Greek classics, among them Homer, The Clouds and the 
 Birds of Aristophanes, the Agamemnon of ^Eschylus. He delivered three courses of lec- 
 tures, before the Lowell Institute, upon subjects connected with Grecian history and litera- 
 ture. A volume of these lectures was published in 1867, after his death. Another posthu- 
 mous work of his, Familiar Letters from Europe, was published in 1865. t He performed a 
 great amount of literary labor, the value of which only scholars can appreciate, such as the 
 preparation of articles for cyclopaedias and for literary and critical periodicals. He was a 
 vigorous writer, possessing strong common sense, with unaffected enthusiasm for learning, 
 and a temper of unfailing cheerfulness. There was a heartiness in his manner, and in all 
 he did, that secured universal respect and good will. 
 
 The extract we have here printed will show, in some measure, his feelings towards the 
 city to whose art and letters he had devoted his life. 
 
 ATHENS, November 6, 1853. 
 
 LET me now tell you more fully than in my last letter how I spent 
 my first Sunday in Athens. In the forenoon I heard Dr. King, the 
 American missionary, preach to a small assembly of Greeks, in his 
 own house, in Greek ; an excellent sermon, to every word of which I 
 could cordially assent. Then I took a copy of the Greek New Tes- 
 tament, and, walking round the Acropolis by the street of the Tripods, 
 and along the upper ranges of the Dionysiac Theatre, passed the 
 Odeion of Herodes Atticus and the Propylaea, down into the valley 
 
CORNELIUS CONWAY FELTON. 285 
 
 on the north of the Acropolis, and up the stone steps to the Are- 
 opagus. I read the admirable discourse of St. Paul, standing-, as he 
 did, " in the midst of Mars' Hill." I read it five times, from begin- 
 ning to end, twice aloud, in presence of the same natural fea- 
 tures of the scene that lay before his eyes, and many of the grandest 
 objects of art that he saw, ruinous, but still sublime. The discourse 
 in the Acts is evidently only a sketch of the sermon as it was deliv- 
 ered, but I think it embraces all the main points. Standing there, 
 on an elevated rock, " in the midst of Mars' Hill," silent, with the 
 Acrcpolis before me, covered with fragments of idols and ruins of 
 " temples made with hands," the seats of the Areopagites around me 
 scarcely traceable, and crumbling with age and the weather, and no 
 one to occupy them except the fancied forms of the Epicureans and 
 Stoics who encountered St. Paul, I could well understand the noble 
 eloquence with which the apostle spoke to his curious hearers of the 
 " God that made the world and all things therein," who is " Lord of 
 heaven and earth, and dwelleth not in temples made with hands." 
 
 These words are even more striking now than they were when 
 St. Paul uttered them. Then these glorious temples stood entire, 
 and the statues that peopled or surrounded them seemed like an 
 assembly of gods ; now the gods are prostrate, or carried away to 
 adorn the museums of distant lands. Heads, arms, legs, mutilated 
 bodies, majestic and beautiful indeed, but thrown down from their 
 high places and broken in pieces, or laboriously put together by the 
 antiquary, are all that remain around the ruinous and time-stained 
 columns which stand so mournfully on the spot which they once 
 made the central point of Grecian worship. Surely the apostle's 
 words sound more solemn after eighteen centuries have wrought 
 so tremendous an argument for their truth. If any temples built by 
 human hands deserved to be the dwelling-place of God, it was the 
 temples on the Acropolis ; and what are they now ? Wonderfully 
 do those old columns, friezes, and architraves stand out against an 
 Attic evening sky ; wonderfully do they reflect the rays of the sun, 
 as he comes up in his morning splendor, over the ridges of Hymet- 
 tus. But God is in the setting and the rising sun ; he is enthroned 
 on the blue arch of the sky ; he looks down from yonder crescent 
 moon that hangs over the Acropolis ; his breath is the soft air 
 which sweeps over those beautiful mountains and these spreading 
 plains : but surely he dwelleth not in the mouldering temples, made 
 by human hands, however cunning. St. Paul, having so powerfully 
 declared this truth, passes on with admirable tact, and brief but 
 
286 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 effective eloquence, to the brotherhood of men, and the future judg- 
 ment of the world by the Saviour, and closes most impressively with 
 the resurrection of the dead. 
 
 From his first allusion to the unknown God, he kept as close as 
 possible to the range of Grecian thought. For Greeks had con- 
 ceived, in their better moments, of the unity of God and his spir- 
 itual nature; one of their poets quoted happily by St. Paul 
 had declared that men were the children of God ; the doctrine &. 
 repentance had dawned upon the souls of Socrates and Plato, and 
 a future judgment was distinctly believed and taught in their 
 schools : but, when he spoke of the resurrection of the dead, he 
 suddenly overleaped the boundaries of Grecian thought, and left 
 his hearers in amazement, gaining, however, some proselytes, 
 " among the which was Dionysius, the Areopagite, and a woman 
 named Damaris, and others with them." 
 
 After an hour or two on the Areopagus, I walked across the 
 deserted hollow to the prison of Socrates. Here I sat down on 
 a rocky seat, and read the two dialogues, the Criton and Phae- 
 don of Plato, the scene of which is placed here. They contain, 
 I have no doubt, the substance of the conversations of Socrates 
 with his disciples, during the last two days of his life, and are 
 remarkable for the truly Christian character of the moral and even 
 the religious doctrines taught by that incomparable man. It must 
 have been within a few feet of the place where I sat that these 
 conversations were held. . . . 
 
 When, towards sunset, I walked away from that consecrated 
 prison, the scenes and conversations, so vividly represented by 
 Plato, seemed to have just taken place ; and as I looked up to the 
 Areopagus, on which the sun was still shining, I seemed to hear 
 the voice of Paul, enforcing and perfecting, by divine authority, 
 the doctrines as to duty and immorality, towards which Socrates 
 had felt his way by the guidance of reason alone. The sunlight on 
 the Areopagus, compared with the shades of Socrates's prison, 
 seemed a type of revelation, contrasted even with the best and 
 clearest deductions of the unassisted human mind. 
 
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 28/ 
 
 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 John Greenleaf Whittier was born in Haverhill, Mass., in December, 1807. He worked 
 on his father's farm till his eighteenth year, when he attended the academy for two years. 
 His mental discipline and his skill in writing came from his early connection with the news- 
 paper press. He edited a political newspaper in Boston, afterwards a literary weekly at 
 Hartford, Conn., and later an anti-slavery journal at Philadelphia. He was also corre- 
 sponding editor, for many years, of the National Era, at Washington. His early religious 
 education among the society of Friends had made him a strong opponent of slavery. One 
 of his earliest prose works (1833) was a discussion of that question ; and the volume of 
 poems, that first gave him reputation, was entitled Voices of Freedom. His principal 
 prose works are Leaves from Margaret Smith's Journal (1836), a forcible sketch of Puritan 
 intolerance, Old Portraits and Modern Sketches (1850), and Literary Recreations (1854). 
 His poems were collected in an elegant volume in 1850. Other volumes appeared later: 
 Songs of Labor in 1851, The Chapel of the Hermits in 1852, The Panorama in 1856, 
 Home Ballads in 1860, In War Time in 1863, Snow Bound in 1865, The Tent on the 
 Beach in 1867, Among the Hills in 1868, The Pennsylvania Pilgrim in 1872. 
 
 If there is one in our age whom all men will admit to have been born a poet, it is Whit- 
 tier. He is less indebted to art, to scholastic culture, to the influences of literary compan- 
 ionship, and to other adventitious aids, than any of his brethren. To him "the universe 
 swims in an ocean of similitudes," and the images he sees and embodies in verse appear to 
 him unsought. The few and simple elements of the landscapes in his native Essex bleak 
 hills, broad marshes, and the sea have been as fertile in suggestions to him as though 
 he had all his life been loitering in Eden. Those who from prejudice had failed to see the 
 genius that shone in his fiery lyrics, were, after a time, forced to admire the pensive beauty 
 of The Last Walk in Autumn, the pathetic grace of Maud Muller, the intense realism of 
 the winter idyl of Snow Bound, the vivid picture of Skipper Iresou's Ride, and the bright 
 and tender memories of The Barefoot Boy. 
 
 But the sensibilities of our poet have not been touched by landscapes and ideal pictures 
 alone : he is the poet of man as well as of nature. Though shy and reserved, he has not 
 shut himself up in fastidious seclusion, but has borne in his own heart the sorrows of the 
 poor and the wronged. He is a fiery apostle of human brotherhood, and has chanted 
 anathemas against war, and every form of cruelty and superstition. 
 
 Had Whittier been over-solicitous about classical allusions and elegance of phrase, the 
 charm of freshness might have vanished from his verse. His muse is a country maid, with 
 a free step, exuberant health, and natural graces ; and though she has no need to stand 
 abashed before courtly dames, her favorite haunts are by the sea-shore or the lakes of the 
 north ; and when she comes among men, it is to show, to those whose vision has been 
 cleared to see, that heroism is not merely legendary, and that an aureole of heavenly light still 
 hovers over every scene where an act of duty, whether high or humble, is bravely done. 
 
 Whittier is eminently a national poet. His mind is in full sympathy with the progressive 
 ideas of the new world. He echoes no strains from foreign singers, and has no thought of 
 a foreign audience. What he has written is a product as natural and indigenous as our 
 golden maize or our magnolia blooms. 
 
 It is surprising, too, in looking over his collected poems, to notice their high, uniform 
 merit. We do not mean what is sometimes termed a "level excellence ;" the uniformity 
 is like that of a grand chain of mountains. The quantity of verse from a single mind that 
 is really inspired, fairly wrought in artistic form, with thought and melody in perfect accord, 
 is generally to be found in a small bulk. How many pages of the standard poets must be 
 skipped by the most tolerant reader I But Whittier is as profuse with gems as lesser bards 
 are with imitations. Even the space of an essay would give room for mentioning only the 
 more striking passages. 
 
288 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 In all collections of our literature made by Englishmen, the want of appreciation is pain- 
 fully evident. But we cannot forbear saying here, that there are now living in this country 
 at least five poets for whom the English have only two peers Browning and Tennyson ; 
 and for those in all lands who read modern verse in English, and are sufficiently cultivated 
 to know and enjoy poetry, the productions of American poets constitute a large portion of 
 their entertainment. 
 
 Mr. Whittier lives in Amesbury, Mass. His health is delicate, and his visits to the city 
 are very infrequent. His name is never mentioned but with respect and love. 
 
 PROEM. 
 
 I LOVE the old melodious lays 
 Which softly melt the ages through, 
 
 The songs of Spenser's golden days, 
 
 Arcadian Sidney's silvery phrase, 
 Sprinkling our noon of time with freshest morning dew. 
 
 Yet, vainly in my quiet hours 
 To breathe their marvellous notes I try ; 
 
 I feel them, as the leaves and flowers 
 
 In silence feel the dewy showers, 
 And drink with glad, still lips the blessing of the sky. 
 
 The rigor of a frozen clime, 
 The harshness of an untaught ear, 
 
 The jarring words of one whose rhyme 
 
 Beat often Labor's hurried time, 
 Or Duty's rugged march through storm and strife, are here. 
 
 Of mystic beauty, dreamy grace, 
 No rounded art the lack supplies ; 
 
 Unskilled the subtle lines to trace, 
 
 Or softer shades of Nature's face, 
 I view her common forms with unanointed eyes. 
 
 Nor mine the seer-like power to show 
 
 The secrets of the heart and mind ; 
 
 To drop the plummet-line below 
 Our common world of joy and woe, 
 
 A more intense despair or brighter hope to find. 
 
 Yet here at least an earnest sense 
 Of human right and weal is shown ; 
 
 A hate of tyranny intense, 
 
 And hearty in its vehemence, 
 As if my brother's pain and sorrow were my own. 
 
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 289 
 
 O Freedom ! if to me belong 
 Nor mighty Milton's gift divine, 
 
 Nor Marvell's wit and graceful song, 
 
 Still with a love as deep and strong 
 As theirs, I lay, like them, my best gifts on thy shrine ! 
 
 EVENING BY THE LAKE-SIDE. 
 
 YON mountain's side is black with night, 
 While, broad-orbed, o'er its gleaming crown 
 
 The moon, slow-rounding into sight, 
 On the hushed inland sea looks down. 
 
 How start to light the clustering isles, 
 
 Each silver-hemmed ! How sharply show 
 
 The shadows of their rocky piles 
 And tree-tops in the wave below ! 
 
 How far and strange the mountains seem, 
 Dim-looming through the pale, still light ! 
 
 The vague, vast grouping of a dream, 
 They stretch into the solemn night. 
 
 Beneath, lake, wood, and peopled vale, 
 Hushed by that presence grand and grave, 
 
 Are silent, save the cricket's wail, 
 And low response of leaf and wave. 
 
 Fair scenes ! whereto the Day and Night 
 Make rival love, I leaVe ye soon, 
 
 What time before the eastern light 
 The pale ghost of the setting moon 
 
 Shall hide beyond yon rocky spines, 
 And the young archer, Morn, shall break 
 
 His arrows on the mountain pines, 
 And, golden-sandalled, walk the lake ! 
 
 Farewell ! around this smiling bay 
 
 Gay-hearted Health, and Life in bloom, 
 
 With lighter steps than mine, may stray 
 In radiant summers yet to come ; 
 '9 
 
2QO HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 But none shall more regretful leave 
 These waters and these hills than I ; 
 
 Or, distant, fonder dream how eve 
 Or dawn is painting wave and sky ; 
 
 How rising moons shine sad and mild 
 On wooded isle and silvering bay ; 
 
 Or setting suns beyond the piled 
 
 And purpled mountains lead the day ; 
 
 Nor laughing girl, nor bearding boy, 
 
 Nor full-pulsed manhood, lingering here, 
 
 Shall add, to life's abounding joy, 
 The charmed repose to suffering dear. 
 
 Still waits kind Nature to impart 
 Her choicest gifts to such as gain 
 
 An entrance to her loving heart 
 
 Through the sharp discipline of pain. 
 
 Forever from the Hand that takes 
 One blessing from us others fall ; 
 
 And, soon or late, our Father makes 
 His perfect recompense to all ! 
 
 O, watched by Silence and the Night, 
 And folded in the strong embrace 
 
 Of the great mountains, with the light 
 Of the sweet heavens upon thy face/ 
 
 Lake of the Northland ! keep thy dower 
 Of beauty stillj and while above 
 
 Thy solemn mountains speak of power, 
 Be thou the mirror of God's love. 
 
 [From The Last Walk in Autumn.] 
 I. 
 
 O'ER the bare woods, whose outstretched hands 
 Plead with the leaden heavens in vain, 
 
 I see, beyond the valley lands, 
 
 The sea's long level dim with rain. 
 
 Around me all things, stark and dumb, 
 
 Seem praying for the snows to come, 
 
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 And, for the summer bloom and greenness gone, 
 With winter's sunset lights and dazzling morn atone. 
 
 II. 
 Along the river's summer walk, 
 
 The withered tufts of asters nod ; 
 And trembles on its arid stalk 
 
 The hoar-plume of the golden-rod. 
 And on a ground of sombre fir, 
 And azure-studded juniper, 
 The silver birch its buds of purple shows, 
 And scarlet berries tell where bloomed the sweet wild-rose. 
 
 in. 
 
 With mingled sound of horns and bells, 
 A far-heard clang, the wild geese fly, 
 Storm-sent, from Arctic moors and fells, 
 
 Like a great arrow through the sky, 
 Two dusky lines converged in one, 
 Chasing the southward-flying sun ; 
 While the brave snow-bird and the hardy jay 
 Call to them from the pines, as if to bid them stay. 
 
 IV. 
 
 I passed this way a year ago : 
 
 The wind blew south ; the noon of day 
 Was warm as June's ; and save that snow 
 
 Flecked the low mountains far away, 
 And that the vernal-seeming breeze 
 Mocked faded grass and leafless trees, 
 I might have dreamed of summer as I lay, 
 Watching the fallen leaves with the soft wind at play. 
 
 v. 
 Since then, the winter blasts have piled 
 
 The white pagodas of the snow 
 On these rough slopes, and, strong and wild, 
 
 Yon river, in its overflow 
 Of spring-time rain and sun, set free, 
 Crashed with its ices to the sea ; 
 And over these gray fields, then green and gold, 
 The summer corn has waved, the thunder's organ rolled. 
 
2Q2 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 VI. 
 
 Rich gift of God ! A year of time ! 
 
 What pomp of rise and shut of day, 
 What hues wherewith our Northern clime 
 
 Makes autumn's dropping woodlands gay, 
 What airs outblown from ferny dells, 
 And clover-bloom and sweetbrier smells, 
 What songs of brooks and birds, what fruits and flowers, 
 Green woods and moonlit snows, have in its round been ours ! 
 
 VII. 
 
 I know not how, in other lands, 
 
 The changing seasons come and go ; 
 What splendors fall on Syrian sands, 
 
 What purple lights on Alpine snow ! 
 Nor how the pomp of sunrise waits 
 On Venice at her watery gates ; 
 A dream alone to me is Arno's vale, 
 And the Alhambra's halls are but a traveller's tale. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Yet, on life's current, he who drifts 
 
 Is one with him who rows or sails ; 
 And he who wanders widest lifts 
 
 No more of beauty's jealous veils 
 Than he who from his doorway sees 
 The miracle of flowers and trees, 
 Feels the warm Orient in the noonday air, 
 And from cloud minarets hears the sunset call to prayer ! 
 
 IX. 
 
 The eye may well be glad, that looks 
 
 Where Pharpar's fountains rise and fall ; 
 But he who sees his native brooks 
 
 Laugh in the sun, has seen them all. 
 The marble palaces of Ind 
 Rise round him in the snow and wind ; 
 From his lone sweetbrier Persian Hafiz smiles, 
 And Rome's cathedral awe is in his woodland aisles. 
 
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 293 
 
 X. 
 
 And thus it is my fancy blends 
 
 The near at hand and far and rare ; 
 And while the same horizon bends 
 Above the silver-sprinkled hair 
 Which flashed the light of morning skies 
 On childhood's wonder-lifted eyes, 
 Within its round of sea, and sky, and field, 
 Earth wheels with all her zones, the Kosmos stands revealed. 
 
 XVII. 
 
 What greetings smile, what farewells wave, 
 
 What loved ones enter and depart ! 
 The good, the beautiful, the brave, 
 
 The Heaven-lent treasures of the heart ! 
 How conscious seems the frozen sod 
 And beechen slope whereon they trod ! 
 The oak-leaves rustle, and the dry grass bends 
 Beneath the shadowy feet of lost or absent friends. 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 Then ask not why to these bleak hills 
 
 I cling, as clings the tufted moss, 
 To bear the winter's lingering chills, 
 
 The mocking spring's perpetual loss. 
 I dream of lands where summer smiles, 
 And soft winds blow from spicy isles, 
 But scarce would Ceylon's breath of flowers be sweet, 
 Could I not feel thy soil, New England, at my feet ! 
 
 XIX. 
 
 At times I long for gentler skies, 
 
 And bathe in dreams of softer air, 
 But homesick tears would fill the eyes 
 
 That saw the Cross without the Bear. 
 The pine must whisper to the palm, 
 The north-wind break the tropic calm ; 
 And with the dreamy languor of the Line, 
 The North's keen virtue blend, and strength to beauty join. 
 
294 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 XX. 
 
 Better to stem with heart and hand 
 The roaring tide of life, than lie, 
 Unmindful, on its flowery strand, 
 Of God's occasions drifting^by ! 
 Better with naked nerve to bear 
 The needles of this goading air, 
 Than, in the lap of sensual ease, forego 
 The godlike power to do, the godlike aim to know. 
 
 XXI. 
 
 Home of my heart ! to me more fair 
 
 Than gay Versailles or Windsor's halls, 
 The painted, shingly town-house where 
 
 The freeman's vote for Freedom falls ! 
 The simple roof where prayer is made, 
 Than Gothic groin and colonnade ; 
 The living temple of the heart of man, 
 Than Rome's sky-mocking vault, or many-spired Milan ! 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 And sweet homes nestle in these dales, 
 
 And perch along these wooded swells ; 
 And, blest beyond Arcadian vales, 
 
 They hear the sound of Sabbath bells 1 
 Here dwells no perfect man sublime, 
 Nor woman winged before her time, 
 But with the faults and follies of the race, 
 Old home-bred virtues held their not unhonored place. 
 
 XXV. 
 
 Then let the icy north-wind blow 
 
 The trumpets of the coming storm, 
 To arrowy sleet and blinding snow 
 
 Yon slanting lines of rain transform. 
 Young hearts shall hail the drifted cold, 
 As gayly as I did of old ; 
 
 And I, who watch them through the frosty pane, 
 Unenvious, live in them my boyhood o'er again. 
 
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 295 
 
 XXVI. 
 
 And I will trust that He who heeds 
 
 The life that hides in mead and wold, 
 Who hangs yon alder's crimson beads, 
 
 And stains these mosses green and gold, 
 Will still, as He hath done, incline 
 His gracious care to me and mine ; 
 Grant what we ask aright, from wrong debar, 
 And, as the earth grows dark, make brighter every star ! 
 
 THE BATTLE AUTUMN OF 1 862. 
 
 THE flags of war like storm-birds fly, 
 
 The charging trumpets blow ; 
 Yet rolls no thunder in the sky, 
 
 No earthquake strives below. 
 
 And, calm and patient, Nature keeps 
 
 Her ancient promise well, 
 Though o'er her bloom and greenness sweeps 
 
 The battle's breath of hell. 
 
 And still she walks in golden hours 
 
 Through harvest-happy farms, 
 And still she wears her fruits and flowers 
 
 Like jewels on her arms. 
 
 What mean the gladness of the plain, 
 
 This joy of eve and morn, 
 The mirth that shakes the beard of grain 
 
 And yellow locks of corn ? 
 
 Ah ! eyes may well be full of tears, 
 
 And hearts with hate are hot ; 
 But even-paced come round the years, 
 
 And Nature changes not. 
 
 She meets with smiles our bitter grief, 
 With songs our groans of pain ; 
 
 She mocks with tint of flower and leaf 
 The war-field's crimson stain. 
 
 Still, in the cannon's pause, we hear 
 Her sweet thanksgiving psalm ; 
 
 Too near to God for doubt or fear, 
 She shares the eternal calm. 
 
 She knows the seed lies safe below 
 The fires that blast and bum ; 
 
 For all the tears of blood we sow 
 She waits the rich return. 
 
 She sees with clearer eye than ours 
 The good of suffering born, 
 
 The hearts that blossom like her flowers, 
 And ripen like her corn. 
 
 O, give to us, in times like these, 
 
 The vision of her eyes ; 
 And make her fields and fruited trees 
 
 Our golden prophecies ! 
 
 O, give to us her finer ear ! 
 
 Above this stormy din, 
 We too would hear the bells of cheer 
 
 Ring peace and freedom in ! 
 
 THE BAREFOOT BOY. 
 
 BLESSINGS on thee, little man, 
 Barefoot boy, with cheek of tan I 
 With thy turned-up pantaloons, 
 And thy merry whistled tunes ; 
 With thy red lip, redder still 
 
 Kissed by strawberries on the hill ; 
 With the sunshine on thy face, 
 Through thy torn brim's jaunty grace. 
 From my heart I give thee joy 
 I was once a barefoot boy I 
 
 7 
 
2 9 6 
 
 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 Prince thou art the grown-up man 
 Only is republican. 
 Let the million-dollared ride ! 
 Barefoot, trudging at his side, 
 Thou hast more than he can buy, 
 In the reach of ear and eye 
 Outward sunshine, inward joy: 
 \ Blessings on thee, barefoot boy I 
 
 O, for boyhood's painless play, 
 Sleep that wakes in laughing day, 
 Health that mocks the doctor's rules, 
 Knowledge never learned of schools, 
 Of the wild bee's morning chase, 
 Of the wild flower's time and place, 
 Flight of fowl, and habitude 
 Of the tenants of the woodj^ 
 How the tortoise bears hisshell, 
 How the woodchuck digs his cell, 
 And the ground-mole sinks his well ; 
 How the robin feeds her young, 
 How the oriole's nest is hung ; 
 Where the whitest lilies blow, 
 Where the freshest berries grow, 
 Where the ground-nut trails its vine, 
 Where the wood-grape's clusters shinej/ 
 Of the black-wasp's cunning way, 
 Mason of his walls of clay, 
 And the architectural plans 
 Of gray hornet artisans ! 
 For, eschewing books and tasks, 
 Nature answers all he asks ; 
 Hand in hand with her he walks, 
 Face to face with her he talks, 
 Part and parcel of her joy, 
 Blessings on the barefoot boy ! 
 
 O, for boyhood's time of June, 
 Crowding years in one brief moon, 
 When all things I heard or saw, 
 Me, their master, waited for. 
 I was rich in flowers and trees, 
 Humming-birds and honey-bees ; 
 For my sport the squirrel played, 
 Plied the snouted mole his spade ; 
 For my taste the blackberry cone 
 Purpled over hedge and stone ; 
 Laughed the brook for my delight 
 
 Through the day and through the night, 
 Whispering at the garden wall, 
 Talked with me from fall to fall ; 
 Mine the sand- rimmed pickerel pond, 
 Mine the walnut slopes beyond, 
 Mine on bending orchard trees, 
 Apples of Hesperides 1 
 Still, as my horizon grew, 
 Larger grew my riches too ; 
 All the world I saw or knew 
 Sieemed a complex Chinese toy, 
 Fashioned for a barefoot boy ! 
 
 O, for festal dainties spread, 
 Like my bowl of milk and bread, 
 Pewter spoon and bowl of wood, 
 On the door-stone, gray and rude ! 
 O'er me, like a regal tent, 
 Cloudy-ribbed, the sunset bent, 
 Purple-curtained, fringed with gold, 
 Looped in many a wind-swung fold ; 
 While for music came the play 
 Of the pied frogs' orchestra ; 
 And, to light the noisy choir, 
 Lit the fly his lamp of fire. 
 I was monarch : pomp and joy 
 Waited on the barefoot boy. 
 
 Cheerily, then, my little man, 
 Live and laugh as boyhood can ! 
 Though the flinty slopes be hard, 
 Stubble-speared the new-mown sward, 
 Every morn shall lead thee through 
 Fresh baptisms of the dew ; 
 Every evening from thy feet 
 Shall the cool wind kiss the heat : 
 All too soon these feet must hide 
 In the prison cells of pride, 
 Lose the freedom of the sod, 
 Like a colt's for work be shod, 
 Made to tread the mills of toil, 
 Up and down in ceaseless moil : 
 Happy if their track be found 
 Never on forbidden ground ; 
 Happy if they sink not in 
 Quick and treacherous sands of sin. 
 Ah ! that thou couldst know the joy, 
 Ere it passes, barefoot boy 1 
 
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 
 
 297 
 
 [From Snow Bound] 
 
 THE sun that brief December day 
 
 Rose cheerless over hills of gray, 
 
 And, darkly circled, gave at noon 
 
 A sadder light than waning moon. 
 
 Slow tracing down the thickening sky 
 
 Its mute and ominous prophecy, 
 
 A portent seeming less than threat, 
 
 It sank from sight before it set. 
 
 A chill no coat, however stout, 
 
 Of homespun stuff could quite shut out, 
 
 A hard, dull bitterness of cold, 
 That checked, mid-vein, the circling race 
 Of life-blood in the sharpened face, 
 
 The coming of the snow-storm told. 
 
 The wind blew east : we heard the roar 
 
 Of Ocean on his wintry shore, 
 
 And felt the strong pulse throbbing there 
 
 Beat with low rhythm our inland air. 
 
 Meanwhile we did our nightly chores, 
 Brought in the wood from out of doors, 
 Littered the stalls, and from the mows 
 Raked down the herd's-grass for the cows : 
 Heard the horse whinnying for his corn ; 
 And, sharply clashing horn on horn, 
 Impatient down the stanchion rows 
 The cattle shake their walnut bows ; 
 While, peering from his early perch 
 Upon the scaffold's pole of birch, 
 The cock his crested helmet bent, 
 And down his querulous challenge sent. 
 
 Unwarmed by any sunset light 
 
 The gray day darkened into night, 
 
 A night made hoary with the swarm 
 
 And whirl-dance of the blinding storm, 
 
 As zigzag wavering to and fro 
 
 Crossed and recrossed the winged snow : 
 
 And ere the early bedtime came 
 
 The white drift piled the window-frame, 
 
 And through the glass the clothes-line posts 
 
 Looked in like tall and sheeted ghosts. 
 
 So all night long the storm roared on : 
 The morning broke without a sun ; 
 In tiny spherule traced with lines 
 Of Nature's geometric signs, 
 In starry flake, and pellicle, 
 All day the hoary meteor fell.; 
 
 And, when the second morning shone, 
 
 We looked upon a world unknown, 
 
 On nothing we could call our own. 
 
 Around the glistening wonder bent 
 
 The blue walls of the firmament, 
 
 No cloud above, no earth below, 
 
 A universe of sky and snow ! 
 
 The old familiar sights of ours 
 
 Took marvellous shapes ; strange domes and 
 
 towers 
 
 Rose up where sty or corn-crib stood, 
 Or garden wall, or belt of wood ; 
 A smooth white mound the brush-pile showed, 
 A fenceless drift what once was road ; 
 The bridle-post an old man sat 
 With loose-flung coat and high cocked hat ; 
 The well-curb had a Chinese roof; 
 And even the long sweep, high aloof, 
 In its slant splendor, seemed to tell 
 Of Pisa's leaning miracle. 
 
 As night drew on, and, from the crest 
 Of wooded knolls that ridged the west, 
 The sun, a snow-blown traveller, sank 
 From sight beneath the smothering bank, 
 We piled, with care, our nightly stack ' 
 Of wood against the chimney-back, 
 The oaken log, green, huge, and thick, 
 And on its top the stout back-stick ; 
 The knotty fore-stick laid apart, 
 And filled between with curious art 
 The ragged brush ; then, hovering near, 
 We watched the first red blaze appear, 
 Heard the sharp crackle, caught the gleam 
 On whitewashed wall and sagging beam, 
 Until the old, rude-furnished room 
 Burst, flower-like, into rosy bloom ; 
 While radiant with a mimic flame 
 Outside the sparkling drift became, 
 And through the bare-boughed lilac-tree 
 Our own warm hearth seemed blazing free. 
 
 Shut in from all the world without, 
 We sat the clean-winged hearth about 
 Content to let the north-wind roar 
 In baffled rage at pane and door, 
 While the red logs before us beat 
 The frost-line back with tropic heat; 
 And ever, when a louder blast 
 
2Q8 
 
 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 Shook beam and rafter as it passed, 
 The merrier up its roaring draught 
 The great throat of the chimney laughed. 
 The house-dog, on his paws outspread, 
 Laid to the fire his drowsy head ; 
 The cat's dark silhouette on the wall 
 A couchant tiger's seemed to fall ; 
 And, for the winter fireside meet, 
 Between the andirons' straddling feet, 
 The mug of cider simmered slow, 
 The apples sputtered in a row, 
 And, close at hand, the basket stood 
 With nuts from brown October's wood. 
 
 Our uncle, innocent of books, 
 
 Was rich in lore of fields and brooks ; 
 
 In moons, and tides, and weather wise, 
 
 He read the clouds as prophecies, 
 
 And foul or fair could well divine, 
 
 By many an occult hint and sign, 
 
 Holding the cunning-warded keys 
 
 To all the woodcraft mysteries ; 
 
 Himself to Nature's heart so near 
 
 That all her voices in his ear 
 
 Of beast or bird had meanings clear, 
 
 Like Apollonius of old, 
 
 Who knew the tales the sparrows told, 
 
 Or Hermes, who interpreted 
 
 What the sage cranes of Nilus said ; 
 
 A simple, guileless, childlike man, 
 
 Content to live where life began ; 
 
 Strong only on his native grounds, 
 
 The little world of sights and sounds 
 
 Whose girdle was the parish bounds, 
 
 Whereof his fondly partial pride 
 
 The common features magnified, 
 
 As Surrey hills to mountains grew 
 
 In White of Selborne's loving view ; 
 
 He told how teal and loon he shot, 
 
 And how the eagle's eggs he got, 
 
 The feats on pond and river done, 
 
 The prodigies of rod and gun ; 
 
 Till, warming with the tales he told, 
 
 Forgotten was the outside cold, 
 
 The bitter wind unheeded blew, 
 
 From ripening corn the pigeons flew, 
 
 The partridge drummed i' the wood, the 
 
 mink 
 
 Went fishing down the river-brink. 
 In fields with bean or clover gay, 
 The woodchuck, like a hermit gray, 
 Peered from the doorway of his cell ; 
 
 The muskrat plied the mason's trade, 
 And tier by tier his mud-walls laid ; 
 And from the shagbark overhead 
 
 The grizzled squirrel dropped his shell 
 
 As one who held herself a part 
 Of all she saw, and let her heart 
 
 Against the household bosom lean, 
 Upon the motley-braided mat 
 Our youngest and our dearest sat, 
 Lifting her large, sweet, asking eyes, 
 
 Now bathed within the fadeless green 
 And holy peace of Paradise. 
 O, looking from some heavenly hill, 
 
 Or from the shade of saintly palms, 
 
 Or silver reach of river calms, 
 Do those large eyes behold me still ? 
 With me one little year ago : 
 The chill weight of the winter snow 
 
 For months upon her grave has lain ; 
 And now, when summer south-winds blow, 
 
 And brier and harebell bloom again, 
 I tread the pleasant paths we trod, 
 I see the violet-sprinkled sod 
 Whereon she leaned, too frail and weak 
 The hillside flowers she loved to seek, 
 Yet following me where'er I went 
 With dark eyes full of love's content. 
 The birds are glad ; the brier-rose fills 
 The air with sweetness ; all the hills 
 Stretch green to June's unclouded sky ; 
 But still I wait with ear and eye 
 For something gone which should be nigh, 
 A loss in all familiar things, 
 In flower that blooms, and bird that sings. 
 And yet, dear heart ! remembering thee, 
 
 Am I not richer than of old ? 
 Safe in thy immortality, 
 
 What change can reach the wealth I hold? 
 
 What chance can mar the pearl and gold 
 Thy love hath left in trust with me ? 
 And while in life's late afternoon, 
 
 Where cool and long the shadows grow, 
 I walk to meet the night that soon 
 
 Shall shape and shadow overflow, 
 I cannot feel that thou art far, 
 Since near at need the angels are ; 
 And when the sunset gates unbar, 
 
 Shall I not see thee waiting stand, 
 And, white against the evening star, 
 
 The welcome of thy beckoning hand ? 
 
RICHARD HILDRETH. 
 
 Yet, haply, in some lull of life, To warm them at the wood-fire's blaze ! 
 
 Some Truce of God which breaks its strife, And thanks untraced to lips unknown 
 
 The worldling's eyes shall gather dew, Shall greet me like the odors blown 
 
 Dreaming in throngful city ways From unseen meadows newly mown, 
 
 Of winter joys his boyhood knew ; Or lilies floating in some pond, 
 
 And dear and early friends the few Wood-fringed, the wayside gaze beyond ; 
 
 Who yet remain shall pause to view The traveller owns the grateful sense 
 
 These Flemish pictures of old days ; Of sweetness near, he knows not whence, 
 
 Sit with me by the homestead hearth, And, pausing, takes with forehead bare 
 
 And stretch the hands of memory forth The benediction of the air. 
 
 RICHARD HILDRETH. 
 
 Richard Hildreth was born in Deerfield, Mass., June 28, 1807. He was graduated at 
 Harvard College in 1826, and, after reading law in Newburyport, removed to Boston, and 
 commenced practice. In 1832 he became the editor of the Boston Atlas. Being in delicate 
 health, he went to the South in 1834, and resided for a year and a half on a plantation. This 
 experience suggested to him the idea of writing a novel founded on the vicissitudes in the 
 life of a slave. Archy Moore, which appeared on his return, was therefore the first anti- 
 slavery novel. It was republished in England, and favorably received. B'ut Mr. Hildreth's 
 mind was not suited to writing fiction, nor did he care for any rhetorical arts. The titles 
 of his works show what were his favorite studies. He translated Bentham's Theory of 
 Legislation from the French. He wrote a History of Banks, Despotism in America, which 
 was a discussion of the subject of slavery, also a Theory of Morals, and a Theory of Politics. 
 These last works were written while he was a resident in Demerara. His most important 
 work is his History of the United States, in six volumes, published between 1849 and 1852, 
 and bringing the narrative down to 1820. This is a work evincing great industry, indepen- 
 dent judgment, and unswerving adherence to facts as he saw them. The style is singular- 
 ly clear and pure, and the arrangement of details perspicuous. There is not a passage of 
 "fine writing" or declamation in it ; in which respect it contrasts favorably with Bancroft's 
 History. It, is as if he had said to his countrymen, " If you want to know what has really 
 happened in the settlement of this country and in the foundation of the government, you can 
 read these pages ; but if you want eloquence and political disquisitions, look elsewhere." 
 The impression left by Hildreth's History is not favorable to Jefferson and his followers ; his 
 hero (if sober history be allowed to have a hero !) is Hamilton. Whether the view of Ban- 
 croft or that of Hildreth be the true one, no critic can now with certainty affirm. Every 
 history of this country so far has been based upon more or less partial statements, and upon 
 such letters as have been permitted to see the light. Each historian has made such selec- 
 tions as will make effective pictures, and place the actors in what he considers their true 
 relative positions. Undoubtedly many letters exist, which some future explorer, like Carlyle, 
 may bring to light, and, by their aid, give a new color to characters and events. It is too 
 soon for the success of such an undertaking as yet. This generation is not ready to accept 
 as true the traits of any accurate portrait of the fathers, nor to believe that our governmental 
 fabric had its rise among precisely such selfish intrigues, struggles, and aspersion of motives 
 as are prevalent to-day. 
 
 Mr. Hildreth published a work, entitled Japan as it Was and Is, a compilation of value. 
 He was connected at one time with the New York Tribune, and was an industrious writer 
 for other periodicals. 
 
 His frame was slender, and his health was always delicate. He died at Florence in 
 July, 1865. 
 
30O HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 [From the History of the United States.] 
 THE DEATH OF HAMILTON. 
 
 IT was not at all in the spirit of a professed duellist, it was not 
 upon any paltry point of honor, that Hamilton had accepted this 
 extraordinary challenge, by which it was attempted to hold him 
 answerable for the numerous imputations on Burr's character 
 bandied about in conversation and the newspapers fof two or three 
 years past. The practice of duelling he utterly condemned ; indeed, 
 he had himself been a victim to it in the loss of his eldest son, a boy 
 of twenty, in a political duel some two years previously. As a 
 private citizen, as a man under the influence of moral and . religious 
 sentiments, as a husband loving and loved, and the father of a 
 numerous and dependent family, as a debtor honorably disposed, 
 whose creditors might suffer by his death, he had every motive for 
 avoiding the meeting. So he stated in a paper which, under a pre- 
 monition of his fate, he took care to leave behind him. It was in his 
 character of a public man ; it was in that lofty spirit of patriotism, 
 of which examples are so rare, rising high above all personal and 
 private considerations, a spirit magnanimous and self-sacrificing 
 to the last, however in this instance uncalled for and mistaken, 
 that he accepted the fatal challenge. " The ability to be in future 
 useful," such was his own statement of his motives, " whether in 
 resisting mischief or effecting good in those crises of our public affairs 
 which seem likely to happen, would probably be inseparable from a 
 :onformity with prejudice in this particular." 
 
 With that candor towards his opponents by which Hamilton was 
 sver so nobly distinguished, but of which so very seldom, indeed, 
 did he ever experience any return, he disavowed in this paper the 
 last he ever wrote any disposition to affix odium to Burr's conduct 
 in this particular case. He denied feeling towards Burr any personal 
 ill will, while he admitted that Burr might naturally be influenced 
 against him by hearing of strong animadversions in which he had 
 indulged, and which, as usually happens, might probably have been 
 aggravated in the report. These animadversions, in some cases, 
 might have been occasioned by misconstruction or misinformation ; 
 yet his censures had not proceeded on light grounds nor from un- 
 worthy motives. From the possibility, however, that he might have 
 injured Burr, as well as from his general principles and temper in 
 relation to such affairs, he had come to the resolution, which he left 
 on record, and communicated also to his second, to withhold and 
 
RICHARD HILDRETH. 30 1 
 
 throw away his first fire, and perhaps even his second ; thus giving 
 Burr a double opportunity to pause and reflect. 
 
 The grounds of Weehawken, on the Jersey shore, opposite New 
 York, were at that time the usual field of these single combats, then, 
 chiefly by reason of the inflamed state of political feeling, of frequent 
 occurrence, and very seldom ending without bloodshed. The day 
 having been fixed, and the hour appointed at seven o'clock in the 
 morning, the parties met, accompanied only by their seconds. The 
 bargemen, as well as Dr. Hosack, the surgeon mutually agreed upon, 
 remained, as usual, at a distance, in order, if any fatal result should 
 occur, not to be witnesses. The parties having exchanged saluta- 
 tions, the seconds measured the distance of ten paces, loaded the 
 pistols, made the other preliminary arrangements, and placed the 
 combatants. At the appointed signal, Burr took deliberate aim, and 
 fired. The ball entered Hamilton's side, and as he fell, his pistol too 
 was unconsciously discharged. Burr approached him, apparently 
 somewhat moved ; but on the suggestion of his second, the surgeon 
 and bargemen already approaching, he turned and hastened away, 
 Van Ness coolly covering him from their sight by opening an 
 umbrella. The surgeon found Hamilton half lying, half sitting on 
 the ground, supported in the arms of his second. The pallor of 
 death was on his face. " Doctor," he said, " this is a mortal 
 wound ; " and immediately fainted, as if overcome by the effort of 
 speaking. As he was carried across the river the fresh breeze 
 revived him. His own house being in the country, he was conveyed 
 at once to the house of a friend, where he lingered twenty-four hours 
 in great agony, but preserving his composure and self-command to 
 the last. . . . 
 
 In Hamilton's death the Federalists and the country experienced 
 a loss second only to that of Washington. Hamilton possessed the 
 same rare and lofty qualities, the same just balance of soul, with less 
 indeed of Washington's severe simplicity and awe-inspiring presence, 
 but with more of warmth, variety, ornament, and grace. If the Doric 
 in architecture be taken as the symbol of Washington's character, 
 Hamilton's belonged to the same grand style as developed in the 
 Corinthian if less impressive, more winning. If we add Jay for 
 the Ionic, we have a trio not to be matched, in fact not to be ap- 
 proached, in our history, if, indeed, in any other. Of earth-born 
 Titans, as terrible as great, now angels, and now toads and serpents, 
 there are everywhere enough. Of the serene and benign sons of the 
 celestial gods, how few at any time have walked the earth ! 
 
3O2 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 [From Japan as it Was and Is.] 
 JAPAN IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY. 
 
 THE doctrine of the transmigration of souls, one of the most dis- 
 tinguishing tenets of the Buddhist faith, had not failed to confirm 
 the Japanese in a distaste for animal food, which had originated, 
 perhaps, from the small number of animals natives of that insular 
 country an abstinence, indeed, which even the ancient religion of 
 Sinto had countenanced by denouncing as impure the act of killing 
 any animal, or being sprinkled with the slightest drop of blood. Of 
 domestic tame animals, the Japanese possessed from time immemo- 
 rial the horse, the ox the buffalo, the dog, and the cat ; but none of 
 these were ever used as food. The Portuguese introduced the sheep 
 and the goat ; but the Japanese, not eating their flesh nor under- 
 standing the art of working up their wool or hair, took no pains to 
 multiply them. The Chinese introduced the hog ; but the eating of 
 that animal was confined to them and to other foreigners. The deer, 
 the hare, and the wild boar were eaten by some sects, and some 
 wild birds by the poorer classes. The fox was hunted for its skin, 
 the hair of which was employed for the pencils used in painting and 
 writing. The animal itself, owing to its roguery, was believed to be 
 the residence of particularly wicked souls an idea confirmed by 
 many strange stories in common circulation. The tortoise and the 
 crane were regarded in some sort as sacred animals, never to be 
 killed nor injured. Whales of a small species were taken, then as 
 now, near the coast, and were used as food, as were many other 
 kinds of fish, the produce of the sea and rivers. Shell-fish and 
 certain sea-weeds were also eaten in large quantities. 
 
 The soil of Japan, being of volcanic origin, was in some places 
 very fertile ; but in many parts there were rugged and inaccessible 
 mountains, the sides of which, not admitting the use of the plough, 
 were built up in terraces cultivated by hand. Agriculture formed 
 the chief occupation of the inhabitants, and they had carried it to 
 considerable perfection, well understanding the use of composite 
 manures. The chief crops were rice, which was the great article of 
 food ; barley, for the horses and cattle ; wheat, used principally for 
 vermicelli ; and several kinds of peas and beans. They cultivated, 
 also, a number of seeds, from which oils were expressed ; likewise 
 cotton, hemp, the white mulberry for the feeding of silk-worms (silk 
 being the stuff most in use), and the paper mulberry for the manu- 
 facture of paper. To these may be added the camphor tree, which 
 
RICHARD HILDRETH. 303 
 
 grew, however, only in the south-western parts of Ximo, the Rhus 
 vernix, which produces the celebrated Japanese varnish, and the 
 tea-plant, spoken of by one of the early Portuguese missionaries as 
 " a certain herb called Chia, of which they put as much as a walnut 
 shell may contain into a dish of porcelain, and drink it with hot 
 water." From rice they produced by fermentation an intoxicating 
 drink, called saki, which served them in the place of wine, and 
 which was consumed in large quantities. A yeast, or rather vinegar, 
 produced from this liquor, was largely employed in the pickling of 
 vegetables. Their most useful woods were the bamboo, the fir of 
 several species, and the cedar. 
 
 They understood in perfection the arts of weaving silks and of 
 moulding porcelain, and excelled in gilding, engraving, and especial- 
 ly in the use of lacker or varnish. They also were able to manu- 
 facture sword-blades of excellent temper. 
 
 As in other Eastern countries, the greater nobles exhibited an 
 extreme magnificence ; but trade and the arts were held in low esteem, 
 and the mass of the people were excessively poor. Their buildings, 
 though they had some few solid structures of stone, were principally 
 light erections of wood, to avoid the effects of frequent earthquakes ; 
 but this and the varnish employed exposed them to conflagrations, 
 which, in the towns, were frequent and destructive. These towns 
 consisted, for the most part, of very cheap structures (like most of 
 those throughout the East), so that cities were built and destroyed 
 with equal ease and celerity. 
 
 Their commerce was limited almost entirely to the interchange of 
 domestic products, a vast number of vessels, of rather feeble struc- 
 ture, being employed in navigating the coasts of the islands, which 
 abounded with deep bays and excellent harbors. 
 
 Of the sciences, whether mathematical, mixed, or purely physical, 
 they knew but little. They had, however, a considerable number of 
 books treating of religion, medicine, and their history and tradi- 
 tions. The young were instructed in eloquence, poetry, and a rude 
 sort of painting and music, and they had a great fondness for theatri- 
 cal representations, in which they decidedly excelled. Their writing, 
 in which they greatly studied brevity, was in columns, as with the 
 Chinese, from the top to the bottom of the page, for which they gave 
 this reason : that writing ought to be a true representation of men's 
 thoughts, and that men naturally stood erect. These columns read 
 from right to left. They employed, besides the Chinese ideographic 
 
304 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 signs, a syllabic alphabet of their own, though in many works the 
 Chinese characters were freely introduced. 
 
 Jurisprudence, as in most Eastern countries, was a very simple 
 affair. The laws were very few. Heads of families exercised 
 great power over their households. Most private disputes were 
 settled by arbitration ; but where this failed, and in all criminal cases, 
 a decision was made on the spot by a magistrate, from whom there 
 was seldom any appeal. The sentences were generally executed at 
 once, and often with very great severity. Whether from their 
 temperament or their belief in the doctrines of transmigration and 
 annihilation, it was observed that the Japanese met death with more 
 courage than was common in Europe. It was, indeed, a point of 
 honor, in many cases, to inflict it on themselves, which they did in 
 a horrid manner, by cutting open their bowels by two gashes in the 
 shape of a cross. The criminal who thus anticipated execution 
 secured thereby the public sympathy and applause, saving his 
 property from confiscation, and his family from death ; and, upon 
 the death of superiors or masters, the same fate was often, as a 
 mark of personal devotion and attachment, self-inflicted ; and some- 
 times, also, in consequence of a disgrace or affront, to escape or 
 revenge which no other means appeared. The missionaries especial- 
 ly noted in the Japanese a pride, a self-respect, a haughty magna- 
 nimity, a sense of personal honor, very uncommon in the East, but 
 natural characteristics enough of a people who had never been con- 
 quered by invaders from abroad ; while the great vicissitudes to 
 which they were exposed all vassals generally sharing the fate of 
 their superiors made them look upon the goods and evils of 
 fortune in a very philosophical spirit. 
 
 EDMUND QUINCY. 
 
 Edmund Quincy was born in Boston, February i, 1808, and was graduated at Harvard 
 College in 1827. He studied law, but has never practised the profession, being, as he once 
 jocosely styled himself, "a reformed lawyer." He has written a great number of letters 
 and other articles for periodicals, characterized by a peculiar and often pungent wit. He 
 published, in 1854, a novel entitled Wensley, a Story without a Moral. It has a racy New 
 England flavor, and was much enjoyed by those familiar with the manners of fifty years ago. 
 In 1867 he published a life of his father, Josiah Quincy, a work of great interest as a biog- 
 raphy and as a contribution to our national history, and exhibiting clearly the literary 
 culture, taste, and judgment of the author. 
 
 Mr. Quincy resides at Dedham, in one of those spacious old houses which few men in our 
 century know how to build, and fewer still how to enjoy. 
 
EDMUND QUINCY. 305 
 
 [From the Life of Josiah Quincy.l 
 A PICTURE OF THE TIME OF 1790. 
 
 BOSTON, though the second town in importance in the United 
 States, contained but eighteen thousand inhabitants. It was full of 
 "garden-houses," such as lingered in London as late as Milton's 
 time, and in one of which he once lived. Many of its streets and 
 Pearl Street was one of them resembled those of a flourishing 
 country town rather than of the capital of a sovereign state. Cows 
 were pastured, long since this century came in, where the thick 
 houses of a dense population now crowd one another for room. 
 Boys played ball in the streets without disturbance, or danger from 
 the rush of traffic. The Common was then, and for a quarter of a 
 century later, properly and technically "a common," upon which 
 every inhabitant had the right of pasturing his cow. These "milky 
 mothers," indeed, were very prominent members of society at that 
 time, and for long afterwards, and had, or took, the freedom of the 
 city with a perfect self-complacency, perambulating the streets at 
 their own free will and pleasure. The same privileges and im- 
 munities were enjoyed by them in Boston that were extended then, 
 and until within my own observation, in New York, to less pastoral 
 and uncleaner beasts. Those were days of small things and slow 
 communications. The American cities and communities were then 
 individual and distinct in their characteristics, to a degree scarcely 
 conceivable in these clays of multiplied population and universal 
 travel. A journey to New York, then a small city of thirty thousand 
 souls, was a much rarer event in life then than a voyage to Europe 
 now. It took nearly as long, and was attended with greater danger 
 and discomfort. Two stage-coaches and twelve horses sufficed for 
 the travel between the two chief commercial places on the continent 
 in 1790, and the journey consumed a week. The visits of strangers 
 were rare events, and always the occasions of general and eager 
 hospitality. The Boston of that day was a pleasant place to live in. 
 It was well recovered from the financial embarrassments which 
 accompanied and followed the revolutionary war ; and the revival of 
 commerce, and the opening of fields to the enterprise of the mer- 
 chants, closed against them in the days of colonial dependence, were 
 the cause of a great and growing prosperity. 
 
 The intercourse of the cultivated society for which Boston was 
 distinguished was conducted on simple and easy terms. The hours 
 were early. Private parties were elegant, according to the style of 
 20 
 
306 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 the time, but infrequent in comparison with friendly gatherings of a 
 more informal and unceremonious kind. Public assemblies collected 
 the principal inhabitants once a fortnight in Concert Hall, where the 
 minuet and country-dance yet held their own against revolutionary 
 innovations. ... . 
 
 I was curious to know how my father's recollections of the per- 
 sonal appearance of Washington agreed with the popular descriptions 
 and pictorial representations of it with which we are all familiar. 
 He was not an imaginative man, and never dressed his heroes in 
 the colors of fancy. No man had a profounder reverence for Wash- 
 ington than he, but this did not affect his perceptions of physical 
 phenomena, nor his recollections of them. My mother, on the con- 
 trary, was " of imagination all compact," and Washington was in her 
 mind's eye, as she recalled him, more than a hero a superior 
 being, as far above the common race of mankind in majesty and 
 grace of person and bearing as in moral grandeur. This was one of 
 the few subjects on which my father and mother differed in opinion. 
 He maintained that Stuart's portrait is a highly idealized one, pre- 
 senting its great subject as the artist thought he ought to live in the 
 minds of posterity, but not a strong resemblance of the actual man 
 in the flesh. He always declared that the portrait by Savage, in the 
 college dining-room in Harvard Hall, at Cambridge, was the best 
 likeness he had ever seen of Washington, though its ' merits as a 
 work of art are but small. With this opinion my mother could not 
 away. Stuart's Washington could hardly come up to the gracious 
 figure that dwelt in her memory. One day, when talking over those 
 times in his old age, I asked my father to tell me what were his 
 recollections of Washington's personal presence and bearing. " I 
 will tell you," said he, "just how he struck me. He reminded me 
 of the gentlemen who used to come to Boston in those days to 
 attend the General Court from Hampden or Franklin County, in the 
 western part of the state. A little stiff in his person, not a little 
 formal in his manners, not particularly at ease in the presence of 
 strangers, he had the air of a country gentleman not accustomed 
 to mix much in society, perfectly polite, but not easy in his address 
 and conversation, and not graceful in his gait and movements." . . . 
 
 One of his [Mr. Quincy's] favorite schemes was the substitution of 
 hawthorn hedges for the old-fashioned rail fence of New England. 
 They kept themselves in repair, he would say, and so saved the ex- 
 pense of renewing the fences of dead wood, which was a material item 
 in the cost of farming. At one time his whole farm was fenced only 
 
GEORGE STILLMAN HILLARD. 307 
 
 with this verdurous wall, and the system worked exceeding well as 
 long as the cattle were kept in the stalls. But when, in 1823, he was 
 obliged to give up the supervision of his paternal acres for that of 
 the city of Boston, and the tenant to whom he let them insisted on 
 pasturing Jiis cows, the hedges were found not to be equal to the 
 occasion. A hedge might be sufficient to restrain the wanderings 
 of the civilized cattle of England, which had been accustomed to be 
 led into fat pastures for generations ; but it was otherwise with 
 the hardy kine of New Hampshire and Vermont, whence the herds 
 of the lowland country were chiefly recruited, which, brought up to 
 browse in the woods and on the mountains, made little account of 
 any obstacle that offered itself in the shape of green leaves and 
 twigs. The thorns they seemed to regard as an appetitizing con- 
 diment, a kind of sauce piquante, thrown in to increase the 
 pleasure of the meal. So, in the end, rail fences had to be provided 
 to protect the hedges from the beasts. However, his experiment 
 settled the hedge question as far as New England was concerned. 
 
 GEORGE STILLMAN HILLARD. 
 
 George Stillman Hillard was born in Machias, Me., September 22, 1808. He was 
 graduated at Harvard College in 1828, after which he studied law, and settled in Boston, 
 where he has ever since resided. He has paid a divided homage to law and literature, and 
 has been distinguished at the bar as well as among writers. He has delivered several able 
 discourses on public occasions, in which he has exhibited brilliant qualities of style, and the 
 results of reading and culture. He visited Europe in 1847, and on his return delivered a 
 course of lectures before the Lowell Institute. His notes of travel, under the title of Six 
 Months in Italy, relate mostly to ancient and mediaeval art, and have what seems to be a 
 permanent value. Unlike the journals of most tourists, this work attracts new readers with 
 every year, and is as fresh to-day as when it appeared. He has published a selection from 
 the works of Walter Savage Landor, and an edition of Spenser in five volumes. He has 
 written many valuable articles for the Christian Examiner and the North American Review, 
 and is the author of a widely-known series of school readers. 
 
 One of the extracts here given is from an address delivered in 1846, which is noticeable as 
 one of the earliest attempts to show the influences of physical geography upon the history 
 of mankind. 
 
 [From a Lecture on the Relations between Geography and History.] 
 
 THE peninsula of Greece is remarkable, among the countries of 
 Europe, for those peculiarities which distinguish Europe itself from 
 the other quarters of the globe for the number of its natural divis- 
 ions, and its extent of sea-coast compared with its surface. Though 
 not so large as Portugal, its extent of sea-coast is greater than that 
 of Italy, and twice as great as that of France. Peloponnesus is so 
 
3O8 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 embayed and indented by the sea that it has been aptly likened to 
 the human hand, stretched out, with the fingers apart. Thus the 
 voice of the sea was ever sounding in the ears of the Greek, and 
 from every mountain height its blue waters were seen sparkling in 
 the clear distance. It essentially contributed to the formation of 
 that bold, active, and enterprising spirit which characterized the 
 people. The murmur of its waves is constantly heard in the litera- 
 ture of Greece, as in that of England. The poetry of Homer is full 
 of ocean influences. Its author must have been familiar with the 
 sea in all its moods, and from childhood " laid his hand upon its 
 mane," like that strong swimmer of our own age, from whom these 
 words are taken, but who, unlike the old Greek bard, drew from the 
 ocean not the spirit of its central repose, but its bitterness, its tur- 
 bulence, and its foam. The attachment of the Greeks to the sea is 
 illustrated by an anecdote, which has come down to us, of a Greek 
 islander, who, when he was carried to see the beautiful vale of 
 Tempe, coldly remarked, " This is well ; but where is the sea ? " 
 
 Greece, too, was as much a land of the mountain as of the flood. 
 It is a region of plains and hollows, lying in the laps of steep moun- 
 tain ranges, which can in many places be traversed only by narrow 
 passes, where the footing is difficult and dangerous. States lying 
 near each other were completely isolated by mountain barriers. 
 Hence it came that Greece was occupied by many distinct com- 
 munities, differing in dialect and in civil and religious institutions, 
 whose struggles and rivalries afforded a constant excitement to the 
 minds of the inhabitants. This explains the fact why the history 
 of Greece is so crowded with events, is so fruitful in political instruc- 
 tion, and is also one reason of the beauty and variety of its litera- 
 ture. Of the various dialects of Greece, no one degenerated into a 
 vulgar or provincial patois, but each was a refined language, used to 
 express the conceptions best suited to its peculiar character. . . . 
 
 Turning from Laconia to Attica, we perceive a marked difference 
 in the physical characteristics of the two countries. Attica is a 
 peninsula of small extent, with valleys opening upon the coast, 
 which abound with commodious harbors, and inviting, by its 
 position, the commerce of Asia. Its soil was light and poor, produ- 
 cing flowers and fragrant shrubs in abundance, and well adapted to 
 the olive, but not of depth and body enough for the growth of wheat. 
 Though laboriously and skilfully cultivated, its produce was never 
 sufficient to supply the wants of the inhabitants. On the other 
 hand, Attica had mines of silver and abundant quarries of marble. 
 
GEORGE STILLMAN HILLARD. 309 
 
 Thus the Athenians were urged to a maritime life, alike by the 
 wealth and the poverty of their country, and they early became bold 
 and successful navigators. The passage from Greece to Asia is 
 rendered easy by that group of beautiful islands, which extends, like 
 a succession of natural stepping-stones, from one continent to the 
 other. A glance at the map suggests the obvious explanation of 
 those relations of protection and dependence which so long existed 
 between Athens and these islands. We see how natural it was for 
 that powerful maritime city to bind these ocean gems into a coronet 
 for her brow of sovereignty. Athens, by its position, was exposed 
 to assault, and was consequently more than once captured. 
 
 There were other elements common in various degrees to the 
 whole of the Grecian peninsula, which aided in the wonderful 
 development of the human mind which there took place. The air 
 was remarkable for its clearness and purity, as is shown by the 
 excellent preservation in which those monuments of art are still 
 found which have been so fortunate as to escape the destroying 
 hand of man. The climate was admirably suited to develop both 
 body and mind. The winters were severe in some places, but gen- 
 erally there was warmth without heat, and coolness without cold. 
 The cold of winter was tempered by the genial sea-breezes, and the 
 heats of summer mitigated by the bracing winds from the mountains, 
 many of whose peaks were covered with snow during the whole 
 year. The soil, with very few exceptions, was of that kind which 
 stimulates and rewards labor ; not of tropical luxuriance, but richly 
 repaying the husbandman's toil. Thus all the influences that were 
 around the ancient Greek were adapted to quicken, animate, and 
 inspire ; to give muscular power and nervous sensibility ; to create 
 active minds in vigorous bodies ; and there is the same analogy 
 between the energetic and practical character of the Greek intellect 
 and the forms and expressions of nature in .Greece which we observe 
 between the dreamy and speculative cast of the Oriental mind and 
 the exhausting heats and monotonous plains of the East. 
 
 [From an Address before the Mercantile Library Association, 1850.] 
 THE DANGERS AND DUTIES OF THE MERCANTILE PROFESSION. 
 
 WE are inclined to pursue too keenly, and to value too highly, 
 what is called success in life, which means a good estate, a dis- 
 tinguished social position, power, influence, and consideration. All 
 the elements that mould the growing mind tend to strengthen this 
 
3IO HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 passion. Open the common biographies which are written for our 
 children, and what do you find set down in them ? This man, when 
 he was a boy, was docile, diligent, and frugal ; he studied hard ; he 
 was never idle, and never naughty ; he made friends ; he acquired 
 knowledge ; he laid up all the money that he earned. And what 
 was the result ? He became prosperous, and powerful, and rich ; he 
 held high offices and enjoyed great honors, and was esteemed and 
 exalted. If you do likewise, you will be what he was, and gain what 
 he gained. 
 
 This is but another form of appealing to the love of excelling, 
 rather than the love of excellence that inferior motive, which, 
 though it may quicken the faculties, dims the beauty of the soul. I 
 confess that increasing years bring with them an increasing respect 
 for men who do not succeed in life, as those words are commonly 
 used. Heaven has been said to be a place for those who have not 
 succeeded upon earth ; and it is surely true that celestial graces do 
 not best thrive and bloom in the hot blaze of worldly prosperity. 
 
 Ill success sometimes arises from a superabundance of qualities 
 in themselves good from a conscience too sensitive, a taste too 
 fastidious, a self-forgetfulness too romantic, a modesty too retiring. 
 I will not go so far as to say, with a living poet, that " the world 
 knows nothing of its greatest men," but there are forms of great- 
 ness, or at least of excellence, which " die and make no sign ; " 
 there are martyrs that miss the palm, but not the stake ; heroes 
 without the laurel, and conquerors without the triumph. 
 
 In the mercantile profession, the acquisition of property is the 
 obvious index of success. A successful merchant is a rich merchant. 
 The two ideas can hardly be disjoined. Thus the universal passion for 
 the prizes of life is apt, in your case, to take its lowest form that of 
 the love of money. I would hold up no fanatical or ascetic views of life 
 for your admiration and applause. Wealth brings noble opportunities, 
 and competence is a proper object of pursuit ; but wealth, and even 
 competence, may be bought at too high a price. Wealth itself has 
 no moral attribute. It is not money, but the love of money, which 
 is the root of all evil. It is the relation between wealth and the 
 mind and the character of its possessor which is the essential thing. 
 It is the passionate, absorbing, and concentrated pursuit of wealth, 
 the surrendering of the whole being to one despotic thought, 
 the starving of all the nobler powers, in order to glut one fierce and 
 clamorous appetite against which I warn you. This form of 
 idolatry will not only check intellectual growth, but it is adverse to 
 
EDWARDS A. PARK. 311 
 
 all the delicacies and refinements of virtue. I know that there is a 
 certain coarse morality which draws its nutriment from the soil of 
 its dustiest heart. 
 
 I know that to steal, and commit forgery, and swindle, lead, in the 
 long run, to poverty as well as to shame. But there is a border-land 
 between unblushing knavery and virgin honesty, into which success- 
 ful forays may be made under the cloud of night and secrecy. We 
 say that honesty is the best policy, but no man was ever honest who 
 acted from mere policy ; and it is also not true that the best honesty 
 s the best policy. 
 
 The most serviceable honesty, like the most current coin, is that 
 In which the fine gold of virtue is mingled with the alloy of worldly 
 thrift. The most successful man of business, other things being 
 equal, is he whose habitual course of dealing is so far upright as to 
 admit of occasional slight deviations, and thus give the color of 
 integrity to acts in themselves doubtful. There is such a thing as a 
 " losing honesty," which never deliberates, and never parleys, which 
 is as pure as the snow " that's bolted by the northern blast twice 
 o'er ; " an honesty sometimes crowned with brilliant success, but 
 more commonly dwelling with modest fortunes and a lowly estate. 
 
 EDWARDS A. PARK. 
 
 Edwards A. Park was born in Providence, R. I., December 29, 1808. He was graduated 
 at Brown University in 1826, received his theological education at Andover, Mass., and was 
 settled in 1831 as pastor of a church in Braintrce. In 1835 ne was appointed professor of 
 moral and intellectual philosophy in Amherst College, and a year later resigned to accept a 
 chair at Andover, where he has since resided. 
 
 Professor Park's published works have naturally growi: out of his professional studies, 
 and are mostly doctrinal in their character. He edited the Writings of the Rev. William 
 Bradford Homer, with a Memoir, the Writings of Professor B. B. Edwards, with a Memoir. 
 He wrote a work entitled the Preacher and Pastor, and, with collaborators, published a vol- 
 ume of Hymns, also a treatise on hymnology, entitled Hymns and Choirs. He has con- 
 tributed to current theological literature, and has been one of the editors of the Bibliotheca 
 S.icra from the beginning. His published discourses on various occasions have gained for 
 him a commanding position in his denomination. His sermons are weighty with thought, 
 simple in diction, direct in trleir motive and argument, and leave a deep impression upon the 
 mind. He must be considered as one of the ablest of the clergy, and a leading representa- 
 tive of the modern school of New England theology. 
 
 [From Address before the American Education Society, May 30, 1865.] 
 
 AT the present time ministers need treasures of knowledge, not 
 only in defending the truth, but also in making it attractive. It must 
 be made attractive ; for it must not remain true, as it in now true, 
 
312 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 that the larger part of our countrymen habitually absent themselves 
 from the house of God. The surest method of inducing men to fre- 
 quent the sanctuary is that of exhibiting the facts and principles of 
 the gospel according to the laws of the human mind. Our fathers 
 exhibited the truth in a style adapted to their day. But the same 
 style is not adapted to the present day. Every age has its own 
 methods of thought. Our school-boys are learning sciences of which 
 our ancestors never dreamed. The taste of the populace is refined 
 and enriched by arts unknown to the universities of former times. 
 The student must begin his work early, and tarry at it long, if he 
 would learn the fitnesses of doctrine, as now proved and now illus- 
 trated, to move the mind of men, as it is now stored with ideas and 
 made sensitive and delicate by culture. Unless the pastor adapt 
 his methods of thought to the existing state of his hearers' sensi- 
 bilities, he works against the laws which God has made. These 
 laws God will honor. The neglect of them God will not honor. We 
 have no more reason to expect that he will bless the ministry which 
 sets at defiance the mental forces ordained of heaven, than that he 
 will bless the mechanic who uses the lever and the screw in defiance 
 of the principles on which the lever and the screw act. The preacher 
 can do nothing without God, but so far forth as he is a co-worker 
 with God, he has power, not indeed his own, but divine. He who 
 made the forces of nature made them to be helpers of man, and if we 
 comply with the methods in which these forces work, we are amazed 
 at their results. We put up our wires on the top of poles over which 
 the lightning travels, as our post-boy, to carry our mails for us. We 
 weave our cotton and wool on grounds where we employ the law of 
 gravitation, as a spinster, to turn our wheels for us. Those were 
 shrewd men of Boston, who, if they had been trained theologians, 
 would have been wise men ; for they erected their grist-mills on a 
 spot where the moving tides rolled the machinery around, and thus 
 they made use of the moon, as a miller, to grind their corn. Still 
 more, if a minister devoutly comply with the laws of mind, may he 
 employ them as the winds to be his messengers, and as the lightning 
 to be his servants. But if he utter the truth with affected tones, 
 prim, finical gestures, or in any indolent, or inflated, or unfeeling 
 method, and then complain that his hearers are inattentive because 
 they are totally depraved, his complaint is ungraceful, for his elocu- 
 tion is totally corsupt. If he fill his sermons with truisms, vapid 
 exhortations, incoherent thoughts, and then say that the pews are 
 empty because those who ought to be in them are sinners by nature, 
 
EDWARDS A. PARK. 313 
 
 he makes a one-sided statement, for he is lazy by nature, and has 
 not schooled himself in learning and obeying the laws of the human 
 soul. If he will raise the spiritual building, he must study the fit- 
 nesses of the tenon to the mortise. . . . 
 
 The Puritan worship demands the art of extemporaneous yet ac- 
 curate speech, expressing solid, well-ordered, yet fresh, out-gushing 
 thought ; an art which requires more discipline than any other from 
 the human artist, and when fairly attained is the most amazing de- 
 velopment of the divine skill on earth, developing at once the noblest 
 faculties of the body and the soul of the speaker and the hearer. 
 The Puritan worship demands an art of song, which will animate 
 devotion, and will at the same time be devotion ; an art which the 
 pastor must understand, and must excite the children of his parish 
 to cultivate. We would address the ear in the sanctuary, not by 
 such music as flatters economical men with the notion that they can 
 enjoy just as fine a display at the church as at the opera, and avoid 
 paying for an opera ticket ; not by such music as prompts the wor- 
 shippers to inquire, " Was not that piece well executed ? " " Was 
 not that a skilful performance ? " Not by such music as sends men 
 home conversing about the interludes of the organ, rather than 
 thinking about the sentiments which lay hidden between the inter- 
 ludes, but by such psalmody as will not obtrude itself for criticism ; 
 such as is the voice of the prayer of the congregation. We would 
 address the eye in the sanctuary, not by massive pillars which stand 
 between the preacher and his hearers, and hide them from each 
 other ; not by lofty walls which drown articulate speech in an unin- 
 telligible echo ; but by such a style of architecture as gives a distinct, 
 definite sound to the speaker's voice, and predisposes men to cherish 
 the faith which " cometh by hearing ; " such a style of architecture 
 as will not make the sanctuary a cathedral on the one hand, nor a 
 lyceum lecture-room on the other hand ; but a sacred place, pecu- 
 liar, set apart, still a place fitted for man as man, and therefore 
 giving to the speaker and the hearer pure air, as a symbol and a 
 means of pure instruction ; admitting the light of heaven, which is a 
 symbol of spiritual light, and enables the hearers to commune with 
 their preacher, to carry on a dialogue with him, they seeing his eye, 
 and he discerning whether they be awake or asleep, doubting or be- 
 lieving, resisting his message or trying to understand it ; so may he 
 speak to them the word in season. A dim religious light is in good 
 taste for a mausoleum ; a clear, evangelical light is in keeping with 
 the worship of Him who is honored not by mysticism and hazy sen- 
 
314 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 timentalism, but by clear thought and unstained principle. The per- 
 fection of art in the sanctuary is to make all its forms elastic, so that 
 they will bend with the turning course of Providence, with the wind- 
 ing of right sentiment. Where there is parade in worship, there is 
 no true art ; where the fresh love of the soul is not expressed in free 
 utterance, . . . there is no true art. Where the temple of truth 
 is hidden under and behind the scaffolding of it, there art has only 
 begun its work, and not been able to finish. 
 
 OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. 
 
 Oliver Wendell Holmes was born in Cambridge, Mass., August 29, 1809. He was grad- 
 uated at Harvard College in 1829. He received his degree of M. D. in 1836, after some 
 years of study, both at home and in medical schools abroad. He was chosen professor of 
 anatomy and physiology in Dartmouth College in 1838, and was called to the same chair in 
 Harvard College in 1847. 
 
 Dr. Holmes commenced writing poetry at an early age. Referring now to those first 
 attempts, with the impressions of later triumphs in mind, we are almost surprised at the 
 beauty of many lines, as under the splendor of a declining day we see beauties not revealed 
 to us in the morning landscape. Terpsichore, Urania, and Poetry, a Metrical Essay 
 these are good names with which to conjure up forms of youthful grace. And those after- 
 dinner poems who can refrain from envying the college "dons" their enjoyment of that 
 delicious dessert ? 
 
 Upon the establishment of the Atlantic Monthly in 1857, Dr. Holmes commenced a series 
 of papers entitled The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. This proved to be a literary event, 
 and the appearance of each successive number raised the fame of the author still higher. 
 The next year he followed the happy invention by a series on a similar plan, entitled The 
 Professor at the Breakfast Table. E'sie Venner, a psychological novel, appeared in 1861, 
 and The Gmrdian Angel in 1867. Another series of delightful essays, /entitled The Poet 
 at the Breakfast Table, was begun in the Atlantic, January, 1872. 
 
 He has also published a number of medical works, and addresses, and a very powerful 
 essay upon the functions of the brain, entitled Mechanism in Thought and Morals. 
 
 There are authors whose qualities are ascertained by a not very difficult analysis. The 
 intellect of Holmes, though manifesting many and strongly-marked attributes, eludes all 
 tests, preserves its individuality, and remains unclassified among original elements. When 
 we think of the familiar confidences of the Autocrat, we might liken him to Montaigne. But 
 while the parallel is being considered, we come upon passages so full of tingling hits or of 
 rollicking fun, that we are sure we are mistaken, and that he resembles no one so much as 
 Sydney Smith. But presently he sounds the depths of our consciousness, explores the con- 
 cealed channels of feeling, flashes the light of genius upon our half-acknowledged thoughts, 
 and we see that this is what neither the great Gascon nor the hearty and jovial Englishman 
 could have attempted. We are equally puzzled when we would consider his verse. The 
 alternations of tender sentiment, humor, and mirthful satire might remind us of Hood. 
 His lyrics have the high spirit of the best pieces of Campbell. The charming simplicity 
 and delicate feeling of other poems recall the songs of Beranger. Then we see that he is 
 like them all, or rather like neither. Some of his stanzas have a compactness, finish, and 
 lustre that we may fairly call Horatian ; no one since Pope has condensed so much power 
 into lines of such elastic movement. 
 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. 315 
 
 Though he has written prose and verse with equal success, and would have been famous 
 in either field, still all his works are pervaded by the same original and characteristic traits. 
 It is difficult to consider his poetry by itself when there is constantly breaking into our inner 
 chamber of judgment a troop of recollections from the Autocrat : Wit, with glittering eye 
 and assailing forefinger; Irony, with mouth awry, one side of the face severe, and the 
 scornful tongue in the cheek of the other ; Puns, like Siamese twins in harlequin suits, 
 turning somersaults ; grave figures in dominoes, with the port of Lord Bacon, or the mock- 
 ing smile of Voltaire ; and \\hite-robed Sentiment, her tender bosom heaving, her dewy 
 tears scarce brushed away, and she mortally afraid of being made ridiculous by some prank 
 of the merry company. 
 
 And if in the same silent session we were to take up the most brilliant of his prose works, 
 we should hardly turn half a dozen leaves without coming upon some lyric of the sea or the 
 street, some delicate strain of remembered love, or sterling lesson of duty, or scholastic le- 
 gend with a sting in its tail ; and we should declare that Holmes was simply and purely a poet. 
 
 In the Table Talk the miracle is, th.it one mind could so long, from its own resources, as 
 from a quarry, furnish those monoliths of wisdom, those sculptured forms of beauty, and 
 blazing gems of illustration. A clever writer might comment forever upon daily events or 
 current literature, as Sainte-Beuve did in his Causeries du L,undi ', but to turn inward his 
 look, to interest an indifferent public solely in his own bright, strange, deep, and wayward 
 thoughts and fancies, to suggest subtile resemblances and remote associations between the 
 outer and inner world, to invest intellectual processes with such a charm as to make each 
 reader fancy himself (for the time) another Plato, and then to close each conversation with 
 a hymn of fitting beauty, to be able so to illuminate our "thought's interior sphere" is 
 a task not for a genie, but a genius. 
 
 Holmes has undoubtedly suffered in the estimation of the unthinking as the author of 
 comic verses. As ha himself says, they 
 
 " suspect the azure blossom that unfolds upon the shoot, 
 As if wisdom's old potato could not flourish at the root." 
 
 But if he had never perpetrated a joke he would have been one of the most original of essay- 
 ists ; and when the world forgets the sallies that have set tables in a roar, and even the 
 lyrics that have set a nation's heart on fire, still his picture of the ship of pearl will preserve, 
 his name forever. 
 
 [From the Autocrat of the Breakfast Table.] 
 
 BOATING. 
 
 FOR the past nine years I have rowed about, during a good part 
 of the summer, on fresh or salt water. My present fleet on the river 
 Charles consists of three row-boats, i. A small, flat-bottomed skiff, 
 of the shape of a flat-iron, kept mainly to lend to boys ; 2. A fancy 
 " dory," for two pairs of sculls, in which I sometimes go out with 
 my young folks ; 3. My own particular water-sulky, a " skeleton " 
 or " shell " race-boat, twenty-two feet long, with huge outriggers, 
 which boat I pull with ten-foot sculls alone, of course, as it holds 
 but one, and tips him out if he doesn't mind what he is about. In 
 this I glide around the Back Bay, down the stream, up the Charles 
 to Cambridge and Watertown, up the Mystic, round the wharves, in 
 the wake of steamboats, which leave a swell after them delightful to 
 rock upon ; I linger under the bridges those " caterpillar bridges," 
 
3l6 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 as my brother professor so happily called them ; rub against the 
 black sides of old wood-schooners ; cool down under the overhang- 
 ing stern of some tall Indiaman ; stretch across to the Navy Yard, 
 where the sentinel warns me off from the Ohio just as if I should 
 hurt her by lying in her shadow ; then strike out into the harbor, 
 where the water gets clear and the air smells of the ocean till all 
 at once I remember that if a west wind blows up of a sudden, I shall 
 drift along past the islands, out of sight of the dear old State House, 
 plate, tumbler, knife and fork all waiting at home, but no chair 
 drawn up at the table ; all the dear people waiting, waiting, waiting, 
 while the boat is sliding, sliding, sliding into the great desert, where 
 there is no tree and no fountain. As I don't want my wreck to be 
 washed up on one of the beaches in company with devil's-aprons, 
 bladder-weeds, dead horse-shoes, and bleached crab-shells, I turn 
 about and flap my long, narrow wings for home. When the tide is 
 running out swiftly, I have a splendid fight to get through the 
 bridges, but always make it a rule to beat though I have been 
 jammed up into pretty tight places at times, and was caught once 
 between a vessel swinging round and the pier, until our bones (the 
 boat's, that is) cracked as if we had been in the jaws of Behemoth. 
 Then back to my moorings at the foot of the Common, off with the 
 rowing-dress, dash under the green, translucent wave, return to the 
 garb of civilization, walk through my garden, take a look at my elms 
 on the Common, and, reaching my habitat, in consideration of my 
 advanced period of life, indulge in the Elysian abandonment of a 
 huge recumbent chair. 
 
 When I have established a pair of well-pronounced feathering- 
 calluses on my thumbs, when I am in training so that I can do my 
 fifteen miles at a stretch without coming to grief in any way, when I 
 can perform my mile in eight minutes or a little less, then I feel as 
 if I had old Time's head in chancery, and could give it to him at my 
 leisure. 
 
 THE MELLOWING PROCESS OF TIME. 
 
 You don't know what I mean by the green state ? Well, then, I 
 will tell you. Certain things are good for nothing until they have 
 been kept a long while ; and some are good for nothing until they 
 have been kept and used. Of the first, wine is the illustrious and 
 immortal example. Of those which must be kept and used I will 
 name three meerschaum pipes, violins, and poems. The meer- 
 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. 317 
 
 schaum is but a poor affair until it has burned a thousand offerings 
 to the cloud-compelling deities. It comes to us without complexion 
 or flavor born of the sea-foam, like Aphrodite, but colorless as 
 pallida Mors herself. The fire is lighted in its central shrine, and 
 gradually the juices which the broad leaves of the Great Vegetable 
 had sucked up from an acre, and curdled into a drachm, are diffused 
 through its thirsting pores. First a discoloration, then a stain, and 
 at last a rich, glowing, umber tint spreading over the whole surface. 
 Nature true to her old brown autumnal hue, you see as true in 
 the fire of the meerschaum as in the sunshine of October ! And 
 then the cumulative wealth of its fragrant reminiscences ! He who 
 inhales its vapors takes a thousand whiffs in a single breath ; and 
 one cannot touch it without awakening the old joys that hang around 
 it as the smell of flowers clings to the dresses of the daughters of the 
 house of Farina ! 
 
 [Don't think I use a meerschaum myself, for/rtfo not, though I 
 have owned a calumet since my childhood, which from a naked 
 Pict (of the Mohawk species) my grandsire won, together with a 
 tomahawk and beaded knife-sheath, paying for the lot with a bullet- 
 mark on his right cheek. On the maternal side I inherit the love- 
 liest silver-mounted tobacco-stopper you ever saw. It is a little 
 box-wood Triton, carved with charming liveliness and truth ; I have 
 often compared it to a figure in Raphael's Triumph of Galatea. It 
 came to me in an ancient shagreen case ; how old it is I do not 
 know, but it must have been made since Sir Walter Raleigh's time. 
 If you are curious, you shall see it any day. Neither will I pretend 
 that I am so unused to the more perishable smoking contrivance 
 that a few whiffs would make me feel as if I lay in a ground-swell on 
 the Bay of Biscay. I am not unacquainted with that fusiform, spiral- 
 wound bundle of chopped stems and miscellaneous incombustibles, 
 the cigar, so called, of the shops which to " draw" asks the suc- 
 tion-power of a nursling infant Hercules, and to relish, the leathery 
 palate of an old Silenus. I do not advise you, young man, even if 
 my illustration strike your fancy, to consecrate the flower of your 
 life to painting the bowl of a pipe, for, let me assure you, the stain 
 of a reverie-breeding narcotic may strike deeper than you think for. 
 I have seen the green leaf of early promise grow brown before its 
 time under such Nicotian regimen, and thought the umbered meer- 
 schaum was dearly bought at the cost of a brain enfeebled and a 
 will enslaved.] 
 
 Violins, too the sweet old Amati ! the divine Stradivarius ! 
 
3l8 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 Played on by ancient Maestros until the bow-hand lost its power, 
 and the flying fingers stiffened. Bequeathed to the passionate 
 young enthusiast, who made it whisper his hidden love, and cry his 
 inarticulate longings, and scream his untold agonies, and wail his mo- 
 notonous despair. Passed from his dying hand to the cold virtuoso, 
 who let it slumber in its case for a generation, till, when his hoard 
 was broken up, it came forth once more and rode the stormy sym- 
 phonies of royal orchestras, beneath the rushing bow of their lord 
 and leader. Into lonely prisons with improvident artists ; into 
 convents from which arose, day and night, the holy hymns with 
 which its tones were blended ; and back again to orgies in which it 
 learned to howl and laugh as if a legion of devils were shut up in it ; 
 then again to the gentle dilettante, who calmed it down with easy 
 melodies until it answered him softly as in the days of the old 
 maestros. And so given into our hands, its pores all full of music ; 
 stained, like the meerschaum, through and through, with the con- 
 centrated hue and sweetness of all the harmonies which have kindled 
 and faded on its strings. 
 
 Now I tell you a poem must be kept and tised, like a meerschaum 
 or a violin. A poem is just as porous as the meerschaum, the 
 more porous it is, the better. I mean to say that a genuine poem is 
 .capable of absorbing an indefinite amount of the essence of our own 
 humanity, its tenderness, its heroism, its regrets, its aspirations, 
 so as to be gradually stained through with a divine secondary 
 color derived from ourselves. So, you see, it must take time to bring 
 the sentiment of a poem into harmony with our nature by staining 
 ourselves through every thought and image our being can penetrate. 
 
 Then, again, as to the mere music of a new poem ; why, who can 
 expect anything more from that than from the music of a violin fresh 
 from the maker's hands ? Now you know very well that there are 
 no less than fifty-eight different pieces in a violin. These pieces are 
 strangers to each other, and it takes a century, more or less, to make 
 them thoroughly acquainted. At last they learn to vibrate in har- 
 mony, and the instrument becomes an organic whole, as it were a 
 great seed capsule, which had grown from a garden-bed in Cremona, 
 or elsewhere. Besides, the wood is juicy and full of sap for fifty 
 years or so, but at the end of fifty or a hundred more gets tolerably 
 dry and comparatively resonant. 
 
 Don't you see that all this is just as true of a poem ? Counting 
 each word as a piece, there are more pieces in an average copy of 
 verses than in a violin. The poet has forced all these words together, 
 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. 319 
 
 and fastened them, and they don't understand it at first. But let the 
 poem be repeated aloud, and murmured over in the mind's muffled 
 whisper often enough, and at length the parts become knit together 
 in such absolute solidarity that you could not change a syllable with- 
 out the whole world's crying out against you for meddling with the 
 harmonious fabric. 
 
 WHO ARE DISTURBED BY REFORMS. 
 
 DID you never, in walking in the fields, come across a large fiat 
 stone, which had lain, nobody knows how long, just where you found 
 it, with the grass forming a little hedge, as it were, all round it, 
 close to its edges ? and have you not, in obedience to a kind of feel- 
 ing that told you it had been lying there long enough, insinuated 
 your stick, or your foot, or your fingers under its edge, and turned it 
 over as a housewife turns a cake, when she says to herself, " It's 
 done brown enough by this time " ? What an odd revelation, and 
 what an unforeseen and unpleasant surprise to a small community, 
 the very existence of which you had not suspected, until the sudden 
 dismay and scattering among its members produced by your turning 
 the old stone over ! Blades of grass flattened down, colorless, 
 matted together, as if they had been bleached and ironed ; hideous 
 crawling creatures, some of them coleopterous, or horny-shelled 
 turtle-bugs one wants to call them ; some of them softer, but cun- 
 ningly spread out and compressed like Lepine watches (Nature 
 never loses a crack or a crevice, mind you, or a joint in a tavern 
 bedstead, but she always has one of her flat-pattern live timekeep- 
 ers to slide into it) ; black, glossy crickets, with their long filaments 
 sticking out like the whips of four-horse stage-coaches ; motionless, 
 slug-like creatures, young larvce, perhaps more horrible in their 
 pulpy stillness than even in the infernal wriggle of maturity ! But 
 no sooner is the stone turned, and the wholesome light of day let 
 upon this compressed and blinded community of creeping things, 
 than all of them which enjoy the luxury of legs and some of them 
 have a good many rush round wildly, butting each other and 
 everything in their way, and end in a general stampede for under- 
 ground retreats, from the region poisoned by sunshine. Next year 
 you will find the grass growing tall and green where the stone lay ; 
 the ground-bird builds her nest where the beetle had his hole ; the 
 dandelion and the buttercup are growing there, and the broad fans 
 of insect-angels open and shut over their golden disks, as the rhyth- 
 
32O HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 mic waves of blissful consciousness pulsate through their glorified 
 being. 
 
 The young fellow whom they call John saw fit to say, in his very 
 familiar way, at which I do not choose to take t>rFence, but which 
 I sometimes think it necessary to repress, that I was. coming it 
 rather strong on the butterflies. 
 
 " No," I replied ; "there is meaning in each of those images 
 the butterfly as well as the others. The stone is ancient error. The 
 grass is human nature borne down and bleached of all its color by it. 
 The shapes which are found beneath are the crafty beings that thrive 
 in darkness, and the weaker organisms kept helpless by it. He who 
 turns the stone over is whosoever puts the staff of truth to the old 
 lying incubus, no matter whether he do it with a serious face or a 
 laughing one. The next year stands for the coming time. Then 
 shall the nature which had lain blanched and broken rise in its full 
 stature and native hues in the sunshine. Then shall God's min- 
 strels build their nests in the hearts of a new-born humanity. Then 
 shall beauty Divinity taking outlines and color light upon the 
 souls of men as the butterfly, image of the beatified spirit rising from 
 the dust, soars from the shell that held a poor grub, which would 
 never have found wings had not the stone been lifted. 
 
 I HAVE lived by the sea-shore and by the mountains. No, I am 
 not going to say which is best. The one where your place is is the 
 best for you. But this difference there is : you can domesticate 
 mountains, but the sea is ferce natures. You may have a hut, or 
 know the owner of one, on the mountain-side ; you see a light half 
 way up its ascent in the evening, and you know there is a home, 
 and you might share it. You have noted certain trees, perhaps ; 
 you know the particular zone where the hemlocks look so black in 
 October, when the maples and beeches have faded. All its reliefs 
 and intaglios have electro typed themselves in the medallions that 
 hang round the walls of your memory's chamber. The sea remem- 
 bers nothing. It is feline. It licks your feet ; its huge flanks purr 
 very pleasantly for you ; but it will crack your bones and eat you, 
 for all that, and wipe the crimsoned foam from its jaws as if nothing 
 had happened. The mountains give their lost children berries and 
 water ; the sea mocks their thirst, and lets them die. The moun- 
 tains have a grand, stupid, lovable tranquillity ; the sea has a fasci- 
 nating, treacherous intelligence. The mountains lie about like huge 
 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. 321 
 
 ruminahts, their broad backs awful to look upon, but safe to handle. 
 The sea smooths its silver scales until you cannot see their joints ; 
 but their shining is that of a snake's belly, after all. In deeper sug- 
 gestiveness I find ds great a difference. The mountains dwarf man- 
 kind, and foreshorten the procession of its long generations. The 
 sea drowns out humanity and time ; it has no sympathy with either, 
 for it belongs to eternity, and of that it sings its monotonous song 
 forever and ever. 
 
 THE CHAMBERED NAUTILUS. 
 
 THIS is the ship of pearl, which, poets feign, 
 , Sails the unshadowed main, 
 The venturous bark that flings 
 On the sweet summer wind its purpled wings 
 In gulfs enchanted, where the siren sings, 
 
 And coral reefs lie bare, 
 
 Where the cold sea-maids rise to sun their streaming 
 hair. 
 
 Its webs of living gauze no more unfurl ; 
 
 Wre9ked is the ship of pearl ! 
 
 And every chambered cell, 
 Where its dim dreaming life was wont to dwell, 
 As the frail tenant shaped his growing shell, 
 
 Before thee lies revealed 
 Its irised ceiling rent, its sunless crypt unsealed ! 
 
 Year after year beheld the silent toil 
 
 That spread his lustrous coil ; 
 
 Still, as the spiral grew, 
 He left the past year's dwelling for the new, 
 Stole with soft step its shining archway through, 
 
 Built up its idle door, 
 
 Stretched in his last found home, and knew the old 
 no more. 
 
 Thanks for the heavenly message brought by thee, 
 
 Child of the wandering sea, 
 
 Cast from her lap forlorn ! 
 From thy dead lips a clearer note is born 
 Than ever Triton blew from wreathed horn ! 
 Through the deep caves of thought I hear a voice 
 
 that sings, 
 21 
 
322 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul, 
 
 As the swift seasons roll ! 
 
 Leave thy low- vaulted past ! 
 Let each new temple, nobler than the last, 
 Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast, 
 
 Till thou at length art free, 
 Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea ! 
 
 MY AUNT. 
 
 MY aunt ! my dear unmarried aunt ! 
 
 Long years have o'er her flown ; 
 Yet still she strains the aching clasp 
 
 That binds her virgin zone ; 
 I know it hurts her, though she looks 
 
 As cheerful as she can ; 
 Her waist is ampler than her life, 
 
 For life is but a span. 
 
 My aunt ! my poor deluded aunt ! 
 
 Her hair is almost gray ; 
 Why will she train that winter curl 
 
 In such a spring-like way ? 
 H<3w can she lay her glasses down, 
 
 And say she reads as well, 
 When, through a double convex lens, 
 
 She just makes out to spell ? 
 
 Her father grandpapa, forgive 
 
 This erring lip its smiles 
 Vowed she should make the finest girl 
 
 Within a hundred miles ; 
 He sent her to a stylish school ; 
 
 'Twas in her thirteenth June ; 
 And with her, as the rules required, 
 
 " Two towels and a spoon." 
 
 They braced my aunt against a board, 
 To make her straight and tall ; 
 
 They laced her up, they starved her down, 
 To make her light and small ; 
 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. 323 
 
 They pinched her feet, they singed her hair, 
 
 They screwed it up with pins ; 
 O, never mortal suffered more 
 
 In penance for her sins. 
 
 So, when my precious aunt was done, 
 
 My grandsire brought her back 
 (By daylight lest some rabid youth 
 
 Might follow on the track). 
 " Ah ! " said my grandsire, as he shook 
 
 Some powder in his pan, 
 " What could this lovely creature do 
 
 Against a desperate man ! " 
 
 Alas ! nor chariot, nor barouche, 
 
 Nor bandit cavalcade, 
 Tore from the trembling father's arms 
 
 His all-accomplished maid. 
 For her how happy had it been ! 
 
 And Heaven had spared to me 
 To see one sad, ungathered rose 
 
 On my ancestral tree. 
 
 THE LAST LEAF. 
 
 I SAW him once before, 
 As he passed by the door, 
 
 And again 
 
 The pavement stones resound, 
 As he totters o'er the ground 
 
 With his cane. 
 
 They say that in his prime, 
 Ere the pruning-knife of Time 
 
 Cut him down, 
 Not a better man was found 
 By the crier on his round 
 
 Through the town. 
 
 But now he walks the streets, 
 And he looks at all he meets 
 Sad and wan, 
 
324 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 And he shakes his feeble head, 
 That it seems as if he said, 
 " They are gone." 
 
 The mossy marbles rest 
 
 On the lips that he has pressed 
 
 In their bloom, 
 
 And the names he loved to hear 
 Have been carved for many a year 
 
 On the tomb. 
 
 My grandmamma has said, 
 Poor old lady she is dead 
 
 Long ago, 
 
 That he had a Roman nose, 
 And his cheek was like a rose 
 
 In the snow. 
 
 But now his nose is thin, 
 And it rests upon his chin 
 
 Like a staff; 
 
 And a crook is in his back, 
 And a melancholy crack 
 
 In his laugh. 
 
 I know it is a sin 
 For me to sit and grin 
 
 At him here ; 
 
 But the old three-cornered hat, 
 And the breeches, 'and all that, 
 
 Are so queer ! 
 
 And if I should live to be 
 The last leaf upon the tree 
 
 In the spring, 
 
 Let them smile as I do now, 
 At the old forsaken bough 
 
 Where I cling. 
 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. 325 
 
 AFTER A LECTURE ON KEATS. 
 " Purpureos sfargatn flores." 
 
 THE wreath that star-crowned Shelley gave 
 
 Is lying on thy Roman grave, 
 
 Yet on its turf young April sets 
 
 Her store of slender violets ; 
 
 Though all the gods their garlands shower, 
 
 I too may bring one purple flower. 
 
 Alas ! what blossom shall I bring 
 That opens in my northern spring ? 
 The garden beds have all run wild, 
 So trim when I was yet a child ; 
 Flat plantains and unseemly stalks 
 Have crept across the gravel walks ; 
 The vines are dead, long, long ago, 
 The almond buds no longer blow. 
 No more upon its mound I see 
 The azure, plume-bound fleur-de-lis ; 
 Where once the tulips used to show, 
 In straggling tufts the pansies grow ; 
 
 The grass has quenched my white- rayed gem, 
 The flowering " Star of Bethlehem," 
 Though its long blade of glossy green 
 And pallid stripe may still be seen. 
 Nature, who treads her nobles down, 
 And gives their birthright to the clown, 
 Has sown her base-born weedy things 
 Above the garden's queens and kings. 
 
 Yet one sweet flower of ancient race 
 Springs in the old familiar place. 
 
 When snows were melting down the vale, 
 
 And Earth unlaced her icy mail, 
 
 And March his stormy trumpet blew, . 
 
 And tender green came peeping through, 
 
 I loved the earliest one to seek 
 
 That broke the soil with emerald beak, 
 
 And watch the trembling bells so blue 
 
 Spread on the column as it grew. 
 
 Meek child of earth ! thou wilt not shame 
 
 The sweet, dead poet's holy name ; 
 
326 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 The God of Music gave thee birth, 
 Called from the crimson-spotted earth, 
 Where, sobbing his young life away, 
 His own fair Hyacinthus lay. 
 The hyacinth my garden gave 
 Shall lie upon that Roman grave. 
 
 UNION AND LIBERTY. 
 
 FLAG of the heroes who left us their glory, 
 
 Borne through their battle-fields' thunder and flame, 
 Blazoned in song and illumined in story, 
 Wave- o'er us all who inherit their fame ! 
 
 Up with our banner bright, 
 
 Sprinkled with starry light, 
 Spread its fair emblems from mountain to shore, 
 
 While through the sounding sky 
 
 Loud rings the nation's cry, 
 Union and Liberty ! One evermore ! 
 
 Light of our firmament, guide of our nation, 
 
 Pride of our children, and honored afar, 
 Let the wide beams of thy full constellation 
 
 Scatter each cloud that would darken a star. 
 Up with our banner bright, etc. 
 
 Empire unsceptred ! what foe can assail thee, 
 
 Bearing the standard of Liberty's van ? 
 Think not the God of thy fathers shall fail thee, 
 
 Striving with men for the birthright of man ! 
 Up with our banner bright, etc. 
 
 Yet if by madness and treachery blighted, 
 
 Dawns the dark hour when the sword thou must draw, 
 Then with the arms of thy millions united, 
 
 Smite the bold traitors to Freedom and Law ! 
 Up with our banner bright, etc. 
 
 Lord of the universe ! shield us and guide us, 
 Trusting thee always, through shadow and sun ! 
 
 Thou hast united us who shall divide us ? 
 Keep us, O, keep us, the Many in One ! 
 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. 327 
 
 Up with our banner bright, 
 
 Sprinkled with starry light, 
 Spread its fair emblems from mountain to shore, 
 
 While through the sounding sky 
 
 Loud rings the nation's cry 
 Union and Liberty ! One evermore ! 
 
 OLD IRONSIDES. 
 
 [Written when it was proposed to break up the old frigate Constitution.] 
 
 AY, tear her tattered ensign down ! 
 
 Long has it waved on high, 
 And many an eye has danced to see 
 
 That banner in the sky ; 
 Beneath it rung the battle shout, 
 
 And burst the cannon's roar ; 
 The meteor of the ocean air 
 
 Shall sweep the clouds no more. 
 
 Her deck, once red with heroes' blood, 
 
 Where knelt the vanquished foe, 
 When winds were hurrying o'er the flood, 
 
 And waves were white below, 
 No more shall feel the victor's tread, 
 
 Or know the conquered knee ; 
 The harpies of the shore shall pluck 
 
 The eagle of the sea ! 
 
 O, bettej that her shattered hulk 
 
 Should sink beneath the wave ; 
 Her thunders shook the mighty deep,. 
 
 And there should be her grave ; 
 Nail to the mast her holy flag, 
 
 Set every threadbare sail, 
 And give her to the god of storms, 
 
 The lightning and the gale ! 
 
328 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 THE PHILOSOPHER TO HIS LOVE. 
 
 DEAREST, a look is but a ray 
 Reflected in a certain way ; 
 A word, whatever tone it wear, 
 Is but a trembling wave of air ; 
 A touch, obedience to a clause 
 In Nature's pure material laws. 
 
 The very flowers that bend and meet, 
 In sweetening others, grow more sweet ; 
 The clouds by day, the stars by night, 
 Inweave their floating locks of light ; 
 The rainbow, Heaven's own forehead's braid, 
 Is but the embrace of sun and shade. 
 
 How few that love us have we found ! 
 How wide the world that girds them round ! 
 Like mountain streams we meet and part, 
 Each living in the other's heart, 
 Our course unknown, our hope to be 
 Yet mingled in the distant sea. 
 
 But Ocean coils and heaves in vain, 
 Bound in the subtile moonbeam's chain ; 
 And love and hope do but obey 
 Some cold, capricious planet's ray, 
 Which lights and leads the tide it charms 
 To Death's dark caves and icy arms. 
 
 Alas ! one narrow line is drawn, 
 That links our sunset with our dawn ; 
 In mist and shade life's morning rose, 
 A^d clouds are round it at its close ; 
 But ah ! no twilight beam ascends 
 To whisper where that evening ends. 
 
 O, in the hour when I shall feel 
 Those shadows round my senses steal, 
 When gentle eyes are weeping o'er 
 The clay that feels their tears no more, 
 Then let thy spirit with me be, 
 Or some sweet angel, likest thee ! 
 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. 329 
 
 EVENING. BY A TAILOR. 
 
 DAY hath put on his jacket, and around 
 
 His burning bosom buttoned it with stars. 
 
 Here will I lay me on the velvet grass, 
 
 That is like padding to earth's meagre ribs, 
 
 And hold communion with the things about me. 
 
 Ah me ! how lovely is the golden braid 
 
 That binds the skirt of night's descending robe ! 
 
 The thin leaves, quivering on their silken threads, 
 
 Do make a music like to rustling satin, 
 
 As the light breezes smooth their downy nap. 
 
 Ha ! wh'at is this that rises to my touch, 
 
 So like a cushion ? Can it be a cabbage ? 
 
 It is, it is that deeply injured flower, 
 
 Which boys do flout us with ; but yet I love thee, 
 
 Thou giant rose, wrapped in a green surtout. 
 
 Doubtless in Eden thou didst blush as bright 
 
 As these, thy puny brethren ; and thy breath 
 
 Sweetened the fragrance of her spicy air ; 
 
 But now thou seemest like a bankrupt beau, 
 
 Stripped of his gaudy hues and essences, 
 
 And growing portly in his sober garments. 
 
 Is that a swan that rides upon the water ? 
 
 O, no ; it is that other gentle bird, 
 
 Which is the patron of our noble calling. 
 
 I well remember, in my early years, 
 
 When these young hands first closed upon a goose ; 
 
 I have a scar upon my thimble finger 
 
 Which chronicles the hour of young ambition. 
 
 My father was a tailor, and his father, 
 
 And my sire's grandsire, all of them were tailors ; 
 
 They had an ancient goose, it was an heir-loom 
 
 From some remoter tailor of our race. 
 
 It happened I did see it on a time 
 
 When none was near, and I did deal with it, 
 
 And it did burn me O, most fearfully ! 
 
 It is a joy to straighten out one's limbs, 
 And leap elastic from the level counter, 
 
HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 Leaving the petty grievances of earth, 
 The breaking thread, the dm of clashing shears, 
 And all the needles that do wound the spirit, 
 For such a pensive hour of soothing silence. 
 Kind Nature, shuffling in her loose undress, 
 Lays bare her shady bosom ; I can feel 
 With all around me ; I can hail the flowers 
 That sprig earth's mantle, and yon quiet bird, 
 That rides the stream, is to me as a brother. 
 The vulgar know not all the hidden pockets 
 Where Nature stows away her loveliness. 
 But this unnatural posture of the legs 
 Cramps my extended calves, and I must go 
 Where I can coil them in their wonted fashion. 
 
 ROBERT CHARLES WINTHROP. 
 
 Robert Charles Winthrop, a lineal descendant of the first governor of Massachusetts, was 
 born in Boston, May 12, 1809. He was educated at the Latin School and at Harvard 
 College, receiving his degree in 1828. He studied law in the office of Daniel Webster ; but 
 soon after his admission to the bar, he commenced a public career. He was a member of 
 the state legislature for six years, during three of which he was speaker. He was elected 
 to Congress in 1840, and remained in that service, excepting a short interval, for ten years. 
 He was chosen speaker in 1847, and in 1849 he was the Whig candidate for re-election to the 
 same position. The Free-soil members held the balance of power between the Whigs and 
 Democrats. Mr. Winthrop refused to give any pledges as to the manner in which he would 
 constitute the committees of the house if he should be elected. The Anti-slavery men 
 thereupon refused to support him, and after sixty-three ballots the Democratic candidate, 
 Mr. Howell Cobb, of Georgia, was elected. In 1850 he was appointed by the governor 
 United States senator, as successor to Webster, who had been made secretary of state. In 
 1851 he was the candidate of the Whigs for the United States senatorship, but was defeated 
 by Charles Sumner, through a coalition of the Democratic and Free-soil parties. He was a 
 candidate for governor the following autumn, and received a large plurality of votes ; but as 
 a majority of all the votes was then required, there was no choice by the people, and the 
 election devolved upon the state legislature. The result was, that Mr. Boutwell, who was 
 the Democratic candidate, was elected. The rule requiring a majority of all the votes was in 
 these three successive instances a disastrous one for the prospects of Mr. Winthrop and his 
 party. Since that time he has taken no active part in political affairs, but has devoted his 
 leisure mainly to literary pursuits. He is president of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 
 which is engaged in the useful work of printing books and manuscripts relating to our annals. 
 He is one of the trustees, under the will of George Peabody, of the fund for promoting 
 popular education in the Southern States. He has delivered a number of orations and dis- 
 courses upon historical, patriotic, and religious subjects. He has published the Life and 
 Letters of John Winthrop, in two volumes ; also a Memoir of Nathan Appleton, and dis- 
 courses commemorative of Prescott, Quincy, Everett, Peabody, and others. 
 
 A volume of his Addresses and Speeches was published in 1852, and another in 1867. 
 
 \ 
 
ROBERT CHARLES WINTHROP. 331 
 
 Mr. Wintlirop is a man of decided opinions, and of high character. All his public per- 
 formances are marked by an independence of tone, thoroughness of conviction, and a clear 
 and forcible style. It should be remembered that it is not the style of an essayist, but rather 
 that of an orator, to whom brevity is not so desirable as amplitude of expression. He is an 
 admiring student of our literature, and uses poetical illustrations with admirable taste 
 and effect. 
 
 [From an Address before the Young Men's Christian Associations of Boston and 
 Richmond. ] 
 
 ANTIOCH. 
 
 THE ancient metropolis of Syria has secured for itself a manifold 
 celebrity on the pages of history. It has been celebrated as the 
 splendid residence of the Syrian kings, and afterwards as the lux- 
 urious capital of the Asiatic provinces of the Roman empire. It 
 has been celebrated for its men of letters, and its cultivation of 
 learning. It has been celebrated for the magnificence of the edifices 
 within its walls,* and for the romantic beauty of its suburban groves 
 and fountains. The circling sun shone nowhere upon more majestic 
 productions of human art, than when it gilded, with its rising or its 
 setting beams, the sumptuous symbols of its own deluded wor- 
 shippers, in the gorgeous temple of Daphne and the gigantic statue 
 of Apollo, which were the pride and boast of that far-famed capital ; 
 while it was from one of the humble hermitages which were em- 
 boson\ed in its exquisite environs, that the sainted Chrysostom 
 poured forth some of those poetical and passionate raptures on the 
 beauties and sublimities of nature, which would alone have won for 
 him the title of " the golden-mouthed." At one time, we are told, it 
 ranked thirds the list of the great cities of the world, next only 
 after Rome and Alexandria, and hardly inferior to the latter of the 
 two, at least, in size and splendor. It acquired a severer and sadder 
 renown in more recent, though still remote history, as having been 
 doomed to undergo vicissitudes and catastrophes of the most dis- 
 astrous and deplorable character, now sacked and pillaged by the 
 Persians, now captured by the Saracens, and now besieged by the 
 Crusaders; a prey, at one moment, to the ravages of fire, at 
 another, to the devastations of an earthquake, which is said to have 
 destroyed no less than two hundred and fifty thousand human lives 
 in a single hour. Its name has thus become associated with so 
 many historical lights and shadows, with so much of alternate 
 grandeur and. gloom, that there is, perhaps, but little likelihood 
 of its ever being wholly lost sight of by any student of antiquity. 
 Yet it is not too much to say, that one little fact, for which the Bible 
 is the sole and all-sufficient authority, will fix that name in the 
 
332 - HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 memory, and rivet it in the affectionate regard, of mankind, when all 
 else associated with it is forgotten. Yes, when its palaces and its 
 temples, its fountains and its groves, its works of art and its men of 
 learning, when Persian, and Saracen, and Crusader, who successive- 
 ly spoiled it, and the flames and the earthquake which devoured and 
 desolated it, shall have utterly faded from all human recollection or 
 record, the little fact the great fact, let me rather say will still 
 be remembered, and remembered with an interest and a vividness 
 which no time can ever efface or diminish, that "the disciples 
 were called Christians first in Antioch ; " that there the name of 
 Christ given at the outset, perhaps, as a nickname and a by- 
 word, but gladly and fearlessly accepted and adopted, in the face of 
 mockery, in the face of martyrdom, by delicate youth and maiden 
 tenderness, as well as by mature or veteran manhood first became 
 the distinctive designation of the faithful followers of'the Messiah. 
 
 THE POWER OF EARLY ASSOCIATIONS. 
 
 FOR one, my friends, I can never think of the bitterness and 
 rancor which are so often allowed to enter into religious differences 
 and religious controversies, without remembering how much our 
 religious opinions, our religious creeds, our religious connections, 
 have been determined pre-detennined, providentially determined 
 for us all, by the mere influence of early and seemingly accidental 
 associations. The place of our birth, the circumstances of our con- 
 dition, the surroundings of our childhood, the fascination of some 
 beloved and faithful pastor, the paternal precept and example, the 
 mother's knee, the family pew, have, after all, done more to decide 
 for each one of us the peculiarities of our religious faith and of our 
 religious forms, than all the catechisms of assemblies, the decrees 
 of councils, or the canons of convocations. We delight to worship 
 God where our fathers and mothers worshipped him, to kneel at the 
 same altar at which they knelt, to unite in the same prayers, or, it 
 may be, to utter the same responses, in which their voices were once 
 heard, and which they first taught us to lisp or to listen to as 
 children. The memories of fathers and mothers, and brothers and 
 sisters, with whom we have " taken sweet counsel together, and 
 walked to the house of God in company," cluster sweetly around us 
 as we sit in the old seats and sing the old psalms and hymns. We 
 almost shrink from trying to get to heaven by any other road than 
 that which they travelled, lest we should miss them at our journey's 
 
ROBERT CHARLES WINTHROP. 333 
 
 end. And is he not a very unwise person, who, without some deep 
 and overpowering conviction, would rudely break the spell and 
 dissolve the charm of such associations, either for himself or others? 
 How miserable is it, then, to allow the differences which have an 
 origin so natural, so worthy, so hallowed, so providential, to become 
 the subject of mutual suspicions, reproaches, and denunciations ! 
 
 It is well for us all to remember, that, in the language of my Lord 
 Bacon, " they be two things unity and uniformity." And how 
 admirably does he suggest in his essay on Unity in Religion, "A 
 man that is of judgment and understanding shall sometimes hear 
 ignorant men differ, and know well within himself, that those which 
 so differ mean one thing, and yet they themselves would never 
 agree ; and if it come so to pass in that distance of judgment which 
 is between man and man, shall we not think that God above, that 
 knows the heart, doth not discern that frail men, in some of their 
 contradictions, intend the same thing, and accepteth of both ? " . . 
 
 Who does not rejoice, as Sunday after Sunday comes round, to 
 see the multitudes that keep holy day thronging our streets and 
 sidewalks, and exchanging the smiles of recognition, or the greetings 
 of friendship, or the formalities of ceremony, as they make way for 
 each other in passing along to their various places of religious wor- 
 ship ? To human eyes, indeed, they seem to be moving in widely 
 different directions, and so it may prove to have been with some of 
 them. But so have I seen on a summer sea, in yonder bay, alike in 
 calm and in storm, vessels of every sort, and beneath every sign, sail- 
 ing in widely different and diverging courses, crossing and recross- 
 ing each other's tracks, and seemingly propelled by the most op- 
 posite and contrarious forces. Yet the same wind of heaven, blowing 
 where it listeth, was the common source of their motive power, 
 giving impulse and direction to the progress of them all alike, and 
 bringing them all to be moored at last in one common haven of rest ! 
 
 [From a speech in Congress in 1844.] 
 PEACE BETWEEN ENGLAND AND AMERICA. 
 
 IF it be a fit subject for reproach to entertain the most anxious and 
 ardent desire for the peace of this country, its peace with England, 
 its peace with all the world, I submit myself willingly to the fullest 
 measure of that reproach. War between the United States and 
 Great Britain for Oregon ! Sir, there is something in this idea too 
 monstrous to be entertained for a moment. The two greatest 
 
334 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 nations on the globe, with more territorial possessions than they 
 know what to do with already, and bound together by so many ties 
 of kindred, and language, and commercial interest, going to war for 
 a piece of barren earth ! Why, it would put back the cause of 
 civilization a whole century, and would be enough not merely to call 
 down the rebuke. of men, but the curse of God. I do not yield to 
 the honorable gentleman in a just concern for the national honor. 
 I am ready to maintain that honor, whenever it is really at stake, 
 against Great Britain, as readily as against any other nation. 
 Indeed, if war is to come upon us, I am quite willing that it should 
 be war with a first-rate power with a foeman worthy of our steel. 
 
 "O, the blood more stirs 
 To rouse a lion than to start a hare." 
 
 If the young Queen of England were the veritable Victoria whom 
 the ancient poets have sometimes described as descending from the 
 right hand of Jupiter to crown the banner of predestined Triumph, 
 I would still not shrink from the attempt to vindicate the rights of 
 my country on every proper occasion. To her forces, however, as 
 well as to ours, may come the " cita mors" as well as the " victoria 
 Iczfa." We have nothing to fear from a protracted war with any 
 nation, though our want of preparation might give us the worst of it 
 in the first encounter. We are all, and always, ready for war, when 
 there is no other alternative for maintaining our country's honor. 
 We are all, and always, ready for any war into which a Christian 
 man, in a civilized land, and in this age of the world, can have the 
 face to enter. But I thank God that there are very few such cases. 
 War and honor are fast getting to have less and less to do with each 
 other. The highest honor of any country is to preserve peace, even 
 under provocations which might justify war. The deepest disgrace 
 to any country is to plunge into war under circumstances which 
 leave the honorable alternative of peace. I heartily hope and trust, 
 sir, that in deference to the sense of the civilized world, in deference 
 to that spirit of Christianity which is now spreading its benign and 
 healing influences over both hemispheres with such signal rapidity, 
 we shall explore the whole field of diplomacy, and exhaust every art 
 of negotiation, before we give loose to that passion for conflict which 
 the honorable gentleman from Pennsylvania seems to regard as so 
 grand and glorious an element of the American character. 
 
MARGARET FULLER. 
 
 MARGARET FULLER. 
 
 Sarah Margaret Fuller, by marriage Marchioness Ossoli, was born in Cambridge, May 
 Y 23, 1810. She was educated by her father, who injudiciously gave her tasks that developed 
 her mental faculties at the expense of a sound bodily organization. She was a prodigy of 
 learning, and early devoured languages and literatures. She spent a few years in teaching, 
 and in 1840 was principal editor of The Dial, a periodical devoted to transcendental philoso- 
 phy. In 1844 she became connected with the New York Tribune, and wrote for it reviews 
 and miscellaneous articles, which in 1846 were collected and published under the title of 
 Papers on Art and Literature. She went to Europe in 1846, and after extensive travels 
 reached Rome in the spring of 1847. In December of that year she was married to tha 
 Marquis Ossoli. She remained in Rome during the revolution of 1848, and through the 
 siege by the French the year after. In May, 1850, she embarked with her husband and 
 infant son at Leghorn, in the ship Elizabeth, for New York, and when near port perished 
 with them in the wreck of the vessel on Fire Island. 
 
 Three of her intimate friends, Ralph Waldo Emerson, William Henry Channing, and James 
 Freeman Clarke, wrote an account of her life, each contributing a separate view. From this 
 work, as well as from the concurrent testimony of other intellectual and cultivated people, it is 
 evident that Margaret Fuller (as we prefer to call her) was a woman of rare genius. She 
 delighted in abstruse philosophical themes, and in criticism of literature and art. Clubs of her 
 admirers met statedly to hear her discourse upon her favorite topics. At the same time the 
 habit of monologue rendered her manners painfully disagreeable to all but this esoteric 
 circle, and gave to her opinions an oracular tone, that seemed to admit of neither denial nor 
 question. In her published works there are passages of great power and beauty. Her 
 descriptions of scenery that of Niagara, for instance are given with a few bold strokes, 
 that suggest much more than at first meets the eye.' She paints, in fact, our inward emotion 
 in presence of the scene, and so gives us the ideal of nature. Her critical articles often show 
 insight, and the power of clear statement ; but either she was warped by personal dislikes or 
 she took pleasure in demolishing popular idols. In her view there were but half a dozen 
 people with brains in America. In her way of writing, the editorial we had a royal sound, 
 that would liave been offensive if it had not been so often absurd. German philosophy had 
 but recently come in fashion ; its phrases infected all its votaries, and furnished their plati- 
 tudes with a wondrous garb for disguise. It was some time before it was discovered that 
 philosophic diction did not always clothe philosophic thought. 
 
 Perhaps Margaret Fuller had passed through her destructive stage, and was ready to 
 build. Perhaps, if she had lived, she would have justified the opinions of her admirers by 
 the creation of some artistic work. If this were so, the calamity of the shipwreck is the 
 more to be lamented. As in the case of great orators, actors, and singers, who, after charm- 
 ing a generation, die and leave only a tradition of their powers, this extraordinary woman 
 will be a mere name in our literary history. 
 
 Something of her influence survives. The advocates for the elevation of woman hold her 
 in high regard as a pioneer in their cause. In this, as in everything else 'in which she took 
 part, she put her own intense personality forward, and did much to win for her sex the right 
 of discussion and the privilege of being heard. 
 
 Besides the Papers on Art and Literature, before mentioned, she wrote Woman in the 
 Nineteenth Century, also letters from Europe, which were published under the title of 
 At Home and Abroad (1856). This last work included Summer on the Lakes, which was 
 originally published in 1843, also notices of her life and character, by Bayard Taylor and 
 Horace Oreeley, and commemorative poems, by Walter Savage Landor and others. She 
 translated Eckermann's Conversations with Goethe (1839), a d The Letters of Gunderode 
 and Bettine(i84i). 
 
336 ' HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 SCOTT AND BURNS. 
 
 ON the coach with us was a gentleman coming from London to 
 make his yearly visit to the neighborhood of Burns, in which he was 
 born. " I can now," said he, "go but once a year; when a boy, I 
 never let a week pass without visiting the house of Burns." He 
 afterwards observed, as every step woke us to fresh recollections of 
 Walter Scott, that Scott, with all his vast range of talent, knowl- 
 edge, and activity, was a poet of the past only, and in his inmost 
 heart wedded to the habits of a feudal aristocracy, while Burns is 
 the poet of the present and the future, the man of the people, and 
 throughout a genuine man. This is true enough ; but for my part I 
 cannot endure a comparison which by a breath of coolness depreci- 
 ates either. Both were wanted ; each acted the important part 
 assigned to him by destiny with a wonderful thoroughness and com- 
 pleteness. Scott breathed the breath just fleeting from the forms of 
 ancient Scottish heroism and poesy into new he made for us the 
 bridge by which we have gone into the old Ossianic hall, and caught 
 the meaning just as it was about to pass from us forever. Burns is 
 full of the noble, genuine democracy which seeks not to destroy 
 royalty, but to make all men kings, as he himself was, in nature and 
 in action. They belong to the same world ; they are pillars of the 
 same church, though they uphold its starry roof from opposite sides. 
 Burns was much the rarer man, precisely because he had most of 
 common nature on a grand scale : his humor, his passion, his sweet- 
 ness, are all his own ; they need no picturesque or romantic acces- 
 sories to give them due relief; looked at by all lights they are the 
 same. Since Adam, there has been none that approached nearer 
 fitness to stand up before God and angels in the naked majesty of 
 manhood than Robert Burns. 
 
 . CARLYLE. 
 
 I APPROACHED him with more reverence after a little experience 
 of England and Scotland had taught me to appreciate the strength 
 and height of that wall of shams and conventions which he more 
 than any man, or thousand men, indeed, he almost alone, has 
 begun to throw down. Wherever there was fresh thought, generous 
 hope, the thought of Carlyle has begun the work. He has torn off 
 the veils from hideous facts ; he has burnt away foolish illusions ; he 
 has awakened thousands to know what it is to be a man that we 
 
MARGARET FULLER. 337 
 
 must live, and not merely pretend to others that we live. He has 
 touched the rocks and they have given forth musical answer ; little 
 more was wanting to begin to construct the city. 
 
 But that little was wanting, and the work of construction is left to 
 those that come after him ; nay, all attempts of the kind he is the 
 readiest to deride, fearing new shams worse than old, unable to trust 
 the general action of a thought, and finding no heroic man, no nat- 
 ural king, to represent it and challenge his confidence. 
 
 Accustomed to the infinite wit and exuberant richness of his 
 writings, his talk is still an amazement and a splendor scarcely to be 
 faced with steady eyes. He does not converse only harangues. 
 It is the usual misfortune of such marked men (happily not one in- 
 variable or inevitable) that they cannot allow other minds room to 
 breathe and show themselves in their atmosphere, and thus miss the 
 refreshment and instruction which the greatest never cease to need 
 from the experience of the humblest. Carlyle allows no one a 
 chance, but bears down all opposition ; not only by his wit and onset 
 of words, resistless in their sharpness as so many bayonets, but by 
 actual physical superiority, raising his voice and rushing on his 
 opponent with a torrent of sound. This is not in the least from un- 
 willingness to allow freedom to others ; on the contrary, no man 
 would more enjoy a manly resistance to his thought ; but it is the 
 impulse of a mind accustomed to follow out its own impulse as the 
 hawk its prey, and which knows not how to stop in the chase. 
 Carlyle, indeed, is arrogant and overbearing, but in his arrogance 
 there is no littleness or self-love : it is the heroic arrogance of some 
 old Scandinavian conqueror it is his nature and the untamable 
 impulse that has given him power to crush the dragons. You do 
 not love him, perhaps, nor revere, and perhaps, also, he would only 
 laugh at you if you did ; but you like him heartily, and like to see 
 him the powerful smith, the Siegfried, melting all the old iron 
 in his furnace till it glows to a sunset red, and burns you if you 
 senselessly go too near. He seemed to me quite isolated, lonely as 
 the desert ; yet never was man more fitted to prize a man, could he 
 find one to match his mood. He finds such, but only in the past. 
 He sings rather than talks. He pours upon you a kind of satirical, 
 heroical, critical poem, with regular cadences, and generally catch- 
 ing up near the beginning some singular epithet, which serves as a 
 refrain when his song is full, or with which, as with a knitting- 
 needle, he catches up the stitches if he has chanced now and then to 
 let fall a row. For the higher kinds of poetry he has no sense, and 
 22 
 
338 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 his talk on that subject is delightfully and gorgeously absurd ; he 
 sometimes stops a minute to laugh at it himself, then begins anew 
 with fresh vigor ; for all the spirits he is driving before him seem to 
 him as Fata Morganas, ugly masks, in fact, if he can but make them 
 turn about ; but he laughs that they seem to others such dainty Ariels. 
 He puts out his chin sometimes till it looks like the beak of a bird, 
 and his eyes flash bright instinctive meanings, like Jove's bird ; yet 
 he is not calm and grand enough for the eagle : he is more like the 
 falcon, and yet not of gentle blood enough for that either. He is not 
 exactly like anything but himself, and therefore you cannot see him 
 without the most hearty refreshment and good-will, for he is original, 
 rich, and strong enough to afford a thousand faults ; one expects 
 some wild land in a rich kingdom. His talk, like his books, is full 
 of pictures, his critical strokes masterly ; allow for his point of view, 
 and his survey is admirable. He is a large subject ; I cannot speak 
 more or wiselier of him now, nor needs it ; his works are true, to 
 blame and praise him the Siegfried of England, great and power- 
 ful, if not quite invulnerable, and of a might rather to destroy evil 
 than legislate for good. At all events, he seems to be what Destiny 
 intended, and represents fully a certain side ; so we make no re- 
 monstrance as to his being and proceeding for himself, though we 
 sometimes must for us. 
 
 THEODORE PARKER. 
 
 Theodore Parker was born in Lexington, Mass., August 24, 1810. , He received only a 
 common school education until in his seventeenth year he procured the necessary books and 
 fitted himself to enter college. He worked on his father's farm while pursuing his studies, 
 and in 1830 entered the freshman class at Harvard. Though he remained but a year, it is 
 said he went over the studies of three years. He then taught school until, in 1834, he 
 entered the Cambridge divinity school. During this period and through his whole life he 
 devoted his time to learning, in almost every department, especially in that of languages. 
 He was familiar with Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Syriac, Arabic, German, French, Spanish, 
 Italian, Russian, Danish, and Swedish, and perhaps with many more. He was able to read 
 fluently in over twenty languages and dialects. Metaphysics, history, politics, literature, 
 and whatever was nearest, furnished the aliment without which he could not exist. In 1837 
 he was settled as pastor of a Unitarian church in West Roxbury. Before long his views 
 took a form not in accordance with the teachings of his clerical brethren. This change was 
 announced in a sermon preached at the ordination of the Rev. C. C. Shackford, in South 
 Boston, in 1841, of which the significant title was The Transient and Permanent in Chris- 
 tianity. He went to Europe in 1843, and spent a year. In 1845 he began to preach for the 
 Twenty-eighth Congregational Society, an independent gathering of his followers, and 
 thenceforth had no connection with the Unitarian body. He attracted large audiences, first 
 in the Melodeon and afterwards in the Music Hall. He regarded the Bible as a religious 
 history, but denied its plenary inspiration, if not its divine origin. He developed his idea of 
 
THEODORE PARKER. 339 
 
 God from the operations of reason, and with great earnestness taught the doctrine of an 
 immortal life. He was an advocate of temperance, of social reform, and of universal 
 liberty. The anti-slavery movement was then new and unpopular. He was naturally at- 
 tacked both by religious teachers and by party leaders, and his retorts were constant and 
 bitter. In fact, he could never forget his opponents, and in the midst of the most pathetic or 
 the most noble passages in his sermons, the epithets of "kidnapper," and "pharisee" were 
 sure to occur. He was the constant friend of fugitive slaves, and at one time was indicted 
 for counselling resistance to the authorities when a slave named Anthony Burns was 
 delivered back to his master. In private life he was amiable, tender, and helpful. A large 
 part of his income was applied to charitable purposes. He visited all classes of people, 
 exploring the midnight haunts of vice and the dwellings of the poor and outcast. 
 
 His writings are generally strong and rugged in style. He addresses the reason, and 
 makes few appeals to the feelings. But his love of nature was intense, and nearly every dis- 
 course has some tribute to the beauty of the seasons, and some illustration of spiritual truth 
 drawn from the visible world. He excelled also in pathetic description, and gave to the 
 ideas of home, parents, children, age, and death, a tender and impressive charm. His chief 
 deficiency as a writer was in taste, the want of which often mars his general literary 
 excellence. 
 
 His life of constant 'activity exhausted his vital forces, and in January, 1859, he relin- 
 quished his charge, and sailed to Santa Cruz, and thence to Europe. He spent some time 
 in Switzerland and Italy, and died at Florence, May 10, 1860. 
 
 His works, published by Horace B. Fuller, Boston, are, a Discourse of Matters Pertain- 
 ing to Religion ; Sermons of Theism, Atheism, and the Popular Theology ; Ten Sermons of 
 Religon ; Additional Speeches, Addresses, and Occasional Sermons ; Critical and Miscel- 
 laneous Writings; Historic Americans Franklin, Washington, Adams, and Jefferson; 
 The Trial of Theodore Parker ; Prayers ; Selections from the World of Mind and Matter ; 
 Translation of De Wette's Introduction to the Old Testament, &c. His life has been writ- 
 ten by the Rev. John Weiss. His large and valuable collection of books over thirteen 
 thousand volumes was given by him to the Boston Public Library. 
 
 [From a Sermon of Immortality.] 
 
 ALL men desire to be immortal. This desire is instinctive, natural, 
 universal. In God's world such a desire implies the satisfaction 
 thereof equally natural and universal. It cannot be that God has 
 given man the universal desire of immortality, this belief in it, and 
 yet made it all a mockery. Man loves truth ; tells it ; rests only in it ; 
 how much more God, who is the trueness of truth ! Bodily senses 
 imply their objects ; the eye, light ; the ear, sound ;*the touch, the 
 taste, the smell, things relative thereto. Spiritural senses likewise 
 foretell their object are silent prophecies of endless life. The love 
 of justice, beauty, truth, of man and God, points to realities unseen 
 as yet. We are ever hungering after noblest things, and what we 
 feed on makes us hunger more. The senses are satisfied, but the 
 soul never. . . . 
 
 Shall we remember the deeds of the former life this man that he 
 picked rags out of the mud in the streets, and another that he ruled 
 nations ? Who can tell ? nay, who need care to ask ? Such a 
 remembrance seems not needed for retribution's sake. The oak 
 
34O HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 remembers not each leaf it ever bore, though each helped to form 
 the oak, its branch and bole. How much has gone from our bodies ? 
 We know not how it came or went ! How much of our past life is 
 gone from our memory, yet its result lives in our character ! The 
 saddler remembers not every stitch he took while a 'prentice, yet 
 each stitch helped form the saddler. . . . 
 
 I would not slight this wondrous world. I love its day and night. 
 Its flowers and its fruits are dear to me. I would not wilfully lose 
 sight of a departing cloud. Every year opens new beauty in a star, 
 or in a purple gentian fringed with loveliness. The laws, too, of 
 matter seem more wonderful the more I study them, in the whirling 
 eddies of the dust, in the curious shells of former life buried by 
 thousands in a grain of chalk, or in the shining diagrams of light 
 above my head. Even the ugly becomes beautiful when truly seen. 
 I see the jewel in the bunchy toad. The more I live, the more I 
 love this lovely world ; feel more its Author in each little thing in 
 all that's great. But yet I feel my immortality the more. In child- 
 hood the consciousness of immortal life buds forth feeble, though 
 full of promise. In the man it unfolds its fragrant petals, his most 
 celestial flower, to mature its seed throughout eternity. The pros- 
 pect of that everlasting life, the perfect justice yet to come, the 
 infinite progress before us, cheer and comfort the heart. Sad and 
 disappointed, full of self-reproach, we shall not be so forever. The 
 light of heaven breaks upon the night of trial, sorrow, sin ; the 
 sombre clouds which overhang the east, grown purple now, tell us 
 the dawn of heaven is coming in. Our faces, gleamed on by that, 
 smile in the new-born glow ; we are beguiled of our sadness before 
 we are aware. 
 
 [From a Sermon of Old Age.] 
 
 THERE is a period when the apple tree blossoms with its fellows 
 of the wood and field. How fair a time it is ! All nature is woo- 
 some and winning ; the material world celebrates its vegetable loves ; 
 and the flower-bells, touched by the winds of Spring, usher in the 
 universal marriage of Nature. Beast, bird, insect, reptile, fish, plant, 
 lichen, with their prophetic colors spread, all float forward on the 
 tide of new life. Then comes the Summer. Many a blossom falls 
 fruitless to the ground, littering the earth with beauty, never to be 
 used. Thick leaves hide the process of creation, which first blushed 
 
THEODORE PARKER. 34! 
 
 public in the flowers, and now unseen goes on. For so life's most 
 deep and fruitful hours are hid in mystery. Apples are growing on 
 every tree ; all summer long, they grow, and in early Autumn. At 
 length the fruit is fully formed ; the leaves begin to fall, letting the 
 sun approach more near. The apple hangs there yet ; not to grow, 
 only to ripen. Weeks long it clings to the tree ; it gains nothing in 
 size and weight. Externally, there is increase of beauty. Having 
 finished the form from within, Nature brings out the added grace of 
 color. It is not a tricksy fashion painted on, but an expression 
 which of itself comes out a fragrance and a loveliness of the 
 apple's innermost. Within, at the same time, the component ele- 
 ments are changing. The apple grows mild and pleasant. It 
 softens, sweetens in one word, it mellows. Some night, the vital 
 forces of the tree get drowsy, and the Autumn, with gentle breath, 
 just shakes the bough ; the expectant fruit lets go its hold, full 
 grown, full ripe, full colored too, and with plump and happy sound 
 the apple falls into the Autumn's lap ; and the Spring's marriage 
 promise is complete. . . . 
 
 The farmer tills his ground for the annual harvest, but his good 
 tillage fertilizes the soil ; and without his thinking of it, his farm 
 grows richer and his estate larger. And just so it is with the true, 
 good man : as the years go by him, his estate of religion greatens, 
 and becomes more and more. The little flowers of humanity a 
 warm spring day calls them out, where there is no deepness of 
 earth ; but to raise the great oak trees of human righteousness, you 
 want a deep, rich soil, and threescore, fourscore, fivescore summers 
 and winters, for the tree to grow in, broadly buttressed below, broad- 
 branched above, to wrestle with the winds, and take the sunshine 
 of God's heaven on its top. And that is the value of long life it is 
 an opportunity to grow great and ripen through. It is out of Time 
 and Nature that man makes life ; long time is needed, as well as noble 
 nature, for a great life. . . . 
 
 Grandfather is old. His back also is bent. In the street he sees 
 crowds of men looking dreadfully young, and walking fearfully swift. 
 He wonders where all the old folks are. Once, when a boy, he could 
 not find people young enough for him, and sidled up to any young 
 stranger he met on Sundays, wondering why God made the world so 
 old. Now he goes to commencement to see his grandsons take 
 their degree, and is astonished at the youth of the audience. " This 
 is new," he says ; " it did not use to be so fifty years before." At 
 
342 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 meeting, the minister seems surprisingly young, the audience young ; 
 and he looks round and is astonished that there are so few vener- 
 able heads. The audience seems not decorous ; they come in late, 
 and hurry off early, clapping the doors to after them with irreverent 
 bang. But grandfather is decorous, well-mannered, early in his 
 seat ; jostled, he jostles not again ; elbowed, he returns it not ; 
 crowded, he thinks no evil. He is gentlemanly to the rude, obliging 
 to the insolent and vulgar for grandfather is a gentleman, not 
 puffed up with mere money, but edified with well-grown manliness. 
 Time has dignified his good manners. 
 
 Now it is night. Grandfather sits by his old-fashioned fire. The 
 family are all abed. He draws his old-fashioned chair nearer to the 
 hearth. On the stand which his mother gave him are the candle- 
 sticks, also of old time. The candles are three quarters burnt 
 down ; the fire on the hearth also is low. He has been thoughtful 
 all day, talking half to himself, chanting a bit of verse, humming a 
 snatch of an old tune. He kissed more tenderly than common his 
 youngest granddaughter, the family pet, before she went to 
 bed. He takes out of his bosom a little locket nobody ever sees 
 it. Therein are two little twists of hair, common hair it might be 
 yours or mine. But as grandfather looks at them, the outer twist of 
 hair becomes a whole head of most ambrosial curls. He remembers 
 the stolen interviews, the meetings by moonlight, and how sweet the 
 evening star looked, and how he laid his hand on another's shoulder. 
 " You are my evening star," quoth he. He remembers 
 
 " The fountain heads and pathless groves, 
 Places that pale Passion loves." 
 
 He thinks of his bridal hour. . . . 
 
 The last stick on his andirons snaps asunder, and falls outward. 
 Two faintly smoking brands stand there. Grandfather lays them 
 together, and they flame up ; the two smokes are one united flame. 
 " Even so let it be in heaven," says grandfather. 
 
EDGAR ALLAN POE. / 343 
 
 EDGAR ALLAN POE. 
 
 Edgar Poe was born in Baltimore in January, iSn. He was the son of a lawyer, who had 
 abandoned his profession, married an actress, and gone upon the stage. Upon the death of 
 his parents, Edgar, who was a bright and beautiful boy, was adopted and carefully educated 
 by Mr. John Allan, of Richmond. He was sent to school at Stoke Newington, near 
 London, for some years, and aftenvards entered the University of Virginia. He was the 
 foremost scholar of his class, and might have finished his course with honor, but he was 
 expelled for his profligate habits. From this time he had " adventures " enough, mostly 
 disgraceful, and often criminal, to furnish the incidents for an eighteenth century novel. 
 Having contracted debts which his patron refused to pay, he went abroad to join the patriot 
 Greeks ; but after a year he appeared at St. Petersburg, in a state of destitution, and was 
 sent home by the interposition of the American minister. Mr. Allan received him with for- 
 giveness, and procured his appointment as a cadet at West Point. In ten months he was 
 expelled. On returning home he found that Mr. Allan had married a young and handsome 
 woman for a second wife. For some grave reason not made public, Poe was turned out of 
 the house, and the relationship was at an end. Mr. Allan died not long after, and made no 
 mention of him in his will. 
 
 Poe published a small volume of Poems in Baltimore, but shortly after he was driven by 
 poverty to enlist as a common soldier in the army. He deserted, as might have been expected. 
 He next obtained a prize offered for a story, and found friends through whose aid he became 
 editor of the Literary Messenger in Richmond. He wrote with great industry for a while, 
 but soon fell into bad habits, quarrelled with the proprietor, and was dismissed. While in 
 Richmond he had married his cousin ; and with her he went to New York, and became a 
 contributor to literary periodicals. He edited Burton's Magazine, and then Graham's 
 Magazine, in Philadelphia. After the usual quarrel he went to New York, and was em- 
 ployed by Willis upon the Mirror. In the mean time his Adventures of Arthur Gordon 
 Pym, the Tales of the Grotesque and the Arabesque, and his remarkable story, The Gold 
 Bug, had been published. His poem The Raven appeared in the American Review, and 
 gave him an immense reputation. At this time he enjoyed a season of comparative quiet. 
 He became connected with the Broadway Journal, which he edited for a year or more. He 
 published a series of criticisms in the Lady's Book, styled The Literati, now forming the 
 third volume of his works. It is seldom in any country that such a savage, wielding such 
 weapons, puts on the war-paint and attempts such havoc in the peaceful fields of letters. 
 Not that there was not a great deal of power and some grains of truth in his strictures ; but 
 his utter want of moral principle, his prejudices, wilfulness, and brutality, combined to 
 render them the most worthless, as they were the most ill-mannered, articles ever printed. 
 He praised the vapid productions of obscure authors, and condemned every poet of repute. 
 Time, which is the sure test of excellence, has made his passionate invectives and com- 
 mendations alike ludicrous. 
 
 After the death of his wife he had formed an engagement with a lady in Richmond, and 
 the wedding day was fixed. On his way to New York, he fell in with some of his old com- 
 panions in dissipation at Baltimore ; he soon became drunk, wandered into the streets, and 
 the same night perished miserably from exposure (October 7, 1849). 
 
 The character of Poe was thoroughly depraved. There was no baseness of which he was 
 not capable, hardly any enormity that he did not commit. And he appears to have been 
 entirely wanting in moral sense. The exhibitions he made of himself are in perfect keeping 
 with the characteristics of his poetry and of his tales. His intellect was sharp, electric, 
 powerful, and it had been carefully trained. Of the cultivation which books and study give 
 he had no small measure. His sense of melody, his perception of the proprieties of style 
 and of just proportion in structure, were marvellous. With the smallest particle of honesty 
 he would have made an admirable critic ; the want of it made his praise and his censure as 
 
344 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 uncertain as the wind, and as little regarded. The reader will search his works in vain for 
 the least exhibition of real feeling. The Raven, as all admit, is a wonderful poem ; but it 
 has not a line that might not have been written by a fallen and unrepentant angel. His 
 tales are masterpieces of construction, but when their secret is revealed their interest is at 
 an end ; for they have no elements of human sympathy ; they leave no impression of good ; 
 they are miracles of clock-work, not immoral, but w-moral. 
 
 There is sometimes a period in the growth of men when the intellect is deified, and goodness 
 little esteemed when dazzling characters, like Byron, are admired. But if youth would be 
 taught what mere intellect may be without the moral element, let them consider the works, 
 the character, and career of Poe. The poet must express his inmost qualities in his verse ; 
 and the noblest poetry in all its varied but harmonious elements is the visible soul of the 
 noblest man. 
 
 The complete works of Poe were published in four vols., i2mo., by J. S. Redfield, New 
 York, 1849. A handsome edition of his poems, with illustrations by the first English artists, 
 and a smaller edition in "blue and gold," have been published by the same house. 
 
 [From a tale entitled The Fall of the House of Usher.] 
 THE WRECK OF A NOBLE MIND. 
 
 IN the greenest of our valleys 
 
 By good angels tenanted, 
 Once a fair and stately palace 
 
 Radiant palace reared its head 
 In the monarch Thought's dominion 
 
 It stood there ! 
 Never seraph spread a pinion 
 
 Over fabric half so fair ! 
 
 Banners yellow, glorious, golden, 
 
 On its roof did float and flow, 
 (This all this was in the olden 
 
 Time, long ago,) 
 And every gentle air that dallied, 
 
 In that sweet day, 
 Along the ramparts plumed and pallid, 
 
 A winged odor went away. 
 
 Wanderers in that happy valley, 
 
 Through two luminous windows, saw 
 Spirits moving musically, 
 
 To a lute's well-tuned law, 
 Round about a throne where, sitting 
 
 (Porphyrogene !) 
 In state his glory well befitting, 
 
 The ruler of the realm was seen. 
 
 
EDGAR ALLAN POE. 345 
 
 And all with pearl and ruby glowing 
 
 Was the fair palace-door, 
 Through which came flowing, flowing, flowing, 
 
 And sparkling evermore, 
 A troop of Echoes, whose sweet duty 
 
 Was but to sing, 
 In voices of surpassing beauty, 
 
 The wit and wisdom of their king. 
 
 But evil things, in robes of sorrow, 
 
 Assailed the monarch's high estate. 
 (Ah, let us mourn ! for never morrow 
 
 Shall dawn upon him desolate !) 
 And round about his home the glory 
 
 That blushed and bloomed, 
 Is but a dim-remembered story 
 
 Of the old time entombed. 
 
 And travellers, now, within that valley, 
 
 Through the red-litten windows see 
 Vast forms that move fantastically 
 
 To a discordant melody, 
 While, like a ghastly rapid river, 
 
 Through the pale door 
 A hideous throng rush out forever, 
 
 And laugh but smile no more. 
 
 THE RAVEN. 
 
 ONCE upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, 
 Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore 
 While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, 
 As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door. 
 "'Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door 
 Only this, and nothing more." 
 
 Ah, distinctly I remember, it was in the bleak December, 
 And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor : 
 Eagerly I wished the morrow ; vainly I had sought to borrow 
 From my books surcease of sorrow sorrow for the lost Lenore 
 For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore 
 Nameless here forevermore. 
 
346 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain 
 Thrilled me filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before ; 
 So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating, 
 " 'Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door 
 Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door ; 
 This it is, and nothing more." 
 
 Presently my soul grew stronger : hesitating then no longer, 
 " Sir," said I, " or madam, truly your forgiveness I implore ; 
 But the fact is, I was napping, and so gently you came rapping, 
 And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door, 
 That I scarce was sure I heard you." Here I opened wide the door : 
 Darkness there, and nothing more. 
 
 Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, 
 
 fearing, 
 
 Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortals ever dared to dream before ; 
 But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token, 
 And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, "Lenore ! " 
 This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, " Lenore ! " 
 Merely this, and nothing more. 
 
 Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning, 
 Soon again I heard a tapping something louder than before. 
 " Surely," said I, " surely that is something at my window lattice ; 
 Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore 
 Let my heart be still a moment, and this mystery explore ; 
 'Tis the wind, and nothing more." 
 
 Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter, 
 In there stepped a stately Raven of the saintly days of yore. 
 Not the least obeisance made he ; not a minute stopped or staid he ; 
 But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door 
 Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door 
 Perched, and sat, and nothing more. 
 
 Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling, 
 By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore, 
 " Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou," I said, " art sure 
 no craven, 
 
EDGAR ALLAN POE. 347 
 
 Ghastly grim and ancient Raven wandering from the Nightly 
 
 shore 
 
 Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night's Plutonian shore ! " 
 Quoth the Raven, " Nevermore." 
 
 Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly, 
 Though its answer little meaning, little relevancy bore ; 
 For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being 
 Ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above his chamber door, 
 Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber door, 
 With such name as " Nevermore." 
 
 But the Raven, sitting lonely on that placid bust, spoke only 
 That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour. 
 Nothing further then he uttered ; not a feather then he fluttered 
 Till I scarcely more than muttered, "Other friends have flown 
 
 before 
 
 On the morrow he will leave me, as my Hopes have flown before." 
 Then the bird said, " Nevermore." 
 
 Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken, 
 " Doubtless," said I, " what it uttered is its only stock and store, 
 Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful Disaster 
 Followed fast and followed faster, till his songs one burden bore 
 Till the dirges of his Hope that melancholy burden bore 
 Of ' Never nevermore ! ' " 
 
 But the Raven still beguiling all my sad soul into smiling, 
 Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird and bust and 
 
 door ; 
 
 Then, upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking 
 Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore 
 What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore 
 Meant in croaking " Nevermore." 
 
 This I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing 
 To the fowl, whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom's core ; 
 This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease reclining 
 On the cushion's velvet lining that the lamp-light gloated o'er, 
 But whose velvet violet lining with the lamp-light gloating o'er 
 She shall press, ah, nevermore ! 
 
34^ HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 Then, methought, the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen 
 
 censer 
 
 Swung by seraphim whose footfalls tinkled on the tufted floor. 
 "Wretch," I cried, "thy God hath lent thee by these angels he 
 
 hath sent thee 
 
 Respite respite and nepenthe from thy memories of Lenore ! 
 Quaff, O, quaff this kind nepenthe, and forget this lost Lenore ! " 
 Quoth the Raven, " Nevermore." 
 
 " Prophet ! " said I, " thing of evil ! prophet still, if bird or 
 
 devil ! 
 
 Whether tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore, 
 Desolate, yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted 
 On this home by Horror haunted tell me truly, I implore 
 Is there is there balm in Gilead ? tell me tell me, I implore ! " 
 Quoth the Raven, " Nevermore." 
 
 " Prophet ! " said I, " thing of evil ! prophet still, if bird or devil ! 
 By that heaven that bends above us by that God we both adore 
 Tell this soul, with sorrow laden, if, within the distant Aidenn, 
 It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore 
 Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore." 
 Quoth the Raven, " Nevermore." 
 
 " Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend ! " I shrieked, up- 
 starting 
 
 " Get thee back into the tempest and the Night's Plutonian shore ! 
 Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken ! 
 Leave my loneliness unbroken ! quit the bust above my door ! 
 Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door ! 
 Quoth the Raven, " Nevermore." 
 
 And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting 
 
 On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door ; 
 
 And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming, 
 
 And the lamp-light o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the 
 
 floor; 
 
 And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor 
 Shall be lifted nevermore ! 
 
GEORGE WASHINGTON GREENE. 349 
 
 GEORGE WASHINGTON GREENE. 
 
 George Washington Greene was born in East Greenwich, R. I., April 8, 1811. He en- 
 tered Brown University, but left in his junior year on account of ill health, and went to 
 Europe, where he remained, excepting a few visits to this country, until 1847. From 1837 
 to 1845 he was United States consul at Rome. He wrote for the North American Review 
 a series of essays upon Italian history, which have been collected under the title of Histori- 
 cal Studies. On his return to the United States, he became professor of modern lanjjuages 
 at Brown University. In 1852 he removed to New York, where he edited the works of 
 Addison (1854), and continued writing for periodicals. He wrote, for Sparks's American 
 Biography, the life of his grandfather, General Nathanael Greene, and he has since (1867-71) 
 published an enlarged edition of his Life and Letters, three vols., 8vo. A second series of 
 his essays has been published, entitled A Historical View of the American Revolution. 
 
 The works of Mr. Greene command the respect of scholars from the faithful study they 
 exhibit, as well as for the moderation of tone and the clear and easy style in which they are 
 written. 
 
 [From the Historical View of the American Revolution.] 
 BARON STEUBEN. 
 
 STEUBEN was the son of a captain of engineers ; born in a gar- 
 rison, and with no prospect of fortune or preferment but such as he 
 could open for himself with his sword. His earliest associations 
 were with armies and camps. When a mere child he had followed 
 his father to the Crimea and Cronstadt, and played among the forti- 
 fications that the old soldier was constructing with much professional 
 skill and absolute professional indifference as to whom they defended, 
 or who might lose his life in winning them. Then came two or three 
 years of study in a Jesuit college, where he laid good foundations in 
 mathematics and history, and acquired some tincture of polite liter- 
 ature. French, under Frederic, was as important a language for a 
 German who wished to push his fortunes as German itself ; and 
 Steuben studied them both with equal care. But the sound of the 
 drum broke rudely in upon these softening pursuits, and before he 
 was fully turned of fourteen, and while Washington was learning 
 arithmetic, and filling his copy-book with legal and mercantile forms, 
 at Mr. Williams's school, near Bridge's Creek, his future inspector- 
 general was already serving as a volunteer in the campaign of 1744, 
 at the siege of Prague. The upward path in the Prussian army was 
 a hard path to climb, and many there were who left arms, and legs, 
 and life itself by the way. Young Steuben entered it with the enthu- 
 siasm of a high-spirited youth reared in the midst of warlike exer- 
 cises and traditions of military glory. When the seven years' war 
 broke out, he had already reached the rank of first lieutenant. 
 Meanwhile his leisure hours had been well employed ; building up 
 
3 SO HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 surely upon the foundations he had laid during his short college life, 
 and making himself master of engineering and the most difficult of 
 the scientific parts of his profession. Never before, in modern times, 
 had its practical lessons and all its highest principles been applied 
 as they were applied by Frederic during that bloody war ; and they 
 who, like Steuben, fought through it all, might well claim that they 
 had studied in war's greatest school. Steuben had one advantage 
 beyond most of his comrades, and an advantage which was at the 
 same time the highest distinction. Frederic, who, in the distribu- 
 tion of his military favors, never took birth, or fortune, or anything 
 but merit, into consideration, had chosen among his younger officers 
 a select number to study under his own eye, teaching and exam- 
 ining them himself. Steuben was one of them. . . . 
 
 To supply these deficiencies [in the American army], to introduce 
 uniform systems of manoeuvre, inspection, and returns ; to infuse a 
 spirit of order and'harmony into all the departments of the army ; to 
 inspire officers with self-reliance and an intuitive perception of what- 
 ever the moment might require, and men with confidence in their offi- 
 cers, and prompt and intelligent obedience to their orders, was the 
 task of Steuben a task which can only be appreciated by those who 
 take the pains to study, in detail, the difficulties with which he had 
 to contend. . . . 
 
 He first drafted a hundred and twenty men from the line, as a 
 guard for the commander-in-chief. This was his school. Twice 
 every day he drilled them himself, teaching them to march, to 
 wheel, to bear arms, and even to execute some elementary manoeu- 
 vres. Hitherto, the American officers had left the care of drilling 
 the soldiers to their sergeants, as a thing below the dignity of an 
 officer. The sight of a man of Steuben's rank and experience, 
 with his glittering star on his breast, marching and wheeling with 
 common soldiers, taking their muskets into his own hands, and 
 showing them how to handle them, produced a great revulsion in 
 their ideas, and presently colonels and lieutenant colonels entered 
 cheerfully into the good work, some, perhaps, with the feeling 
 that, like Gil Bias's uncle, they would thus learn full as much 
 as they taught. In a fortnight this school moved and looked like 
 soldiers, and before Monmouth came, the leaven from this little 
 nucleus had penetrated the whole army. ... 
 
 Never before had an American army been trained like this army 
 of Valley Forge. " Never," said Hamilton, when at Monmouth 
 he saw a division in full retreat halt at Steuben's command, and 
 
ALFRED BILLINGS STREET. 35 1 
 
 form as coolly under a close and heavy fire as they would have 
 formed on parade, " never did I know or conceive the value of 
 military discipline before." . . . 
 
 A regular and vigorous inspection brought, at stated times, the 
 whole army under the supervision of officers eager to show their 
 zeal in the performance of a difficult duty. Till then, as I have 
 already said, there had been an annual loss of more than five 
 thousand muskets, and the war office, in making out its estimates 
 for the year, had regularly made allowance for that number. In 
 the returns under Steuben's inspectorship, only three muskets were 
 missing in one year, and those three were accounted for. . . . 
 
 And what was his reward ? An eight years' struggle with pov- 
 erty and its bitter humiliations ; to be publicly insulted as living 
 upon national bounty, when a tardy justice had compelled Con- 
 gress to acknowledge his claims and buy them off with an annuity 
 of twenty-five hundred dollars ; a grave so little respected that a 
 public road was run over it, laying its sacred contents bare to the 
 rains of heaven, and to the eye and even the hand of vulgar curi- 
 osity, till individual reverence, performing the part of national grati- 
 tude, removed the desecrated bones to a surer resting-place ; and a 
 name in American history overshadowed and almost forgotten, till a 
 countryman of his own, making himself, as Steuben had done, an 
 American in heart and feeling, without sacrificing the instincts of his 
 nativity, gathered together, with German industry and German zeal, 
 the scattered records of his services, and portrayed, in faithful and 
 enduring colors, his achievements in war, his virtues in peace, his 
 rare endowments of mind, and the still nobler qualities of his heart. 
 
 ALFRED BILLINGS STREET. 
 
 Alfred Billings Street was born in Poughkeepsie,^N. Y., December 18, 1811. At four- 
 teen years of age he removed, with his father, to Monticello, in Sullivan County, where he 
 studied law, and was admitted to the bar. In 1839 he removed to Albany, where he has 
 since resided, and has filled the place of state librarian. 
 
 His first volume of poems, entitled The Burning of Schenectady, was published in 1842. 
 In 1844 a second collection appeared, entitled Drawings and Tintings. Frontenac, his 
 longest poem, appeared in 1849. He published a history of certain New York courts, en- 
 titled The Council of Revision, in 1860, and in the same year an account of the Saranacand 
 Raquette Lakes, of Northern New York, under the title of Woods and Waters. 
 
 Mr. Street has the tastes of a landscape painter of the realistic school. As we read we 
 walk with him through the forests and by the banks of rivers. His pages give us a minute 
 and faithful record, of every picturesque view, a notice of every variety of tree and flower, 
 
353 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 and of every native of the woods. His perception of the beautiful is not of general effects, but 
 of details, and we have carefully painted studies rather than comprehensive pictures. The 
 points that fill the eye or strike the ear with pleasure are all enumerated, but we miss the 
 imaginative power that blends the separate observations into a symmetrical whole. This is 
 the faculty which he lacks, and it is the crowning faculty of the poet. There is no doubt 
 that he has wrought with conscientious fidelity, and that his studies are true and beautiful. 
 But his range of thought, as well as of observation, is not the broadest, and he must be 
 classed among the painstaking students of nature, and not among the masters of its secret 
 power, the interpreters of its divine lessons. 
 
 [From The Willewemoc in Summer.] 
 
 BLUE sky, pearl cloud, and golden beam 
 
 Beguile my steps this summer day, 
 Beside the lone and lovely stream, 
 
 And 'mid its sylvan scenes to stray. 
 The moss, too delicate and soft 
 To bear the tripping bird aloft, 
 Slopes its green velvet to the sedge, 
 Tufting the mirrored water's edge, 
 Where the slow eddies wrinkling creep 
 'Mid swaying grass in stillness deep : 
 The sweet wind scarce has breath to turn 
 
 The edges of the leaves, or stir 
 
 The fragile wreath of gossamer 
 Embroidered on yon clump of fern. 
 The stream incessant greets my ear 
 
 In hollow dashings, full round tones, 
 Purling 'mid alder branches here, 
 
 There gurgling o'er the tinkling stones ; 
 The rumble of the waterfall 
 Majestic sounding over all. 
 
 Before me spreads the sheltered pool, 
 
 Pictured with tree-shapes black and cool : 
 
 Here the roofed water seems to be 
 
 A solid mass of ebony ; 
 
 There the lit surface glances bright 
 
 In dazzling gleams of spangled light : 
 
 Now the quick darting waterfly 
 
 Ploughs its light furrow, skimming by, 
 
 While circling o'er in mazy rings, 
 
 The chirping swallow dips his wings ; 
 
 Relieved against yon sunny glare 
 
 The gnat-swarms, dust-like, speck the air ; 
 
ALFRED BILLINGS STREET. 353 
 
 From yon deep cove where lily-gems 
 Are floating by their silken stems, 
 Out glides the dipping duck to seek 
 The narrow windings of the creek, 
 The glitterings of his purple back 
 Disclosing far his sinuous track ; 
 Now sliding down yon grassy brink 
 I see the otter plunge and sink ; 
 Yon bubbling streak betrays his rise, 
 And through the furrowing sheet he plies. 
 
 The aspen shakes, the hemlock hums 
 
 Damp with the shower the west wind comes ; 
 
 Rustling in heaps the quivering grass, 
 
 It darkening dots the streamlet's glass, 
 
 And rises with the herald-breeze 
 
 The cloud's dark umber o'er the trees ; 
 
 A veil of gauze-like mist it flings, 
 
 Dimples the stream with transient rings, 
 
 And soon beneath this tent-like tree 
 
 The swift, bright, glancing streaks I see, 
 
 And hear around in murmuring strain 
 
 The gentle music of the rain. 
 
 Then bursts the sunshine warm and gay, 
 
 The misty curtain melts away, 
 
 The clouds in fragments break, and through 
 
 Trembles in spots the smiling blue ; 
 
 A fresh, damp sweetness fills the scene, 
 
 From dripping leaf and moistened earth, 
 The odor of the wintergreen 
 
 Floats on the airs that now have birth ; 
 Plashes and air-bells all about 
 Proclaim the gambols of the trout, 
 And calling bush and answering tree 
 Echo with woodland melody. 
 Now the piled west in pomp displays 
 
 The radiant forms that sunset weaves, 
 And slanting lines of golden haze 
 
 Are streaming through the sparkling leaves. 
 23 
 
354 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 NOAH PORTER. 
 
 Noah Porter was born in Farmington, Conn., in 1811. and was graduated at Yale College 
 in 1831. He studied theology at the Yale School, while tutor in the college, and was 
 ordained pastor of the Congregational church at New Milford, Conn., in 1836. In 1843 he 
 removed to Springfield, Mass., where he remained until 1847, when he was appointed pro- 
 fessor of moral philosophy and metaphysics in Yale College. He held this place until 1871, 
 when, on the retirement of Dr. Woolsey, he was chosen president. His principal work 
 is a text-book upon mental philosophy, entitled The Human Intellect, considered by many 
 to be on the whole the ablest presentation of its great subject in a popular form. He pub- 
 lished in 1870 a volume on Books and Reading a very candid, discriminating, and catholic 
 treatise. His other works are, The Educational Systems of the Puritans and the Jesuits 
 (1851), The American Colleges and the American Public (1870), Elements of Intellectual 
 Science (1871), The Sciences of Nature versus the Science of Man : a Plea for the Science 
 of Man (1871). He has been a contributor to the New Englander and other periodicals, and 
 has published occasional discourses and addresses. He was also editor-in-chief of the last 
 revised edition of Webster's Dictionary, in which the etymologies were wrought over, and 
 the definitions recast 
 
 [From Books and Reading.] 
 
 WE should be contented to read that which is suitable to our 
 present development of thought and feeling, or, in plainer language, 
 to our age and progress. Everything is appropriate and beautiful in 
 its season. Eat strawberries in May or June, and wait for peaches 
 and grapes till the autumn. Let not the miss just entering upon 
 her teens expect to appreciate the poetry or philosophy which her 
 brother of twenty-two is but just beginning to comprehend and 
 enjoy. Above all, do not meddle with philosophy of any sort, whether 
 it comes in the form of history, of fiction, or grave discussion, until 
 you can grapple with its problems and follow its subtile abstractions. 
 
 Let your reading in every department follow somewhat the order 
 of nature and of psychical growth, and the growth will be all the 
 more rapid and easy. The transitions from that which is adapted 
 to earlier and later youth, and -to dawning and developed manhood, 
 will be easily and gracefully accomplished, and both intellect and 
 feeling will find, in the abundant variety of literary productions, suit- 
 able and satisfying nutriment for their newly-developed wants and 
 tastes. Important aid in the selection of the right books, according 
 to this rule, may be derived from advisers who know us well. But 
 the rule furnishes in itself the means for its own enforcement, if we 
 considerately apply it. TAs a general truth, facts should come before 
 philosophy ; narrative before reflection ; objective description before 
 subjective meditation ; poetry that is graphic, outward, and pictur- 
 esque before that which is meditative, learned, and introverted ; and 
 
NOAH PORTER. 355 
 
 history, that paints and describes, before that which generalizes and 
 interprets. . . . 
 
 The style of a writer should often determine whether we read or 
 neglect him. But what is style, and how shall we judge whether it 
 is good or bad ? That depends upon our taste, i. e., whether it is 
 healthy or vitiated, whether it is uncultured or rightly trained. Sav- 
 ages and semi-barbarians are fond of stimulating and strongly con- 
 trasted colors, of violent and spasmodic gesticulations, of shrieking 
 and dissonant sounds, of noisy and discordant music. So in litera- 
 ture there are semi-barbarians, who delight in the glaring and the 
 grotesque, the extravagant and the spasmodic, the vulgar and sensa- 
 tional in diction and imagery. In the judgment of such, those books, 
 journals, and newspapers only are up to the times, and produced by 
 live wen, which are distinguished by characteristics that belong to 
 the barbaric age. That writer is trenchant and brilliant who is ill- 
 mannered, coarse, personal, and vituperative. That orator is mag- 
 nificently eloquent who ranges through the Classical Dictionary for 
 historic parallels to common men and common occasions, and always 
 rides on the topmost wave of his tumid diction. Flippancy and 
 audacity are taken for genius and power, and a perpetual straining 
 after tawdry ornaments and effective diction, such as remind one of 
 war paint and tattooing, is deemed the certain indication of intellec- 
 tual power. People of more refined habits and a more perfectly 
 developed civilization require a somewhat different style in the 
 writers whom they delight to read as strength without roughness, 
 elegance without affectation, ease without weakness, copiousness 
 without verbosity, and courtesy without loss of dignity. We judge 
 of style somewhat as we do of manners. Whatever in expression 
 facilitates the easy apprehension and the pleasant reception of the 
 thoughts and sentiments ; whatever fits both like a glove, and seems 
 to have been their natural growth ; whatever in form is the unstudied 
 product of an earnest and refined nature, is, in general, good in 
 style. On the other hand, whatever is awkward, indirect, involved, and 
 difficult to follow ; whatever is factitious and affected ; whatever is 
 overloaded with obtrusive and gaudy decorations ; above all, what- 
 ever is swelling, declamatory, and overstrained in its illustration is 
 bad in diction, is bad in style. We may read an author whose style 
 is defective or. bad for the worth of his matter ; but a bad style 
 ought never to please or attract us, and, other things being equal, we 
 cannot but prefer the well-written to the badly-written book. 
 
 Style, indeed, is not to be judged of as a thing of the supremest 
 
356 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 consequence, but as chiefly valuable as it renders easy and agreeable 
 the communication of thought and feeling. " The more sash, the 
 less light," was a pithy saying in respect of diction, often uttered by 
 a writer who illustrated the rule by his own example. It is slightly 
 too pointed to be altogether true. A window may serve other ends 
 than to let in the white light of winter or the dazzling glance of sum- 
 mer ; and style may be allowed to color and warm intellectual clear- 
 ness with the hues that express emotion, and to set off these hues 
 by varying contrasts of beauty and shading ; but when style is char- 
 acterized by mere pomp and glitter, by artificial nicety or studied 
 effect, it deserves the contempt of every person of sense, as truly 
 when seen in a book as when displayed by a man. But as in con- 
 versing with men we are naturally pleased with an easy flow of lan- 
 guage from the lips, so is it with language when it is written. There 
 is a natural grace, and order, and beauty which lend a charm that 
 cannot be described. There is a power in expression by which a 
 word as used by one man will produce a stronger impression than a 
 page composed by another. By one writer thought is thrust forth 
 as dry as a withered branch ; by another, through apt illustration, it 
 is made fresh and blooming, like an orange bough just broken from 
 the tree, in which bud, blossom, and fruit mingle their fragrance and 
 beauty. From one man truth falls as if wrung from unwilling lips ; 
 from another it leaps into form and action with a resistless energy, 
 warm and living, startling and overpowering. 
 
 It is of vital importance to our success and pleasure in reading, 
 that the books which we read should be well written. It is also a 
 prime necessity that our ideal of what good writing is should be just 
 and elevated. Next to bad morals in writing should be ranked bad 
 manners in diction, or an infelicitous style. Awkwardness may be 
 excused, and even accepted as an excellence, when it betokens sin- 
 cerity and directness of aim ; but vulgarity, affectation, vituperation, 
 and bullyism, as well as " great swelling words of vanity," and lofty 
 airs of pompous declamation, whether of the Asiatic and Oriental or 
 the American and Occidental type ; whether heard in the harangue 
 from the hustings, in the sermon from the pulpit, or in the speech to 
 the universe in the legislature ; whether written in the newspaper or 
 the essay, are more nearly akin to moral defects than is usually be- 
 lieved or noticed. Indeed, they rarely fail to indicate them. Vague 
 declamation is a kind of conscious falsehood. Empty rhetoric is a 
 certain sign, as well as an efficient promoter, of insincerity and hol- 
 lo wn ess, of sham and pretence in the character. 
 
WENDELL PHILLIPS. ^1 j 357 
 
 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 
 
 Wendell Phillips was born in Boston, Mass., November 29, i8ri. He was graduated at 
 Harvard College in 1831, and at the Cambridge Law School in 1833. He made his first 
 appearance as an orator in December, 1837, at a public meeting held in Faneuil Hall, to 
 take some notice of the murder of the Rev. E. P. Lovejoy, at Alton, 111. (Mr. Lovejoy had 
 established an anti-slavery paper in Alton, and the office had been recently mobbed, and he 
 killed while defending his property). The conservative portion of the audience, under the 
 lead of the attorney general, endeavored to frustrate the purpose of those who called the 
 meeting. Mr. Phillips was young and comparatively unknown, but he was roused by the 
 occasion, and, in a brilliant strain of invective, he attacked the position of those who at- 
 tempted to palliate the crime that had been committed against a free press. His impassioned 
 eloquence captivated the audience ; the opposition was silenced, and the original resolutions 
 presented were adopted. 
 
 Mr. Phillips continued to labor in behalf of the anti-slavery cause, although he and his 
 party abstained from voting and from political action, because they would not swear to sup- 
 port the constitution of the United States so long as it protected slavery. Now that the 
 institution is abolished, he finds abundant fields for his labors as a reformer. He is one of 
 the leading advocates of woman suffrage. He is vehement in support of the laws that make 
 it a penal offence to sell intoxicating drinks. He is a friend of the Labor Reformers in their 
 desire to lighten the burdens and increase the comforts and the mental cultivation of 
 the poor. 
 
 As an orator Mr. Phillips has few rivals, and scarcely a superior, in this generation. His 
 voice is musical, his manner at once earnest and graceful, and his command of a fluent and 
 idiomatic speech little less than marvellous. He is a great master of all the arts of attack. 
 Preachers, politicians, and men in high places generally, who differ with him in opinion, 
 are the subjects of his keenr ridicule and his withering sarcasm. Like the old prophets he 
 has always a '' burden." He is a natural leader of men when on the platform ; he knows 
 how to reach their hearts, if not through their reason and their moral sense, then by their 
 pride, their local prejudices, and their affections. 
 
 But those who have listened to his perfect utterances, whether in fervid denunciation, 
 indignant protest, or pathetic appeal, seldom have the opportunity to examine in cool blood 
 the true character of the rhetoric that fascinated them. While they watched the magnificent 
 stream of eloquence, it seemed like the course of a river of molten lava. Let them to-day 
 walk over the cooled and hardened surface, and they will find how rough and full of scorias 
 its track is. Mr. Phillips's speeches have been collected in a handsome volume, with a por- 
 trait. Apart from its relations to the topics it deals with, and viewed simply as a specimen 
 of composition, there is hardly any modern book so disappointing. The apt illustration, the 
 witty anecdote, the emphatic statement, the traces of strong feeling, are to be seen in every 
 discourse. But there are also slang phrases and vituperative epithets, which might be 
 tolerated in an off-hand speech, but which when seen on the printed page debase the style 
 and weaken its force. From the extract here printed it would seem that this is a deliberate 
 choice, and that the orator has no regard for literature, except so far as it serves practical 
 ends. 
 
 Mr. Phillips has long been a popular lecturer, and never fails to interest his audiences. 
 Matter and manner are in perfect accord, and his stately presence and melodious tones 
 leave an impression that is never forgotten. 
 
358 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 PROSPECTIVE INFLUENCE OF WOMEN UPON LITERATURE. 
 
 I SAID justice had never been done to woman for her influence 
 upon literature and society. Society is the natural outgrowth of the 
 New Testament, and yet nothing deserving of the name ever existed 
 in Europe until, two centuries ago, in France, woman called it into 
 being. Society, the only field where the sexes have ever met on 
 terms of equality, the arena where character is formed and studied, 
 the cradle and the realm of public opinion, the crucible of ideas, the 
 world's university, at once a school and a theatre, the spur and the 
 crown of ambition, the tribunal which unmasks pretension and stamps 
 real merit, the power that gives government leave to be, and outruns 
 the lazy church in fixing the moral sense of the age, who shall 
 fitly describe the lofty place of this element in the history of the last 
 two centuries ? Who shall deny that, more than anything else, it 
 deserves the name of the most controlling element in the history of 
 the two centuries just finished ? And yet this is the realm of woman, 
 the throne which, like a first conqueror, she founded and then filled. 
 
 So with literature. The literature of three centuries ago is not 
 decent to be read : we expurgate it. Within a hundred years 
 woman has become a reader, and for that reason, as much or more 
 than anything else, literature has sprung to a higher level. No need 
 now to expurgate all you read. Woman, too, is .now an author ; and 
 I undertake to say that the literature of the next century will be 
 richer than the classic epochs, for that cause. Truth is one forever, 
 absolute, but opinion is truth filtered through the moods, the blood, 
 the disposition, of the spectator. Man has looked 'at creation, and 
 given us his impressions, in Greek literature and English, one-sided, 
 half-way, all awry. Woman now takes the stand to give us her 
 views of God's works and her own creation ; and exactly in propor- 
 tion as woman, though equal, is eternally different from man, just in 
 that proportion will the literature of the next century be doubly rich, 
 because we shall have both sides. You might as well plant yourself 
 in the desert, under the changeless gray and blue, and assert that 
 you have seen all the wonders of God's pencil, as maintain that a 
 male literature Latin, Greek, or Asiatic can be anything but a 
 half part, poor and one-sided ; as well develop only muscle, shutting 
 out sunshine and color, and starving the flesh from your angular 
 limbs, and then advise men to scorn Titian's flesh and the Apollo, 
 since you have exhausted manly beauty, as think to stir all the depths 
 of music with only half the chords. The diapason of human thought 
 
WENDELL PHILLIPS. 359 
 
 was never struck till Christian culture summoned woman into the 
 republic of letters ; and experience as well as nature tells us, " what 
 God hath joined, let not man put asunder." 
 
 I welcome woman, therefore, to the platform of the world's teach- 
 ers, and I look upon the world, in a very important sense, as one 
 great school. As Humboklt said, 'ten years ago, "Governments, 
 religion, property, books, are nothing but the scaffolding to build a 
 man. Earth holds up to her master no fruit but the finished man." 
 Education is the only interest worthy the deep, controlling anxiety 
 of the thoughtful man. To change Bryant a little, 
 
 " The hills, 
 
 Rock-ribbed and ancient as the sun, 
 The venerable woods, rivers that move 
 In majesty, and the complaining brooks 
 That make the meadows green, and poured round all 
 Old ocean's gray and melancholy waste, 
 Are but the solemn decorations all 
 Of the great school of man." 
 
 It is in this light, and for this value, that I appreciate the lyceum. 
 We have four sources of education in this country talk, literature, 
 government, religion. The lyceum makes one and the most impor- 
 tant element of each. It is a church without a creed, and with a 
 constant rotation of clergymen. It teaches closer ethics than the 
 pulpit. Let lyceum committees debate whether they shall invite 
 Theodore Parker, or theological papers scold because Beecher stands 
 on your platform, and out of such debate the people will pick a les- 
 son of toleration better, more real, and more impressive than 
 Locke's Treatise, or a dozen sermons, would give them. Responsi- 
 bility teaches as nothing else can. That is God's great motor power. 
 When your horse cannot move his load, throw a sack of grain on his 
 back, and he draws easily on. He draws by weight, not by muscle. 
 Give the masses nothing to do, and they will topple down thrones 
 and cut throats ; give them* the government, as here, and they will 
 make pulpits useless and colleges an impertinence. It is the best 
 part of literature, too, for it is the only part that is vital. I value let- 
 ters. I thank God that I was taught for many years enough to 
 see inside the sham. 
 
 The upper tier of letters is mere amateur does not understand 
 its own business. William H. Prescott would have washed his hand 
 twice had Walker, the filibuster, grasped it unwittingly ; but he sits 
 down in his study and writes the history of filibusters, respectable 
 
360 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 only because they died three hundred years ago ! He did not know 
 that he was the mere annalist of the Walkers and Jefferson Davises 
 of that age. 
 
 THE TEMPERANCE QUESTION. 
 
 SOME men look upon this temperance cause as whining bigotry, 
 narrow asceticism, or a vulgar sentimentality, fit for little minds, weak 
 women, and weaker men. On the contrary, I regard it as second 
 only to one or two others of the primary reforms of this age, and for 
 this reason :. Every race has its peculiar temptation ; every clime 
 has its specific sin. The tropics and tropical races are tempted to 
 one form of sensuality ; the colder and temperate regions, and our 
 Saxon blood, find their peculiar temptation in the stimulus of drink 
 and food. In old times our heaven was a drunken revel. We relieve 
 ourselves from the over-weariness of constant and exhausting toil 
 by intoxication. Science has brought a cheap means of drunkenness 
 within the reach of every individual. National prosperity and free 
 institutions have put into the hands of almost every workman the 
 means of being drunk for a week on the labor of two or three hours. 
 With that blood and that temptation, we have adopted democratic 
 institutions, where the law has no sanctions but the purpose and 
 virtue of the masses. The statute-book rests not on bayonets, as in 
 Europe, but on the hearts of the people. A drunken people can 
 never be the basis of a free government. It is the corner-stone 
 neither of virtue, prosperity, nor progress. To us, therefore, the 
 title-deeds of whose estates and the safety of whose lives depend 
 upon the tranquillity of the streets, upon the virtue of the masses, 
 the presence of any vice which brutalizes the average mass of man- 
 kind, and tends to make it more readily the tool of intriguing and 
 corrupt leaders, is necessarily a stab at the very life of the nation. 
 Against such a vice is marshalled the Temperance Reformation. 
 That my sketch is no fancy picture every one of you knows. 
 Every one of you can glance back over your own path, and count 
 many and many a one among those who started from the goal at 
 your side, with equal energy and perhaps greater promise, who has 
 found a drunkard's grave long before this. The brightness of the 
 bar, the ornament of the pulpit, the hope, and blessing, and stay of 
 many a family you know, every one of you who has reached mid- 
 dle life, how often on your path you set up the warning, " Fallen 
 before the temptations of the streets ! " Hardly one house in this 
 
CHARLES SUMNER. 361 
 
 city, whether it be full and warm with all the luxury of wealth, or 
 whether it find hard, cold maintenance by the most earnest economy ; 
 no matter which hardly a house that does not count among sons 
 or nephews some victim of this vice. The skeleton of this warning 
 sits at every board. The whole world is kindred in this suffering. 
 The country mother launches her boy with trembling upon the temp- 
 tations of city life ; the father trusts his daughter anxiously to the 
 young man she has chosen, knowing what a wreck intoxication may 
 make of the house-tree they set up. Alas ! how often are their 
 worst forebodings more than fulfilled ! I have known a case 
 probably many of you recall some almost equal to it where one 
 worthy woman could count father, brother, husband, and son-in-law 
 all drunkards no man among her near kindred, except her son, 
 who was not a victim of this vice. Like all other appetites, this 
 finds resolution weak when set against the constant presence of 
 temptation. 
 
 CHARLES SUMNER. 
 
 Charles Sumner was born in Boston, January 6, 1811. He was educated in the Boston 
 Latin School, and at Harvard College, where he received his degree in 1830. He studied 
 law, and was admitted to the bar in 1834. Although he was successful in practice, he gave 
 his attention more to the theory of law, and soon became known as an able writer on legal 
 subjecte. He was for three years reporter of the Circuit Court, and was at different times 
 lecturer at the Cambridge Law School. In 1845, on the 4th of July, he delivered an oration 
 before the municipal authorities of Boston, on the True Grandeur of Nations, in which he 
 denounced the impending war with Mexico, and advocated the settlement of national con- 
 troversies by arbitration. Mr. Sumner was originally a Whig, but he was led by the course 
 of events to join the Free-soil party. In 1851 the Democratic and Free-soil parties having 
 formed a coalition to carry the state election, he was, after a long and animated contest, 
 chosen United States senator to succeed Daniel Webster. He opposed the fugitive slave 
 bill in a speech in which he announced the doctrine that " freedom is national, slavery 
 sectional." In 1856, after the delivery of his speech entitled The Crime against Kansas, 
 in which were some passages that were highly offensive to slaveholders, he was assaulted, 
 while at his desk in the Senate chamber, with a heavy cane, by Preston S. Brooks, of South 
 Carolina, and was so severely injured that he was unable to perform any mental labor for 
 some years. On resuming his seat, in the autumn of 1859, he delivered a speech that was 
 afterwards printed under the title of The Barbarism of Slavery. During the rebellion 
 which followed the election of Abraham Lincoln, he advocated the emancipation of ths 
 slaves as the most effective mode of ending the contest. For many years he has been a 
 leading member of the Senate. In 1861 he was made chairman of the committee on foreign 
 relations, which position he held until 1870, when he was displaced on account of not agree- 
 ing with his political associates in the support of President Grant. 
 
 Mr. Sumner's orations and speeches, taken in their order, might almost form a history of 
 the anti-slavery movement in its connection with national politics. He has always insisted 
 that the recent amendments are but the legitimate development of the original doctrines of 
 the Constitution. 
 
362 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 Mr. Sumner is distinguished for his learning, especially in history and public law. In his 
 efforts on great occasions his citations of authorities are absolutely bewildering. His mind 
 is comprehensive and logical, his methods direct and forcible, his spirit vehement and in- 
 domitable. As he moves on he leaves no point untouched, no matter how trite or familiar it 
 may be. There are no gaps in his sentences, and no ellipses in his thought. He leaves 
 nothing for the imagination. Proposition is riveted to proposition until the whole statement 
 is like a piece of plate armor. But this scrupulous gathering up of details, and the copious- 
 ness of illustration by historical parallels, though effective with audiences and useful for 
 popular instruction, often render portions of his speeches, when printed, tedious to cul- 
 tivated readers, who are oppressed by the amplifications, the repetitions, and the profusion 
 of learned quotations with which the argument is loaded. The field he has passed over is 
 sure to be thoroughly swept. The audiences who listen, whether friendly or otherwise, are 
 always profoundly impressed with his power and sincerity. The antagonist who follows him 
 has always a task demanding his best efforts. 
 
 His style has unconsciously acquired a certain professional or state-paper tone. We see by 
 the formal and stately manner that it is the statesman and the author of didactic treatises that 
 is writing. The elevation of his thought is a moral elevation. As we read we seem to be 
 on high ground, and breathe pure mountain air. There is no compromise with wrong, no 
 paltering with worldly policy. Poetical discussions conducted in such a spirit rise to the 
 dignity of pure ethics, and are as inspiring as they are impressive. Much of the effect of 
 Mr. Sumner's speeches is due to this pervading moral element. He is not greatly imagina- 
 tive, and his ample utterances, unlike the copious and glowing diction of Burke, appear to 
 be the results of painstaking industry. 
 
 Mr. Sumner has an enviable distinction in what we must consider a corrupt age ; he is so 
 noted for inflexible honesty that no one ever ventures to suggest that he has an interested 
 motive for his conduct. In person he is very tall, and wears a look of dignity and conscious 
 power. He speaks with great energy, but has not a very melodious voice nor graceful man- 
 ner. There are few in this generation that will leave behind a more exalted reputation for 
 the qualities that constitute a great and good man. 
 
 His works, in several volumes, 8vo., with portrait, are published by Lee & Shepard, 
 Boston. 
 
 [From an Oration on the True Grandeur of Nations.] 
 
 AND now, if it be asked why, in considering the true grandeur of 
 nations, I dwell thus singly and exclusively on war, it is because 
 war is utterly and irreconcilably inconsistent with true greatness. 
 Thus far, man has worshipped in military glory a phantom idol, 
 compared with which the colossal images of ancient Babylon or 
 modern Hindostan are but toys ; and we, in this favored land of 
 freedom, in this blessed day of light, are among the idolaters. The 
 Heaven-descended injunction, Know thyself, still speaks to an un- 
 heeding world from the far-off letters of gold at Delphi : Know thy- 
 self; know that the moral is the noblest part of man, transcending far 
 that which is the seat of passion, strife, and war nobler than the 
 intellect itself. And the human heart, in its untutored, spontaneous 
 homage to the virtues of peace, declares the same truth admonish- 
 ing the military idolater that it is not the bloody combats, even of 
 the bravest chiefs, even of gods themselves, as they echo from the 
 resounding lines of the great poet of war, which receive the warmest 
 
CHARLES SUMNER. 363 
 
 admiration, but those two scenes where are painted the gentle, un- 
 warlike affections of our nature, the Parting of Hector from An- 
 dromache, and the Supplication of Priam. In the definitive election 
 of these peaceful pictures, the soul of man, inspired by a better 
 wisdom than that of books, and drawn unconsciously by the heaven- 
 ly attraction of what is truly great, acknowledges, in touching 
 instances, the vanity of military glory. The beatitudes of Christ, 
 which shrink from saying, " Blessed are the war-makers," inculcate 
 the same lesson. Reason affirms and repeats what the heart has 
 prompted and Christianity proclaimed. Suppose war decided by 
 force, where is the glory ? Suppose it decided by chance, where is 
 the glory? Surely, in other ways true greatness lies. Nor is it 
 difficult to tell where. 
 
 True greatness consists in imitating, as nearly as possible for 
 finite man, the perfections of an infinite Creator above all, in 
 cultivating those highest perfections, Justice and Love : justice, which, 
 like that of St. Louis, does not swerve to the right hand or to the 
 left ; love, which, like that of William Penn, regards all mankind as of 
 kin. " God is angry," says Plato, " when any one censures a man like 
 himself, or praises a man of an opposite character; and the godlike 
 man is the good man." Again, in another of those lovely dialogues, 
 precious with immortal truth, " Nothing resembles God more than 
 that man among us who has attained to the highest degree of 
 justice." The true greatness of nations is in those qualities which 
 constitute the true greatness of the individual. It is not in extent 
 of territory, or vastness of population, or accumulation of wealth ; 
 not in fortifications, or armies, or navies ; not in the sulphurous 
 blaze of battle ; not in Golgothas, though covered by monuments 
 that kiss the clouds for all these are creatures and representatives 
 of those qualities in our nature which are unlike anything in God's 
 nature. Nor is it in triumphs of the intellect alone in literature, 
 learning, science, or art. The polished Greeks, our masters in the 
 delights of art, and the commanding Romans, overawing the earth 
 with their power, were little more than splendid savages. And 
 the age of Louis XIV., of France, spanning so long a period of 
 ordinary worldly magnificence, thronged by marshals bending under 
 military laurels, enlivened by the unsurpassed comedy of Molicre, 
 dignified by the tragic genius of Corneille, illumined by the splendors 
 of Bossuet, is degraded by immoralities that cannot be mentioned 
 without a blush, by a heartlessness in comparison with which the 
 ice of Nova Zembla is warm, and by a succession of deeds of in- 
 
364 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 justice not to be washed out by the tears of all the recording angels 
 of heaven. 
 
 The true greatness of a nation cannot be in triumphs of the intel- 
 lect alone. Literature and art may enlarge the sphere of its in- 
 fluence ; they may adorn it ; but in their nature they are but 
 accessaries. The true grandeur of humanity is in moral eleva- 
 tion, sustained, enlightened, and decorated by the intellect of man. 
 The surest tokens of this grandeur in a nation are that Christian 
 beneficence which diffuses the greatest happiness among all, and that 
 passionless, godlike justice which controls the relations of the 
 nation to other nations, and to all the people committed to its 
 charge. . . . 
 
 Far be from us, fellow- citizens, on this festival, the pride of national 
 victory, and the illusion of national freedom, in which we are too 
 prone to indulge ! None of you make rude boast of individual 
 prosperity or prowess. And here I end as I began. Our country 
 cannot do what an individual cannot do. Therefore it must not 
 vaunt or be puffed up. Rather bend to unperformed duties. Inde- 
 pendence is not all. We have but half done, when we have made 
 ourselves free. The scornful taunt wrung from bitter experience of 
 the great revolution in France must not be levelled at us : " They 
 wish to be free, but know not how to be just" Nor is priceless 
 freedom an end in itself, but rather the means of justice and benef- 
 icence, where alone is enduring concord, with that attendant happi- 
 ness which is the final end and aim of nations, as of every human 
 heart. It is not enough to be free. There must be peace which 
 cannot fail, and other nations must share the great 'possession. To 
 this end must we labor, bearing ever in mind two special objects, 
 complements of each other : first, the arbitrament of war must end ; 
 and secondly, disarmament must begin. With this ending and this 
 beginning the great gates of the future will be opened, and the 
 guardian virtues will assert a new empire. Alas ! until this is done, 
 national honor and national glory will yet longer flaunt in blood, and 
 there can be no true grandeur of nations. 
 
 To this great work let me summon you. That future, which 
 filled the lofty vision of sages and bards in Greece and Rome, which 
 was foretold by prophets and heralded by evangelists, when man, in 
 happy isles, or in a new paradise, shall confess the loveliness of 
 peace, may you secure, if not for yourselves, at least for your chil- 
 dren ! Believe that you can do it, and you can do it. The true 
 golden age is before, not behind. If man has once been driven 
 
CHARLES SUMNER. 365 
 
 from paradise, while an angel with a flaming sword forbade his 
 return, there is another paradise, even on earth, which he may 
 make for himself, by the cultivation of knowledge, religion, and the 
 kindly virtues of life where the confusion of tongues shall be dis- 
 solved in the union of hearts, and joyous nature, borrowing prolific 
 charms from prevailing harmony, shall spread her lap with un- 
 imagined bounty, and there shall be perpetual jocund spring, and 
 sweet strains borne on "the odoriferous wing of gentle gales," 
 through valleys of delight more pleasant than the vale of Tempe, 
 richer than the garden of the Hesperides, with no dragon to guard 
 its golden fruit. 
 
 Is it said that the age does not demand this work ? The robber 
 conqueror of the past, from fiery sepulchre, demands it ; the precious 
 blood of millions unjustly shed in war, crying from the ground, 
 demands it ; the heart of the good man demands it ; the conscience, 
 even of the soldier, whispers, " Peace." There are considerations 
 springing from our situation and condition which fervently invite us 
 to take the lead. Here should join the patriotic ardor of the land, 
 the ambition of the statesman, the effort of the scholar, the per- 
 vasive influence of the press, the mild persuasion of the sanctuary, 
 the early teaching of the school. Here, in ampler ether and diviner 
 air, are untried fields for exalted triumph, more truly worthy the 
 American name than any snatched from rivers of blood. War is 
 known as the last reason of kings. Let it be no reason of our 
 republic. Let us renounce and throw off forever the yoke of 
 a tyranny most oppressive of all in the world's annals. As those 
 standing on the mountain-top first discern the coming beams of 
 morning, so may we, from the vantage-ground of liberal institutions, 
 first recognize the ascending sun of a new era ! Lift high the gates, 
 and let the King of Glory in, the King of true Glory, of Peace ! I 
 catch the last words of music from the lips of innocence and beauty, 
 
 "And let the whole earth be filled with his glory." 
 
 It is a beautiful picture in Grecian story, that there was at least one 
 spot, the small island of Delos, dedicated to the gods, and kept at all 
 times sacred from war. No hostile foot ever pressed this kindly 
 soil, and citizens of all countries met here, in common worship, 
 beneath the aegis of inviolable peace. So let us dedicate our beloved 
 country ; and may the blessed consecration be felt in all its parts, 
 everywhere throughout its ample domains ! The Temple of Honor 
 shall be enclosed by the Temple of Concord, that it may never more 
 
366 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 be entered through any portal of war ; the horn of abundance shall 
 overflow at its gates ; the angel of religion shall be the guide over 
 its steps of flashing adamant ; while within its happy courts, purged 
 of Violence and Wrong, Justice, returned to the earth from long exile 
 in the skies, with equal scales for nations as for men, shall rear her 
 serene and majestic front ; and by her side, greatest of all, Charity, 
 sublime in meekness, hoping all and enduring all, shall divinely 
 temper every righteous decree, and with words of infinite cheer 
 inspire to those deeds that cannot vanish away. And the future chief 
 of the republic, destined to uphold the glories of a new era, unspotted 
 by human blood, shall be first in peace, first in the hearts of his 
 countrymen. 
 
 While seeking these fruitful glories for ourselves, let us strive for 
 their extension to other lands. Let the bugles sound the Truce of 
 God to the whole world forever. Not to one people, but to every 
 people, let the glad tidings go. The selfish boast of the Spartan 
 women, that they never saw the smoke of an enemy's camp, must 
 become the universal chorus of mankind, while the iron belt of War, 
 now encompassing the globe, is exchanged for the golden cestus of 
 Peace, clothing all with celestial beauty. History dwells with fond- 
 ness on the reverent homage bestowed by massacring soldiers upon 
 the spot occupied by the sepulchre of the Lord. Vain man ! why 
 confine regard to a few feet of sacred mould ? The whole earth is 
 the sepulchre of the Lord ; nor can any righteous man profane 
 any part thereof. Confessing this truth,- let us now, on this Sabbath 
 of the Nation, lay a new and living stone in the grand Temple of 
 Universal Peace, whose dome shall be lofty as the firmament of 
 heaven, broad and comprehensive as earth itself. 
 
 JOHN WILLIAM DRAPER. 
 
 John William Draper was born in Liverpool, England, May 5, iSn, and was educated 
 at London University. He came to the United States in 1833, and pursued his studies in 
 chemistry and medicine at the Univei-sity of Pennsylvania. He was professor at Hampden 
 and Sidney College from 1836 to 1839, and afterwards at the University of New York first 
 in the academical and then in the medical department. Dr. Draper is a man of great learn- 
 ing, and has written many able scientific works. Among them are treatises on the Organi- 
 zation of Plants (1844), Chemistry (1846), Natural Philosophy (1847), Human Physiology 
 (1856.) But he has not confined his studies to the sciences. He has aspired to co-ordinate 
 the results of all modern learning into a broad philosophical view of the progress of man- 
 kind. This is the theme of his principal work, the History of the Intellectual Development 
 of Europe. It may be likened, in a measure, to Buckle's History of Civilization, and to 
 
JOHN WILLIAM DRAPER. 367 
 
 the recent works of Lecky ; but the author Ins made an original plan, and has developed 
 his own ideas in the view of the world's history. His stvle is sententious and dignified ; 
 his works will be read for their ideas, and will command respect from all thoughtful 
 men. He has written a History of the American Civil War, three vols., 8vo. ; also 
 Thoughts on the Future Civil Policy of America, in one vol., 8vo., Harper & Brothers, 
 New York. 
 
 [From History of the Intellectual Development of Europe.] 
 
 NATIONS AS WELL AS MEN MORTAL. 
 
 Too commonly do we beliftve that the affairs of men are deter- 
 mined by a spontaneous action or free will ; we keep that overpow- 
 ering influence which really controls them in the background. In 
 individual life we also accept a like deception, living in the belief that 
 everything we do is determined by the volition of ourselves or of 
 those around us ; nor is it until the close of our days that we discern 
 how great is the illusion, and that we have been swimming, playing, 
 and struggling in a stream which, in spite of all our voluntary 
 motions, has silently and resistlessly borne us to a predetermined 
 shore. . . . 
 
 Nations, like individuals, die. Their birth presents an ethnical 
 element ; their death, which is the most solemn event that we can 
 contemplate, may arise from interior or from external causes. Em- 
 pires are only sand-hills in the hour-glass of Time ; they crumble 
 spontaneously away by the process of their own growth. 
 
 A nation, like a man, hides from itself the contemplation of its 
 final day. It occupies itself with expedients for prolonging its 
 present state. It frames laws and constitutions under the delusion 
 that they will last, forgetting that the condition of life is change. 
 Very able modern statesmen consider it to be the grand object of 
 their art to keep things as they are, or rather as they were. But the 
 human race is not at rest ; and bands with which, for a moment, it 
 may be restrained, break all the more violently the longer they hold. 
 No man can stop the march of destiny. 
 
 Time, to the nation as to the individual, is nothing absolute ; its 
 duration depends on the rate of thought and feeling. For the same 
 reason that to the child the year is actually longer than to the adult, 
 the life of a nation may be said to be no longer than the life of a 
 person, considering the manner in which its affairs are moving. 
 There is a variable velocity of existence, though the lapses of time, 
 may be equable. 
 
 The origin, existence, and death of nations depend thus on phys- 
 ical influence, which are themselves the result of immutable laws. 
 Nations are only transitional forms of humanity. They must tin- 
 
368 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 dergo obliteration as do the transitional forms offered by the animal 
 series. There is no more an immortality for them than there is an 
 immobility for an embryo in any one of the manifold forms passed 
 through in its progress of development. 
 
 The life of a nation thus flows in a regular sequence, determined 
 by invariable law ; and hence, in estimating different nations, we 
 must not be deceived by the casual aspect they present. The phil- 
 osophical comparison is made by considering their entire manner 
 of career or cycle of progress, and not their momentary or transitory 
 state. Though they may encounter disaster, their absolute course 
 can never be retrograde ; it is always onward, even if tending to 
 dissolution. It is as with the individual, who is equally advancing 
 in infancy, in maturity, in old age. Pascal was more than justified 
 ,in his assertion, that " the entire succession of men, through the 
 whole course of ages, must be regarded as one man, always living 
 and incessantly learning." 
 
 THE LIMITS OF FREE WILL. 
 
 HE who is immersed in the turmoil of a crowded city sees nothing 
 but the acts of men, and, if he formed his opinion from his experi- 
 ence alone, must conclude that the course of events altogether 
 depends on the uncertainties of human volition. But he who 
 ascends to a sufficient elevation loses sight of the passing con- 
 flicts, and no longer hears the contentions. He discovers that 
 the importance of individual action is diminishing, as the pano- 
 rama beneath him is extending. And if he could attain to the 
 truly philosophical, the general point of view, disengaging himself 
 from all terrestrial influences and entanglements, rising high 
 enough to see the whole globe at a glance, his acutest vision 
 would fail to discover the slightest indication of man, his free- 
 will, or his works. In her resistless, onward sweep, in the clock- 
 like precision of her daily and nightly revolution, in the well- 
 known pictured forms of her continents and seas, now no longer 
 dark and doubtful, but shedding forth a planetary light, well might 
 he ask what had become of all the aspirations and anxieties, the 
 pleasures and agony, of life. As the voluntary vanished from his 
 sight, and the irresistible remained, and each moment became 
 more and more distinct, well might he incline to disbelieve his 
 own experience, and to question whether the seat of so much 
 undying glory could be the place of so much human uncertainty ; 
 whether beneath the vastness, energy, and immutable course of a 
 
HARRIET ELIZABETH BEECHER STOWE. 369 
 
 moving world, there lay concealed the feebleness and imbecility 
 of man. Yet it is none the less true that these contradictory 
 conditions co-exist Free-will and Fate, Uncertainty and Des- 
 tiny, and all are watched by the sleepless eye of Providence. It 
 is only the point of view that has changed ; but on that how much 
 has depended ! A little nearer we gather the successive ascertain- 
 ments of human inquiry, a little farther off we realize the pano- 
 ramic vision of the Deity. Well has - a Hindu philosopher re- 
 marked, that he who stands by the bank of a flowing stream sees, 
 in their order, the various parts as they successively glide by, but 
 he who is placed on an exalted station views, at a glance, the 
 whole as a motionless, silvery thread among the fields. To the 
 one there is the accumulating experience and knowledge of man 
 in time, to the other there is the instantaneous and unsuccessive 
 knowledge of God. 
 
 HARRIET ELIZABETH BEECHER STOWE. 
 
 Harriet Elizabeth Beecher Stowe, daughter of Dr. Lyman Beecher, a distinguished 
 gyman, was born in Litchfield, Conn., June 15, 1812. She removed to Cincinnati with htr 
 father in 1833, where she was married, in 1836, to the Rev. Calvin E. Stowe, afterwards 
 professor at Bowdoin College and at Andover Theological School. 
 
 She wrote several stories and sketches for the Cincinnati Gazette and other periodicals, 
 which were afterwards collected in a volume entitled The Mayflower. In 1851 she began 
 the story of Uncle Tom's Cabin, in weekly chapters, in a newspaper published in Washing- 
 ton, called the National Era. On its completion it appeared, in two volumes, i2mo., in 
 Boston. Its success was without a parallel in the literature of any age. Near half a mil- 
 lion copies were sold in this country, and a considerably larger number in England. It was 
 translated into every language of Europe, and into Arabic and Armenian. It was drama- 
 tized and acted in nearly every theatre in the world. The Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin 
 appeared in 1853. The same year she visited Europe, and was received with gratifying 
 attention. On her return she published Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands, two volumes, 
 i2mo. Drcd, a Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp, was published in 1856. This work pro- 
 duced but a slight impression, probably because the chirm of novelty in the subject was 
 wanting. The character of Dred himself is more grand and picturesque than Uncle Tom. 
 The Minister's Wooing appeared first in the Atlantic Monthly as a serial, and was pub- 
 lished in book form in 1859. We think this the most delightful of her stories. The scene 
 i-; laid in Newport, in the last century, and the characters (excepting Aaron Burr, whom 
 the author, very properly, does not know much about) are among her finest creations. 
 Agnes of Sorrento and The Pearl of Orr's Island were published in 1*62 : House and 
 Home Papers in 1864 ; The Chimney Corner, a series in the Atlantic, in 1865 ; Little Foxes 
 in 1865 ; Queer Little People in 1867 ; Oldtown Folks in i%) ; Pink and White Tyranny in 
 1871 ; and My Wife and I in 18721 She also printed the True Story of Lady Byron's Life, 
 which was probably not true, and, in any case, should not have been told. 
 
 It will be seen that Mrs. Stowe has been a very prolific writer, and, although her fame 
 will rest upon her first great book, all of her novels have some admirable qualities, and sev- 
 24 
 
3/O HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 eral of them have enough merit in themselves to have given her a place among our first 
 authors of fiction. She is a novelist of rare and original genius. She is indebted to no 
 special culture and to no careful practice for her effects. In attention to the niceties 
 of the language she is surpassed by many writers of an inferior rank. Her descrip- 
 tions of persons and of scenes are like the etchings of the old painters ; the method is 
 full of details, and the process could not be imparted, but at due distance the effect is magi- 
 cal, the cartoon priceless and imperishable. 
 
 Probably our great national struggle, then impending (although we did not know it), in- 
 tensified the public interest in Uncle Tom's Cabin and its momentous lessons ; but it is a 
 great story still. The characters are powerfully drawn, and the plot is constructed with 
 skill. The figures of the prim Miss Ophelia, the indescribable Aunt Dinah, and of the 
 great souled Uncle Tom are masterpieces in fiction. The future historian of the United 
 States, in mentioning the causes that led to the overthrow of slavery, must give much of 
 the credit to the author of the drama in which the results of the system were exhibited to 
 the world. 
 
 Professor Stowe resigned his chair at Andover some years since, and now, with his wife 
 and daughters, resides during a part of the year in Florida. 
 
 [From Uncle Tom's Cabin.] 
 UNCLE TOM READS HIS TESTAMENT. 
 
 Is it strange, then, that some tears fall on the pages of his Bible 
 as he lays it on the cotton-bale, and, with patient finger threading 
 his slow way from word to word, traces out its promises ? Hav- 
 ing learned late in life, Tom was but a slow reader, and passed on 
 laboriously from verse to verse. Fortunate for him was it that the 
 book he was intent on was one which slow reading cannot injure 
 nay, one whose words, like ingots of gold, seem often to need to 
 be weighed separately, that the mind may take in their priceless 
 value. Let us follow him a moment, as, pointing to each word, 
 and pronouncing each half aloud, he reads, 
 
 " Let not your heart be troubled. In my Father's 
 house are many mansions. I go to prepare a 
 place for you." 
 
 Cicero, when he buried his darling and only daughter, had a heart 
 as full of honest grief as poor Tom's, perhaps no fuller, for both 
 were only men ; but Cicero could pause over no such sublime 
 words of hope, and look to no such future reunion ; and if he had 
 seen them, ten to one he would not have believed, he must fill 
 his head first with a thousand questions of authenticity of manu- 
 script, and correctness of translation. But, to poor Tom, there it 
 lay, just what he needed, so evidently true and divine that the pos- 
 sibility of a question never entered his simple head. It must be 
 true, for, if not true, how could he live ? 
 
 As for Tom's Bible, though it had no annotations and helps in 
 
HARRIET ELIZABETH BEECHER STOWE. 
 
 margin from learned commentators, still it had been embellished 
 with certain way-marks and guide-boards of Tom's own invention, 
 and which helped liim more than the most learned expositions could 
 have done. It had been his custom to get the Bible read to him 
 by his master's children, in particular by young Master George ; and 
 as they read, he would designate, by bold, strong marks and dashes, 
 with pen and ink, the passages which more particularly gratified 
 his ear or affected his heart. His Bible was thus marked through, 
 from one end to the other, with a variety of styles and designations ; 
 so he could in a moment seize upon his favorite passages, without 
 the labor of spelling out what lay between them ; and while it lay 
 there before him, every passage breathing of some old home scene, 
 and recalling some past enjoyment, his Bible seemed to him all of 
 this life that remained, as well as the promise of a future one. 
 
 LITTLE EVA. 
 
 HER form was the perfection of childish beauty, without its usual 
 chubbiness and squareness of outline. There was about it an undu- 
 lating and aerial grace such as one might dream of for some mythic 
 and allegorical being. Her face was remarkable, less for its perfect 
 beauty of feature than for a singular and dreamy earnestness of 
 expression, which made the ideal start when they looked at her, and 
 by which the dullest and most literal were impressed, without 
 exactly knowing why. The shape of her head and the turn of her 
 neck and bust were peculiarly noble, and the long, golden-brown hair 
 that floated like a cloud around it, the deep, spiritual gravity of her 
 violet blue eyes, shaded by heavy fringes of golden brown, all 
 marked her out from other children, and made every one turn and 
 look after her, as she glided hither and thither on the boat. Never- 
 theless, the little one was not what you would have called either a 
 grave child or a -sad one. On the contrary, an airy and innocent 
 playfulness seemed to flicker like the shadow of summer leaves over 
 her childish face, and around her buoyant figure. She was always 
 in motion, always with half a smile on her rosy mouth, flying hither 
 and thither, with an undulating and cloud-like tread, singing to her- 
 self as she moved as in a happy dream. Her father and female 
 guardian were incessantly busy in pursuit of her but, when caught, 
 she melted from them again like a summer cloud ; and as no word 
 of chiding or reproof ever fell on her ear for whatever she chose to 
 
3/2 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 do, she pursued her own way all over the boat. Always dressed in 
 white, she seemed to move like a shadow through all sorts of places, 
 without contracting spot or stain ; and there was not a corner or 
 nook, above or below, where those fairy footsteps had not glided, 
 and that visionary golden head, with its deep blue eyes, fleeted 
 along. 
 
 The fireman, as he looked up from his sweaty toil, sometimes 
 found those eyes looking wonderingly into the raging depths of the 
 furnace, and fearfully and pityingly at him, as if she thought him in 
 some dreadful danger. Anon the steersman at the wheel paused 
 and smiled, as the picture-like head gleamed through the window of 
 the round house, and in a moment was gone again. A thousand 
 times a day rough voices blessed her, and smiles of unwonted soft- 
 ness stole over hard faces as she passed ; and when she tripped 
 fearlessly over dangerous places, rough, sooty hands were stretched 
 involuntarily out to save her, and smooth her path. 
 
 Tom, who had the soft, impressible nature of his kindly race, ever 
 yearning towards the simple and child-like, watched the little crea- 
 ture with daily increasing interest. To him she seemed some- 
 thing almost divine ; and whenever her golden head and deep blue 
 eyes peered out upon him from behind some dusky cotton-bale, or 
 looked down upon him over some ridge of packages, he half believed 
 he saw one of the angels stepped out of the New Testament. 
 
 AUNT DINAH'S DEFENSIVE TACTICS. 
 
 LIKE a certain class of modern philosophers, Dinah perfectly 
 scorned logic and reason in every shape, and always took refuge in 
 intuitive certainty ; and here she was perfectly impregnable. No 
 possible amount of talent, or authority, or explanation, could ever 
 make her believe that any other way was better than her own, or 
 that the course she had pursued in the smallest matter could be in 
 the least modified. This had been a conceded point with her old 
 mistress. Marie's mother ; and " Miss Marie," as Dinah always 
 called her young mistress even after her marriage, found it easier to 
 submit than contend ; and so Dinah had ruled supreme. This was 
 the easier, in that she was perfect mistress of that diplomatic art 
 which unites the utmost subservience of manner with the utmost 
 inflexibility as to measure. 
 
 Dinah was mistress of the whole art and mystery of excuse-mak- 
 
HARRIET ELIZABETH BEECHER STOWE. 373 
 
 ing, in all its branches. Indeed, it was an axiom with her that the 
 cook can do no wrong, and a cook in a southern kitchen finds abun- 
 dance of heads and shoulders on which to lay off every sin and 
 frailty, so as to maintain her own immaculateness entire. If any 
 part of the dinner was a failure, there were fifty indisputably good 
 reasons for it, and it was the fault, undeniably, of fifty other people, 
 whom Dinah berated with unsparing zeal. 
 
 But it was very seldom that there was any failure in Dinah's last 
 results. Though her mode of doing everything was peculiarly 
 meandering and circuitous, and without any sort of calculation as to 
 time and place, though her kitchen generally looked as if it had 
 been arranged by a hurricane blowing through it, and she had about 
 as many places for each cooking utensil as there were days in the 
 year, yet, if one could have patience to wait her own good time, 
 up would come her dinner in perfect order, and in a style of prepa- 
 ration with which an epicure could find no fault. 
 
 It was now the season of incipient preparation for dinner. Dinah, 
 who required large intervals of reflection and repose, and was studious 
 of ease in all her arrangements, was seated on the kitchen floor, 
 smoking a short, stumpy pipe, to which she was much addicted, and 
 which she always kindled up, as a sort of censer, whenever she felt 
 the need of an inspiration in her arrangements. It was Dinah's 
 mode of invoking the domestic Muses. 
 
 Seated around her were various members of that rising race with 
 which a southern household abounds, engaged in shelling peas, 
 peeling potatoes, picking pin-feathers out of fowls, and other prepar- 
 atory arrangements, Dinah every once in a while interrupting her 
 meditations to give a poke, or a rap on the head, to some of the 
 young operators, with the pudding-stick that lay by her side. In 
 fact Dinah ruled over the woolly heads of the younger members 
 with a rod of iron, and seemed to consider them born for no earthly 
 purpose but to " save her steps," as she phrased it. It was the 
 spirit of the system under which she had grown up, and she carried 
 it out to its full extent. 
 
 Miss 'Ophelia, after passing on her reformatory tour through all 
 the other parts of the establishment, now entered the kitchen. 
 Dinah had heard, from various sources, what was going on, and re- 
 solved to stand on defensive and conservative ground mentally 
 determined to oppose and ignore every new measure, without any 
 actual and observable contest. 
 
 The kitchen was a large brick-floored apartment, with a great old- 
 
374 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 fashioned fireplace stretching along one side of it an arrangement 
 which St. Clare had vainly tried to persuade Dinah to exchange for 
 the convenience of a modern cook-stove. Not she. No Puseyite, 
 or conservative of any school, was ever more inflexibly attached to 
 time-honored inconveniences than Dinah. 
 
 When St. Clare had first returned from the north, impressed with 
 the system and order of his uncle's kitchen arrangements, he had 
 largely provided his own with an array of cupboards, drawers, and 
 various apparatus, to induce systematic regulation, under the sanguine 
 illusion that it would be of any possible assistance to Dinah in her 
 arrangements. He might as well have provided them for a squirrel 
 or a magpie. The more drawers and closets there were, the more 
 hiding-holes could Dinah make for the accommodation of old rags, 
 hair-combs, old shoes, ribbons, cast-off artificial flowers, and other 
 articles of vertu, wherein her soul delighted. 
 
 When Miss Ophelia entered the kitchen, Dinah did not rise, but 
 smoked on in sublime tranquillity, regarding her movements ob- 
 liquely out of the corner of her eye, but apparently intent only on the 
 operations around her. 
 
 Miss Ophelia commenced opening a set of drawers. 
 
 " What is this drawer for, Dinah ? " she said. 
 
 " It's handy for most anything, missis," said Dinah. So it ap- 
 peared to be. From the variety it contained, Miss Ophelia pulled 
 out first a fine damask table-cloth stained with blood, having evi- 
 dently been used to envelop some raw meat. 
 
 " What's this, Dinah ? You don't wrap up meat in your mistress's 
 best table-cloths ? " 
 
 " O, Lor', missis, no ; the towels was all a missin' so I just did 
 it. I laid out to wash that ar' that's why I put it thar." 
 
 " Shif 'less ! " said Miss Ophelia to herself, proceeding to tumble 
 over the drawer, where she found a nutmeg-grater and two or three 
 nutmegs, a Methodist hymn-book, a couple of soiled Madras hand- 
 kerchiefs, some yarn and knitting-work, a paper of tobacco and a 
 pipe, a few crackers, one or two gilded china saucers with some 
 pomade in them, one or two thin old shoes, a piece of flannel care- 
 fully pinned up, enclosing some small white onions, several damask 
 table-napkins, some coarse crash towels, some twine and darning- 
 needles, and several broken papers, from which sundry sweet herbs 
 were sifting into the drawer. 
 
 " Where do you keep your nutmegs, Dinah ? " said Miss Ophelia, 
 with the air of one who " prayed for patience." 
 
HARRIET ELIZABETH BEECHER STOWE. 3/5 
 
 " Most anywhar, missis ; there's some in that cracked tea-cup up 
 there, and there's some over in that ar cupboard." 
 
 " Here are some in the grater," said Miss Ophelia, holding 
 them up. 
 
 " Laws, yes ; I put 'em there this morning I likes to keep my 
 things handy," said Dinah. " You Jake ! what are you stopping 
 for ? You'll cotch it ! Be still, thar ! " she added, with a dive of 
 her stick at the criminal. 
 
 " What's this ? " said Miss Ophelia, holding up the saucer of 
 pomade. 
 
 " Laws, it's my har-grease ; I put it thar to have it handy." 
 
 " Do you use your mistress's best saucers for that ? " 
 
 " Law ! it was 'cause I was driv, and in such a hurry. I was 
 gwine to change it this very day." 
 
 " Here are two damask table-napkins." 
 
 " Them table-napkins I put thar to get 'em washed out some 
 day." 
 
 " Don't you have some place here on purpose for things to be 
 washed ? " 
 
 " Well, Mas'r St. Clare got dat ar chest, he said, for dat ; but I 
 likes to mix up biscuit and hev my things on it some days, and then 
 it ain't handy a liftin' up the lid." 
 
 " Why don't you mix your biscuits on the pastry-table, there ? " 
 
 " Law, missis, it gets sot so full of dishes, and one thino- and 
 another, der an't no room, no ways " 
 
 " But you should wash your dishes, and clear them away." 
 
 " Wash my dishes ! " said Dinah, in a high key, as her wrath 
 began to rise over her habitual respect of manner. " What does 
 ladies know 'bout work, I want to know ? When'd mas'r ever get 
 his dinner, if I was to spend all my time a washin' and a puttin' up 
 dishes ? Miss Marie never tellecl me so, no how." 
 
 " Well, here are these onions." 
 
 "Laws, yes!" said Dinah; "thar is whar I put em, now. I 
 couldn't 'member. Them's particular onions I was a savin' for dis 
 yer very stew. I'd forgot they was in dat ar old flannel." 
 
 Miss Ophelia lifted out the sifting papers of sweet herbs. " I 
 wish missis wouldn't touch dem ar. I likes to keep my things 
 where I knows whar to go to 'em," said Dinah, rather decidedly. 
 
 " But you don't want these holes in the papers." 
 
 " Them's handy for siftin' on't out," said Dinah. 
 
 " But you see it spills all over the drawer." 
 
3/6 HANDBOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 " Laws, yes ! if missis will go a tumblin' things all up so, it will. 
 Missis has spilt lots dat, an way," said Dinah, coming uneasily to 
 the drawers. " If missis only will go up stairs till my clarin' up time 
 comes, I'll have eberything right ; but I can't do nothin' when 
 ladies is round a henderin'. You, Sam, don't you gib de baby dat ar 
 sugar-bowl ! I'll crack ye over, if ye don't mind ! " 
 
 ' " I'm going through the kitchen, and going to put everything in 
 order, once, Dinah, and then I'll expect you to keep it so." 
 
 " Lor, now, Miss Thelia, dat ar an't no way for ladies to do. I 
 never did see ladies doin' no sich ; my old missis nor Miss Marie 
 never did, and I don't see no kinder need on't ; " and Dinah stalked 
 indignantly about, while Miss Ophelia piled and sorted dishes, 
 emptied dozens of scattering bowls of sugar into one receptacle, 
 sorted napkins, table-cloths, and towels for washing washing, 
 wiping, and arranging with her own hands, and with a speed and 
 alacrity which perfectly amazed Dinah. 
 
 " Lor', now ! if dat ar de way dem northern ladies do, dey an't 
 ladies no how," she said to some of her satellites, when at a safe 
 hearing distance. " I has things as straight as anybody, when my 
 clarin'-up time comes ; but I don't want ladies round a henderin' 
 and gettin' my things all where I can't find 'em." 
 
 To do Dinah justice, she had, at irregular periods, paroxysms of 
 reformation and arrangement, which she called " clarin'-up times," 
 when she would begin with great zeal, and turn every drawer and 
 closet wrong side outward on to the floor or tables, and make the 
 ordinary confusion seven-fold more confounded. Then she would 
 light her pipe, and leisurely go over her arrangements, looking 
 things over, and discoursing upon them ; making all the young fry 
 scour most vigorously on the tin things, and keeping up for several 
 hours a most energetic state of confusion, which she would explain 
 to the satisfaction of all inquirers, by the remark that she was a 
 "clarin'-up." "She couldn't hev things a gwine on so as they had 
 been, and she was gwine to make these yer young ones keep better 
 order ; " for Dinah herself, somehow, indulged the illusion that she 
 herself was the soul of order, and it was only the young uns, and the 
 everybody else in the house, that were the cause of anything that 
 fell short of perfection in this respect. When all the tins were 
 scoured, and the tables scrubbed snowy white, and everything that 
 could offend tucked out of sight in holes and corners, Dinah would 
 dress herself up in a smart dress, clean apron, and high, brilliant 
 Madras turban, and tell all marauding " young uns " to keep out of 
 
CHRISTOPHER PEARSE CRANCH. 
 
 the kitchen, for she was gwine to have things kept nice. Indeed, 
 these periodic seasons were often an inconvenience to the whole 
 household, for Dinah would contract such an immoderate attach- 
 ment to her scoured tin, as to insist upon it that it shouldn't be 
 used again for any possible purpose at least till the ardor of the 
 " clarin'-up " period abated. 
 
 CHRISTOPHER PEARSE CRANCH. 
 
 Christopher Pearse Cranch was born in Alexandria, Va. , March 8, 1813, and was graduated 
 at Columbia College, Washington, in 1832. He studied divinity at the Cambridge Theologi- 
 cal School, but soon relinquished the clerical profession, and became a landscape painter. 
 He was one of the contributors to the Dial (conducted by Margaret Fuller, George Ripley, 
 and Mr. Emerson), and published in it some of his most striking verses. A small volume 
 of his poems was published in 1844. In 1847 he visited Europe, and resided abroad, mostly 
 in Paris, for over ten years. He wrote and illustrated two juvenile books of a fanciful char- 
 acter, entitled The Last of the Huggermuggers (1856), and Kobboltozo (1857). He has 
 lately made a poetical translation of Virgil, to be published by Messrs. Osgood & Co., in 
 uniform style with Bryant's Homer, Longfellow's Dante, and Taylor's Faust. 
 
 Mr. Cranch's poetry is for poets. It is instinct with genuine feeling, and wrought into 
 terse and weighty lines. He has a rare sense of music, and his sonnets upon several 
 musical instruments are full of quaint and characteristic beauty. 
 
 Since his return from Europe Mr. Cranch has lived at Staten Island, N. Y. 
 
 TO THE MAGNOLIA GRANDIFLORA. 
 
 MAJESTIC flower ! How purely beautiful 
 
 Thou art, as rising from thy bower of green, 
 Those dark and glossy leaves so thick and full, 
 
 Thou standest like a high-born forest queen 
 Among thy maidens clustering round so fair ; 
 
 I love to watch thy sculptured form unfolding, 
 And look into thy depths, to image there 
 
 A fairy cavern ; and while thus beholding, 
 And while thy breeze floats o'er thee, matchless flower, 
 
 I breathe the perfume, delicate and strong, 
 That comes like incense from thy petal-bower ; 
 
 My fancy roams those southern woods along, 
 Beneath that glorious tree, where deep among 
 
 The unsunned leaves thy large white flower-cups hung ! 
 
3/8 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 SLEEP. 
 
 LIKE the dark mirror of some mountain lake 
 
 To woods and clouds, to stars and twilight flowers, 
 Art thou, O Sleep, to these our waking hours. 
 
 From all that passes in us when awake, 
 
 Some strange reflection thou dost ever take ; 
 From all events and acts thy deeps have caught 
 The dim inverted images of thought 
 
 And feeling. But as winds will sometimes break 
 The stillness of the water, every gleam 
 
 Of beauty or of order is deranged, 
 
 And all the fairy picture wildly changed, 
 So the calm image of some happiest dream 
 
 Turns dark and dim, and with proportion lost, 
 
 Waves, endless, shapeless, wild, even when loved the most 
 
 MORNING. 
 
 THE earth was wandering in a troubled sleep, 
 
 And as it wandered, dreaming tearful dreams, 
 Then came the sun adown his orient steep, 
 
 Making sweet morning with its golden beams ; 
 A parent, bending o'er his child, he seems, 
 
 Kissing its eyes, lips, cheeks, with warm embrace ; 
 So kisseth he the mountains, woods, and streams, 
 
 And all the dew-like tears from off its face. 
 O, joy ! That father's smile is like no other 
 
 The child is folded in a parent's arms, 
 And looks up to the sky, its blue-eyed mother, 
 
 And laughs, with light upon its waking charms. 
 Ah, happy earth, what tender care hast thou ! 
 There is no midnight cloud or dream upon thee now. 
 
 NIGHT. 
 
 THE star-wrought mantle of the dewy Night 
 Is folded now all round and round thee, Earth ; 
 
 Safely to rest ! this moon thy chamber-light, 
 These winds thy waving curtains, and the birth 
 
CHRISTOPHER PEARSE CRANCH. 3/9 
 
 Of white-winged mountain mists thy dreams shall be 
 
 Silently rising as thy slumbers fall. 
 The Night is now too clear for thee to see 
 
 The storm-clouds gather at the tempest's call, 
 And fright thee with their dream-scowl as thou sleepest. 
 
 Rest thee, O mother Earth ! The heavens above 
 Shine on- thy sleep, will cheer thee if thou weepest, 
 
 And sing thee their old morning song of love ; 
 They watch o'er thee, as thou, when daylight comes, 
 Dost watch, from all thy hills, over thy children's homes. 
 
 GNOSIS.* 
 
 THOUGHT is deeper than all speech, 
 
 Feeling deeper than all thought ; 
 Souls to souls can never teach 
 
 What unto themselves was taught. 
 
 We are spirits clad in veils ; 
 
 Man by man was never seen ; 
 All our deep communing fails 
 
 To remove the shadowy screen. 
 
 Heart to heart was never known, 
 
 Mind with mind did never meet ; 
 We are columns left alone, 
 
 Of a temple once complete. 
 
 Like the stars that gem the sky, 
 
 Far apart, though seeming near, 
 In our light we scattered lie ; 
 
 All is thus but starlight here. 
 
 What is social company 
 
 But a babbling summer stream ? 
 What our wise philosophy 
 
 But the glancing of a dream ? 
 
 Only when the sun of love 
 
 Melts the scattered stars of thought ; 
 
 Only when we live above 
 What the dim-eyed world hath taught ; 
 
 * Knowing. 
 
380 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 Only when our souls are fed 
 
 By the Fount which gave them birth, 
 
 And by inspiration led, 
 
 Which they never drew/rom earth, 
 
 We like parted drops of rain 
 Swelling till they meet and run, 
 
 Shall be all absorbed again, 
 Melting, flowing into one. 
 
 HENRY WARD BEECHER. 
 
 Henry Ward Beecher was born in Litchfield, Conn., June 24, 1813, and was graduated at 
 Amherst College in 1834. He studied theology under the instruction of his father, at Lane 
 Seminary, near Cmcinnrti, and was settled as a preacher first at Lawrenceburg, Ind., and 
 afterwards at Indianapolis. In 1847 he removed to Brooklyn, N. Y,, and became pastor of 
 the Plymouth Church. With the exception of a novel, entitled Norwood (1866), his works 
 are the fruit of his regular labors as a p'reacher, and as a contributor to religious periodicals. 
 He wrote for the New York Independent a series of articles which has been published in 
 two volumes, under the title of Star .Papers. Notes from Plymouth Pulpit is a regular 
 report of his sermons. Life Thoughts is a collection of passages from his extemporaneous 
 discourses, taken down in short hand by one of his admirers. He is the author of Lectures 
 to Young Men, Eyes and Ears (1862), Freedom and War (1863), and two volumes of 
 sermons. 
 
 Mr. Beecher is a natural orator, and whether he is on the public platform, at the desk of 
 the lecturer, or in his own pulpit, he exercises an absolute sway over the feelings of his 
 audience. His sense of humor is acute, so that even the periods of his sermons are some- 
 times rounded with smiles. His illustrations, like those of all great teachers, from Plato to 
 Emerson, are drawn from homely subjects, but they flash on the understanding, and touch 
 the heart with irresistible force. His enthusiasm is magnetic ; the speaker and the hearer 
 are moved by a simultaneous impulse the one to say his noblest things, and the other to 
 follow with a lively apprehension. It is while on the wing, as it were, that Mr. Beecher 
 has given the proof of his imaginative power. Then it is that his figures come clothed in 
 perfect grace, and his language lias a natural felicity. The extracts that follow seem to us 
 to warrant this estimate. We doubt if so many apophthegms, so many exquisite poetic images, 
 as are contained in Life Thoughts, can be gathered from any volume of sermons, without 
 going back to Jeremy Taylor. At the same time we doubt whether Mr. Beecher could sit 
 down to write those same glowing sentences with much hope of success. The ideas are 
 his, but are born only when the subject and the time call them into life. His sermons are 
 thoughtful, instructive, and full of ingenious illustrations ; their method shows careful study, 
 but their brilliant passages are as unpremeditated as lightning strokes. 
 
 In fiction he did not gain great reputation, nor is he greatly successful as an essayist ; the 
 mastery of a finished and graceful style is not to be carried by assault, like a redoubt. And 
 his pressing duties have left him small time for what he would probably term the arts of the 
 literary pharisee. But it is impossible for such a man to be dull, or otherwise than interest- 
 ing ; and while his wonderful fervor as a speaker remains, it would be too much to ask that 
 he should carry the same fire into his closet. 
 
HENRY WARD BEECHER. ' 38! 
 
 [From Life Thoughts.] 
 THE TWENTY-THIRD PSALM. 
 
 DAVID has left no sweeter psalm than the short twenty-third. It 
 is but a moment's opening of his soul ; but, as when one, walking the 
 winter street, sees the door opened for some one to enter, and the 
 red light streams a moment forth, and the forms of gay children are 
 running to greet the comer, and genial music sounds, though the 
 door shuts and leaves night black, yet it cannot shut back again all 
 that the eye, the ear, the heart, and the imagination have seen so 
 in this psalm, though it is but a moment's opening of the soul, are 
 emitted truths of peace and consolation that will never be absent 
 from the world. 
 
 The twenty-third -psalm is the nightingale of the psalms. It is 
 small, of a homely feather, singing shyly out of obscurity ; but, O, it 
 has filled the air of the whole world with melodious joy, greater than 
 the heart can conceive. Blessed be the day on which that psalm 
 was born. 
 
 What would you say of a pilgrim commissioned of God to travel 
 up and down the earth singing a strange melody, which, when heard, 
 caused him to forget what sorrow he had ? And so the singing 
 angel goes on his way through all lands, singing in the language of 
 all nations, driving away trouble by the pulses of the air which his 
 tongue moves with divine power. Behold just such a one ! This 
 pilgrim God has sent to speak in every language on the globe. It 
 has charmed more griefs to rest than all the philosophy of the 
 world. It has remanded to their dungeon more felon thoughts, 
 more black doubts, more thieving sorrows, than there are sands on 
 the sea-shore. It has comforted the noble host of the poor. It has 
 sung courage to the army of the disappointed. It has poured balm 
 and consolation into the heart of the sick, of captives in dungeons, 
 of widows in their pinching griefs, of orphans in their loneliness. 
 Dying soldiers have died easier as it was read to them ; ghastly 
 hospitals have been illumined ; it has visited the prisoner and 
 broken his chains, and, like Peter's angel, led him forth in imagina- 
 tion, and sung him back to his home again. It has made the dying 
 Christian slave freer than his master, and consoled those whom, 
 dying, he left behind mourning, not so much that he was gone as 
 because they were left behind and could not go too. Nor is its 
 work done. It will go singing to your children and my children, and 
 to their children, through all the generations of time ; nor will it fold 
 
382 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 its wings till the last pilgrim is safe, and time ended, and then it 
 shall fly back to the bosom of God, whence it issued, and sound on, 
 mingled with all those sounds of celestial joy which make heaven 
 musical forever. 
 
 NOT ENOUGH TO BE SINCERE. 
 
 IT is often said, it is no matter what a man believes if he is only 
 sincere. This is true of all minor truths, and false of all truths 
 whose nature it is to fashion a man's life. It will make no difference 
 in a man's harvest whether he think turnips have more saccharine 
 matter than potatoes whether corn is better than wheat. But let 
 the man sincerely believe that seed planted without ploughing is as 
 good as with, that January is as favorable for seed-sowing as April, 
 and that cockle-seed will produce as good a harvest as wheat, and 
 will it make no difference ? A child might as well think he could 
 reverse that ponderous marine engine which, night and day, in calm 
 and storm, ploughs its way across the deep, by sincerely taking hold 
 of the paddle-wheel, as a man might think he could reverse the 
 action of the elements of God's moral government through a mis- 
 guided sincerity. They will roll over such a one, and whelm him 
 in endless ruin. 
 
 THEOLOGICAL STRIFE FATAL TO PIETY. 
 
 How sad is that field from which battle has just departed ! By as 
 much as the valley was exquisite in its loveliness, is it now sublime- 
 ly sad in its desolation. Such to me is the Bible, when a fighting 
 theologian has gone through it. 
 
 How wretched a spectacle is a garden into which cloven-footed 
 beasts have entered ! That which yesterday was fragrant, and 
 shone all over with crowded beauty, is to-day uprooted, despoiled, 
 trampled, and utterly devoured, and all over the ground you shall 
 find but the rejected cuds of flowers, and leaves, and forms that have 
 been champed for their- juices, and then rejected. Such to me is the 
 Bible, when the pragmatic prophecy-monger and the swinish util- 
 itarian have toothed its fruits and craunched its blossoms. 
 
 O garden of the Lord ! whose seeds dropped down from heaven, 
 and to whom angels bear watering dews night by night ! O flowers 
 and plants of righteousness ! O sweet and holy fruits ! we walk 
 among you, and gaze with loving eyes, and rest under your odorous 
 shadows ; nor will we, with sacrilegious hand, tear you, that we may 
 
HENRY WARD BEECHER. 383 
 
 search the secret of your roots, nor spoil you, that we may know 
 how such wondrous grace and goodness are involved within you ! 
 
 HOMELY ILLUSTRATIONS OF DIVINE TRUTH. 
 
 WHAT wonderful provision God has made for us, spreading out 
 the Bible into types of nature ! 
 
 What if every part of your house should begin to repeat the 
 truths which have been committed to its symbolism ? The lowest 
 stone would say, in silence of night, " Other foundation can no man 
 lay." The corner-stone would catch the word, " Christ is the corner- 
 stone." The door would add, " I am the door." The taper burn- 
 ing by your bedside would stream up in a moment to tell you, 
 " Christ is the light of the worM." If you gaze upon your children, 
 they reflect from their sweetly-sleeping faces the words of Christ, 
 " Except ye become like little children." If, waking, you look 
 towards your parents' couch, from that sacred place God calls him- 
 self your father and your mother. Disturbed by the crying of your 
 children, who are affrighted in a dream, you will rise to soothe 
 them, and hear God saying, " So will I wipe away all tears from 
 your eyes in heaven." Returning to your bed, you look from the 
 window. Every star hails you, but, chiefest, " the bright and morning 
 Star." By and by, flaming from the east, the flood of morning 
 bathes your dwelling, and calls you forth to the cares of. the day, 
 and then you remember that God is the sun, and that heaven is 
 bright with his presence. Drawn by hunger, you approach the 
 table. The loaf whispers as you break it, " Broken for you," and 
 the wheat of the loaf sighs, " Bruised and ground for you." The 
 water that quenches your thirst says, " I am the water of life." If 
 you wash your hands, you can but remember the teachings of 
 spiritual purity. If you wash your feet, that hath been done sacred- 
 ly by Christ, as a memorial. The very roof of your dwelling hath 
 its utterance, and bids you look for the day when God's house shall 
 receive its top-stone. 
 
 Go forth to your labor, and what thing can you see that hath not 
 its message ? The ground is full of sympathy. The flowers have 
 been printed with teachings. The trees, that only seem to shake 
 their leaves in sport, are framing divine sentences. The birds tell 
 of heaven with their love-warblings in the green twilight. The 
 sparrow is preacher of truth. The hen that clucks and broods her 
 chickens, unconscious that to the end of the world she is. part and 
 
384 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 parcel of a revelation of God to man, the sheep that bleat from 
 the pastures, the hungry wolves that blink in the forest, the serpent 
 that glides noiselessly in the grass, the raven that flies heavily 
 across the field, the lily over which his shadow passes, the plough, 
 the sickle, the vane, the barn, the flail, the threshing-floor, all of 
 them are consecrated priests, unrobed teachers, revelators that see 
 no vision themselves, but that bring to us thoughts of truth, con- 
 tentment, hope, and love. All are ministers of God. The whole 
 earth doth praise him, and show forth his glory ! 
 
 RELIGION A HARMONY OF THE FACULTIES. 
 
 SOME men think that religion is a mere ecstatic experience, like a 
 tune rarely played upon some faculty ; living only while it is being 
 performed, and then dying in silence. And, indeed, many men 
 carry their religion as a church carries its bell high up in a 
 belfry, to ring out on sacred days, to strike for funerals, or to chime 
 for weddings. All the rest of the time it hangs high above reach 
 voiceless, silent, dead. But religion is not the specialty of any one 
 feeling, but the mood and harmony of the whole of them. It is the 
 whole soul marching heavenward to the music of joy and love, with 
 well-ranked faculties, every one of them beating tune and keep- 
 ing time. 
 
 The religious life is thoughtful, but thought is not alone its nature. 
 It is full of affection, but it has more than mere feeling ; it abounds 
 in grand moral impulses. Effervescent experiences are not its char- 
 acteristic. It is the soul of a man made wondrously rich, moving to 
 the touch of divine influence in every way to which so facile and 
 elaborate a creature as man can move. There is no end to its com- 
 binations. It shapes itself beyond all enumeration of shapes. It 
 thinks in vast and fathomless streams. It wills with all attitudes of 
 authority and decision. It feels with all moods and variations of 
 social affection. It rises, by the wings of faith, into the invisible, 
 and fashions for itself a life there, glowing with every imaginable 
 ecstasy. And neither one of these is religion more than another. 
 It is the whole soul's life that is religion. When the sun rose on 
 Memnon, it was fabled to have uttered melodious noises ; but what 
 were the rude twangings of that huge, grotesque statue, compared 
 with the soul's response when God rises upon it, and every part, 
 like a vibrating chord, sounds forth, to his touch, its joy and 
 worship ? 
 
JOHN SULLIVAN DWIGHT. 385 
 
 JOHN SULLIVAN DWIGHT. 
 
 John Sullivan Dwight was born in Boston, May 13, 1813, and was graduated at Harvard 
 College in 1832. He studied at the Cambridge Theological School, completing his course 
 in 1836, and preached for about six years. He was settled in Northampton in 1840. He 
 translated, about that time, the Select Minor Poems of Goethe and Schiller, which were 
 published as a volume in Ripley's Specimens of Foreign Literature. He contributed 
 reviews of Tennyson, Spenser, and other authors, to the Christian Examiner. He wrote 
 a course of lectures upon Bach, Handel, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and their successors, 
 which were delivered in Boston, New York, and Philadelphia. He was a contributor to 
 the Dial, and afterwards to the Harbinger. He joined the Brook Farm association in 1842, 
 and remained there, teaching literature and music, and working on the farm, until the insti- 
 tution was broken up. 
 
 The younger generation may need to be informed that about thirty years ago a number 
 of the most intellectual people of Boston and vicinity, among them George Ripley, George 
 W. Curtis, and Nathaniel Hawthorne, purchased a farm in West Roxbury, and lived in a com- 
 munity, doing the necessary labor with their own hands, and endeavoring to show the world 
 a better mode of life by combining their efforts both in practical affairs and in their mental 
 and moral culture. It was a sincere and noble effort, though unsuccessful. Their pure and 
 blameless lives, and their aspirations for the good of the race, are not to be thought of in 
 connection with the later hideous developments of socialism in Paris, and the shameless 
 doctrines of social reformers recently propounded in New York. Some views of the 
 interior workings of the experiment may be seen in Hawthorne's Blithedale Romance. 
 
 Mr. Dwight in 1852 established the Musical Journal that bears his name, and of which 
 he is still the editor. The volumes of this periodical contain an invaluable collection of the 
 literature of music and art. Mr. Dwight is one of the officers and a leading spirit in the 
 Harvard Musical Association of Boston, and it is to this association that the city is indebted 
 for the annual series of symphony concerts, for the beautiful Music Hall, with its magnifi- 
 cent organ and its exquisite statue of Beethoven. 
 
 Mr. Dwight holds a high place among writers. He has the rare art of expressing the 
 best ideas, especially in musical criticism, by fortunate adjectives and epithets. He is an 
 upholder of the severe classical school, and often runs counter to popular tastes, but no one 
 doubts the sincerity of his convictions, or that the end he aims at is the elevation of the art 
 and the maintenance of a pure standard of beauty amid all the capricious changes of musical 
 fashion. 
 
 [From the Christian Examiner, May, 1840.] 
 
 SPENSER'S FAERIE QUEENE. 
 
 THE realm of Faerie is a purely moral world, unconditioned by 
 time and space, but making them subserve. . . . 
 
 It is a world in which Love, and Beauty, and the Rule of Right 
 shine always as the grand interests, and into which only enough of 
 wrong is introduced to occupy the Will, to furnish monsters for the 
 knights of glory to contend with, and serve as foils to victorious vir- 
 tue. Here the ardent young mind has its hopes, and enjoys per- 
 petual novelty, the mild excitement of surprise grown common. 
 Here it loses itself in a world which dates not from history, but from 
 25 
 
386 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 the heart. Now, this is truly poetry, in the sense of one of the hap- 
 piest definitions which we have seen. " Poetry," says Shelley, " is 
 the record of the best and happiest moments of the best and hap- 
 piest minds." Pleasure, without mixture of misgiving or alarm ; 
 beauty, love, clear conscience, and fresh, perennial youth, these 
 are the atmosphere of the poem ; at times, a somewhat drowsy at- 
 mosphere, as so much summer must be but an atmosphere which 
 it is life and occupation to breathe. The time to read its lulling, 
 mellifluous stanzas is in summer, when the world is green and warm, 
 and the air is full of sounds and smells which harmonize with your 
 imaginary sensations while you read ; when nature, as it were, adopts 
 all that the poet paints and sings, and contradicts no word of it ; or 
 else, when rainy days or snow-storms drive back the thoughts into 
 their own inward summer, where there is youth still, and hope and 
 love, without fear. But for the full surrender of one's self to such 
 poetry few feel generous leisure enough in our economical age. 
 Everything must subserve a purpose, must promise some calculable 
 result. Poetry, while she keeps to her own pure province of reveal- 
 ing to us a higher life, is neglected, and only called in as a con- 
 venient helper, to impress the maxims and further the enterprises, 
 political, social, and personal, of this life. Pegasus must wear the 
 harness. No wonder, then, that Spenser, that even Shakespeare, 
 are little read. We have no leisure to live, and through the calm 
 medium of the universal mind, enjoy all forms of life in turn ; we 
 all have special ends to pursue, which we will not quit, and for 
 which we exclude nature, poetry, love, God even. , Let Milton and 
 Shakespeare have the stars and the mountains, and Nature's music, 
 and all the tragedy and comedy of the world to themselves, and let 
 Lear, and Hamlet, and Sir Guyon, and fair Florimel accomplish 
 their destinies in a world not ours. Alas ! the world of poetry is 
 our world, if we but knew ourselves, and out of it the heart has no 
 home. . . . 
 
 But the quality possessed in the highest degree by Spenser, the 
 light which never leaves his works, is beauty. This it is, mainly, 
 that gives him his high place among poets, and not sublimity, or 
 intensity, or profoundness of thought. His muse haunts all the ex- 
 quisite retreats of nature, and bathes in every innocent delight. He 
 is a very bee, or humming-bird, among flowers ; through whole eter- 
 nities of summer days it is one feast of beauty with him ; his appe- 
 tite is never cloyed. He is beautiful, even while dull. His world 
 is always fresh and young. His is that gracefulness of constant, 
 
JOHN SULLIVAN DWIGHT. 387 
 
 cheerful activity and accomplishment, which characterizes the music 
 of Haydn, and which better fitted him to sing " The Creation," than 
 the world's aspiration for its " Messiah," which required the sub- 
 limer genius of a Handel, or the depths of love and sorrow, the 
 boundless yearnings of a spirit like Beethoven. Indeed, The Faerie 
 Queene reminds us more of Haydn's music than of any poetry of 
 words with which we are familiar. It has the same constant grace 
 and cheerfulness, the same tenderness, and purity, and conscien- 
 tiousness, and about the same moderate degree of depth. The 
 melody of the poem surpasses everything. He is the master of ver- 
 sification. Those flowing, majestical " Spenserian stanzas " remain 
 as unrivalled as the Grecian statues. They have an architectural 
 solidity and self-sustaining proportion. To compose such may well 
 be called " to build the lofty rhyme." The choice setting of every 
 word, the antithetic clauses, the endless alliterations, would seem 
 studied and artificial in the extreme, but for the perfect success in 
 every instance, the agreeable effect produced, and the freshness with 
 which every stanza so elaborated is left. It seems as if this rhythm 
 were the habitual law of his mind, and governed even its spontaneous 
 workings. In some instances this complicated beauty of form is 
 carried so far as to seem like a language in itself, another art, as dis- 
 tinct from music as from poetry. It is a sort of verbal architecture, 
 a rhyming of thoughts as well as of syllables. . . . 
 
 Imagination, in the highest sense of the word, is not his. We 
 mean, not the power of inventing images, of conceiving of things 
 which never were, but that power which perceives the unity of 
 things, which regards all things as images, manifestations of the one 
 all-pervading life ; that consciousness of Being, to which all phe- 
 nomena are of infinite interest. He gives us parts of Nature, paints 
 each object truly, remembers faithfully many a tune which she has 
 sung to him ; but there is not the key-note of all nature and of all 
 being ringing through his soul. Where this is felt, it matters not 
 what theme the poet touches, the same depth of life is implied in 
 all he says, the same spirit moulds and colors all his expressions, 
 and rounds the smallest trifle into an arc of the full orb of nature. 
 The smallest and most careless acts of genius, like the smallest leaf 
 or berry, show how all nature entered into their composition. They 
 seem done not in a corner, but out under the open sky, in the midst 
 of many witnesses, and with the sympathy of many, of all the view- 
 less spirits of the cloud, the stars, the waters, and the woods. But 
 a picture-poet, like Spenser, copies or invents this or that, which is 
 
388 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 beautiful in itself, but conveys no consciousness of a whole, in which 
 it has its being. If his topics chance to be commonplace, then he 
 is. A Shakespeare, a Goethe, a Wordsworth, are never dull ; for 
 the thoughts and images, however common, are always steeped in 
 the music of the man, which is also the music of Nature. 
 
 Universality such as Shakespeare's was by no means an attribute 
 of Spenser's mind. He never goes out of his own individual con- 
 sciousness, and lives in another. He never identifies himself with 
 his characters. They are seen from without by iiim, and not un- 
 folded from within. So that we are never so lost in his story as not 
 to feel who the author is, and that he is standing by, pointing out 
 the objects of his picture to us. Consequently, his characters all 
 lack individuality. They are too much alike. We do not see what 
 they are, but only what they do. Their actions seem invented first, 
 and they are brought in to perform them. They do not seem to 
 live ; we should not recognize them in another age and another 
 dress. They are cold, as figures on a phantasmagoria. 
 
 SYLVESTER JUDD. 
 
 Sylvester Judd was born in Westhampton, Mass., July 23, 1813. He was graduated at 
 Yale College in 1836, and, having become a Unitarian in belief, he studied theology at the 
 Cambridge School. He was ordained as pastor of a church in Augusta, Me., in 1840, and 
 remained there until his death, which occurred January 20, 1853. 
 
 Mr. Judd was a strong advocate of peace and of temperance, and an opponent of slavery 
 and of capital punishment. His religious doctrines were inwoven with his life, and his 
 works are but the various modes of expression of his cherished principles. His first pub- 
 lished work is entitled Margaret, a Tale of the Real and the Ideal, of Blight and Bloom. 
 In this singular and powerful fiction the reader is introduced to a New England town as it 
 was at the beginning of this century. The simple manners, the rustic festivals, the mode 
 of worship, and the prevailing intemperance of the period, are drawn with absolute fidelity. 
 The author's earnest purpose is somewhat too evident for a well-rounded work of art, and 
 the movement of the story is not at all what novel-readers expect; but no one, in our judg- 
 ment, has painted the aspects of nature in New England with such exquisite touches, or has 
 so clearly revealed the inner life of the people at a time of a great impending transition. 
 The author had a boundless wealth of materials, but his sense of form was deficient ; the 
 scenes have not been wrought into symmetrical order, and there is a want of proportion in 
 the various parts. These are fatal obstacles to the general popularity of the book. Still, 
 the genius of the author shines throughout the sad story. Its vivid woodland scenes, and 
 its strong, homely characters, contrasting with the spiritual beauty of its heroine, could 
 hardly have been done for us even by Hawthorne's pencil. Margaret appeared in 1845. 
 A new edition was published in 1851, and'in 1856 it was illustrated by Darley, in a series of 
 drawings that have done honor to American art. Philo, an Evangeliad, a religious poem, 
 appeared in 1850, and Richard Edney, a romance, in the same year. A posthumous work, 
 
SYLVESTER JUDD. 389 
 
 entitled The Church, in a Series of Discourses, was published in 1854. His life, written 
 by Mrs. Arethusa Hall, was also published the same year. Mr. Judd was a single-hearted, 
 sincere, and fervent minister, and his life was without any striking events. But his work 
 will preserve his memory ; in every generation there will be those who will fecognize and 
 do honor to his genius. 
 
 [From Margaret, a Tale of the Real and the Ideal, of Blight and Bloom.] 
 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 WE behold a child of eight or ten months. It has brown, curly 
 hair, dark eyes, fair-conditioned features, a health-glowing cheek, 
 and well-shaped limbs. Who is it ? Whose is it ? What is it ? 
 Where is it ? It is in the centre of fantastic light, and only a dimly 
 revealed form appears. It may be Queen Victoria's, or Sally Twig's. 
 It is God's own child, as all children are. The blood of Adam and 
 Eve, through how many soever channels diverging, runs in its veins, 
 and the spirit of the Eternal, that blows everywhere, has animated its 
 soul. It opens its eyes upon us, stretches out its hands to us, as all 
 children do. Can you love it ? It may be the heir of a throne, does 
 it interest you? or of a milking-stool, do not despise it. It is a 
 miracle of the All-working ; it is endowed by the All-gifted. Smile 
 upon it, it will smile you back again ; prick it, it will cry. Where 
 does it belong ? in what zone or climate ? on what hill ? to what 
 'plain ? It may have been born on the Thames or the Amazon, the 
 Hoan Ho or the Mississippi. 
 
 The vision deepens. Green grass appears beneath the child. It 
 may, after all, be Queen Victoria's in Windsor Park, or Sally Twig's 
 on Little Ricker Island. The sun now shines upon it, a blue sky 
 breaks over it, and the wind rustles its hair. Sun, sky, and wind are 
 common to Arctic and Antarctic regions, and belong to every merid- 
 ian. A black-cap is seen to fly over it, and this bird is said, by 
 naturalists, to be found in both hemispheres. A dog, or the whelp 
 of a dog, a young pup, crouches near it, makes a caracole backwards, 
 frisks away, and returns again. The child is pleased, throws out its 
 arms, and laughs right merrily. 
 
 As we now look at the child, we can hardly tell to which of the 
 five races it belongs whether it be a Caucasian, Mongolian, Amer- 
 ican, Ethiopian, or Malay. Each child on this terraqueous ball, 
 whether its nose be aquiline, its eyes black and small, its cheek- 
 bones prominent, its lips large, or its head narrow ; whether its hue 
 be white, olive, or jet, is of God's creating, and is delighted with the 
 bright summer light, a bed of grass, the wind, birds, and puppies ; 
 and smiles in the eyes of all beholders. It is God's child still, and 
 
3QO HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 its mother's. It is curiously and wonderfully made ; the inspiration 
 of the Almighty hath given it understanding. It will look after God, 
 its Maker, by how many soever names he may be called ; it will 
 aspire to the Infinite, whether that Infinite be expressed in Bengalee 
 or Arabic, English or Chinese ; it will seek to know truth ; it will 
 long to be loved ; it will sin and be miserable, if it has none to care 
 for it ; it will die. . . . 
 
 MARGARET AT THE POND. 
 
 When Margaret had finished the several chores, she went to the 
 Pond. She was barefooted and barearmed. She wore a brown 
 linen gown or tunic, open in front, a crimson skirt, a blue checked 
 apron, and, for head-covering, a green rush hat. By a narrow foot- 
 path, winding through shrubbery and brambles, and defiling along 
 the foot of a steep hill that rose near the house, she came to the 
 margin of the water. Chilion, her brother, who was at work with a 
 piece of glass, smoothing a snow-white, bass-wood paddle, for a little 
 bark canoe he had made her, saw Margaret approach with evident 
 pleasure, yet received her in the quietest possible manner,- as she 
 leaped and laughed towards him. He asked her if she remembered 
 the names of the flowers ; and, while he was finishing the paddle* 
 she went along the shore to gather them. The Pond covered sev- 
 eral hundreds of acres ; its greatest diameter measured about a mile 
 and a half; its outline was irregular here divided by sharp rocks, 
 there retreating into shaded coves ; and on its face .appeared three 
 or four small islands, bearing trees and low bushes. Its banks, if 
 not really steep, had a bluff and precipitous aspect from the tall for- 
 est that girdled it about. The region was evidently primitive, and 
 the child, as she went along, trod on round, smooth pebbles of white 
 and rose quartz, dark hornblende, green-stone, and an occasional 
 fragment of trap, the results of the diluvial ocean, if anybody can 
 tell when or what that was. In piles, among the stones, lay quiver- 
 ing and ever-accumulating masses of fleece-like and fox-colored foam ; 
 there were also the empty shells of various kinds of mollusks. She 
 climbed over the white-peeled trunks of hemlocks that had fallen 
 into the water, or drifted to the shore ; she trod through beds of fine 
 silver-gray sand, and in the shallow edge of the Pond she walked on 
 a hard, even bottom of the same, which the action of the waves had 
 beaten into a smooth, shining floor. She discovered flowers which 
 her brother told her were hoarhound, skull-caps, and Indian tobacco ; 
 
SYLVESTER JUDD. 39 1 
 
 she picked small green apples, that disease had formed on the leaves 
 of the willows, and beautiful velvety crimson berries from the black 
 alder. 
 
 MARGARET'S DREAM. 
 
 Night came on, and Margaret went to bed. The wind puffed, 
 hissed, whistled, shrieked, thundered, sighed, howled, by turns. 
 The house jarred and creaked, her bed rocked under her, loose 
 boards on the roof clappered and rattled, snow pelted the window- 
 shutter. In such a din and tussle of the elements lay the child. She 
 had no sister to nestle with her, and snug her up ; no gentle mother 
 to fold the sheets about her neck, and tuck in the bed ; no watchful 
 father to come with a light, and see that all was safe. 
 
 In the fearfulness of that night, she sung or said to herself some 
 words of the Master's, which he, however, must have given her fora 
 different purpose, for of needs must a stark child's nature in such 
 a crisis appeal to something above and superior to itself, and she 
 has taken a floating impression that the higher agencies, whatever 
 they might be, existed in Latin. 
 
 ' O sanctissima, O purissima, 
 Dulcis Virgo Maria, 
 Mater amata, intemerata ! 
 Ora, ora, pro nobis ! " 
 
 As she slept amid the passion of the storm, softly did the snow 
 from the roof distil upon her feet, and sweetly did dreams from 
 heaven descend into her soul. In her dream she was walking in a 
 large, high, self-illuminated hall, with flowers, statues, and columns 
 on either side. Above, it seemed to vanish into a sort of opaline- 
 colored invisibility. The statues, of clear white marble, large as 
 life, and the flowers in marble -vases, alternated with each other 
 between the columns, whose ornamented capitals merged in the 
 shadows above. There was no distinct, articulate voice, but a low 
 murmuring of the air, or sort of musical pulsation, that filled the 
 place. The statues seemed to be, for the most part, marble embodi- 
 ments of pictures she had seen in the Master's books. There were 
 the Venus de Medicis ; Diana, with her golden bow ; Ceres, with 
 poppies and ears of corn ; Humanity, " with sweet and lovely coun- 
 tenance ; " Temperance, pouring water from a pitcher ; Diligence, 
 with a sickle and sheaf ; Peace, and her crown of olives ; Truth, 
 with " her looks serene, pleasant, courteous, cheerful, and yet mod- 
 
3Q2 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 est." The flowers were such as she had sometimes seen about 
 houses in the village, but of rare size and beauty cactuses, dahlias, 
 carnations, large pink hydrangeas, white japonicas, calla lilies, and 
 others. Their shadows waved on the white walls, and it seemed to 
 her as if the music she heard issued from their cups. 
 
 Sauntering along she came to a marble arch or doorway, hand- 
 somely sculptured, and supported on caryatides. This opened to a 
 large rotunda, where she saw nine beautiful female figures swimming 
 in a circle in the air. These strewed on her, as she passed, leaves 
 and flowers of amaranth, angelica, myrtle, white jasmin, white poppy, 
 and eglantine ; and spun round and round silently as swallows. By 
 a similar arch, she went into another rotunda, where was a marble 
 monument or sarcophagus, from which two marble children with 
 wings wer represented as rising, and above them fluttered two iris- 
 colored butterflies. Through another doorway she entered a larger 
 space, opening to the heavens. In this she saw a woman, the same 
 woman she had before seen in her dreams, with long black hair, and 
 a pale, beautiful face, who stood silently pointing to a figure far off 
 on the rose-colored clouds. This figure was Christ, whom she 
 recognized. Near him, on the round top of a purple cloud, having 
 the blue distant sky for a background, was the milk-wh'ite Cross, 
 twined with evergreens ; about it, hand in hand, she saw moving, as 
 in a distance, four beautiful female figures, clothed in white robes. 
 These she remembered as the ones she saw in her dream at the 
 Stile, and she now knew them- to be Faith, Hope, Love, and their 
 sister, who was yet of their own creation, Beauty., Then in her 
 dream she returned, and at the door where she entered this myste- 
 rious place, she found a large green bull-frog, with great goggle eyes, 
 having a pond-lily saddled to his back. Seating herself in the cup, 
 she held on by the golden pistils as the pommel of a saddle, and the 
 frog leaped with her clear into the next morning, in her own little 
 dark chamber. When she awoke the wind and noise without had 
 ceased. A perfect cone of pure white snow lay piled up over her 
 feet, and she attributed her dream partly to that. She opened the 
 window-shutter ; it was even then snowing in large, quiet, moist 
 flakes, which showed that the storm was nearly at an end ; and in 
 the east, near the sun-rising, she saw the clouds bundling up, ready 
 to go away. 
 
HENRY THEODORE TUCKERMAN. 393 
 
 HENRY THEODORE TUCKERMAN. 
 
 Henry Theodore Tuckerman was born in Boston, April 20, 18*3. He was educated in 
 the public schools, and went abroad in his twentieth year. Travel and observation, with 
 private reading and study, supplied the place of university training. He removed from 
 Boston to New York in 1845, where he resided until his death, which occurred December* 
 17, 1871. Mr. Tuckerman was an indefatigable and voluminous writer; very few authors 
 have put so much on paper or in print. He published a volume of poems, which show a 
 cultivated taste and considerable poetic feeling. He has also written several memoirs and 
 biographies ; but his chief employment was that of essayist, literary and art critic, and 
 narrator of the lighter incidents of travel. His appreciative feeling, good taste, and long 
 practice gave him the skill, and his pleasant habit of observation and retentive memory 
 furnished the materials. He never probed a subject deeply, never developed principles, 
 except very obvious ones, was never strongly graphic in description, nor keen in analysis ; 
 but the stream of his prose ran smoothly on until the salient points of his theme were pleasantly 
 touched upon, and its associations were gracefully hinted at ; and the reader, without fatigue, 
 closed the book with the thought that he had spent an hour with more or less profit in the 
 company of an amiable, well-informed, and well-bred man of the world. 
 
 The reader will infer that such an author does not belong to the class of original creators 
 of literature. But these critical writers have their well-established place and their duties in 
 the kingdom of letters. The list of Mr. Tuckerman's works will show the amount and kind 
 of service he performed: The Italian Sketch Book (1835); Isabel, or Sicily, a Pilgrimage 
 (1839) : Rambles and Reviews (1841) ; Thoughts on the Poets (1846); Characteristics of 
 Literature (1849-1851) ; Sketch of American Literature, Mental Portraits or Studies of 
 Character, Life of Commodore Silas Talbot (1850) ; The Optimist (1850) ; Poems (1851) ; A 
 Month in England (1853) ; A Memorial of Horatio Greenough (1853) ; Leaves from the 
 Diary of a Dreamer (1853) ; Biographical Essays (1857) ; Essay on Washington (1859) ; A 
 Sheaf of Verse (1864) : America and her Commentators, with a Critical Sketch of Travel in 
 the United States (1864) ; The Criterion (1866) ; Book of the Artists (1867) ; Maga Papers 
 about Paris (1867) ; Artist- Life, or Sketches of American Painters ; Life of J. P. Kennedy 
 (1871-) 
 
 [From Historical Studies.] 
 
 DANIEL BOONE. 
 
 IT was a fond boast with him that the first white women that ever 
 stood on the banks of the Kentucky River were his wife and daughter, 
 and that his axe cleft the first tree whose timbers laid the foundation 
 of a permanent settlement in the state. He had the genuine ambi- 
 tion of a pioneer, and the native taste for life in the woods embodied 
 in the foresters of Scott and the Leather-stocking of Cooper. He 
 possessed that restless impulse, the instinct of adventure, the 
 poetry of action. It has been justly said that " he was seldom taken 
 by surprise, never shrank from danger, nor cowered beneath ex- 
 posure and fatigue." So accurate were his woodland observations 
 and memory, that he recognized an ash tree which he had notched 
 twenty years before, to identify a locality, and proved the accuracy 
 of his designation by stripping off the new bark, and exposing the 
 marks of his axe beneath. His aim was so certain, that he could 
 
394 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 with ease bark a squirrel ; that is, bring down the animal, when on 
 the top of the loftiest tree, by knocking off the bark immediately 
 beneath, killing him by the concussion. . . . 
 
 We have followed his musing steps through the wide, umbrageous 
 solitudes he loved, and marked the contentment he experienced in a 
 *log hut, and by a camp-fire ; but over this attractive picture there 
 ever impended the shadow of peril, in the form of a stealthy and 
 cruel foe, the wolf, disease, and exposure to the elements. Enraged 
 at the invasion of their ancient hunting-grounds, the Indians hov- 
 ered near ; while asleep in the jungle, following the plough, or at his 
 frugal meal, the pioneer was liable to be shot down by an unseen 
 rifle, and surrounded by an ambush ; from the tranquil pursuits of 
 agriculture, at any moment, he might be summoned to the battle- 
 field, to rescue a neighbor's property, or defend a solitary outpost. 
 The senses became acute, the mind vigilant, and the tone of feeling 
 chivalric, under such discipline. That life has a peculiar dignity, 
 even in the midst of privation, and however devoid of refined cul- 
 ture, which is entirely self-independent both for sustainment and 
 protection. It has, too, a singular freshness and animation, the 
 more genial from being naturally inspired. Compare the spasmodic 
 efforts at hilarity, the forced speech and hackneyed expression of 
 the fashionable drawing-room, with the candid mirth and gallant 
 spirit born of the woodland and the chase, the powerful sinews 
 and well-braced nerves of the pioneer with the languid pulse of the 
 metropolitan exquisite, and -it seems as if the fountain of youth 
 still bubbled up in some deep recess of the forest. Philosophy, too, 
 as well as health, is attainable in the woods, as Shakespeare has 
 illustrated in As You Like It, and Boone by his example and habit- 
 ual sentiments. He said to his brother, when they had lived for 
 months in the yet unexplored wilds of Kentucky, " You see how 
 little human nature requires. It is in our own hearts, rather than in 
 the things around us, that we are to seek felicity. A man may be 
 happy in any state. It only needs a perfect resignation to the will of 
 Providence." It is remarkable that the two American characters 
 which chiefly interested Byron were Patrick Henry and Daniel 
 Boone the one for his gift of oratory, and the other for his phil- 
 osophical content, both so directly springing from the resources of 
 nature. . . 
 
 To one having but an inkling of this sympathy with nature, with a 
 nervous organization and an observant mind, there is, indeed, no 
 restorative of the frame, or sweet diversion to the mind, like a day 
 
JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY. 395 
 
 in the woods. The effect of roaming a treeless plain, or riding over 
 a Cultivated region, is entirely different. There is a certain tranquil- 
 lity and balm in the forest that heals and calms the fevered spirit, 
 and quickens the languid pulses of the weary and the disheartened 
 with the breath of hope. Its influence on the animal spirits is 
 remarkable ; and the senses, released from the din and monotonous' 
 limits of streets and houses, luxuriate in the breadth of vision, and 
 the rich variety of form, hue, and odor, which only scenes like these 
 afford. As we walk in the shadow of lofty trees, the repose and 
 awe of heart that breathe from a sacred temple gradually lull the 
 tide of care, and exalt despondency into worship. . . . 
 
 If such refreshment and inspiration are obtainable from a casual 
 and temporary visit to the woods, we may imagine the effect of a 
 lengthened sojourn in the primeval forest upon a nature alive to its 
 beauty, wildness, and solitude ; and when we add to these the zest 
 of adventure, the pride of discovery, and that feeling of sublimity 
 which arises from a consciousness of danger always impending, it is 
 easy to realize in the experience of a pioneer at once the most 
 romantic and practical elements of life. In American history, rich 
 as it is in this species of adventure, no individual is so attractive and 
 prominent as Daniel Boone. The singular union in his character of 
 benevolence and hardihood, bold activity, and a meditative disposi- 
 tion, the hazardous enterprises and narrow escapes recorded of him, 
 and the resolute tact he displayed in all emergencies, are materials 
 quite adequate to a thrilling narrative ; but when we add to the 
 external phases of interest that absolute passion for forest life which 
 distinguished him, and the identity of his name with the early 
 fortunes of the west, he seems to combine the essential features of 
 a genuine historical and thoroughly, individual character. 
 
 JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY. 
 
 John Lothrop Motley was born in Dorchester, Mass., April 15, 1814. He was graduated at 
 Harvard College in 1831, and then spent two years in German universities, and afterwards 
 some time in travel. On his return he studied law, and was admitted to the bar in Boston 
 (1836), but soon quitted the profession. In 1839 he published a novel, entitled Morton's 
 Hope. In 1840 he was appointed secretary of legation to the American embassy at St. 
 Petersburg, which place he held only for a short time. In 1849 he published a second his- 
 (orical novel, entitled Merry Mount, a Romance of the Massachusetts Colony. He con- 
 Jributed several admirable historical and critical papers to the reviews. Becoming interested 
 in the history of Holland, he commenced a work on the subject, and in 1851 went abroad to 
 gather fuller materials. He passed five years in the chief capitals of Europe in his re- 
 
396 
 
 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 searches, and in 1856 published, in London, The Rise of the Dutch Republic. This work 
 gave him an assured place among historians. It was reprinted in New York, and transla- 
 tions of it appeared in Holland, Germany, and France, the French translation being intro- 
 duced by Guizot. Mr. Motley visited this country in 1857, and was one of the company of 
 authors by whom the Atlantic Monthly was established. He commenced his studies for a 
 continuation of his history, but soon found that the necessary books and manuscripts must 
 be studied in Europe. Accordingly he returned and made the most thorough examination 
 of the collections of state papers at Brussels, including full copies from the Spanish archives 
 of Simancas, and an immense mass of English correspondence never before made public. 
 He continued his studies with equal success at Venice, Paris, and other places. The first part 
 of his work, The History of the United Netherlands, appeared in two volumes in 1861, and 
 the remaining part, in two volumes also, in 1868. The history of Holland during the period 
 treated by Mr. Motley is the history of European liberty. Every nation was in some way 
 concerned in the great struggle between Spain and the Netherlands. The characters of 
 Philip II., of his great minister, Cardinal Granvelle, of his sister, Margaret of Parma, and 
 of his great general, the infamous Duke of Alva, as well as the principles and policy of the 
 Spanish government, are painted in the strongest colors. English history also has a new 
 illumination from this work, and the reader will probably get a more vivid and accurate con- 
 ception of the vain and vacillating Queen Elizabeth, of the unprincipled Earl of Leicester, 
 of Lord Burghley, Walsingham, Drake, and other prominent persons of the period than can 
 be gained from any other source. Of famous Hollanders and Flemings the historian has 
 made a national portrait gallery. 
 
 The execution of the work is in keeping with the grandeur of the subject. The immense 
 mass of details which would fatally encumber an inferior writer are grouped with a view to 
 their collective effect ; and we are enabled to follow, as in a romance, the popular leaders 
 heroes and martyrs both in their long and desperate struggle against the intrigues of ec- 
 clesiastics, the brutality of a fanatical soldiery, and the selfish craft of kings. Motley is fond 
 of portraying scenes of magnificence, and of marshalling events in dramatic order. His 
 style of narration is vivid, but lacking in simplicity. His honorable sympathy with free 
 principles and his hatred of oppression and wrong tend to disturb the philosophic repose of 
 style, and his pages often show the tumult of feeling in the swollen torrents of words. He 
 makes a keen analysis of character, but there is a redundancy, or rather a repetition, 
 especially in the descriptions of William of Orange, and in the moral reflections occurring at 
 great crises, that is apt in the end to become tiresome. But in spite of minor faults his 
 history is nearer to being great than any yet written in this country. 
 
 Mr. Motley was appointed minister to Austria in November, 1866, and was recalled in 
 1867. He was minister to England from April, 1869, to November, 1870, when he was dis- 
 placed No American abroad has more steadfastly upheld the principles of democracy and 
 the honor of his country. 
 
 Mr. Motley is now residing at the Hague, occupying a house tendered to him by the 
 Queen of Holland. A continuation of his history is to be expected at no distant day. 
 
 [From The Rise of the Dutch Republic.] 
 
 THE ABDICATION OF CHARLES V. IN FAVOR OF HIS SON, PHILIP II., 
 AT BRUSSELS, August 27, 1556. 
 
 THE gay capital of Brabant of that province which rejoiced in 
 the liberal constitution known by the cheerful title of the "joyful 
 entrance" was worthy to be the scene of the imposing show. 
 Brussels had been a city for more than five centuries, and at that 
 
JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY. 39/ 
 
 day numbered about one hundred thousand inhabitants. Its walls, 
 six miles in circumference, were already two hundred years old. 
 Unlike most Netherland cities, lying usually upon extensive plains, 
 it was built along the sides of an abrupt promontory. A wide 
 expanse of living verdure, cultivated gardens, shady groves, fertile 
 cornfields, flowed round it like a sea. The foot of the town was 
 washed by the little river Senne, while the irregular but picturesque 
 streets rose up the steep sides of the hill like the semicircles and 
 stairways of an amphitheatre. Nearly in the heart of the place rose 
 che audacious and exquisitely embroidered tower of the town-house, 
 three hundred and sixty-six feet in height, a miracle of needlework in 
 atone, rivalling in its intricate carving the cobweb tracery of that 
 lace which has for centuries been synonymous with the city, and 
 rearing itself above the facade of profusely decorated and brocaded 
 architecture. The crest of the elevation was crowned by the towers 
 of the old ducal palace of Brabant, with its extensive and thickly- 
 wooded park on the left, and by the stately mansions of Orange, 
 Egmont, Aremberg, Culemburg, and other Flemish grandees, on 
 the right. The great forest of Soignies, dotted with monasteries 
 and convents, swarming with every variety of game, whither the 
 citizens made their summer pilgrimages, and where the nobles 
 chased the wild boar and the stag, extended to within a quarter of a 
 mile of the city walls. . . . 
 
 The hall was celebrated for its size, harmonious 'proportions, and 
 the richness of its decorations. It was the place where the chapters 
 of the famous order of the Golden Fleece were held. Its walls were 
 hung with a magnificent tapestry of Arras, representing the life and 
 achievements of Gideon, the Midianite, and giving particular prom- 
 inence to the miracle of the " fleece of wool," vouchsafed to that 
 renowned champion, the great patron of the Knights of the Fleece. 
 On the present occasion there were various additional embellish- 
 ments of flowers and votive garlands. At the western end a 
 spacious platform or stage, with six or seven steps, had been con- 
 structed, below which was a range of benches for the deputies of the 
 seventeen provinces. Upon the stage itself there were rows of 
 seats, covered with tapestry, upon the right hand and upon the left. 
 These were respectively to accommodate the knights of the order 
 and the guests of high distinction. In the rear of these were other 
 benches, for the members of the three great councils. In the centre 
 of the stage was a splendid canopy, decorated with the arms of 
 Burgundy, beneath which were placed three gilded arm-chairs. . . . 
 
HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 As the clock struck three, the hero of the scene appeared. Caesar, 
 as he was always designated in the classic language of the day, 
 entered, leaning on the shoulder of William of Orange. They 
 came from the chapel, and were immediately followed by Philip II. 
 and Queen Mary of Hungary. The Archduke Maximilian, the 
 Duke of Savoy, and other great personages, came afterwards, ac- 
 companied by a glittering throng of warriors, councillors, governors, 
 and Knights of the Fleece. . . . 
 
 All the company present had risen to their feet as the emperor 
 entered. By his command, all immediately afterwards resumed their 
 places. The benches at either end of the platform were accordingly 
 filled with the royal and princely personages invited, with the Fleece 
 Knights, wearing the insignia of their order, with the members of 
 the three great councils, and with the governors. The Emperor, the 
 King and the Queen of Hungary, were left conspicuous in the centre 
 of the scene. As the whole object of the ceremony was to present an 
 impressive exhibition, it is worth our while to examine minutely the 
 appearance of the two principal characters. 
 
 Charles V. was then fifty-five years and eight months old ; but he 
 was already decrepit with premature old age. He was of about the 
 middle height, and had been athletic and well proportioned. Broad 
 in the shoulders, deep in the chest, thin in the flank, very*muscular 
 in the arms and legs, he had been able to match himself with all 
 competitors in the tourney and the ring, and to vanquish the bull 
 with his own hand in the favorite national amusement of Spain. 
 He had been able in the field to do the duty of captain and soldier, 
 to endure fatigue and exposure, and every privation except fasting. 
 These personal advantages were now departed. Crippled in hands, 
 knees, and legs, he supported himself with difficulty upon a crutch, 
 with the aid of an attendant's shoulder. In face he had always been 
 extremely ugly, and time had certainly not improved his physiog- 
 nomy. His hair, once of a light color, was now white with age, 
 close-clipped and bristling ; his beard was gray, coarse, and shaggy. 
 His forehead was spacious and commanding ; the eye was dark-blue, 
 with an expression both majestic and benignant. His nose was 
 aquiline, but crooked. The lower part of his face was famous for its 
 deformity. The under lip, a Burgundian inheritance, as faithfully 
 transmitted as the duchy and county, was heavy and hanging ; the 
 lower jaw protruding so far beyond the upper, that it was impossible 
 for him to bring together the few fragments of teeth which still 
 remained, or to speak a whole sentence in an intelligible voice. 
 
JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY. 399 
 
 Eating and talking occupations to which he was always much 
 addicted were becoming daily more arduous, in consequence of 
 this original defect, which now seemed hardly human, but rather 
 an original deformity. 
 
 So much for the father. The son, Philip II., was a small, meagre 
 man, much below the middle height, wjth thin legs, a narrow chest, 
 and the shrinking, timid air of an habitual invalid. He seemed so 
 little, upon his first visit to his aunts, the Queens Eleanor and Mary, 
 accustomed to look upon proper men in Flanders and Germany, that 
 he was fain to win their favor by making certain attempts in the tour- 
 nament, in which his success was sufficiently problematical. . . . 
 
 In face, he was the living image of his father, having the same 
 broad forehead and blue eye, with the same aquiline, but better 
 proportioned, nose. In the lower part of the countenance, the 
 remarkable Burgundian deformity was likewise reproduced. He 
 had the same heavy, hanging lip, with a vast mouth, and monstrous- 
 ly protruding lower jaw. His complexion was fair, his hair light and 
 thin, his beard yellow, short, and pointed. He had the aspect of a 
 Fleming, but the loftiness of a Spaniard. His demeanor in public 
 was still, silent, almost sepulchral. He looked habitually on the 
 ground when he conversed, was chary of speech, embarrassed, and 
 even suffering in manner. This was ascribed partly to a natural 
 haughtiness which he had occasionally endeavored to overcome, and 
 partly to habitual pains in the stomach, occasioned by his inordinate 
 fondness for pastry. 
 
 Such was the personal appearance of the man who was about to 
 receive into his single hand the destinies of half the world ; whose 
 single will was, for the future, to shape the fortunes of every 
 individual then present, of many millions more in Europe, America, 
 and at the ends of the earth, and of countless millions yet unborn. 
 
 The three royal personages being seated upon chairs placed tri- 
 angularly under the canopy, such of the audience as had seats 
 provided for them, now took their places, and the proceedings com- 
 menced. Philibert de Bruxelles, a member of the privy council of 
 the Netherlands, arose at the emperor's command, and made a long 
 oration. He spoke of the emperor's warm affection for the provinces, 
 as the land of his birth ; of his deep regret that his broken health 
 and failing powers, both of body and mind, compelled him to resign 
 his sovereignty, and to seek relief for his shattered frame in a more 
 genial climate. . . . 
 
 After this long harangue, which has been fully reported by several 
 
400 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 historians who were present at the ceremonv, the councillor pro- 
 ceeded to read the deed of cession, by which Philip, already sove- 
 reign of Sicily, Naples, Milan, and titular King of England, France, 
 and Jerusalem, now received all the duchies, marquisates, earldoms, 
 baronies, cities, towns, and castles of the Burgundian property, in- 
 cluding, of course, the seventeen Netherlands. . . . 
 
 The emperor then rose to his feet. Leaning on his crutch, he 
 beckoned from his seat the personage upon whose arm he had 
 leaned as he entered the hall. A tall, handsome youth of twenty- 
 two came forward a man whose name from that time forward, and 
 as long as history shall endure, has been, and will be, more familiar 
 than any other in the mouths of Netherlanders. At that day he had 
 rather a southern than a German or Flemish appearance. He had 
 a Spanish cast of features, dark, well chiselled, and symmetrical. 
 His head was small and well placed upon his shoulders. His hair 
 was dark-brown, as were also his mustache and peaked beard. His 
 forehead was lofty, spacious, and already permanently engraved with 
 the anxious lines of thought. His eyes were full, brown, well opened, 
 and expressive of profound reflection. He was dressed in the mag- 
 nificent apparel for which the Netherlanders were celebrated above 
 all other nations, and which the ceremony rendered necessary. . . . 
 
 Thus supported on his crutch and upon the shoulder of William 
 of Orange, the emperor proceeded to address the states, by the aid 
 of a closely written brief which he held in his hand. He reviewed 
 rapidly the progress of events from his seventeenth year up to 
 that day. . . . 
 
 He sketched his various wars, victories, and treaties of peace, 
 assuring his hearers that the welfare of his subjects and the security 
 of the Roman Catholic religion had ever been the leading objects of 
 his life. As long as God had granted him health, he continued, 
 only enemies could have regretted that Charles was living and 
 reigning ; but now that his strength was but vanity, and life fast 
 ebbing away, his love for dominion, his affection for his subjects, 
 and his regard for their interests, required his departure. Instead 
 of a decrepit man, with one foot in the grave, he presented them with 
 a sovereign in the prime of life and the vigor of health. . . . 
 
 Posterity would applaud his abdication, should his son prove 
 worthy of his bounty ; and that could only be by living in the fear of 
 God, and by maintaining law, justice, and the Catholic religion in all 
 their purity, as the true foundation of the realm. In conclusion, he 
 entreated the estates, and through them the nation, to render obe- 
 
JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY. 4<DI 
 
 dience to. their new prince, to maintain concord, and to preserve 
 inviolate the Catholic faith ; begging them, at the same time, to 
 pardon him all errors or offences which he might have committed 
 towards them during his reign, and assuring them that he should 
 unceasingly remember their obedience and affection in his every 
 prayer to that Being to whom the remainder of his life was to be 
 dedicated. . . 
 
 Sobs were heard throughout every portion of the hall, and tears 
 flowed profusely from every eye. The Fleece Knights on the plat- 
 form and the burghers in the background were all melted with the 
 same emotion. As for the emperor himself, he sank almost faint- 
 ing on his chair as he concluded his address. An ashy paleness 
 overspread his countenance, and he wept like a child. Even the icy 
 Philip was almost softened, as he rose to perform his part in the 
 ceremony. Dropping upon his knees before his father's feet, he 
 reverently kissed his hand. 
 
 Charles placed his hands solemnly on his son's head, made the 
 sign of the cross, and blessed him in the name of the Holy Trinity. 
 Then raising him in his arms, he tenderly embraced him, saying, as 
 he did so, to the great potentates around him, that he felt a sincere 
 compassion for the son on whose shoulders so heavy a weight had 
 just devolved, and which only a life-long labor would enable him to 
 support. . . . 
 
 The orations and replies having now been brought to a close, the 
 ceremony was terminated. The emperor, leaning on the shoulders 
 of the Prince of Orange and of the Count de Buren, slowly left the 
 hall, followed by Philip, the Queen of Hungary, and the whole 
 court ; all in the same order in which they had entered, and by the 
 passage into the chapel. 
 
 It is obvious that the drama had been completely successful. It 
 had been a scene where heroic self-sacrifice, touching confidence, 
 ingenuous love of duty, patriotism, and paternal affection upon one 
 side, filial reverence, with a solemn regard for public duty and the 
 highest interests of the people on the other, were supposed to be 
 the predominant sentiments. The happiness of the Netherlands 
 was apparently the only object contemplated in the great transac- 
 tion. All had played well their parts in the past, all hoped the 
 best in the times which were to follow. The abdicating emperor was 
 looked upon as a hero and a prophet. The stage was drowned 
 in tears. . . . 
 
 And yet what was the Emperor Charles to the inhabitants of the 
 26 
 
4O2 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 Netherlands, that they should weep for him ? His conduct towards 
 them during his whole career had been one of unmitigated oppres- 
 sion. What to them were all these forty voyages by sea and land, 
 these journeyings back and forth from Friesland to Tunis, from 
 Madrid to Vienna ? What was it to them that the imperial shuttle 
 was thus industriously flying to and fro? The fabric wrought was 
 but the daily growing grandeur and splendor of his imperial house ; 
 the looms were kept moving at the expense of their hardly-earned 
 treasure, and the woof was often dyed red in the blood of his 
 bravest subjects. 
 
 RICHARD HENRY DANA, JR. 
 
 Richard Henry Dana, Jr. was born in Cambridge, Mass., August i, 1815, and was grad- 
 uated at Harvard College in 1837. In 1834, while in college, he suffered from an affection of 
 the eyes, and left his studies for a sea voyage. He shipped as a common sailor in a vessel 
 bound for California, then an unsettled country, and on his return published his expe- 
 riences in a book entitled Two Years before the Mast. This has had an enormous circula- 
 tion, both in England and America, for over thirty years, and is still almost as popular as 
 Robinson Crusoe. He was admitted to the bar in Boston in 1840, and has always held a 
 leading position among lawyers, especially in admiralty cases. He has been a leading mem- 
 ber of the Free-soil party, though he has never held any but local offices, except that he was 
 United States district attorney from 1861 to 1866. He is a member of the Protestant Epis- 
 copal church, and has taken a prominent part in the general conventions of that body. In 
 1859 he published a volume entitled To Cuba and Back. 
 
 [From Two Years before the Mast.] 
 AN ICEBERG. 
 
 SATURDAY, July 2. This day the sun rose fair, but it ran too low 
 in the heavens to give any heat, or thaw out our sails and rigging ; 
 yet the sight of it was pleasant, and we had a steady " reef-topsail 
 breeze " from the westward. The atmosphere, which had previously 
 been clear and cold, for the last few hours grew damp, and had a 
 disagreeable, wet chilliness in it ; and the man who came from the 
 wheel said he heard the captain tell " the passenger " that the ther- 
 mometer had fallen several degrees since morning, which he could 
 not account for in any other way than by supposing that there must 
 be ice near us, though such a thing was rarely heard of in this lati- 
 tude at this season of the year. At twelve o'clock we went below, 
 and had just got through dinner, when the cook put his head down 
 the scuttle and told us to come on deck and see the finest sight that 
 we had ever seen. " Where away, doctor ? " asked the first man 
 who was up. " On the larboard bow." And there lay, floating in 
 
RICHARD HENRY DANA, JR. 403 
 
 the ocean, several miles off, an immense, irregular mass, its top and 
 points covered with snow, and its centre of a deep indigo color. 
 This was an iceberg, and of the largest size, as one of our men said, 
 who had been in the Northern Ocean. As far as the eye could 
 reach, the sea in every direction was of a deep blue color, the waves 
 running high and fresh, and sparkling in the light ; and in the midst 
 lay this immense mountain-island, its cavities and valleys thrown 
 into deep shade, and its points and pinnacles glittering in the sun. 
 All hands were soon on deck, looking at it, and admiring, in various 
 ways, its beauty and grandeur. But no description can give any idea 
 of the strangeness, splendor, and really the sublimity of the sight. 
 Its great size, for it must have been from two to three miles in 
 circumference, and several hundred feet in height, its slow motion, 
 as its base rose and sank in the water, and its high points nodded 
 against the clouds ; the dashing of the waves upon it, which, break- 
 ing high with foam, lined its base with a white crust ; and the thun- 
 dering sound of the cracking of the mass, and the breaking and tum- 
 bling down of huge pieces, together with its nearness and approach, 
 which added to a slight element of fear, all combined to give to it 
 the character of true sublimity. The main body of the mass was, as 
 I have said, of an indigo color, its base crusted with foam, and, as it 
 grew thin and transparent towards the edges and top, its color shaded 
 off from a deep blue to the whiteness of snow. It seemed to be drift- 
 ing slowly towards the north, so that we kept away and avoided it, 
 It was in sight all the afternoon, and when we got to leeward of it 
 the wind died away, so that we lay to quite near it for a greater part 
 of the night. Unfortunately, there was no moon ; but it was a clear 
 night, and we could plainly mark the long, regular heaving of the 
 stupendous mass, as its edges moved slowly against the stars, now 
 revealing them, and now shutting them in. Several times in our 
 watch loud cracks were heard, which sounded as though * they must 
 have run through the whole length of the iceberg, and several pieces 
 fell down with a thundering crash, plunging heavjly into the sea. 
 Towards morning a strong breeze sprang up, and we filled away, and 
 left it astern, and at daylight it was out of sight. 
 
 A THUNDER-STORM. 
 
 SUNDAY, September 4. ... The first night after the trade 
 winds left us, while we were in the latitude of the Island of Cuba, we 
 had a specimen of a true tropical thunder-storm. A light breeze had 
 
404 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 been blowing from aft during the first part of the night, which grad- 
 ually died away, and before midnight it was dead calm, and a heavy 
 black cloud had shrouded the whole sky. When our watch came 
 on deck at twelve o'clock, it was as black as Erebus ; the studding- 
 sails were all taken in, and the royals furled ; not a breath was stir- 
 ring ; the sails hung heavy and motionless from the yards, and the 
 stillness and the darkness, which was almost palpable, were truly 
 appalling. Not a word was spoken, but every one stood as though 
 waiting for something to happen. In a few minutes the mate came 
 forward, and in a low tone, which was almost a whisper, told us to 
 haul down the jib. The fore and mizzen top-gallant sails were taken 
 in in the same silent manner, and we lay motionless upon the water, 
 with an uneasy expectation, which, from the long suspense, became 
 actually painful. We could hear the captain walking the deck, but 
 it was too dark to see anything more than one's hand before the 
 face. Soon the mate came forward again, and gave an order, in a 
 low tone, to clew up the main top-gallant sail ; and so infectious were 
 the awe and silence that the clew-lines and bunt-lines were hauled 
 up without any singing out at the ropes. An English lad and myself 
 went up to furl it, and we had just got the bunt up, when the mate 
 called out to us something, we did not hear what ; but, supposing it 
 to be an order to bear-a-hand, we hurried and made all fast, and 
 came down, feeling our way among the rigging. When we got down 
 we found all hands looking aloft, and there, directly over where we 
 had been standing, upon the main top-gallant mast-head, was a ball 
 of light, which the sailors call a corposant (corpo sqnto), and which 
 the mate had called out to us to look at. They were all watching it 
 carefully, for sailors have a notion that if the corposant rises in the 
 rigging it is a sign of fair weather, but if it comes lower down there 
 will be a storm. Unfortunately, as an omen, it came down, and 
 showed itself on the top-gallant yard-arm. We were off the yard in 
 good season, for it is held a fatal sign to have the pale light of the 
 corposant thrown upon one's face. As it was, the English' lad did 
 not feel comfortably at having had it so near him, and directly over 
 his head. In a few minutes it disappeared, and showed itself again 
 on the fore top-gallant yard, and, after playing about for some time, 
 disappeared once more, when the man on the forecastle pointed to it 
 upon the flying-jib-boom end. But our attention was drawn from 
 watching this by the falling of some drops of rain, and by a percep- 
 tible increase of the darkness, which seemed suddenly to add a new 
 shade of blackness to the night. In a few minutes, low, grumbling 
 
RICHARD HENRY DANA, JR. 405 
 
 thunder was heard, and some random flashes of lightning came 
 from the south-west. Every sail was taken in but the topsails ; 
 still, no squall appeared to be coming. A few puffs lifted the 
 topsails, but they fell again to the mast, and all was as still as 
 ever. A moment more, and a terrific flash and peal broke simul- 
 taneously upon us, and a cloud appeared to open directly over 
 our heads, and let down the water in one body, like a falling 
 ocean. We stood motionless, and almost stupefied ; yet nothing 
 had been struck. Peal after peal rattled over our heads, with a 
 sound which seemed actually to stop the breath in the body, and 
 the " speedy gleams " kept the whole ocean in a glare of light. 
 The violent fall of rain lasted but a few minutes, and was followed 
 by occasional drops and showers ; but the lightning continued 
 incessant for several hours, breaking the midnight darkness with 
 irregular and blinding flashes. During all this time there was 
 not a breath stirring, and we lay motionless, like a mark to be 
 shot at, probably the only object on the surface of the ocean for 
 miles and miles. We stood hour after hour, until our watch was 
 out, and we were relieved, at four o'clock. During all this time 
 hardly a word was spoken, no bells were struck, and the wheel 
 was silently relieved. The rain fell at intervals in heavy showers, 
 and we stood drenched through and blinded by the flashes, which 
 broke the Egyptian darkness with a brightness that seemed almost 
 malignant ; while the thunder rolled in peals, the concussion of 
 which appeared to shake the very ocean. A ship is not often 
 injured by lightning, for the electricity is separated by the great 
 number of points she presents, and the quantity of iron which she 
 has scattered in various parts. The electric fluid ran over our 
 anchors, topsail sheets, and ties, yet no harm was done to us. We 
 went below at four o'clock, leaving things in the same state. It is 
 not easy to sleep when the very next flash may tear the ship in two 
 or set her on fire, or where the death-like calm may be broken by 
 the blast of a hurricane, taking the masts out of the ship. But a 
 man is no sailor if he cannot sleep when he turns in, and turn out 
 when he's called. And when, at seven bells, the customary " All 
 the larboard watch, ahoy ! " brought us on deck, it was a fine, 
 clear, sunny morning, the ship going leisurely along, with a soft 
 breeze and all sail set. 
 
406 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 JOHN GODFREY SAXE. 
 
 John Godfrey Saxe was born at Highgate, Vt., June 2, 1816, and was graduated at Mid- 
 dlebury College in 1839. He studied law, and, after his admission to the bar in 1843, re- 
 mained in practice till 1850, when he removed to Burlington, where for five years he was 
 editor of the Sentinel. At that time he withdrew from his profession, and devoted himself 
 to lecturing and authorship. He is at present editor of the Evening Journal, at Albany, 
 N. Y. His first volume, entitled Progress, a Satire, and Other Poems, was published in 
 1846 ; The New Rape of the Lock and The Proud Miss McBride in 1848. An enlarged edi- 
 tion of his poems appeared in 1852 ; The Money King and Other Poems in 1859 Clever 
 Stories of Many Nations, with comic illustrations, in 1863; a cabinet edition of his poetical 
 works in 1864 ; and Masquerade in 1866. 
 
 Mr. Saxe writes with facility, is intent mainly on jests and epigrams, and amuses himself 
 and his readers by clever hits at the fashions and follies of the time. His good-natured 
 satire does not cleave to the depths, nor is his humor of that quality which reaches to the 
 sources of feeling, and which gives us the surprises of an April day. But he is level with 
 the popular apprehension, and has made his name more familiarly known, in all parts of the 
 country, than that of any of our comic versifiers. 
 
 [From Progress : a Satire.] 
 
 NOR less, O Progress, are thy newest rules 
 
 Enforced and honored in the " Ladies' Schools," 
 
 Where Education, in its nobler sense, 
 
 Gives place to Learning's shallowest pretence ; 
 
 Where hapless maids, in spite of wish or taste, 
 
 On vain " accomplishments " their moments waste ; 
 
 By cruel parents here condemned to wrench 
 
 Their tender throats in mispronouncing French ; 
 
 Here doomed to force, by unrelenting knocks, 
 
 Reluctant music from a tortured box ; 
 
 Here taught, in inky shades and rigid lines, 
 
 To perpetrate equivocal " designs ; " 
 
 " Drawings " that prove their title plainly true, 
 
 By showing nature " drawn " and " quartered " too ! 
 
 In ancient times, I've heard my grandam tell, 
 
 Young maids were taught to read, and write, and spell ; 
 
 (Neglected arts ! once learned by rigid rules, 
 
 As prime essentials in the common schools " ;) 
 
 Well taught beside in many a useful art 
 
 To mend the manners and improve the heart ; 
 
 Nor yet unskilled to turn the busy wheel, 
 
 To ply the shuttle, and to twirl the reel ; 
 
 Could thrifty tasks with cheerful grace pursue, 
 
 Themselves " accomplished," and their duties too. 
 
JOHN GODFREY SAXE. 407 
 
 Of tongues, each maiden had but one, 'tis said 
 
 (Enough, 'twas thought, to serve a lady's head), 
 
 But that was English great and glorious tongue, 
 
 That Chatham spoke, and Milton, Shakespeare, sung ! 
 
 Let thoughts too idle to be fitly dressed 
 
 In sturdy Saxon, be in French expressed ; 
 
 Let lovers breathe Italian like, in sooth, 
 
 Its singers, soft, emasculate, and smooth ; 
 
 But for a tongue whose ample powers embrace 
 
 Beauty and force, sublimity and grace, 
 
 Ornate or plain, harmonious, yet strong, 
 
 And formed alike for eloquence and song, 
 
 Give me the English aptest tongue to paint 
 
 A sage or dunce, a villain or a saint, 
 
 To spur the slothful, counsel the distressed, 
 
 To lash the oppressor, and to soothe the oppressed, 
 
 To lend fantastic Humor freest scope 
 
 To marshal all his laughter-moving troop, 
 
 Give Pathos power, and Fancy lightest wings, 
 
 And Wit his merriest whims and keenest stings ! 
 
 MY FAMILIAR. 
 
 Ecce iierunt Crispinus I 
 
 I. 
 
 AGAIN I hear that creaking step 
 
 He's rapping at the door ! 
 Too well I know the boding sound 
 
 That ushers in a bore. 
 I do not tremble when I meet 
 
 The stoutest of my foes, 
 But Heaven defend me from the friend 
 
 Who comes but never goes ! 
 
 n. 
 He drops into my easy-chair, 
 
 And asks about the news ; 
 He peers into my manuscript, 
 
 And gives his candid views ; 
 He tells me where he likes the line, 
 
 And where he's forced to grieve ; 
 
408 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 He takes the strangest liberties 
 But never takes his leave ! 
 
 in. 
 He reads my daily paper through 
 
 Before I've seen a word ; 
 He scans the lyric (that I wrote), 
 
 And thinks it quite absurd ; 
 He calmly smokes my last cigar, 
 
 And calmly asks for more ; 
 He opens everything he sees 
 
 Except the entry door ! 
 
 IV. 
 
 He talks about his fragile health, 
 
 And tells me of the pains 
 He suffers from a score of ills 
 
 Of which he ne'er complains ; 
 And how he struggled once with death 
 
 To keep the fiend at bay ; 
 On themes like those away he goes 
 
 But never goes away ! 
 
 v. 
 
 He tells me of the carping words 
 
 Some shallow critic wrote, 
 And every precious paragraph 
 
 Familiarly can quote ; 
 He thinks the writer did me wrong ; 
 
 He'd like to run him through ! 
 He says a thousand pleasant things 
 
 But never says, "Adieu!" 
 
 VI. 
 
 Whene'er he comes that dreadful man 
 
 Disguise it as I may, 
 I know that, like an autumn rain, 
 
 He'll last throughout the day. 
 In vain I speak of urgent tasks, 
 
 In vain I scowl and pout; 
 A frown is no extinguisher 
 
 It does not put him out ! 
 
PARKE GODWIN. 409 
 
 VII. 
 
 I mean to take the knocker off, 
 
 Put crape upon the door, 
 Or hint to John that I am gone 
 
 To stay a month or more. 
 I do not tremble when I meet 
 
 The stoutest of my foes, 
 But Heaven defend me from, the friend 
 
 Who never, never goes ! 
 
 PARKE GODWIN. 
 
 Parke Godwin was born in Paterson, N. J., February 25, 1816. He was graduated at 
 Princeton College in 1834, and studied law in his native town, but did not practise the 
 profession. He married a daughter of the poet Bryant, and has been almost constantly 
 associated with his father-in-law in conducting the Evening Post, of New York. In 1843 
 he commenced the issue of a weekly periodical, entitled The Pathfinder, in which he dis- 
 played great ability ; but the enterprise came to an end in three months on account of the 
 failure of the publisher. He has been a frequent contributor to the Democratic Review, 
 was for some time editor of Putnam's Monthly, and was the author of many of the able 
 political articles that appeared in the early numbers of the Atlantic Monthly. He has 
 translated the tales of Zschokke, and a part of Goethe's Autobiography. He is the author 
 of a Popular View of the Doctrines of Fourier, Constructive Democracy, and Vala (founded 
 on incidents in the life of Jenny Lind). He commenced a History of France, of which the 
 first volume appeared in 1860. A collection of his Political Essays was printed in 1856, and 
 a series of critical and literary papers, entitled Out of the Past, in 1870. 
 
 Mr. Godwin has been an earnest and successful essayist, and has done much to guide 
 public opinion in the weighty affairs of government. He is always clear in argument, and 
 commands the thoughtful attention and respect of his readers. It is to be hoped that his 
 History will yet be completed. 
 
 [From Out of the Past.] 
 AMERICAN AUTHORSHIP. 
 
 THE records of literary adventure have produced the impression, 
 the world over, that authors are a peculiar and exceptional class, 
 shiftless, seedy, and improvident, who, unable to live by any of the 
 recognized methods of society, have betaken themselves to the ex- 
 pedient of living by their wits. It is understood that they reside, 
 when they reside anywhere, in some vacant corner of a garret ; that 
 they pass their days in lurking out of the way of bailiffs and land- 
 ladies ; and that, after leading lives of vicissitude, poverty, neglect, 
 and sorrow, when they come to die they revenge their long quarrel 
 
4IO HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 with mankind by bequeathing to it certain inestimable treasures of 
 poetry, wit, or thought, over which it will gloat and glow forever. 
 
 Who cannot recall a multitude of disquisitions written on the 
 hapless lot of the poet who " learned by suffering what he taught in 
 song " ? How often have literary men themselves bewailed the cruel 
 injustice of society to their order ! What sighs have we not exhaled, 
 what tears not wept, over the pitiful stories of misconceived and un- 
 rewarded genius ! The sad experiences of Savage, the miserable 
 death of Otway, the more miserable death of Chatterton, " the sleep- 
 less boy who perished in his pride," the miscarriages of Burns, the 
 indigence of Coleridge, the protracted struggles of Hook and Hood, 
 the suicide of Blanchard, and a thousand other mournful histories, 
 are still fresh in all our memories. Have not " the calamities of 
 authors," indeed, furnished the indefatigable Disraeli with the ma- 
 terials for a volume ? Or is there any possibility of our forgetting 
 those lines of Moore, how 
 
 " Bailiffs will seize his last blanket to-day, 
 Whose pall shall be held up by nobles to-morrow " ? 
 
 Schiller, in a pretty fable, represents Jupiter as dividing all the 
 wealth of the world among the different classes of his creatures. To 
 the kings he gives taxes and tolls, to the farmers lands, to the mer- 
 chants trade, and to the abbots and monks most excellent wine ; but 
 after having disposed of all his worldly possessions, he espies a 
 poet wandering away from the rest, destitute, shabby, and forlorn. 
 " What ho ! my good fellow," exclaims the father of men ; " where 
 wert thou when the general distribution was going fomvard ?" The 
 bard modestly replied, " Mine eyes were drunk with the glory of 
 thy coming, and mine ears filled with the harmonies of thy heaven ! " 
 When the monarch of the gods, apparently no less open to delicate 
 flattery than any mortal, rejoined, " Well, it's a sad case, my boy ! 
 I have nothing left on earth to give you ; but, as a compensation, you 
 shall have, after death, the topmost step of my throne in the skies." 
 The poet was doubtless pleased, and went away ; and ever since it 
 is said that this has been the principal inheritance of his tribe. . . . 
 
 It should be admitted, in behalf of literary men, to explain and 
 excuse, if not to justify their complaints, that with most of them the 
 difficulty is not so much the insufficiency of their incomes as the 
 liberality of their outgoes. A thousand peculiar temptations, spring- 
 ing partly from those mental susceptibilities which difference them 
 from others, and partly from their social aptitudes, beset them to 
 
PARKE GODWIN. 411 
 
 spend more than they make. The very qualities which form their 
 greatest glory are those often which lead them into the deepest 
 humiliations. If they were as hard, as unimaginative, as careful of 
 the main chance, as the cotton spinner or the merchant, they would 
 grow rich, like the cotton spinner or the merchant but they 
 are not so constructed. The delicacy of organization, out of which 
 literature comes, renders them keenly sensitive also to the pressures 
 and discomforts of existence, to the sands which grit between the 
 shell of their outward condition and the fleshy fibres. Yearning, then, 
 to bring their surroundings into a better correspondence with their 
 tastes, their perpetual tendency is to gather costly appliances and 
 comforts about them, and to shut out actual existence by one of 
 ideal refinement. Again, with superior powers to entertain, or an 
 elevated fame to render their acquaintance a distinction, authors are 
 more sought for than others by general society, where, whether they 
 contract nice or dissipated habits, they equally expose themselves to 
 expense. It is impossible to keep up a varied and generous inter- 
 course without falling into more or less extravagance ; and genius, 
 with its irritable fancies and impetuous impulses, is least of all likely 
 to resist the allurements of luxurious living, or to temper the seduc- 
 tions of taste with the cold discipline of judgment : not that genius 
 is ever destitute of judgment, for subtile, strong, unerring judg- 
 ment is its very essence, but then its judgment is theoretic judg- 
 ment, which is displayed in the creation and providence of a great 
 drama or poem, and not the practical judgment which controls every- 
 day affairs. It is not the judgment that keeps one from running into 
 prodigality, or, for want of an appropriate and ample nourishment, 
 from resort to questionable indulgences. Ah ! then the clouds 
 darken about it, the present grows comfortless and the future mina- 
 tory, and poor genius, losing its freshness and glow, is genius no 
 more. It utters its wail into the uncaring universe like one who 
 falls, at midnight, from some on-rushing steamship, and, hearing no 
 reply but the splash of his own sinking, goes down into the unyield- 
 ing depths ! But is the world to blame for such miscarriages ? Is 
 the literary profession, as a practical pursuit, to blame ? Is such a 
 lot worse, in its external liabilities, than that of other men ? and 
 would not the chimney-sweep or the lawyer, who should forget the 
 actual conditions of social existence to indulge in dreams and ideal- 
 izations, fail as signally as the author ? 
 
412 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 ROBERT TRAILL SPENCE LOWELL. 
 
 Robert Traill Spence Lowell was born in Boston, October 9, 1816, and was graduated at 
 Harvard College in 1833. He studied theology, was ordained as a clergyman of the Church 
 of England in 1842, and was chaplain to the Bishop of Newfoundland and Jamaica. He 
 was subsequently settled as rector of Bay Robert, in Newfoundland, which is the scene of 
 his novel, The New Priest in Conception Bay. He returned to the United States in 1858, 
 and was settled first at Newark, N. J., and afterwards at Duanesburg, N. Y. He is now 
 head master of St. Mark's School, at Southborough, Mass. 
 
 His novel was published in Boston in 1858, and, though not greatly successful with the 
 public, it impressed all cultivated readers by its exquisite pictures of scenery, its rare and 
 life like portraiture of character, and its pure and elevated tone. The story is not managed 
 with art ; the dialogue is often prolix, and the interest drags. Many of its situations, how- 
 ever, are well conceived ; and the final scene, in which the people rush' from the little parish 
 church to look for a man lost in the lonely fields of snow, is painted in a masterly way. It 
 is a book that only a poet and a man of genius could have written. A new edition of this 
 novel, illustrated by Darley, appeared in 1863. 
 
 Mr. Lowell also printed, in 1860, a volume of Poems, entitled Fresh Hearts that Failed 
 Three Thousand Years Ago. They have considerable merit. One of them, The Brave 
 Old Ship, the Orient, is a powerful and elaborately painted picture. The irregular metre 
 and want of melody are likely to repel the reader, but its descriptions are full of sombre 
 magnificence, and leave a lasting impression. 
 
 [From The New Priest in Conception Bay.] 
 A SCENE FOR A PAINTER. 
 
 WITH a fine breeze in from the eastward, and the bright sun shin- 
 ing from half way down the sky, the waters came in glad crowds up 
 the harbor, and ran races along the cliffs. Here and 'there a little 
 in-coming sail was rising and falling smoothly and silently, as the 
 loaded punt floated before the wind. 
 
 The scene, to a sympathetic eye, was a pretty one, of home life ; 
 but the prettiest part of it was on the water-edge of Whitmonday 
 Hill. At the upper end of it (speaking harbor-wise, and meaning 
 towards the inner part of the harbor) stood a little stage, a rude 
 house for heading, and splitting, and salting fish, whose open 
 doorway showed an inviting shade, of which the moral effect was 
 heightened by the sylvan nature of the house itself, made up as it 
 was of boughs of fir, though withered and red. A fisherman and his 
 wife had just taken in the catch of fish from a punt at the stage's 
 ladder, and a pretty girl, of some seventeen years, was towing the 
 unloaded boat along beside the hill, by a rope laid over her shoulder, 
 while a little thing of four or five years old, on board, was tugging 
 with an oar at the stem, to keep the boat's head off shore. 
 
 The older girl was one whose beauty is not of any classic kind, 
 and yet is beauty, being of a young life, healthy and strong, but 
 quiet and deep, to which features and form give thorough expression 
 and obedience. She had a swelling, springy shape, dark, glancing 
 
ROBERT TRAILL SPENCE LOWELL. 413 
 
 eyes, cheeks glowing with quick blood (the figure, and glance, and 
 glowing cheek all at their best with exercise), while masses of jetty 
 hair were lifted and let fall by the wind from below the cap, which 
 she wore like all girls in her country. Her dress was different 
 from the common only in the tastefulness that belongs to such a 
 person, and had now a grace more than ever, as it waved and 
 fluttered in the wind, and partook of the life of the wearer. She 
 wore a frock of dark blue, caught up a little in front, and show- 
 ing a white woollen petticoat ; a kerchief of pretty colors was tied 
 very becomingly over her bosom, and a bright red ribbon, along 
 the front of her cap, lay among her black hair. Her shoes and 
 stockings were rolled up in her apron, while her blue-veined feet 
 not large nor small, but smooth and well shaped clung to the 
 uneven surfaces of the rocks, and strained upon them, as she 
 walked against the wind, and sprang from one rock to another ; 
 and they dipped now and then in the water, as the little waves 
 splashed up. Over all, both face and figure, was a grace of inno- 
 cent, modest "maidenhood. 
 
 Nothing could be prettier or more picturesque than this little 
 group. The elder girl, who dragged the boat, skirted the edge of the 
 water with the lightness of one of those little beach birds, that, with 
 a shadow and a reflection in the moist sand running along beside it, 
 alternately follows and retreats from the retreating and advancing 
 waves, and the little navigator, towards whom her sister continually 
 turned, had her plump little legs, in their wrinkled yarn stockings, 
 and her well-shod feet set apart to keep her balance, while her head 
 was tightly covered in a white cap, and a kerchief, with a silk fringe, 
 went round her neck and down the back of her serge gown ; so 
 that one could not but smile at her and her work. At intervals 
 she prattled, and for longer intervals she worked with all earnest 
 gravity in silence. . . . 
 
 Splash ! went the water against the bow, spattering everything, 
 and, among other things, the little white-capped head, and silk ker- 
 chief, and serge gown of the sculler at the stern. Anon a wave 
 came up from beneath the keel, and, thrusting a sudden shoulder 
 under the blade of her oar, would lift it up out of the scull-hole 
 in spite of her, and be off. Then she would grasp her weapon 
 womanfully, and get it under her arm, and lay it laboriously into 
 its place again. In England one may see the father's horse going 
 to stable with a young child on its back, and another walking 
 beside. Here, they were taking the punt to a snug place, where 
 she was to be hauled up for the night. 
 
4H HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 HENRY DAVID THOREAU. 
 
 Henry David Thoreau was born in Boston, July 12, 1817, and was graduated at Harvard 
 College in 1837. His father was a maker of lead pencils at Concord, and the son followed the 
 business for a while, but when he had succeeded in making a perfect pencil he would make 
 no more. He supported himself by surveying, teaching school, carpentering, and other 
 work. Living in the neighborhood of Emerson, he early felt the intellectual influence of 
 that great man ; he studied classical and English literature in its best sources, and gave 
 much time to the poetry and philosophy of the East. He wrote somewhat in the style of 
 Emerson, though he was unconscious, as were his family, that he was an imitator. To a 
 psrson who had remarked the resemblance, Mrs. Thoreau, the author's mother, once said, 
 "Yes, Mr. Emerson's style is like my son's." Thoreau was early out of patience with 
 society and all its burdens. He remained single ; he never attended church, never voted, 
 and never paid a tax. The town constable once attempted to collect a poll-tax of him, and 
 took him to jail ; but after a short imprisonment he was set at liberty. It was as fruitless a 
 proceeding as it would have been to levy a tax upon one of the author's beloved wood- 
 chucks. In 1845 he thought to make his separation from the world complete, and built for 
 himself a wooden house or shanty on the shore of Walden Pond, near Concord, where he 
 lived for several years. In his account of his life he gives the details of his expenses, and it 
 appears that the materials of his house cost him $28.125. His crop of beans and other 
 vegetables, the first year, were valued at $23.44, anc * the outgoes were $14.725. The cost of 
 groceries for eight months was $8.74, and for clothing $8.40. Total expenses for the 
 year $6 1. 99 5. 
 
 The amount necessary to sustain life is shown to be very small, and the example of this 
 recluse has a certain value in view of the general extravagant habits of our people. But, 
 looked at soberly, this was the experiment of a selfish misanthrope, the freak of a literary 
 barbarian. To withdraw from human fellowship for a time gives a healthy stimulus to the 
 mind ; but ho man can or ought to repudiate utterly the obligations he owes to the world. 
 As Lowell says, "The tub of Diogenes had a sounder bottom. He squatted on another 
 man's land ; he borrows an axe ; his boards, his nails, his bricks, his mortar, his books, his 
 lamp, his fish-hooks, his plough, his hoe, all turn state's evidence against him as an ac- 
 complice in the sin of that artificial civilization which rendered it possible that such a person 
 as Henry D. Thoreau should exist at all. " 
 
 Whatever we may think of the eccentric man and his philosophy of living, we acknowledge 
 a great debt to him for his fresh and delightful books. From the unpromising natural 
 features of Concord, he has drawn for us the most beautiful views, and has given us the daily 
 studies of a devotee of Nature, in the annual procession of flowers and plants, in the habits 
 of the lesser animals, and of the singing birds. The reader will look in vain elsewhere for 
 such faithful, affectionate sketches. His descriptive powers are of the highest order, and his 
 sentences appear to have been as carefully set as gems. His taste in literature was cul- 
 tivated, and his quotations, especially from Oriental sources, are always apposite. But the 
 reader does not perceive anywhere the warmth of the author's sympathy, unless it is for the 
 four-footed hermits, his neighbors. Not that he actually hated mankind, but he was not 
 concerned in their affairs, and regarded their labor, worship, and love as being of no more 
 vital moment than the nest-building, pairing, and morning song of the birds. 
 
 Hawthorne has mentioned hiirf in terms of affectionate regard, and says, "Whilst he used 
 in his writings a certain petulance of remark about churches and churchmen, he was a person 
 of rare, tender, and absolute religion a person incapable of any profanation. " He died 
 at Concord, May 6, 1862. Mr. Emerson published an account of him in the Atlantic 
 Monthly shortly after his death. 
 
 His works are, A Week on Concord and Merrimack Rivers (1849), Walden, or Life in 
 the Woods (1854), Excursions (1863), Maine Woods, Cape Cod, A Yankee in Canada, 
 Letters to Various Persons (1865). Boston, J. R. O?good & Co. 
 
HENRY DAVID THOREAU. 415 
 
 [From Walden.] 
 THE BEAN FIELD. 
 
 As I drew a still fresher soil about the rows with my hoe, I dis- 
 turbed the ashes of unchronicled nations who in primeval years lived 
 under these heavens, and their small implements of war and hunting 
 were brought to the light of this modern day. They lay mingled with 
 other natural stones, some of which bore the marks of having been 
 burned by Indian fires, and some by the sun, and also bits of pottery 
 and glass brought hither by the recent cultivators of the soil. When 
 my hoe tinkled against the stones, that music echoed to the woods 
 and the sky, and was an accompaniment to my labor which yielded 
 an instant and immeasurable crop. It was no longer beans that I 
 hoed, nor I that hoed beans ; and I remembered with as much pity 
 as pride, if I remembered at all, my acquaintances who had gone to 
 the city to attend the oratorios. The night-hawk circled overhead 
 in the sunny afternoons for I sometimes made a day of it like a 
 mote in the eye, or in heaven's eye, falling from time to time with a 
 swoop and a sound as if the heavens were rent, torn at last to very 
 rags and tatters, and yet a seamless cope remained ; small imps 
 that fill the air and lay their eggs on the ground, on bare sand or 
 rocks on the tops of hills, where few have found them ; graceful and 
 slender like ripples caught up from the pond, as leaves are raised by 
 the wind to float in the heavens such kindredship is in Nature. 
 The hawk is aerial brother of the wave which he sails over and 
 surveys, those his perfect air-inflated wings answering to the ele- 
 mental unfledged pinions of the sea. Or sometimes I watched a 
 pair of hen-hawks circling high in the sky, alternately soaring and 
 descending, approaching and leaving one another, as if they were 
 the imbodiment of my own thoughts. Or I was attracted by the 
 passage of wild pigeons from this wood to that, with a slight quiver- 
 ing, winnowing sound and carrier haste ; or from under a rotten 
 stump my hoe turned up a sluggish portentous and outlandish 
 spotted salamander, a trace of Egypt and the Nile, yet our contem- 
 porary. When I paused to lean on my hoe, these sounds and 
 sights I heard and saw anywhere in the row, a part of the inex- 
 haustible entertainment which the country offers. . . . 
 
 BERRIES. 
 
 Sometimes, having had a surfeit of human society and gossip, and 
 worn out all my village friends, I rambled still farther westward 
 
416 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 than I habitually dwell, into yet more unfrequented parts of the 
 town, or, while the sun was setting, made my supper of huckle- 
 berries and blueberries on Fair Haven Hill, and laid up a store for 
 several days. The fruits do not yield their true flavor to the 
 purchaser of them, nor to him who raises them for the market. 
 There is but one way to obtain it, yet few take that way. If you 
 would know the flavor of huckleberries, ask the cow-boy or the 
 partridge. It is a vulgar error to suppose that you have tasted 
 huckleberries who never plucked them. A huckleberry never reaches 
 Boston ; they have not been known there since they grew on her 
 three hills. The ambrosial and essential part of the fruit is lost with 
 the bloom which is rubbed off in the market cart, and they become 
 mere provender. As long as eternal justice reigns, not one in- 
 nocent huckleberry can be transported thither from the country's 
 hills. . . . 
 
 THE POND. 
 
 The shore is irregular enough not to be monotonous. I have in 
 my mind's eye the western indented with deep bays, the bolder 
 northern, and the beautifully scolloped southern shore, where suc- 
 cessive capes overlap each other and suggest unexplored coves 
 between. The forest has never so good a setting, nor is so distinct- 
 ly beautiful, as when seen from the middle of a small lake amid hills 
 which rise from the water's edge ; for the water in which it is re- 
 flected not only makes the best foreground in such a case, but, with 
 its winding shore, the rrost natural and agreeable boundary to it. 
 There is no rawness nor imperfection in its edge iheie, as where the 
 axe has cleared a part, or a cultivated f .eld abuts on it. T/ie trees 
 have ample room to expand on the water side, and each sends forth 
 its most vigorous branch in that direction. There Nature has 
 woven a natural selvage, and the eye rises by just gradations from 
 the low shrubs of the shore to the highest trees. There are few 
 traces of man's hand to be seen. The water laves the shore as it 
 did a thousand years ago. . . . 
 
 In such a day, in September or October, Walden is a perfect 
 forest mirror, set round with stones as precious to my eye as if 
 fewer or rarer. Nothing so fair, so pure, and at the same time so 
 large, as a lake, perchance, lies on the surface of the earth. Sky 
 water. It needs no fence. Nations come and go without defiling it. 
 It is a mirror which no stone can crack, whose quicksilver will never 
 wear off, whose gilding Nature continually repairs ; no storms, no 
 
JAMES THOMAS FIELDS. 41 / 
 
 dust, can dim its surface ever fresh ; a mirror in which all im- 
 purity presented to it sinks, swept and dusted by the sun's hazy 
 brush, this the light dust-cloth, which retains no breath that is 
 breathed upon it, but sends its own to float as clouds high above its 
 surface, and be reflected in its bosom still. 
 
 A field of water betrays the spirit that is in the air. It is con- 
 tinually receiving new life and motion from above. It is inter- 
 mediate in its nature between land and sky. On land only the 
 grass and trees wave, but the water itself is rippled by the wind. L 
 see where the breeze dashes across it by the streaks or flakes of 
 light. It is remarkable that we can look down on its surface. We 
 shall, perhaps, look down thus on the surface of air at length, and 
 mark where a still subtler spirit sweeps over it. ... 
 
 Already, by the first of September, I had seen two or three small 
 maples turned scarlet across the pond, beneath where the white 
 stems of three aspens diverged at the point of a promontory, next 
 the water. Ah ! many a tale their color told ! And gradually from 
 week to week the character of each tree came out, and it admired 
 itself reflected in the smooth mirror of the lake. Each morning the 
 manager of this gallery substituted some new picture, distinguished 
 by more brilliant or harmonious coloring, for the old upon the 
 walls. . . . 
 
 Like the wasps, before I finally went into winter quarters in 
 November, I used to resort to the north-east side of Walden, which 
 the sun, reflected from the pitch-pine woods and the stony shore, 
 made the fireside of the pond ; it is so much pleasanter and whole- 
 somer to be warmed by the sun while you can be, than by an artificial 
 fire. I thus warmed myself by the still glowing embers which the 
 summer, like a departed hunter, had left. 
 
 JAMES THOMAS FIELDS. 
 
 James Thomas Fields was born in Portsmouth, N. H., December 31, 1817, and received 
 his education in the public schools of that town. He came to Boston, engaged in the busi- 
 ness of bookselling, and afterwards became a partner in the house of Ticknor & Fields, 
 honorably known wherever the best books are read. He delivered a poem before the 
 Mercantile Library Association in 1839, and has ever since devoted himself to literature 
 with as much assiduity as to book-making. 
 
 Campbell proposed the health of Bonaparte when the news came that he had had a book- 
 seller shot at Leipsic, and there are frequent squibs at the expense of the guild of publishers, 
 in the works of the improvident literary class. It was reserved for Mr. Fields to form for a 
 long period a bond of intimate friendship between his own house and the best living authors^ 
 27 
 
41 8 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 and at last to go over to them without losing his individuality, and preserving the regard 
 of both. 
 
 He published privately small volumes of poems in 1849, l &54> ar >d J 8s8. He was the 
 editor of the Atlantic Monthly from 1862 to 1870. His long acquaintance with authors gave 
 him unusual advantages in gathering letters and materials for personal biography. These 
 collections were given to the reading public in the Atlantic, in a series of papers called Our 
 Whispering Gallery, and have recently been published in a handsome volume, entitled 
 Yesterdays with Authors. The glimpses of private life, the hints of conversation, and the 
 numerous letters thus preserved, are exceedingly interesting, and Mr. Fields's introductions 
 and narratives are written with excellent taste and judgment. The accounts of Hawthorne 
 and Dickens, in particular, are more delightful than any elaborate biography would be. The 
 letters of Miss Mitford,- which conclude the volume, are of less real value, as the kind- 
 hearted lady seems to have looked at everything American through a Claude Lorraine 
 glass, and her constant gush of admiration and affection lessens the value of her opinions. 
 
 [From Yesterdays with Authors.] 
 CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 OUR first real visit to Cobham Park was on a summer morning, 
 when Dickens walked out with us from his own gate, and, strolling 
 quietly along the road, turned at length into what seemed a rural 
 wooded pathway. At first we did not associate the spot, in its 
 spring freshness, with that morning after Christmas when he had 
 supped with the Seven Poor Travellers, and lain awake all night 
 with thinking of them ; and after parting in the morning with a 
 kindly shake of the hand all round, started to walk through Cobham 
 woods on his way towards London. Then on his lonely road, " the 
 mists began to rise in the most beautiful manner, and the sun to 
 shine ; and as I went on," he writes, "through the bracing air, see- 
 ing the hoar frost sparkle everywhere, I felt as if all Nature shared 
 in the joy of the great birthday. Going through the woods, the soft- 
 ness of my tread upon the mossy ground and among the brown 
 leaves enhanced the Christmas sacredness by which I felt surrounded. 
 As the whitened stems environed me, I thought how the Founder of 
 the time had never raised his benignant hand, save to bless and 
 heal, except in the case of one unconscious tree." 
 
 Now we found ourselves on the same ground, surrounded by 
 the full beauty of the summer-time. The hand of Art conspiring 
 with Nature had planted rhododendrons, as if in their native soil 
 beneath the forest trees. They were in one universal flame of 
 blossoms as far as the eye could see. Lord and Lady D., the 
 kindest and most hospitable of neighbors, were absent ; there was 
 not a living figure besides ourselves to break the solitude, and we 
 wandered on and on, with the wild birds for companions, as in our 
 native wildernesses. By and by we came near Cobham Hall, with 
 
JAMES THOMAS FIELDS. 419 
 
 its fine lawns and far-sweeping landscape, and workmen, and garden- 
 ers, and a general air of summer luxury. But to-day we were to go 
 past the hall and lunch on a green slope under the trees (was it 
 just the spot where Mr. Pickwick tried the cold punch and found it 
 satisfactory ? I never liked to ask !) and after making the old woods 
 ring with the clatter and clink of our noontide meal, mingled with 
 floods of laughter, were to come to the village, and to the very inn 
 from which the disconsolate Mr. Tupman wrote to Mr. Pickwick, 
 after his adventure with Miss Wardle. There is the old sign, and 
 here we are at the Leather Bottle, Cobham, Kent. " There's no 
 doubt whatever about that." Dickens's modesty would not allow 
 him to go in ; so we made the most of an outside study of the quaint 
 old place as we strolled by ; also of the cottages whose inmates 
 were evidently no strangers to our party, but were cared for by them 
 as English cottagers are so often looked after by the kindly ladies 
 in their neighborhood. And there was the old churchyard, "where 
 the dead had been quietly buried ' in the sure and certain hope ' 
 which Christmas-time inspired." There too were the children, 
 whom, seeing at their play, he could not but be loving, remembering 
 who had loved them ! One party of urchins swinging on a gate 
 reminded us vividly of Collins, the painter. Here was his composi- 
 tion to the life. Every lover of rural scenery must recall the little 
 fellow on the top of a five-barred gate in the picture Collins painted, 
 known widely by the fine engraving made of it at the time. And 
 there, too, were the blossoming gardens, which now shone in their 
 new garments of resurrection. The stillness of midsummer noon 
 crept over everything as we lingered in the sun and shadow of the 
 old village. Slowly circling the hall, we came upon an avenue of 
 lime-trees leading up to a stately doorway in the distance. The 
 path was overgrown, birds and squirrels were hopping unconcerned- 
 ly over the ground, and the gates and chains were rusty with disuse. 
 "This avenue," said Dickens, as we leaned upon the wall, and 
 looked into its cool shadows, " is never crossed except to bear the 
 dead body of the lord of the hall to its last resting-place ; a remnant 
 of superstition, and one which Lord and Lady D. would be glad 
 to do away with, but the villagers would never hear of such a thing, 
 and would consider it certain death to any person who should go or 
 come through this entrance. It would be a highly unpopular move- 
 ment for the present occupants to attempt to uproot this absurd idea, 
 and they have given up all thoughts of it for the time." . . . 
 His favorite mode of exercise was walking; and when in America, 
 
420 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 scarcely a day passed, no matter what the weather, that he did not 
 accomplish his eight or ten miles. It was on these expeditions that 
 he liked to recount to the companion of his rambles stories and 
 incidents of his early life ; and when he was in the mood, his fun 
 and humor knew no bounds. He would then frequently discuss the 
 numerous characters in his delightful books, and would act out, on 
 the road, dramatic situations, where Nickleby, or Copper-field, or 
 Swiveller would play distinguished parts. I remember, he said, 
 on one of these occasions, that during the composition of his first 
 stories he could never entirely dismiss the characters about whom 
 he happened to be writing ; that while the Old Curiosity Shop was 
 in process of composition, Little Nell followed him about every- 
 where ; that while he was writing Oliver Twist, Fagin, the Jew, 
 would never let him rest, even in his most retired moments ; that at 
 midnight and in the morning, on the sea and on the land, Tiny Tim 
 and Little Bob Cratchit were ever tugging at his coat-sleeve, as if 
 impatient for him to get back to his desk and continue the story of 
 their lives. But he said after he had published several books, and 
 saw what serious demands his characters were accustomed to make 
 for the constant attention of his already overtasked brain, he resolved 
 that the phantom individuals should no longer intrude on his hours 
 of recreation and rest, but that when he closed the door of his study 
 he would shut them all in, and only meet them again when he came 
 back to resume his task. That force of will with which he was so 
 pre-eminently endowed enabled him to ignore these manifold exist- 
 ences till he chose to renew their acquaintance. He said also, that 
 when the children of his brain had once been launched, free and 
 clear of him, into the world, they would sometimes turn up in the 
 most unexpected manner to look their father in the face. 
 
 Sometimes he would pull my arm while we were walking together, 
 and whisper, " Let us avoid Mr. Pumblechook, who is crossing the 
 street to meet us," or " Mr. Micawber is coming; let us turn down 
 this alley to get out of his way." He always seemed to enjoy the 
 fun of his comic people, and had unceasing mirth over Mr. Pick- 
 wick's misadventures. 
 
 What a treat it was to go with him to the London Zoological Gar- 
 dens, a place he greatly delighted in at all times ! He knew the 
 zoological address of every animal, bird, and fish of any distinction ; 
 and he could, without the slightest hesitation, on entering the 
 grounds, proceed straightway to the celebrities of claw, or foot, or 
 fin. The delight he took in the hippopotamus family was most ex- 
 
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 421 
 
 hilarating. He entered familiarly into conversation with the huge, 
 unwieldy creatures, and they seemed to understand him. Indeed, 
 he spoke to all the unphilological inhabitants with a directness and 
 tact which went home to them at once. He chaffed with the 
 monkeys, coaxed the tigers, and bamboozled the snakes, with a 
 dexterity unapproachable. All the keepers knew him, he was such 
 a loyal visitor, and I noticed they came up to him in a friendly way, 
 with the feeling that they had a sympathetic listener always in 
 Charles Dickens. 
 
 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 
 
 James Russell Lowell was born in Cambridge, Mass., February 22, 1819. He was 
 graduated at Harvard College in 1838, and was admitted to the bar, in Boston, 1840. 
 He never practised the profession, but gave his attention wholly to literature ; and, except- 
 ing his visits to Europe, he has always lived in the house in which he was born. He recited 
 a class posm, which was printed in 1839. In 1841 he printed a volume of poems, entitled 
 A Year's Life. In 1843, in connection with Robert Carter, he established a magazine 
 called The Pioneer, which survived but three months, on account of the failure of the pub- 
 lisher. In 1844 he published A Legend of Brittany ; in 1845 Conversations on the Old 
 Poets ; in 1848 a new series of poems, many of them strongly anti-slavery in character; and 
 in the same year, The Vision of Sir Launfal, one of the most popular of his poems, and an 
 exquisite work of art. During the Mexican war, and the political events that followed it, 
 Mr. Lowell commenced, in the Boston Courier, a series of satirical poems m the Yankee 
 dialect, purporting to have been written by Mr. Hosea Biglow, and furnished with an intro- 
 duction, notes, and an index, by the Rev. Homer Wilbur. These were afterwards gathered, 
 with burlesque "notices from an independent press," in a volume entitled The Biglow 
 Papers. The point, vigor, wit, and perfect keeping of this satire, are admirable. Regarded 
 as a mere repository of fun, it is inimitable ; but the author's lines are edged tools, rather 
 than playthings, and they have been felt throughout the long struggle that is now ended. 
 The character of Parson Wilbur is a delightfully comic creation ; and Hosea is the embodi- 
 ment of the native humor and homely mother-wit of the Yankee race. A second series 
 was published during the late rebellion. 
 
 In 1843 Mr. Lowell published anonymously a rhymed satirical view of American litera- 
 ture, entitled A Fable for Critics. Though written from a humorous point ofview, and in a 
 " touch-and-go " style, it contains many exquisite passages, and some acute, and, on the 
 whole, just estimates of our principal writers. In 1852-3 Mr. Lowell visited Europe. In 
 1854-5 lie delivered a course of lectures before the Lowell Institute upon the British poets. 
 It was a most brilliant exposition of the subject, and gave to the author as high a place among 
 critics as among ]-oats. In 1855, upon the resignation of Mr. Longfellow, he was appointed 
 professor of modern languages and belles lettrcs in Harvard College. He visited Europe 
 again to perfect himself in his studies, and returned to assume his place, in August, 1856. 
 
 The Atlantic Monthly was established, by Messrs. Phillips & Sampson, in 1857, and 
 the gentlemen who had been invited to assist in the undertaking unanimously designated 
 Mr. Lowell as the editor-in-chief. The character and influence of that magazine, and the 
 stimulus it gave to the literary taste and culture of the country, are now matters of history. 
 He wrote also frequently for Putnam's Monthly, and was editor, for a time, of the North 
 American Review. His essays in these periodicals have been collected in three volumes: 
 Fireside Travels (1864), Among My Books (1870), and My Study Windows (1871). H 
 read a Commemoration Ode, at the assembly of the sons of Harvard, in July, 1865, in honor 
 
422 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 of the slain heroes of the civil war. It is written in a lofty strain, and, more than any mod- 
 ern ode that we remember, is filled with "thoughts that breathe and words that burn.'* 
 Under the Willows, a volume of later poems, with deeper insight and more refined traits of 
 beauty, was printed in 1869. In the same year appeared a poem in blank verse, entitled 
 The Cathedra], suggested by a visit to Chartres. This is probably the highest expression 
 of his genius. It is far from popular, for its masculine power of thought, and the glancing 
 lights of its imagery, are only for those who have the clear and practised sight to discern its 
 spiritual truths and subtile analogies. A recent volume contains all his published poems, 
 except one entitled Fitz Adam's Story, which appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, January, 
 1867, and which contains some of the most faithful sketches of New England character ever 
 drawn. 
 
 It is common, in speaking of authors who have excelled in various styles of writing, to 
 call them versatile. But what adjective will convey an idea of the many-sidedness of Low- 
 ell ? When we read the tender story. of The First Snow Fall, the wise lessons of Ambrose, 
 the prophetic strains of The Present Crisis and of Villa Franca, the wit and shrewdness of 
 Hosea Biglow, the delicious humor of the garrulous Parson, the delicate beauty of Sir 
 Launfal, the grandeur of the Commemoration Ode, the solemn splendor of The Cathedral, 
 what can we do but wonder at the imaginative power that takes on these various shapes, 
 and moves in such diverse ways to touch our souls in every part? When, in addition, we 
 consider his vigorous, learned, and glowing prose essays, full of color like fresh stud : es from 
 the fields, full of wit that not only sparkles in epigram but pervades and lightens the whole, 
 and full of an elastic spirit such as belongs to immortal youth, we find enough to give him 
 an enduring fame if he had never written a line of verse. 
 
 There are persons of education and taste who say they do not find much to admire in 
 Lowell. Honest Samuel Pepys records of the Midsummer Night's Dream that it was the 
 most insipid and ridiculous play he had ever seen. Faust is not easy reading, nor is Dante's 
 Divine Comedy. It is not necessary to compare Lowell with the world's great authors ; it 
 is enough to say that his works deserve and wiil repay the study of the most thoughtful 
 men. One cause that may repel the mere pleasure-loving reader is that the poet is more 
 concerned for the full expression of his vigorous thought than for the melody of the result- 
 ing lines ; and when the strong words of our language are borne on a torrent of feeling, they 
 are sometimes like an ice-pack on one of our rivers at the breaking up of winter. 
 
 Cambridge to-day, with its growing piles of masonry, its clustering schools, its scores of 
 professors, its trim country housas and lawns, its smooth streets and enclosed fields, seems 
 as though it might be the horns of an essayist, historian, philosopher, or of a poet of a cer- 
 tain urban class ; but we should hardly think of looking there for a poet of original 
 genius, in intimate relations with nature, and formed by the study of character untu- 
 tored in books and unspoiled by artificial modes of life. To know the early influences 
 that developed the poet's mind and furnished him with the material for his inimitable 
 studies, we should have seen Cambridge Thirty Years Ago. Mount Auburn was not a 
 populous cemetery then, but was Sweet Auburn, a pasture full of the haunts of flowers. 
 Love Lane had not been blotted out, and the willows hung over the marshes and skirted 
 the Concord road. Old people were living who had preserved the traditions, manners, an 
 speech of the last century. In place of the railway trains, enormous caravans of white-cov- 
 ered wapons came from the interior, and gathered nightly at the great square taverns at the 
 Port. The Cambridge boy of that day (and how far away that day seems !) knew the sunny 
 slopes where the anemones first showed their tremulous purple blossoms, and the spongy 
 lanes where the gorgeous cardinal flower and the strangely beautiful orchis were to be 
 found. Birds, rabbits, and squirrels were his familiar friends. The groups of farmers on 
 their way to market, and the more knowing teamsters, to whom their years on the turnpike 
 had given the air of travelled men, as they met at the great caravanseras and exchanged 
 jokes, furnished abundant opportunities for the study of character, especially of the indi- 
 vidual qualities of the now extinct rustic Yankee. 
 
 The observing eyes of the future poet found plenty of humorous traits among these shrewd 
 
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 423 
 
 and simple people. Their mental processes, their clear-cut phrases, their homely meta- 
 phors, and their quaint modes of speech, were unconsciously treasured in his memory. He 
 was fortunate, too, in the surroundings of his home and in his father's library, in which he 
 devoured romances, travels, and poems ; and he could have passed a better examination, 
 probably, in Scottish ballads, Hakluyt's Voyages, Froissart's Chronicles, and old plays, 
 than in conic sections or Greek prosody. 
 
 As each plant, by a secret chemistry, draws from the soil the elements necessary for its 
 own jjrowth, and for the perfect flavor and aroma of its own flowers and juices, so it would 
 sesm each intellect pierces the accumulated mould around it, and draws into itself the ele- 
 ments for its future blossoming and its immortal fruit. Summer has passed with the poet, 
 but the long, golden autumnal season is yet before him. 
 
 [From an essay on Cambridge Thirty Years Ago, in Fireside Travels.] 
 
 THERE was but one white-and-yellow-washer, whose own cottage, 
 fresh-gleaming every June through grape-vine and creeper, was his 
 only sign and advertisement. He was said to possess a secret, 
 which died with him like that of Luca della Robbia, and certainly 
 conceived all colors but white and yellow to savor of savagery, civ- 
 ilizing the stems of his trees annually with liquid lime, and meditat- 
 ing how to extend that candent baptism even to the leaves. His 
 pie-plants (the best in town), compulsory monastics, blanched under 
 barrels, each in his little hermitage, a vegetable Certosa. His fowls, 
 his ducks, his geese, could not show so much as a gray feather 
 among them, and he would have given a year's earnings for a white 
 peacock. The flowers which decked his little door-yard were whitest 
 China asters and goldenest sunflowers, which last, backsliding from 
 their traditional Parsee faith, used to puzzle us urchins not a little 
 by staring brazenly every way except towards the sun. Celery, too, 
 he raised, whose virtue is its paleness, and the silvery onion, and 
 turnip, which, though outwardly conforming to the green heresies 
 of summer, nourish a purer faith subterraneously, like early Chris- 
 tians in the catacombs. In an obscure corner grew the sanguine 
 beet, tolerated only for its usefulness in allaying the asperities of 
 Saturday's salt fish. He loved winter better than summer, because 
 Nature then played the white-washer, and challenged with her snows 
 the scarce inferior purity of his overalls and neckcloth. I fancy 
 that he never rightly liked Commencement, for bringing so many 
 black coats together. He founded no school. Others might essay 
 his art, and were allowed to try their prentice hands on fences and 
 the like coarse subjects, but the ceiling of every housewife waited 
 on the leisure of Newman (ichneu7non the students called him, for 
 his diminutiveness), nor would consent to other brush than his. 
 There was also but one brewer (Lewis), who made the village beer, 
 both spruce and ginger, a grave and amiable Ethiopian, making a 
 
424 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 discount always to the boys, and wisely, for they were his chiefest 
 patrons. He wheeled his whole stock in a white-roofed handcart, 
 on whose front a sign-board presented, at either end, an insurrec- 
 tionary bottle yet insurgent after no mad Gallic fashion, but soberly 
 and Saxonly discharging itself into the restraining formulary of a 
 tumbler, symbolic of orderly prescription. The artist had struggled 
 manfully with the difficulties of his subject, but had not succeeded 
 so well that we did not often debate in which of the twin bottles 
 Spruce was typified, and in which Ginger. We always believed that 
 Lewis mentally distinguished between them, but by some peculiarity 
 occult to exoteric eyes. This ambulatory chapel of the Bacchus 
 that gives the colic, but not inebriates, only appeared at the Com- 
 mencement holidays, and the lad who bought of Lewis laid out his 
 money well, getting respect as well as beer, three sirs to every glass, 
 " Beer, sir ? yes, sir : spruce or ginger, sir ? " I can yet recall 
 the innocent pride with which I walked away after that somewhat 
 risky ceremony (for a bottle sometimes blew up), dilated not alone 
 with carbonic-acid gas, but with the more ethereal fixed air of that 
 titular flattery. Nor was Lewis proud. When he tried his fortunes 
 in the capital on election days, and stood amid a row of rival vend- 
 ers in the very flood of custom, he never forgot his small fellow- 
 citizens, but welcomed them with an assuring smile, and served 
 them with the first. 
 
 [From Among My Books.] 
 THE COUNTRY SCHOOL. 
 
 PASSING through some Massachusetts village, perhaps at a dis- 
 tance from any house, it may be in the midst of a piece of woods 
 where four roads meet, one may sometimes even yet see a small, 
 square, one-story building, whose use would not be long doubtful. 
 It is summer, and the flickering shadows of forest leaves dapple the 
 roof of the little porch, whose door stands wide, and shows, hanging 
 on either hand, rows of straw hats and bonnets, that look as if they 
 had done good service. As you pass the open windows you hear 
 whole platoons of high-pitched voices discharging words of two or 
 three syllables with wonderful precision and unanimity. Then there 
 is a pause, and the voice of the officer in command is Jieard reprov- 
 ing some raw recruit, whose vocal musket hung fire. Then the 
 drill of the small infantry begins anew, but pauses again because 
 some urchin who agrees with Voltaire that the superfluous is a 
 
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 42$ 
 
 very necessary thing insists on spelling "subtraction" with an 
 s too much. 
 
 If you had the good fortune to be born and bred in the Bay State, 
 your mind is thronged with half-sad, half-humorous recollections. 
 The a-b abs of little voices, long since hushed in the mould, or ring- 
 ing now in the pulpit, at the bar, or in the senate-chamber, come 
 back to the ear of memory. You remember the high stool on which 
 culprits used to be elevated, with the tall paper fool's-cap on their 
 heads, blushing to the ears ; and you think with wonder how you 
 have seen them since as men climbing the world's penance-stools 
 of ambition without a blush, and gladly giving everything for life's 
 caps and bells. And you have pleasanter memories of going after 
 pond-lilies, of angling for horn-pouts, that queer bat among tRe 
 fishes, of nutting, of walking over the creaking snow-crust in win- 
 ter, when the warm breath of every household was curling, up silently 
 in the keen blue air. You wonder if life has any rewards more 
 solid and permanent than the Spanish dollar that was hung around 
 your neck to be restored again next day, and conclude sadly that it 
 was but too true a prophecy and emblem of all worldly success. 
 But your moralizing is broken short off by a rattle of feet and the 
 pouring forth of the whole swarm, the boys dancing and shouting, 
 the mere effervescence of the fixed air of youth and animal spirits 
 uncorked; the sedater girls in confidential twos and threes decant- 
 ing secrets out of the mouth of one cape-bonnet into that of another. 
 Times have changed since the jackets and trousers used to draw 
 up on one side of the road, and the petticoats on the other, to salute 
 with bow and courtesy the white neckcloth of the parson or the 
 squire, if it chanced to pass during intermission. 
 
 Now this little building, and others like it, were an original kind 
 of fortification invented by the founders of New England. They 
 are the martello-towers that protect our coast. This was the great 
 discovery of our Puritan forefathers. They were the first lawgivers 
 who saw clearly, and enforced practically, the simple, moral, and 
 political truth that knowledge was not an alms to be dependent on 
 the chance charity of private men, or the precarious pittance of a 
 trust-fund, but a sacred debt which the commonwealth owed to 
 every one of her children. The opening of the first grammar school 
 was the opening of the first trench against monopoly in church and 
 state ; the first row of trammels and pothooks which the little 
 Shearjashubs and Elkanahs blotted and blubbered across their copy- 
 books, was the preamble to the Declaration of Independence. 
 
426 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 [From My Study Windows.] 
 MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE. 
 
 THE return of the robin is commonly announced by the news- 
 papers, like that of eminent or notorious people to a watering-place, 
 as the first authentic notification of spring. And such his appear- 
 ance in the orchard and garden undoubtedly is. But, in spite of 
 his name of migratory thrush, he stays with us all winter, and I 
 have seen him when the thermometer marked fifteen degrees below 
 zero of Fahrenheit, armed impregnably within, like Emerson's Tit- 
 mouse, and as cheerful as he. The robin has a bad reputation 
 among people who do not value themselves less for being fond of 
 cherries. There is, I admit, a spice of vulgarity in him, and his song 
 is rather of the Bloomfield sort, too largely ballasted with prose. 
 His ethics are of the Poor Richard school, and the main chance 
 which calls forth all his energy is altogether of the belly. He never 
 has those fine intervals of lunacy into which his cousins, the catbird 
 and the mavis, are apt to fall. But for a' that and twice as muckle 's 
 a' that, I would not exchange him for all the cherries that ever came 
 out of Asia Minor. With whatever faults, he has not wholly for- 
 feited that superiority which belongs to the children of nature. He 
 has a finer taste in fruit than could be distilled from many successive 
 committees of the Horticultural Society, and he eats with a relishing 
 gulp not inferior to Dr. Johnson's. He feels and freely exercises 
 his right of eminent domain. His is the earliest mess of green peas ; 
 his all the mulberries I had fancied mine. But if he get also the 
 lion's share of the raspberries, he is a great planter, and sows those 
 wild ones in the woods, that solace the pedestrian and give a mo- 
 mentary calm even to the jaded victims of the White Hills. He 
 keeps a strict eye over one's fruit, and knows to a shade of purple 
 when your grapes have cooked long enough in the sun. During the 
 severe drought a few years ago, the robins wholly vanished from my 
 garden. I neither saw nor heard one for three weeks. Meanwhile 
 a small foreign grape-vine, rather shy of bearing, seemed to find the 
 dusty air congenial, and, dreaming perhaps of its sweet Argos across 
 the sea, decked itself with a score or so of fair bunches. I watched 
 them from day to day till they should have secreted sugar enough 
 from the sunbeams, and at last made up my mind that I would cele- 
 brate my vintage the next morning. But the robins, too, had some- 
 how kept note of them. They must have sent out spies, as did the 
 Jews into the promised land, before I was stirring. When I went 
 
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 427 
 
 with my basket, at least a dozen of these winged vintagers bustled 
 out from among the leaves, and, alighting on the nearest trees, inter- 
 changed some shrill remarks about me of a derogatory nature. They 
 had fairly sacked the vine. Not Wellington's veterans made cleaner 
 work of a Spanish town ; not Federals or Confederates were ever 
 more impartial in the confiscation of neutral chickens. I was keep- 
 ing my grapes a secret to surprise the fair Fidele with, but the robins 
 made them a profounder secret to her than I had meant. The tat- 
 tered remnant of a single bunch was all my harvest-home. How 
 paltry it looked at the bottom of my basket as if a humming-bird 
 had laid her egg in an eagle's nest ! I could not help laughing ; 
 and the robins seemed to join heartily in the merriment. There was 
 a native grape-vine close by, blue with its less refined abundance, 
 but my cunning thieves preferred the foreign flavor. Could I tax 
 them with want of taste ? 
 
 The robins are not good solo singers, but their chorus, as, like 
 primitive fire-worshippers, they hail the return of light and warmth 
 to the world, is unrivalled. There are a hundred singing like one. 
 They are noisy enough then, and sing, as poets should, with no 
 afterthought. But when they come after cherries to the tree near 
 my window, they muffle their voices, and their faint pip, pip, pop ! 
 sounds far away at the bottom of the garden, where they know I 
 shall not suspect them of robbing the great black-walnut of its bitter- 
 rinded store. They are feathered Pecksniffs, to be sure ; but then 
 how brightly their breasts, that look rather shabby in the sunlight, 
 shine in a rainy day against the dark green of the fringe-tree ! After 
 they have pinched and shaken all the life out of an earthworm, as 
 Italian cooks pound all the spirit out of a steak, and then gulped 
 him, they stand up in honest self-confidence, expand their red waist- 
 coats with the virtuous air of a lobby-member, and outface you with 
 an eye that calmly challenges inquiry. " Do I look like a bird that 
 knows the flavor of raw vermin ? I throw myself upon a jury of my 
 peers. Ask any robin if he ever ate anything less ascetic than the 
 frugal berry of the juniper, and he will answer that his vow forbids 
 him." Can such an open bosom cover such depravity ? Alas ! yes. 
 I have no doubt his breast was redder at that very moment with the 
 blood of my raspberries. On the whole, he is a doubtful friend in 
 the garden. He makes his dessert of all kinds of berries, and is not 
 averse from early peas. But when we remember how omnivorous 
 he is, eating his own weight in an incredibly short time, and that 
 Nature seems exhaustless in her invention of new insects hostile to 
 
428 HAND-BOOfC OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 vegetation, perhaps we may reckon that he does more good than 
 harm. For my own part, I would rather have his cheerfulness and 
 kind neighborhood than many berries. 
 
 [One of the notes of " Mr. Homer Wilbur," in The Biglow Papers.] 
 THE NEWSPAPER. 
 
 " WONDERFUL, to him that has eyes to see it rightly, is the news- 
 paper. To me, for example, sitting on the critical front bench of the 
 pit, in my study here in Jaalam, the advent of my weekly journal is 
 as that of a strolling theatre, or rather of a puppet-show, on whose 
 stage, narrow as it is, the tragedy, comedy, and farce of life are 
 played in little. Behold the whole huge earth sent to me hebdoma- 
 dally in a brown-paper wrapper ! 
 
 "Hither, to my obscure corner, by wind or steam, on horseback 
 or dromedary-back, in the pouch of the Indian runner or clicking 
 over the magnetic wires, troop all the famous performers from the 
 four quarters of the globe. Looked at from a point of criticism, tiny 
 puppets they seem all, as the editor sets up his booth upon my desk, 
 and officiates as showman. Now I can truly see how little and tran- 
 sitory is life. The earth appears almost as a drop of vinegar, on 
 which the solar microscope of the imagination must be brought to 
 bear in order to make out anything distinctly. That animalcule 
 there, in the pea-jacket, is Louis Philippe, just landed on the coast 
 of England. That other, in the gray surtout and cocked hat, is Na- 
 poleon Bonaparte Smith, assuring France that she need apprehend 
 no interference from him in the present alarming juncture. At that 
 spot where you seem to see a speck of something in motion, is an 
 immense mass-meeting. Look sharper, and you will see a mite 
 brandishing his mandibles in an excited manner. That is the great 
 Mr. Soandso, defining his position, amid tumultuous and irrepressi- 
 ble cheers. That infinitesimal creature, upon whom some score of 
 others, as minute as he, are gazing in open-mouthed admiration, is 
 a famous philosopher, expounding to a select audience their capacity 
 for the Infinite. That scarce-discernible pufflet of smoke and dust 
 is a revolution. That speck there is a reformer, just arranging the 
 lever with which he . is to move the world. And lo ! there creeps 
 forward the shadow of a skeleton, that blows one breath between its 
 grinning teeth, and all our distinguished actors are whisked off the 
 slippery stage into the dark Beyond. 
 
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 429 
 
 "Yes, the little show-box has its solemner suggestions. Now 
 and then we catch a glimpse of a grim old man, who lays down 
 a scythe and hour-glass in the corner while he shifts the scenes. 
 There, too, in the dim background, a weird shape is ever delving. 
 Sometimes he leans upon his mattock, and gazes, as a coach 
 whirls by, bearing the newly-married on their wedding jaunt, or 
 glances carelessly at a babe brought home from christening. Sud- 
 denly (for the scene grows larger and larger as we look) a bony 
 hand snatches back a performer in the midst of his part, and him, 
 whom yesterday two infinities (past and future) would not suffice, 
 a handful of dust is enough to cover and silence forever. Nay, 
 we see the same fleshless fingers opening to clutch the showman 
 himself, and guess, not without a shudder, that they are lying in 
 wait for spectator also. 
 
 " Think of it : for three dollars a year I buy a season-ticket to 
 this great Globe Theatre, for which God would write the dramas 
 (only that we like farces, spectacles, and the tragedies of Apollyon 
 better), whose scene-shifter is Time, and whose curtain is rung 
 down by Death. 
 
 " Such thoughts will occur to me sometimes, as I am tearing 
 off the wrapper of my newspaper. Then suddenly that otherwise 
 too often vacant sheet becomes invested for me with a strange kind 
 of awe. Look ! deaths and marriages, notices of inventions, dis- 
 coveries, and books, lists of promotions, of killed, wounded, and 
 missing, news of fires, accidents, of sudden wealth, and as sudden 
 poverty, I hold in my hand the ends of myriad invisible electric 
 conductors, along which tremble the joys, sorrows, wrongs, triumphs, 
 hopes, and despairs of as many men and women everywhere. So that 
 upon that mood of mind which seems to isolate me from mankind as 
 a spectator of their puppet-pranks, another supervenes, in which I 
 feel that I, too, unknown and unheard of, am yet of some import to 
 my fellows. For, through my newspaper here, do not families take 
 pains to send me, an entire stranger, news of a death among them ? 
 Are not here two who would have me know of their marriage ? And, 
 strangest of all, is not this singular person anxious to have me in- 
 formed that he has received a fresh supply of Dimitry Bruisgins ? 
 But to none of us does the Present (even if for a moment discerned 
 as such) continue miraculous. We glance carelessly at the sun- 
 rise, and get used to Orion and the Pleiades. The wonder wears 
 off, and to-morrow this sheet, in which a vision was let down to me 
 from heaven, shall be the wrapper to a bar of soap or the platter for 
 a beggar's broken victuals." H. w. 
 
43 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 BEAVER BROOK. 
 
 HUSHED with broad sunlight lies the hill, 
 And, minuting the long day's loss, 
 
 The cedar's shadow, slow and still 
 Creeps o'er its dial of gray moss. 
 
 Warm noon brims full the valley's cup, 
 The aspen's leaves are scarce astir ; 
 
 Only the little mill sends up 
 Its busy, never-ceasing burr. 
 
 Climbing the loose-piled .wall that hems 
 The road along the mill-pond's brink, 
 
 From 'neath the arching barberry stems, 
 My footstep scares the shy chewink. 
 
 Beneath a bony buttonwood, 
 
 The mill's red door lets forth the din ; 
 The whitened miller, dust-imbued, 
 
 Flits past the square of dark within. 
 
 No mountain torrent's strength is here ; 
 
 Sweet Beaver, child of forest still, 
 Heaps its small pitcher to the ear, 
 
 And gently waits the miller's will. , 
 
 Swift slips Undine along the race 
 
 Unheard, and then, with flashing bound, 
 
 Floods the dull wheel with light and grace, 
 And, laughing, hunts the loath drudge round. 
 
 The miller dreams not at what cost 
 
 The quivering mill-stones hum and whirl, 
 
 Nor ho\v, for every turn, are tossed 
 Armfuls of diamond and pearl. 
 
 But Summer cleared my happier eyes 
 With drops of some celestial juice, 
 
 To see how Beauty underlies 
 Forevermore each form of Use. 
 
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 431 
 
 And more : methought I saw that flood, 
 Which now so dull and darkling steals, 
 
 Thick, here and there, with human blood, 
 To turn the world's laborious wheels. 
 
 No more than doth the miller there, 
 
 Shut in our several cells, do we 
 Know with what waste of beauty rare 
 
 Moves every day's machinery. 
 
 Surely the wiser time shall come 
 
 When this fine overplus of might, 
 No longer sullen, slow, and dumb, 
 
 Shall leap to music and to light 
 
 In that new childhood of the Earth, 
 
 Life of itself shall dance and play, 
 Fresh blood in Time's shrunk veins make mirth, 
 
 And labor meet delight half way. 
 
 AMBROSE. 
 
 NEVER, surely, was holier man 
 
 Than Ambrose, since the world began ; 
 
 With diet spare and raiment thin, 
 
 He shielded himself from the father of sin ; 
 
 With bed of iron and scourgings oft, 
 
 His heart to God's hand as wax made soft. 
 
 Through earnest prayer and watchings long 
 He sought to know 'twixt right and wrong, 
 Much wrestling with the blessed Word 
 To make it yield the sense of the Lord, 
 That he might build a storm-proof creed 
 To fold the flock in at their need. 
 
 At last he builded a perfect faith, 
 
 Fenced round about with The Lord thus saith; 
 
 To himself he fitted the doorway's size, 
 
 Meted the light to the need of his eyes, , 
 
 And knew, by a sure and inward sign, 
 
 That the work of his fingers was divine. 
 
432 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 Then Ambrose said, " All those shall die 
 The eternal death who believe not as I ; " 
 And some were boiled, some burned in fire, 
 Some sawn in twain, that his heart's desire 
 For the good of men's souls might be satisfied, 
 By the drawing of all to the righteous side. 
 
 One day, as Ambrose was seeking the truth 
 
 In his lonely walk, he saw a youth 
 
 Resting himself in the shade of a tree ; 
 
 It had never been given him to see 
 
 So shining a face, and the good man thought 
 
 'Twere pity he should not believe as he ought. 
 
 So he set himself by the young man's side, 
 And the state of his soul with questions tried ; 
 But the heart of the stranger was hardened indeed, 
 Nor received the stamp of the one true creed ; 
 And the spirit of Ambrose waxed sore to find 
 Such face the porch of so narrow a mind. 
 
 " As each beholds in cloud and fire 
 
 The shape that answers his own desire, 
 
 So each," said the youth, " in the Law shall find 
 
 The figure and features of his mind ; 
 
 And to each in his mercy hath God allowed 
 
 His several pillar of fire and cloud." 
 
 The soul of Ambrose burned with zeal 
 And holy wrath for the young man's weal. 
 " Believest thou then, most wretched youth," 
 Cried he, " a dividual essence in Truth ? 
 I fear me thy heart is too cramped with sin 
 To take the Lord in his glory in." 
 
 Now there bubbled beside them where they stood, 
 
 A fountain of waters sweet and good ; 
 
 The youth to the streamlet's brink drew near, 
 
 Saying, " Ambrose, thou maker of creeds, look here ! " 
 
 Six vases of crystal then he took, 
 
 And set them along the edge of the brook. 
 
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 433 
 
 " As into these vessels the water I pour, 
 There shall one hold less, another more, 
 And the water unchanged, in every case, 
 Shall put on the figure of the vase ; 
 O thou, who wouldst unity make through strife, 
 Canst thou fit this sign to the Water of Life ? " 
 
 When Ambrose looked up, he stood alone ; 
 
 The youth, and the stream, and the vases were gone ; 
 
 But he knew, by a sense of humbled grace, 
 
 He had talked with an angel face to face, 
 
 And felt his heart change inwardly 
 
 As he fell on his knees beneath the tree. 
 
 THE DEAD HOUSE. 
 
 HERE once my step was quickened, 
 
 Here beckoned the opening door, 
 And welcome thrilled from the threshold 
 
 To the foot it had known before. 
 
 A glow came forth to meet me 
 
 From the flame that laughed in the grate, 
 And shadows adance on the ceiling 
 
 Danced blithe with mine for a mate. 
 
 " I claim you, old friend," yawned the arm-chair ; 
 
 " This corner, you know, is your seat ; " 
 ' Rest your slippers on me," beamed the fender ; 
 
 " I brighten at touch of your feet." 
 
 " We know the practised finger," 
 Said the books, " that seems like brain ; " 
 
 And the shy page rustled the secret 
 It had kept till I came again. 
 
 Sang the pillow, " My down once quivered 
 
 On nightingales' throats that flew 
 Through moonlit gardens of Hafiz 
 
 To gather quaint dreams for you." 
 28 
 
434 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 Ah me, where the Past sowed heart's-ease, 
 The Present plucks rue for us men ! 
 
 I come back : that scar unhealing 
 Was not in the churchyard then. 
 
 But, I think, the house is unaltered ; 
 
 I will go and beg to look 
 At the rooms that were once familiar 
 
 To my life as its bed to a brook. 
 
 Unaltered ! alas for the sameness 
 That makes the change but more ! 
 
 'Tis a dead man I see in the mirrors, 
 'Tis his tread that chills the floor ! 
 
 To learn such a simple lesson, 
 Need I go to Paris and Rome, 
 
 That the many make the household, 
 But only one the home ? 
 
 'Twas just a womanly presence, 
 
 An influence unexpressed ; 
 But a rose she had worn, on my grave-sod 
 
 Were more than long life with the rest ! 
 
 'Twas a smile, 'twas a garment's rustle, 
 'Twas nothing that I can phrase, 
 
 But the whole dumb dwelling grew conscious, 
 And put on her looks and ways. 
 
 Were it mine I would close the shutters, 
 Like lids when the life is fled, 
 
 And the funeral fire should wind it, 
 This corpse of a home that is dead. 
 
 For it died that autumn morning 
 When she, its soul, was borne 
 
 To lie all dark on the hill-side 
 
 That looks over woodland and corn. 
 
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 435 
 
 THE FIRST SNOW-FALL. 
 
 THE snow had begun in the gloaming, 
 
 And busily all the night 
 Had been heaping field and highway 
 
 With a silence deep and white. 
 
 Every pine, and fir, and hemlock, 
 Wore ermine too dear for an earl, 
 
 And the poorest twig on the elm-tree 
 Was ridged inch-deep with pearl. 
 
 From sheds new-roofed with Carrara 
 Came chanticleer's muffled crow ; 
 
 The stiff rails were softened to swan's down, 
 And still fluttered down the snow. 
 
 I stood and watched by the window 
 
 The noiseless work of the sky, 
 And the sudden flurries of snow-birds, 
 
 Like brown leaves whirling by. 
 
 I thought of a mound in sweet Auburn 
 Where a little headstone stood ; 
 
 How the flakes were folding it gently, 
 As did robins the babes in the wood. 
 
 Up spoke our own little Mabel, 
 
 Saying, " Father, who makes it snow ? " 
 
 And I told of the good All-father 
 Who cares for us here below. 
 
 Again I looked at the snow-fall, 
 And thought of the leaden sky, 
 
 That arched o'er our first great sorrow, 
 When that mound was heaped so high. 
 
 I remembered the gradual patience 
 That fell from that cloud like snow, 
 
 Flake by flake, healing and hiding 
 The scar of our deep-plunged woe. 
 
43^ HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 And again to the child I whispered, 
 
 " The snow that husheth all, 
 Darling, the merciful Father 
 Alone can make it fall ! " 
 
 Then, with eyes that saw not, I kissed her ; 
 
 And she, kissing back, could not know 
 That my kiss was given to her sister, 
 
 Folded close under deepening snow. 
 
 ALADDIN. 
 
 WHEN I was a beggarly boy, 
 
 And lived in a cellar damp, 
 I had not a friend nor a toy, 
 
 But I had Aladdin's lamp ; 
 When I could not sleep for cold, 
 
 I had fire enough in my brain, 
 And builded, with roofs of gold, 
 
 My beautiful castles in Spain ! 
 
 Since then I have toiled day and night, 
 
 I have money and power good store, 
 But I'd give all my lamps of silver bright 
 
 For the one that is mine no more : , 
 Take, Fortune, whatever you choose ; 
 
 You gave, and may snatch again ; 
 I have nothing 'twould pain me to lose, 
 
 For I own no more castles in Spain ! 
 
 [From the Biglow Papers. Second Series.] 
 
 SUMTHIN' IN THE PASTORAL LINE. 
 
 ONCE git a smell o' musk into a draw, 
 
 An' it clings hold like precerdents in law : 
 
 Your gra'ma'am put it there when, goodness knows 
 
 To jes' this-worldify her Sunday clo'es ; 
 
 But the old chist wun't sarve her gran'son's wife 
 
 (For, 'thout new funnitoor, wut good in life ?) 
 
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 437 
 
 An' so ole clawfoot, from the precinks dread 
 O' the spare chamber, slinks into the shed, 
 Where, dim with dust, it fust or last subsides 
 To holdin' seeds an' fifty things besides ; 
 But better days stick fast in heart an' husk, 
 An' all you keep in't gits a scent o' musk. 
 
 Jes' so with poets : wut they've airly read 
 
 Gits kind o' worked into their heart an' head, 
 
 So 's't they can't seem to write but jest on sheers 
 
 With furrin countries or played-out ideers, 
 
 Nor hev a feelin', ef it doesn't smack 
 
 O' wut some critter chose to feel 'way back : 
 
 This makes 'em talk o' daises, larks, an' things, 
 
 Es though we'd nothin' here that blows an' sings 
 
 (Why, I'd give more for one live bobolink 
 
 Than a square mile o' larks in printer's ink), 
 
 This makes 'em think our fust o' May is May, 
 
 Which 'tain't, for all the almanicks can say. 
 
 0, little city-gals, don't never go it 
 Blind on the word o' noospaper or poet ! 
 They're apt to puff, an' May-day seldom looks 
 Up in the country ez it doos in books ; 
 
 They're no more like than hornets'-nests an' hives, 
 Or printed sarmons be to holy lives. 
 
 1, with my trouses perched on cow-hide boots, 
 Tuggin' my foundered feet out by the roots, 
 Hev seen ye come to fling on April's hearse 
 Your muslin nosegays from the milliner's, 
 Puzzlin' to find dry ground your queen to choose, 
 An' dance your throats sore in morocker shoes : 
 I've seen ye an' felt proud, thet, come wut would, 
 Our Pilgrim stock wuz pithed with hardihood. 
 Pleasure does make us Yankees kind o' winch, 
 Ez though 'twuz sumthin' paid for by the inch ; 
 But yit we du contrive to worry thru, 
 
 Ef Booty tells us thet the things to du, 
 An' kerry a hollerday, ef we set out, 
 Ez stiddily ez though 'twuz a redoubt. 
 
438 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 I, country-born an' bred, know where to find 
 Some blooms thet make the season suit the mind, 
 An' seem to metch the doubtin' bluebird's notes, 
 Half-vent'rin' liverworts in furry coats, 
 Bloodroots, whose rolled-up leaves ef you oncurl, 
 Each on em's cradle to a baby-pearl, 
 But these are jes' Spring's pickets ; sure ez sin, 
 The rebble frosts '11 try to drive 'em in ; 
 For half our May 's so awfully like May n't 
 'Twould rile a Shaker or an evn'ge saint ; 
 Though I own up I like our back'ard springs 
 Thet kind o' haggle with their greens an' things, 
 An' when you 'most give up, 'ithout more words, 
 Toss the fields full o' blossoms, leaves, an' bird's : 
 Thet's Northun natur', slow an' apt to doubt, 
 But when it doos git stirred, there's no gin-out ! 
 
 Fust come the blackbirds clatt'rin' in tall trees, 
 An' settlin' things in windy Congresses 
 Queer politicians, though, for I'll be skinned 
 Ef all on 'em don't head against the wind. 
 'Fore long the trees begin to show belief, 
 The maple crimsons to a coral-reef, 
 Then saffern swarms swing off from all the willers, 
 So plump they look like yaller caterpillars, 
 Then gray hossches'nuts leetle hands unfold 
 Softer'n a baby's be a' three days old : 
 Thet's robin-redbreast's almanick ; he knows 
 Thet arter this ther' 's only blossom-snows ; 
 So, choosin' out a handy crotch an' spouse, 
 He goes to plast'rin' his adobe house. 
 
 Then seems to come a hitch, things lag behind, 
 Till some fine mornin' Spring makes up her mind, 
 An' ez, when snow-swelled rivers cresh their dams 
 Heaped up with ice thet dovetails in an' jams, 
 A leak comes spirtin' thru some pin-hole cleft, 
 Grows stronger, fercer, tears out right an' left, 
 Then all the waters bow themselves an' come, 
 Suddin, in one gret slope o' shedderin' foam, 
 Jes' so our Spring gits everythin' in tune 
 
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 439 
 
 An' gives one leap from April into June ; 
 Then all comes crowdin' in ; afore you think, 
 Young oak-leaves mist the side-hill woods with pink; 
 The catbird in the laylock-bush is loud ; 
 The orchards turn to heaps o' rosy cloud ; 
 Red-cedars blossom tu, though few folks know it, 
 An' look all dipt in sunshine like a poet ; 
 The lime-trees pile their solid stacks o' shade 
 An' drows'ly simmer with the bees' sweet trade ; 
 In ellum-shrouds the flashin' hangbird clings, 
 An' for the summer vy'ge his hammock slings ; 
 All down the loose-walled lanes in archin' bowers 
 The barb'ry droops its strings o' golden flowers, 
 Whose shrinkin' hearts the school-gals love to try 
 With pins they'll worry yourn so, boys, bimeby ! 
 But I don't love your cat'logue style do you ? 
 Ez ef to sell off Natur' by vendoo ; 
 One word with blood in't 's twice ez good ez two : 
 'Nuff sed, June's bridesman, poet o' the year, 
 Gladness on wings, the bobolink, is here ; 
 Half-hid in tip-top apple-blooms he swings, 
 Or climbs aginst the breeze with quiverin' wings, 
 Or, givin' way to 't in a mock despair, 
 Runs down, a brook o' laughter, thru the air. 
 
 A FEW STANZAS FROM "THE PRESENT CRISIS." 
 
 ONCE to every man or nation comes the moment to decide, 
 
 In the strife of Truth with Falsehood, for the good or evil side ; 
 
 Some great cause, God's new Messiah, offering each the bloom or 
 
 blight, 
 
 Parts the goats upon the left hand, and the sheep upon the right, 
 And the choice goes by forever 'twixt that darkness and that light. 
 
 Careless seems the great Avenger ; history's pages but record 
 One death-grapple in the darkness 'twixt old systems and the Word ; 
 Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne, 
 Yet that scaffold sways the future, and, behind the dim unknown, 
 Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own. 
 
440 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 Then to side with Truth is noble when we share her wretched crust, 
 Ere her cause bring fame and profit, and 'tis prosperous to be just ; 
 Then it is the brave man chooses, while the coward stands aside, 
 Doubting in his abject spirit, till his Lord is crucified, 
 And the multitude make virtue of the faith they had denied. 
 
 For humanity sweeps onward : where to-day the martyr stands, 
 On the morrow crouches Judas with the silver in his hands ; 
 Far in front the cross stands ready, and the crackling fagots burn, 
 While the hooting mob of yesterday in silent awe return 
 To glean up the scattered ashes into History's golden urn. 
 
 New occasions teach new duties ; Time makes ancient good uncouth ; 
 
 They must upward still, and onward, who would keep abreast with 
 Truth ; 
 
 Lo, before us gleam her camp-fires ! we ourselves must Pilgrims be, 
 
 Launch our Mayflower, and steer boldly through the desperate win- 
 ter sea, 
 
 Nor attempt the Future's portal with the Past's blood-rusted key. 
 
 WILLIAM WETMORE STORY. 
 
 William Wetmore Story was bora in Salem, Mass., February 19, 1819, and was graduated 
 at Harvard College in 1838, in the class with Professor Lowell. He studied law under 
 the instruction of his father, Judge Story, and became an able writejr upon legal subjects. 
 He reported two volumes of cases in the United States Circuit Court, and was apparently 
 on the road to professional eminence. But he was born with an artistic temperament, and 
 amused himself first by painting landscapes, and afterwards by modelling in clay. He went 
 to Rome in 1848, and in the end he became the first living sculptor of ideal figures. His 
 statues of Saul, Delilah, and Cleopatra, in particular, are considered as masterpieces in form 
 and in the expression of character, thought, and emotion. His success in literature has been 
 almost as remarkable as in art. A volume of his Poems appeared in 1847, and an enlarged 
 edition in 1856. Roba di Roma, most of which appeared first in the Atlantic Monthly, a 
 vivid picture of the modern city, was published in 1862. He published a treatise on the 
 Proportions of the Human Figure in 1866; Graffiti <P Italia* in 1869; and a poem, entitled 
 The Roman Lawyer in Jerusalem, in 1870. He published an edition of the Life and Letters 
 of his father in 1851. He is a contributor to Blackwood's Magazine, and the announcement 
 of a new poem by him is sure to attract the attention of every cultivated reader. 
 
 In 1856, at the inauguration of the statue of Beethoven in the Boston Music Hall, Mr. 
 Story delivered a splendid prologue, which is included in the volume before referred to. 
 
 The poem here printed, The English Language, is a curious study in the resources of our 
 tongue, and a very successful imitation of a classic metre. It is worthy of the student's 
 attention. The Couplets are beautiful thoughts, with an almost Shakespearian directness 
 of expression. 
 
 * Italian Pencil Sketches, a series of dramatic poems. 
 
WILLIAM WETMORE STORY. 44! 
 
 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 
 
 "And for our long, that still is so empayred 
 By travelling linguists, I can prove it clear 
 That no long has the muses' utterance heyred 
 For verse, and that sweete music to the ear 
 Strook out of Rhyme so naturally as this." CHAPMAN. 
 
 GIVE me, of every language, first my vigorous English 
 
 Stored with imported wealth, rich in its natural mines 
 
 Grand in its rhythmical cadence, simple for household employment 
 
 Worthy the poet's song, fit for the speech of man. 
 
 Not from one metal alone the perfectest mirror is shapen, 
 Not from one color is built the rainbow's aerial bridge ; 
 Instruments blending together yield the divinest of music ; 
 Out of a myriad flowers sweetest of honey is drawn. 
 
 So unto thy close strength is welded and beaten together, 
 Iron dug from the North, ductile gold from the South ; 
 So unto thy broad stream the ice-torrents born in the mountains 
 Rush, and the rivers pour brimming with sun from the plains. 
 
 Thou hast the sharp clean edge and the downright blow of the 
 
 Saxon, 
 
 Thou the majestical march and the stately pomp of the Latin, 
 Thou the euphonious swell, the rhythmical roll of the Greek ; 
 Thine is the elegant suavity caught from sonorous Italian, 
 Thine the chivalric obeisance, the courteous grace of the Norman 
 Thine the Teutonic German's inborn guttural strength. 
 
 Raftered by firm-laid consonants, windowed by opening vowels, 
 
 Thou securely art built, free to the sun and the air ; 
 
 Over thy feudal battlements trail the wild tendrils of fancy, 
 
 Where in the early morn warbled our earliest birds ; 
 
 Science looks out from thy watch-tower, love whispers in at thy 
 
 lattice, 
 While o'er thy bastions wit flashes its glittering sword. 
 
 Not by corruption rotted nor slowly by ages degraded, 
 
 Have the sharp consonants gone crumbling away from our words ; 
 
 Virgin and clean is their edge, like granite blocks chiselled by 
 
 Egypt ; 
 Just as when Shakespeare and Milton laid them in glorious verse. 
 
442 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 Fitted for every use like a great majestical river, 
 Blending thy various streams, stately thou flowest along, 
 Bearing the white-winged ship of Poesy over thy bosom, 
 Laden with spices that come out of the tropical isles, 
 Fancy's pleasuring yacht with its bright and fluttering pennons, 
 Logic's frigates of war and the toil-worn barges of trade. 
 
 How art thou freely obedient unto the poet or speaker 
 When, in a happy hour, thought into speech he translates ; 
 Caught on the word's sharp angles flash the bright hues of his 
 
 fancy 
 Grandly the thought rides the words, as a good horseman his steed. 
 
 Now, clear, pure, hard, bright, and one by one, like to hail-stones, 
 
 Short words fall from his lips fast as the first of a shower 
 
 Now in a twofold column, Spondee, Iamb, and Trochee, 
 
 Unbroke, firmset, advance, retreat, trampling along 
 
 Now with a sprightlier springiness bounding in triplicate syllables, 
 
 Dance the elastic Dactylics in musical cadences on, 
 
 Now their voluminous coil intertangling like huge anacondas 
 
 Roll overwhelmingly onward the sesquipedalian words. 
 
 Flexile and free in thy gait and simple in all thy construction, 
 Yielding to every turn thou bearest thy rider along ; 
 Now like our hackney or draught-horse serving our commonest uses, 
 Now bearing grandly the Poet Pegasus-like to the sky. 
 
 Thou art not prisoned in fixed rules, thou art no slave to a grammar, 
 Thou art an eagle uncaged scorning the perch and the chain ; 
 Hadst thou been fettered and formalized, thou hadst been tamer and 
 
 weaker. 
 
 How could the poor slave walk with thy grand freedom of gait ? 
 Let then grammarians rail and let foreigners sigh for thy signposts, 
 Wandering lost in thy maze, thy wilds of magnificent growth. 
 
 Call thee incongruous, wild, of rule and of reason defiant ; 
 
 I in thy wildness a grand freedom of character find. 
 
 So with irregular outline tower up the sky-piercing mountains 
 
 Rearing o'er yawning chasms lofty precipitous steeps, 
 
 Spreading o'er ledges unclimbable, meadows and slopes of green 
 
 smoothness, 
 Bearing the flowers in their clefts, losing their peaks in the clouds. 
 
WILLIAM WETMORE STORY. 443 
 
 Therefore it is that I praise thee and never can cease from rejoicing, 
 Thinking that good stout English is mine and my ancestors' tongue ; 
 Give me its varying music, the flow of its free modulation 
 I will not covet the full roll of the glorious Greek, 
 Luscious and feeble Italian, Latin so formal and stately, 
 French with its nasal lisp, nor German inverted and harsh 
 Not while our organ can speak with its many and "wonderful voices 
 Play on the soft flute of love, blow the loud trumpet of war, 
 Sing with the high sesquialtro, or drawing its full diapason 
 Shake all the air with the grand storm of its pedals and stops. 
 
 [Selections from "Couplets."] 
 
 SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 II. 
 
 OUR nearness value lends to trivial things and slight, 
 But only distance gives to lofty ones their height. 
 
 The Pyramids to those beneath them look not high, 
 But as we go from them they tower into the sky. 
 
 So thy colossal mind, in time's perspective seen, 
 Still rises up and up with more majestic mien. 
 
 in. 
 
 Strive not to say the whole ! the Poet, in his Art, 
 Must intimate the whole, and say the smallest part. 
 
 The young moon's silver arc her perfect circle tells, 
 The limitless within Art's bounded outline dwells. 
 
 Of every noble work the silent part is best, 
 
 Of all expression, that which cannot be expressed. 
 
 Each act contains the Life, each work of Art the world, 
 And all the planet laws are in each dew-drop pearled. 
 
 VI. 
 
 Patient the wounded earth receives the plough's sharp share, 
 And hastes the sweet return of golden grain to bear. 
 
 The sea remembers not the vessel's rending keel, 
 But rushes joyously the ravage to conceal. 
 
HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 So patient under scorn and injury abide ; 
 
 Who conquereth all within may dare the world outside. 
 
 x. 
 
 Live not without a friend ! The Alpine rock must own 
 Its mossy grace, or else be nothing but a stone. 
 
 Live not without a God ! however low or high, 
 In every house should be a window to the sky. 
 
 XII. 
 
 As rooted to the rock the yearning sea-weed grows 
 And sways unto the tide, and feels its ebbs and flows ; 
 
 So unto Reason fixed, yet floating ever free 
 
 In Feeling's ebb and flow the Artist's life should be. 
 
 XIX. 
 
 That dress of thine is made of many lives ; I see 
 Upon thy coral there the diver's misery. 
 
 Thy shawl is red with blood, for that the camel bled ; 
 The seamstress sewed her pain into thy lace's thread. 
 
 The tortured worm gave up his tomb thy silk to make, 
 The oyster bore his pearl of trouble for thy sake. 
 
 The frolic kid was flayed thy snowy hands to hide, 
 A thousand cochineals to paint thy ribbon died. 
 
 Thou wouldst not crush a worm, so gentle is thy heart ; 
 'And yet, behold ! how strange a paradox thou art. 
 
 XXXII. 
 
 Where thou art strong and stout thy friend to thee will show 
 Where thou art weak alone is taught thee by thy foe. 
 
 Therefore despise him not ; but 'neath his battle-axe 
 See if thy armor ring whole, sound, or 'neath it cracks. 
 
 Though friend with flattery soothe, or foe stab through and through, 
 Praise cannot save the False, nor malice kill the True. 
 
EDWIN PERCY WHIPPLE. 445 
 
 EDWIN PERCY WHIPPLE. 
 
 Edwin Percy Whipple was born in Gloucester, Mass., March 8, 1819. He was educated 
 in the public schools of Salem, and on his removal to Boston was employed in a broker's 
 office. Ha became a member of the Mercantile Library Association, and in its debates and 
 other literary exercises he gained the knowledge and practice which laid the foundation for his 
 scholarship and his fame as a writer. He was superintendent of the News Room in the 
 Merchants' Exchange, but in 1860 gave up business to devote himself to literature. He 
 has been a contributor to the North American Review, the Christian Examiner, the 
 Atlantic Monthly, and other periodicals. He delivered a course of lectures before the Lowell 
 Institute, upon the Literature of the Age of Elizabeth, and has benfor some years engaged 
 in lecturing, mostly on literary topics, before lyceums and at colkge anniversaries through- 
 out the country. His orations, reviews, and essays have been published in six volumes, 
 i2mo., by Messrs. J. R. Osgood & Co., Boston. 
 
 Mr. Whipple's mind is acute and analytic, and his mode of dealing with a subject shows 
 his mastery of principles, his sincerity of character, and his power of lucid statement. His 
 style is not uniformly easy, although his vocabulary is ample, and his choice of words is often 
 very felicitous. At times he inclines to be epigrammatic and sparkling, and when this is 
 the case he is apt to restrain his naturally ample utterance, and to establish a formal balance 
 of terse phrases in short, pungent sentences, in place of the longer sweep of the older and 
 more melodious style of English prose. Like most writers who have had their early disci- 
 pline in debate, and have maintained an oratorical style by long practice in lecturing, he 
 sometimes swells his periods into sonorous measure, and writes at his reader, as if in the 
 midst of a brilliant peroration before an excited audience. Our English cousins say that 
 most of our writers lack repose. Probably this is true, but not more true of Mr. Whipple 
 than of many others of equal note. We have young blood yet, and have not quite settled 
 down into the equable courses of mature years. The spectacle of a modem Englishman 
 roused to a state of enthusiasm about anything would be a rare one indeed. 
 
 Mr. Whipple is one of the few writers who have made criticism a fine art ; and the cul- 
 tivated reader finds almost as much pleasure in his thoughtful discussions, rich as they are 
 in assimilated wealth, as in the perusal of a work of original creation. 
 
 [From Character and Characteristic Men.] 
 
 IT results from this doctrine of the mind's growth, that success in 
 all the departments of life, over which intellect holds dominion, 
 depends, not merely on an outside knowledge of the facts and laws 
 connected with each department, but on the assimilation of that 
 knowledge into instinctive intelligence and active power. Take the 
 good farmer, and you will find that ideas in him are endowed with 
 will, and can work. Take the good general, and you will find that 
 the principles of his profession are inwrought into the substance of 
 his nature, and act with the velocity of instincts. Take the good 
 judge, and in him jurisprudence seems impersonated, and his 
 opinions are authorities. Take the good merchant, and you will 
 find that commerce, in its facts and laws, seems in him embodied, 
 and that his sagacity appears identical with the objects on which it 
 is exercised. Take the great statesman, take Webster, and note 
 how, by thoroughly individualizing his comprehensive experience, he 
 
446 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 seems to carry a nation in his brain ; how, in all that relates to the 
 matter in hand, he has in him as faculty what is out of him vcifact; 
 how between the man and the thing there occurs that subtile free- 
 masonry of recognition which we call the mind's intuitive glance ; 
 and how conflicting principles and statements, mixed and mingling 
 in fierce confusion and with deafening war-cries, fall into order and 
 relation, and move in the direction of one inexorable controlling 
 idea, the moment they are grasped by an intellect which is in the 
 secret of their combination : 
 
 " Confusion hears his voice, and the wild uproar stills. " 
 
 Mark, too, how, in- the productions of his mind, the presence and 
 pressure of his whole nature, in each intellectual act, keep his opin- 
 ions on the level of his character, and stamp every weighty paragraph 
 with " Daniel Webster, his mark." The characteristic of all his great 
 speeches is, that the statements, arguments, and images have what we 
 should call a positive being of their own, stand out as plainly to 
 the sight as a ledge of rocks or chain of hills, and, like the works 
 of Nature herself, need no other justification of their right to exist 
 than the fact of their existence. We may dislike their object, but 
 we cannot deny their solidity of organization. This power of giving 
 a substantial body, an undeniable external shape and form, to his 
 thoughts and perceptions, so that the toiling mind does not so much 
 seem to pass from one sentence to another, unfolding its leading 
 idea, as to make each sentence a solid work in a Torres- Vedras 
 line of fortifications this prodigious constructive faculty, wielded 
 with the strength of a huge Samson-like artificer in the material of 
 mind, and welding together the substances it may not be able to 
 fuse, puzzled all opponents who understood it not, and baffled the 
 efforts of all who understood it well. He rarely took a position on 
 any political question which did not draw down upon him a whole 
 battalion of adversaries, with ingenious array of argument and 
 indefinite noise of declamation ; but after the smoke, and dust, and 
 clamor of the combat were over, the speech loomed up perfect and 
 whole, a permanent thing in history or literature, while the loud 
 thunders of opposition had too often died away into low mutterings, 
 audible only to the adventurous antiquary who gropes in the " still 
 air" of stale " Congressional- Debates." The rhetoric of sentences 
 however melodious, of aphorisms however pointed, of abstractions 
 however true, cannot stand in the storm of affairs against this true 
 rhetoric, in which thought is con-substantiated with things. 
 
EDWIN PERCY WHIPPLE. 447 
 
 Now, in men of this stamp, who have so organized knowledge into 
 faculty that they have attained the power of giving Thought the 
 character of Fact, we notice no distinction between power of intel- 
 lect and power of will, but an indissoluble union and fusion of force 
 and insight. Facts and laws are so blended with their personal 
 being, that we hardly decide whether it is thought that wills, or will 
 that thinks. Their actions display the intensest intelligence ; their 
 thoughts come from them clothed in the thews and sinews of ener- 
 getic volition. Their force, being proportioned to their intelligence, 
 never issues in that wild anarchical impulse, or that tough, obstinate, 
 narrow wilfulness, which many take to be the characteristic of indi- 
 vidualized power. They may, in fact, exhibit no striking individual 
 traits which stand impertinently prominent, and yet from this very 
 cause be all the more potent and influential individualities. Indeed, 
 in the highest efforts of ecstatic action, when the person is mightiest, 
 and amazes us by the giant leaps of his intuition, the mere pecu- 
 liarities of his personality are unseen and unfelt. This is the case 
 with Homer, Shakespeare, and Goethe in poetry with Plato 
 and Bacon in philosophy with Newton in science with Caesar 
 in war. Such men, doubtless, had peculiarities and caprices, but 
 they were " burnt and purged away " by the fire of their genius, 
 when its action was intensest. Then their whole natures were 
 melted down into pure force and insight, and the impression of 
 marvellous force and weight and reach of thought. 
 
 If it be objected, that these high examples are fitted to provoke 
 despair rather than stimulate emulation, the answer is, that they 
 contain, exemplify, and emphasize the principles, and flash subtile 
 hints of the processes, of all mental growth and production. How 
 comes it that these men's thoughts radiate from them as acts, en- 
 dowed not only with an illuminating, but a penetrating and animating 
 power ? The answer to this is a statement of the genesis, not mere- 
 ly of genius, but of every form of intellectual manhood ; for such 
 thoughts do not leap a la Minerva, full grown from the head, but are 
 struck off in those moments when the whole nature of the thinker is 
 alive and aglow with an inspiration kindled long before in remote 
 recesses of consciousness from one spark of immortal fire, and un- 
 weariedly burning, burning, burning, until it lit up the whole inert 
 mass of surrounding mind in flame. 
 
 To show, indeed, how little there is of the offhand, the haphazard, 
 the hit-or-miss, in the character of creative thought, and how com- 
 pletely the gladdest inspiration is earned, let us glance at the 
 
44$ HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 psychological history of one of those imperial ideas which measure 
 the power, test the quality, and convey the life, of the minds that 
 conceive them. The progress of such an idea is from film to form. 
 It has its origin in an atmosphere of feeling ; for the first vital move- 
 ment of the mind is emotional, and is expressed in a dim tendency, 
 a feeble feeling after the object, or the class of objects, related to the 
 peculiar constitution and latent affinities of its individual being. This 
 tendency gradually condenses and deepens into a sentiment per- 
 vading the man with a love, of those objects, by a sweet compul- 
 sion ordering his energies in their direction, and by slow degrees 
 investing them, through a process of imagination, with the attribute 
 of beauty, and, through a process of reason, investing the purpose 
 with which he pursues them with the attribute of intelligence. The 
 object dilates as the mind assimilates and the nature moves, so that 
 every step in this advance from mere emotion to vivid insight is a 
 building up of the faculties which each onward movement evokes 
 and exercises sentiment, imagination, reason increasing their 
 power and enlarging their scope with each impetus that speeds them 
 on to their bright and beckoning goal. Then, when the individual 
 has reached his full mental stature and come in direct contact with 
 the object, then, only then, does he "pluck out the heart of its 
 mystery " in one of those lightning-like acts of thought which we 
 call combination, invention, discovery. There is no luck, no ac- 
 cident, in all this. Nature does not capriciously scatter her secrets 
 as golden gifts to lazy pets and luxurious darlings, but imposes 
 tasks when she presents opportunities, and uplifts him whom she 
 would inform. The apple that she drops at the feet of Newton is 
 but a coy invitation to follow her to the stars. 
 
 JULIA WARD HOWE. 
 
 Julia Ward Howe, daughter of Samuel Ward, was born in the city of New York, May 27, 
 1819. She received a careful education from her father, and gave evidences of literary talent at 
 an early age. She was married in 1843 to Dr. Samuel G. Howe, well known as a philanthro- 
 pist and superintendent of the Blind Asylum in Boston, and accompanied him upon a tour 
 in Europe. In 1854 she published a volume of poems, entitled Passion Flowers, and in 
 1856 another volume, Words for the Hour. She wrote two plays for the stage, one of which, 
 The World's Own, was performed in Boston. In 1859 she published a book of travel, 
 entitled A Trip to Cuba. In 1866 appeared her Later Lyrics, containing among other 
 things the magnificent Battle Hymn of the Republic, the music of which was heard in every 
 northern camp during the late war. 
 
 The origin of this stirring melody is not known with certainty. It is believed to have 
 
JULIA WARD HOWE. 449 
 
 come from the Methodist camp meetings. A company of Boston militia, the old Light 
 Infantry corps, while on garrison duty at Fort Warren, was in the habit of singing a couple 
 of rudely improvised lines to the music, running thus : 
 
 "John Brown's body lies a mouldering in the grave, 
 John Brown's body lies a mouldering in the grave, 
 John Brown's body lies a mouldering in the grave ; 
 His soul is marching on." 
 
 The refrain was a repetition of the words "Glory, glory, hallelujah!" The Twelfth 
 Massachusetts Regiment was quartered at the fort for organization and drill, and, before 
 leaving for the seat of war, the men had learned the tune. When the regiment passed 
 through New York, on the march down Broadway, the men struck up the song in unison, 
 and produced an effect, manifested by mingled applause and tears, that is rareiy accorded to 
 music. From them the melody was soon caught by other troops, and the marching on of 
 John Brown's soul was heard from the Potomac to the Mississippi. It became a sort of 
 contagion, and was heard everywhere in patriotic meetings, in parlor and in kitchen, in 
 workshops and on the street. 
 
 Mrs. Howe seized upon the salient movements of the air, and produced a hymn that, like 
 the Marseillaise ', is immortal in itself, and linked to a not unworthy melody. It was as if an 
 ancient prophet had returned to earth with a divine and awful message, to kindle the blood 
 of the nation and lead us on by thoughts of present duty and future glory. 
 
 Of the other pieces in the Later Lyrics, we would mention Her Verses, a Lyrical Romance, 
 which contains many exquisite stanzas. In 1868 she published an account of a trip to Athens, 
 called From the Oak to the Olive. 
 
 Mrs. Howe is an earnest advocate of the movement for woman suffrage, and has written 
 much upon the subject with power and eloquence. 
 
 OUR ORDERS. 
 
 WEAVE no more silks, ye Lyons looms, 
 
 To deck our girls for gay delights ! 
 The crimson flower of battle blooms, 
 
 And solemn marches fill the nights. 
 
 Weave but the flag whose bars to-day 
 
 Drooped heavy o'er our early dead, 
 And homely garments coarse and gray, 
 
 For orphans that must earn their bread ! 
 
 Keep back your tunes, ye viols sweet, 
 That poured delight from other lands ! 
 
 Rouse there the dancer's restless feet : 
 The trumpet leads our warrior bands. 
 
 And ye that wage the war of words 
 
 With mystic fame and subtile power, 
 Go, chatter to the idle birds, 
 
 Or teach the lesson of the hour ! 
 29 
 
45O HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 Ye Sibyl Arts, in one stern knot 
 Be all your offices combined ! 
 
 Stand close, while Courage draws the lot, 
 The destiny of human kind. 
 
 And if that destiny could fail, 
 
 The sun should darken in the sky, 
 
 The eternal bloom of Nature pale, 
 
 And God, and Truth, and Freedom die ! 
 
 BATTLE HYMN OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 MINE eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord : 
 
 He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are 
 
 stored ; 
 
 He hath loosed the fateful lightning of his terrible swift sword ; 
 His truth is marching on. 
 
 I have seen Him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps ; 
 They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps ; 
 I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps. 
 His day is marching on. 
 
 I haveread a fiery gospel, writ in burnished rows of steel : 
 " As ye deal with my contemners, so with you my grace shall deal ; 
 Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with his heel, 
 Since God is marching on." 
 
 He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat ; 
 He is sifting out the hearts of men before his judgment seat : 
 O, be swift, my soul, to answer Him ! be jubilant, my feet ! 
 Our God is marching on. 
 
 In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea, 
 With a glory in his bosom that transfigures you and me : 
 As he died to make men holy, let us die to make men free, 
 While God is marching on. 
 
THOMAS WILLIAM PARSONS. 451 
 
 THOMAS WILLIAM PARSONS. 
 
 Thomas William Parsons was born in Boston, Mass., August 18, 1819, and was educated 
 at the Latin School. He visited Italy in 1836, and devoted himself to Italian literature, 
 especially to the works of Dante, and has become one of the most eminent living scholars in 
 that field. He published in Boston, in 1843, a translation of the first ten cantos of the 
 Inferno, in which not only the spirit of the original but the difficult terzci rima are preserved. 
 In 1854 he published a volume of his poems, which are compact in form, carefully finished, 
 and genuinely beautiful. His Lines on a Bust of Dante in their severe simplicity would 
 have won the approval of the great Florentine himself. A complete translation of thf 
 Inferno appeared in 1867. He is at present residing in London. 
 
 ON A BUST OF DANTE. 
 
 SEE, from this counterfeit of him 
 
 Whom Arno shall remember long, 
 How stern of lineament, how grim, 
 
 The father was of Tuscan song. 
 There but the burning sense of wrong, 
 
 Perpetual care and scorn, abide ; 
 Small friendship for the lordly throng; 
 
 Distrust of all the world beside. 
 
 Faithful if this wan image be, 
 
 No dream his life was but a fight ; 
 Could any Beatrice see 
 
 A lover in that anchorite ? 
 To that cold Ghibeline's gloomy sight 
 
 Who could have guessed the visions came 
 Of Beauty, veiled with heavenly light, 
 
 In circles of eternal flame ? 
 
 The lips as Cumae's cavern close, 
 
 The cheeks with fast and sorrow thin, 
 The rigid front, almost morose, 
 
 But for the patient hope within, 
 Declare a life whose course hath been 
 
 Unsullied still, though still severe, 
 Which, through the wavering days of sin, 
 
 Kept itself icy-chaste and clear. 
 
 Not wholly such his haggard look 
 When wandering once, forlorn, he strayed, 
 
 With no companion save his book, 
 To Corvo's hushed monastic shade ; 
 
45 2 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 Where, as the Benedictine laid 
 His palm upon the pilgrim's guest, 
 
 The single boon for which he prayed 
 The convent's charity was rest. 
 
 Peace dwells not here this rugged face 
 
 Betrays no spirit of repose ; 
 The sullen warrior sole we trace, 
 
 The marble man of many woes. 
 Such was his mien when first arose 
 
 The thought of that strange tale divine, 
 When hell he peopled with his foes, 
 
 The scourge of many a guilty line. 
 
 War to the last he waged with all 
 
 The tyrant canker-worms of earth ; 
 Baron and duke, in hold and hall, 
 
 Cursed the dark hour that gave him birth ; 
 He used Rome's harlot for his mirth ; 
 
 Plucked bare hypocrisy and crime ; 
 But valiant souls of knightly worth 
 
 Transmitted to the rolls of Time. 
 
 O Time ! whose verdicts mock our own, 
 
 The only righteous judge art thou ; 
 That poor, old exile, sad and lone, 
 
 Is Latium's other Virgil now ; 
 Before his name the nations bow ; 
 
 His words are parcel of mankind, 
 Deep in whose hearts, as on his brow, 
 
 The marks have sunk of Dante's mind. 
 
 A SONG FOR SEPTEMBER. 
 
 SEPTEMBER strews the woodland o'er 
 
 With many a brilliant color ; 
 The world is brighter than before 
 
 Why should our hearts be duller ? 
 Sorrow and the scarlet leaf, 
 
 Sad thoughts and sunny weather, 
 Ah, me ! this glory and this grief 
 
 Agree not well together. 
 
JOSIAH GILBERT HOLLAND. 4$ 3 
 
 This is the parting season this 
 
 The time when friends are flying ; 
 And lovers now, with many a kiss, 
 
 Their long farewells are sighing. 
 Why is the earth so gayly drest ? 
 
 This pomp that autumn beareth 
 A funeral seems, where every guest 
 
 A bridal garment weareth. 
 
 Each one of us, perchance, may here, 
 
 On some blue morn hereafter, 
 Return to view the gaudy year, 
 
 But not with boyish laughter : 
 We shall then be wrinkled men, 
 
 Our brows with silver laden, 
 And thou this glen mayst seek again, 
 
 But nevermore a maiden ! 
 
 Nature perhaps foresees that Spring 
 
 Will touch her teeming bosom, 
 And that a few brief months will bring 
 
 The bird, the bee, the blossom ; 
 Ah, these forests do not know 
 
 Or would less brightly wither 
 The virgin that adorns them so 
 
 Will nevermore come hither ! 
 
 JOSIAH GILBERT HOLLAND. 
 
 Josiah Gilbert Holland was born in Belchertown, Mass., July 24, 1819. He studied 
 medicine, and practised for a few years. He was superintendent of public schools in Vicks- 
 burg, Miss., for a year. In 1849 he became associate editor of the Springfield (Mass.) Re- 
 publican, and wrote for its columns several of his popular works. In 1870 he became editor 
 of Scribner's Monthly, in New York. 
 
 His works are a History of Western Massachusetts ( 1855) ; The Bay Path (1857) ; Timothy 
 Titcomb's Letters to the Young (1858) ; Bitter Sweet, a dramatic poem (1858) ; Gold Foil, 
 Hammered from Popular Proverbs (1859) ; Miss Gilbert's Career (1860) : Lessons in Life 
 (1861) ; Letters to the Jones?s (1863); Plain Talk on Familiar Subjects (1865) ; Life of 
 Abraham Lincoln (1866) ; Katrina, Her Life and Mine, a narrative poem (1867). 
 
 His novels are his best works, artistically considered. The Bay Path is a story of the 
 first settlement of Connecticut valley, and the characters and events are mainly historical. 
 The author makes no attempt to reproduce the ancient forms of speech, but he understands 
 
454 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 well and has faithfully represented the ideas and manners of the time. Miss Gilbert's Career 
 has many good points. It is a novel of modern times, and is as new, and near, and devoid 
 of romantic associations, as a pine-shingled house in the factory village it depicts. But its 
 principal figures are exhibited with a certain stereoscopic fidelity, and the characteristic 
 virtues and meannesses of a Yankee neighborhood are naturally developed in the course of 
 its events. The volumes of proverbial advice are doubtless useful works, and have been 
 widely circulated ; but their wisdom is of an obvious kind, and the author, in his endeavors 
 to put himself on a level with his readers, sometimes forgets the style of a man of letters as 
 well as the dignity of a teacher of morals. The two poems, Bitter Sweet and Katrina, have 
 had a great popularity. On the title page of one of them we saw the imprint, " Thirty-sixth 
 Thousand." Few American works have been so rewarded. They are interesting as stories, 
 with some bright sketches of rural life, and some touches of poetic feeling. They have 
 their counterparts in style and mode of treatment in the works of popular English authors, 
 and are specially commended by their admirers for their religious tone and their earnestly 
 expressed lessons. 
 
 [From Miss Gilbert's Career.] 
 
 AN EXHIBITION OF AN INFANT SCHOOL. 
 
 DR. GILBERT came forward, and, rapping upon the stage three 
 times with his cane, called the assembly to order. They had gathered, 
 he said, to witness one of the distinguishing characteristics and 
 proudest triumphs of modern civilization. It had been supposed 
 that the time of children less than five years old must necessarily be 
 wasted in play, that the golden moments of infancy must be for- 
 ever lost. That time was past. As the result of modern progress, 
 it had appeared that even the youngest minds were capable of 
 receiving ideas, and that education may actually be begun at the 
 maternal breast, pursued in the cradle, and forwarded in the nursery 
 to a point beyond the power of imagination at present to conceive. 
 It was in these first years of life that there had been a great waste of 
 time. He saw children before him, in the audience, older than any 
 upon the stage, who had no knowledge of arithmetic and geography, 
 children, the most of whom had never heard the word astronomy 
 pronounced. While these precious little ones had been improving 
 their time, there were those before him whom he had seen engaged 
 in fishing, others in playing at ball, and others still, little girls, doing 
 nothing, but amusing themselves with their dolls ! He had but a 
 word to add. There were others who would address them before 
 the close of the exercises. He offered the exhibition as a demonstra- 
 tion of the feasibleness of infant instruction. He trusted he offered 
 it in a humble spirit, but he felt that he was justified in pointing to 
 it as an effectual condemnation of those parents who had denied to 
 their infants the privilege of attending the school. . . . 
 
 It was now Miss Gilbert's office to engage the audience ; and her 
 little troop of infantry was put through its evolutions and exercises, 
 
JOSIAH GILBERT HOLLAND. 455 
 
 to the astonishment and delight of all beholders. They sang songs ; 
 they repeated long passages of poetry in concert ; they went through 
 the multiplication table to the tune of Yankee Doodle ; they an- 
 swered with the shrill, sing-song voice of parrots all sorts of questions 
 in geography ; they recited passages of Scripture ; they gave an 
 account of the creation of the world and of the American revolution ; 
 they told the story of the birth of Christ, and spelled words of six 
 syllables ; they added, they multiplied, they subtracted, they di- 
 vided ; they told what hemisphere, what continent, what country, 
 what state, what county, what town, they lived in ; they repeated the 
 names of the presidents of the United States and the governors of 
 the commonwealth ; they acted a little drama of Moses in the 
 Bulrushes ; and they did many other things, till, all through the 
 audience, astonishment grew into delight, and delight grew into 
 rapture. . . . 
 
 The musicians, who had been kept pretty closely at work accom- 
 panying the children in their songs, moved back their chairs at a 
 hint from Miss Gilbert, and took a position behind the pulpit. There 
 was a general moving of benches and making ready for the closing 
 scene and the crowning glory of the exhibition a representation 
 of the solar system on green baize, by bodies that revolved on 
 two legs. . . . 
 
 " The sun will take his place," said Miss Gilbert ; and immediately 
 the red-headed boy who bore the banner of " The Crampton Light 
 Infantry " stepped to the centre of the planetarium, with a huge ball 
 in his hand, mounted upon the end of a tall stick. Taking his stand 
 upon the chalk sun, and elevating the sphere above a head that 
 would have answered the purpose of a sun quite as well, he set it 
 twirling on its axis ; and thus came the centre of the system into 
 location and into office. 
 
 " Mercury ! " said Miss Gilbert ; and out came a smart little chap 
 with a smaller ball in his hand, and began walking obediently around 
 the chalk circle next the sun. 
 
 " Venus ! " and sweet little Venus rose out of the waves of muslin 
 tossing on the side of the stage, and took the next circle. 
 
 " Earth and her satellite ! " called forth a boy and a girl, the latter 
 playing moon to the boy's earth, revolving around him as he re- 
 volved around the sun, and with great astronomical propriety, making 
 faces at him. 
 
 Mars was called for ; and it ' must be acknowledged that the red 
 planet was very pale and very weary looking. 
 
456 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 " Jupiter and his satellites ! " and the boy Jupiter walked upon 
 the charming circle with a charming circle of little girls revolving 
 around him. 
 
 So Saturn with its seven moons, and Georgium Sidus, otherwise 
 Herschel, otherwise Uranus, with its six attendant orbs, took their 
 places on the verge of the system, and slowly, very slowly, moved 
 around the common centre. But there was one orbit still unfilled, 
 and that was a very eccentric one. It was not all described upon 
 the green baize carpet, but left it, and retired behind the pulpit, 
 and was lost. 
 
 The system was in motion, and, watching every revolving body in 
 it, stood the system's queen, indicating by her finger that Uranus 
 should go slower, or Mercury faster, and striving to keep ordei 
 among the subjects of her realm. The music grew dreamy and soft, 
 in an attempt to suggest what is called " the music of the spheres," 
 if any reader knows what that is. Heavenly little bodies indeed 
 they were, and it is not wonderful that many eyes moistened with 
 sensibility as they mingled so gracefully and so harmoniously upon 
 the plane of vision. Still the eccentric orbit was without an oc- 
 cupant, and no name was called. At last a pair of large dark eyes ap- 
 peared from behind the pulpit, and behind the eyes a head of golden 
 hair, and behind the head a wreath of floating golden curls. This 
 was the unbidden comet, advancing slowly towards the sun, almost 
 creeping at first, then gradually increasing his velocity, intent on 
 coming in collision with no other orb, smiling not, seeing nothing 
 of the audience before him, and yet absorbing the attention of every 
 eye in the house. The doctor's eyes beam with unwonted interest. 
 Miss Gilbert forgets Mars and Venus, and looks only at the comet. 
 At last the comet darts around its perihelion, and the golden curls 
 are turned to the audience in full retreat towards the unknown region 
 of space behind the pulpit from whence it had proceeded. 
 
 The house rang with cheers, and the doctor was prouder than 
 before ; for this was his little son Fred, the bearer of the banner 
 with the long inscription, Miss Gilbert's darling brother, and the 
 brightest ornament of the Crampton Light Infantry. 
 
 Miss Gilbert clapped her hands three times, and her system dis- 
 solved returned to its original elements and stepping forward 
 to her father, she announced that her exhibition was closed. 
 
 Dr. Bloomer said that he did not feel authorized to speak for 
 others, but he felt that he had learned much from the exhibition. He 
 felt that he should go away from it a wiser man, with new apprehen- 
 
JOSIAH GILBERT HOLLAND. 457 
 
 sions of the powers of the human soul, and the preciousness of time. 
 The hour was coming, he doubted not, in the progress of the race, 
 when knowledge would be so simplified, and the modes of imparting 
 it would become so well adapted to the young mind, that the child 
 of five would begin his process of education where the fathers left 
 off theirs. These little ones had already taught him many things, 
 and God would perfect his own praise out of the mouths of babes 
 and sucklings. . . . 
 
 The Rev. Jonas Sliter rose to make only "a few little remarks," 
 as he modestly characterized them. . . . These children, he 
 said, were undertaking the battle of life early. They had enlisted 
 under a captain who had already led them to a victory prouder than 
 any ever achieved by a Cassar or a Napoleon an American Joan of 
 Arc, whose career of usefulness, if she should keep her sword 
 bright, and her escutcheon untarnished, would far surpass in glory 
 that of the world-renowned heroine whose name he had mentioned. 
 Heaven forbid that he should flatter any one. He despised a 
 flatterer ; but he felt that he was honoring Caesar, and Napoleon, and 
 Joan of Arc in their graves by mentioning their names in connection 
 with such achievements as he had witnessed on that occasion. . . . 
 Standing back, as if to wait for the subsidence of the applause, his 
 mind retired behind his glasses, and thrust out its antenna in every 
 direction to feel for his theme, but he could not find it. 
 
 In his desperation he turned, at last, to the children, and said in 
 his blandest tones, " Little children, can you tell me who Caesar, and 
 Napoleon, and Joan of Arc were ? " 
 
 " Caesar is the name of my dog," responded the little golden- 
 haired comet. 
 
 " Napoleon is the name of my dog," cried Mars. 
 
 There was an awful pause a suppressed titter when precious 
 little Venus, in a shrill voice, with an exceedingly knowing look in 
 her face, said that "Joan of Arc was the name of the dog that Noah 
 saved from the flood." 
 
 What wonder that Crampton roared with laughter ? . . . 
 
 But Rev. Jonas Sliter was up. The sole question with him was 
 how to sit down. What should he say ? He waited until the laughter 
 had subsided, and then he told the children they had not got to that 
 yet, but their excellent teacher would doubtless tell them all about it 
 the next term. 
 
458 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 HERMAN MELVILLE. 
 
 Herman Melville was born in the city of New York August i, 1819. His boyhood was 
 spent in the neighborhood of Albany, and in Berkshire County, Mass. He gave early 
 evidence of talent for composition. At the age of eighteen he shipped before the mast as a 
 common sailor, visited London, and returned in the same way. In 1841 he embarked on a 
 whaling vessel bound to the Pacific. Being weary of the service, he deserted, in company 
 with a fellow-sailor, in 1842, at Nukuheva, one of the Marquesas Islands. Unexpectedly 
 he found himself among a race of cannibals, but was hospitably treated, though kept in 
 custody, for four months, when he escaped on a French vessel, and landed at Tahiti on the 
 day when the French took possession of the Society Islands. From thence he went to 
 Honolulu, in the Sandwich Islands, and returned to Boston in 1844. He wrote an account 
 of his singular experiences, and the work entitled Typee, was published in 1846, simultane- 
 ously in London and New York. Typee closes with the account of his' escape from Nuku- 
 heva. A second work, Omoo, published in 1847, takes up the narrative at that point. 
 These are among the most delightful books of travel in the language. The style is charm- 
 ingly easy, the descriptions are novel and picturesque, and the incidents are, if not abso- 
 lutely true, related with an air of verisimilitude that gives the reader perfect confidence. 
 
 Mr. Melville afterwards published Mardi, and a Voyage Thither (1849). ^ n tne same 
 year appeared Redburn, the Reminiscences of a Gentleman's Son in the Merchant Service. 
 In 1850 he removed to Pittsfield, Mass. His residence is now (1872) in New York city, 
 where he holds the office of inspector in the Custom House. White Jacket, or the World 
 in a Man-of-War, was published in 1850, and is- considered one of the most admirable 
 ot the author's works. In 1851 he published Moby Dick, the White Whale, an imaginative 
 story, and not altogether probable. Later works are, Pierre, or the Ambiguities (1852) ; 
 The Piazza Tales, containing some powerfully drawn pictures (1856) ; The Confidence Man 
 (1857) ; Battle Pieces and Aspects of the War (1866). 
 
 [From Typee.] 
 CLIMBING A COCOA-NUT TREE. 
 
 THIS invaluable fruit, brought to perfection by the rich soil of the 
 Marquesas, and borne aloft on a stately column more than a hun- 
 dred feet from the ground, would seem at first almost inaccessible to 
 the simple natives. Indeed, the slender, smooth, and soaring shaft, 
 without a single limb or protuberance of any kind to assist one in 
 mounting it, presents an obstacle only to be overcome by the sur- 
 prising agility and ingenuity of the islanders. It might be supposed 
 that their indolence would lead them patiently to await the period 
 when the ripened nuts, slowly parting from their stems, fall one by 
 one to the ground. This certainly would be the case, were it not 
 that the young fruit, encased in a soft green husk, with the incipient 
 meat adhering in a jelly-like pellicle to its sides, and containing a 
 bumper of the most delicious nectar, is what they chiefly prize. 
 
HERMAN MELVILLE. 459 
 
 They have at least twenty different terms to express as many 
 progressive stages in the growth of the nut. Many of them reject 
 the fruit altogether except at a particular period of its growth, which, 
 incredible as it may appear, they seemed to me to be able to ascer- 
 tain within an hour or two. Others are still more capricious in their 
 tastes ; and after gathering together a heap of the nuts of all ages, 
 and ingeniously tapping them, will first sip from one and then from 
 another, as fastidiously as some delicate wine-bibber experimenting, 
 glass in hand, among.his dusty demijohns of different vintages. 
 
 Some of the young men, with more flexible frames than their 
 comrades, and perhaps with more courageous souls, had a way of 
 walking up the trunk of the cocoa-nut trees which to me seemed 
 little less than miraculous : and when looking at them in the act, I 
 experienced that curious perplexity a child feels when he beholds a 
 fly moving feet uppermost along a ceiling. 
 
 I will endeavor to describe the way in which Narnee, a noble 
 young chief, sometimes performed this feat for my particular gratifi- 
 cation ; but his preliminary performances must also be recorded. 
 Upon my signifying my desire that he should pluck me the young 
 fruit of some particular tree, the handsome savage, throwing himself 
 into a sudden attitude of surprise, feigns astonishment at the ap- 
 parent absurdity of the request. Maintaining this position for a 
 moment, the strange emotions depicted on his countenance soften 
 down into one of humorous resignation to my will, and then, looking 
 wistfully up to the tufted top of the tree, he stands on tiptoe, strain- 
 ing his neck and elevating his arm, as though endeavoring to reach 
 the fruit from the ground where he stands. As if defeated in this 
 childish attempt, he now sinks to the earth despondingly, beating 
 his breast in well-acted despair ; and then, starting to his feet all at 
 once, and throwing back his head, raises both hands, like a school- 
 boy about to catch a falling ball. After continuing this for a moment 
 or two, as if in expectation that the fruit was going to be tossed 
 down to him by some good spirit in the tree-top, he turns wildly 
 round in another fit of despair, and scampers off to the distance of 
 thirty or forty yards. Here he remains a while, eying the tree, the 
 very picture of misery ; but the next moment, receiving, as it were, 
 a flash of inspiration, he rushes again towards it, and clasping both 
 arms about the trunk, with one elevate'd a little above the other, he 
 presses the soles of his feet close together against the tree, extend- 
 ing his legs from it until they are nearly horizontal, and his body 
 becomes doubled into an arch ; then, hand over hand, and foot after 
 
460 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 foot, he rises from the earth with steady rapidity, and almost before 
 you are aware of it, has gained the cradled and embowered nest of 
 nuts, and with boisterous glee flings the fruit to the ground. 
 
 This mode of walking the tree is only practicable where the trunk 
 declines considerably irom the perpendicular. This, however, is 
 almost always the case ; some of the perfectly straight shafts of the 
 trees leaning at an angle of thirty degrees. 
 
 The less active among the men, and many of the children of the 
 valley, have another method of climbing. They take a broad and 
 stout piece of bark, and secure either end of it to their ankles ; so 
 that when the feet thus confined are extended apart, a space of little 
 more than twelve inches is left between them. This contrivance 
 greatly facilitates the act of climbing. The band pressed against the 
 tree, and closely embracing it, yields a pretty firm support ; while 
 with the arms clasped about the trunk, and at regular intervals sus- 
 taining the body, the feet are drawn up nearly a yard at a time, and 
 a corresponding elevation of the hands immediately succeeds. In 
 this way I have seen little children, scarcely five years of age, fear- 
 lessly climbing the slender pole of a young cocoa-nut tree, and while 
 hanging perhaps fifty feet from the ground, receiving the plaudits of 
 their parents beneath, who clapped their hands, and encouraged 
 them to mount still higher. 
 
 What, thought I, on first witnessing one of these exhibitions, 
 would the nervous mothers of America and England say to a similar 
 display of hardihood in any of their children ? The Lacedaemonian 
 nation might have approved of it, but most modern dames would 
 have gone into hysterics at the sight. 
 
 At the top of the cocoa-nut tree the numerous branches, radiating 
 on all sides from a common centre, form a sort of green and waving 
 basket, between the leaflets of which you just discern the nuts 
 thickly clustering together, and on the loftier trees looking no bigger 
 from' the ground than bunches of grapes. I remember one adventur- 
 ous little fellow Too-Too was the rascal's name who had built 
 himself a sort of aerial baby-house in the picturesque tuft of a tree 
 adjoining Marheyo's habitation. He used to spend hours there 
 rustling among the branches, and shouting with delight every time 
 the strong gusts of wind, rushing down from the mountain-side, 
 swayed to and fro the tall and flexible column on which he was 
 perched. 
 
WALT WHITMAN. 461 
 
 WALT WHITMAN. 
 
 Walt Whitman was born at West Hills, Long Island, May 31, 1819. The family lived in 
 a story-and-a-half farm-house, heavily timbered, and still standing, which overlooked the sea. 
 They were a race of workers, to whom books were little known. While the author was still a 
 child, his parents moved to Brooklyn, where he attended school. At the age of thirteen he 
 learned to set type, and a few years later he taught in a country school. Before he was 
 twenty he wrote a sketch for the Democratic Review. In 1849 he travelled through the 
 western states, and while absent from home edited a paper in New Orleans for a year. 
 Returning, he followed his trade for a time, and afterwards went into business as a carpenter 
 and builder, which had been his father's occupation. Upon removing to New York he 
 frequented the society of newspaper reporters somewhat, but found most to enjoy or to 
 observe in people of the lower walks of life. He read much, especially in the Bible, which 
 he esteems as the grandest collection of literature. He published a volume, entitled Leaves 
 of Grass, in 1856, by which he has been widely known, and on account of which he has been 
 generally reprobated. The work contains pictures of marked originality and unquestionable 
 power, as well as passages of a very exceptionable character, for which no defence that is 
 valid in this day can be set up. During the late war he was almost constantly employed 
 in hospitals and camps in the relief of sick and wounded soldiers. These scenes finally 
 took form in his mind, and were published in a thin volume, entitled Drum Taps. Two 
 selections from this work, both of a pathetic sort (and they could not be otherwise !) are 
 here presented. Pupils who are accustomed to associate the idea of poetry with regular 
 classic measure in rhyme, or in ten-syllabled blank verse, or elastic hexameters, will com- 
 mence these short and simple prose sentences with surprise, and will wonder how any num- 
 ber of them can form a poem. But let them read aloud, with minds in sympathy with the 
 picture as it is displayed, and they will find by nature's unmistakable responses that the 
 author is a poet, and possesses the poet's incommunicable power to touch the heart. This 
 power is the inheritance into which the poet is born, and, as Webster said of eloquence, 
 labor and learning will toil for it in vain. 
 
 What success our author would have had in moulding his poetic conceptions into recog- 
 nized poetic measure we cannot say. His poems read as literal translations from Homer or 
 Dante would. The undying spirit is in every homely line ; but \\\o.fonn, which is its incarna- 
 tion, and as inseparable from it as body from soul, is not wrought into symmetry. By some 
 eternal law the expression of deep emotion, or of the images of beauty, not only takes on a 
 nobler form of words than belongs to every-day affairs, but falls naturally into a rhythmical 
 movement. Had Whitman read the Psalms of his favorite David in the Hebrew, or the 
 Iliad in its original measure, he might not have thought our prose versions to be models 
 either for the adequate expression or for the appropriate form of his ideas. As it is, we must 
 think his lines are diamonds in the rough virgin gold in unwrought nuggets. With 
 many estimates of his genius made by his admirers we cannot agree. The grandeur that 
 comes from mere geographical vastness is not necessarily poetical ; it does not imply poetic 
 power to use such phrases as " from the Alleghanies to the Rocky Mountains." Much of 
 his glorification of America comes under that head. But after making all deductions, the 
 fact remains that he has set down some of the most striking thoughts and sketched some of 
 the most vivid scenes to be found in modern literature, and that he is less indebted to 
 others for his ideas and for his power of illustration than almost any American writer. 
 
 Whitman was once removed from his place as a department clerk in Washington, on 
 account of the immoralities in his first book. Let us hope that the cabinet officer who 
 vindicated the Christianity of his department was himself an exemplar of the virtues, and that ^ 
 he neither used his official influence to enhance his private fortune, nor strove to maintain 
 his power by "ways that are dark." 
 
462 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 COME UP FROM THE FIELDS, FATHER. 
 I. 
 
 COME up from the fields, father here's a letter from our Pete ; 
 And come to the front door, mother here's a letter from thy dear 
 son. 
 
 IL 
 
 Lo, 'tis autumn ; 
 
 Lo, where the trees, deeper green, yellower, and, redder, 
 Cool and sweeten Ohio's villages, with leaves fluttering in the 
 
 moderate wind, 
 Where apples ripe in the orchards hang, and grapes on the trellised 
 
 vines ; 
 
 (Smell you the smell of the grapes on the vines ? 
 Smell you the buckwheat, where the bees were lately buzzing ?) 
 
 in. 
 
 Above all, lo, in the sky, so calm, so transparent after the rain, and 
 
 with wondrous clouds ; 
 Below, too, all calm, all vital and beautiful and the farm prospers 
 
 well. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Down in the fields all prospers well ; 
 
 But now from the fields come, father come at the daughter's call ; 
 And come to the entry, mother to the front door -come, right away. 
 
 v. 
 
 Fast as she can she hurries something ominous her steps 
 
 trembling ; 
 She does not tarry to smooth her white hair, nor adjust her cap. 
 
 VI. 
 
 Open the envelope quickly ; 
 
 O, this is not our son's writing, yet his name is signed ; 
 O, a strange hand writes for our dear son O stricken mother^ soul ! 
 All swims before her eyes flashes with black she catches the 
 
 main words only ; 
 Sentences broken gun-shot wound in the breast, cavalry skirmish, 
 
 taken to hospital, 
 At present low, but will soon be better. 
 
WALT WHITMAN. 463 
 
 VII. 
 
 Ah, now the single figure to me, 
 
 Amid all teeming and wealthy Ohio, with all its cities and farms, 
 Sickly white in the face, and dull in the head, very faint, 
 By the jamb of a door leans. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Grieve not so, dear mother (the just-grown daughter speaks through 
 
 her sobs ; 
 
 The little sisters huddle around, speechless and dismayed ;) 
 See, dearest mother, the letter says, Pete will soon be better. 
 
 IX. 
 Alas, poor boy, he will never be better, (nor may be needs to be 
 
 better, that brave and simple soul ;) 
 
 While they stand at home at the door, he is dead already j 
 The only son is dead. 
 
 x. 
 
 But the mother needs to be better ; 
 She, with thin form ; presently drest in black ; 
 By day her meals untouched then at night fitfully sleeping, often 
 
 waking, 
 
 In the midnight waking, weeping, longing with one deep longing, 
 O that she might withdraw unnoticed silent from life, escape and 
 
 withdraw, 
 To follow, to seek, to be with her dear, dead son. 
 
 DIRGE FOR TWO VETERANS. 
 
 THE last sunbeam 
 
 Lightly falls from the finished Sabbath, 
 On the pavement here and there beyond it is looking 
 
 Down a new-made double grave. 
 
 II. 
 
 Lo ! the moon ascending ! 
 Up from the east, the silvery round moon ; 
 Beautiful over the house-tops, ghastly, phantom moon ; 
 
 Immense and silent moon. 
 
464 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 III. 
 
 I see a sad procession, 
 
 And I hear the sound of coming full-keyed bugles ; 
 All the channels of the city streets they 're flooding, 
 
 As with voices and with tears. 
 
 IV. 
 
 I hear the great drums pounding, 
 And the small drums steady whirring ; 
 And every blow of the great convulsive drums 
 
 Strikes me through and through. 
 
 v. 
 
 For the son is brought with the father ; 
 (In the foremost ranks of the fierce assault they fell ; 
 Two veterans, son and father, dropped together, 
 
 And the double grave awaits them.) 
 
 VI. 
 
 Now, nearer blow the bugles, 
 And the drums strike more convulsive, 
 And the daylight o'er the pavement quite has faded, 
 
 And the strong dead-march enwraps me. 
 
 VII. 
 
 In the eastern sky up-buoying, 
 The sorrowful vast phantom moves illumined ; 
 ('Tis some mother's large, transparent face, 
 
 In heaven brighter growing.) 
 
 VIII. 
 
 O strong dead-march, you please me ! 
 O, moon immense, with your silvery face you soothe me ! 
 O my soldiers twain ! O my veterans, passing to burial ! 
 
 What I have I also give you. 
 
 IX. 
 
 The moon gives you light, 
 And the bugles and drums give you music ; 
 And my heart, O my soldiers, my veterans, 
 
 My heart gives you love. 
 
ALICE GARY. 465 
 
 ALICE GARY. 
 
 Alice Gary was born at Mount Healthy, near Cincinnati, O., in April, 1820. She had 
 but slight opportunities for education. A series of sketches, published in the National Era, 
 first drew public attention to her as a writer. In 1850 she published a volume of poems 
 written by herself and her sister Phcebe. A volume of her prose sketches, entitled Clover- 
 nook, appeared in 1851, a second series in 1853, and a third in 1854. She published a poem, 
 entitled Hualco, in 1851 ; Lyra and Other Poems in 1853; a new collection of Poems in 
 1855; Ballads, Lyrics, and Hymns in 1866; A Lover's Diary in 1867. She has written 
 several novels ; Hagar, a Story of 'io-day (1853) ; Hollywood (1855) ; Married, not Mated 
 (1856); and The Bishop's Son (1867); also Pictures of Country Life (1859); and Snow- 
 berries (1867). 
 
 Miss Gary removed from her western home to New York in 1850, and resided there until 
 her death, which occurred February 12, 1871. 
 
 There can be no question that Alice Gary had what our clerical friends call a "vocation " 
 to poetry. She had the clear vision, the instant sense of comparison, and the perception of 
 analogies not discerned by common eyes. Her memory treasured all the picturesque asso- 
 ciations of her childhood, and we find them in profusion in her poems. Her art is not so 
 conspicuous as her poetic insight. Many of her most striking images are rather crudely 
 wroughtj and to read her lines smoothly requires such a variety of accents that the sensitive 
 i-:ir is constantly threatened with a shock. Some stanzas are padded to proper dimensions . 
 by phrases that we are accustomed to hear from young ladies with limited vocabularies, and 
 which give us a sudden descent to the regions of the commonplace. But her poetic feeling 
 is genuine ; her cheerful temper kept her from morbid sentimentalism, the bane of modern 
 poetry ; she attempted no flights beyond her powers, and never sought to set out the plan 
 of the universe in the cant words of metaphysics. For these solid excellences many faults 
 of construction are forgiven. Her poems can be read with hearty enjoyment, and ought to 
 be remembered and esteemed as among the best utterances of American women. 
 
 THE PICTURE-BOOK. 
 
 THE black walnut-logs in the chimney 
 Made ruddy the house with their light, 
 
 And the pool in the hollow was covered 
 With ice like a lid, it' was night j 
 
 And Roslyn and I were together, 
 
 I know now the pleased look he wore, 
 And the shapes of the shadows that checkered 
 
 The hard yellow planks of the floor ; 
 
 And how, when the wind stirred the candle, 
 
 Affrighted they ran from its gleams, 
 And crept up the wall to the ceiling 
 
 Of cedar, and hid by the beams. 
 
 There were books on the mantel-shelf, dusty, 
 And shut, and I see in my mind 
 30 
 
466 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 The pink-colored primer of pictures 
 We stood on our tiptoes to find. 
 
 We opened the leaves where a camel 
 Was seen on a sand-covered track, 
 
 A-snuffing for water, and bearing 
 A great bag of gold on his back ; 
 
 And talked of the free flowing river 
 A tithe of his burden would buy, 
 
 And said, when the lips of the sunshine 
 Had sucked his last water-skin dry, 
 
 With thick breath, and mouth gaping open, 
 And red eyes a-strain in his head, 
 
 His bones would push out as if buzzards 
 Had picked him before he was dead ! 
 
 Then turned the leaf over, and finding 
 A palace that banners made gay, 
 
 Forgot the bright splendor of roses 
 
 That shone through our windows in May ; 
 
 And sighed for the great beds of princes, 
 While pillows for him and for me 
 
 Lay soft among ripples of ruffles 
 As sweet and as white as could be ; 
 
 And sighed for their valleys, forgetting 
 How warmly the morning sun kissed 
 
 Our hills, as they shrugged their green shoulders 
 Above the white sheets of the mist. 
 
 Their carpets of dyed wool were softer, 
 We said, than the planks of our floor, 
 
 Forgetting the flowers that in summer 
 Spread out their gold mats at our door. 
 
 The storm spit its wrath in the chimney, 
 
 And blew the cold ashes aside, 
 And only one poor little fagot 
 
 Hung out its red tongue as it died, 
 
ALICE GARY. 467 
 
 When Roslyn and I through the darkness 
 Crept off to our shivering beds, 
 
 A thousand vague fancies and wishes 
 Still wildly astir in our heads : 
 
 Not guessing that we, too, were straying 
 In thought on a sand-covered track, 
 
 Like the camel a-dying for water, 
 And bearing the gold on his back. 
 
 IF AND IF. 
 
 IF I were a painter, I could paint 
 The dwarfed and straggling wood, 
 
 And the hill-side where the meeting-house 
 With the wooden belfry stood, 
 
 A dozen steps from the door, alone, 
 
 On four square pillars of rough gray stone. 
 
 We school-boys used to write our names 
 
 With our finger-tips each day 
 In the dust o' th' cross-beams, once it shone, 
 
 I have heard the old folks say, 
 (Praising the time past, as old folks will,) 
 Like a pillar of fire on the side of the hill. 
 
 I could paint the blacksmith's dingy shop, 
 
 Its sign, a pillar of smoke ; 
 The farm-horse halt, the rough-haired colt, 
 
 And the jade with her neck in a yoke ; 
 The pony that made to himself a law, 
 And wouldn't go under the saddle, nor draw ! 
 
 The poor old mare at the door-post, 
 With joints as stiff as its pegs, 
 
 Her one white eye, and her neck awry, 
 Trembling the flies from her legs, 
 
 And the thriftless farmer that used to stand 
 
 And curry her ribs with a kindly hand. 
 
468 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 I could paint his quaint old-fashioned house, 
 With its windows, square and small, 
 
 And the seams of clay running every way 
 Between the stones o' the wall ; 
 
 The roof, with furrows of mossy green, 
 
 And new bright shingles set between. 
 
 The oven, bulging big behind, 
 
 And the narrow porch before, 
 And the weather-cock for ornament 
 
 On the pole beside the door ; 
 And the row of milk-pans, shining bright 
 As silver, in the summer light. 
 
 And I could paint his girls and boys, 
 
 Each and every one, 
 Hepzibah sweet, with her little bare feet, 
 
 And Shubal, the stalwart son, 
 And wife and mother, with home-spun gown, 
 And roses beginning to shade into brown. 
 
 I could paint the garden, with its paths 
 Cut smooth, and running straight, 
 
 The gray sage bed, the poppies red, 
 And the lady-grass at the gate, 
 
 The black warped slab, with its hive of 'bees, 
 
 In the corner, under the apple trees. 
 
 ** I could paint the fields, in the middle hush 
 
 Of winter, bleak and bare, 
 Some snow like a lamb that is caught in a bush, 
 
 Hanging here and there, 
 The mildewed haystacks, all a-lop, 
 And the old dead stub with the crow at the top. 
 
 The hill-side, and the small space set 
 
 With broken palings round, 
 The long loose grass, and the little grave 
 
 With the headstone on the ground, 
 And the willow, like the spirit of grace 
 Bending tenderly over the place. 
 
ALICE GARY. 469 
 
 The miller's face, half smile, half frown, 
 
 Were a picture I could paint, 
 And the mill, with gable steep and brown, 
 
 And dripping wheel aslant, 
 The weather-beaten door, set wide, 
 And the heaps of meal-bags either side. 
 
 The timbers cracked to gaping seams, 
 
 The swallows' clay-built nests, 
 And the rows of doves that sit on the beams 
 
 With plump and glossy breasts, . 
 The bear by his post sitting upright to eat, 
 With half of his clumsy legs in his feet. 
 
 I could paint the mill-stream cut in two 
 
 By the heat o' the summer skies, 
 And the sand-bar, with its long brown back, 
 
 And round and bubbly eyes, 
 And the bridge, that hung so high o'er the tide, 
 Creaking and swinging from side to side. 
 
 The road, where, slow and wearily, 
 
 The dusty teamster came, 
 The sign on its post and the round-faced host, 
 
 And the high-arched door, aflame 
 With trumpet-flowers, the well-sweep, high, 
 And the flowing water-trough, close by. 
 
 If I were a painter, and if my hand 
 
 Were cunning, as it is not, 
 I could paint you a picture that would stand 
 
 When all the rest were forgot : 
 But why should I tell you what it would be ? 
 I never shall paint it, nor you ever see. 
 
47O HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 EDWARD EVERETT HALE. 
 
 Edward Everett Hale was born in Boston, April 3, 1822, and was graduated at Harvard 
 College in 1839. He studied theology, and in 1846 was settled as pastor of a Unitarian 
 church in Worcester, Mass. He removed to Boston in 1856, and became pastor of the 
 South Congregational Church, a position which he still retains. He inherited literary tal- 
 ent from both parents, and, as his father was a leading editor in Boston, he had ample 
 incentives to practise the art of composition. He has shown in various \vays that he pos- 
 sesses abilities of the highest order. His sermons often exhibit a happy combination of 
 originality and learning. In literary criticism he is always skilful and entertaining, if not 
 always just. His speeches on public occasions are uniformly brilliant, fruitful in wise sug- 
 gestions, glowing in style, and full of witty and happy illustrations. In the various progres- 
 sive movements of the day he is a recognized leader. Philanthropists, educators, and social 
 reformers all count on his powerful aid. His fertile mind drops hints as the elms scatter 
 their profuse seeds forpublic welfare, forprivate comfort, for municipal action, and for social 
 cooperation ; and if all took root there would be a plenty of nurslings for experimental 
 crops. His activity is little less than marvellous, but, great as it is, it is entirely inadequate 
 to the tasks he imposes upon himself. Besides his regular clerical duties, he is editor of a 
 magazine (Old and New), a contributor to other periodicals, a lyceum lecturer, an overseer 
 of Harvard College, and a laborer in many other societies. 
 
 The published works of Mr. Hale are as follows: The Rosary (1848) ; Margaret Perci- 
 val in America (1850) ; Sketches of Christian History (1850) ; Letters on Irish Emigration 
 (1852) ; Kansas and Nebraska (1854) ; The Man Without a Country (1865) ; If, Yes, and 
 Perhaps (1868) ; The Ingham Papsrs (1869) ; Ten Times One is Ten (1870) ; Sybaris, 
 and Other Homes (1867). Roberts Brothers, Boston. 
 
 It will be hardly necessary to say that his graver works are characterized by clearness of 
 method apd reasoning power. His tales, sketches, and lighter essays seem to have been 
 thrown off without much thought, and have neither the refined graces of style nor the artistic 
 treatment which even the thinnest of literary trifles require. The Man Without a Country 
 is a story of considerable power, especially in its unaffected truthful tone. And it is just to 
 add that every one of his stories, no matter how disappointing its management may be, has 
 a leading idea, and gives the reader some practical and beneficent suggestion to meditate 
 upon. All things are not possible for one man. But, looking at the matter from our point 
 of view, we can but hope that the splendid powers of this writer may be concentrated upon 
 some work that shall show, more fully than any he has yet written, the rare foresight, the 
 exuberant fancy, the wealth of learning, and the unfailing spirit that are really his. 
 
 [From If, Yes, and Perhaps.] 
 WHAT MIGHT HAVE HAPPENED IF DAVID AND HOMER HAD MET. 
 
 A SUMMER bivouac had collected together a little troup of sol- 
 diers from Joppa, under the shelter of a grove, where they had 
 spread their sheep-skins, tethered their horses, and pitched a single 
 tent. With the carelessness of soldiers, they were chatting away 
 the time till sleep might come, and help them to-morrow with its 
 chances perhaps of fight, perhaps of another day of this camp 
 indolence. Below the garden slope where they were lounging, the 
 rapid torrent of Kishon ran brawling along. A full moon was 
 
EDWARD EVERETT HALE. 
 
 rising above the rough edge of the eastern hills, and the whole 
 scene was alive with the loveliness of an Eastern landscape. 
 
 As they talked together, the strains of a harp came borne down 
 the stream by the wind, mingling with the rippling of the 
 brook. . . . 
 
 Soothed by the sound, and by the moonlight, and by the sum- 
 mer breeze, they were just in mood to welcome the first interrup- 
 tion which broke the quiet of the night. It was the approach of 
 one of their company, who had been detached to Accho a day or 
 two before, and who came hurrying in to announce the speedy 
 arrival of companions, for whom he bespoke a welcome. Just as 
 they were to leave Accho, he said, that day, on their return to 
 camp, an Ionian trading-vessel had entered port. He and his fel- 
 low-soldiers had waited to help her moor, and had been chatting 
 with her seamen. They had told them of the chance of battle to 
 which they were returning ; and two or three of the younger 
 lonians, enchanted at the relief from the sea's imprisonment, had 
 begged them to let them volunteer in company with them. These 
 men had come up into the country with the soldiers, therefore ; 
 and he who had broken the silence of the listeners to the distant 
 serenade had hurried on to tell his comrades that such visitors 
 were on their way. 
 
 They soon appeared on foot, but hardly burdened by the light 
 packs they bore. 
 
 A soldier's welcome soon made the Ionian sailors as much at 
 home with the men of the bivouac, as they had been through the 
 day with the detachment from the seaboard. A few minutes were 
 enough to draw out sheep-skins for them to lie upon, a skin of 
 wine for their thirst, a bunch of raisins and some oat-cakes for their 
 hunger. A few minutes more had told the news which each party 
 asked from the other, and then these sons of the sea and these 
 war-bronzed Philistines were as much at ease with each other as if 
 they had served under the same sky for years. . . . 
 
 Homer smiled; for it was Homer whom he spoke to Homer 
 still in the freshness of his unblinded youth. He took the harp 
 which the young Philistine handed to him, thrummed upon its 
 chords, and, as he tuned them, said, " I have no harp of olive-wood ; 
 we cut this out it was years ago from an old oleander in the 
 marshes near Colophon. What will you hear, gentlemen ? " 
 
 " The poet chooses for himself," said the courtly old captain. 
 
 " Let me sing you, then, of the Olive Harp; " and he struck the 
 
4/2 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 chords a gentle, quieting harmony, which attuned itself to his own 
 spirit, pleased as he was to find music, and harmony, and the 
 olive of peace in the midst of the rough bivouac, where he had come 
 up to look for war. . . . 
 
 He struck another prelude, and began. Then was it that Homer 
 composed his Hymn to Mars. In wild measure, and impetuous, 
 he swept along through the list of Mars' titles and attributes ; then 
 his key changed, and his hearers listened more intently, more sol- 
 emnly, as m a graver strain, with slower music, and an almost awed 
 dignity ol voice- Lie bard went on : 
 
 "Helper of mortals, hear ! 
 
 As thy fires give 
 The present boldnesses that strive 
 
 In youth for honor ; 
 
 So would I likewise wish to have the power 
 To keep off from my head thy bitter hour, 
 And quench the false fire of my soul's low kind, 
 By the fit ruling of my highest mind 1 
 
 Con.trol that sting of wealth 
 That stirs me on still to the horrid scath 
 
 Of hideous battle ! 
 
 " J)o thou, O, ever blessed ! give me still 
 Presence of mind to put in act my will, 
 
 Whate'er the occasion be ; 
 And sc to live, unforced by any fear, 
 Beneath those laws of peace, that never are 
 Affected with pollutions popular 
 
 Of uiiiust injury, 
 
 As to bear snfe Jhe burden of hard fates, 
 Of foes inflexive, aid inhuman hates ! " 
 
 The tones died away ; the company was hushed for a moments 
 and the old chief then said gravely tc his petulant follower, " Thai 1 " 
 is what men fight for, boy." But the boy did not need the counsel- 
 Homer's manner, his voice, the musk itself, the spirit of the song, 
 as much as the words, had overcome him, and the boasting soldiel 
 was covering his tears with his hands. . . . 
 
 With the ease cf genius he changed the *ore of his melody again, 
 and sang his own hymn, To Earth, the Mnther of All. 
 
 The triumphant strain is one which harmonies with c^very ?enti' 
 ment; and he commanded instantly the rapt attention of the circle* 
 So engrossed was he that he did not seem to observe, as he sang> 
 an addition to their company of some soldiers from above in the valr 
 ley, just as he entered on the passage, 
 
EDWARD EVERETT HALE. 473 
 
 "Happy, then, are they 
 Whom thou, O, great in reverence, 
 Art bent to honor. They shall all things find 
 In all abundance ! All their pastures yield 
 Herds in all plenty. All their roofs are filled 
 
 With rich possessions. 
 High happiness and wealth attend them, 
 While, with laws well-ordered, they 
 Cities of happy households sway ; 
 And their sons exult in the pleasure of youth, 
 And their daughters dance with the flower-decked girls, 
 Who play among the flowers of summer ! 
 Such are the honors thy full hands divide ; 
 Mother of Gods and starry Heaven's bride 1 " 
 
 A buzz of pleasure and a smile ran round the circle, in which the 
 new-comers joined. They were the soldiers who had been to hear 
 and join the music at the Carmel-men's post. The tones of Homer's 
 harp had tempted them to return ; and they had brought with them 
 the Hebrew minstrel, to whom they had been listening. It was the 
 outlaw David, of Bethlehem Ephrata. 
 
 David had listened to Homer more intently than any one ; and 
 as the pleased applause subsided, the eyes of the circle gathered 
 upon him, and the manner of all showed that they expected him, in 
 minstrel fashion, to take up the same strain. 
 
 He accepted the implied invitation, played a short prelude, and 
 taking Homer's suggestion of topic, sang in parallel with it, 
 
 " I will sing a new song unto thee, O God ! 
 Upon psaltery and harp will I sing praise to thee. 
 Thou art he that giveth salvation to kings, 
 That delivereth David, thy servant, from the sword. 
 Rid me and save me from those who speak vanity, 
 Whose right hand is alright hand of falsehood, 
 That our sons may be as plants in fresh youth ; 
 That our daughters may be as corner-stones 
 The polished stones of our palaces ; 
 That our garners may be full with all manner of store, 
 That our sheep may bring forth thousands and ten thousands in the way ; 
 That there may be no cry nor complaint in our streets. 
 Happy is the people that is in such a case, 
 Yea, happy is the people whose God is the Lord ! " 
 
 The melody was triumphant, and the enthusiastic manner yet more 
 so. The Philistines listened delighted too careless of religion, 
 they, indeed, not to be catholic in presence of religious enthusiasm, 
 and Homer wore the exalted expression which his face seldom wore. 
 For the first time since his childhood, Homer felt that he was not 
 alone in the world ! . . . 
 
474 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 Homer had told him of the storm at sea they met a few days be- 
 fore, and David, I think, had spoken of a mountain tornado, as he 
 met it years before. In the excitement of his narrative he struck 
 the harp, which was still in his hand, and sung : 
 
 "Then the earth shook and trembled, 
 The foundations of the hiils moved and were shaken, 
 
 Because He was wroth ; 
 Then went up a smoke out of his nostrils, 
 And fire out of his mouth devoured; 
 It burned with living coal ; 
 He bowed the heavens also, and came down, 
 And darkness was under his feet ; 
 He rode upon a cherub, and did fly, 
 Yea, he did fly upon the wings of the wind. 
 He made darkness his resting-place, 
 His pavilion were dark waters and clouds of the skies ; 
 At the brightness before him the clouds passed by, 
 
 Hail-stones and coals of fire. 
 The Lord also thundered in the heavens, 
 And the highest gave his voice ; 
 
 Hail-stones and coals of fire, 
 Yea, he sent out his arrows, and scattered them, 
 And he shot out his lightnings, and discomfited them. 
 Then the channels of waters were seen, 
 And the foundations of the world were made known, 
 
 At thy rebuke, O Lord ! 
 At the blast of the breath of thy nostrils, 
 He sent from above, he took me, 
 He drew me out of many waters." 
 
 " Mine were but a few verses," said Homer. " f I am more than 
 repaid by yours. Imagine Neptune, our sea-god, looking on a bat- 
 tle,- 
 
 " There he sat high, retired from the seas ; 
 There looked with pity on his Grecians beaten ; 
 There burned with rage at the god-king who slew them. 
 Then he rushed forward from the rugged mountains, 
 
 Quickly descending ; 
 
 He bent the forests also as he came down, 
 And the high cliffs shook under his feet. 
 
 Three times he trod upon them, 
 And with his fourth step reached the home he sought for. 
 
 "There was his palace, in the deep waters of the seas, 
 Shining with gold, and builded forever. 
 There he yoked him his swift-footed horses ; 
 Their hoofs are brazen and their manes are golden. 
 He binds them with golden thongs. 
 He seizes his golden goad, 
 He mounts upon his chariot, and doth fly ; 
 
EDWARD EVERETT HALE. 475 
 
 Yes, he drives them forth into the waves ! 
 
 And the whales rise under him from the depths, 
 
 For they know he is their king ; 
 
 And the glad sea is divided into parts, 
 
 That his steeds may fly along quickly ; 
 
 And his brazen axle passes dry between the waves, 
 
 So, bounding fast, they bring him to his Grecians." 
 
 And the poets sank again into talk. . . . 
 
 " He paints the picture. David sings the life of the picture." 
 
 " Yes : Homer sees what he sings ; David feels his song." 
 
 " Homer's is perfect in its description." 
 
 " Yes ; but for life, for the soul of the description, you need the 
 Hebrew." . . . 
 
 And so it was that Homer, apropos of I do not know what, sang 
 in a sad tone, 
 
 " Like leaves on trees the race of man is found, 
 Now green in youth, now withering on the ground ; 
 Another race the following spring supplies ; 
 They fall successive, and successive rise. 
 So generations in their course decay, 
 So flourish these, when those have passed away. " 
 
 David waited for a change in the strain ; but Homer stopped. 
 The young Hebrew asked him to go on ; but Homer said that the 
 passage which followed was mere narrative, from a long narrative 
 poem. David looked surprised that his new friend had not pointed 
 out a moral as he sang, and said, simply, " We sing that thus : 
 
 ' As for man, his days are as grass ; 
 As a flower of tha field, so he flourisheth ; 
 For ths wind passeth over it, and it is gone, 
 And the place thereof shall know it no more. 
 
 But the marcy of the Lord 
 Is from everlasting to everlasting, 
 Of them that fear him ; 
 And his righteousness 
 Unto children's children, 
 To such as keep his covenant, 
 As remember his commandments to do them.' " 
 
4/6 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS'. 
 
 THOMAS BUCHANAN READ. 
 
 Thomas Buchanan Read was bom in Chester County, Penn., March 12, 1822. At the 
 age of seventeen he went to Cincinnati, and entered a sculptor's studio, but soon after 
 devoted himself to painting. He resided successively in New York, Boston, and Philadel- 
 phia, and in 1850 visited Europe. He returned to Cincinnati in 1858, and afterwards spent 
 some time in Boston and Cambridge. He went to Europe again in 1863 or 1864, and lived 
 at Rome until the spring of 1872, when lie sailed to the United States, and died shortly after 
 his arrival at New York. He has been very successful in his profession as a painter of por- 
 iraits and human figures. He published a volume of poems at Boston in 1847 ; another at 
 Philadelphia in 1848. The New Pastoral appeared in 1855 ; The Home by the Sea in 1856. 
 His collected poems, in two volumes, were published in Boston in 1860. The Wagoner 
 of the Alleghanies was published in 1862 ; Sheridan's Ride, his most popular poem, in 1865 ; 
 a new edition of his poems, in three volumes, in 1867 ; Good Samaritans in 1867. 
 
 In art, the prevailing taste among Americans is for landscapes, and in poetry there is a 
 similar fondness for descriptions of natural scenery. Where the author gives only an 
 enumeration of natural features, as it were, a rhymed catalogue, he speedily becomes 
 tiresome. But a landscape, as seen in a poet's vision, and reproduced as a whole by clear, 
 bold strokes, appeals to the imagination as strongly as any form of creative art. Mr. Read 
 has painted an autumn scene with equal fidelity and picturesque power. It is worthy of 
 being studied beside the best works of the kind. He is more than a seeker of epithets, and 
 his poems are more than accumulations of mosaics. We are frequently reminded by the 
 sudden presentation of some grand image that we are in contact with a mind of original 
 force, and we also see the hand of the artist in the just proportions and in the harmonious 
 accessories of the poem. 
 
 THE CLOSING SCENE. 
 
 WITHIN his sober realm of leafless trees 
 
 The russet year inhaled the dreamy air, 
 Like some tanned reaper in his hour of ease, 
 
 When all the fields are lying brown and bare. 
 
 The gray barns, looking from their hazy hills 
 O'er the dim waters widening in the vales, 
 
 Sent down the air a greeting to the mills, 
 On the dull thunder of alternate flails. 
 
 All sights were mellowed and all sounds subdued, 
 The hills seemed farther and the streams sang low; 
 
 As in a dream the distant woodman hewed 
 His winter log with many a muffled blow. 
 
 The embattled forests, erewhile armed in gold, 
 Their banners bright with every martial hue, 
 
 Now stood, like some sad beaten host of old, 
 Withdrawn afar in Time's remotest blue. 
 
THOMAS BUCHANAN READ. 477 
 
 On slumbrous wings the vulture held his flight ; 
 
 The dove scarce heard his sighing mate's complaint; 
 And like a star slow drowning in the light, 
 
 The village church-vane seemed to pale and faint. 
 
 The sentinel-cock upon the hill-side crew 
 Crew thrice, and all was stiller than before, 
 
 Silent till some replying warder blew 
 
 His alien horn, and then was heard no more. 
 
 Where erst the jay, within the elm's tall crest, 
 
 Made garrulous trouble round her unfledged young, 
 
 And where the oriole hung her swaying nest, 
 By every light wind like a censer swung : 
 
 Where sang the noisy masons of the eaves, 
 
 The busy swallows, circling ever near, 
 Foreboding, as the rustic mind believes, 
 
 An early harvest and a plenteous year ; 
 
 Where every bird which charmed the vernal feast, 
 Shook the sweet slumber from its wings at morn, 
 
 To warn the reaper of the rosy east, 
 All now was songless, empty, and forlorn. 
 
 Alone from out the stubble piped the quail, 
 And croaked the crow through all the dreamy gloom ; 
 
 Alone' the pheasant, drumming in the vale, 
 Made echo to the distant cottage loom. 
 
 There was no bud, no bloom upon the bowers ; 
 
 The spiders wove their thin shrouds night by night ; 
 The thistle-down, the only ghost of flowers, 
 
 Sailed slowly by, passed noiseless out of sight. 
 
 Amid all this, in this most cheerless air, 
 
 And where the woodbine shed upon the porch 
 
 Its crimson leaves, as if the Year stood there 
 Firing the floor with his inverted torch ; 
 
 Amid all this, the centre of the scene, 
 
 The white-haired matron, with monotonous tread, 
 
 Plied the swift wheel, and with her joyless mien, 
 Sat like a Fate, and watched the flying thread. 
 
HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 She had known Sorrow, he had walked with her, 
 Oft supped and broke the bitter ashen crust ; 
 
 And in the dead leaves still she heard the stir 
 Of his black mantle trailing in the dust. 
 
 While yet her cheek was bright with summer bloom, 
 Her country summoned, and she gave her all ; 
 
 And twice War bowed to her his sable plume 
 Regave the swords to rust upon her wall. 
 
 Regave the swords, but not the hand that drew 
 
 And struck for Liberty its dying blow, 
 Nor him who, to his sire and country true, 
 
 Fell 'mid the ranks of the invading foe. 
 
 Long, but not loud, the droning wheel went on, 
 Like the low murmur of hive at noon ; 
 
 Long, but not loud, the memory of the gone 
 Breathed through her lips a sad and tremulous tune. 
 
 At last the thread was snapped : her head was bowed ; 
 
 Life dropped the distaff through his hands serene, 
 And loving neighbors smoothed her careful shroud, 
 
 While Death and Winter closed the autumn scene. 
 
 NIGHTFALL. 
 
 I SAW in the silent afternoon 
 
 The overladen sun go down ; 
 While, in the opposing sky, the moon, 
 
 Between the steeples of the town, 
 
 Went upward, like a golden scale 
 
 Outweighed by that which sank beyond ; 
 
 And over the river, and over the vale, 
 With odors from the lily-pond, 
 
 The purple vapors calmly swung ; 
 
 And, gathering in the twilight trees, 
 The many vesper minstrels sung 
 
 Their plaintive midday memories, 
 
 Till, one by one, they dropped away 
 From music into slumber deep ; 
 
THOMAS BUCHANAN READ. 
 
 479 
 
 And now the very woodlands lay 
 
 Folding their shadowy wings in sleep. 
 
 O, Peace ! that like a vesper psalm 
 Hallows the daylight at its close ; 
 
 O, Sleep ! that like the vapor's calm 
 Mantles the spirit in repose, 
 
 Through all the twilight falling dim, 
 
 Through all the song which passed away, 
 
 Ye did not stoop your wings to him 
 Whose shallop on the river lay 
 
 Without an oar, without a helm ; 
 His great soul in his marvellous eyes 
 
 Gazing on from realm to realm 
 Through all the world of mysteries ! 
 
 SONG OF THfi ALPINE GUIDE. 
 
 ON Zurich's spires, with rosy light, 
 
 The mountains smile at morn and eve, 
 And Zurich's waters, blue and bright, 
 
 The glories of those hills receive. 
 And there my sister trims her sail, 
 
 That like a wayward swallow flies ; 
 Put I would rather meet the gale 
 
 That fans the eagle in the skies. 
 
 She sings in Zurich's chapel choir, 
 
 Where rolls the organ on the air, 
 And bells proclaim, from spire to spire, 
 
 Their universal call to prayer. 
 But let me hear the mountain rills, 
 
 And old St. Bernard's storm-bell toll, 
 And, 'mid these great cathedral hills, 
 
 The thundering avalanches roll. 
 
 My brother wears a martial plume, 
 
 And serves within a distant land, 
 The flowers that on his bosom blcom 
 
 Are placed there by a stranger hand. 
 Love meets him but in foreign eyes, 
 
 And greets him in a foreign speech, 
 But she who to my heart replies 
 
 Must speak the tongue these mountains teach. 
 
 The warrior's trumpet o'er him swells, 
 The triumph which it only hath ; 
 
 But let me hear the mule-worn bells 
 Speak peace in every mountain path. 
 
 His spear is ever 'gainst a foe, 
 
 Where waves the hostile flag abroad ;- 
 My pike-staff only cleaves the snow, 
 
 My banner the blue sky of God. 
 
 On Zurich's side my mother sits, 
 
 And to her whirring spindle sings 
 Througk Zurich's wave my father's nets 
 
 Sweep daily with their filmy wings. 
 To that beloved voice I list, 
 
 And view that father's toil with pride ; 
 But, like a low and vale-born mist, 
 
 My spirit climbs the mountain side. 
 
 And I would ever hear the stir 
 
 And turmoil of the singing winds, 
 Whose viewless. wheels around me whirr, 
 
 Whose distaffs are the swaying pines. 
 And, on some snowy mountain head, 
 
 The deepest joy to me is given, 
 When, net-like, the great storm is spread 
 
 To sweep the azure lake of heaven. 
 
 Then, since the vale delights me not, 
 
 And Zurich wooes in vain below, 
 And it hath been my joy and lot 
 
 To scale these Alpine crags of snow 
 And since in life I loved them well, 
 
 Let me in death lie down with them, 
 And let the pines and tempests swell 
 
 Around me their great requiem. 
 
HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 DRIFTING. 
 
 MY soul to-day 
 Is far away, 
 
 Sailing the Vesuvian Bay ; 
 My winged boat, 
 A bird afloat, 
 
 Over the rail 
 My hand I trail 
 Within the shadow of the sail ; 
 A joy intense, 
 The ccolinsr sense 
 
 Swims round the purple peaks remote : Glides down my drowsy indolence. 
 
 Round purple peaks 
 
 It sails, and seeks 
 Blue inlets and their crystal creeks, 
 
 Where high rocks throw, 
 
 Through deeps below, 
 A duplicated golden glow. 
 
 Far, vague, and dim, 
 The mountains swim ; 
 
 While on Vesuvius' misty brim, 
 With outstretched hands, 
 The gray smoke stands 
 
 O'erlooking the volcanic lands. 
 
 Here Ischia smiles 
 
 O'er liquid miles ; 
 And yonder, bluest of the isles, 
 
 Calm Capri waits, 
 
 Her sapphire gates 
 Beguiling to her bright estates. 
 
 I heed not, if 
 
 My rippling skiff 
 Float swift or slow from cliff to cliff; 
 
 With dreamful eyes 
 
 My spirit lies 
 Under the walls of Paradise. 
 
 Under the walls 
 
 Where swells and falls 
 The Bay's deep breast at intervals 
 
 At peace I lie, 
 
 Blown softly by, 
 A cloud upon this liquid sky. 
 
 The day, so mild, 
 
 Is Heaven's own child, 
 With Earth and Ocean reconciled ; 
 
 The airs I feel 
 
 Around me steal 
 Are murmuring to the murmuring keel. 
 
 With dreamful eyes 
 
 My spirit lies 
 Where Summer sings and never dies, 
 
 O'erveiled with vines, 
 
 She glows and shines 
 Among her future oil and wines. 
 
 Her children, hid 
 
 The cliffs amid, 
 Are gambolling with the gambolling kid ; 
 
 Or down the walls, 
 
 With tipsy calls, 
 Laugh on the rocks like waterfalls. 
 
 The fisher's child, 
 
 With tresses wild, 
 Unto the smooth, bright sand beguiled, 
 
 With glowing lips 
 
 Sings as she skips, 
 Or gazes at the far-off ships. 
 
 Yon deep bark goes 
 
 Where Traffic blows, 
 From lands of sun to lands of snows ; 
 
 This happier one 
 
 Its course is run 
 From lands of snow to lands of sun. 
 
 O, happy ship, 
 
 To rise and dip, 
 With the blue crystal at your lip I 
 
 O, happy crew, 
 
 My heart with you 
 Sails, and sails, and sings anew. 
 
 No more, no more 
 
 The worldly shore 
 Upbraids me with its loud uproar I 
 
 With dreamful eyes 
 
 My spirit lies 
 Under the walls of Paradise I 
 
RICHARD GRANT WHITE. 481 
 
 RICHARD GRANT WHITE. 
 
 Richard Grant White was born in the city of New York, May 23, 1822, and was grad- 
 uated at the University of New York in 1839. He was admitted to the bar in 1845, but 
 soon devoted himself to literature, especially to the works of Shakespeare and his contempo- 
 raries. His principal work, for which his other efforts have served as studies, is his edition 
 of Shakespeare, in twelve volumes, published by Little, Brown & Co., Boston. In this he 
 has shown himself an accomplished scholar and philologist, and earned the respect of all 
 cultivated men. He published a treatise, entitled Shakespeare's Scholar, in 1854, and an 
 Essay on the Authorship of King Henry VI., in 1859. He edited a collection of National 
 Hymns in 1861, and a collection of the Poetry of the Civil War in 1866. He published, in 
 1870, a work entitled Words and their Uses, a valuable aid to students and men of letters. 
 He was for some years editor of the New York Courier and Enquirer ; he was a leading 
 contributor to Putnam's Monthly, and is now understood to be the editor of The Galaxy, 
 a literary magazine in New York. 
 
 As a writer he is positive in tone, and forcible and idiomatic in expression. His works 
 show great industry, and the results of critical observation in language, history, and manners. 
 
 SHAKESPEARE'S GENIUS. 
 
 PURELY English as Shakespeare was in what we may call the 
 externals of his dramatic art, he was in no respect more so than in 
 his style. In the earlier half of the sixteenth century, Italian liter- 
 ature had begun to exercise a modifying influence upon that of Eng- 
 land, and especially upon English poetry. . . . In Shakespeare's 
 writings it does not appear except, perhaps, in his Venus and 
 Adonis. His very sonnets are free from any traits of Italian spirit 
 or versification. He went to Italian literature, in his time the 
 great mint and treasure-house of fiction, but it was only for the 
 raw material of a tragedy like Othello, or a comedy like the Mer- 
 chant of Venice. He doubtless read Italian well enough to master 
 the works of the early Italian novelists ; but, although the literature 
 of that language could not but have insensibly enlivened his genius, 
 and .enriched his stores of thought, it had no perceptible effect upon 
 his mental tone, his turn of expression, or his choice of imagery. 
 He is as free from the influence of this as he is from that classic 
 literature the imitation of which was in vogue with the regularly 
 educated writers of his day. His vocabulary, at once his means of 
 thought and medium of expression, is merely that of his time, that 
 which was used by his dramatic contemporaries, and by the trans- 
 lators of the Bible. Writing for the general public, he used such 
 language as would convey his meaning to his auditors, the com- 
 mon phraseology of his period. But what a language that was ! In 
 its capacity for the varied and exact expression of all moods of 
 
482 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 mind, all forms of thought, all kinds of emotion, a tongue unequalled 
 by any other known to literature ! A language of exhaustless 
 variety ; strong without ruggedness, and flexible without effeminacy. 
 A manly tongue ; yet bending itself gracefully and lovingly to the 
 tenderest and daintiest needs of woman, and capable of giving 
 utterance to the most awful and impressive thoughts in homely 
 words that come from the lips and go to the heart of childhood. It 
 would seem as if this language had been preparing itself for cen- 
 turies to be the fit medium of utterance for the world's greatest poet. 
 Hardly more than a generation had passed since the English tongue 
 had reached its perfect maturity, just time enough to have it well 
 worked into the unconscious usage of the people, when Shakespeare 
 appeared, to lay upon it a burden of thought which would test its 
 extremest capability. He found it fully formed and developed, but 
 not yet uniformed, and cramped, and disciplined by the lexicogra- 
 phers and rhetoricians those martinets of language, who seem to 
 have lost for us in force and flexibility as much as they have gained 
 for us in precision. The phraseology of that day was notably large 
 and simple among ordinary writers and speakers. Among the col- 
 lege-bred writers and their imitators, there was too great a fondness 
 for little conceits ; but even with them this was an extraneous blem- 
 ish, like that sometimes found in the ornament upon a noble build- 
 ing. Shakespeare seized this instrument, to whose tones all ears 
 were open, and, with the touch of a master, he brought out all its 
 harmonies. It lay ready to any hand, but his was the first to use 
 it with absolute control ; and among all his successors, great as 
 some are, he has had, even in this single respect, no rival. No 
 unimportant condition of his supreme mastery over expression 
 was his entire freedom from constraint it may almost be said 
 from consciousness in the choice of language. He was no pre- 
 cisian, no etymologist, no purist. He was not purposely writing 
 literature. The only criticism that he feared was that of his au- 
 dience, which represented the English people of all grades above 
 the peasantry. These he wished should not find his writing 
 incomprehensible or dull : no more. If we except the translators 
 of the Bible, Shakespeare wrote the best English that has yet 
 been written ; but they who speak of it as remarkably pure, that is, 
 as having a notably small admixture of Romance words, utter 
 mere vague, unwarranted encomium. In the sixteenth century 
 there were probably more Romance words adopted into our lan- 
 guage than there had been before, or have been since, if we exclude 
 
DONALD GRANT MITCHELL. 483 
 
 words of technical or quasi technical character. These words 
 Shakespeare and the translators of the Bible used at need with 
 unconscious freedom. The vocabularies, both of the Bible and 
 of Shakespeare's plays, show forty per cent, of Romance or Latin 
 words, which, with the exception just named, is probably a larger 
 proportion than is now used by our best writers, certainly 
 larger than is heard from those who speak their mother tongue 
 with spontaneous idiomatic correctness. So many Latin words 
 having been adopted into the English language in the Elizabethan 
 era, and English having been up to that period almost excluded 
 from literature, the Latin element then retained much of its native 
 character, to which fact is due, in some measure, Shakespeare's use 
 of words of Latin origin in their radical signification. But although 
 he uses them thus oftener than any of his contemporaries, we may 
 be sure that it was the result of no yielding to the constraints of 
 scholarship. In brief, words were his slaves, not he theirs ; and if 
 one could serve his purpose better than another, he did not stop 
 to ask the birthplace or to trace the lineage of his servant. 
 
 DONALD GRANT MITCHELL. 
 
 Donald Grant Mitchell was born in Norwich, Conn., in April, 1822, and was graduated 
 at Yale College in 1841. Being in delicate health, he spent a few years on his grandfather's 
 farm, and became greatly interested in husbandry. He went to England in 1844, and ram- 
 bled through every county on foot ; he wrote letters from thence for the Albany Cultivator. 
 After passing eighteen months on the continent, he returned home and published an account 
 of his travels, entitled Fresh Gleanings, or a New Sheaf from the Old Fields of Continental 
 Europe, by Ik Marvel. He visited Europe a second time in 1848, and on his return pub- 
 lished The Battle Summer. He next published a serial, entitled The Lorgnette, afterwards 
 collected in two volumes. About the same time appeared his most popular work, The Rev- 
 eries of a Bachelor. This is a series of dainty pictures of life as seen by a susceptible and 
 romantic youth, and is extremely fascinating to those who have not advanced beyond its 
 tender and ecstatic experiences. A second volume, entitled Dream Life, appeared a year 
 later. Fudge Doings, published in 1854, is the title of a series of sketches of fashionable life 
 that originally appeared in the Knickerbocker Magazine. In 1853 he was appointed consul 
 to Venice. On his return in 1855 he settled upon his farm near New Haven, where he has 
 since resided. The time of Mr. Mitchell's retirement to his farm marks a great change in 
 the style and character of his works. My Farm of Edgewood, published in 1863, is a charm- 
 ing book, full of bright pictures, and retaining enough of the grace of his early manner with- 
 out its rather cloying sentiment. Wet Days at Edgewood (1864) contains some agreeable 
 accounts of ancient writers upon agriculture. These were followed by Seven Stories in 
 1865, Doctor Johns, a novel, in 1867, and Rural Studies in 1867. 
 
 Mr. Mitchell's eminent characteristic is grace. He has seen much and read much, and 
 we feel, while following his guidance, that he is shrewd and observant, kindly and hopeful, 
 
484 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 just and dispassionate. His books, especially his later ones, have a healthy and maniy 
 tone, with an unobtrusive but pervading humor. The possessor of these rare qualities 
 must be reckoned among our most delightful writers. He is said to be engaged in writing 
 a history of Venice. 
 
 [From My Farm of Edgewood.] 
 WATER IN LANDSCAPE. 
 
 I BELIEVE there is nothing in nature which so enlaces one's love 
 for the country, and binds it with willing fetters, as the silver meshes 
 of a brook. Not for its beauty only, but for its changes ; it is the 
 warbler ; it is the silent muser ; it is the loiterer ; it is the noisy 
 brawler ; and, like all brawlers, beats itself into angry foam, and 
 turns in the eddies demurely penitent, and runs away to sulk under 
 the bush. Brooks, too, pique terribly a man's audacity, if he have 
 any eye for landscape gardening. It seems so manageable in all its 
 wildness. Here in the glen a bit of dam will give a white gush of 
 waterfall, and a pouring sluice to some overshot wheel ; and the 
 wheel shall have its connecting shaft and whirl of labors. Of 
 course there shall be a little scape-way for the trout to pass up 
 and down ; a rustic bridge shall spring across somewhere below, 
 and the stream shall be coaxed into loitering where you will, 
 under the roots of a beech that leans over the water; into a 
 broad pool of the pasture close, where the cattle may cool them- 
 selves in August. In short, it is easy to see how a brook may be 
 held in leash, and made to play the wanton for you summer after 
 summer. I do not forget that poor Shenstone ruined himself by 
 his coquetries with the trees and brooks at Leasowes. I commend 
 the story of the bankrupt poet to those who are about laying out 
 country places. 
 
 Meantime our eyes shall run where the brooks are running to 
 the sea. It must be admitted that a sea view gives the final and 
 the kingly grace to a country home. A lake view and a river 
 view are well in their way, but the hills hem them ; the great reach, 
 which is a type, and, as it were, a vision of the future, does not be- 
 long to them. There is none of that joyous strain to the eye in 
 looking on them which a sea view provokes. The ocean seems to 
 absorb all narrowness, and tides it away, and dashes it into yeasty 
 multiple of its own illimitable width. A man may be small by birth, 
 but he cannot grow smaller with the sea always in his eye. 
 
DONALD GRANT MITCHELL. 485 
 
 [From the Same.] 
 MY GARDEN. 
 
 I ENTER upon my garden by a little crazy, rustic wicket, over 
 which a Virginia creeper has tossed itself into a careless tangle of 
 festoons. The entrance is overshadowed by a cherry tree, which 
 must be nearly half a century old, and which, as it filches easily very 
 much of the fertilizing material that is bestowed upon the garden, 
 makes a weightier show of fruit than can be boasted by any of the 
 orchard company. . . . 
 
 I have provided also a leafy protection for this garden against the 
 sweep of winds from the north-west : northward, this protection con- 
 sists of a wild belt of tangled growth sumacs, hickories, cedars, 
 wild-cherries, oaks separated from the northern walk of the gar- 
 den by a trim hedge-row of hemlock-spruce. This tangled belt is 
 of a spontaneous growth, and has shot up upon a strip of the 
 neglected pasture land, from which, seven years since, I trenched 
 the area of the garden. Thus it is not only a protection, but offers 
 a pleasant contrast of what the whole field might have been, with 
 what the garden now is. I must confess that I love these savage 
 waymarks of progressive tillage, as I love to meet here and there 
 some stolid old-time thinker, whom the rush of modern ideas has 
 left in picturesque isolation. 
 
 Time and again some enterprising gardener has begged the privi- 
 lege of uprooting this strip of wilderness, and trenching to the skirt 
 of the wall beyond it ; but I have guarded the waste as if it were a 
 crop ; the cheewits and thrushes make their nests undisturbed there. 
 The long, firm, gravel alley which traverses the garden from north to 
 south, traverses also this bit of savage shrubbery, and, by a latticed 
 gate, opens upon smooth grass lands beyond, which are skirted with 
 forest. 
 
 Within this tangle-wood, I have set a few graftlings upon a wild- 
 crab, and planted a peach or two only to watch the struggle which 
 these artificial people will make with their wild neighbors. And so 
 various is the growth within this limited belt, that my children pick 
 there, in their seasons, luscious dewberries, huckleberries, wild 
 raspberries, billberries, and choke-cherries ; and, in autumn, gather 
 bouquets of golden-rod and asters, set off with crimson tufts of 
 sumac, and the scarlet of maple boughs. And when I see the bril- 
 liancy of these, and smack the delicate flavor of the wild fruit, it 
 makes me doubt if our progress is, after all, as grand as it should 
 
486 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 be, or as \ve vainly believe it to be ; and (to renew my parallel) 
 it seems to me that the old-time and gone-by thinkers may possibly 
 have given us as piquant and marrowy suggestions upon whatever 
 subject of human knowledge they touched, as the hot-house philos- 
 ophers of to-day. I never open, of a Sunday afternoon, upon the 
 yellowed pages of Jeremy Taylor, but his flavor, andr affluence, and 
 homely wealth of allusions suggest the tangled wild of the garden 
 with its starry flowers, its piquant berries, its scorn of human rul- 
 ings, its unkempt vigor, its boughs and tendrils stretching heaven- 
 ward ; and I never water a reluctant hill of yellow cucumbers, and 
 coax it with all manner of concentrated fertilizers into bearing, but 
 
 I think of the elegant education of the dapper Dr. , and of the 
 
 sappy and flavorless results. 
 
 [From the Same.] 
 THE POULTRY. 
 
 AT certain times, when the condition of the garden or crops 
 allows it, I permit my fowls free forage ; and as they stroll off over 
 the lawn and among the shrubberies, it sometimes happens that they 
 come in contact with the more vagabond birds of the larger farm 
 family. The hens take the meeting philosophically, with a well-bred 
 lack of surprise, and are not deterred for a moment from their for- 
 age employ ; perhaps (if with a brood) giving an admonitory cluck 
 to their chicks to keep near them, even as old ladies with daugh- 
 ters, in a strange place, advise caution, without enjoining positive 
 non-intercourse. 
 
 The ducks, on the contrary, in a very low-bred manner, give way 
 to a world of surprises, and gad about each other, dipping their 
 heads, and quacking, and bickering, like old gossips long time apart, 
 who pour interminable scandal in each other's ears. The cocks 
 make an honest, fair fight of it, and one goes home draggled, con- 
 fining himself thereafter to his own quarters. 
 
 The turkeys meet as fine ladies do, tiptoeing round and round, 
 and eying each other with earnest scrutiny, and abundant curvet- 
 ings of the neck, very stately, dignified, and impudent stooping 
 to browse, perhaps (ladies sniff thus at vinaigrettes), as if no strange 
 fowl were near, which is merest affectation. They summon their 
 little families into close order, as if fearing contagion, and, eying 
 each other, wander apart, without a sign of companionship or a gob- 
 ble of leave-taking. 
 
JAMES PARTON. 487 
 
 JAMES PARTON. 
 
 James Parton was born at Canterbury, England, February g, 1822. He was brought to 
 New York at the age of five years, and received his education at an academy at White 
 Plains. He was a school teacher for a time, and afterwards was engaged as an assistant 
 editor of the Home Journal. He wrote a Life of Horace Greeley, which was published in 
 1855. This was followed by a Life of Aaron Burr in 1857, and a Life of Andrew Jackson, in 
 three volumes, in 1859-60. He made a collection of the Humorous Poetry of the English 
 Language, which was printed in 1856. In 1863 he wrote an account of General Butler in 
 New Orleans ; in 1864 a Biography of Franklin, in two volumes ; in 1865 the Life of John 
 Jacob Astor ; in 1866 How New York City is Governed ; Famous Americans in 1867 ; the 
 People's Book of Biography in 1868 ; Smoking and Drinking in 1868 ; the Danish Islands in 
 1869. He has lately begun an elaborate Biography of Jefferson in the Atlantic Monthly. 
 He has been a contributor to the Atlantic and to other periodicals, and has treated in his 
 attractive style of a great variety of topics, from Chicago shambles to Providence silver plate. 
 
 Mr. Parton is a man of indefatigable industry, and has built his many biographies upon the 
 results of faithful study. He has a rare pictorial art, and employs in narrative the countless 
 bits of detail he has gathered with strong effect. Under his hand the character grows to 
 life-like proportions, as the clay puts on the form of man when moulded by the artist. It is 
 safe to say of any one of his works that it is interesting ; and the interest is not merely in 
 the style, in the usual meaning of the word : it lies rather in the mastery of the subject. 
 
 But when we have finished some of his books, and would consider the moral aspect of the 
 characters he has drawn for us, we are forced to pause. The sharp lines between truth and 
 falsehood, between right and wrong, are not always to be seen. We know that much is to 
 be pardoned to the biographer, because he naturally becomes an advocate, and we have been 
 accustomed to see defences and extenuations put forth for the greatest scoundrels in history. 
 Where the biographer makes palpable misstatements the mischief is easily corrected, for the 
 critic goes over the work with a sharp pencil and marks dele> as he would upon a faulty 
 proof-sheet. But where the animating spirit of the writer is wrong, and he wilfully or 
 ignornntly confounds the everlasting ideas of rectitude, there is no setting it right for the 
 inex-'crencecl reader. It maybe that we could not point out many untrue paragraphs in 
 the Life of Burr, but not even Mr. Parton's plausible art can satisfy those who know the 
 history of the last century, that Burr was not a thoroughly depraved man. Much as we may 
 admire many traits in Jackson's character, no candid man will assert that his was a soul that 
 could at all times bear the clear light of truth. In Mr. Parton's book, the facts that might 
 cloud Jackson's character, and exhibit him as an intriguing and unscrupulous politician, are 
 generally set aside, or, if admitted, are palliated and defended from the necessities of the 
 cns^. In his Famous Americans, at least one man is held up to the admiration of youth 
 \vhos whole life has been a scene of successful trickery, or robberv under forms of law ; as 
 though the possession of wea'th. rrovicled one has enough of it, is sufficient to make any 
 rne'Ts taken to acquire it respectable. When Mr. Parton assumes a hi.ch moral tone, and 
 holds up the sins of public men to reprobation, it would seem to be because h-t v.vniH take n 
 person whom he disliked to use as a warning. The historian of politics and the rigi.l 
 moralist judge men by very different standards. In comparing two contemporary states- 
 men, it ij qiu'te important that the writer should apply the same rules to both. But Mr. 
 Parton, while he paints the sensual traits, and other dark fea ures of Mr. Webster's char- 
 acter, with an unsparing brush, has nothing but delicate words of praise for Mr. Clay. 
 Now, Mr Clay was in no respect morally superior to his great rival, and had less of a real 
 manly generosity in his nature. Mr. Clay was adored by the common people for his 
 gracious manners ; but his selfishness in pursuit of office, and his unwillingness to allow 
 any other Kentucloan to rise during his lifetime, are perfectly well known. Long before 
 his death he had alienated the affections of every great family and every rising lawyer in the 
 
HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 state, and though his popularity outwardly remained, he was thoroughly hated in secret by 
 all of the able men. 
 
 The comparison between these two men is mentioned merely as an instance of the fatal 
 lurches to which Mr. Parton is subject. All his crows are white. While we find in his 
 works a rare fascination, and can read them with profit, it is necessary to bear in mind his 
 tendency to exalt his heroes and to blacken their rivals ; and we should hold a steady 
 balance of judgment when we are asked by him to doubt the verdicts of impartial writers 
 upon the characters of public men. 
 
 In the midst of the scandalous and shameless pursuit of gain that prevails among financiers, 
 speculators, and office-holders in this country, the writer of books for the young has a plain 
 duty to perform ; and we cannot too strongly condemn the complaisance that passes over 
 in silence the frauds and conspiracies by which vast fortunes are accumulated at the expense 
 of the honest and helpless public. 
 
 Either these lives of selfish millionnaires and selfish politicians should not be written at all, 
 or the full truth should be told ; else in time the idea of moral beauty in character might 
 become like the legends of a fabulous golden age. 
 
 [From Famous Americans of Modern Times.] 
 A PORTRAIT OF STEPHEN GIRARD. 
 
 WITHIN the memory of many persons still alive, " old Girard," as 
 the famous banker was usually styled, a short, stout, brisk old gen- 
 tleman, used to walk, in his swift, awkward way, the streets of the 
 lower part of Philadelphia. Though everything about him indicated 
 that he had very little in common with his fellow-citizens, he was the 
 marked man of the city for more than a generation. His aspect 
 was rather insignificant and quite unprepossessing. His dress was 
 old-fashioned and shabby ; and he wore the pig-tail, the white neck- 
 cloth, the wide-brimmed hat, and the large-skirted coat of the last 
 century. He was blind of one eye ; and though his bushy eyebrows 
 gave some character to his countenance, it was curiously devoid of 
 expression. He had also the absent look of a man who either had 
 no thoughts, or was absorbed in thought ; and he shuffled along on 
 his enormous feet, looking neither to the right nor to the left. There 
 was always a certain look of the old mariner about him, though he 
 had been fifty years an inhabitant of the town. When he rode, it 
 was in the plainest, least comfortable gig in Philadelphia, drawn by 
 an ancient and ill-formed horse, driven always by the master's own 
 hand at a good pace. He chose still to live where he had lived for 
 fifty years, in Water Street, close to the wharves, in a small and in- 
 convenient house, darkened by tall storehouses, amid the bustle, the 
 noise, and the odors of commerce. His sole pleasure was to visit 
 once a day a little farm which he possessed a few miles out of town, 
 where he was wont to take off his coat, roll up his shirt sleeves, and 
 personally labor in the field and in the barn, hoeing corn, pruning 
 trees, tossing hay, and not disdaining even to assist in butchering 
 
JAMES PARTON. 489 
 
 the animals which he raised for market. It was no mere ornamental 
 or experimental farm. He made it pay. All of his produce was 
 carefully, nay, scrupulously husbanded, sold, recorded, and accounted 
 for. He loved his grapes, his plums, his pigs, and especially his 
 rare breed of canary-birds ; but the people of Philadelphia had the 
 full benefit of their increase at the highest market rates. 
 
 Never was there a person more destitute than Girard of the 
 qualities which win the affection of others. His temper was violent, 
 his presence forbidding, his usual manner ungracious, his will in- 
 flexible, his heart untender, his imagination dead. He was odious 
 to many of his fellow-citizens, who considered him the hardest and 
 meanest of men. He had li x ved among them for half a century, but 
 he was no more a Philadelphian in 1830 than in 1776. He still 
 spoke with a French accent, and accompanied his words with a 
 French shrug and French gesticulation. Surrounded with Christian 
 churches, which he had helped to build, he remained a sturdy un- 
 believer, and possessed the complete works of only one man, Voltaire. 
 He made it a point of duty to labor on Sunday, as a good example 
 to others. He made no secret of the fact that he considered the 
 idleness of Sunday an injury, moral and economical. He would 
 have opened his bank on Sundays if any one would have come 
 to it. For his part, he required no rest, and would have none. He 
 never travelled. He never attended public assemblies or amuse- 
 ments. He had no affections to gratify, no friends to visit, no 
 curiosity to appease, no tastes to indulge. What he once said of 
 himself appeared to be true, that he rose in the morning with but a 
 single object, and that was to labor so hard all day as to be able to 
 sleep at night. The world was absolutely nothing to him but a 
 working-place. He scorned and scouted the opinion that old men 
 should cease to labor, and should spend the evening of their days in 
 tranquillity. " No," he would say ; " labor is the price of life, its 
 happiness, its everything ; to rest is to rust ; every man should labor 
 to the last hour of his ability." Such was Stephen Girard, the 
 richest man who ever lived in Pennsylvania. 
 
 This is an unpleasing picture of a citizen of polite and amiable 
 Philadelphia. It were, indeed, a grim and dreary world in which 
 should prevail the principles of Girard. But see what this man has 
 done for the city that loved him not. Vast and imposing structures 
 rise on the banks of the Schuylkill, wherein, at this hour, six hun- 
 dred poor orphan boys are fed, clothed, trained, and taught, upon the 
 income of the enormous estate which he won by this entire con- 
 
4QO HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 secration to the work of accumulating property. In the ample 
 grounds of Girard College, looking up at its five massive marble 
 edifices, strolling in its shady walks, or by its verdant playgrounds, 
 or listening to the cheerful cries of the boys at play, the most 
 sympathetic and imaginative of men must pause before censuring 
 the sterile and unlovely life of its founder. And if he should inquire 
 closely into the character and career of the man who willed this great 
 institution into being, he would perhaps be willing to admit that 
 there was room in the world for one Girard, though it were a pity 
 there should ever be another. Such an inquiry would perhaps dis- 
 close that Stephen Girard was endowed by nature with a great heart 
 as well as a powerful mind, and that circumstances alone closed and 
 hardened the one, cramped and perverted the other. It is not im- 
 probable that he was one of those unfortunate beings who desire to 
 be loved, but whose temper and appearance combine to repel affec- 
 tion. His marble statue, which adorns the entrance to the principal 
 building, if it could speak, might say to us, " Living, you could not 
 understand nor love me ; dead, I compel at least your respect." 
 Indeed, he used to say, when questioned as to his career, " Wait till 
 I am dead ; my deeds will show what I was." 
 
 FRANCIS PARKMAN. 
 
 Francis Parkman was born in Boston, September 16, 1823, and was graduated at Harvard 
 College in 1844. He visited Europe, and on his return made a journey across the prairies 
 and among the Rocky Mountains. An account of this exploration was published in 1849, 
 entitled, The California and Oregon Trail. He wrote the History of the Conspiracy of 
 Pontiac (1851), and Vassal Morton, a novel (about 1854). For nearly ten years he suffered 
 from a severe disease of the brain, and was unable to continue his historical labors, or even 
 at times to read so much as a newspaper. His cheerful temper and active habits carried 
 him through the long trial, and at length he began to develop the idea which he had formed. ' 
 This was to relate the history of the attempts of the French and Spanish to colonize North 
 America. He was thoroughly familiar with the Indian character. He had hunted with 
 them, and shared th'iir life of activity and their comfortless camps. He knew the language 
 of more than one tribe. He made a careful study, from original sources, of the routes and 
 adventures of the early explorers, and of the journals of the Jesuit missionaries. He pub- 
 lished, in 1865, a vo'ume entitled Pioneers of France in the New World. This was followed, 
 in 1867, by The Jesuits in North America, and in 1869, by The Discovery of the Great West 
 These three volumes now form parts, respectively, of a work with the general title of France 
 and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives. As the arc indicates the 
 completed circle, we can judge from these volumes of the magnitude of the undertaking. 
 
 Mr. Parkman writes with uncommon vigor, and his pages are alive with thrilling adven- 
 ture, brilliant description, and romantic episodes. His fairness is vouched for by the fact 
 that, though a Protestant himself, his narratives of the heroic and self sacrificing Jesuit 
 fathers are warmly commended by Catholic authorities in this country and in Canada. The 
 
FRANCIS PARKMAN. 49! 
 
 conflicts of savages can never have the interest for civilized readers which we feel in the 
 great struggles of European nations. Battles like those of Tours, Lepanto, Hastings, 
 Waterloo, Sevastopol, and Sedan signify the triumph of the ideas of the conquering race or 
 nation. The desperate encounters between Indian tribes settled no principle, and left the 
 equilibrium of mankind undisturbed. It is for this reason, among others, that Parkman 
 has now less renown as a historian than some of his more fortunate rivals. He is further- 
 more apt to err in entering into the details of warfare with too great particularity. The 
 tawny Ajax or Hector does not stand for so much as in Homer's time. Mr. Parkman writes 
 with i he vividness of an eye-witness, and gives to each skirmish an importance somewhat 
 out of keeping with a broad view of the whole history, so that a part of his title, a Series of 
 Historical Narratives, is more fitting than we could desire. 
 
 But his qualities as a writer are of a high order. He has left no room for a competitor in 
 the same field, and his works, in our judgment, are surer of going down to posterity as 
 authorities than almost any histories that have been written in our time. Much of the his- 
 tory of Europe, and all of our own annals, will some day be writteiTanew. Mr. Parkman's 
 graphic relations, we believe, will be read as long as the character and fate of the aborigines 
 have any interest for the world. 
 
 LFrom The Discovery of the Great West.] 
 THE ILLINOIS TOWN. 
 
 Go to the banks of the Illinois, where it flows by the village 
 of Utica, and stand on the meadow that borders it on the north. 
 In front glides the river, a musket-shot in width, and from the 
 farther bank rises, with gradual slope, a range of wooded hills 
 that hide from sight the vast prairie behind them. A mile or 
 more on your left these gentle acclivities end abruptly in the 
 lofty front of the great cliff, called by the French the Rock of 
 St. Louis, looking boldly out from the forests that environ it ; 
 and, three miles distant on your right, you discern a gap in the 
 steep bluffs that here bound the valley, marking the mouth of the 
 River Vermilion, called Aramoni by the French. Now stand, 
 in fancy, on this same spot, in the early autumn of the year 1680. 
 You are in the midst of the great town of the Illinois, hundreds 
 of mat-covered lodges and thousands of congregated savages. 
 Enter one of their dwellings : they will not think you an intruder. 
 Some friendly squaw will lay a mat for you by the fire ; you may 
 seat yourself upon it, smoke your pipe, and study the lodge and 
 its inmates by the light that streams through the holes at the 
 top. Three or four fires smoke and smoulder on the ground, 
 down the middle of the long-arched structure ; and, as to each 
 fire there are two families, the place is somewhat crowded when 
 all are present. But now there is space and breathing room, for 
 many are in the fields. A squaw sits weaving a mat of rushes ; 
 a warrior, naked, except his moccasons, and tattooed with fan- 
 tastic devices, binds a stone arrow-head to its shaft with the fresh 
 
492 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 sinews of a buffalo. Some lie asleep, some sit staring in vacancy, 
 some are squatted, in lazy chat, around a fire. The smoke brings 
 water to your eyes ; the fleas annoy you ; small, unkempt children, 
 naked as young puppies, crawl about your knees, and will not be 
 repelled. You have seen enough. You rise and go out again into 
 the sunlight. It is, if not a peaceful, at least a languid scene. 
 A few voices break the stillness, mingled with the joyous chirp- 
 ing of crickets from the grass. Young men lie flat on their faces, 
 basking in the sun. A group of their elders are smoking around 
 a buffalo-skin, on which they have just been playing a game of 
 chance with cherry-stones. A lover and his mistress, perhaps, sit 
 together under a shed of bark, without uttering a word. Not far 
 off is the graveyard, where lie the dead of the village some 
 buried in the earth, some wrapped in skins and aloft on scaffolds, 
 above the reach of wolves. In the cornfields around you see 
 squaws at their labor, and children driving off intruding birds ; 
 and your eye ranges over the meadows beyond, spangled with the 
 yellow blossoms of the resin-weed and the Rudbeckia, or over the 
 bordering hills still green with the foliage of summer. 
 
 This, or something like it, one may safely affirm, was the aspect 
 of the Illinois village at noon of the tenth of September. In a hut, 
 apart from the rest, you would probably have found the Frenchmen. 
 Among them was a man, not strong in person, and disabled, more- 
 over, by the loss of a hand, yet, in this den of barbarism, betray- 
 ing the language and bearing of one formed in the most polished 
 civilization of Europe. This was Henri de Ton^y. The others 
 were young Boisrondet, and the two faithful men who had stood by 
 their commander. The friars, Membre and Ribourde, were not in 
 the village, but at a hut a league distant, whither they had gone to 
 make a " retreat " for prayer and meditation. Their missionary 
 labors had not been fruitful. They had made no converts, and 
 were in despair at the intractable character of the objects of their 
 zeal. As for the other Frenchmen, time doubtless hung heavy 
 on their hands ; for nothing can surpass the vacant monotony of 
 an Indian town when there is neither hunting, nor war, nor feasts, 
 nor dances, nor gambling to beguile the lagging hours. 
 
 Suddenly the village was wakened from its lethargy as by the 
 crash of a thunderbolt. A Shawanoe, lately here on a visit, had 
 left his Illinois friends to return home. He now reappeared, cross- 
 ing the river in hot haste, with the announcement that he had met, 
 on his way, an army of Iroquois approaching to attack them. All 
 
FRANCIS PARKMAN. 493 
 
 was panic and confusion. The lodges disgorged their frightened 
 inmates ; women and children screamed, startled warriors snatched 
 their weapons. There were less than five hundred of them, for 
 the greater part of the young men had gone to war. A crowd of 
 excited savages thronged about Tonty and his Frenchmen, already 
 objects of their suspicion, charging them, with furious gesticulations, 
 with having stirred up their enemies to invade them. Tonty de- 
 fended himself in broken Illinois, but the naked mob were but half 
 convinced. They seized the forge and tools and flung them into 
 the river, with all the goods that had been saved from the desert- 
 ers ; then, distrusting their power to defend themselves, they 
 manned the wooden canoes, which lay in multitudes by the bank, 
 embarked their women and children, and paddled down the stream 
 to that island of dry land in the midst of marshes which La Salle 
 afterwards found filled with their deserted huts. Sixty warriors 
 remained here to guard them, and the rest returned to the village. 
 All night long fires blazed along the shore. The excited warriors 
 greased their bodies, painted their faces, befeathered their heads, 
 sang their war-songs, danced, stamped, yelled, and brandished their 
 hatche-ts, to work up their courage to face the crisis. The morning 
 came, and with it came the Iroquois. 
 
 Young warriors had gone out as scouts, and now they returned. 
 They had seen the enemy in the line of forest that bordered the 
 River Aramoni, or Vermilion, and had stealthily reconnoitred them. 
 They were very numerous, and armed, for the most part, with guns, 
 pistols, and swords. Some had bucklers of wood or raw hide, and 
 some wore those corselets of tough twigs, interwoven with cordage, 
 which their fathers had used when fire-arms were unknown. The 
 scouts added more, for they declared that they had seen a Jesuit 
 among the Iroquois ; nay, that La Salle himself was there, whence 
 it must follow that Tonty and his men were enemies and traitors. 
 The supposed Jesuit was but an Iroquois chief, arrayed in a black 
 hat, doublet, and stockings, while another, equipped after a some- 
 what similar fashion, passed in the distance for La Salle. But the 
 Illinois were furious. Tonty's life hung by a hair. A crowd of 
 savages surrounded him, mad with rage and terror. He had come 
 lately from Europe, and knew little of Indians, but, as the friar 
 Membr says of him, " he was full of intelligence and courage ; " and 
 when they heard him declare that he and his Frenchmen would go 
 with them to fight the Iroquois, their threats grew less clamorous, 
 and their eyes glittered with a less deadly lustre. 
 
494 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 Whooping and screeching, they ran to their canoes, crossed the 
 river, climbed the woody hill, and swarmed down upon the plain 
 beyond. About a hundred of them had guns ; the rest were armed 
 with bows and arrows. They were how face to face with the enemy, 
 who had emerged from the woods of the Vermilion, and was advan- 
 cing on the open prairie. With unwonted spirit, for their repute as 
 warriors was by no means high, the Illinois began, after their fashion, 
 to charge ; that is, they leaped, yelled, and shot off bullets and 
 arrows, advancing as they did so, while the Iroquois replied with 
 gymnastics no less agile, and bowlings no less terrific, mingled with 
 the rapid clatter of their guns. Tonty saw that it would go hard 
 with his allies. It was of the last moment to stop the fight if possi- 
 ble. The Iroquois were, or professed to be, at peace with the 
 French, and, taking counsel of his courage, he resolved on an 
 attempt to mediate, which may well be called a desperate one. He 
 laid aside his gun, took in his hand a wampum belt as a flag of truce, 
 and walked forward to meet the savage multitude, attended by Bois- 
 rondet, another Frenchman, and a young Illinois, who had the har- 
 dihood to accompany him. The guns of the Iroquois still flashed 
 thick and fast. Some of them were aimed at him, on which he sent 
 back the two Frenchmen and the Illinois, and advanced alone, hold- 
 ing out the wampum belt. A moment more and he was among the 
 infuriated warriors. It was a frightful spectacle : the contorted 
 forms, bounding, crouching, twisting, to deal or dodge the shot ; the 
 small, keen eyes, that shone like an angry snake's ; the parted lips, 
 pealing their fiendish yells ; the painted features, writhing with fear 
 and fury, and every passion of an Indian fight ; man, wolf, and 
 devil, all in one. With his swarthy complexion, and his half-savage 
 dress, they thought he was an Indian, and thronged about him, glar-' 
 ing murder. A young warrior stabbed at his heart with a knife, but 
 the point glanced aside against a rib, inflicting only a deep gash. A 
 chief called out that, as his ears were not pierced, he must be a 
 Frenchman. On this, some of them tried to stop the bleeding, and 
 led him to the rear, where an angry parley ensued, while the yells 
 and firing still resounded in the front. Tonty, breathless, and bleed- 
 ing at the mouth with the force of the blow he had received, found 
 words to declare that the Illinois were under the protection of the 
 king and the governor of Canada, and to demand that they should 
 be left in peace. 
 
 A young Iroquois snatched Tonty's hat, placed it on the end of 
 his gun, and displayed it to the Illinois, who thereupon, thinking he 
 
FRANCIS PARKMAN. 495 
 
 was killed, renewed the fight, and the firing in front breezed up 
 more angrily than before. A warrior ran in, crying out that the Iro- 
 quois were giving ground, and that there were Frenchmen among 
 the Illinois who fired at them. - On this the clamor around Tonty 
 was redoubled. Some wished to kill him at once ; others resisted. 
 Several times he felt a hand at the back of his head lifting up his 
 hair, and, turning, saw a savage with a knife standing as if ready to 
 scalp him. A Seneca chief demanded that he should be burned. 
 An Onondaga chief, a friend of La Salle, was for setting him free. 
 The dispute grew fierce and hot. Tonty told them that the Illinois 
 were twelve hundred strong, and that sixty Frenchmen were at the 
 village ready to back them. This invention, though not fully be- 
 lieved, had no little effect. The friendly Onondaga carried his point, 
 and the Iroquois, having failed to surprise their enemies as they had 
 hoped, now saw an opportunity to delude them by a truce. They 
 sent back Tonty with a belt of peace. He held it aloft in sight of 
 the Illinois ; chiefs and old warriors ran to stop the fight ; the yells 
 and the firing ceased, and Tonty, like one waked from a hideous 
 nightmare, dizzy, almost fainting with loss of blood, staggered across 
 the intervening prairie to rejoin his friends. He was met by the two 
 friars, Ribourde and Membre, who, in their secluded hut a league 
 from the village, had but lately heard of what was passing, and who 
 now, with benedictions and thanksgiving, ran to embrace him as a 
 man escaped from the jaws of death. 
 
 The Illinois now withdrew, re-embarking in their canoes, and 
 crossing again to their lodges ; but scarcely had they reached them, 
 when their enemies appeared at the edge of the forest on the oppo- 
 site bank. Many found means to cross, and under the pretext of 
 seeking for provisions, began to hover in bands about the skirts of 
 the town, constantly increasing in numbers. Had the Illinois dared 
 to remain, a massacre would doubtless have ensued ; but they knew 
 their foe too well, set fire to their lodges, embarked in haste, and 
 paddled down the stream to rejoin their women and children at the 
 sanctuary among the morasses. The whole body of the Iroquois 
 now crossed the river, took possession of the abandoned town, build- 
 ing for themselves a rude redoubt or fort of the trunks of trees and 
 of the posts and poles forming the framework of the lodges which 
 escaped the fire. Here they ensconced themselves, and finished the 
 work of havoc at their leisure. 
 
496 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 GEORGE HENRY BOKER. 
 
 George Henry Boker was born in Philadelphia in 1823, and was graduated at Princeton 
 College, N. J., in 1842. He studied law, but never engaged in practice. He made atrip 
 to Europe, and upon his return settled in his native city, where he has since resided. In 
 1847 he published a volume, entitled The Lesson of Life and other Poems. The following 
 year he published Calaynos, a tragedy, which was brought out upon the stage in London 
 with success. His second tragedy, Anne Boleyn, was brought out not long after. This 
 was followed by several other plays, which were produced upon the stage, and gave the 
 author a wide reputation. He has also published two later volumes : War Lyrics, and 
 Konigsmark, the Legend of the Hounds and other Poems. His early poems and trage- 
 dies have been collected in two volumes, entitled Plays and Poems. As a favorable speci- 
 men of his style and his power the reader is referred to the dramatic sketch, The Podesta's 
 Daughter. He was greatly interested in the fortunes of the late civil war, and showed, in 
 his spirited lyrics, the depth and fervency of his patriotism. 
 
 We are fully sensible that the selections here printed may not be the best expressions of his 
 genius, and that his plays probably contain his finest thoughts ; but it is impossible in a com- 
 pilation like this to present any extract from a play that is at all complete in itself. 
 
 Mr. Boker has lately been appointed minister to Constantinople. 
 
 "I HAVE A COTTAGE." 
 
 I HAVE a cottage where the sunbeams lurk, 
 Peeping around its gables all day long, 
 Brimming the buttercups until they drip 
 With molten gold, like o'ercharged crucibles. 
 Here, wondering why the morning-glories close 
 Their crumpled edges ere the dew is dry, 
 Great lilies stand, and stretch their languid buds 
 In the full blaze of noon, until its heat 
 Has pierced them to their centres. Here the rose 
 Is larger, redder, sweeter, longer-lived, 
 Less thorny, than the rose of other lands. 
 
 I have a cottage where the south wind comes, 
 
 Cool from the spicy pines, or with a breath 
 
 Of the mid-ocean salt upon its lips, 
 
 And a low, lulling, dreamy sound of waves, 
 
 To breathe upon me, as I lie along 
 
 On my white violets, marvelling at the bees 
 
 That toil but to be plundered, or the mart 
 
 Of striving men, whose bells I sometimes hear, 
 
 When they will toss their brazen throats at heaven, 
 
 And howl to vex me. But the town is far ; 
 
 And all its noises, ere they trouble me, 
 
GEORGE HENRY BOKER. 497 
 
 Must take a convoy of the scented breeze, 
 
 And climb the hills, and cross the bloomy dales, 
 
 And catch a whisper in the swaying grain, 
 
 And bear unfaithful echoes from the wood, 
 
 And mix with birds, and streams, and fluttering leaves, 
 
 And an old ballad which the shepherd hums, 
 
 Straying in thought behind his browsing flock. 
 
 I have a cottage where the wild bee comes 
 
 To hug the thyme, and woo its dainties forth ; 
 
 Where humming-birds, plashed with the rainbow's dyes, 
 
 Poise on their whirring wings before the door, 
 
 And drain my honeysuckles at a draught. 
 
 Ah, giddy sensualist, how thy blazing throat 
 
 Flashes and throbs while thou dost pillage me 
 
 Of all my virgin flowers ! And then, away 
 
 What eye may follow ! But yon constant robin : 
 
 Spring, summer, winter, still the same clear song 
 
 At morn and eve, still the contented hop, 
 
 And low, sly whistle when the crumbs are thrown. 
 
 Yet he is jealous of my tawny thrush, 
 
 And drives him off, ere a faint symphony 
 
 Ushers the carol warming in his breast. 
 
 I have a cottage in the cloven hills ; 
 Through yonder peaks the flow of sunlight comes, 
 Dragging its sluggish tide across the path 
 Of the reluctant stars, which silently 
 Are buried in it. Through yon western gap 
 Day ebbs away, leaving a margin round 
 Of sky and cloud, drowned in its sinking flood, 
 Till Venus shimmers through the rising blue, 
 And lights her sisters up. Here lie the moonbeams, 
 Hour after hour, becalmed in the still trees ; 
 Or on the weltering leaves of the young grass 
 Rest half asleep, rocked by some errant wind. 
 Here are more little stars, on winter nights, 
 Than sages reckon in their heaven charts ; 
 For the brain wanders, and the dizzy eye 
 Aches at their sum, and dulls, and winks with them. 
 The Northern Lights come down to greet me here, 
 32 
 
HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 Playing fantastic tricks, above my head, 
 
 With their long tongues of fire, that dart and catch, 
 
 From point to point, across the firmament, 
 
 As if the face of heaven were passing off 
 
 In low combustion ; or the kindling night 
 
 Were slowly flaming to a fatal dawn, 
 
 Wide-spread and sunless as the day of doom. 
 
 I have a cottage cowering in the trees, 
 And seeming to shrink lower day by day. 
 Sometimes I fancy that the growing boughs 
 Have dwarfed my dwelling ; but the solemn oaks 
 That hang above my roof so lovingly, 
 They too have shrunk. I know not how it is : 
 For when my mother led me by the hand 
 Around our pale, it seemed a weary walk ; 
 And then, as now, the sharp roof nestled there 
 Among the trees, and they propped heaven. Alas ! 
 Who leads me now around the bushy pale ? 
 Who shows the bird's nest in the twilight leaves ? 
 Who catches me within her fair, round arms, 
 When autumn shakes the acorns on our roof 
 To startle me ? I know not how it is : 
 The house has shrunk, perhaps, as our poor hearts, 
 When they both broke at parting, and mine closed 
 Upon a memory, shutting out the world 
 Like a sad anchorite. Ah, that gusty morn ! 
 But here she lived, here died, and so will I. 
 
 I have a cottage murmur if ye will, 
 Ye men whose lips are prison doors to thoughts 
 Born, with mysterious struggles, in the heart ; 
 And, maidens, let your store of hoarded smiles 
 Break from their dimples, like the spreading rings 
 That skim a lake, when some stray blossom falls 
 Warm in its bosom. Ah, you cannot tell 
 Why violets choose not a neighboring bank, 
 Why cowslips blow upon the selfsame bed, 
 Why year by year the swallow seeks one nest, 
 Why the brown wren rebuilds her hairy home. 
 O, sightless cavillers, you do not know 
 
GEORGE HENRY BOKER. 499 
 
 How deep roots strike, nor with what tender care 
 The soft down lining warms the nest within. 
 Think as you will, murmur and smile apace 
 I have a cottage where my days shall close, 
 Calm as the setting of a feeble star. 
 
 INVOCATION. . 
 
 COUNTRY, bleeding from the heart, 
 
 If these poor songs can touch thy woe, 
 And draw thee but a while apart 
 From sorrow's bitter overflow, 
 
 Then not in vain 
 
 This feeble strain 
 About the common air shall blow. 
 
 As David stood by prostrate Saul, 
 So wait I at thy sacred feet : 
 
 1 reverently raise thy pall, 
 
 To see thy mighty bosom beat. 
 
 I would not wrong 
 
 Thy grief with song ; 
 I would but utter what is meet. 
 
 Arise, O giant ! ho, the day 
 
 Flows hither from the gates of light. 
 The dreams, that struck thee with dismay, 
 Were shadows of distempered night. 
 'Tis just to mourn 
 What thou hast borne, 
 But yet the future has its right. 
 
 A glory, greater than the lot 
 
 Foretold by prophets, is to be ; 
 A fame without the odious blot 
 Upon thy title to be free, 
 The jeer of foes, 
 The woe of woes, 
 God's curse and sorrow over thee. 
 
5OO HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 Above the nations of the earth 
 
 Erect thee, prouder than before ! 
 Consider well the trial's worth, 
 And let the passing tempest roar. 
 It spends its shock 
 Upon a rock : 
 Thou shalt outlive a thousand more. 
 
 Through tears and blood I saw a gleam ; 
 Through all the battle-smoke it shone ; 
 A voice I heard that drowned the scream 
 Of widows and the orphans' moan : 
 An awful voice, 
 That cried, " Rejoice ! " 
 A light outbreaking from God's throne. 
 
 A BATTLE HYMN. 
 
 GOD, to thee we humbly bow, 
 
 With hand unarmed and naked brow ; 
 
 Musket, lance, and sheathed sword 
 
 At thy feet we lay, O Lord ! 
 
 Gone is all the soldier's boast 
 
 In the valor of the host ; 
 
 Kneeling here, we do our most 
 
 Of ourselves we nothing know : 
 Thou, and thou alone, canst show, 
 By the favor of thy hand, 
 Who has drawn the guilty brand. 
 If our foemen have the right, 
 Show thy judgment in our sight . 
 Through the fortunes of the fight ! 
 
 If our cause be pure and just, 
 Nerve our courage with thy trust : 
 Scatter, in thy bitter wrath, 
 All who cross the nation's path : 
 May the baffled traitors fly, 
 As the vapors from the sky 
 When thy raging winds are high ! 
 
THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON. 501 
 
 God of mercy, some must fall 
 In thy holy cause. Not all 
 Hope to sing the victor's lay, 
 When the sword is laid away. 
 Brief will be the prayers then said ; 
 Falling at thy altar dead, 
 Take the sacrifice instead. 
 
 Now, O God, once more we rise, 
 Marching on beneath thy eyes ; 
 And we draw the sacred sword 
 In thy name and at thy word. 
 May our spirits clearly see 
 Thee, through all that is to be, 
 In defeat or victory ! 
 
 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON. 
 
 Thomas Wentworth Higginson was born in Cambridge, Mass., December 2, 1823, and 
 was graduated at Harvard College in 1841. He studied theology at the school in Cam- 
 bridge, and was settled as pastor of the First Church in Newburyport in 1847. He was 
 also pastor of the Free Church in Worcester from 1852 to 1858. He was an ardent friend 
 of the anti-slavery cause, and has been a prominent actor in the various progressive move- 
 ments of the last twenty years. He was indicted, in company with Parker, Phillips, and 
 others, for the attempt to rescue Anthony Burns, a fugitive slave, from the custody of the 
 United States officers. He was very active in the work of planting colonies from the free 
 states in Kansas. Before the war broke out he had left the clerical profession ; and believ- 
 ing that the sword was needed more than the pen, he entered the military service, and was 
 appointed colonel of the first regiment of black troops raised in South Carolina. He saw 
 some active service, and, after being wounded at an engagement on the Edisto River, was 
 discharged for disability in October, 1864. He has since resided at Newport, R. I. 
 
 His ability as a writer was first -generally recognized in his essays contributed to the early 
 numbers of the Atlantic Monthly. They were mostly upon out-door life and athletic sports, 
 and were directed strongly against the prevailing effeminacy and want of physical energy 
 among clergymen and other scholars. If there is an order of muscular Christians in America, 
 Colonel Higginson is its chief apostle. These essays were collected in 1863, with the 
 title of Out-Door Papers. There are few volumes in our time that have so many exquisite 
 passages of description, so much masculine thought, and such a hearty, cheerful tone. We 
 may add that, in the purity and beauty of his style, Colonel Higginson is surpassed by very 
 few living writers. Malbone, an Oldport Romance, reprinted also from the Atlantic, 
 appeared in 1869 : Army Life in a Black Regiment In 1870: Atlantic Essays in 1871. He 
 has also edited the Harvard Memorial Biographies, in two volumes, being lives of the Har- 
 vard graduates who fell in the late war. This is an enduring monument of his patriotic 
 feeling, good judgment, and literary skill. He published a translation of Epictetus in 1865. 
 He is a frequent contributor to several leading periodicals, particularly the Woman's Jour 
 naL His works are published by J. R. Osgood & Co., Boston. 
 
$O2 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 [From Out-Door Papers.] 
 MY OUT-DOOR STUDY. 
 
 THE noontide of the summer day is past, when all Nature slum- 
 bers, and when the ancients feared to sing, lest the great god Pan 
 should be awakened. Soft changes, the gradual shifting of every 
 shadow on every leaf, begin to show the waning hours. Ineffectual 
 thunder-storms have gathered and gone by, hopelessly defeated. 
 The floating bridge is trembling and resounding beneath the pres- 
 sure of one heavy wagon, and the quiet fishermen change their places 
 to avoid the tiny ripple that glides stealthily to their feet above the 
 half-submerged planks. Down the glimmering lake there are miles 
 of silence, and still waters, and green shores, overhung with a mul- 
 titudinous and scattered fleet of purple and golden clouds, now furl- 
 ing their idle sails, and drifting away into the vast harbor of the south. 
 Voices of birds, hushed first by noon and then by possibilities of 
 tempest, cautiously begin once more, leading on the infinite melodies 
 of the June afternoon. As the freshened air invites them forth, so 
 the smooth and stainless water summons us. " Put your hand upon 
 the oar," says Charon, in the old play, to Bacchus, " and you shall 
 hear the sweetest songs." The doors of the boat-house swing 
 softly open, and the slender wherry, like a water-snake, steals silently 
 in the wake of the dispersing clouds. 
 
 The woods are hazy, as if the warm sunbeams had melted in 
 among the interstices of the foliage, and spread a soft film through- 
 out the whole. The sky seems to reflect the water, and the water 
 the sky ; both are roseate with color, both are darkened with clouds, 
 and between them both, as the boat recedes, the floating bridge 
 hangs suspended, with its motionless fishermen and its moving team. 
 The wooded islands are poised upon the lake, each belted with a 
 paler tint of softer wave. The air seems fine and palpitating ; the 
 drop of an oar in a distant row-lock, the sound of a hammer on a 
 dismantled boat, pass into some region of mist and shadows, and 
 form a metronome for delicious dreams. 
 
 Every summer I launch my boat to seek some realm of enchant- 
 ment beyond all the sordidness and sorrow of earth, and never yet 
 did I fail to ripple with my prow at least the outskirts of those 
 magic waters. What spell has fame or wealth to enrich this midday 
 blessedness with a joy the more ? Yonder barefoot boy, as he drifts 
 silently in his punt beneath the drooping branches of yonder vine- 
 clad bank, has a bliss which no Astor can buy with money, no 
 
THOMAS WENTWORTH HJGGINSON. 503 
 
 Seward conquer with votes, which yet is no monopoly of his, 
 and to which time and experience only add a more subtile and con- 
 scious charm. The rich years were given us to increase, not to im- 
 pair, these cheap felicities. Sad or sinful is the life of that man who 
 finds not the heavens bluer and the waves more musical in maturity 
 than in childhood. Time is a severe alembic of youthful joys, no 
 doubt ; we exhaust book after book, and leave Shakespeare un- 
 opened ; we grow fastidious in men and women ; all the rhetoric, all 
 the logic, we fancy we have heard before ; we have seen the pic- 
 tures, we have listened to the symphonies ; but what has been done 
 by all the art and literature of the world towards describing one sum- 
 mer day ? The most exhausting effort brings us no nearer to it than 
 to the blue sky which is its dome ; our words are shot up against it 
 like arrows, and fall back helpless. Literary amateurs go the tour 
 of the globe to renew their stock of materials, when they do not yet 
 know a bird, or a bee, or a blossom beside their homestead door ; 
 and in the hour of their greatest success they have not an horizon to 
 their life so large as that of yon boy in his punt. All that is pur- 
 chasable in the capitals of the world is not to be weighed in com- 
 parison with the simple enjoyment that may be crowded into one 
 hour of sunshine. What can place or power do here ? " Who could 
 be before me, though the palace of Caesar cracked and split with 
 emperors, while I, sitting in silence on a cliff of Rhodes, watched 
 the sun as he swung his golden censer athwart the heavens ? " 
 
 [From the Same.] 
 FROM THE PROCESSION OF THE FLOWERS. 
 
 BUT, after all, the fascination of summer lies not in any details, 
 however perfect, but in the sense of total wealth which summer 
 gives. Wholly to enjoy this, one must give one's self passively to 
 it, and not expect to reproduce it in words. We strive to picture 
 heaven, when we are barely at the threshold of the inconceivable 
 beauty of earth. Perhaps the truant boy, who simply bathes him- 
 self in the lake and then basks in the sunshine, dimly conscious of 
 the exquisite loveliness around him, is wiser, because humbler, than 
 is he who with presumptuous phrases tries to utter it. There are 
 multitudes of moments when the atmosphere is so surcharged with 
 luxury that every pore of the body becomes an ample gate for sen- 
 sation to flow in, and one has simply to sit still and be filled. In 
 after years the memory of books seems barren and vanishing com- 
 
504 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 pared with the immortal bequest of hours like these. Other sources 
 of illumination seem cisterns only; these are fountains. They may 
 not increase the mere quantity of available thought, but they impart 
 to it a quality which is priceless. No man can measure what a sin- 
 gle hour with Nature may have contributed to the moulding of his 
 mind. The influence is self-renewing, and if for a time it baffles 
 expression by reason of its fineness, so much the better in the end. 
 
 The soul is like a musical instrument : it is not enough that it be 
 framed for the very most delicate vibration, but it must vibrate long 
 and often before the fibres grow mellow to the finest waves of sym- 
 pathy. I perceive that in the veery's carolling, the clover's scent, 
 the glistening of the water, the waving wings of butterflies, the sun- 
 set tints, the floating clouds, there are attainable infinitely more 
 subtile modulations of delight than I can yet reach the sensibility 
 to discriminate, much less describe. If, in the simple process of 
 writing, one could physically impart to this page the fragrance of 
 this spray of azalea beside me, what a wonder would it seem ! 
 and yet one ought to be able, by the mere use of language, to 
 supply to every reader the total of that white, honeyed, trailing 
 sweetness which summer insects haunt, and the Spirit of the 
 Universe loves. The defect is not in language, but in men. 
 There is no conceivable beauty of blossoms so beautiful as 
 words, none so graceful, none so perfumed. It is possible to 
 dream of combinations of syllables so delicious that all the dawn- 
 ing and decay of summer cannot rival their perfection, nor winter's 
 stainless white and azure match their purity and their charm. To 
 write them, were it possible, would be to take rank with Nature ; 
 nor is there any other method, even by music, for human art to 
 reach so high. 
 
 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 George William Curtis was born in Providence, R. I., February 24, 1824. He received 
 his early education in a private school at Jamaica Plain, Mass. When he was fifteen years 
 old his father removed to New York, and he was placed in the counting-room of a mer- 
 chant, but remained only a year. In 1842 he went to Brook Farm, in West Roxbury, and 
 remained a year and a half, devoting his time to study and to agricultural labor. After- 
 wards, being attracted by the intellectual society of Concord, Mass., he went there and 
 lived with a farmer eighteen months, still pursuing his studies, and doing regular work 
 upon the farm. In 1846 he went to Europe, and spent some years in study and travel, 
 extending his tour to Egypt and Syria. He returned to the United States in 1850, and 
 soon after published his first work, Nile Notes of a Howadji. He became connected with 
 the New York Tribune, aiid wrote letters for it from various watering-places, which wers 
 
GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 505 
 
 afterwards collected in a volume, entitled Lotos- Eating.. His second book, The Howadji 
 in Syria, was published in 1852. Putnam's Monthly was established in the same year, and 
 Mr. Curtis was one of the original editors. For this magazine he wrote a number of 
 sketches and essays, some of which were afterwards published with the title Prue and I. 
 In this work Mr, Curtis is seen at his best, in our judgment A pretty rill of a story runs 
 through it like a musical little brook through a romantic valley. The pervading sentiment 
 is tender and pure. The lovely young matron, "Prue," is the sharer in the thoughts and 
 the reminiscences of the story-teller, as well as in his affection and measureless content. 
 The style is as unpretentious and as lovely as the story. If it were more musical its melody 
 would glide into verse. The sketches are full of the best fruits of reading and travel, and 
 preserve for us those picturesque associations of the old world for which we look in the 
 note books of tourists in vain. 
 
 The Potiphar Papers is the title of a volume of satirical sketches of fashionable society, 
 published originally in Putnam's Monthly. Mr. Curtis also published a novel called Trumps, 
 which was vivacious and elegant in style, but lacking in the strong dramatic interest which 
 modern readers of fiction require. 
 
 Putnam's Monthly was an excellent and well-conducted magazine, but it was not very 
 successful in a business point of view. After the failure of the original publisher, it was con- 
 tinued by Messrs. Dix & Edwards, in which firm Mr. Curtis was a silent partner. In 1857 
 the house became insolvent, and in the endeavor to save the creditors from loss he sank his 
 entire private fortune. 
 
 He became a public lecturer in 1853, and has been eminently successful in this field. His 
 clear thought, high moral purpose, varied experience, and glowing style, aided by his attrac- 
 tive presence and finely modulated voice, have combined to make him one of the ablest and 
 most popular of public speakers. In the presidential campaigns of 1856 and 1860 he was a 
 prominent advocate of the Republican party. 
 
 He has for a long time been a contributor to Harper's Monthly, in which his brief essays, 
 under the head of The Easy Chair, have been greatly admired. Since 1857 he has been the 
 editor of Harper's Weekly, and lias probably been mainly instrumental in giving to that 
 paper its strong positive character. 
 
 [From Prue and I.] 
 SEA FROM SHORE. 
 
 I HAVE read in some book of travels that certain tribes of Arabs 
 have no name for the ocean, and that when they came to the 
 shore for the first time, they asked, with eager sadness, as if pene- 
 trated by the conviction of a superior beauty, " What is that desert 
 of water, more beautiful than the land ? " And in the translations 
 of German stories, which Adoniram and the other children read, 
 and into which I occasionally look in the evening when they are 
 gone to bed, for I like to know what interests my children, I 
 find that the Germans, who do not live near the sea, love the fairy 
 lore of water, and tell the sweet stories of Undine and Melusina, as if 
 they had especial charm for them, because their country is inland. 
 
 We who know the sea have less fairy feeling about it, but our 
 realities are romance. My earliest remembrances are of a long 
 range of old, half-dilapidated stores, red brick stores, with steep 
 wooden roofs, and stone window-frames and door-frames, which 
 
506 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 stood upon docks built as if for immense trade with all quarters 
 of the globe. 
 
 Generally there were only a few sloops moored to the tremen- 
 dous posts, which I fancied could easily hold fast a , Spanish Ar- 
 mada in a tropical hurricane. But sometimes a great ship, an East 
 Indiaman, with rusty, seamed, blistered sides and dingy sails, came 
 slowly moving up the harbor, with an air of indolent self-impor- 
 tance and consciousness of superiority, which inspired me with 
 profound respect. If the ship had ever chanced to run down a 
 row-boat, or a sloop, or any specimen of smaller craft, I should 
 only have wondered at the temerity of any floating thing in crossing 
 the path of such supreme majesty. The ship was leisurely chained 
 and cabled to the old dock, and then came the disembowelling. 
 
 How the stately monster had been fattening upon foreign spoils ! 
 How it had gorged itself (such galleons did never seem to me of 
 the feminine gender) with the luscious treasures of the tropics ! It 
 had lain its lazy length along the shores of China, and sucked in 
 whole flowery harvests of tea. The Brazilian sun flashed through 
 the strong wicker prisons, bursting with bananas and nectarian 
 fruits that eschew the temperate zone. Steams of camphor, of san- 
 dal wood, arose from the hold. Sailors, chanting cabalistic strains, 
 that had to my ear a shrill and monotonous pathos, like the uniform 
 rising and falling of an autumn wind, turned cranks that lifted the 
 bales, and boxes, and crates, and swung them ashore. 
 
 But, to my mind, the spell of their singing raised the fragrant 
 freight, and not the crank. Madagascar and Ceylon appeared at the 
 mystic bidding of the song. The placid sunshine of the docks was 
 perfumed with India. The universal calm of southern seas poured 
 from the bosom of the ship over the quiet, decaying old northern port. 
 
 Long after the confusion of unloading was over, and the ship lay 
 as if all voyages were ended, I dared to creep timorously along the 
 edge of the dock, and, at great risk of falling in the black water of 
 its huge shadow, I placed my hand upon the hot hulk, and so estab- 
 lished a mystic and exquisite connection with Pacific islands, with 
 palm groves, and all the passionate beauties they embower ; with 
 jungles, Bengal tigers, pepper, and the crushed feet of Chinese 
 fairies. I touched Asia, the Cape of Good Hope, and the Happy 
 Islands. I would not believe that the heat I felt was of our northern 
 sun ; to my finer sympathy, it burned with equatorial fervors. 
 
 The freight was piled in the old stores. I believe that many of 
 them remain, but they have lost their character. When I knew 
 
GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 5O/ 
 
 them, not only was I younger, but partial decay had overtaken the 
 town ; at least the bulk of its India trade had shifted to New York 
 and Boston. But the appliances remained. There was no throng 
 of busy traffickers, and after school, in the afternoon, I strolled by 
 and gazed into the solemn interiors. 
 
 Silence reigned within, silence, dimness, and piles of foreign 
 treasure. Vast coils of cable, like tame boa-constrictors, served as 
 seats for men with large stomachs, and heavy watch-seals, and nan- 
 keen trousers, who sat looking out of the door towards the ships, with 
 little other sign of life than an occasional low talking, as if in their 
 sleep. Huge hogsheads perspiring brown sugar and oozing slow 
 molasses, as if nothing tropical could keep within bounds, but must 
 continually expand, and exude, and overflow, stood against the walls, 
 and had an architectural significance, for they darkly reminded me 
 of Egyptian prints, and, in the duskiness of the low-vaulted store, 
 seemed cyclopean columns incomplete. Strange festoons and heaps 
 of bags, square piles of square boxes cased in mats, bales of airy 
 summer stuffs, which, even in winter, scoffed at cold, and shamed it 
 by audacious assumption of eternal sun, little specimen boxes of 
 precious dyes, that even now shine through my memory, like old 
 Venetian schools unpainted, these were all there in rich con- 
 fusion. 
 
 The stores had a twilight of dimness ; the air was spicy with min- 
 gled odors. I liked to look suddenly in from the glare of sunlight 
 outside, and then the cool, sweet dimness was like the palpable 
 breath of the far off island-groves ; and if only some parrot or macaw 
 hung within, would flaunt with glistening plumage in his cage, and 
 as the gay hue flashed in a chance sunbeam, call in his hard, shrill 
 voice, as if thrusting sharp sounds upon a glistening wire from out 
 that grateful gloom, then the enchantment was complete, and, with- 
 out moving, I was circumnavigating the globe. 
 
 [From Titbottom's Spectacles. In the Same.] 
 GRANDFATHER GAZES AT THE SEA. 
 
 MY grandfather lived upon one of the small islands, St. Kitts, 
 perhaps, and his domain extended to the sea. His house, a ram- 
 bling West Indian mansion, was surrounded with deep, spacious 
 piazzas, covered with luxurious lounges, among which one capacious 
 chair was his peculiar seat. They tell me he used sometimes to sit 
 
508 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 there for the whole day, his great, soft brown eyes fastened upon the 
 sea, watching the specks of sails that flashed upon the horizon, while 
 the evanescent expressions chased each other over his placid face as 
 if it reflected the calm and changing sea before him. 
 
 His morning costume was an ample dressing-gown of gorgeously- 
 flowered silk, and his morning was very apt to last all day. He 
 rarely read ; but he would pace the great piazza for hours, with his 
 hands buried in the pockets of his dressing-gown, and an air of sweet 
 reverie, which any book must be a very entertaining one to pro- 
 duce. . . . 
 
 To a stranger, life upon those little islands is uniform, even to 
 weariness. But the old native dons, like my grandfather, ripen in 
 the prolonged sunshine, like the turtle upon the Bahama banks, nor 
 know of existence more desirable. Life in the tropics I take to be 
 a placid torpidity. 
 
 During the long, warm mornings of nearly half a century, my 
 grandfather Titbottom had sat in his dressing-gown, and gazed at 
 the sea. But one calm June day, as he slowly paced the piazza after 
 breakfast, his dreamy glance was arrested by a little vessel, evidently 
 nearing the shore. He called for his spy-glass, and, surveying the 
 craft, saw that she came from the neighboring island. She glided 
 smoothly, slowly, over the summer sea. The warm morning air was 
 sweet with perfumes, and silent with heat. The sea sparkled lan- 
 guidly, and the brilliant blue sky hung cloudlessly over. Scores of 
 little island vessels had my grandfather seen coming over the horizon, 
 and cast anchor in the port. Hundreds of summer mornings had 
 the white sails flashed and faded, like vague faces through forgotten 
 dreams. But this time he laid down the spy-glass, and leaned against 
 a column of the piazza, and watched the vessel with an intentness 
 that he could not explain. She came nearer and nearer, a graceful 
 spectre in the dazzling morning. 
 
 " Decidedly, I must step down and see about that vessel," said 
 my grandfather Titbottom. 
 
 He gathered his ample dressing-gown about him, and stepped 
 from the piazza, with no other protection from the sun than the little 
 smoking-cap upon his head. His face wore a calm, beaming smile, 
 as if he loved the whole world. He was not an old man, but there 
 was almost a patriarchal pathos in his expression as he sauntered 
 along in the sunshine towards the shore. A group of idle gazers 
 was collected to watch the arrival. The little vessel furled her sails, 
 and drifted slowly landward, and, as she was of very light draft, she 
 
CHARLES GODFREY LELAND. 509 
 
 came close to the shelving shore. A long plank was put out from 
 her side, and the debarkation commenced. 
 
 My grandfather Titbottom stood looking on, to see the passengers 
 as they passed. There were but a few of them, and mostly traders 
 from the neighboring island. But suddenly the face of a young girl 
 appeared over the side of the vessel, and she stepped upon the plank 
 to descend. My grandfather Titbottom instantly advanced, and, 
 moving briskly, reached the top of the plank at the same moment, 
 and with the old tassel of his cap flashing in the sun, and one hand 
 in the pocket of his dressing-gown, with the other he handed the 
 young lady carefully down the plank. That young lady was after- 
 wards my grandmother Titbottom. 
 
 For over the gleaming sea, which he had watched so long, and 
 which seemed thus to reward his patient gaze, came his bride that 
 sunny morning. 
 
 " Of course we are happy," he used to say to her, after they were 
 married ; " for you are the gift of the sun I have loved so long and 
 so well." And my grandfather Titbottom would lay his hand so 
 tenderly upon the golden hair of his young bride, that you could 
 fancy him a devout Parsee, caressing sunbeams. 
 
 CHARLES GODFREY LELAND. 
 
 Charles Godfrey Leland was born in the city of Philadelphia, August 15, 1824, and was 
 graduated at Princeton College, N. J., in 1845. He afterwards studied at the Universities 
 of Heidelberg, Munich, and Paris. He studied law on his return, and was admitted to the 
 bar, but never practised the profession. He was a frequent contributor to the Knicker- 
 bocker Magazine and other periodicals. He published The Poetry and Mystery of Dreams 
 in 1855 ; Meister Karl's Sketch Book in 1856. He also translated Pictures of Travel from 
 the German of Heinrich Heine, and a Book of Songs by the same author. He wrote some 
 years ago a ballad in the broken English of a Pennsylvania German, of which the first 
 
 line was, 
 
 " Hans Breitmann gif a barty." 
 
 It was an odd and taking burlesque, and it had (with a great deal of nonsense) some fair 
 hits at the German tendency to sentiment, closing in a state of metaphysical cloudiness that 
 was exceedingly droll. The success of this bit of fun led the author to follow up the vein he 
 had struck, and a series of ballads in which Hans Breitmann figured were speedily pub- 
 lished. Those in which the hero was represented as a "bummer " following the army of 
 General Sherman on his march to the sea were quite elaborate, and nearly as amusing as 
 their prototype. To this happy hit the author mainly owes the extended reputation he now 
 enjoys. But note the injustice or the stupidity of the reading public ! Mr. Leland had 
 years before written a striking but grotesque book of travel, full of curious learning, showing 
 keen observation, fresh sensibilities, and unfailing humor. This was Meister Karl's Sketch 
 Book, already mentioned. It was remembered pleasantly by all scholars, but not greatly 
 
5IO HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 successful with the general public. Now that the Breitmaun Ballads have made the author 
 known to a wider circle, a new edition of Meister Karl, with important changes and addi- 
 tions, has been published in a handsome form. 
 
 Mr. Leland's translations are faithful, spirited, and free in movement, which is high praise 
 when it is remembered that Heine's prose and poetry both are very difficult to render into 
 English without disenchanting them. He now resides in the city of New York. 
 
 [From Meister Karl's Sketch Book] 
 NUREMBERG. 
 
 I KNOW not how often I have had occasion, during my life, when 
 speaking of Romanesque or Gothic objects, to employ such adjec- 
 tives as "odd," "quaint," "weird," "strange," "wild," "freakish," 
 " antique," and " irregular ; " but I am very certain that if they could 
 be concentrated or monogrammatized in a single word, it would be 
 exactly the one needed to describe the rare old town of Nuremberg. 
 There is a picturesque disorder a lyrical confusion about the 
 entire place, which is perfectly irresistible. Turrets shoot up in all 
 sorts of ways, on all sorts of occasions, upon all sorts of houses ; 
 and little boxes, with delicate Gothic windows, cling to their sides 
 and to one another like barnacles to a ship ; while the houses them- 
 selves are turned around and about in so many positions, that you 
 wonder that a few are not upside down, or lying on their sides, by 
 way of completing the original arrangement of no arrangement at 
 all. It always seemed to me as if the buildings in Nuremberg had, 
 like the furniture in Irving's tale, been indulging over night in a 
 very irregular dance, and suddenly stopped in the most complicated 
 part of a confusion worse confounded. Galleries, 'quaint staircases, 
 and towers, with projecting upper stories, as well as eccentric chim- 
 neys, demented doorways, insane weather-vanes, and highly original 
 steeples, form the most commonplace materials in building ; and it 
 has more than once occurred to me that the architects of this city, 
 even at the present day, must have imbibed their principles, not 
 from the lecture-room, but from the most remarkable inspirations of 
 some romantic scene-painter. During the last two centuries men 
 appear to have striven, with a most uncommendable zeal, all over 
 Christendom, to root out and extirpate every trace of the Gothic 
 In Nuremberg alone they have religiously preserved what little they 
 originally had in domestic architecture, and added to it (of late years 
 especially), with so much earnestness, that Monsieur Fartoul. after 
 declaring that the private houses of this city exhibit few or no traces 
 of ancient Gothicism, adds, " But, recently, they scatter pointed 
 arches in their facades, and put them even into dormer windows, to 
 
CHARLES GODFREY LELAND. 5 1 I 
 
 such an extent that, if you should chance to visit Nuremberg ten 
 years hence, you will find the Gothic everywhere, and perhaps feel 
 inclined to accuse me of indulging in false assertions." . . . 
 
 Nuremberg, like Avignon, is one of the very few cities which have 
 retained in an almost perfect state the feudal walls and turrets with 
 which they were invested by the middle ages. At regular intervals 
 along these walls occur little towers, for their defence, reminding 
 one of beads strung on a rosary ; the great watch-tower at the gate, 
 with its projecting machicolation, forming the pendent cross, the 
 whole serving to guard the town within from the dangers of war, 
 even as the rosary protects the city of Mansoul from the attacks of 
 Sin and Death though, sooth to say, since the invention of gun- 
 powder and the Reformation, both the one and the other appear to 
 have lost much of their former efficacy. Directly through the centre 
 of the town runs a small stream, called the Pegnitz, " dividing the 
 town into two nearly equal halves, named after the two great 
 churches situated within them ; the northern being termed St. 
 Sebald's, and the southern, St. Lawrence's, side." 
 
 In the northern part of the division of St. Sebaldus rises a high 
 hill, formed at the summit of vast rocks, on which is situated the 
 ancient Reicheveste, or Imperial Castle, whose origin is fairly lost 
 in the dark old days of Heathenesse. From it the traveller can 
 obtain an admirable view of the romantic town below. In regarding 
 it, I was irresistibly reminded of the remarkable resemblance exist- 
 ing between most of its buildings and the children's toys manufac- 
 tured by the ingenious artisans of Nuremberg and its vicinity. In 
 one squab little mansion, capped with peaked tower and eye-like 
 windows, I distinctly recognized the original model of a fascinating 
 little vermilion-colored edifice which had, long years ago, well nigh 
 thrown me into a convulsion of delight when first extracted, one 
 Christmas morning, from the Krisskingle stocking ; while a circular 
 building of modern date, with a primrose roof, had evidently been 
 formed after the same model as a certain "round tower of other 
 days " with which I had whilom delighted my juvenile optics. Well 
 do I remember that "jolly round house," whose door on opening 
 displayed to the astonished vision a wooden young lady with a very 
 short waist, holding over her bonnetless head, with commendable 
 perpendicularity, an opened parasol ; while by her side an aged but 
 (to judge from a red feather which grew from the centre of her head) 
 apparently respectable female was busily engaged in roasting a 
 goose at a fire, consisting of three glowing strips of tinsel. It was 
 
512 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 a mooted question with Lady Bulwer, as to whether Shakespeare was 
 born to write for Charles Kean, or Charles Kean to act Shakespeare ; 
 and I for my part am unable to decide whether the Dutch toy- 
 makers of Nuremberg obtained their designs from its architects, or 
 whether the architects copy after their toys. 
 
 ADELINE D. T. WHITNEY. 
 
 Adeline D. T Whitney, daughter of the late Enoch Train, was born in Boston, Septem- 
 ber 15, 1824, was married in the year 1843 to Mr. Seth D. Whitney, and has since resided 
 in Milton, Mass. She published a poem, entitled Footsteps on the Seas, in 1857 Mother 
 Goose for Grown Folks in 1859 ; Boys at Chequasset in 1862; Faith Gartney's Girlhood 
 in 1863; The Gayworthys in 1865; A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life in 1866; 
 Patience Strong's Outings in 1868 ; Hitherto in 1869 ; Real Folks in 1872. 
 
 Mrs. Whitney's first works in prose were written for young people, but, as often happens 
 with meritorious stories of that class, the elders also found them entertaining. Her novels 
 seem to have grown up with her youthful characters, and have steadily increased in popular- 
 ity. Their success is mainly owing, as we think, to their excellent moral qualities, their 
 freedom from morbid sentiment, and the cheerful and practical views of life and lessons of 
 duty they present The scenes and characters in her book are well discriminated, and the 
 dialogues are generally spirited and suggestive. The style of writing, however, is faulty 
 at times, owing to a choice of words that tend neither to rhetorical correctness nor to natural 
 ease of expression. Of the sincerity, the noble instincts, the womanly refinement manifested 
 in such novels as Hitherto and The Gayworthys, too much cannot be said. In the art of 
 construction, too, the author shows no common skill ; and (what is the first, last, and only 
 indispensable requisite) she has the power of making her stories interesting from the be- 
 ginning. With this power and this experience occasional blemishes of style look very trivial ; 
 but elderly and friendly critics, who no longer read merely for the sake of the story, wish 
 they could avoid seeing them. 
 
 [From The Gayworthys.] 
 ODORS OF SANCTITY. 
 
 SUNDAY came. The old meeting-house was full of its Sabbath 
 fragrance. Do you know what I mean ? Did you ever sit a great 
 while ago it must have been, to be sure in one of those family 
 enclosures in an old-fashioned country church, whose space is railed 
 off in roomy squares, and smell the mingled incense that goes up, 
 on a summer day, with the prayers and praises ? the tender aroma 
 of fresh flowers, held here and there in a hand that has gathered 
 them just the last thing at home or on the way ; the odor of aromat- 
 ics of peppermints, perhaps, or nibbled cloves; the lavender and 
 musk that breathe faintly forth from the best laces, muslins, and 
 ribbons ; to say nothing of whiffs, now and then, that betray spice- 
 cake, and cimbals, and sage-cheese, stowed away carefully in 
 sanctuary cupboards, under the hinge-seats, until the " nooning " ? 
 
ADELINE D. T. WHITNEY. 513 
 
 Whatever you may think, there was nothing disagreeable about it 
 nothing even of coarseness or desecration to long-accustomed 
 nostrils, it was the very atmosphere of the Lord's Day ; and the 
 life-long, subtile association helped the people, doubtless, even in 
 their prayers. 
 
 Little Sarah Gair found it all very delightful, contrasted with city 
 church-going, where people shove themselves into narrow crannies, 
 and sit with their knees against one board and their backs against 
 another stuck in rows, like knives in a knife-box compressing 
 the body, by way of expanding the soul. There was nothing Say 
 liked better than to go to meeting in Hilbury ; to sit in the corner, 
 on the broad window-seat that came in so as to form a commodious 
 place for two, and where Gershom was usually her companion ; to 
 listen to the full-voiced village choir, and look up with a sort of 
 childish awe at the row of men and maidens who filled the "singing- 
 seats," and bore part in the solemn service of praise ; to glance from 
 group to group of the crowded congregation, and, when tired of 
 bonnets and faces within, to turn eyes and thoughts outward, where 
 the stone slabs were planted thickly, marking the more solemn con- 
 gregation of the dead ; to walk round, quietly, from pew to pew in 
 the nooning, or to go with aunt Rebecca into the churchyard, and 
 read the names, it didn't seem a sad, but rather a pleasant and 
 beautiful thing, to be lying there, where neighbors and friends came 
 up and walked meekly, and talked gently, among the green graves, 
 or to go with aunt Joanna to a neighbor's house, and eat cimbals, 
 and hear the great girls talk, which was pretty much all the little 
 girls could do on Sunday ; and as for the incense we were speaking 
 of, Say always complained to her mother, when she got back to 
 Selport, that it "didn't ever smell like Sunday there." 
 
 COUNTRY SOUNDS. 
 
 SHE woke there, this bright spring morning, in the old "red 
 room." She lay, looking and listening. Listening to the sounds of 
 arousal about the country-side ; the far-off sounds that make it 
 beautiful to listen, where such may be heard. In the city there was 
 only the rumble and clatter just under her windows ; this smothered 
 in upon her heavily, by the close brick walls ; now and then the 
 striking of a clock, or the chiming of a bell a few streets off. Here 
 there was all the faint sweet music that comes floating over breadth 
 of field and forest ; the wind surging in the great trees ; the whistle 
 33 
 
514 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 of the ploughman, and his cheery call to the oxen, beginning their 
 day's work away over there where the brown furrows lay like a fine- 
 lined carpet over the sunny side-hill ; the distant singing of wood 
 birds, and wandering notes from high up overhead ; the flutter and 
 chirp in the boughs close by ; the voice and stir of domestic crea- 
 tures about house and farm-yard ; there were only these in all the 
 air ; no din and bustle of more complicated life to drown them ; 
 they came in pleasant alternation, and succession, and blending, tell- 
 ing of space, and joy, and freedom. . . . 
 
 Say had her first flitting to do ; out among the chickens dozens 
 of little live puff-balls of golden down, with just one note of faint, 
 tender music breathed into each ; into the shed-chamber, the "play- 
 parlor" of old, where some of the selfsame bits of pink and blue 
 china were set up on the ledges, against the boards, where she had 
 put them years ago ; a glance out from the always-open window ; a 
 counting of little white, and black, and motley pigs, that were, at the 
 very moment, scrambling after each other over the bit of meadow, 
 towards the oak wood off thither, for their day's picnic a stroll 
 down through the great barn between the sweet-smelling mows, and 
 so out, at the south doors, into the spring-meadow ; through this, by 
 the gravelled cart-path, running around two sides to a bar-place in 
 the far corner, into the old " oak orchard," away beyond, where the 
 great, precipitous gray boulder reared itself in the midst, on the 
 brow of the hill-field, and beside it spread the huge branches of the 
 ancient tree that gave its name to the plantation. A rest here, and 
 a long look over the valley, to the blue, misty hills' beyond ; a ride 
 on the old apple bough, her steed in days of yore standing here, 
 waiting still, like the enchanted horse in the Alhambran legend. 
 Back again, after a while, more slowly ; a peep into dairy and cheese- 
 room ; a delicious peeking, in the old way, at white tender curd, cut 
 up in cubes, ready for the press ; and at last, half unwillingly, an 
 acknowledgment of the one "must" of her first, bright day of multi- 
 tudinous delights unpacking; she had all this to fill up the quick 
 morning hours, and bring round the dinner-time, before she had 
 really settled what to do with the day at all. 
 
THOMAS STARR KING. $15 
 
 THOMAS STARR KING. 
 
 Thomas Starr King was born in the city of New York, December 16, 1824. His father 
 was a clergyman, and had several places of residence during the author's boyhood, among 
 which were Portsmouth, N. H., and Charlestown, Mass. He was a precocious scholar, 
 and began at an early age to fit himself for college, but was unable to go on with his course 
 of education on account of the straitened circumstances and failing health of his father. 
 When his father died, the young man, then only fifteen years of age, went into a dry goods 
 store, and aided in the support of the family. All branches of study seemed to be in his own 
 province. He learned modern languages, read metaphysical philosophy with avidity, and 
 rambled through literatures as through pleasant gardens. He taught school for a time 
 while still in his minority, served a while as a clerk at the navy-yard, and in his twenty- 
 first year was ordained a minister of the Universalist denomination in Charlestown, in the 
 church where his father had preached. About two years later (1848) he became pastor of the 
 Hollis Street church, in Boston. His chief energies were given to his sermons, lectures, and 
 public addresses. His temper was enthusiastic, his manners animated and graceful, and the 
 expression of his ideas naturally oratorical. In a very few years he became widely known 
 and admired. 
 
 In April, 1860, he removed from Boston to San Francisco, to become pastor of the 
 Unitarian church. His labors were not confined to his parish nor to religious teaching. 
 The rebellion having broken out, there was a severe struggle in California between the 
 friends of the Union on the one side, and the friends of secession and of a separate empire 
 on the Pacific coast on the other. Mr. King entered into this contest with all the ardor of 
 his nature, and addressed the people throughout the state. It is believed that his efforts 
 were greatly instrumental in maintaining the sentiment of patriotism, and binding that 
 remote region to the fortunes of the Federal Union. The value of such a service at that 
 critical period cannot be over-estimated. He was never a very robust person, and his con- 
 stant activity wore upon him, until, in the prime of his life, he yielded to a sudden attack of 
 diphtheria. He died March 4, 1864. 
 
 Mr. King was an enthusiastic lover of the picturesque in nature, and was as fond as 
 Ruskin of reproducing scenery by elaborate word-pictures. The White Mountains particu- 
 larly were his delight. They appeared to have been his by right of discovery, or pre- 
 emption at least Year after year during his summer vacations he explored valleys and 
 gorges, and scaled precipices and peaks, until he was more familiar with the region than the 
 natives themselves. He published in a handsome quarto volume, in 1859, The White Hills, 
 their Legends, Landscapes, and Poetry. The work is well illustrated from drawings by the 
 late M. G. Wheelock. It is the most complete work of the kind in existence. It contains 
 not only the necessary topographical information, but a great many descriptive passages of 
 rare beauty, and a magazine of apposite quotations besides. A volume of selections from 
 his public speeches was published in 1865, but no proper collection of his miscellanies has 
 yet been made. A brief but exceedingly interesting biography of him was published by Mr. 
 Richard Frothingham, of Charlestown, in 1865. 
 
 [From The White Hills.] 
 THE SACO VALLEY. 
 
 " WHEN the lofty and barren mountain," says a legend I have 
 somewhere read, "was first upheaved into the sky, and from its 
 elevation looked down on the plains below, and saw the valley and 
 the less elevated hills covered with verdant and fruitful trees, it sent 
 up to Brahma something like a murmur of complaint, * Why thus 
 
5l6 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 barren ? why these scarred and naked sides exposed to the eye of 
 man ? ' And Brahma answered, ' The very light shall clothe thee, 
 and the shadow of the passing cloud shall be as a royal mantle. 
 More verdure would be less light. Thou shalt share in the azure of 
 heaven, and the youngest and whitest cloud of a summer's sky shall 
 nestle in thy bosom. Thou belongest half to us.' 
 
 " So was the mountain dowered. And so too," adds the legend, 
 "have the loftiest minds of men been in all ages dowered. To 
 lower elevations have been given the pleasant verdure, the vine, and 
 the olive. Light, light alone, and the deep shadow of the passing 
 cloud, these are the gifts of the prophets of the race." 
 
 The glory of the mountains is color. A great many people think 
 that they see all there is to be seen of the White Hills in one visit. 
 Have they not been driven from Conway to the Notch, and did they 
 not have an outside seat on the stage on a clear day ? Have they 
 not seen the Glen when there were no clouds, and ascended Mount 
 Washington, and devoted a day and a half to Franconia, and crossed 
 Winnipiseogee on their way home ? At any rate, if they have staid 
 a week in one spot, they cannot understand why they may not be 
 said to have exhausted it ; and if they have passed one whole season 
 in a valley, it might seem to them folly to go to the same spot the 
 next year. . . . 
 
 But what if you could go into a gallery where the various sculpture 
 took different attitudes every day ? where a Claude or a Turner was 
 present and changed the sunsets on his canvas, shifted the draperies 
 of mist and shadow, combined clouds and mead6ws and ridges in 
 ever- varying beauty, and wiped them all out at night ? . . . 
 
 Would one visit, then, enable a man to say that he had seen the 
 gallery ? Would one season be sufficient to drain the interest of it ? 
 Thus the mountains are ever changing. They are never two days 
 the same. The varying airs of summer, the angles at which, in dif- 
 ferent summer months, the light strikes them, give different general 
 character to the landscapes which they govern. And then, when we 
 think of the perpetual frolic of the sun blaze and the shadow upon 
 them, never twice alike ; the brilliant scarfs into which the mists 
 that stripe or entwine them are changed ; the vivid splendors that 
 often flame upon them at evening, 
 
 Like the torrents of the sun 
 Upon the horizon walls ; 
 
 the rich, deep, but more vague and modest hues, which we try in 
 vain to bring under definition, that glow upon them in different airs ; 
 
THOMAS STARR KING. 517 
 
 
 
 and the evanescent tints that touch them only now and then in a 
 long season, as though they were something too rare and pure to be 
 shown for more than a moment to dwellers of the earth, and then 
 only as a hint of what may be displayed in diviner climes, we see 
 that it is the landscape-eye alone, and the desire to cultivate it, 
 which is needed to make the mountains, from any favorable district 
 such as North Conway, an undrainable resource and joy. 
 
 Those who seek a sort of melo-dramatic astonishment by the 
 height of their peaks and the gloomy menace of sheer and desolate 
 walls, will be disappointed at first, and will not find that the moun- 
 tains " grow upon them." But it is not so with color. That is a 
 perpetual surprise. The glory of that, even upon the New Hamp- 
 shire mountains, cannot be exaggerated. They should be sought for 
 their pomp far more than for their configuration. . . . 
 
 The inexperienced eye has no conception of the affluent delight 
 that is kindled by the opulence of pure and tender colors on the 
 mountains. A ramble by the banks of the Saco, in North Conway, 
 or along the Androscoggin below Gorham, will often yield from this 
 cause what we may soberly call rapture of vision. A great many 
 persons, in looking around from Artist's Hill, would say at first that 
 green, and blue, and white, and gray, in the foliage, the grass, the 
 sky, the clouds, and the mountains, were the only colors to be 
 noticed, and these in wide, severely-contrasted masses. We should 
 go entirely beyond their appreciation in speaking of the light-brown 
 and olive plateaus rising from the wide flats of meadow green, the 
 richer and more subtle hues on the darker belt of lower hills, the 
 sheeny spaces of pure sunshine upon smooth slopes or level sward, 
 the glimmer of pearly radiance upon pools of aerial sapphire brought 
 from the distant mountains in the wandering Saco, the blue and 
 white mistiness from clouds and distant air gleaming in the chasms 
 of brooks fresh from the cool top of Kearsarge, and the gold or silver 
 glances of light upon knolls or smooth boulders scattered here and 
 there upon the irregular and tawny ground, and upon the house- 
 roofs beyond. Yet let a man who thinks these particulars are 
 imaginary hold his head down, and thus reverse his eyes, and then 
 say whether the delicacy and variety of hues are exaggerated in 
 such a statement. There are those who have such a perception of 
 colors with their eyes upright. And they will know that the tints 
 just noted are only hints of a great color-symphony to be wrought 
 out upon the wide landscape. They know how the rich or sombre 
 passages of shade, and the olive strips and slaty breadths of dark- 
 
5l8 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 ness, will be transformed in some glorious afternoon, when the land- 
 scape assumes its full pomp, into masses of more ethereal gloom, 
 and made magnificent by the intermixture of gorgeous tones of pur- 
 ples, emeralds, and russets with cloudy azure and subtle gray along 
 the second part of the mountain outworks. They know how those 
 flecks of pearl and sapphire upon the meadow will mingle and spread 
 with shifting azure and amethyst upon the lower parts of the great 
 mountains ; and how the spaces of sunshine, the blue and white 
 mistiness, and the golden and silver glances of light, will assume 
 new beauty and larger proportions amid the gleaming hues of the 
 looming azure ridge, the waving gray and purple of cloud-enwrapped 
 peak, the tender flashes of changeful light and tint in sky and cloud, 
 and the tremulous violet and aerial orange of the mysterious ravines, 
 with their wondrous sloping arras, on whose striped folds, inwrought 
 with gold and silver upon pale emerald ground, are, one might think, 
 the mystical signs of some weird powers that work from within 
 the earth. 
 
 BAYARD TAYLOR. 
 
 James Bayard Taylor was born in Kennett Square, Chester Co., Penn., January n, 1825. 
 He became an apprentice in a printing office in his native county at seventeen years of age, 
 and was a contributor of verses to the newspapers. A collection of these early poems, 
 entitled Ximena, was published in 1844, after which he went to Europe, and travelled over 
 the country mostly as a pedestrian. On his return he published an account of his tour, 
 entitled Views Afoot, or Europe as seen with Knapsack and Staff He subsequently wrote 
 for the Literary World, and for the New York Tribune. He became in time one of the 
 editors and proprietors of the Tribune, and contributed afterwards to its columns accounts 
 of his many journeys. The titles of his books will show the many countries he has visited. 
 In 1849 he published El Dorado, an account of a trip to California and Mexico ; in 1853 
 (i) Journey to Central Africa; (2) Lands of the Saracen ; (3) Visit to India, China, Loo- 
 Choo, and Japan. These three volumes record his observations in a series of voyages and 
 travels extending to fifty thousand miles. In 1857 he published Northern Travel, an account 
 of a tour through Sweden, Denmark, and Lapland. In 1859 appeared a work on Greece and 
 Russia. 
 
 His literary labors have not been confined to travels. A list of his works will show his 
 unwearied industry in other departments. He published Rhymes of Travel in 1848 ; a Book 
 of Romances, Lyrics, and Songs in 1851 ; Poems of the Orient in 1854 ; Poems of Home and 
 Travel in 1855. This last volume contained only such poems as the author then wished to 
 acknowledge. Since then have appeared At Home and Abroad (1859), and a second series 
 (1862) ; The Poet's Journal (1862) ; Hannah Thurston, a novel (1863) ; The Fortunes of 
 John Godfrey (1864) ; The Story of Kennett (1866); Picture of St. John (1866) ; Colorado, 
 a Summer Trip (1867) ; Frithiof's Saga (iS6 7 ) ; Byways of Europe (1869); The Ballad of 
 Abraham Lincoln (1869) ; A new translation of Goethe's Faust (1870). He has also edited 
 a Cyclopaedia of Modern Travel, which commenced in 1856. Were it only for his active 
 life of enterprise and for the additions he has made to our knowledge, Mr. Taylor should 
 
BAYARD TAYLOR. 
 
 be held in grateful esteem. His positive merits as a writer, however, deserve a warmer 
 recognition. His-descriptions are clearly and vividly portrayed, and his books are weighted 
 with but little of the ordinary traveller's burden of unimportant personal details. They 
 are interesting as mere narratives, and of permanent value for the facts they record. His 
 Oriental poems have a natural warmth of color and vivacity of expression. He will be chiefly 
 remembered, however, among poets, for his faithful and admirable translation of Faust, a 
 work that testifies to his skill, poetic feeling, and mastery of expression. 
 
 [From Greece and Russia.] 
 THE HAUNTS OF THE MUSES. 
 
 WE left Athens, on the I3th of April, for a journey to Parnassus 
 and the northern frontier of Greece. The company consisted of 
 Francois, Braisted, and myself, and Ajax, and Themistocles, our 
 agoyats, or grooms. It was a teeming, dazzling day, with light 
 scarfs of cloud-crape in the sky, and a delicious breeze from the west 
 blowing through the pass of Daphne. The Gulf of Salamis was 
 pure ultramarine, covered with velvety bloom, while the island and 
 Mount Kerata swam in transparent pink and violet tints. Greece, 
 on such a day, is living Greece again. The soul of ancient Art and 
 Poetry throbs in the splendid air, and pours its divinest light upon 
 the landscape. 
 
 Crossing the sacred plain of Eleusis for the fourth time in my 
 Grecian journeys, our road entered the mountains lower off shoots 
 Cithasron, which divides the plain from that of Boeotia. They are 
 now covered with young pines to the very summits, and Francois 
 directed my attention to the rapidity with which the mountains were 
 becoming wooded since destruction of young trees has been pro- 
 hibited by law. The agricultural prosperity of the country, in many 
 districts, depends entirely on the restoration of the lost forests. 
 The sun was intensely hot in the close glens, and we found the 
 shade of the old Cithasronian pines very grateful. We met a strag- 
 gling company of lancers returning from the Thessalian frontier, 
 and many travellers in the course of the afternoon. Among the 
 baggage animals following the lancers we were surprised to find 
 Pegasus and Bellerophon, the lean horses which had carried us 
 through the Peloponnesus ; and soon after Aristides himself re- 
 splendent in clean Easter garments. He was greatly disappointed 
 at seeing us under way, as he intended to carry us to the Mount 
 of Song on his own winged steeds. 
 
 Towards evening we descended into the valley of the Eleusinian 
 Cephissus, at the foot of Cithaeron, passing the remains of an ancient 
 tower twenty feet high. At sunset, when the sky had become over- 
 
52O HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 cast and stormy, we reached the solitary khan of Casa, at the foot of 
 a rocky, precipitous hill, crowned by the Acropolis of (Enoe, and 
 were heartily glad to find shelter in the windy building from the 
 more violent wind outside. . . . 
 
 We awoke to a cloudless sky, and after coffee climbed the hill of 
 CEnoe, or Eleutheria, whichever it may be. I suppose Leake is most 
 likely to be right, and so I shall call it (Enoe. A hard pull of fifteen 
 minutes brought us to the lower part of the wall, which is composed 
 of blocks of gray conglomerate limestone the native rock of the 
 hill. The walls are eight feet thick, and strengthened by projecting 
 square towers. . . . 
 
 The walls are better preserved than any I saw in Greece. They 
 date from the time of Alexander the Great. The position of the 
 place, among the wild peaks of Cithasron, makes it one of the most 
 picturesque ruins of the country. We now climbed the main ridge 
 of the mountains, and in less than an hour reached the highest point 
 whence the great Boeotian plain suddenly opened to our view. 
 
 In the distance gleamed Lake Copais, and the hills beyond the 
 snowy top of Parnassus lifted clear and bright above the morning 
 vapors ; and at last, as we turned a shoulder of the mountain in de- 
 scending, the streaky top of Helicon appeared on the left, completing 
 the classic features of the landscape. ... I then turned my horse's 
 head towards Thebes, which we reached in two hours. . . . 
 
 The site of the town is superb : both Helicon and Parnassus tower 
 in the south and west, and even a corner of Pentelicus is visible. 
 While I sat beside the old tower, sketching the Mountain of the 
 Sphinx, a Theban eagle the spirit of Pindar soared slowly 
 through the blue depths above. The memories of Pindar and 
 Epaminondas consecrate the soil of Thebes, though she helped to 
 ruin Greece by her selfish jealousy of Athens. It is not an ac- 
 cidental circumstance that she has so utterly disappeared, while 
 the Propylaea, of the Athenian Acropolis, which Epaminondas threat- 
 ened to carry off, still stand and may they stand forever ! . . . 
 
 The next morning we rode down from the Cadmeion, and took 
 the highway to Livadia, leading straight across the Boeotian plain. 
 It is one of the finest alluvial bottoms in the world, a deep, dark 
 vegetable mould, which would produce almost without limit, were it 
 properly cultivated. Before us, blue and dark under the weight of 
 clouds, lay Parnassus, and far across the immense plain the blue 
 peaks of Mount (Eta. In three hours we reached the foot of Helicon, 
 and looked up at the streaks of snow which melt into the Fountain 
 
RICHARD HENRY STODDARD. 521 
 
 of the Muses. Presently a stream, as limpid as air, issued from the 
 cleft of the mountain. O fons Bandusice, splendidior vitro, I ex- 
 claimed ; but it was diviner than the Bandusian wave, which gurgled 
 its liquid dactyls over marble pebbles. Ajax and Themistocles had 
 halted in the shade of a garden on the bank ; Francois was unpack- 
 ing his saddle-bags ; so I leaped from Erato, my mare, knelt among 
 asphodels, and drank. The water had that sweetness and purity 
 which make you seem to inhale rather than drink it. The palate 
 swam in the delicious flood with a delight which acknowledged no 
 satiety. What is this ? I said, as I lifted up my head : can it be the 
 Muses' Fountain coming down from yonder mountain ? Whence this 
 longing unsuppressed in my breast this desire that is springing to 
 be singing? My veins are on fire give me a lyre ! "I'll beat 
 Apollo all hollow." 
 
 " Pshaw," said Francois, who had just taken a draught. " He 
 now can drink, who chooses, at the Fountain of the Muses. Why 
 you know the gods and goddesses, and the nymphs in scanty bodices, 
 are now no more detected in the shrines to them erected. That 
 was a superstition unworthy a man of your position. To such illu- 
 sions you're no dupe ; this water's very good for soup." 
 
 " Sound the hewgag, beat the tonjon," exclaimed Braisted, who 
 had not been thirsty ; " I believe you are both crazy." 
 
 But the mare, Erato, who had taken long draughts from the 
 stream, whinnied, whisked her tail, and galloped off one line of 
 hexameter after another as we continued our journey. 
 
 So I devoutly testify that Helicon is not yet dry, and the Fountain 
 of the Muses retains its ancient virtue. 
 
 RICHARD HENRY STODDARD. 
 
 Richard Henry Stoddard was born in Hingham, Mass., in July, 1825. He removed to 
 New York city in early youth, and in 1848 became a contributor to the periodical press. A 
 collection of his poems, entitled Footprints, was published in 1849, and another in 1852. 
 He has also written Adventures in Fairy Land, a series of tales ; Songs of Summer ; Town 
 and Country : Loves and Heroines of the Poets ; The King's Bell ; Putnam the Brave ; 
 Alexander von Humboldt (a convenient rtsiime. of his life, travels, and works) ; Abraham 
 Lincoln, an ode ; the Book of the East. Besides, he has edited various selections from the 
 poets, ancient and modern. His last volume, Book of the East, from which our selections 
 have been made, shows the poet attaining to a fuller and fairer expression of thought. There 
 were promising glimpses and suggestions in his earlier poems, but his art had not then 
 learned to conceal art. The lines seemed labored and obscure, so that the most sympathetic 
 reader might be in doubt as to what was intended by them. These later verses can be com- 
 mended without reservation, as exhibiting genuine feeling and poetic power. 
 
522 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 ADSUM. 
 
 (December 23-24, 1863.) 
 I. 
 
 THE Angel came by night, 
 
 (Such angels still come down !) 
 And like a winter cloud 
 
 Passed over London town ; 
 Along its lonesome streets, 
 
 Where Want had ceased to weep, 
 Until it reached a house 
 
 Where a great man lay asleep ; 
 The man of all his time 
 
 Who knew the most of men, 
 The soundest head and heart, 
 
 The sharpest, kindest pen. 
 It paused beside his bed, 
 
 And whispered in his ear ; 
 He never turned his head, 
 
 But answered, " I am here." 
 
 II. 
 Into the night they went. 
 
 At morning, side by side, 
 They gained the sacred Place 
 
 Where the greatest Dead abide J 
 Where grand old Homer sits 
 
 In godlike state benign ; 
 Where broods in endless thought 
 
 The awful Florentine ; 
 Where sweet Cervantes walks, 
 
 A smile on his grave face ; 
 Where gossips quaint Montaigne, 
 
 The wisest of his race ; 
 Where Goethe looks through all 
 
 With that calm eye of his ; 
 Where little seen but Light 
 
 The only Shakespeare is ! 
 When the new Spirit came, 
 
 They asked him, drawing near, 
 " Art thou become like us ? " 
 
 He answered, " I am here." 
 
RICHARD HENRY STODDARD. 523 
 
 THE COUNTRY LIFE. 
 
 NOT what we would, but what we must, 
 
 Makes up the sum of living ; 
 Heaven is both more and less than just 
 
 In taking and in giving. 
 
 Swords cleave to hands that sought the plough, 
 And laurels miss the soldier's brow. 
 
 Me, whom the city holds, whose feet 
 
 Have worn its stony highways, 
 Familiar with its loneliest street, 
 
 Its ways were never my ways. 
 My cradle was beside the sea, 
 And there, I hope, my grave will be. 
 
 Old homestead ! in that old gray town 
 
 Thy vane is seaward blowing ; 
 Thy slip of garden stretches down 
 
 To where the tide is flowing ; 
 Below they lie, their sails ail furled, 
 The ships that go about the world. 
 
 Dearer that little country house, 
 
 Inland with pines beside it ; 
 Some peach trees, with unfruitful boughs, 
 
 A well, with weeds to hide it : 
 No flowers, or only such as rise 
 Self-sown poor things ! which all despise. 
 
 Dear country home ! can I forget 
 
 The least of thy sweet trifles ? 
 The window-vines that clamber yet, 
 
 Whose blooms the bee still rifles ? 
 The roadside blackberries, growing ripe, 
 And in the woods the Indian pipe ? 
 
 Happy the man who tills his field, 
 
 Content with rustic labor ; 
 Earth does to him her fulness yield, 
 
 Hap what may to his neighbor. 
 
524 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 Well days, sound nights O, can there be 
 A life more rational and free ? 
 
 Dear country life of child and man 1 
 For both the best, the strongest, 
 
 That with the earliest race began, 
 And hast outlived the longest ; 
 
 Their cities perished long ago ; 
 
 Who the first farmers were we know. 
 
 Perhaps our Babels too will fall ; 
 
 If so, no lamentations, 
 For Mother Earth will shelter all, 
 
 And feed the unborn nations ! 
 Yes, and the swords that menace now 
 Will then be beaten to the plough. 
 
 JOHN WILLIAMSON PALMER. 
 
 John Williamson Palmer was bora in Baltimore, Md., April 4, 1825. He received a lib- 
 eral education, and studied medicine at a school in Philadelphia. He went to California in 
 the midst of the excitement that followed the discovery of gold, and was city physician of 
 San Francisco in 1849. Having made a voyage to China in 1852, he was engaged, while at 
 Hong Kong, as surgeon on the Phlegetiwn, one of the East India Company's war steamers, 
 and served through a campaign in Burmah. On his return to this country he published an 
 account of his experiences, entitled The Golden Dagon, or Up and Down the Irrawaddi. 
 He was a contributor to Putnam's, Harper's, and the Atlantic Monthly, and to the New 
 York Tribune, and other periodicals. His papers in the Atlantic, mostly upon traits of 
 Oriental life, were exceedingly spirited, faithful, and picturesque studies. His skill as an 
 artist is unexcelled, and the accuracy of his descriptions is vouched for by all who have 
 lived in the East. He wrote a comedy called The Queen's Heart, which was produced in 
 Boston in 1858 with flattering success. The New and the Old appeared in 1859. In this 
 work the characteristics of the miners, and of the motley elements that had congregated in 
 California, were set forth with graphic power. These sketches were the first attempts to 
 portray that new and exceptional phase of society. In the same year he translated Miche- 
 let's L'Amour. In 1860 he published Folk Songs, an admirable collection of popular poe- 
 try. During the late civil war he was engaged in other than literary pursuits, being warmly 
 attached to the cause of the South, and serving it as best he could. In 1867 he published 
 a second compilation, entitled The Poetry of Compliment and Courtship. 
 
 Dr. Palmer resides in Baltimore, and has been recently editor of a weekly paper there 
 His wife, Henrietta Lee Palmer, has written a work called The Heroines of Shakespeare, 
 a series of studies of female character, published in an elegant style by the Messrs. Apple- 
 ton, of New York. 
 
JOHN WILLIAMSON PALMER. 52$ 
 
 [From the Atlantic Monthly, June, 1858.] 
 ASIRVADAM THE BRAHMIN. 
 
 SIMPLICITY, convenience, decorum, and picturesqueness distin- 
 guish the costume of Asirvadam the Brahmin. Three yards of 
 yard-wide fine cotton envelop his loins in such a manner that, while 
 one end hangs in graceful folds in front, the other falls in a fine dis- 
 traction behind. Over this, a robe of muslin or pifia cloth the lat- 
 ter in peculiar favor by reason of its superior purity for high-caste 
 wear covers his neck, breast, and arms, and descends nearly to 
 his ankles. Asirvadam borrowed this garment from the Mussul- 
 man ; but he fastens it on the left side, which the follower of the 
 Prophet never does, and surmounts it with an ample and elegant 
 waistband beside the broad Romanesque mantle that he tosses over 
 his shoulder with such a senatorial air. His turban, also, is an inno- 
 vation, not proper to the Brahmin, pure and simple, but, like 
 the robe, adopted from the Moorish wardrobe for a more imposing 
 appearance in Sahib society. It is formed of a very narrow strip, 
 fifteen or twenty yards long, of fine stuff, moulded to the orthodox 
 shape and size by wrapping it, while wet, on a wooden block ; hav- 
 ing been hardened in the sun, it is worn like a hat. As for his feet, 
 Asirvadam, uncompromising in externals, disdains to pollute them 
 with the touch of leather. Shameless fellows, Brahmins though they 
 be, of the sect of Vishnu, go about without a blush in thonged san- 
 dals, made of abominable skins ; but Asirvadam, strict as a Gooroo 
 when the eyes of his caste are upon him, is immaculate in wooden 
 clogs. 
 
 In ornaments his taste, though somewhat grotesque, is by no 
 means lavish. A sort of stud or button, composed of a solitary ruby, 
 in the upper rim of the cartilage of either ear, a chain of gold, 
 curiously wrought, and intertwined with a string of small pearls, 
 around his neck, a massive bangle of plain gold on his arm, a richly 
 jewelled ring on his thumb, and others, broad and shield-like, on his 
 toes, complete his outfit in these vanities. 
 
 As often as Asirvadam honors us with his morning visit of busi- 
 ness or ceremony, a slight yellow line, drawn horizontally between 
 his eyebrows, with a paste composed of ground sandal-wood, denotes 
 that he has purified himself externally and internally by bathing and 
 prayers. To omit this, even by the most unavoidable chance to 
 appear in public without it, were to incur a grave public scandal ; 
 only excepting the season of mourning, when, by an expressive 
 
526 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 Oriental figure, the absence of the caste-mark is accepted for the 
 token of a profound and absorbing sorrow, which takes no thought 
 even for the customary forms of decency. . . . 
 
 When Asirvadam was but seven years old he was invested with 
 the triple cord by a grotesque, and in most respects absurd, extrava- 
 gant, and expensive ceremony, called the Upanayana, or Introduc- 
 tion to the Sciences, because none but Brahmins are freely admitted 
 to their mysteries. This triple cord consists of three thick strands 
 of cotton, each composed of several finer threads. These three 
 strands, representing Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva, are not twisted 
 together, but hang separately from the left shoulder to the right hip. 
 The preparation of so sacred a badge is intrusted to none but the 
 purest hands, and the process is attended with many imposing cere- 
 monies. Only Brahmins may gather the fresh cotton ; only Brah- 
 mins may card, and spin, and twist it ; and its investiture is a matter 
 of so great cost, that the poorer brothers must have recourse to con- 
 tributions from the pious of their caste to defray the exorbitant 
 charges of priests and masters of ceremonies. 
 
 It is a noticeable fact in the natural history of the always insolent 
 Asirvadam, that, unlike Shatriya the warrior, Vaishya the cultivator, 
 or Soodra the laborer, he is not born into the full enjoyment of his 
 honors, but, on the contrary, is scarcely of more consideration than 
 a Pariah, until by the Upanayana he has been admitted to his birth- 
 right. Yet, once decorated with the ennobling badge of his order, 
 our friend became from that moment something superior, something 
 exclusive, something supercilious, arrogant, exacting, Asirvadam, 
 the high Brahmin, a creature of wide strides without awkward- 
 ness, towering airs without bombast, Sanscrit quotations without 
 pedantry, florid phraseology without hyperbole, allegorical illustra- 
 tions and proverbial points without sententiousness, fanciful flights 
 without affectation, and formal strains of compliment without offen- 
 sive adulation. . . . 
 
 Asirvadam has choice of a hundred callings, as various in dignivv 
 and profit as they are numerous. Under native rule he makes a 
 good cooly, because the officers of the revenue are forbidden trt 
 search a Brahmin's baggage, or anything that he carries. He is an 
 expeditious messenger, for no man may stop him ; and he can travel 
 cheaply, for whom there is free entertainment on every road. In 
 financial straits he may teach dancing to nautch-girls ; or he maj 
 play the mountebank or the conjurer, and, with a stock of mantras 
 and charms, proceed to the curing of murrain in cattle, pip in chick- 
 
JOHN WILLIAMSON PALMER. 
 
 ens, and short-windedness in old women, at the same time telling 
 fortunes, calculating nativities, finding lost treasure, advising as to 
 journeys and speculations, and crossing out crosses in love for any 
 pretty dear who will cross the poor Brahmin's palm with a rupee. 
 He may engage in commercial pursuits ; and, in that case, his bull- 
 ing and bearing at the opium sales will put Wall Street to the blush. 
 He may turn his attention to the healing art ; and allopathically, 
 homceopathically, hydropathically,electropathically, or by any other 
 path, run a muck through many heathen hospitals. The field of 
 politics is full of charms for him, the church invites his taste and 
 talents, and the army tempts him with opportunities for intrigue, 
 but, whether in the shape of Machiavelisms, miracles, or mutinies, he 
 is forever making mischief; whether as messenger, dancing-master, 
 conjurer, fortune-teller, speculator, mountebank, politician, priest, or 
 Sepoy, he is ever the same Asirvadam the Brahmin, sleekest of 
 lackeys, most servile of sycophants, expertest of tricksters, smooth- 
 est of hypocrites, coolest of liars, most insolent of beggars, most ver^ 
 satile of adventurers, most inventive of charlatans, most restless of 
 schemers, most insidious of Jesuits, most treacherous of confidants, 
 falsest of friends, hardest of masters, most arrogant of patrons, cru- 
 elest of tyrants, most patient of haters, most insatiable of avengers, 
 most gluttonous of ravishers, most infernal of devils, pleasantest 
 of fellows. 
 
 Superlatively dainty as to his fopperies of orthodoxy, Asirvadam 
 is continually dying of Pariah roses in aromatic pains of caste. If, 
 in his goings and comings, one of the "lilies of Nelufar" should 
 chance to stumble upon a bit of bone or rag, a fragment of a dish, or 
 a leaf from which some one has eaten ; should his sacred raiment 
 be polluted by the touch of a dog or a Pariah, he is ready to faint, 
 and only a bath can revive him. He may not touch his sandals with 
 his hand, nor repose in a strange seat, but is provided with a mat, a 
 carpet, or an antelope's skin, to serve him for a cushion in the houses 
 of his friends. With a kid glove you may put his respectability in 
 peril, and with your patent-leather pumps affright his soul within 
 him. To him a pocket-handkerchief is a sore offence, and a tooth- 
 pick monstrous. All the Vedas could not save the Giaour who 
 "chews," nor burnt brandy, though the Seven Penitents distilled it, 
 purify the mouth that a tooth-brush has polluted. Beware how you 
 offer him a wafered letter ; and when you present him with a copy 
 of your travels, let it be bound in cloth. 
 
528 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 ROSE TERRY. 
 
 Rose Terry was born in the town of Hartford, Conn., February 17, 1827, and has always 
 lived in the immediate neighborhood of her birthplace. She wrote a number of admirable 
 stories and sketches for the Atlantic Monthly, in which she displayed a keen observation of 
 character, a nice perception of humor, and admirable descriptive powers. Those who are 
 familiar with the early numbers of the Atlantic will recall Ann Potter's Lesson, Sally Par- 
 sons's Duty, Turkey Tracks, and others, as among the most genuine and life-like pictures 
 of country life in this age of descriptive writing. Miss Terry shares with Mrs. Stowe and 
 Mr. Trowbridge the honor of making the most natural and amusing sketches of the rustic 
 Yankees, male and female. She published a volume of poems in 1861 which evince a 
 delicate sense of the beautiful in nature, a tender and rather melancholy feeling, and a sweet 
 and melodious style of versification. Both the poems and the stories convey an impression 
 *f a refined and lovely nature. 
 
 EXOGENESIS. 
 
 THE curving beach and shining bay 
 
 Stretch from the cliff-foot far away, 
 
 Where sailing dreams of ships go by 
 
 And trace their spars against the sky. 
 
 A belt of woodland dense and dark, 
 
 The distant beacon's flashing spark, 
 
 The moth-white sails that wing-and-wing 
 
 Up from the purple ocean spring ; 
 
 One and all, in the perfect hour, 
 
 Open to life its perfect flower ; 
 
 Though the ardent rose is dim and dead, 
 
 Though the cool Spring-daisies all are fled, 
 
 The lily unfolds its tintless calm 
 
 And the golden anthers are spiced with balm. 
 
 Come, my soul, from thy silent cell ! 
 
 Know the healing of Nature's spell. 
 
 The soft, wild waves, that rush and leap, 
 
 Sing one song from the hoary deep ; 
 
 The south-wind knows its own refrain 
 
 As it speeds the cloud o'er heaven's blue main. 
 
 " Lose thyself, thyself to win : 
 
 Grow from without thee, not within." 
 
 Leave thy thought and care alone, 
 Let the dead for the dead make moan ; 
 Gather from earth and air and sea 
 The pulseless peace they keep for thee, 
 
ROSE TERRY. $ 2 9 
 
 Ring on ring of sight and sound 
 
 Shall hide thy heart in a calm profound, 
 
 Where the works of men and the ways of earth 
 
 Shall never enter with tears or mirth, 
 
 And the love of kind shall kinder be 
 
 From nature than humanity. 
 
 DECEMBER XXXI. 
 
 THERE goes an old Gaffer over the hill, 
 
 Thieving, and old, and gray ; 
 He walks the green world his wallet to fill, 
 
 And carries good spoil away. 
 
 Into his bag he popped a king ; 
 
 After him went a friar, 
 Many a lady, with gay gold ring, 
 
 Many a knight and squire. 
 
 He carried my true love far away, 
 
 He stole the dog at my door ; 
 The wicked old Gaffer, thieving and gray, 
 
 He'll never come by any more. 
 
 My little darling, white and fair, 
 
 Sat in the door and spun ; 
 He caught her fast by her silken hair, 
 
 Before the child could run. 
 
 He stole the florins out of my purse, 
 The sunshine out of mine eyes ; 
 
 He stole my roses, and, what is worse, 
 The gray old Gaffer told lies. 
 
 He promised fair when he came by, 
 And laughed as he slipped away, 
 
 For every promise turned out a lie ; 
 But his tale is over to-day. 
 
 Good by, old Gaffer ! you'll come no more ; 
 
 You've done your worst for me. 
 The next gray robber will pass my door ; 
 
 There's nothing to steal or see ! 
 34 
 
53 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 THE TWO VILLAGES. 
 
 OVER the river, on the hill, 
 Lieth a village white and still ; 
 All around it the forest-trees 
 Shiver and whisper in the breeze ; 
 Over it sailing shadows go 
 Of soaring hawk and screaming crow, 
 And mountain grasses, low and sweet, 
 Grow in the middle of every street. 
 
 Over the river, under the hill, 
 Another village lieth still ; 
 There I see in the cloudy night 
 Twinkling stars of household light, 
 Fires that gleam from the smithy's door, 
 Mists that curl on the river-shore ; * 
 
 And in the roads no grasses grow, 
 For the wheels that hasten to and fro. 
 
 In that village on the hill 
 
 Never is sound of smithy or mill ; 
 
 The houses are thatched with grass and flowers ; 
 
 Never a clock to toll the hours ; 
 
 The marble doors are always shut ; 
 
 You cannot enter in hall or hut ; 
 
 All the villagers lie asleep ; 
 
 Never a grain to sow or reap ; 
 
 Never in dreams to moan or sigh ; 
 
 Silent and idle and low they lie. 
 
 In that village under the hill, 
 When the night is starry and still, 
 Many a weary soul in prayer 
 Looks to the other village there, 
 And weeping and sighing longs to go 
 Up to that home from this below ; 
 Longs to sleep in the forest wild, 
 Whither have vanished wife and child, 
 And heareth, praying, this answer fall : 
 " Patience ! that village shall hold ye all ! " 
 
JOHN TOWNSEND TROWBR1DGE. 53! 
 
 JOHN TOWNSEND TROWBRIDGE. 
 
 John Townsend Trowbridge was born in the town of Ogden, in Western New York, Sep- 
 tember 18, 1827. His father had moved with his family there a short time before, crossing 
 the Ganesee River on the ice, in an ox-sled, near where the city of Rochester now stands. 
 There was no bridge then, and only one house. The boy received a common school educa- 
 tion, and studied at home also, applying himself to French first and Latin and German after- 
 wards. When he was sixteen years old his father died, and he thenceforward worked on 
 the farm and taught school winters until he was nineteen, when he went to New York 
 alone, where he had neither friend nor acquaintance. He had intended to write for a liveli- 
 hood, and soon became kno.vn to Major M. M. Noah, then an editor of a weekly paper, who 
 pnve him some encouragement. His earnings were small, and he had some severe but 
 useful experiences : days of hard labor, a garret to sleep in, and often only a crust to eat. 
 To add to his bitter disappointments, he had the pain of seeing some of his productions 
 printed and praised in a certain magazine, while the remuneration for them that he had 
 counted upon to save himself from hunger was as inaccessible as the pot of gold buried 
 under the end of a rainbow. He was not the only poor author of twenty years ago who 
 made the discovery that the editorial " den " of that magazine was a sort of a Cave of Cacus ; 
 no footsteps (of the paymaster) ever leading out of it. He found friends at last, where 
 friends are oftenest found, among people of the humbler sort, and he breathed freer. He 
 removed to Boston in 1848, and had further experience with editors of " literary " papers, of 
 which his novel, Martin Merrivale, gives some comical hints, He had written some tales 
 of his early life on the frontier, and he now found a publisher for them. Father Bright- 
 hopes, Burrcliffj and a few other stories appeared in rapid succession (1853) with the 
 name of Paul Creyton as author. They were written for young people, but they were read 
 by all classes. They were immediately popular, and the 3 oung author had the precious 
 satisfaction of learning that his future was secure, because his works had a commercial 
 value. His next work was Martin Merrivale (1854), a novel that possessed undoubted 
 merit, and contained some most suggestive pictures. As a whole, it did not impress the 
 public favorably. He visited Europe in 1855-6, and passed a year in France and Italy. 
 Neighbor Jackwood, one of his most popular novels, was written while he was abroad. Next 
 came The Old Battle-Ground in 1859 ; and Cudjoe's Cave, a novel founded on the adven- 
 tures of an escaped slave, in 1863. Coupon Bonds is a story of rural New England life, 
 with many realistic touches and comic situations. After the war was over he visited the 
 Southern States, and wrote a work, entitled The South, a large volume of six hundred pages, 
 
 Mr. Trowbridge is equally well known by his poetical writings. He contributed a num- 
 ber of poems to the Atlantic Mor.thly years ago, which drew the attention of thoughtful 
 readers. Later he put into verse several stories of Yankee character, of which he is one of the 
 most original delineators, and he was quite as successful as he had formerly been in prose. 
 His most popular poem, The Vagabonds, was originally published in the Atlantic in 1863, 
 and has since appeared in book form, with illustrations by Barley. It is a dramatic sketch, 
 clearly conceived, sharply drawn, full of deep feeling, and conveying a warning lesson. 
 
 Mr. Trowbridge resides at Arlington, Mass., and occupies his time in literary pursuits. 
 He is the editor of the juvenile magazine, Our Young Folks. His works are published by 
 Messrs. J. R. Osgood & Co. 
 
 [From Coupon Bonds.] 
 THE TROUBLES OF MR. AND MRS. DUCKLOW. 
 
 [Mr. and Mrs. Ducklow are nervously anxious about some bonds which they have secret- 
 ly purchased with money that should have been given to their adopted son, Reuben, a 
 soldier, with a young family, who has sacrificed his health and his pecuniary prospects in 
 
532 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 the service of his country (1861-4). Going to visit him, on the morning after his return 
 home, the careful couple leave their house in charge of Tacldy, another adopted son, the 
 bonds being concealed under the sitting-room carpet. Mrs. Ducklow remains at Reuben's, 
 while Mr. Ducklow sets out to drive tothe Railroad station for the sick soldier's trunk.] 
 
 MR. DUCKLOW had scarcely turned the corner of the street, when 
 looking anxiously in the direction of his homestead, he saw a column 
 of smoke. It was directly over the spot where he knew his house 
 to be situated. He guessed at a glance what had happened. The 
 frightful catastrophe he foreboded had befallen. Taddy had set the 
 house afire. 
 
 " Them bonds ! them bonds ! " he exclaimed, distractedly. He 
 did not think so much of the house : house and furniture were 
 insured ; if they were burned, the inconvenience would be great 
 indeed, and at any other time the thought of such an event would 
 have been a sufficient cause for trepidation, but now his chief, his 
 only anxiety was the bonds. They were not insured. They would 
 be a dead loss. And what added sharpness to his pangs, they would 
 be a loss which he must keep a secret, as he had kept their existence 
 a secret a loss which he could not confess, and of which he could 
 not complain. Had he not just given his neighbors to understand 
 that he held no such property ? And his wife was she not at that 
 very moment, if not serving up a lie on the subject, at least paring 
 the truth very thin indeed ? 
 
 " A man would think," observed Ferring, " that Ducklow had 
 some o' them bonds on his hands, and got scaret, he look such a 
 sudden start. He has, hasn't he, Mrs. Ducklow V 
 
 " Has what ? " said Mrs. Ducklow, pretending ignorance. 
 
 " Some o' them cowpon bonds. I ruther guess he's got some." 
 
 " You mean Gov'ment bonds ? Ducklow got some ? 'Tain't at all 
 likely he'd spec'late in them, without saying something to me about 
 it ! No, he couldn't have any without my knowing it, I'm sure ! " 
 
 How demure, how innocent she looked, plying her knitting-needles, 
 and stopping to take up a stitch! How little at that moment she 
 knew of Ducklow's trouble, and its terrible cause ! 
 
 Ducklow's first impulse was to drive on and endeavor at all 
 hazards to snatch the bonds from the flames. His next was, to 
 return and alarm his neighbors, and obtain their assistance. But a 
 minute's delay might be fatal ; so he drove on, screaming, " Fire ! 
 fire ! " at the top of his voice. 
 
 But the old mare was a slow-footed animal ; and Ducklow had no 
 whip. He reached forward and struck her with the reins. 
 
JOHN TOWNSEND TROWBRIDGE. 533 
 
 " Git up ! git up ! Fire ! fire ! " screamed Ducklow. " O, them 
 bonds ! them bonds ! Why didn't I give the money to Reuben ? 
 Fire ! fire ! fire ! " 
 
 By dint of screaming and slapping, he urged her from a trot into a 
 gallop, which was scarcely an improvement as to speed, and certain- 
 ly not as to grace. It was like the gallop of an old cow. "Why 
 don't ye go 'long ! " he cried, despairingly. 
 
 Slap, slap ! He knocked his own hat off with the loose ends of 
 the reins. It fell under the wheels. He cast one look behind, to 
 satisfy himself that it had been very thoroughly run over and crushed 
 into the dirt, and left it to its fate. 
 
 Slap, slap ! " Fire, fire ! " Canter, canter, canter ! Neighbors 
 looked out of their windows, and, recognizing Ducklow's wagon and 
 old mare in such an astonishing plight, and Ducklow himself, with- 
 out his hat, rising from his seat, and reaching forward in wild atti- 
 tudes, brandishing the reins, at the same time rending the azure with 
 yells, thought he must be insane. 
 
 He drove to the top of the hill, and looking beyond, in expecta- 
 tion of seeing his house wrapped in flames, discovered that the 
 smoke proceeded from a brush-heap which his neighbor Atkins was 
 burning in a field near by. 
 
 The revulsion of feeling that ensued was almost too much for the 
 excitable Ducklow. His strength went out of him. For a little 
 while there seemed to be nothing left of him but tremor and cold 
 sweat. Difficult as it had been to get the old mare in motion, it was 
 now even more difficult to stop her. 
 
 "Why! what has got into Ducklow's old mare ? She's running 
 away with him ! Who ever heard of such a thing ! " And Atkins, 
 watching the ludicrous spectacle from his field, became almost as 
 weak from laughter as Ducklow was from the effects of fear. 
 
 At length Ducklow succeeded in checking the old mare's speed, 
 and in turning her about. It was necessary to drive back for his 
 hat. By this time he could hear a chorus of shouts, " Fire ! fire ! 
 fire ! " over the hill. He had aroused the neighbors as he passed, 
 and now they were flocking to extinguish the flames. 
 
 " A f:ilse alarm ! a false alarm ! " said Ducklow, looking marvel- 
 lously sheepish, as he met them. " Nothing but Atkins's brush- 
 heap ! " 
 
 " Seems to me you ought to have found that out 'fore you raised 
 all creation with your yells ! " said one hyperbolical fellow. " You 
 looked like the Flying Dutchman ! This your hat ? I thought 'twas 
 
534 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 a dead cat in the road. No fire, no fire !" turning back to his 
 comrades, " only one of Ducklow's jokes." 
 
 Nevertheless, two or three- boys there were who would not be con- 
 vinced, but continued to leap up, swing their caps, and scream, 
 " Fire ! " against all remonstrance. Ducklow did not wait to enter 
 into explanations, but, turning the old mare about again, drove home 
 amid the laughter of the bystanders and the screams of the mis- 
 guided youngsters. As he approached the house, he met Taddy 
 rushing wildly up the street. 
 
 " Thaddeus ! Thaddeus ! Where ye goin', Thaddeus ? " 
 
 " Coin' to the fire ! " cried Taddy. 
 
 " There isn't any fire, boy ! " 
 
 " Yes, there is ! Didn't ye hear 'em ? They've been yellin' like 
 fury." 
 
 " It's nothin' but Atkins's brush." 
 
 " That all ? " And Taddy appeared very much disappointed. " I 
 thought there was goin' to be some fun. I wonder who was such a 
 fool as to yell fire jest for a darned old brush-heap ! " 
 
 Ducklow did not inform him. 
 
 "I ? ve got to drive over to town and git Reuben's trunk. You 
 stand by the mare while I step in and brush my hat." 
 
 Instead of applying himself at once to the restoration of his 
 beaver, he hastened to the sitting-room, to see that the bonds 
 were safe. 
 
 " Heavens and 'arth ! " said Ducklow. 
 
 The chair, which had been carefully planted in the spot where 
 they were concealed, had been removed. Three or four tacks had 
 been taken out, and the carpet pushed from the wall. There was 
 straw scattered about. Evidently Taddy had been interrupted, in 
 the midst of his ransacking, by the alarm of fire. Indeed, he was 
 even now creeping into the house to see what notice Ducklow would 
 take of these evidences of his mischief. 
 
 In great trepidation the farmer thrust in his hand here and there, 
 and groped, until he found the envelope precisely where it had been 
 placed the night before, with the tape tied around it, which his wife 
 had put on to prevent its contents from slipping out and losing them- 
 selves. Great was the joy of Ducklow. Great also was the wrath 
 of him, when he turned and discovered Taddy. 
 
 " Didn't I tell you to stand by the old mare ?" 
 
 " She won't stir," said Taddy, shrinking away again. 
 
 " Come here ! " and Ducklow grasped him by the collar. "What 
 have you been doin' ? Look at that ! " 
 
JOHN TOWNSEND TROWBRIDGE. 53$ 
 
 " 'Twan't me ! " beginning to whimper, and ram his fists into 
 his eyes. 
 
 " Don't tell me't wan't you ! " Ducklow shook him till his teeth 
 chattered. " What was you pullin' up the carpet for ? " 
 
 " Lost a marble ! " snivelled Taddy. 
 
 "Lost a marble! Ye didn't lose it under the carpet did ye? 
 Look at all that straw pulled out ! " shaking him again. 
 
 " Didn't know but it might 'a' got under the carpet, marbles roll 
 so," explained Taddy, as soon as he could get his breath. 
 
 " Wai, sir ! " Ducklow administered a resounding box on his ear. 
 " Don't you do such a thing again, if you lose a million marbles ! " 
 
 " Hain't got a million ! " Taddy wept, rubbing his cheek. " Hain't 
 got but four ! Won't ye buy me some to-day ? " 
 
 " Go to that mare, and don't you leave her again till I come, or 
 I'll marble ye in a way you won't like ! " 
 
 Understanding, by this somewhat equivocal form of expression, 
 that flagellation was threatened, Taddy obeyed, still feeling his 
 smarting and burning ear. 
 
 Ducklow was in trouble. What should he do with the bonds ? 
 The floor was no place for them, after what had happened ; and he 
 remembered too well the experience of yesterday to think for a 
 moment of carrying them about his person. With unreasonable im- 
 patience, his mind reverted to Mrs. Ducklow. 
 
 " Why ain't she to home ? These women are forever a-gaddin' ! 
 I wish Reuben's trunk was in Jericho ! " 
 
 Thinking of the trunk reminded him of one in the garret, filled 
 with old papers of all sorts, newspapers, letters, bills of sale, 
 children's writing-books, accumulations of the past quarter of a 
 century. Neither fire, nor burglar, nor ransacking youngster had 
 ever molested those ancient records during all those five and twenty 
 years. A bright thought struck him. 
 
 " I'll slip the bonds down into that wuthless heap o ? rubbish, 
 where no one 'ud ever think o' lookin' for 'em, and resk 'em." 
 
 Having assured himself that Taddy was standing by the wagon, 
 he paid a hasty visit to the trunk in the garret, and concealed the 
 envelope, still bound in its band of tape, among the papers. He 
 then drove away, giving Taddy a final charge to beware of setting 
 anything afire. 
 
 He had driven about half a mile when he met a peddler. There 
 was nothing unusual or alarming in such a circumstance, surely ; but 
 as Ducklow kept on, it troubled him. 
 
HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 " He'll stop to the house now, most likely, and want to trade. 
 Findin' nobody but Taddy, there's no knowin' what he'll be tempted 
 to do. But I ain't a-goin' to worry. I'll defy anybody to find them 
 bonds. Besides, she may be home by this time. I guess she'll 
 hear of the fire-alarm, and hurry home : it'll be jest like her. She'll 
 be there, and trade with the peddler ? " thought Ducklow, uneasily. 
 Then a frightful fancy possessed him. " She has threatened two or 
 three times to sell that old trunkful of papers. He'll offer a big 
 price for 'em, and ten to one she'll let him have 'em. Why didrft I 
 think on't ? What a stupid blunderbuss I be ! " 
 
 As Ducklow thought of it, he felt almost certain that Mrs. Duck- 
 low had returned home, and that she was bargaining with the ped- 
 dler at that moment. He fancied her smilingly receiving bright tin- 
 ware for the old papers ; and he could see the tape-tied envelope 
 going into the bag with the rest ! The result was, that he turned 
 about and whipped the old mare home again in terrific haste, to 
 catch the departing peddler. 
 
 Arriving, he found the house as he had left it, and Taddy occupied 
 in making a kite-frame. 
 
 " Did that peddler stop here ? " 
 
 " I hain't seen no peddler." 
 
 "And hain't yer Ma Ducklow been home, neither ? " 
 
 " No." 
 
 And with a guilty look, Taddy put the kite-frame behind him. 
 
 Ducklow considered. The peddler had turned up a cross-street : 
 he would probably turn down again and stop at the 'house, after all : 
 Mrs. Ducklow might by that time be at home : then the sale of old 
 papers would be very likely to take place. Ducklow thought of 
 leaving word that he did not wish any old papers in the house to be 
 sold, but feared lest the request might excite Taddy's suspicions. 
 
 " I don't see no way but for me to take the bonds with me," 
 thought he, with an inward groan. 
 
 He accordingly went to the garret, took the envelope out of the 
 trunk, and placed it in the breast-pocket of his overcoat, to which 
 he pinned it, to prevent it by any chance from getting out. He 
 used six large, strong pins for the purpose, and was afterwards sorry 
 he did not use seven. 
 
 " There's suthin' losin' out of yer pocket ! " bawled Taddy, as he 
 was once more mounting the wagon. 
 
 Quick as lightning, Ducklow clapped his hand to his breast. In 
 doing so he loosed his hold of the wagon-box and fell, raking his 
 shin badly on the wheel. 
 
JOHN TOWNSEND TROWBRIDGE. 537 
 
 " Yer side-pocket ! It's one o' yer mittens ! " said Taddy. 
 
 " You rascal ! how you scared me ! " 
 
 Seating himself in the wagon, Ducklovv gently pulled up his 
 trousers-leg to look at the bruised part. 
 
 " Got anything in yer boot-leg to-day, Pa Ducklovv ? " asked 
 Taddy, innocently. 
 
 "Yes, a barked shin ! all on your account, too ! Go and put 
 that straw back, and fix the carpet ; and don't ye let me hear ye 
 speak of my boot-leg again, or I'll boot- teg ye ! " 
 
 So saying, Ducklow departed. 
 
 Instead of repairing the mischief he had done in the sitting-room, 
 Taddy devoted his time and talents to the more interesting occupa- 
 tion of constructing his kite-frame. He worked at that, until Mr. 
 Grantley, the minister, driving by, stopped to inquire how the folks 
 were. 
 
 " Ain't to home : may I ride ? " cried Taddy, all in a breath. 
 
 Mr. Grantley was an indulgent old gentleman, fond of children ; 
 so he said, " Jump in ; " and in a minute Taddy had scrambled to a 
 seat by his side. 
 
 And now occurred a circumstance which Ducklow had foreseen. 
 The alarm of fire had reached Reuben's ; and although the report 
 of its falseness followed immediately, Mrs. Ducklow's inflammable 
 fancy was so kindled by it that she could find no comfort in prolong- 
 ing her visit. 
 
 " Mr. Ducklow'll be going for the trunk, and I must go home 
 and see to things, Taddy's such a fellow for mischief! I can foot it ; 
 I shan't mind it." 
 
 And off she started, walking herself out of breath in her anxiety. 
 
 She reached the brow of the hill just in time to see a chaise drive 
 away from her own door. 
 
 " Who can that be ? I wonder if Taddy's there to guard the 
 house ! If anything should happen to them bonds ! " 
 
 Out of breath as she was, she quickened her pace, and trudged 
 on, flushed, perspiring, panting, until she reached the house. 
 
 " Thadcleus ! " she called. 
 
 No Taddy answered. She went in. The house was deserted. 
 And lo ! the carpet torn up, and the bonds abstracted ! 
 
 Mr. Ducklow never would have 'made such work, removing the 
 bonds. Then somebody else must have taken them, she reasoned. 
 
 "The man in the chaise!" she exclaimed, or rather made an 
 effort to exclaim, succeeding only in bringing forth a hoarse, gasping 
 sound. Fear dried up articulation. Vox faucibus hcssit. 
 
HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS.- 
 
 And Taddy ? He had disappeared ; been murdered, perhaps or 
 gagged and carried away by the man in the chaise. 
 
 Mrs. Ducklow flew hither and thither (to use a favorite phrase of 
 her own), " like a hen with her head cut off; " then rushed out of 
 the house, and up the street, screaming after the chaise, 
 
 " Murder ! murder ! Stop thief! stop thief! " 
 
 She waved her hands aloft in the air frantically. If she had 
 trudged before, now she trotted, now she cantered ; but if the canter- 
 ing of the old mare was fitly likened to that of a cow, to what thing, 
 to what manner of motion under the sun, shall we liken the canter- 
 ing of Mrs. Ducklow ? It was original ; it was unique ; it was pro- 
 digious. Now, with her frantically waving hands, and all her un- 
 dulating and flapping skirts, she seemed a species of huge, unwieldy 
 bird attempting to fly. Then she sank down into a heavy, dragging 
 walk, breath and strength all gone, no voice left even to scream 
 murder. Then the awful realization of the loss of the bonds once 
 more rushing over her, she started up again. " Half running, half 
 flying, what progress she made ! " Then Atkins's dog saw her, and, 
 naturally mistaking her for a prodigy, came out at her, bristling up 
 and bounding and barking terrifically. 
 
 " Come here ! " cried Atkins, following the dog. " What's the 
 matter ? What's to pay, Mrs. Ducklow ? " 
 
 Attempting to speak, the good woman could only pant and wheeze. 
 
 " Robbed ! " she at last managed to whisper, amid the yelpings of 
 the cur that refused to be silenced. 
 
 "Robbed? How? Who?" 
 
 " The chaise. Ketch it." 
 
 Her gestures expressed more than her words ; and Atkins's horse 
 and wagon, with which he had been drawing out brush, being in the 
 yard near by, he ran to them, leaped to the seat, drove into the road, 
 took Mrs. Ducklow aboard, and set out in vigorous pursuit of the 
 slow two wheeled vehicle. 
 
 " Stop, you, sir ! Stop, you, sir ! " shrieked Mrs. Ducklow, hav- 
 ing recovered her breath by the time they came up with the chaise. 
 
 It stopped, and Mr. Grantley, the minister, put out his good- 
 natured, surprised face. 
 
 " You've robbed my house ! You've took " 
 
 Mrs. Ducklow was going on in wild, accusatory accents, when she 
 recognized the benign countenance. 
 
 " What do you say ? I have robbed you ? " he exclaimed, very 
 much astonished. 
 
JOHN TOWNSEND TROWBRIDGE. 539 
 
 " No, no ! not you ! You wouldn't do such a thing ! " she stam- 
 mered forth, while Atkins, who had laughed himself weak at Mr. 
 Ducklow's plight earlier in the morning, now laughed himself into a 
 side-ache at Mrs. Ducklow's ludicrous mistake. "But did you 
 did you stop at my house ? Have you seen our Thaddeus ? " 
 
 " Here I be, Ma Ducklow ! " piped a small voice ; and Taddy, who 
 had till then remained hidden, fearing punishment, peeped out of the 
 chaise from behind the broad back of the minister. 
 
 " Taddy ! Taddy ! how came the carpet " 
 
 " I pulled it up, huntin' for a marble," said Taddy, as she paused, 
 overmastered by her emotions. 
 
 "And the the thing tied up in a brown wrapper?" 
 
 " Pa Ducklow took it." 
 
 "Ye sure?" 
 
 " Yes ; I seen him ! " 
 
 "O, dear!" said Mrs. Ducklow, "I never was so beat! Mr 
 Grantley, I hope excuse me I didn't know what I was about ! 
 Taddy, you notty boy, what did you leave the house for ? Be ye 
 quite sure yer Pa Ducklow " 
 
 Taddy repeated that he was quite sure, as he climbed from the 
 chaise into Atkins's wagon. The minister smilingly remarked that 
 he hoped she would find no robbery had been committed, and went 
 his way. Atkins, driving back, and setting her and Teddy down at 
 the Ducklow gate, answered her embarrassed " Much obleeged to 
 ye," with a sincere " Not at all," considering the fun he had had a 
 sufficient compensation for his trouble. And thus ended the morn- 
 ing's adventures, with the exception of an unimportant episode, in 
 which Taddy, Mrs. Ducklow, and Mrs. Ducklow's rattan were the 
 principal actors. 
 
 [From The Atlantic Monthly, March, 1858.] 
 BEAUTY. 
 
 FOND lover of the Ideal Fair, 
 My soul, eluded everywhere, 
 Is lapsed into a sweet despair. 
 
 Perpetual pilgrim, seeking ever, 
 Baffled, enamoured, rinding never ; 
 Each morn the cheerful chase renewing, 
 Misled, bewildered, still pursuing ; 
 Not all my lavished years have bought 
 One steadfast smile from her I sought, 
 
54O HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 But sidelong glances, glimpsing light, 
 A something far too fine for sight, 
 Veiled voices, far-off thridding strains, 
 And precious agonies and pains : 
 Not love, but only love's dear wound 
 And exquisite unrest I found. 
 
 At early morn I saw her pass 
 
 The lone lake's blurred and quivering glass ; 
 
 Her trailing veil of amber mist 
 
 The unbending beaded clover kissed ; 
 
 And straight I hasted to waylay 
 
 Her coming by the willowy way ; 
 
 But, swift companion of the Dawn, 
 
 She left her footprints on the lawn, 
 
 And, in arriving, she was gone. 
 
 Alert I ranged the winding shore ; 
 
 Her luminous presence flashed before ; 
 
 The wild-rose and the daisies wet 
 
 From her light touch were trembling yet ; 
 
 Faint smiled the conscious violet ; 
 
 Each bush and brier and rock betrayed 
 
 Some tender sign her parting made ; 
 
 And when far on her flight I tracked 
 
 To where the thunderous cataract 
 
 O'er walls of foamy ledges broke, 
 
 She vanished in the vapory smoke. 
 
 To-night I pace this pallid floor, 
 The sparkling waves curl up the shore, 
 The August moon is flushed and full ; 
 The soft, low winds, the liquid lull, 
 The whited, silent, misty realm, 
 The wan-blue heaven, each ghostly elm, 
 All these, her ministers, conspire 
 To fill my bosom with the fire 
 And sweet delirium of desire. 
 Enchantress ! leave thy sheeny height, 
 Descend, be all mine own this night, 
 Transfuse, enfold, entrance me quite ! 
 Or break thy spell, my heart restore, 
 And disenchant me evermore ! 
 
CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER. 54! 
 
 CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER. 
 
 Charles Dudley Warner was born in Plainfield, Mass., September 12, 1829. He attended 
 a seminary in Cazenovia, N. Y., and was afterwards graduated at Hamilton College in 
 1851. He spent a couple of years on the western frontier with a surveying party ; afterwards 
 studied law and was admitted to the bar in Philadelphia. He practised his profession for a 
 time at Chicago, and in 1860 removed to Hartford, Conn., where he has since resided. He 
 became connected with the Evening Press, as an assistant editor, and afterwards with the 
 Courant. He was a contributor to Putnam's Monthly and the Knickerbocker Magazine, 
 and in 1870 wrote a series of sketches for the Hartford Courant, entitled My Summer in a 
 Garden, since collected in a volume. He has written another series of sketches, or essays 
 rather, for Scribner's Monthly, entitled Back Log Studies. A volume of his notes of travel 
 (made in 1868) was published in 1872, with the title of Saunterings. 
 
 Mr. Warner is a humorist of an original character. He is a trifle too fond of puns, of 
 verbal quibbles rather, for a pun that strikes out a spark of wit in the clash of double 
 meanings we hold to be praiseworthy, in spite of Dr. Johnson and Bulwer Lytton, and 
 he gives prominence to political and personal allusions which will soon require notes for 
 their elucidation, when some of the persons in office are forgotten. But the fun of his views 
 of nature is genuine ; the garden experiences bear re-reading, which is the proof of their 
 quality. In the case of many books of comic intention a single glance takes in the proffered 
 jokes ; the wit is exhaled, and the pages are thenceforth as stale as exploitred conundrums. 
 The works of the true humorist renew their freshness, and, like our author's garden, though 
 often traversed, are dewy and fragrant with each new day. 
 
 The Back-Log Studies promise to be equally charming ; they have a deeper vein of 
 thought, and the touches of sentiment that give to humor its natural relief. 
 
 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 
 
 THE love of dirt is among the earliest of passions, as it is the 
 latest. Mud pies gratify one of our first and best instincts. So long 
 as we are dirty we are pure. Fondness for the ground comes back 
 to a man after he has run the round of pleasure and business, eaten 
 dirt, and sown wild oats, drifted about the world, and taken the wind 
 of all its moods. The love of digging in the ground (or of looking 
 on while he -pays another to dig) is as sure to come back to him as 
 he is sure, at last, to go under the ground, and stay there. To own 
 a bit of ground, to scratch it with a hoe, to plant seeds, and watch 
 their renewal of life, this is the commonest delight of the race, the 
 most satisfactory thing a man can do. 
 
 Let us celebrate the soil. Most men toil that they may own a 
 piece of it ; they measure their success in life by their ability to buy 
 it. It is alike the passion of the parvenu and the pride of the aris- 
 tocrat. Broad acres are a patent of nobility ; and no man but feels 
 more of a man in the world if he have a bit of ground that he can 
 call his own. However small it is on the surface, it is four thousand 
 miles deep ; and that is a very handsome property. And there is a 
 
542 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 great pleasure in working in the soil, apart from the ownership of it. 
 The man who has planted a garden feels that he has done something 
 for the good of the world. He belongs to the producers. It is a 
 pleasure to eat of the fruit of one's toil, if it be nothing more than a 
 head of lettuce or an ear of corn. One cultivates a lawn even with 
 great satisfaction, for there is nothing more beautiful than grass and 
 turf in our latitude. The tropics may have their delights, but they 
 have not turf ; and the world without turf is a dreary desert. The 
 original garden of Eden could not have had such turf as one sees in 
 England. The Teutonic races all loye turf : they emigrate in the 
 line of its growth. 
 
 To dig in the mellow soil to dig moderately, for all pleasure 
 should be taken sparingly is a great thing. One gets strength 
 out of the ground as often as one really touches it with a hoe. An- 
 taeus (this is a classical article) was no doubt an agriculturist ; and 
 such a prize-fighter as Hercules could not do anything with him till 
 he got him to lay down his spade, and quit the soil. It is not sim- 
 ply beets, and potatoes, and corn, and string-beans that one raises in 
 his well-hoed garden : it is the average of human life. There is life 
 in the ground ; it goes into the seeds ; and it also, when it is stirred 
 up, goes into the man who stirs it. The hot sun on his back as he 
 bends to his shovel and hoe, or contemplatively rakes the warm 
 and fragrant loam, is better than much medicine. The buds are 
 coming out on the bushes round about ; the blossoms of the fruit- 
 trees begin to show ; the blood is running up the grape-vines in 
 streams ; you can smell the wild flowers on the near bank ; and the 
 birds are flying, and glancing, and singing everywhere. To the open 
 kitchen door comes the busy housewife to shake a white something, 
 and stands a moment to look, quite transfixed by the delightful 
 sights and sounds. Hoeing in the garden on a bright, soft May day, 
 when you are not obliged to, is nearly equal to the delight of going 
 trouting. 
 
 Blessed be agriculture ! if one does not have too much of it. All 
 literature is fragrant with it, in a gentlemanly way. At the foot of 
 the charming olive-covered hills of Tivoli, Horace (not he of Chap- 
 paqua) had a sunny farm : it was in sight of Hadrian's villa, who 
 did landscape gardening on an extensive scale, and probably did not 
 get half as much comfort out of it as Horace did from his more sim- 
 ply tilled acres. We trust that Horace did a little hoeing and farm- 
 ing himself, and that his verse is not all fraudulent sentiment. In 
 order to enjoy agriculture, you do not want too much of it, and you 
 
CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER. 543 
 
 want to be poor enough to have a little inducement to work moder- 
 ately yourself. Hoe while it is spring, and enjoy the best anticipa* 1 
 tions. It is not much matter if things do not turn out well. 
 
 This matter of vegetable rank has not been at all studied as it 
 should be. Why do we respect some vegetables, and despise others, 
 when all of them come to an equal honor or ignominy on the table ? 
 The bean is a graceful, confiding, engaging vine ; but you never can 
 put beans into poetry, nor into the highest sort of prose. There is 
 no dignity in the bean. Corn, which in my garden grows alongside 
 the bean, and, so far as I can see, with no affectation of superiority, 
 is, however, the child of song. It waves in all literature. But mix 
 it with beans, and its high tone is gone. Succotash is vulgar. It is 
 the bean in it. The bean is a vulgar vegetable, without culture, or 
 any flavor of high society among vegetables. Then there is the cool 
 cucumber, like so many people good for nothing when it is ripe, 
 and the wildness has gone out of it. How inferior in quality it is to 
 the melon, which grows upon a similar vine, is of a like watery con- 
 sistency, but is not half so valuable ! The cucumber is a sort of low 
 comedian in a company where the melon is a minor gentleman. I 
 might also contrast the celery with the potato. The associations are 
 as opposite as the dining-room of the duchess and the cabin of the 
 peasant. I admire the potato, both in vine and blossom ; but it is 
 not aristocratic. 
 
 The lettuce is to me a most interesting study. Lettuce is like 
 conversation : it must be fresh and crisp, so sparkling that you 
 scarcely notice the bitter in it. Lettuce, like most talkers, is, how- 
 ever, apt to run rapidly to seed. Blessed is that sort which comes 
 to a head, and so remains, like a few people I know ; growing more 
 solid, and satisfactory, and tender at the same time, and whiter at 
 the centre, and crisp in their maturity. Lettuce, like conversation, 
 requires a good deal of oil, to avoid friction, and keep the company 
 smooth : a pinch of Attic salt, a dash of pepper, a quantity of mus- 
 tard and vinegar, by all means, but so mixed that you will notice no 
 sharp contrasts, and a trifle of sugar.* You can put anything, and 
 the more things the better, into salad, as into a conversation, but 
 everything depends upon the skill of mixing. I feel that I am in the 
 best society when I am with lettuce. It is in the select circle of 
 vegetables. The tomato appears well on the table ; but you do not 
 want to ask its origin. It is a most agreeable parvenu. Of course 
 
 * Against the heresy of sugar I protest. EDITOR. 
 
544 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 I have said nothing about the berries. They live in another and 
 more ideal region ; except, perhaps, the currant. Here we see that, 
 even among berries, there are degrees of breeding. The currant is 
 well enough, clear as truth, and exquisite in color ; but I ask you to 
 notice how far it is from the exclusive hauteur of the aristocratic 
 strawberry, and the native refinement of the quietly elegant rasp- 
 berry. 
 
 HELEN (FISKE) HUNT. 
 
 Helen (Fiske) Hunt, daughter of the late Professor Nathan W. Fiske, of Amherst 
 College, was born in Amherst, Mass., in 1831. She was married to Major Edward B. 
 Hunt, U. S. A., an eminent officer of engineers, and assistant professor at V/est Point, who 
 was killed in 1863 by a premature explosion while experimenting with a submarine battery 
 of his own invention. Mrs. Hunt resides at Newport, R. I. She has published a volume 
 of poems, called Verses by H. H. (1871), and a collection of foreign sketches, entitled Bits 
 of Travel (1872). The prose sketches are singularly fresh, suggestive, and charming. They 
 appear to consist of the brilliant passages of the author's note-book, with the details of the 
 itinerary omitted. The poems are deserving of a careful analysis. They have a marked 
 individuality, saving only the occasional resemblances to Emerson, which hardly any thought- 
 ful poet of our time can avoid. The topics chosen and the mode of treatment show an 
 original and powerful mind. The marvellous subtilty of thought challenges the reader's 
 undivided attention in his best moments, while the analogies between the outer and inner 
 world touch his soul with perpetual surprises. Some of the poems are too weighty with 
 meaning to admit of free and melodious movement. Excepting Mrs. Browning, it is doubt- 
 ful whether any woman, at least in our day, has written poetry so informed with spiritual 
 truth, so free from all extraneous elements, so glowing with the highest beauty. 
 
 [From Bits of Travel] 
 A MAY-DAY IN ALBANO. 
 
 WE went Maying on donkeys, and we found more flowers than 
 could have been picked in a month. What a May-day for people 
 who had all their lives before gone Maying in india-rubbers, and 
 an east wind, on the Atlantic coast of America ; had been glad and 
 grateful over a few saxifrages and houstonias, and knelt in ecstasy 
 if they found a shivering clump of dog-tooth violets ! 
 
 Our donkey man looked so like a New Englander that I have an 
 uncomfortable curiosity about him : slim, thin, red-haired, freckled, 
 blue-eyed, hollow-chested, I believe he had run away in his youth 
 from Barnstable, and drifted to the shores of the Alban Lake. 
 I watched him in vain to discover any signs of his understanding 
 our conversation, but I am sure I heard him say "gee" to the 
 donkeys. 
 
 The donkey boy, too, had New England eyes, honest dark blue 
 
HELEN FISKE HUNT. 545 
 
 gray, with perpetual laugh in them. It was for his eyes I took him 
 along, he being as superfluous as a fifth leg to the donkey. But 
 when he danced up and down with bare feet on the stones in front 
 of the hotel door, and twisted and untwisted his dirty little fingers in 
 agony of fear lest I should say no, all the while looking up into my 
 face with a hopeful, imploring smile, so like one I shall never see 
 again, I loved him, and engaged him then and there always to walk 
 by my donkey's nose so long as I rode donkeys in Albano. I had 
 no sooner done this than, presto, my boy disappeared, and all I could 
 see in his stead was a sort of human pin-wheel, with ten dangerous 
 toes for spokes, flying round and round by my side. What a pleased 
 Italian boy, aged eleven, can do in the way of revolving somersets 
 passes belief, even while you are looking at it. But in a moment he 
 came down right end up, and, with the air of a mature protector, 
 took my donkey by the rope, and off we went. 
 
 I never find myself forming part of a donkey, with a donkey man 
 in rear, without being reminded of all the pictures I have seen of the 
 " Flight into Egypt," and being impressed anew with a sense of the 
 terrible time that Holy Family must have had trying to make haste 
 on such kind of animal : of all beasts, to escape from a hostile mon- 
 arch on ! And one never pities Joseph any more for having to go 
 on foot ; except for the name of the thing, walking must always be 
 easier. . . . 
 
 On the left hand you look down into the mystic lake, which is 
 always dark and troubled, no matter how blue the sky ; never did I 
 see a smile or a placid look of rest on the Alban Lake. Doubtless 
 it is still linked with fates and oracles we do not know. On the 
 right hand the hill stretches up, sometimes sharply in cliffs, some- 
 > times in gentle slopes with moist hollows full of ivies and ferns ; 
 everywhere are flowers in clusters, beds, thickets. It seemed paltry 
 to think of putting a few into a basket, hopeless to try to call the roll 
 of their names. . . . 
 
 The holly was in blossom, and the white-thorn, and huge bushes 
 of yellow-broom swung out across our path at every turn ; we thought 
 they must light it up at night. Here and there were communities 
 of crimson cyclamens, that most bewildering of all Italy's flowers ; 
 "mad violets" the Italians call them, and there is a pertinence in 
 that name. They hang their heads and look down as if no violet 
 could be more shy, but all the while their petals turn back like the 
 ears of a vicious horse, and their whole expression is of the most 
 fascinating mixture of modesty and mischief. Always with the cyc- 
 35 
 
546 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 lamens we found the forget-me-nots, nodding above the fringing 
 canopies of blue ; also the little flower that the Italians call forget- 
 me-not, which is the tiniest of things, shaped like our forget-me- 
 not, but of a pale purple color. Dandelions there were too, and but- 
 tercups, warming our hearts to see ; we would not admit that they 
 were any more golden than under the colder sun where we had first 
 picked them. ... , 
 
 Now I come with shamefacedness to speak of the flowers whose 
 names I did not know. What brutish people we are, even those of 
 us who think we love Nature well, to live our lives out so ignorant 
 of her good old families ! We are quite sure to know the names and 
 generations of hundreds of insignificant men and women, merely 
 because they go to our church, or live in our street ; and we should 
 feel ourselves much humiliated if we were not on what is called 
 "speaking terms "with the best people wherever we go. But we 
 are not ashamed to spend summer after summer face to face with 
 flowers, and trees, and stones, and never so much as know them by 
 name. I wonder they treat us so well as they do, provide us with 
 food and beauty so often, poison us so seldom. It must be only out 
 of the pity they feel, being diviner than we. . . . 
 
 As we came out of the woods upon the craggy precipices near the 
 convent, we found the rocks covered with purple and pink thyme. 
 The smell of it, crushed under the donkey's hoofs, was delicious. 
 Somebody was homesick enough to say that it was like going across 
 a New England kitchen the day before Thanksgiving, and spilling 
 the sweet marjoram. . . . 
 
 As we came down the mountain the sunset lights kindled the whole 
 Campagna into a flaming sea. The Mediterranean beyond seemed, 
 by some strange optical effect, to be turned up around the horizon 
 like a golden rim holding the misty sea. The lake looked darker 
 and darker at every step of our descent. Mount Soracte stood clear 
 cut against the northern sky, and between us and it went up the 
 smoke of that enchantress, Rome, the great dome of St. Peter's 
 looming and fading and looming and fading again through the yellow 
 mist like a gigantic bubble, as the power of the faith it represents 
 has loomed, and faded, and loomed, through all the ages. 
 
HELEN FISKE HUNT. 
 
 547 
 
 THOUGHT. 
 
 MESSENGER, art thou the king, or I ? 
 Thou dalliest outside the palace gate 
 Till on thine idle armor lie the late 
 
 And heavy dews : the morn's bright, scornful eye 
 Reminds thee ; then, in subtle mockery, 
 Thou smilest at the window where I wait, 
 Who bade thee ride for life. In empty state 
 My days go on, while false hours prophesy 
 Thy quick return ; at last, in sad despair, 
 
 1 cease to bid thee, leave thee free as air ; 
 When lo ! thou stand'st before me glad and fleet, 
 And lay'st undreamed-of treasures at my feet. 
 Ah ! messenger, thy royal blood to buy 
 
 I am too poor. Thou art the king, not I. 
 
 NOVEMBER woods are bare and still ; 
 
 November days are clear and bright ; 
 Each noon burns up the morning's chill ; 
 
 The morning's snow is .gone by night ; 
 
 Each day my steps grow slow, grow light, 
 As through the woods I reverent creep, 
 Watching all things lie "down to sleep." 
 
 "DOWN TO SLEEP." 
 
 Each day I find new coverlids 
 Tucked in, and more sweet eyes shut tight ; 
 
 Sometimes the viewless mother bids 
 Her ferns kneel down, full in my sight ; 
 I hear th^r chorus of "good night ; " 
 
 And half I smile, and half I weep, 
 
 Listening while they lie " down to sleep. " 
 
 I never knew before what beds, 
 Fragrant to smell, and soft to touch, 
 
 The forest sifts, and shapes, and spreads ; 
 I never knew before how much 
 Of human sound there is in such 
 
 Low tones as through the forest sweep 
 
 When all wild things lie "down to sleep." 
 
 November woods are bare and still ; 
 
 November days are bright and good ; 
 Life's noon burns up life's morning chill ; 
 
 Life's night rests feet which long have stood; 
 
 Some warm, soft bed, in field or wood, 
 The mother will not fail to keep, 
 Where we can "lay us down to sleep." 
 
 DISTANCE. 
 
 O SUBTILE secret of the air, 
 Making the things that are not, fair 
 Beyond the things that we can reach 
 And name with names of clumsy speech ; 
 By shadow-worlds of purple haze 
 The sunniest of sunny days 
 Outweighing in our hearts' delight ; 
 Opening yie eyes of blinded sight ; 
 Holding an echo in such hold, 
 
 Bidding a hope such wings unfold, 
 That present sounds and sights between 
 Can come and go, unheard, unseen, 
 O subtile secret of the air, 
 Heaven itself is heavenly fair 
 By help of thee 1 The saints' good days 
 Are good, because the good Lord lays 
 No bound of shore along the sea 
 Of beautiful Eternity. 
 
548 
 
 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 APRIL. 
 
 ROBINS call robins in tops of trees ; 
 
 Doves follow doves, with scarlet feet ; 
 Frolicking babies, sweeter than these, 
 
 Crowd green corners where highways meet 
 
 Violets stir and arbutus wakes, 
 
 Claytonia's rosy bells unfold ; 
 Dandelion through the meadow makes 
 
 A royal road, with seals of gold. 
 
 Golden, and snowy, and red the flowers, 
 Golden, and snowy, and red in vain ; 
 
 Robins call robins through sad showers ; 
 The white dove's feet are wet with rain. 
 
 For April sobs while these are so glad, 
 April weeps while these are so gay, 
 
 Weeps like a tired child who had, 
 Playing with flowers, lost its way. 
 
 THE WAY TO SING. 
 
 THE birds must know. Who wisely sings 
 
 Will sing as they ; 
 The common air has generous wings, 
 
 Songs make their way. 
 No messenger to run before, 
 
 Devising plan ; 
 No mention of the place or hour 
 
 To any man ; 
 No waiting till some sound betrays 
 
 A listening ear ; 
 No different voice, no new delays, 
 
 If steps draw near. 
 
 " What bird is that ? Its song is good. " 
 
 And eager eyes 
 Go peering through the dusky wood, 
 
 In glad surprise ; 
 Then late at night, when by his fire 
 
 The traveller sits, 
 Watching the flame grow brighter, higher, 
 
 The sweet song flits 
 
 By snatches through his weary brain 
 
 To help him rest ; 
 When next he goes that road again, 
 
 An empty nest 
 On leafless bough will make him sigh, 
 
 "Ah me ! last spring 
 Just here I heard, in passing by, 
 
 That rare bird sing ! " 
 
 But while he sighs, remembering 
 
 How sweet the song, 
 The little bird, on tireless wing, 
 
 Is borne along 
 In other air, and other men 
 
 With weary feet, 
 On other roads, the simple strain 
 
 Are finding sweet. 
 The birds must know. Who wisely sings 
 
 Will sing as they ; 
 The common air has generous wings, 
 
 Songs make their way. 
 
ELIZABETH AKERS ALLEN. 549 
 
 ELIZABETH AKERS ALLEN. 
 
 Elizabeth Akers Allen was born in the town of Strong, Franklin County, Me., October 
 9, 1832. She was married in 1860 to Paul Akers, the sculptor, who died within less than a 
 year afterwards. She is now the wife of Mr. E. M. Allen, of New York. Her first efforts 
 in verse were published with the HOW de plutae of Florence Percy, and had a wide popu- 
 larity through the newspapers. A volume of her poems was published in 1867, by Messrs. 
 Fields, Osgood & Co. They have undoubted merits, being full of tender feeling, with- 
 out any tinge of morbidness, and touched here and there with high lights of vivid imagery 
 and picturesque epithets. Notice this picture of chestnut blossoms: 
 
 "Lanterned with white the chestnut branches wave." 
 And the plaintive song of the wild bird : 
 
 "Filling with his sweet trouble all the air." 
 Observe the effect of the church windows : 
 
 " Where through the windows melts the unwilling light, 
 
 And in its passage learns their gorgeous stain, 
 
 Then bars the gloom with hues all rainbow bright, 
 
 As human souls grow beautiful through pain," 
 
 See this glimpse of the camp : 
 
 " The darkened hills 
 Mushroomed with tents." 
 
 If, besides the specimens printed here, our readers would see instances of the author's 
 power, especially in pathetic description, let them turn to her volume, and read The Spar- 
 row at Sea, and Left Behind. 
 
 AMONG THE LAURELS. 
 
 THE sunset's gorgeous dyes 
 
 Paled slowly from the skies, 
 And the clear heaven was waiting for the stars, 
 
 As side by side we strayed 
 
 Along a sylvan glade, 
 And found our pathway crossed by rustic bars. 
 
 Beyond the barrier lay 
 
 A green and tempting way, 
 Arched with fair laurel trees, a-bloom and tall, 
 
 Their cups of tender snow 
 
 Edged with a rosy glow, 
 And warm, sweet shadows trembling over all. 
 
 The chestnuts sung and sighed, 
 The solemn oaks replied, 
 
5 SO HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 And distant pine trees crooned in cradling tones ; 
 
 While music low and clear 
 
 Gushed from the darkness near, 
 Where a shy brook went tinkling over stones. 
 
 Soft mosses, damp and sweet, 
 
 Allured our waiting feet, 
 And brambles veiled their thorns with treacherous bloom ; 
 
 While tiny flecks of flowers, 
 
 Which owned no name of ours, 
 Added their mite of beauty and perfume. 
 
 And hark ! a hidden bird, 
 
 To sudden utterance stirred, 
 As by a wondrous love too great to bear 
 
 With voiceless silence long, 
 
 Burst into passionate song, 
 Filling with his sweet trouble all the air. 
 
 Then one, whose eager soul 
 
 Could brook no small control, 
 Said, " Let us thread this pleasant path, dear friend : 
 
 If thus the way can be 
 
 So beautiful to see, 
 How much more beautiful must be the end ! 
 
 "Follow! this solitude 
 
 May shrine the haunted wood, 
 Storied so sweetly in romance and rhyme, 
 
 Secure from human ill, 
 
 And rarely peopled still 
 By Fauns and Dryads of the olden time. 
 
 " A spot of hallowed ground 
 
 By mortal yet unfound, 
 Sacred to nymph and sylvan deity, 
 
 Where foiled Apollo glides, 
 
 And bashful Daphne hides 
 Safe in the shelter of her laurel tree ! n 
 
ELIZABETH AKERS ALLEN. $$l 
 
 " Forbear ! " the other cried, 
 
 " O, leave the way untried ! 
 Those joys are sweetest which we only guess ; 
 
 And the impatient soul, 
 
 That seeks to grasp the whole, 
 Defeats itself by its own eagerness. 
 
 " Let us not rudely shake 
 ,' The dew-drop from the brake 
 Fringing the borders of this haunted dell ; 
 
 All the delights which are 
 
 The present and the far 
 Lose half their charm by being known too well ! 
 
 " And he mistakes who tries 
 
 To search all mysteries, 
 Who leaves no cup undrained, no path untracked ; 
 
 Who seeks to know too much 
 
 Brushes with ruthless touch 
 The bloom of Fancy from the brier of Fact 
 
 " Keep one fair myth aloof 
 
 From hard and actual proof, 
 Preserve some dear delusions as they seem ; 
 
 Since the reality, 
 
 How bright soe'er it be, 
 Shows dull and tame beside our marvellous dream. 
 
 " Leave this white page unscored, 
 
 This rare realm unexplored, 
 And let dear Fancy roam there as she will : 
 
 Whatever page we turn, 
 
 However much we learn, 
 Let there be something left to dream of still ! " 
 
 Wherefore, for aught we know, 
 
 The golden apples grow 
 In the green vale to which that pathway leads ; 
 
 The spirits of the wood 
 
 Still haunt its solitude, 
 And Pan sits piping there among the reeds ! 
 
552 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 IN THE DEFENCES. 
 
 ALONG the ramparts which surround the town 
 I walk with evening, marking all the while 
 
 How night and autumn, closing softly down, 
 Leave on the land a blessing and a smile. 
 
 In the broad streets the sounds of tumult cease, 
 The gorgeous sunset reddens roof and spire, 
 
 The city sinks to quietude and peace, 
 Sleeping, like Saturn, in a ring of fire ; 
 
 Circled with forts whose grim and threatening walls 
 Frown black with cannon, whose abated breath 
 
 Waits the command to send the fatal balls 
 Upon their errands of dismay and death. 
 
 And see, directing, guiding, silently 
 
 Flash from afar the mystic signal lights, 
 
 As gleamed the fiery pillar in the sky 
 
 Leading by night the wandering Israelites. 
 
 The earthworks, draped with summer weeds and vines, 
 The rifle-pits, half hid with tangled brier, 
 
 But wait their time ; for see, along the lines 
 Rise the faint smokes of lonesome picket-fires, 
 
 Where sturdy sentinels on silent beat 
 
 Cheat the long hours of wakeful loneliness 
 
 With thoughts of home, and faces dear and sweet, 
 And, on the edge of danger, dream of bliss. 
 
 Yet at a word, how wild and fierce a change 
 Would rend and startle all the earth and skies 
 
 With blinding glare, and noises dread and strange, 
 And shrieks, and shouts, and deathly agonies ! 
 
 But now how tranquilly the golden gloom 
 
 Creeps up the gorgeous forest slopes, and flows 
 
ELIZABETH AKERS ALLEN. 553 
 
 Down valleys blue with fringy aster-bloom, 
 An atmosphere of safety and repose. 
 
 Against the sunset lie the darkening hills 
 
 Mushroomed with tents, the sudden growth of war ; 
 
 The frosty autumn air, that blights and chills, 
 Yet brings its own full recompense therefor. 
 
 Rich colors light the leafy solitudes, 
 
 And far and near the gazer's eyes behold 
 The oak's deep scarlet, warming all the woods, 
 
 And spendthrift maples scattering their gold. 
 
 The pale beech shivers with prophetic woe, 
 
 The towering chestnut ranks stand blanched and thinned, 
 Yet still the fearless* sumac dares the foe, 
 
 And waves its bloody guidons in the wind. 
 
 Where mellow haze the hill's sharp outline dims, 
 
 Bare elms, like sentinels, watch silently, 
 The delicate tracery of their slender limbs 
 
 Pencilled in purple on the saffron sky. 
 
 The failing grasshopper chirps faint and shrill, 
 
 The cricket calls, in mossy covert hid, 
 Cheery and loud, as stoutly answering still 
 
 The soft persistence of the katydid. 
 
 The hum of voices, and the careless laugh 
 
 Of cheerful talkers, fall upon the ear ; 
 The flag flaps listlessly adown its staff; 
 
 And still the katydid pipes loud and near. 
 
 And now from far the bugle's mellow throat 
 
 Pours out, in rippling flow, its silver tide ; 
 And up the listening hills the echoes float 
 
 Faint and more faint, and sweetly multiplied. 
 
 Peace reigns ; not now a soft-eyed nymph that sleeps 
 Unvexed by dreams of strife or conqueror, 
 
554 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 But Power, that, open-eyed and watchful, keeps 
 Unwearied vigil on the brink of war. 
 
 Night falls ; in silence sleep the patriot bands ; 
 
 The tireless cricket yet repeats its tune, 
 And the still figure of the sentry stands 
 
 In black relief against the low, full moon. 
 
 JOHN JAMES PIATT. 
 
 John James Piatt was born at Milton, Ind., March i, 1835. He was educated at the 
 High School in Columbus, O., and at Kenyon College. He contributed verses in 1858 to 
 the Louisville Journal, and in 1859 to the Atlantic Monthly. In conjunction with Mr. W. 
 D. Howells, he published, in 1860, Poems of Two Friends. In 1863 appeared Nests at 
 Washington, a volume of poems written partly by himself and partly by his wife, Mrs. Sarah 
 M. B. Piatt. In 1868 he published Western Windows and Other Poems; in 1871 Land- 
 marks and Other Poems. 
 
 Mr. Piatt writes with force and becoming dignity. He shows a poet's appreciation and 
 feeling in his subjects and illustrations, but his thoughts struggle sometimes with the re- 
 straints of rhythm. We feel sure that his vision is clear even when he has not attained to a 
 full and fitting expression. He has drawn his inspiration from the scenes with which he has 
 been familiar ; he has not been an imitator in construction, nor has he decked his verses 
 with pictorial words used at second hand. His poems are totally unlike the products 
 of the Atlantic coast ; they have a racy flavor of their own, and are a positive addition to 
 our national literature. 
 
 [From Western Windows.] 
 THE MORNING STREET. 
 
 ALONE I walk the morning street, 
 Filled with the silence vague and sweet : 
 All seems as strange, as still, as dead 
 As if unnumbered years had fled, 
 Letting the noisy Babel lie 
 Breathless and dumb against the sky ; 
 iThe light wind walks with me alone 
 Where the hot day flame-like was blown, 
 Where the wheels roared, the dust was beat ; 
 The dew is 'in the morning street. 
 
 Where are the restless throngs that pour 
 
 Along this mighty corridor 
 
 While the noon shines ? the hurrying crowd 
 
 Whose footsteps make the city loud 
 
 The myriad faces hearts that beat 
 
 No more in the deserted street ? 
 
JOHN JAMES PIATT. 555 
 
 Those footsteps in their dreaming maze 
 Cross thresholds of forgotten days ; 
 Those faces brighten from the years 
 In rising suns long set in tears ; 
 Those hearts far in the Past they beat, 
 Unheard within the morning street. 
 
 A city of the world's gray prime, 
 Lost in some desert far from Time, 
 Where noiseless ages, gliding through, 
 Have only sifted sand and dew 
 Yet a mysterious hand of man 
 Lying on all the haunted plan, 
 The passions of the human heart 
 Quickening the marble breast of Art 
 Were not more strange to one who first 
 Upon its ghostly silence burst 
 Than this vast quiet where the tide 
 Of life, upheaved on either side, 
 Hangs trembling, ready soon to beat 
 With human waves the morning street. 
 
 Ay, soon the glowing morning flood 
 Breaks through the charmed solitude : 
 This silent stone, to music won, 
 Shall murmur to the rising sun ; 
 The busy place, in dust and heat, 
 Shall rush with wheels and swarm with feet ; 
 The Arachne-threads of Purpose stream 
 Unseen within the morning gleam ; 
 The life shall move, the death be plain ; 
 The bridal throng, the funeral train, 
 Together, face to face, shall meet 
 And pass within the morning street. 
 
 [From Landmarks and Other Poems.] 
 
 THE PEACH-BLOSSOMS. 
 SENT TO ME IN THE CITY, WITH THE WORDS, "Ir is SPRING." 
 
 IT was a gentle gift to send, 
 This thought in blossoms from a friend : 
 Within my city room 
 
HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 I seem to breathe the country air, 
 While April's kisses everywhere 
 
 Start Earth's brown cheeks to bloom. 
 
 O, beautiful the welcome sight ! 
 (Flushing my paper as I write, 
 
 My words seem blossoming !) 
 The lovely lighted snow that falls 
 Rosy around the cottage walls, 
 
 A miracle of spring ! 
 
 Dream-like, I hear the sunny hum 
 Of swarming bees ; low voices come, 
 
 Familiar, close, and dear ; 
 I hardly know if I am there, 
 Or, shutting out the noisy air, 
 
 Those birds are singing here ! 
 
 To the dry city's restless heart 
 What tender influence ye impart, 
 
 My blossoms, soft and wild ! 
 Ah, from this barren cell I feel 
 Your subtle wand, enchanting, steal 
 
 Me to the Past a child ! 
 
 A child whose laughter-lighted face 
 Breaks from some happy door, a-chase 
 
 For new-winged butterflies ; 
 The wind, how merrily, takes his hair ! 
 Sing, birds, and keep him ever there 
 
 With world-forgetting eyes ! 
 
 Most gracious miracle of spring 
 That gives the dead tree blossoming 
 
 Its resurrection hour ! 
 Lo ! Memory lifts her wizard bough 
 (That seemed as bare and barren), now 
 
 Within my soul in flower ! 
 
HARRIET ELIZABETH PRESCOTT SPOFFORD. 557 
 
 HARRIET ELIZABETH PRESCOTT SPOFFORD. 
 
 Harriet Elizabeth (Prescott) Spofford was born in Calais, Me., April 3, 1835. She was 
 married in 1865 to Richard S. Spofford, Esq., a lawyer of Newburyport, Mass. She was 
 early distinguished by her literary ability. She contributed a story, entitled In a Cellar, to 
 the Atlantic Monthly in its first year of publication, which was greatly admired for its 
 vivacity, its insight into character, and its brilliant dialogue. In 1859 she published a story 
 called Sir Rohan's Ghost, which displayed a remarkable talent for description, but was 
 rather too sombre in character for the popular taste. In 1863 she collected a series of tales 
 which she had written for the magazines, entitled The Amber Gods, and Other Stories. 
 Azarian followed in 1864. The Thief in the Night, a short but powerful novelette, was pub- 
 lished in 1872. She has also written many poems, sketches, and stories that remain uncol- 
 lected. 
 
 If any one were called on to select the most original, vivid, and most artistically wrought 
 stories of our time, Mrs. Spofford's would be named among the first There are no better 
 specimens of what a story for a magazine should be than In a Cellar and Yet's Christmas 
 Box. Her writings manifest a supreme sense of beauty, a revelling delight in color, in 
 music, and in all the luxuries of sense. They show also a wide range of reading, especially 
 of poetry, a knowledge of human nature, and of the capacity of sensitive souls for pain as 
 well as for enjoyment. These brilliant fantasies, which would seem to have been conceived 
 and born in a flash of enthusiasm, are but glimpses of what we might expect if the same 
 powers were spent upon a longer and more carefully planned work. Perhaps the mood 
 would not last long enough ! It might be the good fortune of a book to represent a cycle 
 of the author's thought and experience, to begin with life's hyacinths, to flourish with its 
 roses, to wear the autumnal splendor of its salvias, and end with the lasting verdure of its 
 mountain pines. Only, one would need to consider whether the point of view were not 
 changing while the work was being completed ; otherwise the novel or poem might be 
 in the condition of an old cathedral which needs new basement stones before the last pinna- 
 cles have pierced the sky. 
 
 [From Yet's Christmas-Box, published in Harper's Magazine for April, 1860.] 
 A RACE FOR LIFE WITH A TIDE BY THE BAY OF FUNDY. 
 
 [Miss Henrietta Yuler, whose name was abbreviated to "Yet," was a governess in the 
 family of Madame Van Voorst. She had walked across a beach at the head of the Bay of 
 Fundy, and was returning when she was overtaken by the tide. She was saved by the 
 courage of a grandson of Madame Van Voorst's, known in the family as " Van."J 
 
 THE long winter passed. March blew down warm gales that 
 thawed the ice ; the snow melted away ; in April the bare willow 
 boughs reddened like flames ; spring came early across the fields, 
 and with the spring came Passion-week. It was Good Friday. 
 After church Miss Yuler walked on an errand for Madam Van 
 Voorst to the village beyond, and, the day being so balmy, took 
 her way along the shore. She had very seldom followed this 
 path ; her walks had always been in another direction for to 
 people who have a narrow, personal melancholy the sea is never 
 grateful; and, except to watch the picturesque tides of the Bay 
 
558 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 of Fundy, she had no fancy now for looking over its stretches 
 of color and foam. The tide was out ; she walked rapidly, reached 
 the village, and performed her errand. . . . 
 
 It was about two hours past noon when, bathed and refreshed, 
 Van came down stairs. He looked into the drawing-room to see 
 his grandmother sitting there, her spectacles dropping from her 
 nose, the prayer-book in her lap, the April sun overlying her as she 
 nodded away to the tune of her dream. 
 
 " Grandma ! " he cried, abruptly, " where's Miss Yuler ? " 
 
 " Which ? " said the old lady, giving her shoulder a little shake, 
 and righting herself. 
 
 " Has Miss Yuler got home ? " 
 
 " Not that I know of. Why, what's the matter ? " 
 
 " What time does the tide full ? " 
 
 " About four." 
 
 " It wants a quarter. Good God, she'll be overtaken ! " And he 
 dashed out to the stable. Madam Van Voorst followed quickly. 
 
 " What are you about ? " she cried, as he flung the saddle on Fau- 
 tour. " You are not going to cross the sands now ? Van ! Van ! 
 You'll be drowned ! " 
 
 He flung her off like a rain-drop, sprang to the saddle, and was 
 away like the wind. 
 
 As is very well known, it is impossible for any one to cross the 
 head of the bay when the roar of the distant tide has once been 
 heard ; the rushing torrent overtakes the adventurous runner, and 
 the fleetest horse cannot escape its speed. As Van's Fautour 
 leaped down the rocks to the sand, and opened a hard gallop 
 along the edge, a whisper like the rustle of wind in the pine-tops 
 shivered through the air. Van's eyes grew fiercer ; he turned the 
 spurs in- and flew forward. The whisper crept hoarsely on his ear ; 
 it became voluminous and panting ; it gathered and swept its swift 
 sighs, and swelled, and broke into a low roar, as if a lion shook his 
 bristling mane, and glared around his distant den. Still Van 
 bounded on ; the horse was stung with fright ; the sand shook 
 with shocks of sound ; he stood in the stirrup, and strained his 
 sight along the shore ; the wind of the advancing tide blew in his 
 uncovered hair. Suddenly, at a third of the distance across, Fau- 
 tour swerved and stood with a quiver. Miss Yuler was standing 
 quietly before him on the beach, her bonnet in her hand. She 
 appeared to have been running, but must now have been motionless 
 for several minutes ; she had found it useless to make any farther 
 
HARRIET ELIZABETH PRESCOTT SPOFFORD. 559 
 
 effort, and had abandoned the idea of life. Whatever grace of nature 
 enriched her soul, she had in this moment surrendered herself to its 
 sway. On her face shone the awful pallor of those who confront 
 Death, and await him. There was, besides, some eagerness in her 
 glittering eye to catch the beauty of her destroyer. She saw Van ; 
 the color rushed up again into her cheek and lip ; he gave his foot 
 for a step, without a word, seized her hands, lifted her before him, 
 turned Fautour about with a savage rapidity, and flew back. It was 
 better to die so than alone. His eyes were fastened on her ; she 
 only looked out and down the bay; neither spoke, It was now a 
 race for life. On, spear's length by spear's length, bounded the 
 horse ; on, rushing and seething, chased the tide ; its chill breath 
 stole across them, its damp swathed them, white wreaths of mist 
 curled over their heads. At the right the banks and crags seemed 
 awaiting its flood ; at the left a narrow line of low waves crept sinu- 
 ously, peering into the bay, and tossing their snowy crests like troops 
 of wild horses. Fautour felt the danger, and did not need the red 
 spur ; with his Double burden he doubled his strides, and left his 
 shadow behind him. On they raced ; an element raced after. The 
 dull and muffled tone broke in full and sonorous ; the separate hiss 
 and splash became distinct ; scenting their prey, three feet at a time 
 the waves came leaping in, receding and foaming, and eddying up 
 again, till a wall of chrysoprase transparency towered between them 
 and the western sky, and rolled, in shattered light and fusing volume, 
 to fill its destined depth of fathom, with the noise of many waters 
 and the speed of wind. Off from the trembling sand to the rocks 
 sprang Fantour ; up he clambered from steep to steep ; the early 
 sunset was bathing all summits in soft crimson warmth, the pale gold 
 of the orbed moon hung in the east with all her potent influences, 
 foam-flakes fell heavily on their hair ; another step would sav^ them. 
 A plunge the crest curled under them, and the last wave sent its 
 spent torrent to cool the burning hoofs that were planted rigid as 
 iron, and the tide was full. 
 
 The whole household had poured out to watch the catastrophe.. 
 Miss Yuler stepped coolly to the ground again. Van dismounted, 
 and, replying curtly to their shower of interrogatories, gave the bridle 
 to a servant and strode towards the house. Whether he thought the 
 life he had saved belonged to him or not, he was not the one to take 
 advantage of Miss Yuler's first impulse of gratitude, if any such im- 
 pulse found room in her heart ; and in less than an hour everything 
 was restored to its usual quiet. 
 
56O HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 CELIA THAXTER. 
 
 Mrs. Celia Thaxter was born in Portsmouth, N. H., June 29, 1835. She passed the 
 greater part of her early life upon the Isles of Shoals, a rocky group about ten miles distant 
 from the main land. She published in the Atlantic Monthly, in 1867-8, a series of papers 
 upon these islands which were of exceptional interest and value. In faithfulness of observa- 
 tion, pictorial art, and the perfect keeping of style, they are almost unrivalled among maga- 
 zine articles. With the recollection of these pictures in mind the editor had determined 
 to present some specimens in this volume. But an examination of her Poems, recently 
 published (1872), showed that the elements of strength and beauty in her prose were retained 
 and even heightened in her verse. The range of the poems is confined to the sea and its 
 shores, so that they are lacking in the variety of scenery, of thought, and of sentiment, 
 which we admire in some other authors. But on the solitary coast, in view of the sea, with 
 its changeful skies, its distant ships, and its white-winged sea birds, she is emphatically the 
 most picturesque of poets and subtilest of ideal colorists. Her verses have the very swing 
 of the sea. As we read we feel its cool breath, we perceive its delicate scent, and we hear 
 the ripple of the waves and the soft rote on the pebbly beach. It is marvellous, too, to 
 notice how the language yields to her art, and becomes as liquid and as graceful as the waves 
 themselves. The various scenes of The Summer's Day, as studies of atmospheric effects, 
 should have been painted by Turner. It is doubtful whether that poem is not fully equal, 
 as a work of art, to The Wreck of the Pocahontas, here printed. The Little Sandpiper is 
 an exquisite sketch ; Before Sunrise glows with the very light of the east ; but we should 
 merely enumerate all the titles in the little book, which is a casket of gems, if we were to 
 continue. The Burgomaster Gull is included by the author among Poems for Children, but 
 its bright pictures of the birds that haunt the islands cannot fail to please those who ara 
 children no longer. 
 
 THE WRECK OF THE POCAHONTAS. 
 
 1 LIT the lamps in the lighthouse tower, 
 
 For the sun dropped down and the day was dead ; 
 They shone like a glorious clustered flower, 
 Ten golden and five red. 
 
 Looking across, where the line of coast 
 
 Stretched darkly, shrinking away from the sea, 
 The lights sprang out at its edge, almost 
 They seemed to answer me. 
 
 O, warning lights ! burn bright and clear, 
 
 Hither the storm comes ! Leagues away 
 It moans and thunders low and drear, 
 Burn till the break of day ! 
 
 Good night ! I called to the gulls that sailed 
 
 Slow past me through the evening sky ; 
 And my comrades, answering shrilly, hailed 
 Me back with boding cry. 
 
CELIA THAXTER. 56! 
 
 A mournful breeze began to blow ; 
 
 Weird music it drew through the iron bars ; 
 The sullen billows boiled below, 
 And dimly peered the stars. 
 
 The sails that flecked the ocean floor 
 
 From east to west, leaned low and fled ; 
 They knew what came in the distant roar 
 That filled the air with dread ! 
 
 Flung by a fitful gust, there beat 
 
 Against the window a dash of rain : 
 Steady as tramp of marching feet 
 Strode on the hurricane. 
 
 It smote the waves for a moment still, 
 
 Level and deadly white for fear ; 
 The bare rock shuddered, an awful thrill 
 Shook even my tower of cheer. 
 
 Like all the demons loosed at last, 
 
 Whistling and shrieking, wild and wide, 
 The mad wind raged, while strong and fast 
 Rolled in the rising tide. 
 
 And soon in ponderous showers the spray, 
 
 Struck from the granite, reared and sprung, 
 And clutched at tower and cottage gray, 
 Where overwhelmed they clung, 
 
 Half drowning, to the naked rock ; 
 
 But still burned on the faithful light, 
 Nor faltered at the tempest's shock, 
 Through all the fearful night. 
 
 Was it in vain ? That knew not we. 
 We seemed, in that confusion vast 
 Of rushing wind and roaring sea, 
 One point whereon was cast 
 
 The whole Atlantic's weight of brine. 
 
 Heaven help the ship should drift our way ! 
 No matter how the light might shine 
 Far on into the day. 
 36 
 
562 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 When morning dawned, above the din 
 Of gale and breaker boomed a gun ! 
 Another ! We who sat within 
 Answered with cries each one. 
 
 Into each other's eyes, with fear, 
 
 We looked through helpless tears, as still, 
 One after one, near and more near, 
 The signals pealed, until 
 
 The thick storm seemed to break apart, 
 To show us, staggering to her grave, 
 The fated brig. We had no heart 
 To look, for nought could save. 
 
 One glimpse of black hull heaving slow, 
 
 Then closed the mists o'er canvas torn, 
 And tangled ropes swept to and fro 
 From masts that raked forlorn. 
 
 Weeks after, yet ringed round with spray, 
 
 Our island lay, and none might land, 
 Though blue the waters of the bay 
 Stretched calm on either hand. 
 
 And when at last from the distant shore 
 
 A little boat stole out, to reach 
 Our loneliness, and bring once more 
 Fresh human thought and speech, 
 
 We told our tale, and the boatman cried : 
 
 " 'Twas the Pocahontas, all were lost ! 
 For miles along the coast the tide 
 Her shattered timbers tossed." ' 
 
 Then I looked the whole horizon round, 
 
 So beautiful the ocean spread 
 About us, o'er those sailors drowned ! 
 " Father in heaven," I said, 
 
 A child's grief struggling in my breast, 
 
 " Do purposeless thy children meet 
 Such bitter death ? How was it best 
 These hearts should cease to beat ? 
 
CELIA THAXTER. 563 
 
 " O, wherefore ? Are we nought to thee ? 
 
 Like senseless weeds that rise and fall 
 Upon thine awful sea, are we 
 No more then, after all ? " 
 
 And I shut the beauty from my sight, 
 
 For I thought of the dead that lay below ; 
 From the bright air faded the warmth and light 
 There came a chill like snow. 
 
 Then I heard the far-off note resound, 
 
 Where the breakers slow and slumberous rolled, 
 And a subtile sense of Thought profound 
 Touched me with power untold. 
 
 And, like a voice eternal, spake 
 
 That wondrous rhythm, and " Peace ! be still ! " 
 It murmured ; "bow thy head, and take 
 Life's rapture and life's ill, 
 
 "And wait. At last shall all be clear." 
 
 The long, low, mellow music rose 
 And fell, and soothed my dreaming ear 
 With infinite repose. 
 
 Sighing, I climbed the light-house stair, 
 
 Half forgetting my grief and pain ; 
 And while the day died sweet and fair, 
 I lit the lamps again. 
 
 THE BURGOMASTER GULL. 
 
 THE old-wives sit on the heaving brine, 
 
 White-breasted in the sun, 
 Preening and smoothing their feathers fine, 
 
 And scolding every one. 
 
 The snowy kitti wakes overhead, 
 
 With beautiful beaks of gold, 
 And wings of delicate gray outspread, 
 
 Float listening while they scold. 
 
564 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 And a foolish guillemot, swimming by, 
 Though heavy, and clumsy, and dull, 
 
 Joins in with a will when he hears their cry 
 'Gainst the Burgomaster Gull. 
 
 For every sea-bird, far and near, 
 With an atom of brains in its skull, 
 
 Knows plenty of reasons for hate and fear 
 Of the Burgomaster Gull. 
 
 The black ducks gather, with plumes so rich, 
 And the coots in twinkling lines ; 
 
 And the swift and slender water-witch, 
 Whose neck like silver shines ; 
 
 Big eider-ducks, with their caps pale green, 
 And their salmon-colored vests ; 
 
 And gay mergansers sailing between, 
 With their long and glittering crests. 
 
 But the loon aloof on the outer edge 
 
 Of the noisy meeting keeps, 
 And laughs to watch them behind the ledge 
 
 Where the lazy breaker sweeps. 
 
 They scream, and wheel, and dive, and fret, 
 
 And flutter in the foam ; 
 And fish and mussels blue they get 
 
 To feed their young at home : 
 
 Till, hurrying in, the little auk 
 
 Brings tidings that benumbs, 
 And stops at once their clamorous talk, 
 
 " The Burgomaster comes ! " 
 
 And up he sails, a splendid sight, 
 With " wings like banners " wide, 
 
 And eager eyes both big and bright, 
 That peer on every side. 
 
 A lovely kittiwake flying past, 
 With a slippery pollock fine, 
 
 Quoth the Burgomaster, " Not so fast, 
 My beauty ! This is mine ! " 
 
CELIA THAXTER. 56$ 
 
 His strong wing strikes with dizzying shock ; 
 
 Poor kittivvake, shrieking, flees ; 
 His booty he takes to the nearest rock, 
 
 To eat it at his ease. 
 
 The scared birds scatter to left and right, 
 
 But the bold buccaneer, in his glee, 
 Cares little enough for their woe and their fright, 
 
 " 'Twill \)zyour turn next ! " cries he. 
 
 He sees not, hidden behind the rock, 
 
 In the sea-weed, a small boat's hull, 
 Nor dreams he the gunners have spared the flock 
 
 For the Burgomaster Gull. 
 
 So proudly his dusky wings are spread, 
 
 And he launches out on the breeze, 
 When, lo ! what thunder of wrath and dread ! 
 
 What deadly pangs are these ! 
 
 The red blood drips, and the feathers fly, 
 
 Down drop the pinions wide ; 
 The robber-chief, with a bitter cry, 
 
 Falls headlong in the tide ! 
 
 They bear him off with laugh and shout ; 
 
 The wary birds return ; 
 From the clove-brown feathers that float about 
 
 The glorious news they learn. 
 
 Then such a tumult fills the place 
 
 As never was sung or said ; 
 And all cry, wild with joy, " The base, 
 
 Bad Burgomaster's dead ! " 
 
 And the old-wives sit with their caps so white, 
 
 And their pretty beaks so red, 
 And swing on the billows, and scream with delight, 
 
 For the Burgomaster's dead 1 
 
566 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 MOSES COIT TYLER. 
 
 Moses Coit Tyler was born at Griswold, Conn., in 1835, and was graduated at Yale Col- 
 lege in 1857. He studied theology in the seminary at Andover, Mass., and was settled as 
 pastor of a church in Poughkeepsie, N. Y., in 1860, where he remained two years. He is. 
 now Professor of English Literature in the University of Michigan. He has been a contrib- 
 utor to the New York Independent, and various other periodicals. He published in 1869 a 
 series of essays upon physical culture, entitled The Brawnviile Papers. He writes in an 
 earnest, vigorous style, that smacks of the field and the street no less than of university cul- 
 ture, and upon topics of the highest practical importance. 
 
 [From The Brawnviile Papers.] 
 MARTYRS TO SCIENCE. 
 
 ABOUT fifty years ago the sensibilities of England and America 
 were profoundly and generously stirred by the story, related by Rob- 
 ert Southey, of the wonderful life and the premature death of a stu- 
 dent at Cambridge, named Henry Kirke White. No doubt this story 
 owed not a little of its impressiveness to the eminence of the author 
 who told it', and to the charms of that exquisite prose of which the 
 Poet Laureate was so consummate a master. A delicate youth, born 
 in lowly circumstances, with the glorious face and the temperament 
 of genius, attracts to himself the favor of a wealthy patron, and is 
 enabled to enter one of the renowned universities of the world. Pen- 
 sive, poetical, aspiring, prayerful, and bilious, he pants to satisfy the 
 lofty expectations of his admirers, and succeeds in becoming the 
 model of a virtuous but romantic and lackadaisical student. He 
 wrestles with the stern realities of the Calculus, and indites sonnets 
 to the moon ; composes eloquent hymns to his Creator, and madri- 
 gals to his lady's eyebrow ; writes polished epigrams in the style of 
 Horace, which show the elegance of his taste, and essays on Melan- 
 choly in the style of Addison, which reveal the disordered condition 
 of his liver ; supplicates Heaven for the restoration of his health, 
 and denies himself needful sleep by the help of strong tea, pins, and 
 cold-water compresses ; utters a pious ejaculation before every meal, 
 and then swallows it with a rapidity indicative of his contempt for 
 the functions of teeth, gastric juice, and all other carnal things ; 
 gains all the highest prizes, amazes all the wisest Dons, violates all 
 the holiest laws of health, and dies in a blaze of glory, a Martyr to 
 Science ! 
 
 " Success is the mother of imitation ; " and the unintended evil of 
 
MOSES COIT TYLER. $6? 
 
 Kirke White's radiant and rose-watery career infected the colleges 
 of Christendom. Straightway we had a plague of pious and moony 
 young gentlemen, who excelled in Homer and hypochondria ; cul- 
 tivated prayer, poesy, and dyspepsia ; made tender reference in 
 rhyme to their lyres, their lutes, and their longings to be no more ; 
 sauntered languishingly by purling brooks, when they ought to 
 have been kicking the foot-ball ; sat up burning an extravagant 
 quantity of midnight oil, when they had been much more profit- 
 ably employed snoring in their bunks ; and, while confounding 
 the twinges of a morbid conscience with the pangs of indigestion, 
 and while mistaking the depression of abused nerves for an angelic 
 summons to leave this Vale of Tears, they awaited somewhat im- 
 patiently the time when they should also become Martyrs to 
 Science, bemoaned and canonized by the principal parish sewing 
 societies of the civilized world. 
 
 If this sort of thing had continued, it is impossible to say into 
 what a state the literary world would have descended. It is prob- 
 able that science would have come to be synonymous with sciatica, 
 and the word learning would have suggested lankness, lassitude, 
 and long hair ; the chief purpose of going to college would have 
 been to acquire the dead languages, an interesting cough, the 
 tearful sympathy of old women, and an early death ; the royal road 
 to knowledge would have signified a turnpike leading into the 
 graveyard. An old scholar would have been as rare as white 
 blackbirds and four-leaved clover, and gray hair would have been 
 an infallible proof that its possessor is an ignoramus. 
 
 Fortunately, before the new philosophy had become rooted in 
 the world, a great, robust, and manly scholar, Thomas Arnold, 
 was called to preside over one of the famous foundation schools 
 of England. He was a man who, above all things, scorned cant, 
 effeminacy, and unreality, and he set himself, with all the earnest- 
 ness of his powerful nature, to the task of exterminating this spirit 
 of literary sickliness. He refused to admire learned noodles of 
 the Kirke White order ; he called them by their true names, not 
 Martyrs to Science, but Suicides of Vanity, Ignorance, and 
 Folly. 
 
 In this spirit Dr. Arnold reprobated, as an impiety, the whole 
 system of cultivating one part of our nature at the expense of 
 another. He fought it in the class-room and in the chapel ; he 
 talked against it, wrote against it, lectured against if, preached 
 against it. He assailed it with texts of Scripture, with the maxims 
 
568 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 of Greek ethics, and the verdicts of common sense. He told his 
 boys that, just as there was the virtue of honesty, and the virtue 
 of justice, and the virtue of fortitude, and the virtue of charity, 
 and the virtue of reverence, so was there the gymnastic virtue 
 the virtue of obedience to the laws of health. He told them that 
 this was Christian truth, a portion of the Christianity which ex- 
 isted in the world before Christianity was born. He told them 
 that good health was of more consequence to them than a knowl- 
 edge of the Binomial Theorem, or than facility in the manufacture 
 of Latin hexameters ; that sound lungs and capable stomachs were 
 the necessary conditions of useful scholarship ; and that they would 
 be displeasing him, disappointing their friends, and disobeying 
 God if they postponed bodily vigor to the mistaken requirements 
 of Jiterary ambition. 
 
 I am not aware that the term Muscular Christianity was ever 
 applied by Dr. Arnold, or was ever used in his time ; but there 
 can be no doubt that it was he who first gave the broad and 
 wholesome impulse which has culminated in the habit of thought 
 described by that facetious expression, and that it was his influ- 
 ence which produced such heroes and scholars as Charles Kings- 
 ley, Dean Stanley, and Thomas Hughes a race of men as su- 
 perior to the type represented by Kirke White as Shakespeare is 
 superior to Tupper, as harmony and power are to inanity, as physi- 
 cal jubilance is to headache and heartburn, as common sense is to 
 nonsense, as reality is to moonshine. . . . 
 
 Muscular Christianity seems to me to be a vindication of the full 
 nobleness of meaning contained in the word Education / That 
 glorious word, so much used, so much abused, grasps within its 
 golden rim everything which can develop, strengthen, harmonize, 
 and intensify, and render effective all those faculties of our entire 
 nature, intellectual and corporeal, which the Creator has endowed us 
 with ; and in the logical application of this truth, it stands forth in 
 assertion of the long-despised and repudiated claims of the body. It 
 says that since every part of our nature is the sacred gift of God, he 
 who neglects his body, who calumniates his body, who misuses it, 
 who allows it to grow up puny, frail, sickly, misshapen, homely, 
 commits a sin against the Giver of the body. Ordinarily, therefore, 
 disease is a sin. Round shoulders and narrow chests are states 
 of criminality. Dyspepsia is heresy. The headache is infidelity. 
 It is as truly a man's moral duty to have a good digestion, and sweet 
 breath, and strong arms, and stalwart legs, and an erect bearing, as 
 
THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH. f 569 
 
 it is to read his Bible, or say his prayers, or love his neighbor as 
 himself. 
 
 Long creeds, either for churches or gymnasiums, are stumbling- 
 blocks and snares. The creed of Muscular Christianity is as brief 
 as it is just, comprehensive, and sublime : " ALL ATTAINABLE 
 
 HEALTH IS A DUTY; ALL AVOIDABLE SICKNESS IS A SIN." 
 
 THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH. 
 
 Thomas Bailey Aldrich was born in Portsmouth, N. H., November n, 1836. He was 
 employed for some years in a counting-room in New York, and afterwards became a reader 
 for a publishing house. He was a writer for the Evening Mirror, the Home Journal, and 
 the Saturday Press, of New York, and has been a frequent contributor, both of prose and 
 verse, to the magazines. His first poems were published in 1854, entitled The Bells. 
 Daisy's Necklace appeared in 1856 ; The Ballad of Baby Bell and Other Poems, and The 
 Course of True Love, in 1858 ; Pampineia in 1861 ; and later collections of Poems in 1863 
 and 1865. He published Out of His Head, a prose romance, in 1862, and The Story of a 
 Bad Boy in 1869. This last is one of those fortunate books that, while it is a faithful reflex 
 of the thoughts, feelings, and character of boys, has a higher meaning for men. It 
 breathes a noble spirit, and is a genuine boy's book, without any offensive writing down to 
 youthful comprehension. 
 
 Mr. Aldrich's poems are exquisitely tender in sentiment, graceful in movement, and evi- 
 dently inspired by sympathy with nature. Indeed his "call" to poetry is manifest, and 
 the alternate light and shadow of his verses, we feel sure, have been reflected from his own 
 life. His poems are pure as pearls. It is a pleasure to reflect that among all the writers 
 of popular poetry in this country there are but few whose lines are ever discolored by pas- 
 sion, or who do not show that true beauty is at accord with the purest morals and highest 
 idea of right. 
 
 CASTLES. 
 
 THERE is a picture in my brain 
 That only fades to come again, 
 The sunlight through a veil of rain 
 
 To leeward gliding, 
 A narrow stretch of brown sea-sand, 
 A light-house half a league from land, 
 And two young lovers, hand in hand, 
 
 A castle building. 
 
 Upon the budded apple trees 
 The robins sing by twos and threes, 
 And ever at the faintest breeze 
 Down drops a blossom : 
 
57O HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 And ever would that lover be 
 The wind that robs the bourgeoned tree, 
 And lifts the soft tress daintily 
 On Beauty's bosom. 
 
 Ah, graybeard, what a happy thing 
 It was, when life was in its spring, 
 To peep through Love's betrothal ring 
 
 At fields Elysian, 
 To move and breathe in magic air, 
 To think that all that seems is fair, 
 Ah, ripe young mouth and golden hair, 
 
 Thou pretty vision ! 
 
 Well, well, I think not on these two 
 But the old wound breaks out anew, 
 And the old dream, as if 'twere true, 
 
 In my heart nestles : 
 Then tears come welling to my eyes, 
 For yonder, all in saintly guise, 
 As 'twere, a sweet dead woman lies 
 
 Upon the trestles 1 
 
 BEFORE THE RAIN. 
 
 WE knew it would rain, for all the morn, 
 
 A spirit on slender ropes of mist 
 Was lowering its golden buckets down 
 
 Into the vapory amethyst 
 
 Of marshes, and swamps, and dismal fens, 
 Scooping the dew that lay in the flowers, 
 
 Dipping the jewels out of the sea, 
 To sprinkle them over the land in showers. 
 
 We knew it would rain, for the poplars showed 
 The white of their leaves, the amber grain 
 
 Shrunk in the wind, and the lightning now 
 Is tangled in tremulous skeins of rain 1 
 
THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH. 5/1 
 
 AFTER THE RAIN. 
 
 THE rain has ceased, and in my room 
 The sunshine pours an airy flood ; 
 
 And on the church's dizzy vane 
 The ancient cross is bathed in blood. 
 
 From out the dripping ivy leaves, 
 Antiquely carven, gray and high, 
 
 A dormer, facing westward, looks 
 Upon the village like an eye : 
 
 And now it glimmers in the sun, 
 A globe of gold, a disk, a speck ; 
 
 And in the belfry sits a dove 
 With purple ripples on her neck. 
 
 PISCATAQUA RIVER. 
 
 THOU singest by the gleaming isles, 
 By woods and fields of corn 
 
 Thou singest, and the heaven smiles 
 Upon my birthday morn. 
 
 But I within a city, I, 
 
 So full of vague unrest, 
 Would almost give my life to lie 
 
 An hour upon thy breast ; 
 
 To let the wherry listless go, 
 And, wrapt in dreamy joy, 
 
 Dip and surge idly to and fro, 
 Like the red harbor-buoy ; 
 
 To sit in happy indolence, 
 
 To rest upon the oars, 
 And catch the heavy earthy scents 
 
 That blow from summer shores ; 
 
 To see the rounded sun go down, 
 And with its parting fires 
 
 Light up the windows of the town, 
 And burn the tapering spires ! 
 36 
 
5/2 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 And then to hear the muffled tolls 
 From steeples slim and white, 
 
 And watch, among the Isles of Shoals, 
 The Beacon's orange light. 
 
 O River ! flowing to the main 
 
 Through woods and fields of corn, 
 
 Hear thou my longing and my pain 
 This sunny birthday morn : 
 
 And take this song, which sorrow shapes 
 
 To music like thine own, 
 And sing it to the cliffs and capes 
 
 And crags where I am known. 
 
 WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS. 
 
 William Dean Howells was born in Martinsville, Belmont County, O., March i, 1837. 
 His father, who was a printer and newspaper publisher, removed to Hamilton, O., in 1840, 
 and in his office the son learned the business. He was afterwards connected with the Cin- 
 cinnati Gazette and the Ohio State Journal (of Columbus). He was a contributor to the 
 Atlantic Monthly, and other magazines, and in 1860 published a volume with Mr. J. J. 
 Piatt, entitled Poems of Two Friends. In 1861 he was appointed consul to Venice, where 
 he resided until 1865. In July, 1870, he became the editor of the Atlantic Monthly. Vene- 
 tian Life, was published in 1866; Italian Journeys in 1867; No Love Lost, a poem, in 
 1868 ; Suburban Sketches in 1871 ; Their Wedding Journey in 1872. 
 
 Mr. Howells writes with facility and elegance. We do not complain that he is not pro- 
 found ; there are a plenty of authors who are ambitious of that distinction. His observa- 
 tions are those of a cultivated man, expressed with simplicity and feeling, with pleasing 
 reminiscences of youthful sentiment, and humor of a quiet kind. His sketches of Italian 
 life are among the most readable of modern works of travel. In the Suburban Sketches the 
 author discourses upon the surroundings of Boston, dealing with the less obvious features, 
 and often toying with a subject in a tantalizing way. In the account of the Musical Festi- 
 val of 1869, for instance, the author uses his most dainty touches to describe the "side 
 shows," and to paint for us the Huldahs and Zekiels who came down to the Jubilee, but 
 he has not set down a word " with blood in it " for the grandeur of that incomparable 
 chorus. One scene in the volume is drawn with a masterly hand. It arrests the attention 
 and haunts the memory like an imagined tableau by Gerome, composed for the Bridge of 
 Sighs. It is no dilettante artist that conceived and executed that sketch. 
 
 Mr. Howells's poems have many fine points. The Movers, printed here, is a piece of 
 realism which carries its own warrant of truth in every line. All his poems have graceful 
 turns of thought, and leave an abiding impression of artistic feeling and melody. 
 
WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS. 5/3 
 
 [From Suburban Sketches.] 
 
 IN winter, the journey to or from Boston cannot appear otherwise 
 than very dreary to the fondest imagination. Coming out, nothing 
 can look more arctic and forlorn than the river, double-shrouded in 
 ice and snow, or sadder than the contrast offered to the same pros- 
 pect in summer. Then all is laughing, and it is a joy in every nerve 
 to ride out over the Long Bridge at high tide, and, looking south- 
 ward, to see the wide crinkle and glitter of that beautiful expanse of 
 water, which laps on one hand the granite quays of the city, and on 
 the other washes among the weeds and wild grasses of the salt mead- 
 ows. A ship coming slowly up the channel, or a dingy tug vio- 
 lently darting athwart it, gives an additional pleasure to the eye, and 
 adds something dreamy or vivid to the beauty of the scene. It is 
 hard to say at what hour of the summer's day the prospect is love- 
 liest ; and I am certainly not going to speak of the sunset as the 
 least of its delights. When this exquisite spectacle is presented, the 
 horse-car passenger, happy to cling with one foot to the rear plat- 
 form steps, looks out over the shoulder next him into fairy land. 
 Crimson and purple, the bay stretches westward till its waves darken 
 into the grassy levels, where, here and there, a hayrick shows per- 
 fectly black against the light. Afar off, south-eastward and west- 
 ward, the uplands wear a tinge of tenderest blue, and in the nearer 
 distance, on the low shores of the river, hover the white plumes of 
 arriving and departing trains. The windows of the stately houses 
 that overlook the water take the sunset from it evanescently, and 
 begin to chill and darken before the crimson burns out of the sky. 
 The windows are, in fact, best after nightfall, when they are bril- 
 liantly lighted from within, and when, if it is a dark, warm night, and 
 the briny fragrance comes up strong from the falling tide, the lights, 
 reflected far down on the still water, bring a dream, as I have heard 
 travelled Bostonians say, of Venice and her magical effects in the 
 same kind. But for me the beauty of the scene needs the help of no 
 such association ; I am content with it for what it is. I enjoy also 
 the hints of spring which one gets in riding over the Long Bridge at 
 low tide in the first open days. Then there is not only a vernal 
 beating of carpets on the piers of the drawbridge, but the piles and 
 walls, left bare by the receding water, show green patches of sea- 
 weeds and mosses, and flatter the willing eye with a dim hint of 
 summer. This reeking and saturated herbage, which always seems 
 to me, in contrast with dry land growths, what the water-logged life 
 
5/4 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 of seafaring folk is to that which we happier men lead on shore, 
 taking so kindly the deceitful warmth and brightness of the sun, has 
 then a charm which it loses when summer really comes ; nor does 
 one later have so keen an interest in the men wading about in the 
 shallows below the bridge, who, as in the distance they stoop over 
 to gather whatever shell-fish they seek, make a very fair show of 
 being some ungainlier sort of storks, and are as near as we can hope 
 to come to the spring-prophesying storks of song and story. A sen- 
 timent of the drowsiness that goes before the awakening of the year, 
 and is so different from the drowsiness that precedes the great 
 autumnal slumber, is in the air, but is gone when we leave the river 
 behind and strike into the straggling village beyond. 
 
 [From Poems of Two Friends.] 
 THE MOVERS. 
 
 PARTING was over at last, and all the good-bys had been spoken. 
 Up the long hill-side the white-tented wagon moved slowly, 
 Bearing the mother and children, while onward before them the 
 
 father 
 Trudged with his gun on his arm, and the faithful house-dog beside 
 
 him, 
 Grave and sedate, as if knowing the sorrowful thoughts of his master. 
 
 April was in her prime, and the day in its dewy awaking : 
 Like a great flower, afar on the crest of the eastern woodland, 
 Goldenly bloomed the sun, and over the beautiful valley, 
 Dim with its dew and shadow, and bright with its dream of a river, 
 Looked to the western hills, and shone on the humble procession, 
 Paining with splendor the children's eyes, and the heart of the 
 mother. 
 
 Beauty, and fragrance, and song filled the air like a palpable presence. 
 Sweet was the smell of the dewy leaves and the flowers in the wild 
 
 wood, 
 
 Fair the long reaches of sun and shade in the aisles of the forest. 
 Glad of the spring, and of love, and of morning, the wild birds were 
 
 singing : 
 
 Jays to each other called harshly, then mellowly fluted together ; 
 Sang the oriole songs as golden and gay as his plumage ; 
 
WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS. 575 
 
 Pensively piped the querulous quails their greetings unfrequent, 
 While, on the meadow-elm, the meadow-lark gushed forth in music, 
 Rapt, exultant, and shaken, with the great joy of his singing ; 
 Over the river, loud-chattering, aloft in the air, the kingfisher 
 Hung, ere dropped, like a bolt, in the water beneath him ; 
 Gossiping, out of the bank flew myriad twittering swallows ; 
 And in the boughs of the sycamore quarrelled and clamored the 
 blackbirds. 
 
 Never for these things a moment halted the movers, but onward, 
 Up the long hill-side, the white-tented wagon moved slowly, 
 Till, on the summit, that overlooked all the beautiful valley, 
 Trembling and spent, the horses came to a stand-still unbidden ; 
 Then from the wagon the mother in silence got down with her chil- 
 dren, 
 Came and stood by the father, and rested her hand on his shoulder. 
 
 Long together they gazed on the beautiful valley before them ; 
 
 Looked on the well-known fields that stretched away to the wood- 
 lands, 
 
 Where, in the dark lines of green, showed the milk-white crest of the 
 dogwood, 
 
 Snow of wild-plums in bloom, and crimson tints of the red-bud ; 
 
 Looked on the pasture fields, where the cattle were lazily grazing 
 
 Softly, and sweet, and thin came the faint, far notes of the cow- 
 bells ; 
 
 Looked on the oft-trodden lanes, with their elder and blackberry 
 borders ; 
 
 Looked on the orchard, a bloomy sea, with its billows of blos- 
 soms. 
 
 Fair was the scene, yet suddenly strange and all unfamiliar, 
 
 Like as the faces of friends, when the word of farewell has been 
 spoken. 
 
 Long together they gazed ; then at last on the little log-cabin 
 Home for so many years, now home no longer forever 
 Rested their tearless eyes in the silent rapture of anguish. 
 Up on the morning air no column of smoke from the chimney 
 Wavering, silver and azure, rose, fading and brightening ever ; 
 Shut was the door where yesterday morning the children were play 
 
5/6 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 Lit with a gleam of the sun the window stared up at them blindly ; 
 Cold was the hearthstone now, and the place was forsaken and 
 empty. 
 
 Empty ? Ah, no ! but haunted by thronging and tenderest fancies, 
 
 Sad recollections of all that had ever been, of sorrow or gladness, 
 
 Once more they sat in the glow of the wide red fire in the winter ; 
 
 Once more they sat by the door in the cool of the still summer even- 
 ing; 
 
 Once more the mother seemed to be singing her babe there to slum- 
 ber; 
 
 Once more the father beheld her weep o'er the child that was dying ; 
 
 Once more the place was peopled by all the Past's sorrow and glad- 
 ness ! 
 
 Neither might speak for the thoughts that came crowding their 
 hearts so, 
 
 Till, in their ignorant sorrow, aloud the children lamented ; 
 
 Then was the spell of silence dissolved, and the father and mother 
 
 Burst into tears and embraced, and turned their dim eyes to the 
 westward. 
 
 FRANCIS BRET HARTE. 
 
 Francis Bret Harte was born in Albany, N. Y., in the year 1837. He was an infant when 
 his father died, and at the age of seventeen he went to California, where he taught school, 
 worked in the mines, became a compositor, and at length an editor. He was employed for 
 some time in government offices. In 1868 he founded the Overland Monthly, and was its 
 first editor. In this magazine he published the poems, tales, and sketches that have made 
 him better known, probably, than any writer of his age in the world. His poems are in 
 various moods, some characterized by tender beauty, some by manly vigor, but most 
 of them full of rollicking humor, and expressed in the audaciously picturesque slang of 
 the Pacific roughs. The Address to the Pliocene Skull, the Story of Dow's Flat, and Alkali 
 Station, are masterpieces in their way, and far above the level of The Heathen Chinee, 
 which so moved the public to mirth. His genius is most conspicuous, we think, in his 
 prose. We use the word "genius " advisedly, for the power to create characters and place 
 them in living relations with each other in vivid scenes, as we see them in The Outcasts of 
 Poker Plat and The Luck of Roaring Camp, is an original gift, as far beyond the reach 
 of art as the creation of a rose. The vices of the miners, gamblers, and ruffians are unfor- 
 tunately inseparable from their other strong features ; and these stories, though they may 
 be read by pure-minded people (with charitable allowances), are not at all "milk for babes," 
 and could not be properly included in a work like this. 
 
 The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales was published in 1869 ; Poems in 1870, 
 also Condensed Novels ; East and West Poems in 1872. 
 
 Mr. Harte is now engaged in writing for the Atlantic Monthly. ^ 
 
FRANCIS BRET HARTE. S77 
 
 JOHN BURNS OF GETTYSBURG. 
 
 HAVE you heard the story that gossips tell 
 
 Of Burns of Gettysburg ? No ? Ah, well : 
 
 Brief is the glory that hero earns, 
 
 Briefer the story of poor John Burns : 
 
 He was the fellow who won renown, 
 
 The only man who didn't back down 
 
 When the rebels rode through his native town ; 
 
 But held his own in the fight next day, 
 
 When all his townsfolk rari away. 
 
 That was in July, sixty-three, 
 
 The very day that General Lee, 
 
 Flower of Southern chivalry, 
 
 Baffled and beaten, backward reeled 
 
 From a stubborn Meade and a barren field. 
 
 I might tell how, but the day before, 
 
 John Burns stood at his cottage-door, 
 
 Looking down the village street, 
 Where, in the shade of his peaceful vine, 
 He heard the low of his gathered kine, 
 
 And felt their breath with incense sweet ; 
 Or I might say, when the sunset burned 
 The old farm gable, he thought it turned 
 The milk that fell, in a babbling flood 
 Into the milk-pail, red as blood ! 
 Or how he fancied the hum of bees 
 Were bullets buzzing among the trees. 
 But all such fanciful thoughts as these 
 Were strange to a practical man like Burns, 
 Who minded only his own concerns, 
 Troubled no more by fancies fine 
 Than one of his calm-eyed, long-tailed kine, 
 Quite old-fashioned and matter-of-fact, 
 Slow to argue, but quick to act. 
 That was the reason, as some folks say, 
 He fought so well on that terrible day. 
 
 And it was terrible. On the right 
 Raged for hours the heady fight, 
 37 
 
578 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 Thundered the battery's double bass, 
 
 Difficult music for men to face ; 
 
 While on the left, where now the graves 
 
 Undulate like the living waves 
 
 That all that day unceasing swept 
 
 Up to the pits the rebels kept, 
 
 Round shot ploughed the upland glades, 
 
 Sown with bullets, reaped with blades ; 
 
 Shattered fences here and there 
 
 Tossed their splinters in the air ; 
 
 The very trees were stripped and bare ; 
 
 The barns that once held yellow grain 
 
 Were heaped with harvests of the slain ; 
 
 The cattle bellowed on the plain, 
 
 The turkeys screamed with might and main, 
 
 And brooding barn-fowl left their rest 
 
 With strange shells bursting in each nest. 
 
 Just where the tide of battle turns, 
 
 Erect and lonely stood old John Burns. 
 
 How do you think the man was dressed ? 
 
 He wore an ancient long buff vest, 
 
 Yellow as saffron, but his best ; 
 
 And, buttoned over his manly breast, 
 
 Was a bright blue coat, with a rolling collar, 
 
 And large gilt buttons, size of a dollar, 
 
 With tails that the country-folk called " swaller." 
 
 He wore a broad-brimmed, bell-crowned hat, 
 
 White as the locks on which it sat. 
 
 Never had such a sight been seen 
 
 For forty years on the village green, 
 
 Since old John Burns was a country beau, 
 
 And went to the " quiltings " long ago. 
 
 Close at his elbows all that day, 
 
 Veterans of the Peninsula, 
 
 Sunburnt and bearded, charged away ; 
 
 And striplings, downy of lip and chin, 
 
 Clerks that the Home Guard mustered in, 
 
 Glanced, as they passed, at the hat he wore, 
 
 Then at the rifle his right hand bore ; 
 
FRANCIS BRET HARTE. 579 
 
 And hailed him, from out their youthful lore, 
 
 With scraps of a slangy repertoire : 
 
 " How are you, white hat ?" " Put her through ! " 
 
 " Your head's level," and " Bully for you ! " 
 
 Called him " Daddy," begged he'd disclose 
 
 The name of the tailor who made his clothes, 
 
 And what was the value he set on those ; 
 
 While Burns, unmindful of jeer and scoff, 
 
 Stood there picking the rebels off, 
 
 With his long brown rifle, and bell-crown hat, 
 
 And the swallow-tails they were laughing at. 
 
 'Twas but a moment, for that respect 
 
 Which clothes all courage their voices checked ; 
 
 And something the wildest could understand 
 
 Spake in the old man's strong right hand; 
 
 And his corded throat, and the lurking frown 
 
 Of his eyebrows under his own bell-crown ; 
 
 Until, as they gazed, there crept an awe 
 
 Through the ranks in whispers, and some men saw, 
 
 In the antique vestments and long white hair, 
 
 The Past of the Nation in battle there ; 
 
 And some of the soldiers since declare 
 
 That the gleam of his old white hat afar, 
 
 Like the crested plume of the brave Navarre, 
 
 That day was their oriflamme of war. 
 
 So raged the battle. You know the rest : 
 How the rebels, beaten and backward pressed, 
 Broke, at the final charge, and ran. 
 At which John Burns a practical man 
 Shouldered his rifle, unbent his brows, 
 And then went back to his bees and cows. 
 
 That is the story of old John Burns ; 
 This is the moral the reader learns : 
 In fighting the battle, the question's whether 
 You'll show a hat that's white, or a feather ! 
 
5$O HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 DICKENS IN CAMP. 
 
 ABOVE the pines the moon was slowly drifting, 
 
 The river sang below ; 
 
 The dim Sierras, far beyond, uplifting 
 
 Their minarets of snow. 
 
 The roaring camp-fire, with rude humor, painted 
 
 The ruddy tints of health 
 On haggard face and form that drooped and fainted 
 
 In the fierce race for wealth ; 
 
 Till one arose, and from his pack's scant treasure 
 
 A hoarded volume drew, 
 And cards were dropped from hands of listless leisure 
 
 To hear the tale anew ; 
 
 And then, while round them shadows gathered faster, 
 
 And as the firelight fell, 
 He read aloud the book wherein the Master 
 
 Had writ of " Little Nell." 
 
 Perhaps 'twas boyish fancy, for the reader 
 
 Was youngest of them all, 
 But, as he read, from clustering pine and cedar 
 
 A silence seemed to fall ; 
 
 The fir-trees, gathering closer in the shadows, 
 
 Listened in every spray, 
 While the whole camp, with " Nell " on English meadows, 
 
 Wandered and lost their way. 
 
 And so in mountain solitudes o'ertaken 
 
 As by some spell divine 
 Their cares dropped from them like the needles shaken 
 
 From out the gusty pine. 
 
 Lost is that camp, and wasted all its fire : 
 
 And he who wrought that spell ? 
 Ah, towering pine and stately Kentish spire, 
 
 Ye have one tale to tell ! 
 
GAIL HAMILTON. $81 
 
 Lost is that camp ! but let its fragrant story 
 
 Blend with the breath that thrills 
 With hop-vines' incense all the pensive glory 
 
 That fills the Kentish hills. 
 
 And on that grave where English oak and holly 
 
 And laurel wreaths entwine, 
 Deem it not all a too presumptuous folly, 
 
 This spray of Western pine ! 
 
 "GAIL HAMILTON." 
 
 In place of the usual biographical information, we present the following extract from the 
 preface to Country Living and Country Thinking written by this author : 
 
 "I know that I can bear censure ; I think I could endure neglect; but there is one thing 
 which I will never forgive, and that is any encroachment upon my personality. Whatever 
 an author puts between the two covers of his book is public property ; whatever of himself he 
 does not put there is his private property, as much as if he had never written a word. I do 
 not say that any information which may be gathered, or any conjecture which may be 
 hazarded, concerning the man or the woman who stands behind the mask of the author, may 
 not be a lawful theme of conversation, if people are interested enough to make it so ; but 
 the appearance of any such information or conjecture in any public print, whether in the 
 form of book notice or news item, I consider an unpardonable impertinence." 
 
 Gail Hamilton's writings have a very decided character, and, in some respects, offer a 
 strong and desirable contrast to the colorless inanities printed in ladies' magazines twenty- 
 five years ago, and then considered to be proper models or literary fashion-plates for 
 female authors. Her discussions have covered a wide range r but in nearly everything she 
 has written we see that the motive force lies in her intense abhorrence of the present relative 
 position of the sexes in law and in society. With such feelings and convictions there can be 
 no repose. Every book is a battle, every chapter a skirmish, every sentence a blow or a 
 defiance. The pugnacious tone, if not innate, becomes thus a second nature, and denun- 
 ciation, in gcod vigorous Saxon (with some modern phrases not yet in the dictionaries), 
 may be looked for at any moment. 
 
 Our judgments of the author are of course derived from her works. We should say that 
 she exhibits unusually contradictory qualities. She has more common sense and less dis- 
 cretion than any woman we now remember. She reverences manhood and hates men. 
 She has given her sex the best possible advice for their culture, their health, their domestic 
 habits, and she berates them for their content in their inevitable lot. She argues tena- 
 ciously like one sex and scolds like the other. She writes with an easy mastery of English 
 that a professor might envy, but is certain to brin^ in some unpardonable sling before fin- 
 ishing an article. Where she has least knowledge she treads with most confidence. Greatly 
 indebted, as all sprightly essayists are, to other thinkers, she is unconscious that her wisdom 
 is not of her own quarrying. With natural gifts of observation, with a natural s?nse of 
 beauty, and a fund of natural humor, that should make her one of the most delightful of 
 essayists, she seems to prefer the part of a wayward malcontent, and to indite what is irri- 
 tating rather than whit is amiable. 
 
 With due respect for her great talents, and making allowances for the state of mind pro- 
 
5 82 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 duced by a constant sense of injustice, we think the cause of woman's elevation is not to be 
 finally won by argument alone. Woman may be raised to an equal position with man ; but 
 that will happen when, by the renunciation of playthings, by emancipation from fashion, by 
 development of her moral and intellectual powers, and by assuming a proper share of the 
 burdens of the world, she has shown that she is fitted to maintain that equality. 
 
 Among the works of this author are Country Living and Country Thinking (1862) ; Gala 
 Days (1863); A New Atmosphere (1864); Stumbling Blocks (1864), Skirmishes and 
 Sketches (1865) ; Summer Rest (1866) ; Red Letter Days (1866) ; Wool Gathering (1867) -, 
 Woman's Wrongs, a Counter Irritant (1868); Battle of the Books (1870); and Woman's 
 Worth and Worthlessness (1871). She is said to be at present (1872) the editor of Wood's 
 Household Magazine, published at Newburg, N. Y. 
 
 [From Country Living and Country Thinking.] 
 MEN AND WOMEN. 
 
 MAN, too, is independent. He goes where and when he lists. 
 He need not be rich to gaze upon all the wonders of the new world, 
 all the magnificence of the old. He can shoulder his knapsack, and 
 traverse the globe. Every spot consecrated by genius, patriotism, 
 suffering, love, is spread out before him. Whatever of beautiful, 
 grand, or glorious is to be found in art or nature is his. He can 
 people his brain with memories that will never die, adorn it with pic- 
 tures whose colors will never fade, treasure up untold wealth for his 
 soul to feed on in future years. 
 
 If the day's long toil leave him restless, if throbbing heart or ach- 
 ing head crave a draught of pure elixir, if the murmur of the water- 
 fall, the glow of the stars, or the ever new splendor of the moon lure 
 him out into the night, he goes, and the hush and solitude bring 
 him rest and healing ; the night sweeps into his soul, and cools the 
 fever in his veins. The world recedes. He stands face to face with 
 God. He receives again the breath of life, and becomes a living 
 soul. 
 
 Alas, fora woman ! She can never do a thing, except gregariously. 
 She has no solitude except in the house, which is no solitude at all. 
 She is always at the mercy of others' whims, caprices, tastes, busi- 
 ness engagements, or headaches. If she travels, she must partially 
 accommodate herself to somebody's convenience. She must go in 
 the beaten track. Her eyes must look right on, and her eyelids 
 straight before her. There are no wild wanderings at her own sweet 
 will, no experimental deviations from the prescribed route, no haz- 
 ardous but delightful flying off in a tangent on the spur of the 
 moment. She cannot separate herself from the past, slough off her 
 identity, and become a new being in new scenes. She must take her 
 (Ad associations with her, and they are a robe of oiled silk, effectually 
 
GAIL HAMILTON. 583 
 
 excluding the new atmosphere which should penetrate to the very 
 sources of life. She cannot enjoy in quietness and silence. She is 
 one of a party, and must go into a rapture here and an ecstasy there, 
 and give a definite reason for both. She must be wakened from a 
 trance of delight by a lisped " How beautiful ! " or a quotation from 
 Byron, by some one whose knowledge of Byron is derived from a 
 gilt volume of '"Elegant Extracts," or the "American First Class 
 Book." It is very appalling. . . . 
 
 THE REACH OF INFLUENCE. 
 
 IT is not necessarily the man who comes in contact with the largest 
 number of people who exercises the most influence. It may be so, 
 but it does not follow, and we do not know whether it is or not. 
 When John Bunyan was cast into Bedford jail, there were doubtless 
 many pious souls who mourned that the zeal and power of his best 
 years should be thus wasted ; yet through those prison walls there 
 streams a light which will grow brighter and brighter till lost in the 
 glory of the Celestial City. Every person is responsible for all the 
 good within the scope of his abilities, and for no more, and none 
 can tell whose sphere is the largest. A mother, tending her child 
 in the quiet seclusion of a Virginian home, sees no foreshadowing 
 of a mighty destiny, yet there comes a day when an empire's fate 
 trembles in the tiny hand now clasping hers. It is therefore imper- 
 tinent to assume that the responsibility of teachers, or of any one 
 class of people, is greater than that of any other. The only differ- 
 ence is, that one influences at first hand, another at second or third. 
 At every foot-fall we set in motion a chord whose trembling thrills 
 ten thousand more, and will quiver on eternally. Every thought, 
 and word, and deed of every human being is followed by its inevitable 
 consequence : for the one we are responsible ; with the other we 
 have nothing to do. 
 
 [From the Same.] 
 MAKING BROWN BREAD CAKES. 
 
 LET me give the modus operandi. Of fine maize flour, yellow as 
 the locks of the lovely Lenore, take well, take enough I can- 
 not tell exactly how much ; it depends upon circumstances." Of 
 fresh new milk, white as the brow of the charming Arabella, take 
 I don't know exactly how much of that, either; it depends 
 
584 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 upon circumstances, particularly on the quantity of meal. If you 
 have not new milk, take blue milk, provided it be sweet; or, if 
 you have none that is sweet, sour milk will answer; or, if "your 
 folks don't keep a cow," take water, clear and sparkling as the 
 eyes of the peerless Amanda ; but whether it be milk or water, 
 let it be scalding as the tears of the outraged Isabel. Of molasses, 
 sweet as the tones of the tuneful Lisette, take a great deal, if 
 it is summer ; in the winter not quite so much (for the reasons 
 therefor, see Newton's Treatise on the Expansive Power of Fluids, 
 vol. L, p. 175). Of various other substances, animal, vegetable, 
 and mineral, which it becomes not me to mention, first^ because 
 I have forgotten what they are ; secondly, because I never knew; 
 and thirdly, because, as the immortal Toots remarks, " it is of no 
 consequence," take whatever seems good in your sight, and cast 
 them together into the kneading-trough, and knead with all your 
 might and main. Provide yourself, then, with a tin plate, not bright 
 and new, for so will your cakes be heavy, your crust cracked, and 
 your soul sorrowful, but one blackened by fire, and venerable with 
 time, and rough with service. With your own roseate fingers 
 scoop out a portion of the pulpy mass. Fear not to touch it ; it 
 is soft, yielding, and plastic as the heart of the affectionate Clara. 
 Turn it lovingly over in your hands ; round it ; mould it ; caress 
 it ; soften down its asperities ; smooth off its angularities ; repress 
 its bold protuberances ; encourage its timid shrinkings ; and when 
 it is smooth as the velvet cheek of Ida, and oval as the classic 
 face of Helen, give one "last, long, lingering look," and lay it 
 tenderly in the swart arms of its tutelau plate. Repeat the pro- 
 cess until your cakes shall equal the sands on the sea shore, or the 
 stars in the sky for multitude, or as long as your meal holds out, 
 or till you are tired. I am prescribing for one only. Ab uno discs 
 omnes. 
 
 To the Stygian cave, that yawns dismally from, the kitchen stove, 
 consign it without a murmur. Item: said stove must have a pro- 
 digious crack up and down the front. A philosophical reason for 
 this I am unable to give. I refer the curious in cause and effect 
 to Galen's deservedly celebrated Disquisition on the Relations of 
 Fire and Metals, passim; also, Debrauche on Dough, p. 35, Appen- 
 dix. I only know that the only stove whence I ever saw brown 
 bread "cakes issue had an immense crack up and down the front. 
 [Since writing the above, a new stove has been substituted for the 
 old one, and still brown bread 'cakes are duly marshalled every morn* 
 
GAIL HAMILTON. 585 
 
 ing. Consequently you need not be particular about the crack. 
 Still, I would advise all amateurs to consult the authorities I have 
 mentioned. It will be a good exercise.] 
 
 When your cake has for a sufficient length of time undergone the 
 ordeal of fire, bring it again to the blessed light of day. If the edge 
 be black and blistered, like a giant tree blasted by the lightning's 
 stroke, or if the crust be rent and torn as by internal convulsions, 
 cast it away. It is worthless. Trample it under foot. Item : put 
 on your stoutest boots, and provide yourself with cork soles ; other- 
 wise the trampling may prove to be anything but an agreeable pas- 
 time. J5ut if the surface be a beautiful auburn brown, crisp, brittle, 
 and unbroken, 
 
 "Joy, joy, forever ! your task is done ! 
 The gates are past, and breakfast is won ; " 
 
 or, as the clown said of the apple-dumplings, " Them's the jockeys 
 for me." 
 
 If you are an outside barbarian, ignorant of the refinements of 
 civilized life, you will at once proceed to cut open with your knife 
 the steaming cake as you would an oyster, and thereby render it 
 heavy as the heart of the weeping Niobe ; but if you are a gentle- 
 man and a scholar, you will gently sunder its clinging sides without 
 " armed interference," and so preserve its spongy, porous texture. 
 To the uninitiated one part is as good as another ; but let me con- 
 fidentially whisper in your ear, if it should be your duty to pass the 
 plate, present to your neighbor that side which bears the under-crust, 
 as that is liable to be burnt and unpalatable, and reserve to your- 
 self the smoothly-rounded upper-crust, which is deliciously tooth- 
 some. Lay your portion on your plate crust downward. With 
 your own polished knife (the reason of this you will presently per- 
 ceive) carve from the ball of golden butter a lump of magnificent 
 dimensions. Be not niggardly in this respect. Exercise towards 
 yourself a large-hearted generosity ; for butter sinks into itself, and 
 in itself is lost with wonderful rapidity, when it rests on a pedestal 
 of hot bread. Press your butter, still adhering to your knife, down 
 into the warm, soft bread, in various places, forming little wells, 
 whose walls are unctuous with the melted luxury, and then O, 
 THEN ! but I cannot sustain the picture which my fancy has 
 drawn. 
 
586 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 JOAQUIN MILLER. 
 
 Cincinnatus Heine Miller was born in the Wabash District of Indiana, November 10, 
 1841. When he was thirteen years of age his parents emigrated to Oregon, overland, a jour- 
 ney of five months, and settled in the Willamette Valley. The boy worked on the farm for 
 three years, and then went to California to hunt for gold. Though he had had but the slight- 
 est opportunities for education, he showed his literary tastes early, and while at work for a 
 company of miners he commenced writing verses. When it was suggested to him that 
 poetry was governed by fixed rules, he broke out into an anathema against " riih-um and 
 measurement," and added, "There's the ideas, and I know what poetic license means." 
 He was not successful as a miner, and led for several years a wild life of adventure in Cali- 
 fornia and Nevada, then with Walker in Nicaragua, and afterwards with a band of nomadic 
 savages. He was miner, astrologer, poet, filibuster, Indian sachem, and roaming herdsman. 
 In 1860 he returned to his home in Oregon, lamed by gunshot and arrow wounds, and com- 
 menced studying law in Eugene, the county seat of Lane County. The next year he went 
 to Idaho, where he conducted the hazardous but remunerative business of a miners' express. 
 He returned to Eugene, and edited a newspaper, which was so disloyal as to be suppressed 
 by the military authorities. At this period he married a lady who had been a poetical con- 
 tributor to his paper. He went to San Francisco for a lime, and next removed to Eastern 
 Oregon, where, in 1866 he was elected county judge, an office which he held until 1870. In 
 this year he published, in a small volume, a poem called Songs of the Sierras (the one which 
 is now entitled Californian), giving his name as Joaquin Miller. His wife having obtained 
 a divorce from him, he made provision for his children, and went to England. After great 
 difficulties he found a publisher through the influence of the poet Rosetti. His poems pro- 
 duced a great sensation in both hemispheres, and the author was immediately famous. He 
 returned to Oregon in October, 1871, and set out again for a tour through California and the 
 regions southward. 
 
 The writer in the Overland Monthly, from whose account this notice is abridged, says that 
 the poet is temperate, modest, quiet, and simple in his tastes and dress ; and that in person 
 he is remarkable only for his profusion of long yellow hair, and for the fine play of expres- 
 sion that illumines his wonderfully delicate and sensitive face. 
 
 This singular career gives us a certain interpretation of his wild and vehement, but vivid- 
 ly picturesque. verse. He describes the magnificent scenery of the Pacific coast as though 
 his eyes had been the first, and only ones, to behold it. His pictures are the original studies 
 of a strong and intensely individual mind. There is no vagueness, no uncertainty in his free 
 and bold touches. The persons that figure in his stories are undoubted portraits, and how- 
 ever it may be as to the "one virtue," their names were surely linked to the "thousand 
 crimes." Take Byron, or any of the many reflections of himself, such as Lara or Manfred; 
 make him forget the luxuries of cities, but keep all his boiling passions, and especially his 
 bitter misanthropy ; set him on horseback in the American desert, amidst hostile savages 
 and skulking bandits ; let him banish the humanities learned at Harrow, and paint what he 
 should see, without a thought of "English bards or Scotch reviewers," and he would crive us 
 something like the thrilling sensation we feel in following the adventures of Joaquin Miller. 
 It is too soon to attempt any estimate of this new poet. Should he continue writing with 
 equal vigor, and with the larger scope which maturity and culture bring, he may in some 
 measure give a new direction to the poetical thought of the times, now almost wholly 
 influenced by the philosophical school. If he should write no more, he will be remembered 
 as a meteor of portentous brilliancy, while the great stars of our firmament will shine on. 
 
JOAQUIN MILLER. 
 
 PASSAGES FROM A POEM ENTITLED CALIFORNIAN. 
 
 I STAND beside the mobile sea ; 
 
 And sails are spread, and sails are furled 
 
 From farthest corners of the world, 
 
 And fold like white wings wearily. 
 
 Steamships go up, and some go down 
 
 In haste, like traders in a town, 
 
 And seem to see and beckon all. 
 
 Afar at sea some white shapes flee, 
 
 With arms stretched like a ghost's to me, 
 
 And cloud-like sails far blown and curled, 
 
 Then glide down to the under-world. 
 
 As if blown bare in winter blasts 
 
 Of leaf and limb, tall naked masts 
 
 Are rising from the restless sea, 
 
 So still and desolate and tall, 
 
 I seem to see them gleam and shine 
 
 With clinging drops of dripping brine. 
 
 Broad still brown wings flit here and there, 
 
 Thin sea-blue wings wheel everywhere, 
 
 And white wings whistle through the air : 
 
 I hear a thousand sea-gulls call. 
 
 Behold the ocean on the beach 
 
 Kneel lov.'ly down as if in prayer. 
 
 I hear a moan as of despair, 
 
 While far at sea do toss and reach 
 
 Some things so like white pleading hands. 
 
 The ocean's thin and hoary hair 
 
 Is trailed along the silvered sands 
 
 At every sigh and sounding moan. 
 
 'Tis not a place for mirthfulness, 
 
 But meditation deep, and prayer, 
 
 And kneel ings on the salted sod, 
 
 Where man must own his littleness, 
 
 And know the mightiness of God. 
 
 The very birds shriek in distress, 
 
 And sound the ocean's monotone. 
 
 Afar the bright Sierras lie, 
 A swaying line of snowy white, 
 A fringe of heaven hung :n sight 
 Against the blue base of the sky. 
 
 I look along each gaping gorge, 
 
 I hear a thousand sounding strokes 
 
 Like giants rending giant oaks, 
 
 Or brawny Vulcan at his forge ; 
 
 I see pick-axes flash and shine 
 
 And great wheels whir'ing in a mine. 
 
 Here winds a thick and yellow thread, 
 
 A mossed and silver stream instead ; 
 And trout that leaped its rippling tide 
 Have turned upon their sides and died. 
 
 Curambo ! what a cloud of dust 
 Comes dashing down like driven gust ! 
 And who rides rushing on the sight 
 Adown yon rocky long defile, 
 Swift as an eagle in his flight, 
 Fierce as a winter's storm at night 
 Blown from the bleak Sierra's height, 
 Careering down some yawning orge ? 
 His face is flushed, his eye is wild, 
 And 'neath his courser's sounding feet 
 (A glance could barely be more fleet) 
 The rocks are flashing like a forge. 
 Such reckless rider ! I do ween 
 No mortal man his like has seen. 
 And yet, but for his long scrape, 
 All flowing loose, and black as crape, 
 And long silk locks of blackest hair 
 All streaming wildly in the breeze, 
 You might believe him in a chair, 
 Or chatting at some country fair 
 With a friend or sefiorita rare, 
 He rides so grandly at his ease. 
 
 But now he grasps a tighter rein, 
 
 A red rein wrought in golden chain, 
 
 And in his tapidaros stands, 
 
 Half turns and shakes two bloody hands, 
 
 And shouts defiance at his foe ; 
 
 Now lifts his broad hat from his brow 
 
 As if to challenge fate, and now 
 
 His hand drops to his saddle-bow, 
 
 And clutches something gleaming there 
 
 As if to something more than dare, 
 
 While halts the foe that followed fast 
 
 As rushing wave or raving blast, 
 
 More sudden-swift than though were prest 
 
 All bridle-bands at one behest. 
 
 What crimes have made that red hand red? 
 What wrongs have written that young face 
 With lines of thought so out of place ? 
 Where flies he ? And from whence has fled? 
 And what his lineage and race ? 
 What glitters in his heavy belt? 
 And from his furred catenas gleam ? 
 
588 
 
 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 What on his bosom that doth seem 
 A diamond bright or dagger's hilt ? 
 The iron hoofs that still resound 
 Like thunder from the yielding ground 
 Alone reply ; and now the plain, 
 Quick as you breathe and gaze again, 
 Is won, and all pursuit is vain. 
 
 I stand upon a stony rim, 
 Stone-paved and patterned as a street ; 
 A rock-lipped canon plunging south, 
 As if it were earth's opened mouth, 
 Yawns deep and darkling at my feet ; 
 So deep, so distant, and so dim 
 Its waters wind, a yellow thread, 
 And calls so faintly and so far, 
 I turn aside my swooning head 
 I feel a fierce impulse to leap 
 Adown the beetling precipice, 
 Like some lone, lost, uncertain star ; 
 To plunge into a place unknown, 
 And win a world all, all my own ; 
 Or if I might not meet that bliss, 
 At least escape the curse of this. 
 
 I gaze again. A gleaming star 
 Shines back as from some mossy well 
 Reflected from blue fields afar. 
 Brown ha%vks are wheeling here and there, 
 And up and down the broken wall 
 Cling clumps of dark green chaparral, 
 While from the rent rocks, gray and bare, 
 Blue junipers hang in the air. 
 
 Here, cedars sweep the stream, and here, 
 Among the boulders mossed and brown 
 That time and storms have toppled down 
 From towers undefiled by man. 
 Low cabins nestle as in fear, 
 And look no taller than a span. 
 From low aud shapeless chimneys rise 
 
 Some tall, straight columns of blue smoke, 
 And weld them to the bluer skies ; 
 While sounding down the sombre gorge, 
 I hear the steady pick-axe stroke, 
 As if upon a flashing forge. 
 
 Another scene, another sound ! 
 Sharp shots are fretting through the air, 
 Red knives are flashing everywhere, 
 And here and there the yellow flood 
 Is purpled with warm smoking blood. 
 The brown hawk swoops low to the ground, 
 And nimble chipmonks, small and still 
 Dart striped lines across the sill 
 That lordly feet shall press no more. 
 The flume lies warping in the sun, 
 The pan sits empty by the door, 
 The pick-axe on its bed-rock floor 
 Lies rusting in the silent mine. 
 There comes no single sound nor sign 
 Of life, beside yon monks in brown 
 That dart their dim shapes up and down 
 The rocks that swelter in the sun ; 
 But dashing round yon rocky spur 
 Where scarce a hawk would dare to whirr, 
 Fly horsemen reckless in their flight. 
 One wears a flowing black capote, 
 While down the capo do flow and float 
 Long locks of hair as dark as night, 
 And hands are red that erst were white. 
 
 All up and down the land to-day 
 Black desolation and despair 
 It seems have sat and settled there, 
 With none to frighten them away. 
 Like sentries watching by the way 
 Black chimneys topple in the air, 
 And seem to say, Go back ! beware ! 
 While up around the mountain's rim 
 Are clouds of smoke, so still and grim 
 They look as they are fastened there. 
 
ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS. 589 
 
 ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS. 
 
 Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, daughter of the Rev. Dr. Austin Phelps, and granddaughter 
 of the late Professor Moses Stuart, was born in Andover, Mass., August 31, 1844. She 
 (vrote a number of successful juvenile books at an early age. She became known as a writer 
 of signal ability by the publication of Gates Ajar in 1868. This was followed by Hedged 
 In, and by Men, Women, and Ghosts, both published in 1869. The Silent Partner, from 
 Which the selection following was taken, appeared in 1871. 
 
 Miss Phelps writes with the firm touch of a practised hand, and deals with some of the 
 social problems that are to require all the courage, wisdom, patience, and love of generations 
 for their happy solution. She is quite fortunate in sketches of character, and though her 
 benevolent purposes are sufficiently obvious, her men and women are real persons, and not 
 merely the mouthpieces of warring opinions. The Silent Partner has many of the elements 
 of a powerful novel ; natural dialogue, well contrasted scenes, and the onward movement, 
 and high moral qualities which secure the reader's earnest attention and sympathy. 
 
 [From The Silent Partner.] 
 A VIEW OF A FACTORY GIRL'S LIFE. 
 
 IF you are one of " the hands " in the Hayle and Kelso Mills, you 
 go to your work, as is well known, from the hour of half past six to 
 seven, according to the turn of the season. Time has been when you 
 went at half past four. The Senior forgot this the other day in a little 
 talk which he had with his silent partner very naturally, the time 
 having been so long past ; but the time has been, is now, indeed, yet, 
 in places. Mr. Hayle can tell you of mills he saw in New Hamp- 
 shire last vacation, where they ring them up, if you'll believe it, win- 
 ter and summer, in and out, at half past four in the morning. O, no ; 
 never let out before six, of course. Mr. Hayle disapproves of this. 
 Mr. Hayle thinks it not humane. Mr. Hayle is confident that you 
 would find no mission Sunday school connected with that concern. 
 
 If you are one of " the hands " in the Hayle and Kelso Mills and 
 again, in Hayle and Kelso you are so dully used to this classifica- 
 tion, " the hands," that you were never known to cultivate an objection 
 to it, are scarcely found to notice its use or disuse. Being surely 
 neither head nor heart, what else remains ? Conscious scarcely, from 
 bell to bell, from sleep to sleep, from day to dark, of either head or 
 heart, there seems even a singular appropriateness in the chance of 
 the word with which you are dimly struck. Hayle and Kelso label 
 you. There you are. You are the fingers of the world. You take 
 your patient place. The world may have need of you, but only that 
 it may think, aspire, create, enjoy. It needs your patience as well 
 as your place. You take both, and you are used to both, and the 
 world is used to both, and so, having put the label on for safety's 
 
5QO HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 sake, lest you be mistaken for a thinking, aspiring, creating, enjoy- 
 ing compound, and so some one be poisoned, shoves you into your 
 place upon its shelf, and shuts its cupboard door upon you. 
 
 If you are one of "the hands," then, in Hayleand Kelso, you have 
 a breakfast of bread and molasses probably ; you are apt to eat it 
 while you dress ; somebody is heating the kettle, but you cannot 
 wait for it ; somebody tells you that you have forgotten your shawl ; 
 you throw it over one shoulder, and step out, before it is fastened, 
 into the sudden raw air ; you left lamp-light in-doors ; you find 
 moonlight without; the night seems to have overslept itself; you 
 have a fancy for trying to wake it, would like to shout at it or cry 
 through it, but feel very cold, and leave that for the bells to do by 
 and by. You and the bells are the only waking things in life. The 
 great brain of the world is in serene repose. The great heart of the 
 world lies warm to the core with dreams. The great hands of the 
 world, the patient, perplexed, one almost fancies at times, just for 
 the fancy* seeing you here by the morning moon, the dangerous 
 hands, alone are stirring in the dark. 
 
 You hang up your shawl and your crinoline, and understand, as 
 you go shivering by gaslight to your looms, that you are chilled to 
 the heart, and that you were careless about your shawl, but do not 
 consider carefulness worth your while by nature or by habit ; a little 
 less shawl means a few less winters in which to require shawling. 
 You are a godless little creature, but you cherish a stolid leaning, in 
 these morning moons, towards making an experiment of death and a 
 wadded coffin. 
 
 By the time that gas is out, you cease, perhaps, though you can- 
 not depend upon that, to shiver, and incline less and less to the 
 wadded coffin, and more to chat with your neighbor in the alley. 
 Your neighbor is of either sex and any description, as the case may 
 be. In any event, warming a little with the warming day, you 
 incline more and more to chat. If you chance to be a cotton-weaver, 
 you are presently warm enough. It is quite warm enough in the 
 weaving-room. The engines respire into the weaving-room ; with 
 every throb of their huge lungs you swallow their breath. The 
 weaving- room stifles with steam. The window-sills of this room are 
 guttered to prevent the condensed steam from running in streams 
 along the floor ; sometimes they overflow, and water stands under 
 the looms ; the walls perspire profusely ; on a damp day, drops will 
 fall from the roof. 
 
 The windows of the weaving-room are closed ; the windows must 
 
ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS. $9! 
 
 be closed ; a stir in will break your threads. There is no air to stir. 
 You inhale for a substitute motionless, hot moisture. If you chance 
 to be a cotton-weaver, it is not in March that you think most about 
 your coffin. 
 
 Being " a hand " in Hayle and Kelso, you are used to eating cold 
 luncheon in the cold at noon, or you walk, for the sake of a cup of 
 soup or coffee, half a mile, three quarters, a mile and a half, and 
 back. You are allowed three quarters of an hour in which to do 
 this. You come and go upon the jog-trot. 
 
 You grow moody, being " a hand " at Hayle and Kelso's, with the 
 growing day ; are inclined to quarrel or to confidence with your 
 neighbor in the alley ; find the overseer out of temper, and the 
 cotton full of flaws ; find pains in your feet, your back, your eyes, 
 your arms ; feel damp and sticky lint in your hair, your neck, your 
 ears, your throat, your lungs ; discover a monotony in the process of 
 breathing hot moisture, lower your window at your risk ; are bidden 
 by somebody whose threads you have broken at the other end of 
 the room to put it up, and put it up ; are conscious that your head 
 swims, your eyeballs burn, your breath quickens ; yield your prefer- 
 ence for a wadded coffin, and consider whether the river would not 
 be the comfortable thing ; cough a little, cough a great deal, lose 
 your balance in a coughing fit, snap a thread, and take to swear- 
 ing roundly. 
 
 From swearing you take to singing ; both perhaps are equal relief, 
 active and diverting. There is something curious about that sing- 
 ing of yours. The time, the place, the singers, characterize it 
 sharply the waning light, the rival din, the girls with tired faces. 
 You start some little thing with a refrain and a ring to it ; a hymn, 
 it is not unlikely ; something of a River and of Waiting, and of Toil 
 and Rest, or Sleep, or Crowns, or Harps, or Home, or Green Fields, 
 or Flowers, or Sorrow, or Repose, or a dozen things, but always, it 
 will be noticed, of simple, spotless things, such as will surprise the 
 listener who caught you at your oath of five minutes past. You have 
 other songs, neither simple nor spotless it may be ; but you never 
 sing them at your work, when the waning day is crawling out from 
 spots between your looms, and the girls lift up their tired faces to 
 catch and keep the chorus in the rival din. 
 
 You like to watch the contest between the chorus and the din ; to 
 see you seem almost to see the struggle of the melody from 
 alley to alley, from loom to loom, from darkening wall to darkening 
 wall, from lifted face to lifted face ; to see for you are very sure 
 
592 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 you see the machinery fall into a fit of rage. That is a sight! 
 You would never guess, unless you had watched it just as many 
 times as you have, how that machinery will rage. How it throws its 
 arms about, what fists it can clench, how it shakes at the elbows and 
 knees, what teeth it knows how to gnash, how it writhes and roars, 
 how it clutches at the leaky, strangling gas-lights, and how it bends 
 its impotent black head, always, at last, without fail, and your song 
 sweeps triumphant, like an angel, over it ! With this you are very 
 much pleased, though only " a hand," to be sure, in Hayle and Kelso. 
 You are singing when the bell strikes, and singing still when you 
 clatter down the stairs. Something of the simple spotlessness of 
 the little song is on your face, when you dip into the wind and dusk. 
 Perhaps you have only pinned your shawl, or pulled your hat over 
 your face, or knocked against a stranger on the walk ; but it passes ; 
 it passes and is gone. It is cold and you tremble, direct from the 
 morbid heat in which you have stood all day ; or you have been cold 
 all day, and it is colder, and you shrink ; or you are from the weav- 
 ing-room, and the wind strikes you faint, or you stop to cough, and 
 the girls go on without you. The town is lighted, and people are 
 out in their best clothes. You pull your dingy veil about your eyes. 
 You are weak and heart-sick all at once. You don't care to go 
 home to supper. The pretty song creeps, wounded, back for the 
 engines in the deserted dark to crunch. You are a miserable little 
 factory-girl with a dirty face. 
 
HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 593 
 
 PHILIP FRENEAU. 
 
 [Born in New York, January 2, 1752. Died at Monmouth, N. J., December 18, 1832.] 
 THE INDIAN BURYING-GROUND. 
 
 IN spite of all the learned have said, 
 
 I still my old opinion keep ; 
 The posture that we give the dead 
 
 Points out the soul's eternal sleep. 
 
 Not so the ancients of these lands ; 
 
 The Indian, when from life released, 
 Again is seated with his friends, 
 
 And shares again the joyous feast 
 
 His imaged birds, and painted bowl, 
 And venison for a journey drest, 
 
 Bespeak the nature of the soul, 
 Activity that wants no rest. 
 
 His bow for action ready bent, 
 And arrows, with a head of bone, 
 
 Can only mean that life is spent, 
 And not the finer essence gone. 
 
 Thou, stranger, that shalt come this way, 
 No fraud upon the dead commit ; 
 
 Yet mark the swelling turf, and say, 
 They do not lie, but here they sit. 
 
 Here still a lofty rock remains, 
 On which the curious eye may trace 
 
 (Now wasted half by wearing rains) 
 The fancies of a ruder race. 
 
 Here still an aged elm aspires, 
 Beneath whose far projecting shade 
 
 (And which the shepherd still admires) 
 The children of the forest played. 
 
 There oft a restless Indian queen 
 (Pale Marian with her braided hair) 
 
 And many a barbarous form is seen 
 To chide the man that lingers there. 
 
 By midnight moons, o'er moistening dews, 
 In vestments for the chase arrayed, 
 
 The hunter still the deer pursues, 
 The hunter and the deer a shade. 
 
 And long shall timorous Fancy see 
 The painted chief and pointed spear, 
 
 And reason's self shall bow the knee 
 To shadows and delusions here. 
 
 ST. GEORGE TUCKER. 
 
 [Born at Port Royal, Bermuda, June 29, 1752. Died 'in Virginia, November, 1827.] 
 DAYS OF MY YOUTH. 
 
 DAYS of my youth, ye have glided away ; Eyes of my youth, you much evil have seen ; 
 
 Hairs of my youth, ye are frosted and gray ; Cheeks of my youth, bathed in tears have 
 Eyes of my youth, your keen sight is no you been ; 
 
 more ; Thoughts of my youth, ye have led me astray ; 
 
 Cheeks of my youth, ye are furrowed all Strength of my youth, why lament your decay? 
 
 o'er; 
 
 Strength of my youth, all your vigor is gone ; Days of my age, ye will shortly be past ; 
 
 Thoughts of my youth, your gay visions are Pains of my age, yet a while ye can last ; 
 
 flown. Joys of my age, in true wisdom delight ; 
 
 Eyes of my age, be religion your light ; 
 
 Days of my youth, I wish not your recall ; Thoughts of my age, dread ye not the cold 
 Hairs of my youth, I'm content ye should sod ; 
 
 fell ; Hopes of my age, be ye fixed on your God. 
 
 38 
 
594 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 FRANCIS SCOTT KEY. 
 
 [Born in Frederick County, Md., August i. 1779. Died at Baltimore, January u, 1843.] 
 THE STAR-SPANGLED BANNER. 
 
 O> SAY, can you see, by the dawn's early And where are the foes who so vauntingly 
 
 light, swore 
 
 What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's That the havoc of war, and the battle's con- 
 last gleaming? fusion, 
 Whose broad stripes and bright stars, through A home and a country should leave us no 
 
 the perilous fight, more ? 
 
 O'er the ramparts we watched, were so gal- Their blood has washed out their foul foot- 
 
 lantly streaming : steps' pollution ; 
 
 And the rocket's red glare, and bombs burst- No refuge could save the hireling and slave 
 
 ing in air, From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the 
 
 Gave proof through the night that our flag grave ; 
 
 was still there : And the Star- Spangled Banner in triumph 
 
 O, say, does that Star-Spangled Banner yet doth wave 
 
 wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the 
 
 O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave I 
 
 O, thus be it ever, when freemen shall 
 
 On that shore, dimly seen through the mists stand 
 
 of the deep, Between their loved homes and the war's 
 
 Where the foe's haughty host in dread desolation ! 
 
 silence reposes, Blessed with victory and peace, may the 
 
 What is that which the breeze, o'er the tower- heaven-rescued land 
 
 ing steep. Praise the Power that hath made and pre- 
 
 As it fitfully blows, now conceals, now dis- served us a nation ! 
 
 closes ? Then conquer we must, when our cause it is 
 
 Now it catches the gleam of the morning's just, 
 
 first beam, And this be our motto: "In God is our 
 
 In full glory reflected now shines in the trust." 
 
 stream ; And the Star- Spangled Banner in triumph 
 
 'Tis the Star-Spangled Banner ; O, long may shall wave 
 
 it wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the 
 
 O'er the land of the free, and the home of the brave ! 
 
 brave ! 
 
 SAMUEL WOODWORTH. 
 
 [Born in Scituate, Mass., January 13, 1785. Died in the city of New York, December 9, 
 
 1842.] 
 THE OLD OAKEN BUCKET. 
 
 How dear to this heart are the scenes of my And every loved spot which my infancy 
 
 childhood, knew ; 
 
 When fond recollection presents them to The wide spreading pond, and the mill which 
 
 view ! stood by it, 
 
 The orchard, the meadow, the deep tangled The bridge and the rock where the cataract 
 
 wild wood, fell ; 
 
HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 595 
 
 The cot of my father, the dairy-house nigh it, The old oaken bucket, the iron-bound bucket, 
 
 And e'en the rude bucket which hung in The moss-covered bucket arose from the 
 
 the well.' well. 
 The old oaken bucket, the iron-bound bucket, 
 
 The moss-covered bucket which hung in How sweet from the green mossy brim to 
 
 the well. receive it, 
 
 As, poised on the curb, it inclined to my 
 
 That moss-covered vessel I hail as a treasure ; lips ! 
 
 For often, at noon, when returned from the Not a full blushing goblet could tempt me to 
 
 field, leave it, 
 
 I found it the source of an exquisite pleasure, Though filled with the nectar that Jupiter 
 
 The purest and sweetest that Nature can sips. 
 
 yield. And now, far removed from the loved situa- 
 
 How ardent I seized it with hands that were tion, 
 
 glowing, The tear of regret will intrusively swell, 
 
 And quick to the white-pebbled bottom it As fancy reverts to my father's plantation, 
 
 fell ! And sighs for the bucket which hangs in 
 
 Then soon with the emblem of truth over- the well ; 
 
 flowing, The old oaken bucket, the iron-bound bucket, 
 
 And dripping with coolness, it rose from The moss-covered bucket which hangs in 
 
 the well ; the well 
 
 ANDREWS NORTON. 
 
 [Born in Hingham, Mass., December 31, 1786. Died at Newport, R. I., September 18, 
 
 1853-] 
 
 SCENE AFTER A SUMMER SHOWER. 
 
 THE rain is o'er. How dense and bright 
 Yon pearly clouds reposing lie ! 
 
 Cloud above cloud, a glorious sight, 
 Contrasting with the dark blue sky I 
 
 In grateful silence earth receives 
 
 The general blessing ; fresh and fair, 
 Each flower expands its little leaves, 
 As glad the common joy to share. 
 
 The softened sunbeams pour around 
 A fairy light, uncertain, pale ; 
 
 The wind flows cool ; the scented ground 
 Is breathing odors on the gale. 
 
 'Mid yon rich clouds' voluptuous pile, 
 Methinks some spirit of the air 
 
 Might rest, to gaze below a while, 
 Then turn to bathe and revel there. 
 
 The sun breaks forth ; from off the scene 
 Its floating veil of mist is flung ; 
 
 And all the wilderness of green 
 
 With trembling drops of light is hung. 
 
 Now gaze on Nature yet the same 
 Glowing with life, by breezes fanned, 
 
 Luxuriant, lovely, as she came, 
 
 Fresh in her youth, from God's own hand. 
 
 Hear the rich music of that voice, 
 Which sounds from all below, above ; 
 
 She calls her children to rejoice, 
 And round them throws her arms of love. 
 
 Drink in her influence ; low-born care, 
 And all the train of mean desire. 
 
 Refuse to breathe this holy air, 
 And 'mid this living light expire. 
 
596 
 
 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 RICHARD HENRY WILDE. 
 
 [Born in Dublin, Ireland, September 24, 1789. Died at New Orleans, September 10, 1847.! 
 
 STANZAS. 
 
 MY life is like the summer rose, 
 
 Tlyit opens to the morning sky. 
 But ere (he shades of evening close, 
 Is scattered on the ground to die ! 
 Yet on the rose's humble bed 
 The sweetest dews of night are shed, 
 As if she wept the waste to see 
 But none shall weep a tear for me ! 
 
 My life is like the autumn leaf 
 That trembles in the moon's pale ray 
 
 Its hold is frail its date is brief, 
 Restless and soon to pass away ! 
 
 Yet, ere that leaf shall fall and fade, 
 The parent tree will mourn its shade, 
 The winds bewail the leafless tree, 
 But none shall breathe a sigh for me ! 
 
 My life is like the prints which feet 
 Have left on Tampa's desert strand ; 
 
 Soon as the rising tide shall beat, 
 All trace will vanish from the sand ; 
 
 Yet, as if grieving to efface 
 
 All vestige of the human race, 
 
 On that lone shore loud moans the sea ; 
 
 But none, alas ! shall mourn for me ! 
 
 ELIZA TOWNSEND. 
 
 [Born in Boston, in 1789. Died January 12, 1854.] 
 
 AN INVOCATION TO PEACE. 
 [Concluding stanzas of a Poem entitled The Rainbow.] 
 
 BUT thou, around whose holy head 
 The balmy olive loves to spread, 
 
 Return, O nymph benign ! 
 With buds that paradise bestowed, 
 Whence "healing for the nations" flowed, 
 
 Our bleeding temples twine. 
 
 For thee our fathers ploughed the strand, 
 For thee they left that goodly land, 
 
 The turf their childhood trod ; 
 The hearths on which their infants played, 
 The tombs in which their sires were laid, 
 
 The altars of their God. 
 
 Then, by their consecrated dust, 
 
 Their spirits, spirits of the just, 
 
 Now near their Maker's face, 
 
 By their privations and their cares, 
 Their pilgrim toils, their patriot prayers, 
 Desert thou not their race. 
 
 Descend to mortal ken confest, 
 Known by thy white and stainless vest, 
 And let us on the mountain crest 
 
 That snowy mantle see ; 
 O, let not here thy mission close, 
 Leave not the erring sons of those 
 
 Who left a world for thee. 
 
 Celestial visitant ! again 
 Resume thy gentle golden reign, 
 
 Our honored guest once more ; 
 Cheer with thy smiles our saddened plain, 
 And let thy rainbow o'er the main 
 
 Tell that the storms are o'er. 
 
HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 597 
 
 JOHN HOWARD PAYNE. 
 
 [Bom in the city of New York, June 9, 1792. Died at Tunis, Africa, April 10, 1852.] 
 
 
 
 SWEET HOME. 
 
 'MiD pleasures and palaces though we may An exile from home, splendor dazzles in 
 
 roam, vain ! 
 
 Be it ever so humble, there's no place like O, give me my lowly thatched' cottage 
 
 home ! again ! 
 
 A charm from the skies seems to hallow us The birds singing gayly that came at my 
 
 here, . call;- 
 
 Which, seek through the world, is ne'er met O, give me sweet peace of mind, dearer than 
 
 with elsewhere. all ! 
 
 Home, home, sweet home I Home, home, sweet home ! 
 
 There's no place like home ! There's no place like home ! 
 
 JOHN NEAL. 
 
 [Born in Portland, Me., August 25, 1793.] 
 
 BIRTH OF A POET. 
 
 ON a blue summer night, 
 
 While the stars were asleep, 
 
 Like gems of the deep, 
 In their own drowsy light ; 
 
 While the new-mown hay 
 
 On the green earth lay. 
 And all that came near it went scented away. 
 From a lone woody place 
 There looked out a face, 
 With large blue eyes. 
 Like the wet, warm skies, 
 
 Brimful of water and light ; 
 A profusion of hair 
 Flashing out on the air, 
 
 And a forehead alarmingly bright : 
 'Twas the head of a poet ! He grew 
 
 As the sweet strange flowers of the wilder- 
 ness blow ; 
 
 Till every thought wore a changeable stain, 
 Like flower leaves wet with the sunset rain. 
 
 A proud and passionate boy was he, 
 Like all the children of Poesy ; 
 With a haughty look and a haughty tread, 
 And something awful about his head ; 
 
 With wonderful eyes 
 
 Full of woe and surprise, 
 Like the eyes of them that can see the dead. 
 
 Looking about, 
 
 For a moment or two he stood 
 On the shore of the mighty wood, 
 
 Then ventured out, 
 
 With a bounding step and a joyful shout, - 
 The brave sky bending o'er him ! 
 The broad sea all before him I 
 
59 8 
 
 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 EDWARD EVERETT. 
 
 [For biographical notice, see p. 147] 
 
 f 
 
 DIRGE OF ALARIC THE VISIGOTH, 
 
 Who stormed and spoilt the city of Rome, and was afterwards buried in the channel of 
 the river Busentius, th* water of which had been diverted from its course that the body 
 might be interred. 
 
 WHEN I am dead, no pageant train 
 Shall waste their sorrows at my bier, 
 
 Nor worthless pomp of homage vaia 
 Stain it with hyiiocritic tear ; 
 
 For I will die as I did live, 
 
 Nor take the boon I cannot give. 
 
 Ye shall not raise a marble bust 
 Upon the spot where I repose ; 
 
 Ye shall not fawn before my dust, 
 In hollow circumstance of woes ; 
 
 Nor sculptured clay, with lying breath, 
 
 Insult the clay that moulds beneath. 
 
 Ye shall not pile, with servile toil, 
 Your monuments upon my breast, 
 
 Nor yet within the common soil 
 Lay down the wreck of Power to rest ; 
 
 Where man can boast that lie has trod 
 
 On him that was " the scourge of God." 
 
 But ye the mountain stream shall turn, 
 
 And lay its secret channel bare, 
 And hollow, for your sovereign's urn, 
 
 A resting-place forever there : 
 Then bid its everlasting sppings 
 Flow back upon the king of kings ; 
 And never be the secret said, 
 Until the deep give up his dead. 
 
 My gold and silver ye shall fling 
 Back to the clods that gave them birth ; 
 
 The captured crown of many a king, 
 The ransom of a conquered earth : 
 
 For e'en though dead will I control 
 
 The trophies of the capitol. 
 
 But when beneath the mountain tide 
 Ye've laid your monarch down to rot, 
 
 Ye shall not rear upon its side 
 Pillar or mound to mark the spot ; 
 
 For long enough the world has shook 
 
 Beneath the terrors of my look ; 
 
 And now that I have run my race, 
 
 The astonished realms shall rest a space. 
 
 ' My course was like a river deep, 
 
 And from the northern hills I burst, 
 Across the world in wrath to sweep, 
 
 And where I went the spot was cursed, 
 Nor blade of grass again was seen 
 Where Alaric and his hosts had been. 
 
 See how their haughty barriers fail 
 Beneath the terror of the Goth, 
 
 Their iron-breasted legions quail 
 Before my ruthless sabaoth, 
 
 And low the queen of empires kneels 
 
 And grovels at my chariot-wheels. 
 
 Not for myself did I ascend 
 In judgment my triumphal car ; 
 
 'Twas God alone on high did send 
 The avenging Scythian to the war, 
 
 To shake abroad, with iron hand, 
 
 The appointed scourge of his command. 
 
 With iron hand that scourge I reared 
 O'er guilty king and guilty realm ; 
 Destruction was the sliip I steered, 
 
 And \engeance sat uj:on the helm, 
 When, launched in fury on the flood, 
 I ploughed my way through seas of blood, 
 And in the stream their hearts had spilt 
 Washed out the long arrears of guilt. 
 
 Across the everlasting Alp 
 
 I poured the torrent of my powers, 
 
 And feeble Caesars shrieked for help 
 
 In vain within their seven-hilled towers ; 
 
 I quenched in blood the brightest gem 
 
 That glittered in their diadem, 
 
 And struck a darker, deeper dye 
 
 In the purple of their majesty, 
 
 And bade my northern banners shine 
 
 Upon the conquered Palatine. 
 
HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 599 
 
 My course is run, my errand done : 
 I go to him from whom I came ; 
 
 But never yet shall set the sun 
 Of glory that adorns my name ; 
 
 And Roman hearts shall long be sick, 
 
 When men shall think of Alaric. 
 
 My course is run, my errand done, 
 But darker ministers of fate 
 
 Impatient, round the eternal throne, 
 And in the caves of vengeance wait ; 
 
 And soon mankind shall blench away 
 
 Before the name of Attila. 
 
 GRENVILLE MELLEN. 
 
 [Bora in Biddeford, Me., June 19, 1799- Died in New York, September 5, 1841.] 
 
 THE BUGLE. 
 
 " Biit still the dingle's hollow throat 
 Prolonged the swelling bugle's note ; 
 The owlets started from their dream, 
 The eagles answered with their scream. 
 Round and around the sounds were cast, 
 Till echo turned an answering blast." Lady of the Lake. 
 
 O, WILD enchanting horn ! 
 Whose music up the deep and dewy air 
 Swells to the clouds, and calls an echo there, 
 
 Till a new melody is bora. 
 
 Wake, wake again ; the night 
 Is bending from her throne of Beauty down, 
 With still stars beaming on her azure crown, 
 
 Intense and eloquently bright ! 
 
 Night, at its pulseless noon ! 
 When the far voice of waters mourns in song, 
 And some tired watch-dog, lazily and long, 
 
 Barks at the melancholy moon ! 
 
 Hark ! how it sweeps away, 
 Soaring and dying on the silent sky, 
 As if some sprite of sound went wander- 
 ing by, 
 
 With lone halloo and roundelay. 
 
 Swell, swell in glory out ! 
 Thy tones come pouring on my leaping heart, 
 And my stirred spirit hears thee with a start 
 
 As boyhood's old, remembered shout. 
 
 O, have ye heard that peal, 
 From sleeping city's moon-bathed battle- 
 ments, 
 Or from the guarded field and warrior tents. 
 
 Like some near breath around ye steal ! 
 
 Or have ye, in the roar 
 Of sea, or storm, or battle, heard it rise, 
 Shriller than eagle's clamor, to the skies, 
 
 Where wings and tempests never soar. 
 
 Go, go ; no other sound, 
 No music, that of air or earth is born, 
 Can match the mighty music of that horn, 
 
 On midnight's fathomless profound 1 
 
6oo 
 
 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 GEORGE WASHINGTON DOANE. 
 
 [Born at Trenton, N. J., May 27, 1799. Died at Burlington, N. J., April 27, 1859.] 
 
 " Let my prayer 
 
 SOFTLY now the light of day 
 Fades upon my sight away ; 
 Free from care, from labor free, 
 Lord, I would commune with thee ! 
 Thou, whose all-pervading eye 
 
 Nought escapes, without, within, 
 Pardon each infirmity, 
 
 Open fault, and secret sin. 
 
 EVENING. 
 
 be as the evening sacrifice." 
 
 Soon for me the light of day 
 Shall forever pass away ; 
 Then, from sin and sorrow free, 
 Take me, Lord, to dwell with thee. 
 Thou who, sinless, yet hast known 
 
 All of man's infirmity ; 
 Then, from thy eternal throne, 
 
 Jesus^ look with pitying eye. 
 
 ALBERT GORTON GREENE. 
 
 [Born in Providence, R. I., February 10, 1802. Died at Cleveland, Ohio, January 3, 1868.] 
 TO THE WEATHERCOCK ON OUR STEEPLE. 
 
 THE dawn has broke, the morn is up, 
 
 Another day begun ; 
 And there thy poised and gilded spear 
 
 Is flashing in the sun, 
 Upon that steep and lofty tower 
 
 Where thou thy watch hast kept, 
 A true and faithful sentinel, 
 
 While all around thee slept. 
 
 For years upon thee there has poured 
 
 The summer's noonday heat, 
 And through the long, dark, starless night, 
 
 The winter storms have beat ; 
 And yet thy duty has been done, 
 
 By day and night the same ; 
 Still thou hast met and faced the storm 
 
 Whichever way it came. 
 
 How oft I've seen, at early dawn, 
 
 Or twilight's quiet hour, 
 The swallows, in their joyous glee, 
 
 Come darting round thy tower, 
 As if, with thee, to hail the sun, 
 
 And catch its earliest light, 
 And offer ye the morn's salute, 
 
 Or bid ye both good night ! 
 
 And when around thee or above 
 
 No breath of air has stirred, 
 Thou seem'st to watch the circling flight 
 
 Of each free, happy bird, 
 Till, after twittering round thy head 
 
 In many a mazy track, 
 The whole delighted company 
 
 Have settled on thy back. 
 
 Then, if perchance, amidst their mirth, 
 
 A gentle breeze has sprung, 
 And prompt to mark its first approach, 
 
 Thy eager form hath swung, 
 I've thought I almost heard thee say, 
 
 As far aloft they flew, 
 " Now all away ! here ends our play, 
 
 For I have work to do 1 " 
 
 Men slander thee, my honest friend, 
 
 And call thee, in their pride, 
 An emblem of their fickleness, 
 
 Thou ever-faithful guide. 
 Each weak, unstable human mind 
 
 A " weathercock " they call ; 
 And thus, unthinkingly, mankind 
 
 Abuse thee, one and all. 
 
HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 60 1 
 
 They have no right to make thy name 
 
 A by-word for their deeds : 
 They change their friends, their principles, 
 
 Their fashions, and their creeds ; 
 Whilst thou hast ne'er been known 
 
 Thus causelessly to range, 
 But when thou changes! sides canst give 
 
 Good reason for the change. 
 
 Thou, like some lofty soul, whose course 
 
 The thoughtless oft condemn, 
 Art touched by many airs from heaven 
 
 Which never breathe on them, 
 
 And moved by many impulses 
 
 Which they do never know, 
 Who, round their earth-bound circles, plod 
 
 The dusty paths below. 
 
 Bright symbol of fidelity, 
 
 Still may I think of thee ; 
 And may the lesson thou dost teach 
 
 Be never lost on me ; 
 But still, in sunshine or in storm, 
 
 Whatever task is mine, 
 May I be faithful to my trust 
 
 As thou hast been to thine. 
 
 EDWARD COATES PINKNEY. 
 
 [Born in London, October, 1802. Died in Baltimore, April u, 1828.] 
 
 A HEALTH. 
 
 I FILL this cup to one made up of loveliness And lovely passions, changing oft, so fill her, 
 
 alone, she appears 
 
 A woman, of her gentle sex the seeming The image of themselves by turns, the idol 
 
 paragon ; of past years. 
 
 To whom the better elements and kindly stars 
 
 have given Of her bright face one glance will trace a 
 A form so fair, that, like the air, 'tis less of picture on the brain, 
 
 earth than heaven. And of her voice in echoing hearts a sound 
 
 must long remain ; 
 
 Her every tone is music's own, like those of But memory such as mine of her so very 
 
 morning birds, much endears, 
 
 And something more than melody dwells ever When death is ni^h my latest sigh will not 
 
 in her words ; be life's but hers. 
 
 The coinage of her heart are they, and from 
 
 her lips each flows I filled this cup to one made up of loveliness 
 As one may see the burdened bee forth issue alone, 
 
 from the rose. A woman, of her gentle sex the seeming 
 
 paragon 
 
 Affections are as thoughts to her, the meas- Her health ! and would on earth there stood 
 
 ures of her hours ; some more of such a frame, 
 
 Her feelings have the fragrancy, the freshness That life might be all poetry, and weariness a 
 
 of young flowers ; name. 
 
602 
 
 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 GEORGE P. MORRIS. 
 
 [Born in Philadelphia, October 10, 1802. Died in New York, July 6, 1864.] 
 WOODMAN, SPARE THAT TREE. 
 
 WOODMAN, spare that tree ! 
 
 Touch not a single bough ! 
 In youth it sheltered me, 
 
 And I'll protect it now. 
 'Twas my forefather's hand 
 
 That placed it near his cot : 
 There, woodman, let it stand ; 
 
 Thy axe shall harm it not ! 
 
 That old familiar tree, 
 
 Whose glory and renown 
 Are spread o'er land and sea, 
 
 And wouldst thou hew it down? 
 Woodman, forbear thy stroke ! 
 
 Cut not its earth-bound ties ; 
 O, spare that aged oak, 
 
 Now towering to the skies I 
 
 When but an idle boy 
 
 I sought its grateful shade ; 
 In all their gushing joy 
 
 Here too my sisters played. 
 My mother kissed mo h;rc ; 
 
 My father pressed my hand 
 Forgive this foolish tear, 
 
 But let that old oak stand ! 
 
 My heartstrings round thee cling, 
 
 Close as thy bark, old friend ! 
 Here shall the wild-bird sing, 
 
 And still thy branches bend. 
 Old tree ! the storm sti'.l brave ! 
 
 And, woodman, leave the spot : 
 While I've a hand to save, 
 
 Thy axe shall harm it not. 
 
 REV. JOSEPH H. CLINCH. 
 
 [Born in Trinity, Newfoundland, January 30, 1806. A resident of Boston.] 
 
 HYMN 
 FOR THE DEDICATION OF THE SHURTLEFF SCHOOL HOUSE IN SOUTH BOSTON. 
 
 WHERE Ignorance holds its iron reign, 
 Where mists of deadly Error rise, 
 
 There Virtue lifts her voice in vain, 
 
 There Freedom droops and Honor dies. 
 
 Until they pluck fnir Wisdom's fruit, 
 And drink of Learning's sacred wave, 
 
 Degraded man is but a brute, 
 Degraded woman but a slave. 
 
 The land is cursed whose children feel 
 No warmth by Learning's hand impressed ; 
 
 'Tis Ignorance shapes and drives the steel 
 That pierces Freedom's bleeding breast 
 
 For this we build : for Freedom's sake, 
 These fanes we raise and dedicate ; 
 
 For this we lavish wenlih, to make 
 Our schools the bulwarks of the state. 
 
 Great God ! with favoring eye look down I 
 Prosper the labor of our hand ! 
 
 Accept our work, our efforts crown 
 To elevate and bless the land ! 
 
HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 60 3 
 
 EPES SARGENT. 
 
 [Born at Gloucester, Mass., September 27, 1812. A resident of Boston.] 
 A LIFE ON THE OCEAN WAVE. 
 
 A LIFE on the ocean wave, 
 
 A home on the rolling deep, 
 Where the scattered waters rave, 
 
 And the winds their revels keep ! 
 Like an eagle caged, I pine 
 
 On this dull, unchanging shore : 
 O, give me the flashing brine, 
 
 The spray, and the tempest's roar ! 
 
 Once more ori deck I stand, 
 Of my own swift -gliding craft : 
 
 Set sail ! farewell to the land ! 
 The gale follows fair abaft. 
 
 We shoot through the sparkling foam 
 Like an ocean-bird, set free : 
 
 Like the ocean-bird, our home 
 We'll find far out on the sea. 
 
 The land is no longer in view, 
 
 The clouds have begun to frown ; 
 But with a stout vessel and crew, 
 
 We'll say, Let the storm come down ! 
 And the song of our hearts shall be, 
 
 While the winds and the waters rave, 
 A home on the rolling sea ! 
 
 A life 011 the ocean wave I 
 
 SUMMER IN THE HEART. 
 
 THE cold blast at the casement beats ; 
 
 The window-panes are white ; 
 The snow whirls through the empty streets : 
 
 It is a dreary night ! 
 Sit down, old friend ; the wine-cups wait ; 
 
 Fill, to o'erflowing fill ! 
 Though Winter howleth at the gate 
 
 In our hearts 'tis summer still ! 
 
 For we full many summer joys 
 
 And greenwood sports have shared, 
 When, free and ever-roving boys, 
 
 The rocks, the streams, we dared ; 
 And, as I look upon thy face, 
 
 Back, back o'er years of ill, 
 My heart flies to that happy place, 
 
 Where it is summer still. 
 
 Yes, though like sere leaves on the ground, 
 
 Our early hopes are strown, 
 And cherished flowers lie dead around, 
 
 And singing birds are flown, 
 The verdure is not faded quite, 
 
 Not mute all tones that thrill ; 
 And seeing, hearing thee to-night, 
 
 In my heart 'tis summer still. 
 
 Fill up ! The olden times come back 
 
 With light and life once more ; 
 We scan the Future's sunny track 
 
 From Youth's enchanted shore ; 
 The lost return : through fields of bloom 
 
 We wander at our will ; 
 Gone is the Winter's angry gloom 
 
 In our hearts 'tis summer still 
 
604 
 
 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 CHARLES FENNO HOFFMAN. 
 
 [Born in New York in 1806.] 
 
 SONG. 
 
 SPARKLING and bright in liquid light 
 Does the wine our goblets gleam in, 
 With hue as red as the rosy bed 
 
 Which a bee would choose to dream in. 
 Then fill to-night, with hearts as light, 
 
 To loves as gay and fleeting 
 As bubbles that swim on the beaker's 
 
 brim, 
 And break on the lips while meeting. 
 
 O, if Mirth might arrest the flight 
 Of Time through Life's dominions, 
 
 We here a while would now beguile 
 The graybeard of his pinions, 
 To drink to-night, with hearts as light, 
 
 To loves as gay and fleeting 
 As bubbles that swim on the beaker's 
 
 brim, 
 And break on the lips while meeting. 
 
 But since delight can't tempt the wight, 
 
 Nor fond regret delay him, 
 Nor Love himself can hold the elf, 
 Nor sober Friendship stay him, 
 We'll drink to-night, with hearts as 
 
 light, 
 
 To loves as gay and fleeting 
 As bubbles that swim on the beaker's 
 
 brim, 
 And break on the lips while meeting. 
 
 JONES VERY. 
 
 [Born in Salem, Mass., August 28, 1813.] 
 
 TO THE PAINTED COLUMBINE. 
 
 BRIGHT image of the early years 
 When glowed my cheek as red as thou, 
 
 And life's dark throng of cares and fears 
 Were swift-winged shadows o'er my sunny 
 brow ! 
 
 Thou blushest from the painter's page, 
 Robed in the mimic tints of art ; 
 
 But Nature's hand in youth's green age 
 With fairer hues first traced thee on my 
 heart. 
 
 The morning's blush, she made it thine ; 
 
 The morn's sweet breath, she gave it thee ; 
 And in thy look, my Columbine ! 
 
 Each fond-remembered spot she bade me 
 
 I see the hill's far-gazing head, 
 Where gay thou noddest on the gale ; 
 
 I hear light-bounding footsteps tread 
 The grassy path that winds along the vale. 
 
 I hear the voice of woodland song 
 Break from each bush and well-known tree, 
 
 And on light pinions borne along, 
 Comes back the laugh from childhood's 
 heart of glee. 
 
 O'er the dark rock the dashing brook, 
 With looks of anger, leaps again, 
 
 And, hastening to each flowery nook, 
 
 Its distant voice is heard far down the 
 glen. 
 
 Fair child of art ! thy charms decay, 
 
 Touched by the withered hand of Time ; 
 And hushed the music of that day, 
 When my voice mingled with the stream- 
 let's chime ; 
 
HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 6os 
 
 But on my heart thy cheek of bloom 
 Shall live when Nature's smile has fled ; 
 
 And, rich with memory's sweet perfume, 
 Shall o'er her grave thy tribute incense 
 shed. 
 
 There shalt thou live and wake the glee 
 That echoed on thy native hill ; 
 
 And when, loved flower ! I think of thee, 
 My infant feet will seem to seek thee still. 
 
 THE WIND-FLOWER. 
 
 THOU lookest up with meek, confiding eye 
 
 Upon the clouded smile of April's face, 
 
 Unharmed though Winter stands uncertain 
 
 by, 
 
 Eying with jealous glance each opening 
 grace. 
 
 Thou trustest wisely ! in thy faith arrayed 
 More glorious thou than Israel's wisest 
 king ; 
 
 As thine who hear'st the timid voice of 
 Spring. 
 
 While other flowers still hide them from her 
 
 call 
 
 Along the river's brink and meadow bare, 
 Thee will I seek beside the stony wall, 
 And in thy trust with child-like heart would 
 
 share, 
 O'erjoyed that in thy early leaves I find 
 
 Such faith was His whom men to death be- A lesson taught by Him who loved all human 
 
 trayed 
 
 kind. 
 
 CHARLES GAMAGE EASTMAN. 
 
 [Born in Fryeburg, Me., June i, 1816. Resides at Montpelier, Vt] 
 A PICTURE. 
 
 THE farmer sat in his easy chair 
 
 Smoking his pipe of clay, 
 While his hale old wife with busy care 
 
 Was clearing the dinner away ; 
 A sweet little girl with fine blue eyes 
 On her grandfather's knee was catching flies. 
 
 The old man laid his hand on her head, 
 With a tear on his wrinkled face ; 
 
 He thought how often her mother, dead, 
 Had sat in the self-same place ; 
 
 As the tear stole down from his half-shut eye, 
 
 "Don't smoke!" said the child; "how it 
 makes you cry I '' 
 
 The house-dog lay stretched out on the floor 
 Where the shade after noon used to steal ; 
 
 The busy old wife by the open door 
 Was turning the spinning wheel, 
 
 And the old brass clock on the mantel-tree 
 
 Had plodded along to almost three ; 
 
 Still the farmer sat in his easy chair, 
 While, close to his heaving breast, 
 
 The moistened brow and the cheek so fair 
 Of his sweet grandchild were pressed ; 
 
 His head, bent down, on her soft hair lay 
 
 Fast asleep were they both that summer 
 day! 
 
6o6 
 
 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 JAMES THOMAS FIELDS. 
 
 [Born 1817. For biographical notice, see p. 417.] 
 
 WORDSWORTH. 
 
 THE grass hung wet on Rydal banks. 
 The golden day with pearls adorning, 
 
 When side by side with him we walked 
 To meet midway the summer morning. 
 
 The west wind took a softer breath, 
 
 The sun himself seemed brighter shining, 
 
 As through the porch the minstrel stepped 
 His eye sweet Nature's look enshrining. 
 
 He passed along the dewy sward, 
 The blue-bird sang aloft " good morrow ! " 
 
 He plucked a bud, the flower awoke, 
 And smiled without one pang of sorrow. 
 
 He spoke of all that graced the scene, 
 In tones that fell like music round us ; 
 
 We felt the charm descend, nor strove 
 To break the rapturous spell that bound us. 
 
 We listened with mysterious awe, 
 
 Strange feelings mingling with our pleas- 
 ure ; 
 We heard that day prophetic words. 
 
 High thoughts the heart must always 
 treasure. 
 
 Great Nature's Priest ! thy calm career 
 With that sweet morn on earth has 
 
 ended 
 
 But who shall say thy mission died 
 When, winged for Heaven, thy soul as- 
 cended ! 
 
 REV. SAMUEL LONGFELLOW. 
 
 [Born in Portland, Me., June 18, 1819.] 
 I. NOVEMBER. 
 
 THE dead leaves their rich mosaics, 
 Of olive, and gold, and brown, 
 
 Had lain on the rain-wet pavements, 
 Through all the embowered town. 
 
 They were washed by the autumn tempest, 
 They %vere trod by hurrying feet, 
 
 And the winds came out with their besoms 
 And swept them into the street, 
 
 To be crushed and lost forever 
 
 'Neath the wheels, in the black mire lost, 
 The Summer's precious darlings, 
 
 She nurtured at such cost ! 
 
 O words that have fallen from me I 
 
 O golden thoughts and true I 
 Must I see in the leaves a symbol 
 
 Of the fate which awaiteth you? 
 
 II. APRIL. 
 
 AGAIN has come the Spring-time, O gardener ! tell me the secret 
 
 With the crocus's -olden bloom, Of thy flowers so rare and sweet ! 
 
 With the smell of the fresh-turned earth- " I have only enriched my garden 
 
 mould, With the black mire from the street ! " 
 
 And the violet's perfume. A tlantic Monthly, July, 1858. 
 
HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 607 
 
 GENERAL HENRY R. JACKSON. 
 
 [Born in Savannah, Ga., 1819. Yale, 1839. Author of Tullalah, &c.] 
 MY WIFE AND CHILD. 
 
 [These lines were written while the author was in command of the first Georgia regiment, 
 then in camp on the Rio Grande, below Matamoras, and a part of General Taylor's army 
 of Mexican invasion. The general wrote them in pencil on his knee in his tent.] 
 
 THE tattoo beats, the lights are gone, 
 The camp around in slumber lies ; 
 
 The night in solemn pace moves on, 
 Tl\e shadows thicken o'er the skies ; 
 
 But sleep my weary eyes hath flown, 
 And sad, uneasy thoughts arise. 
 
 I think of thee, my dearest one, 
 Whose love my early life hath blessed ; 
 
 Of thee and him our baby son 
 Who slumbers on thy gentle breast. 
 
 God of the tender, frail, and lone, 
 O, guard the tender sleeper's rest ! 
 
 And hover gently, hover near 
 
 To her, whose watchful eye is wet 
 
 To mother, wife the doubly dear, 
 In whose young heart have freshly met 
 
 Two streams of love so deep and clear 
 And cheer her drooping spirits yet. 
 
 Now, while she kneels before thy throne, 
 
 O, teach her, Ruler of the skies, 
 That while at thy behest alone 
 
 Earth's mightiest powers fall and rise, 
 No tear is wept to thee unknown, 
 No hair is lost, no sparrow dies ; 
 
 That thou canst stay the ruthless hands 
 Of dark disease, and soothe its pain ; 
 
 That only by thy stern commands 
 The battle's lost, the soldier's slain ; 
 
 That from the distant sea or land 
 
 Thou bring'st the wanderer home again. 
 
 And when upon her pillow lone 
 
 Her tear-wet cheek is sadly pressed, 
 
 May happier visions beam upon 
 The brightening current of Irer breast ; 
 
 No frowning look or angry tone 
 Disturb the Sabbath of her rest. 
 
 Whatever fate those forms may show, 
 Loved with a passion almost wild 
 
 By day, by nLht, in joy or woe 
 
 By fears oppressed, or hopes beguiled, 
 
 From every danger, every foa, 
 O God, protect my wife and child ! 
 
 MARIA (WHITE) LOWELL. 
 
 [Born in Watertown, 1821. Died in Cambridge, 1853.] 
 
 THE ALPINE SHEEP. 
 ADDRESSED TO A FRIEND AFTER THE Loss OF A CHILD. 
 
 WHEN on my ear your loss was knelled, 
 
 And tender sympathy upburst, 
 A little spring from memory welled, 
 
 Which once had quenched my bitter thirst. 
 
 And I was fain to bear to you 
 
 A portion of its mild relief, 
 That it might be as healing dew, 
 
 To steal some fever from your grief. 
 
 After our child's untroubled breath 
 Up to the Father took its way, 
 
 And on our home the shade of Death 
 Like a long twilight haunting lay, 
 
 And friends came round, with us to weep 
 Her little spirit's swift remove, 
 
 The story of the Alpine sheep 
 Was told to us by one we love. 
 
6o8 
 
 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 They, in the valley's sheltering care, 
 Soon crop the meadow's tender prime, 
 
 And when the sod grows brown and bare, 
 The shepherd strives to make them climb 
 
 To airy shelves of pasture green, 
 That hang along the mountain's side, 
 
 Where grass and flowers together lean, 
 And down through mist the sunbeams 
 slide. 
 
 But nought can tempt the timid things 
 The steep and rugged paths to try, 
 
 Though sweet the shepherd calls and sings, 
 And seared below the pastures lie, 
 
 Till in his arms their lambs he takes, 
 
 Along the dizzy verge to go ; 
 Then, heedless of the rifts and breaks, 
 
 They follow on, o'er rock and snow. 
 
 And in those pastures, lifted fair, 
 More dewy-soft than lowland mead, 
 
 The shepherd drops his tender care, 
 And sheep and iambs 'together feed. 
 
 This parable, by Nature breathed, 
 Blew on me as the south wind free 
 
 O'er frozen brooks, that flow unsheathed 
 From icy thraldom to the sea. 
 
 A blissful vision, through the night, 
 Would all my happy senses sway, 
 
 Of the good Shepherd on the height, 
 Or climbing up the starry way, 
 
 Holding our little lamb asleep, 
 While, like the murmur of the sea, 
 
 Sounded that voice along the deep, 
 Saying, "Arise and follow me ! " 
 
 LUCY LARCOM. 
 
 [Born at Beverly Farms, Mass., in 1826.] 
 
 HANNAH BINDING SHOES. 
 
 POOR lone Hannah, 
 Sitting at the window, binding shoes, 
 
 Faded, wrinkled, 
 
 Sitting, stitching, in a mournful muse. 
 Bright-eyed beauty once was she, 
 When the bloom was on the tree : 
 
 Spring and winter, 
 Hannah's at the window binding shoes. 
 
 Not a neighbor 
 Passing nod or answer will refuse 
 
 To her whisper, 
 
 " Is there from the fishers any news? " 
 O, her heart's adrift with one 
 On an endless voyage gone ! 
 
 Night and morning 
 Hannah's at the window binding shoes. 
 
 Fair young Hannah, 
 Ben, the sunburnt fisher, gayly woos : 
 
 Hale and clever, 
 For a willing heart and hand he suest 
 
 May-day skies are all aglow, 
 And the waves are laughing so ! 
 
 For her wedding 
 Hannah leaves her window and her shoes. 
 
 May is passing : 
 'Mid the apple-boughs a pigeon coos. 
 
 Hannah shudders, 
 
 For the mild southwester mischief brews. 
 Round the rocks of Marblehead, 
 Outward bound, a schooner sped : 
 
 Silent, lonesome, 
 Hannah's at the window binding shoes. 
 
 'Tis November ; 
 Now no tear her wasted cheek bedews. 
 
 From Newfoundland 
 Not a sail returning will she lose, 
 Whispering hoarsely, " Fishermen, 
 Have you, have you heard of Ben ? 
 
 Old with watching, 
 Hannah's at the window binding shoes. 
 
HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 609 
 
 Twenty winters 
 Bleach and tear the ragged shores she views. 
 
 Twenty seasons : 
 Never one lias brought her any news. 
 
 Still her dim eyes silently 
 
 Chase the white sails o'er the sea : 
 
 Hopeless, faithful, 
 Hannah's at the window binding shoes. 
 
 HENRY TIMROD. 
 
 [Born at Charleston, S. C, December, 1830. Died in Columbia, S. C, October 8, 1867.] 
 
 ODE, 
 
 SUNG ON THE OCCASION OF DECORATING THE GRAVES OF THE CONFEDERATE DEAD, 
 AT MAGNOLIA CEMETERY, CHARLESTON, S. C. 
 i. 
 
 Behold ! your sisters bring their tears, 
 And these memorial blooms. 
 
 SLEEP sweetly in your humble graves, 
 Sleep, martyrs of a fallen cause, 
 
 Though yet no marble column craves 
 The pilgrim here to pause. 
 
 In seeds of laurel in the earth 
 The blossom of our fame is blown, 
 
 And somewhere waiting for its birth 
 The shaft is in the stone ! 
 
 in. 
 
 Meanwhile, behalf the tardy years 
 Which keep in trust your storied tombs, 
 
 Small tributes ! but your shades will smile 
 More proudly on these wreaths to-day, 
 
 Than when some cannon-mouldered pile 
 Shall overlook this bay. 
 
 v. 
 Stoop, angels, hither from the skies ; 
 
 There is no holier spot of ground 
 Than where defeated valor lies 
 
 By mourning beauty crowned ! 
 
 REV. WALTER MITCHELL. 
 
 [From Atlantic Monthly, January, 1858.] 
 TACKING SHIP OFF SHORE. 
 
 THE weather leach of the topsail shivers, 
 The bowlines strain and the lee shrouds 
 
 slacken, 
 
 The braces are taut, the lithe boom quivers, 
 And the waves with the coming squall- 
 cloud blacken. 
 
 I stand at the wheel, and, with eager eye, 
 To sea, and to sky, and to shore I gaze, 
 Till the muttered order of <: FULL AND 
 
 Is suddenly changed 
 STAYS 1 " 
 
 to 
 
 " FULL FOR 
 
 Open, one point on the weather bow, 
 
 Is the light-house tall on Fire Island head ; 
 
 There's a shade of doubt on the captain's 
 
 brow, 
 And the pilot watches the heaving lead. 
 
 39 
 
 The ship bends lower before the breeze, 
 As her broadside fair to the blast she lays ; 
 
 And she swifter springs to the rising seas. 
 As the pilot calls, "STAND BY FOR 
 STAYS ! " 
 
6io 
 
 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 It is silence all, as each in his place, 
 With the gathered coils in his hardened 
 hands, 
 
 By tack and bowline, by sheet and brace, 
 Waiting the watchword impatient stands. 
 
 And the light on Fire Island head draws 
 
 near, 
 
 As, trumpet-winged, the pilot's shout 
 From his post on the bowsprit's heel I 
 
 hear, 
 
 With the welcome call of "READY! 
 ABOUT ! " 
 
 No time to spare ! It is touch and go ; 
 And the captain growls, " DOWN HELM ! 
 
 HARD DOWN ! " 
 
 As my weight on the whirling spokes I 
 ' throw, 
 
 While heaven grows black with the storm- 
 cloud's frown. 
 
 High o'er the knight-heads flies the spray, 
 As we meet the shock of the plunging sea ; 
 
 And my shoulder stiff to the wheel I lay, 
 As I answer, "AY, AY, SIR! HA-A-R-D 
 A- LEE! " 
 
 With the swerving leap of a startled steed, 
 The ship flies fast in the eye of the wind, 
 
 The dangerous shoals on the lee recede, 
 And the headland white we have left 
 behind. 
 
 The topsails flutter, the jibs collapse 
 And belly and tug at the groaning cleats, 
 
 The spanker slats, and the mainsail flaps, 
 And thunders the order, " TACKS AND 
 SHEETS ! " 
 
 'Mid the rattle of blocks and the tramp of 
 
 the crew, 
 
 Hisses the rain of the rushing squall ; 
 The sails are l>lack from clew to clew, 
 And now is the moment for " MAINSAIL, 
 HAUL !" 
 
 XII. 
 
 And the heavy yards, like a baby's toy, 
 By fifty strong arms are swiftly swung ; 
 
 She holds her way, and I look with joy 
 For the first white spray o'er the bulwarks 
 flung. 
 
 XIII. 
 
 " LET GO AND HAUL ! " 'Tis the last com- 
 mand, 
 And the head-sails fill to the blast once 
 
 more ; 
 
 Astern and to leeward lies the land, 
 With its breakers white on the shingly 
 shore. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 What matters the reef, or the rain, or the 
 
 squall ? 
 
 I steady the helm for the open sea ; 
 The first mate clamors, "BELAY THERE, 
 
 ALL ! " 
 
 And the captain's breath once more comes 
 free. 
 
 xv. 
 
 And so off shore let the good ship fly ; 
 Little care I how the gusts may blow, 
 In my fo'castle-bunk in a jacket dry, 
 Eight bells have struck, and my watch is 
 below. 
 
HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 6 1 1 
 
 CHARLES JAMES SPRAGUE. 
 
 [Born in Boston, January 16, 1823. Still a resident of this city.] 
 
 TO MY HERBARIUM. 
 
 YE dry and dead remains ! Turned to the god of day, 
 
 Poor, wrinkled remnants of a beauteous Your little lips come, prayerfully, apart, 
 
 prime '. With the soft breeze your leaves, reviving, 
 Why, from your final doom, should I take play 
 
 pains Sweet music to my heart. 
 
 To stay the hand of time? 
 
 The world would pass you by ; The friend who in those years 
 
 For beauty, grace, and fragrance all are Shared warmly in my rambles, far and wide, 
 
 gone. Back, with the same old fondness, reappears, 
 
 Your age is homeliness to every eye, And trudges at my side. 
 
 And prized by me alone. 
 
 These are your charms to me ! 
 Not beautiful, but dear, 
 
 ,, i 11 ti While such dear recollections ye awake, 
 
 Your wrecks recall to me the happy past ; _, . ... , ... . , 
 
 , ir , ... Your ruins, blackened, crumbling though 
 
 Wand-hke, your stems can summon to ap- , 
 
 they be, 
 
 I treasure for their sake. 
 The days that could not last. 
 
 I breathe the summer air ! May I, like you, dry flowers, 
 
 I wander in the woodland paths once more ! When in young life I can no more engage, 
 
 Again the copse, the dell, the meadow, wear A dear memento be of happy hours 
 
 The loveliness of yore. To those who tend my age. 
 
 ELIZABETH (LLOYD) HOWELL. 
 MILTON'S PRAYER OF PATIENCE. 
 
 I AM old and blind ! When friends pass by, my weaknesses to 
 
 Men point at me as smitten by God's frown ; shun, 
 
 Afflicted and deserted of my kind, Thy chariot I hear. 
 Yet am I not cast down. 
 
 Thy glorious face 
 
 I am weak, yet strong : Is leaning towards me, and its holy light 
 
 I murmur not that I no longer see ; Shines in upon my lonely dwelling-place, 
 
 Poor, old, and helpless, I the more be- And there is no more night. 
 
 long, 
 
 Father supreme ! to thee. On my bended knee 
 
 I recognize thy purpose, clearly shown ; 
 
 All-merciful One ! My vision thou hast dimmed that I may 
 
 When men are farthest, then art thou most see 
 
 near; Thyself, Thyself alone. 
 
612 
 
 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 I have nought to fear ; 
 This darkness is the shadow of thy wing ; 
 
 Beneath it I am almost sacred, here 
 Can come no evil thing. 
 
 O ! I seem to stand, 
 Trembling, where foot of mortal ne'er hath 
 
 been, 
 Wrapped in that radiance from the sinless 
 
 land 
 Which eye hath never seen. 
 
 Visions come and go, 
 
 Shapes of resplendent beauty round me 
 throng ; 
 
 From angel-lips I seem to hear the flow 
 Of soft and holy song, 
 
 In a purer clime 
 
 My being fills with rapture, waves of 
 thought 
 
 Roll in upon my spirit, strains sublime 
 Break over me unsought. 
 
 Give me now my lyre ! 
 I feel the stirrings of a gift divine ; 
 
 Within my bosom glows unearthly fire 
 Lit by no skill of mine. 
 
 ABBA GOOLD WOOLSON. 
 
 (Born at Windham, Me.. April 30, 1838. Educated at Portland High School. Married 
 M. Woolson, a master in the English High School, Boston.] 
 
 OVER THE HILLS. 
 
 I SIT upon Wachuset, and behold 
 Far to the north New Hampshire's moun- 
 tains rise ; 
 
 Nor steepled towns nor forest lands, un- 
 rolled 
 
 In near, encircling vales, can tempt my 
 eyes 
 
 From those blue peaks that skirt the distant 
 scene, 
 
 Veiling with softer light their brows serene. 
 
 Withdrawn in misty shadows, grandly dim, 
 Monadnock towers supreme o'er all the 
 
 view ; 
 While faint as dreams, upon the horizon's 
 
 rim, 
 
 The Unkanoonucs lift their domes of blue, 
 And clustered fair, in nearer plains below, 
 The hills of Sharon catch the sunset glow. 
 
 I see no longer town or gleaming pond, 
 Bathed in the mellow splendors of the west, 
 
 But gaze away to those cool heights beyond, 
 Where wavy range and solitary crest 
 
 Speak to my heart of scenes I loved of yore 
 
 Beneath their slopes, in days that are no 
 more. 
 
 O, lone bird, soaring near this airy peak 
 Whereon I sjt, stay not for darkening skies ; 
 
 O'er rosy lakes and purpling valleys seek 
 A little city in the north that lies 
 
 Set low in meadows by a river wide, 
 
 With trees embowered and fields on either 
 side. 
 
 When there, alit upon some gilded vane 
 
 That tells its dwellers of the veering wind, 
 Your eye shall scan the movements on the 
 
 plain, 
 The haunts I love, the friends there left 
 
 behind ; 
 
 Look sharp and long, for I shall question well, 
 When home you speed again, your tale to tell. 
 
 O, little bird, sweet bird, the shadows grow ' 
 I sit alone and watch the sunset pale 
 
 Behind your flight, while in the woods below 
 Shudders the night wind rustling from the 
 vale ; 
 
 Yet fancy flies to see you settling down 
 
 With sunrise carols o'er that river town. 
 
 
 
HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 6i 3 
 
 FORCEYTHE WILLSON. 
 
 THE OLD SERGEANT. 
 
 "COME a little nearer, thank you, let 
 
 me take the cup : 
 Draw your chair up, draw it closer, just 
 
 another little sup ! 
 May be you may think I'm better ; but I'm 
 
 pretty well used up, 
 Doctor, you've done all you could do, but 
 
 I'm just a going up ! 
 
 " And I wondered who could call me so dis- 
 tinctly and so slow. 
 
 Knew it couldn't be the lighter he could 
 not have spoken so, 
 
 And I tried to answer, ' Here, sir ' ' but I 
 couldn't make it go ; 
 
 For I couldn't move a muscle, and I couldn't 
 make it go I 
 
 " Feel my pulse, sir, if you want to, but it 
 ain't much use to try." 
 
 "Never say that," said the surgeon, as he 
 smothered down a sigh ; 
 
 " It will never do, old comrade, for a soldier 
 to say die ! " 
 
 "What you say will make no difference, Doc- 
 tor, when you come to die," 
 
 "Doctor, what has been the matter ?" "You 
 were very faint, they say ; 
 
 You must try to get some sleep now." "Doc- 
 tor, have I been away?" 
 
 "Not that anybody knows of !" "Doctor 
 Doctor, please to stay ! 
 
 There is something I must tell you, and you 
 won't have long to stay ! 
 
 " I have got my marching orders, and I'm 
 
 ready now to go ; 
 Doctor, did you sny I fainted ? but it couldn't 
 
 ha' been so, 
 For as sure as I'm a sergeant, and was 
 
 wounded at Shiloh, 
 I've this very night been back there, on the 
 
 old field of Shiloh ! 
 
 "Then I thought, It's all a nightmare, all a 
 
 humbug and a bore ; 
 Just another fboiifth/ntyf-iMMV and it won't 
 
 come any more ; 
 But it came, sir, notwithstanding, just the 
 
 same way as before : 
 'ORDERLY SERGEANT ROBERT BURTON 1' 
 
 even plainer than before. 
 
 " That is all that I remember, till a sudden 
 
 burst of light, 
 And I stood beside the river, where we stood 
 
 that Sunday night, 
 Waiting to be ferried over to the dark bluffs 
 
 opposite, 
 When the river was perdition, and all hell 
 
 was opposite ! 
 
 "And the same old palpitation came again 
 
 in all its power, 
 And I heard a bugle sounding, as from some 
 
 celestial tower ; 
 And the same mysterious voice said, ' IT is 
 
 THE ELEVENTH HOUR ! 
 ORDERLY SERGEANT ROBERT BURTON 
 
 IT IS THE ELEVENTH HOUR ! ' 
 
 " This is all thnt I remember : The last time 
 
 the lighter came, 
 And the lights had all been lowered, and the 
 
 noises much the same, 
 He had not been one five minutes before 
 
 something called my name : 
 ' ORDERLY SERGEANT ROBERT BURTON ! ' 
 
 just that way it called my name. 
 
 " Doctor Austin ! what day is this ? " " It 
 
 is Wednesday night, you know." 
 "Yes, to-morrow will be New Year's, and 
 
 a right good time below ! 
 What time is it, Doctor Austin ? " " Nearly 
 
 twelve. " " Then don't you go ! 
 Can it be that all this happened all this 
 
 not an hour ago ! 
 
614 
 
 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 "This was where the gunboats opened on 
 
 the dark rebellious host, 
 And where Webster semicircled his last guns 
 
 upon the coast ; 
 Here were still the two log-houses just the 
 
 same, or else their ghosts, 
 And the same old transport came, and took 
 
 me over or its ghost ! 
 
 "And the old field lay before me all deserted 
 
 far and wide ; 
 There was where they fell on Prentiss, 
 
 there McClernand met the tide ; 
 There was where stern Sherman rallied, and 
 
 where Hurlbut's heroes died, 
 Lower down, where Wallace charged them, 
 
 and kept charging till he died. 
 
 "There was where Lew Wallace showed 
 
 them he was of the canny kin, 
 There was where old Nelson thundered, and 
 
 where Rousseau waded in ; 
 There McCook sent 'em to breakfast, and we 
 
 all began to win 
 There was where the grape-shot took me, 
 
 just as we began to win. 
 
 " Now, a shroud of snow and silence over 
 everything was spread ; 
 
 And but for this old blue mantle and the old 
 hat on my head, 
 
 I should not have even doubted, to this mo- 
 ment, I was dead, 
 
 For my footsteps were as silent as the snow 
 upon the dead ! 
 
 " Death and silence ! Death and silence ! all 
 
 around me as I sped ! 
 And behold, a mighty tower, as if builded to 
 
 the dead, 
 To the heaven of the heavens, lifted up its 
 
 mighty head, 
 Till the stars and stripes of heaven all 
 
 seemed waving from its head ! 
 
 Y 
 
 "Round and mighty-based it towered up 
 into the infinite 
 
 And I knew no mortal mason could have 
 built a shaft so bright ; 
 
 For it shone like solid sunshine ; and a wind- 
 ing stair of light, 
 
 Wound around it and around it till it wound 
 clear out of sight 1 
 
 And, behold, as I approached it with a rapt 
 and dazzled stare, . 
 
 Thinking that I saw old comrades just as- 
 cending the great stair, 
 
 Suddenly the solemn challenge broke of 
 ' Halt, and who goes there ! ' 
 
 ' I'm a friend, ' I said, 'if you are.' 'Then 
 advance, sir, to the stair ! ' 
 
 " I advanced ! That sentry, Doctor, was 
 Elijah Ballantyne ! 
 
 First of all to fall on Monday, after we had 
 formed the line ! 
 
 ' Welcome, my old Sergeant, welcome ! Wel- 
 come by that countersign ! ' 
 
 And he pointed to the scar there, under this 
 old cloak of mine ! 
 
 "As he grasped my hand, I shuddered, think- 
 ing only of the grave ; 
 
 But he smiled and pointed upward with a 
 bright and bloodless glaive ; 
 
 ' That's the way, sir, to headquarters.' 'What 
 headquarters ? ' ' Of the brave. ' 
 
 ' But the great Tower ? ' ' That,' he answered, 
 ' Is the way, sir, of the brave 1 ' 
 
 "Then a sudden shame came o'er me at his 
 
 uniform of light ; 
 At my own so old and tattered, and at his so 
 
 new and bright ; 
 ' Ah,' said he, ' you have forgotten the New 
 
 Uniform to-night, 
 Hurry back, for you must be here at just 
 
 twelve o'clock to-night ! ' 
 
 "And the next thing I remember, you were 
 
 sitting there, and I 
 Doctor did you hear a footstep? Hark 
 
 God bless you all ! Good by t 
 Doctor, please to give my musket and my 
 
 knapsack, when I die, 
 To my son my son that's coming he 
 
 won't get here till I die ! 
 
 " Tell him his old father blessed him as he 
 
 never did before, 
 And to carry that old musket " Hark ! a 
 
 knock is at the door ! 
 "Till the Union " See! it opens'. 
 
 " Father, father ! speak once more ! " 
 " Bless you ! " gasped the old gray sergeant, 
 
 and he lay and said no more 1 
 
HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 6i 5 
 
 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON. 
 
 [Born at Pomfret, Conn., 1835. Married Wm. U. Moulton, of Boston. Contributor to 
 Harper's, the New York Tribune, &c.] 
 
 THE HOUSE IN THE MEADOW. 
 
 IT stands in a sunny meadow, 
 The house so mossy and brown, 
 
 With its cumbrous old stone chimneys, 
 And the gray roof sloping down. 
 
 The trees fold their green arms round it 
 
 The trees a century old ; 
 And the winds go chanting through them, 
 
 And the sunbeams drop their gold. 
 
 The cowslips spring in the marshes, 
 
 The roses bloom on the hill, 
 And beside the brook in the pasture 
 
 The herds go feeding at will. 
 
 Within, in the wide old kitchen, 
 
 The old folk sit in the sun, 
 That creeps through the sheltering woodbine, 
 
 Till the day is almost done. 
 
 Their children have gone and left them ; 
 
 They sit in the sun alone 
 And the old wife's ears are failing 
 
 As she harks to the well-known tone 
 
 That won her heart in her girlhood, 
 That has soothed her in many a care, 
 
 And praises her now for the brightness 
 Her old face used to wear. 
 
 She thinks again of her bridal 
 How, dressed in her robe of white, 
 
 She stood by her gay young lover 
 In the morning's rosy light. 
 
 O, the morning is rosy as ever, 
 
 But the rose from her cheek is fled ; 
 
 And the sunshine still is golden, 
 But it falls on a silvered head. 
 
 And the girlhood dreams, once vanished, 
 
 Come back in her winter time, 
 Till her feeble pulses tremble 
 
 With the thrill of spring-time's prime. 
 
 And looking forth from the window, 
 She thinks how the trees have grown 
 
 Since, dad in her bridal whiteness, 
 She crossed the old door-stone. 
 
 Though dimmed her eyes' bright azure, 
 And dimmed her hair's young gold, 
 
 The love in her girlhood plighted 
 Has never grown dim or old. 
 
 They sat in peace in the sunshine 
 
 Till the day was almost done, 
 And then, at its close, an angel 
 
 Stole over the threshold stone. 
 
 He folded their hands together 
 He touched their eyelids with balm, 
 
 And their last breath floated outward, 
 Like the close of a solemn psalm I 
 
 Like a bridal pair they traversed 
 
 The unseen, mystical road 
 That leads to the Beautiful City, 
 
 Whose "builder and maker is God." 
 
 Perhaps in that miracle country 
 They will give her lost youth back, 
 
 And the flowers of the vanished spring-time 
 Will bloom in the spirit's track. 
 
 One draught from the living waters 
 Shall call back his manhood's prime } 
 
 And eternal years shall measure 
 The love that outlasted time. 
 
 But the shapes that they left behind them, 
 
 The wrinkles and silver hair 
 Made holy to us by the kisses 
 
 The angel had printed there 
 
 We will hide awny 'neath the willows. 
 When the day is low in the west, 
 
 Where the sunbeams cannot find them, 
 Nor the winds disturb their rest. 
 
 And we'll suffer no tell-tale tombstone. 
 
 With its age and date, to rise 
 O'er the two who are o!d no longer, 
 
 In the Father's house in the skies. 
 
6i6 
 
 HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN. 
 
 [Born at Hartford, Conn., 1833. A resident of New York.] 
 THE MOUNTAIN. 
 
 Two thousand feet in air it stands 
 Betwixt the bright and shaded lands, 
 Above the regions it divides 
 And borders with its furrowed sides. 
 The seaward valley laughs with light 
 Till the round sun o'erhangs this height ; 
 But then the shadow of the crest 
 No more the plains that lengthen west 
 Enshrouds, yet slowly, surely creeps 
 Eastward, until the coolness steeps 
 A darkling league of tilth and wold, 
 And chills the flocks that seek their fold. 
 
 Not like those ancient summits lone, 
 Mont Blanc, on his eternal throne, 
 The city-gemmed Peruvian peak, 
 The sunset portals landsmen seek, 
 Whose train, to reach the Golden Land, 
 Crawls slow and pathless through the sand, 
 Or that, whose ice-lit beacon guides 
 The mariner on tropic tides, 
 And flames across the gulf afar, 
 A torch by day, by night a star, 
 Not thus, to cleave the outer skies, 
 Does my serener mountain rise, 
 Nor aye forget its gentle birth, 
 Upon the dewy, pastoral earth. 
 
 But ever, in the noonday light, 
 
 Are scenes whereof I love the sight, 
 
 Broad pictures of the lower world 
 
 Beneath my gladdened eyes unfurled. 
 
 Irradiate distances reveal 
 
 Fair nature wed to human weal ; 
 
 The rolling valley made a plain ; 
 
 Its checkered squares of grass and grain ; 
 
 The silvery rye, the golden wheat, 
 
 The flowery elders where they meet, 
 
 Ay, even the springing corn I see, 
 
 And garden hnunts of bird and bee ; 
 
 And where, in daisied meadows, shines 
 
 The wandering river through its vines, 
 
 Move specks at random, which I know 
 
 Are herds a-grazing to and fro. 
 
 If foiled in what I fain would know, 
 
 Again I turn my eyes below 
 And eastward, past the hither mead 
 Where all day long the cattle feed ; 
 A crescent gleam my sight allures 
 And clings about the hazy moors, 
 The great, encircling, radiant sea, 
 Alone in its immensity. 
 
 Even there, a queen upon its shore, 
 I know the city evermore 
 Her palaces and temples rears, 
 And \voos the nations to her piers; 
 Yet the proud city seems a mole 
 To this horizon-bounded whole ; 
 And, from my station on the mount, 
 The whole is little worth account 
 Beneath the overhanging sky, 
 That seems so far and yet so nigh. 
 Here breathe I inspiration rare, 
 Unburdened by the grosser air 
 That hugs the lower land, and feel 
 Through all my finer senses steal 
 The life of what that life may be, 
 Freed from this dull earth's density, 
 When \ve, with many a soul-felt thrill, 
 Shall thrid the elher at our will, 
 Through winding corric!ors of morn 
 And starry archways swiftly borne. 
 
 Here, in the process of the night, 
 
 The stars themselves a purer light 
 
 Give out, than reaches those who gaze 
 
 Enshrouded with the valley's haze. 
 
 October, entering Heaven's fane, 
 
 Assumes her lucent, annual reign ; 
 
 Then what a dark and dismal clod, 
 
 Forsaken by the sons of God, 
 
 Seems this sad world, to those who march 
 
 Across the high, illumined arch, 
 
 And with their brightness draw me forth 
 
 To scan the splendors of the North I 
 
 I see the Dragon, as he toils 
 
 With Ursa in his shining coils, 
 
 And mark the Huntsman lift his shield, 
 
 Confronting on the ancient field 
 
 The Bull, while in a mystic row 
 
HAND-BOOK OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 
 6i 7 
 
 The jewels of his girdle glow : 
 
 Or, haply, I may ponder long 
 
 On that remoter, sparkling throng, 
 
 The orient sisterhood, around 
 
 Whose chief our Galaxy is wound ; 
 
 Thus half enwrapt in classic dreams, 
 
 And brooding over Learning's gleams, 
 
 I leave to gloom the under land, 
 
 And from my watch-tower, close at hand. 
 
 Like him who led the favored race, 
 
 I look on glory face to face 1 
 
 So, on the mountain-top, alone, 
 I dwell, as one who holds a throne ; 
 Or prince, or peasant, him I count 
 My peer, who stands upon a mount. 
 Sees farther than the tribes below, 
 And knows the joys they cannot know ; 
 And, though beyond the sound of speech 
 They reign, my soul goes out to reach, 
 Far on iheir noble heights elsewhere, 
 My brother-monarchs of the air. 
 
 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 [Born in Hardin County, Kentucky, February 12, 1809. Died April 15, 1865.] 
 ADDRESS AT GETTYSBURG, NOVEMBER, 1863. 
 
 FOURSCORE and seven years ago our fathers brought forth upon 
 this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to 
 the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged 
 in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so 
 conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a 
 great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion 
 of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their 
 lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper 
 that we should do this. But in a larger sense we cannot dedicate, 
 we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave 
 men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far 
 above our power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor 
 long remember, what we say here, but it can never forget what they 
 did here. It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to the 
 unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly 
 advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task 
 remaining before us, that from these honored dead we take increased 
 devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of 
 devotion ; that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not 
 have died in vain ; that this nation, under God, shall have a new 
 birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, 
 and for the people, shall not perish from the earth. 
 
NOTES. 
 
 Page 13. The last paragraphs on this page contain the ideas afterwards amplified by 
 Mr. Webster in his version of what Mr. Adams's speech in support of the Declaration 
 might have been. 
 
 P. 1 8. Catholic is here used in its original sense of general or universal. Amor 
 pair ice. Love of country. 
 
 P. 20. Conge,. Leave to depart. 
 
 P. 23. Saxum vetustum. An ancient rock. 
 
 P. 27. Omtie tulit punctum qui miscuit utile dulci. He carries every point who min- 
 gles the useful with the agreeable. 
 
 P. 35. Granger. Hon. Gideon Granger, who was postmaster-general under Jefferson 
 and Madison, resided at Suffield, Conn., on the route of the mail coaches to Washington. 
 Suffield was the "imperial city," and it was probably famed for the articles of commerce 
 playfully mentioned by Mr. Ames. 
 
 P. 53. Louis Bourdaloue. An eminent French preacher (1632-1704). Jean Baptiste 
 Massillon. A brilliant pulpit orator (1663-1742). 
 
 P. 59. Palinuriis. The pilot in Virgil's ^Eneid. 
 
 P. 63. Nimbus. A cloud. 
 
 P. 76. Michael Angela. Michael Angelo Buonarotti, sculptor, architect, painter, and 
 poet ; a man of colossal genius (1474-1563). 
 
 P. 81. another morn 
 
 Risen on mid noon. 
 
 Paradise Lost, Book V. 1. 310. 
 
 P. 97. Haroun Alraschid. A famous caliph in the Thousand and One Nights. 
 
 P. 133. Mine, de Stael. Daughter of Necker, minister of finance to Louis XVI. Cel- 
 ebrated as a leader in politics and in society (1766-1817). Attila. King of the Huns. 
 Began to reign A. D. 434. See note on p. 598. Genghis Khan. A Tartar conqueror 
 (1160-1227). The Justinian Collection. The Roman law was digested into a code by 
 order of the Emperor Justinian (482-565). 
 
 P. 134. Voltaire. The assumed name of Francois Arouet, a wit, poet, and deistical 
 writer (1694-1778). Pulchre ! be tie ! optime ! Beautiful ! well done ! excellent ! Racine 
 (yean). A French tragic poet (1639-1699). 
 
 P. 135. Primus ego in patriam. I am first in my country. Comeille. See note on 
 p. 363. Calderon (de la Barca). A famous Spanish poet and dramatist (1600-1681). 
 
 P. 148. Claude. Claude Gelee, of Lorraine, the greatest of landscape painters (1600- 
 1682). Salvator. Salvator Rosa, a great Italian painter (1615-1673). Paul Potter. A 
 Dutch painter of animals (1625-1654). 
 
 P. 150. Dante. Dante degli Alighieri, the illustrious Italian poet (1265-1321). 
 Campanile. A bell tower. Michael Angelo. See note on p. 76. Raphael. Raffaello 
 Sanzio, of Urbino, a famous painter (1483-1520). Titian. Tiziano Vercelli, a Venetian 
 pain'.er (1477-1576). Lucumons. The appellation of the ancient Etruscan priests and 
 princes. 
 
 P. 151. Ahimel &c. The lines maybe paraphrased thus: "Alas! those eyes are 
 
 619 
 
62O NOTES. 
 
 darkened that saw more than was ever seen in the ancient times, and were themselves a 
 light to future ages. At evening from the top of Fesoti, c. Paradise Lost, Book I. 
 Galileo. The famous mathematician and astronomer (1564-1642). 
 
 P. 152. E pur siiwiove. And yet it moves. 
 
 P. 176. Don John of Austria. Younger brother of Philip II., son of the Emperor 
 Charles V. 
 
 P. 186. Cervantes (Miguel de). Author of the immortal romance of Don Quixote (pron. 
 Kehoty). 
 
 P. 188. Longinus. A Greek critic and philosopher (213-273). See account of his fate, 
 by Gibbon, in English Literature, Vol. I., art. Zenobia. 
 
 P. 190. The Stoics. A sect of philosophers in Athens, followers of Zeno. 
 
 P. 197. Stuart (Gilbert Charles), a celebrated American portrait painter (1756-1828). 
 
 P. 200. His look drew audience, &c. The correct reading is 
 
 his look 
 
 Drew audience and attention still as night 
 Or summer's noontide air. 
 
 Paradise Lost, Book II. line 300. 
 
 P. 201. William Penn (1644-1718). 
 
 P. 205. Roger Williams. The founder of Rhode Island (1606-1683). Pascal. 
 Blaise Pascal, an eminent philosopher and religious writer, born in Auvergne, France 
 (1623-1662). Edwards. Jonathan Edwards. See Introduction. 
 
 P. 231. Can these things be, &c. Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act III., Scene 4. 
 
 P. 234. "The Problem" contains the noblest lines written in our time. The imagery 
 has a colossal grandeur, and the expression is perfectly commensurate with tli2 thought. 
 
 P. 241. The Hall of ' Eblis is the final scene in a supernatural romance of singular power, 
 entitled Vathek, written by William Beckford, an eccentric Englishman. 
 
 P. 242. Jean Paul Richter, a German philosopher (1763-1825). 
 
 P. 252. The Sclavi, or Slavonians, were the progenitors of the Russians, the Poles, and 
 other nations of Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. 
 
 P. 254. Tortos Ixionis angues, &c. The writhing serpents of Ixion and the huge 
 wheel. Rhizopod. One of the lowest forms of animal life. 
 
 P. 256. Faust is the hero of a poem by the German poet Goethe (Johann Wolfgang von) 
 1749-1832. The precise sound of the name cannot be represented in English letters; it 
 is something like Gerta (G hard), and something like Gerty. Mephistopheles is the 
 tempting end in the story. 
 
 P. 257. General Francis Marion. An American officer in the revolutionary war 
 (1732-1795). 
 
 P. 259. For Roderick Dfiu, see Scott's Lady of the Lake. 
 
 P. 262. The helmet of Mambrino. This is an allusion to Don Quixote, who con- 
 ceived that he must needs provide himself with a helmet that had been worn by a hero of 
 romance, and, meeting a barber who carried his brass basin on his head, he seized it, and 
 insisted that it was the helmet of Mambrino (a personage in Orlando Furioso, Canto I.). 
 
 P. 264. Weedlcss. Without clothing. 
 
 P. 268. Jacques Bridaine. A famous French preacher (1701-1767). The motto is, 
 Eternity is a clock, whose pendulum says, and repeats without cessation, these two words 
 only in the silence of the tombs, Forever ! never ! Never 1 forever ! 
 
 P. 275. The Mouse Tower. Hatto II., the fifteenth Archbishop of Mayence, who died 
 about 975, (according to the legend) was devoured by mice in his tower, near Bingen, and 
 the people thought it to be a judgment for his cruelty in having refused to part with 
 provisions when there was a great scarcity. 
 
 P. 284. The topography of Athens cannot be elucidated in the brief space of a note. 
 Consult Appleton's Cyclopaedia, art. Athens (written by Professor Felton). 
 
 P. 286. Socrates. An Athenian philosopher (B. C. 469-399). 
 
NOTES. 621 
 
 P. 292. Hafiz. A Persian poet. Born early in ths fourteenth century, died 1391. 
 
 P. 273 Kosmos. Literally order, the universe. The Cross is the constellation visi- 
 ble only in southern latitudes, as the Bear is seen circling the pole in the northern 
 heavens. 
 
 P. 294. Than Rome's sky -mocking vault, or many-spired Milan. The reference is 
 to the dome of St. Peter's, and to the cathedral of Milan, which is covered with a myriad 
 of pinnacles and over eight thousand statues. 
 
 P. 306. Stuart. See note for p. 197. 
 
 P. 308. Patois (patwah). A local or provincial corruption of language. 
 
 P. 314. Montaigne (Michael de). A celebrated French essayist (1533-1589). Blran- 
 ger (Pierre Jean de). The first of French lyric poets (1780-1857). 
 
 P. 315. Sainte-Beuve (Charles Augustin). Poet and critic (1804-1871). Canneries du 
 Lundi (Monday Chats) is the title of a series of critical papers, originally issued weekly, 
 
 P. 317. Aphrodite. The Greek name of Venus. Pallida Mors. Pale death. Naked 
 Pict. An allusion to a couplet commonly attributed to Sir Richard Blackmore, containing 
 a fine specimen of a bull : 
 
 "A painted vest Prince Vortigern had on, 
 Which from a naked Pict his grandsire won." 
 
 In a note in Boswell's Life of Johnson [1767 ajtat. 60] it is said that the lines were not by 
 Blackmore, but had been altered by some wag from a passage in The British Princes by 
 the Honorable Edward Howard : 
 
 A vest as admir'd Voltiger had on, 
 
 Which from this Island's foes his grandsire won, &c., &c. 
 
 Antati. The name of a family in Cremona, famous, in the seventeenth century, as makers 
 of violins. Stradivarins (Antonio), father and son, makers of violins, also at Cremona. 
 
 P. 318. Maestros. Masters. Virtuoso. A collector of curiosities. Dilettante. A 
 lover (as of music). 
 
 P. 320. Ferce natura. Of a wild nature. 
 
 P. 325. Purpurcos spargam flares. I will scatter purple blossoms. 
 
 P. 326. Hyacinthus. A youth beloved by Apollo, killed by accident, or rather changed, 
 after receiving a mortal blow, into the flower that bears his name. 
 
 P. 331. Antioch has been recently (1872) almost entirely destroyed by earthquakes. 
 
 P. 334. O, the blood more stirs, &c. Shakespeare's Henry IV., Part I., Act I., 
 Scene 3. Ciia mors, &c. Swift death, and joyful victory. Horace, Sat. I. i, 8. 
 
 P- 337- . Siegfried. The hero of the Norse tales. He was not a smith, as the author 
 seems to suppose. She is thinking of the smith that forged Siegfried's magic sword. 
 
 P. 338. Fata Morgana. Castles of the Fairy Morgana, a form of mirage occasionally 
 seen by observers standing on eminences on the Calabrian shore, and looking westward 
 upon the Strait of Messina. It occurs on still mornings, when the sun, rising behind the 
 mountains, strikes clown upon the smooth surface at an angle of forty-five degrees. The 
 heat then- acts rapidly upon the stagnant air, the strata of which,, slowly intermingling, 
 present a series of mirrors which variously reflect the objects upon the surface. Objects 
 upon the Sicilian shore opposite, beneath the dark background of the mountains of Mes- 
 sina, are seen refracted and reflected upon the water in mid channel, presenting enlarged 
 and duplicated images. Gigantic figures of men and horses move over the picture, as simi- 
 lar images in miniature are seen flitting across the white sheet of the camera obscura. 
 
 P. 342. Fountain heads and pathless groves, &c. From The Nice Valour, by J. 
 Fletcher. 
 
 P. 344. Porphyrogcne, from IIopQvpoyivvriTos, "born in the purple: " a title given to 
 the heir of a Byzantine emperor. ' 
 
 P. 350. Gil Bias. The hero of a famous novel of Spanish life, written (in French) by 
 
622 NOTES. 
 
 Alain Rene Le Sage (1668-1747). The English translation is by Smollett. The uncle, Gil 
 Perez, was an ignorant canon, who taught his nephew to read. 
 
 P. 359. Humboldt. Alexander von Humbo'dt, traveller, naturalist, and philosopher 
 (1769-1859). IValker, the filibuster. Attempts were made in 1855, and later, by a small 
 party of Americans, under the lead of William Walker, and with the connivance of the 
 United States authorities, to seize upon Nicaragua, and other portions of the Isthmus. He 
 was at last overthrown and executed in Honduras in 1860. 
 
 P. 363. Moliere. A comic dramatist of France (1622-1673). By the French consid- 
 ered to be a rival of Shakespeare. Corneille. Poet and dramatist. Born at Rouen, 1606, 
 died at Paris, 1684. Bossuet. Perhaps the greatest of French preachers. Born at Dijon, 
 1627, died at Paris, 1704. 
 
 P. 365. I catch the last words of music from the lips of innocence and beauty. The 
 children of the public schools of Boston sang on the occasion. 
 
 P. 366. Truce of God. An institution of the middle a^es, designed to mitigate the vio- 
 lence of private war by prohibiting engagement in hostilities, at least on the holy days, from 
 Thursday evening to Sunday evening of each week, also during the entire season of Advent 
 and Lent, and on certain festival days. Cestus. A girdle. 
 
 P. 374. A rticles of vertu. Objects of art and taste. 
 
 P. 386. Sir Guyou is the Knight of Temperance (Faerie Queene, Book II.), and Flor- 
 imel a female character in Book III. 
 
 P. 391. O sanctissima, &c. 
 
 "O most holy, O most pure, 
 Sweet Virgin Mary, 
 Mother beloved, undefiled ! 
 Pray, pray for us." 
 
 P. 398. Ccesar. The emperor. It will be observed that the name has come to signify 
 an absolute monarch, as in Kaiser and Czar. 
 
 P. 404. Corpo santo. Holy body. The name given to the strange electrical bodies 
 sometimes seen in the rigging or on the spars of a ship. 
 
 P. 407. Ecce iterum Crispinus. Lo ! here is Crispinus again. Juvenal, 4th Satire. 
 
 P. 410. The lines of Moore refer to the death of Sheridan. Schiller. Johann Chr. 
 Friedrich von Schi!ler,one of the most eminent of German poets and dramatists (1759-1804). 
 
 P. 423. Luca della Robbia. A sculptor of Florence (1388-1463), the inventor of 
 enamelled terra cotta. Certosa. A monastery of Carthusians (Chartreuse in French, 
 Charterhouse in English). 
 
 P. 430. Undine. A water spirit, in the romance of that name by the Baron de la Motte 
 Fouque. Hafiz. See note on p. 292. 
 
 P. 435. Carrara. A district in Italy famous for its quarries of fine white marble. 
 
 P. 441. Empayred. A modern author would use the word "disparaged." 
 
 The English language. The first and third lines of each stanza are dactylic hexameters, 
 acatal :ctic, with spondaic substitutions ; the lines that alternate are hexameters and 
 pentnjiieters, all catalectic in one syllable. The first line is seen to be symmetrical with the 
 nrst line of the ^Eneid : 
 
 Give me of | every I language I first my I vigorous I English. 
 Arma vi- I rumque ca- I no Tro- I jae qui | primus ab I oris. 
 
 But it would be a very difficult and not over profitable task, in a treatise like this, to give 
 an analysis of all the lines. Most of them are musical and correct, but some are only rough 
 and vigorous, e. g. : 
 
 While o'er thy | bastions wit | flashes its | glittering | sword. 
 Bastions wit does not make a very elastic dactyl. 
 
NOTES. 623 
 
 The spondaic line, 
 
 Now clear, | pure, hard, | bright, and | one by | one, like to | hail stones, 
 
 will naturally require a slow and deliberate utterance. Other lines seem to lead to a change 
 of accent, e. g. : 
 
 "Iron dug from the North, ductile gold from the South." 
 
 In this line the reader inevitably fulls into the accent of choriambic metre, and reads it like 
 two choriambic monometers, with a spondee for a basis, thus : 
 
 Iron I dug from the North, 
 Ductile I gold from the South. 
 
 A very simple and sufficient direction to the reader is to think only of the musical lilt, and 
 read boldly. As in skating, the danger of a fall is while halting ; when the motion is estab- 
 lished, all will go surely and smoothly. It is not possible to analyze the feet with the 
 rapidity of reading, and determine the respective quantities of the syllables ; but if the 
 csesural pause is established as a central point, or pivot, the swing naturally follows. 
 
 It is commonly said by writers on prosody that the classic metres cannot be employed in 
 English, because English words do not have "quantity." We venture to assert that they 
 do have quantity, and that the knowledge or the intuitive feeling of quantity is what gives 
 the subtile, melodious charm to the verses of certain poets. We should not go further and 
 assert that rules could be constructed, as in Latin and Greek prosody, by which the quan- 
 tity of every syllable could be ascertained ; but the reader whose ear for rhythm has been 
 cultivated will find that English words arrange themselves naturally in long and short syl- 
 lables, and that an English hexameter is not destitute of force, music, or variety of expres- 
 sion. The measure of Evangeline wi'l occur to all as a fine specimen of constructive art. 
 Torres Vedras. A town in Portugal, admirably fortified by Wellington in 1810. 
 
 P. 447. Minerva, in the classic fable, sprang full grown and armed from the brain of 
 Jupiter. 
 
 P. 451. Artio. A river that flows by Florence. Beatrice. A lady beloved by 
 Dante. Ghibelline. The people of Italy, in the time of Dante, were divided into two 
 political parties, Guelphs and Ghibellines. The former espoused the cause of the pope, the 
 latter that of the emperor. Cum<z. A city in Italy, near which was the famous cave 
 from which the Sibylline prophecies were uttered. 
 
 P. 472. Helper of mortals, hear. Ei? A/jta. This is commonly put seventh in the 
 Homeric hymns. Hermann, however, after Ruhnken, prints it among the Orphic hyrnns, 
 and it is probably not Homeric. 
 
 P. 473. Happy then are they, &c. Etj rr/i/ /^rfpa jrai/rwv. Hymn 20 in Didot collec- 
 tion, 5-19 ve/ses. I will sing a new song, &c. Psalm cxliv. 9-15. 
 
 P. 474. Then the earth shook, &c. Psalm xviii. 7-16. Then he sat on high, &c. 
 Iliad xiii. 15-31. 
 
 P. 475. Like leaves on trees, &c. Iliad vi. 146-149. As for man, &c. Psalm ciii. 
 13-18, 
 
 P. 487. Dele. Omit. 
 
 P. 516. Claude. See note on p. 148. Turner (Joseph M. W.). An eminent English 
 landscape painter (17751851). 
 
 P. 520. Pindar. A great lyric poet (B. C. about 522-442). Epaminondas. A famous 
 Theban general. Died B. C. 362. 
 
 P. 521. O fans BandttsicB, &c. O fountain of Bandusia, more glittering than crystal. 
 Horace, Ode III. 13. 
 
 P. 522. .Adsum. The date is for the death of Thackeray. In The Newcomes, by this 
 
624 
 
 NOTES. 
 
 author, a gentleman reduced to poverty (Colonel Newcome) is obliged to seek a shelter in 
 his old age in a charitable institution, where the daily roll-call was answered by A dsum, 
 meaning "present," or " I am here." On his death bed the veteran, before closing his 
 eyes forever, answers, as if to a summons from the other world, " Adsum." For notes 
 on Dante, Cervantes, c., see previous pages. 
 
 P. 528. Exogenesis. Growth upon the outside. 
 
 P. 541. Parvenu. A person of low origin. The epithet is applied generally to those 
 of vulgar manners. 
 
 P. 547. The reader will find that these exquisite poems require the closest attention, and 
 that they amply repay it. 
 
 P. 549. , Nom de plume. An author's assumed name. 
 
 P- 555- Arachne. A Greek damsel, skilled inweaving and embroidery, who, having 
 affronted Athene by a challenge, was changed to a spider. 
 
 P. 563, et seq. Old-wife is a common name often given to the long-tailed duck, one of 
 the wild sea ducks of New England in the winter. The old-wives are so called on account 
 of their noisy and peculiar call-notes, resembling a loud, excited conversation. Their plu- 
 mage has in it much white. The kittiwake is a small variety of gull, found on our coast in 
 the winter. The guillemot is a kind of sea-fowl, web-footed, with short wings, not good 
 at flying, but expert in swimming and diving. It is an arctic bird. The burgomaster is 
 our largest gull, a great destroyer of the eggs and young of the sea-fowl, and a robber of 
 other birds. Coot is a name given very improperly to our larger sea ducks, such as the 
 eider, the king-duck, velvet-duck, &c. The merganser is a sea-fowl, duck-like, but it has 
 a serrated, narrow bill instead of the usual bill of a duck. The water-witch is our little 
 grebe, a sea bird with curious lobed feet, but a thorough water-bird, diving with great 
 celerity, and almost impossible to shoot. The loon is also a lobe-footed bird, and an 
 expert diver. Theanfc is an arctic bird of the nature of the penguin, with wings so small 
 it can scarcely fly at all. The auks take the place of penguins in the northern hemisphere. 
 
 P. 579. A slangy repertoire. A. stock of low phrases. 
 
 P. 587. Caramba. An exclamation of impatience, anger, or regret, according to the 
 tone. Tapidaros. Covered stirrups. Senorita. A young Spanish lady. Catenas. 
 Reins. Canon. A deep gorge or ravine. Chaparral. A dense thicket. Serape. A 
 horseman's cloak or blanket. 
 
 Pp. 598, 599. Attila was the king of the Huns, and for many years, in the first half of 
 the fifth century, was the terror both of Constantinople and Rome. Not long after the 
 death of Alaric, he invaded the Roman empire at the head of half a million of barbarians, 
 and with fire and sword laid waste many of its most fertile provinces. Into the bold sketch 
 of Alaric, which is given in this dirge, the poet, in the license of his art, has thrown some 
 of the distinguishing features of Attila. It may be well to advise the youthful reader that, 
 as a matter of sobar history, it was Attila, and not Alaric, who used to say that the grass 
 never grew where his horse had trod ; and that it was not Alaric, but Attila, who was 
 called the Scourge of God. With this appellation the king of the Huns was so well pleased 
 that he adopted it as one of his titles of honor. Note by J. Pijrpont, in A merican First 
 Class Book. 
 
 P. 6n. That this poem should have been attributed to Milton himself is not so strange 
 when we consider that it is a paraphrase of a passage in Milton's " Second Defence of the 
 People of England." The thoughts are Milton's; the form in which they are expressed, 
 though beautiful in parts, and creditable to the authoress, is not at all Miltonian. 
 
 P. 613. This striking poem is taken from a volume published by Messrs. Ticknor & 
 Fields. The author died about the year 1865. He resided at one time in Cambridge, 
 Mass., and before that in New Albany, Ind. The editor has not been able to learn any- 
 thing further of him. Grapevine. The term in camp for a false report (as by the tele- 
 graph). 
 
 P. 617. Although Abraham Lincoln was not an author in the usual sense of the word, 
 he had the good fortune to deliver one short address, which will not suffer by comparison 
 
NOTES. 625 
 
 with any passage of similar length either in English or in any other modern tongue. The sim- 
 plicity ot ttui language is in harmony with the moral sublimity of the ideas. We seem, as 
 we read, to be contemplating the SOUL of the man rising before us serene and unconscious 
 as a mounum. 'lue French philosopher, Vauvenargues, said that "GREAT THOUGHTS 
 COME FROM THE HEART." Applying the apophthegm to this immortal address of Lincoln's, 
 we see that the spontaneous sentiments and conceptions of a great and noble nature, espe- 
 cially those occurring at the scene of some great event, are more vital and powerful than 
 any result of the voluntary intellectual processes. There was not a scholar living who could 
 have added any point, dignity, or grandeur to these sentences. 
 40 
 
INDEX. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Abdication of Charles V., the 396 
 
 ADAMS, JOHN " 
 
 ADAMS, JOHN QUINCY 39 
 
 Adsum 5-2 
 
 Age, Characteristics of. 34* 
 
 Aladdin 436 
 
 Alaric, Dirge of. 59^ 
 
 ALDRICH, THOMAS B 569 
 
 Albano, a May Day in. . 544 
 
 A Life on the Ocean Wave 603 
 
 ALLEN, ELIZABETH AKERS. ..... 549 
 
 ALLSTON, WASHINGTON 63 
 
 Alpine Guide, Song of the 477 
 
 Alpine Sheep, the 607 
 
 Ambrose. . - 431 
 
 American Eloquence, One of the Sources 
 
 of. 198 
 
 American Flag, the 157 
 
 America to Great Britain 67 
 
 AMES, FJSHER. 34 
 
 Among the Laurels 547 
 
 Andre, the B'ate of. 29 
 
 Ange!o. See Michael Angela. 
 
 Antioch 331 
 
 April 548 
 
 Arnold, Dr. Thomas 567 
 
 Arnold, the Treason of. 33 
 
 Aristocracy among Vegetables 543 
 
 Aaepal at Springfold, the 2t>4 
 
 Asirvadam the Brahmin 525 
 
 Assabeth River 249 
 
 Astronomy, the Uses of. 150 
 
 Athens, Felton's Description of. ... 284 
 
 AUDI; BO.V, JOHN J 68 
 
 August Rain, the 123 
 
 Aunt Dinah, Dofensive Tactics of. . . 372 
 Authorship, American 409 
 
 PACK 
 
 Autumn Landscape, an 476 
 
 Autumn, the Suggestions of. 223 
 
 Ay, tear her tattered Ensign down. . . 327 
 
 BACON, LEONARD 224 
 
 BANCROFT, GEORGE 201 
 
 Barefoot Boy, the 295 
 
 BAKLOW, JOEL "26 
 
 Battle, Autumn of 1862, the 295 
 
 Battle Hymn, a 500 
 
 Battle Hymn of the Republic 450 
 
 Bay of Fundy, a Race with the Tide in 
 
 the 557 
 
 Bay of Naples, Picture of the 480 
 
 Beach Bird, the Little 108 
 
 Bean Field, Thoreau's 415 
 
 Beauty 539 
 
 Beauty, the Spirit of, by Mrs. Sigour- 
 
 ney 126 
 
 Bjaver Brook 430 
 
 BEECHER, HENRY WARD 380 
 
 Beer, Spruce and Ginger, at Cambridge. 424 
 
 Before the Rain 570 
 
 Belfry Pigeon, the 279 
 
 Beleaguered City, the 267 
 
 Bible and the Iliad, the 187 
 
 BIRD, ROBERT M. . . 239 
 
 B.rth of a Poet, the 597 
 
 Blind Preacher, the 51 
 
 Boating, Essay by Hipginson on. ... 502 
 
 " Holmes 315 
 
 Bobolink, Song of the 439 
 
 BOKER, GEORGE H 496 
 
 Bonaparte, Ames's Opinion of. .... 35 
 " Jefferson's Opinion of. . . 17 
 " A. H. Everett on the Char- 
 acter of " 133 
 
 627 
 
6iS 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Books and Reading, Dr. N. Porter on. 354 
 
 Boone, Daniel, Character of. 393 
 
 Bore, Saxe's Picture of a 407 
 
 Boston in 1790 305 
 
 " Picturesque View of. 573 
 
 Brahmin, Asirvadam the 525 
 
 Brown-bread Cakes 583 
 
 BROWNSON, ORESTES A 236 
 
 Brussels, a Picture of. 396 
 
 BRYANT, WILLIAM CULLEN 135 
 
 Buccaneer, the 107 
 
 Bugle, the 599 
 
 Bunker Hill, Address to the Survivors of 
 
 the Battle of. 80 
 
 Bunker Hill Monument, Webster's Ora- 
 tion at laying Corner-stone of. ... 122 
 
 Burgomaster Gull, the 563 
 
 Burns, Halleck's Tribute to 159 
 
 " Margaret Fullar upon 336 
 
 Burns, John, of Gettysburg 577 
 
 Burr's Duel with Hamilton 300 
 
 BUSHNELL, HORACE. 212 
 
 Calavar, Scene from 239 
 
 CALHOUN, JOHN C 86 
 
 Californian > 587 
 
 Cambridge Thirty Years ago 423 
 
 CARY, ALICE. 465 
 
 Carlyle, Margaret Fuller's Portrait of. . 336 
 
 Caste in India. . . . ^ 525 
 
 Castles 509 
 
 Cervantes at the Battle of Lepanto. . . 186 
 
 Chambered Nautilus, the 321 
 
 Channing, Hawthorne's Day on the As- 
 
 sabeth River with 249 
 
 CHANNING, WILLIAM E 72 
 
 Character affected by Climate 216 
 
 and Characteristic Men. . . 445 
 Charles V., the Abdication of. .... 396 
 
 CHILD, LYDIA MARIA 220 
 
 Children no 
 
 " Humorous Characteristics of. 232 
 
 Children's Hour, the 274 
 
 CHOATE, RUFUS 196 
 
 Christianity the Basis of Civilization. . 219 
 
 Church Music 313 
 
 City, the, may be the Home of a Poet. . 263 
 
 Civilization, the Law of. 218 
 
 Classical Learning, Story on 61 
 
 CLAY, HENRY 53 
 
 Clergyman, Qualifications of a successful. 311 
 Climate as affecting Character 216 
 
 CLINCH, REV. J. H 602 
 
 Clock on the Stairs, the Old 268 
 
 Closing Scene, the 476 
 
 Cocoa-nut Tree, Climbing a 458 
 
 Columbiad, the 26 
 
 Come up from the Fields, Father. . . . 462 
 
 Commerce, Romance of. 506 
 
 Concord, the Old Manse at 247 
 
 Hymn for the Completion of the 
 
 Monument at 234 
 
 Connecticut River, Beauty of the Valley 
 
 of the. 
 
 223 
 
 Consolations of the Psalms 381 
 
 COOPER, JAMES FENIMORE 112 
 
 Coral Grove, the 166 
 
 Country Life 523 
 
 Country School, Lowell's Picture of the. 424 
 
 Country Sounds 513 
 
 Couplets, Epigrammatic 443 
 
 Coupon Bonds. 53! 
 
 Crampton Light Infantry, the 455 
 
 CRANCH, CHRISTOPHER P 377 
 
 Crane, Ichabod 100 
 
 Culprit Fay, the 154 
 
 CURTIS, GEORGE WILLIAM 504 
 
 DANA, RICHARD H 107 
 
 DANA, RICHARD H.. JR 402 
 
 Dante, Lines on a Bust of. 451 
 
 David and Homer, Comparison of. . . 470 
 
 David Swan 242 
 
 Days of my Youth. 593 
 
 Dead House, the 433 
 
 Death of Nations, the.' 367 
 
 Death of the Flowers, the 142 
 
 December xxxi 529 
 
 Declaration of Independence, J. Adams's 
 
 Letter upon ix 
 
 Deep in the Wave is a Coral Grove. . . 166 
 
 Defences, In the 552 
 
 DEWEY, ORVILLE 144 
 
 Dickens, Charles, Fields's Recollections 
 
 of. 418 
 
 Dickens in Camp 580 
 
 Dirge for Two Veterans 463 
 
 Dirge of Alaric . 598 
 
 Distance 547 
 
 DOANE, GEORGE W 600 
 
 Domestic Life 231 
 
 Down to Sleep 547 
 
 DRAKE, JOSEPH R 154 
 
 " Halleck's Tribute to 161 
 
INDEX. 
 
 629 
 
 DRAPER, JOHN W 366 
 
 Dream of Margaret, the 391 
 
 Drifting 480 
 
 Driftwood, the Fire of. 270 
 
 Ducklow, the Troubles of Mr. and Mrs. 531 
 
 Dutchman's Fireside, the. .' 57 
 
 Dutch Justice 94 
 
 Dutch Republic, Rise of the 395 
 
 DWIGHT, JOHN S 385 
 
 DWIGHT, TIMOTHY 22 
 
 Early Associations, the Power of. ... 332 
 
 Earth the Mother of all, to 472 
 
 EASTMAN, CHARLES G 605 
 
 Education in Massachusetts, Labors of 
 
 Horace Mann for. 172 
 
 Education, Meaning of a Liberal. . . . 224 
 
 Elms of New England, the 223 
 
 Eloquence affected by National Pros- 
 perity 198 
 
 Eloquence of the Indians, Palfrey on the. 171 
 
 Webster 196 
 
 Embargo, Quincy's Speech on the. . . 44 
 
 EMERSON, RALPH WALDO 227 
 
 England and America, War between. . 33?> 
 
 English Channel, Fight in the 113 
 
 English Language, the 441 
 
 in Shakespeare, the. 482 
 
 Lectures on the. . . 206 
 
 Eva, Mrs. Stowe's Portrait of. .... 371 
 
 Evening 600 
 
 by a Tailor 329 
 
 " by Percival 167 
 
 " by the Lake Side 289 
 
 " Wind, the 141 
 
 EVERETT, ALEXANDER H 132 
 
 EVERETT, EDWARD 147, 59^ 
 
 Exhibition of an Infant School 454 
 
 Exogenesis 528 
 
 Factory Girl's Life, View of a 589 
 
 Faerie Queene, the, Characteristics of. . 385 
 Farm Yard, Sights and Sounds of a. . . 514 
 
 Fate and Free-will 368 
 
 FELTON, CORNELIUS C 284 
 
 FIELDS, JAMES T 417, 606 
 
 Fire of Drift Wood, the 270 
 
 First Snow-fall, the 435 
 
 Flag, the American. 157 
 
 Florence, Everett's Recollections of Gal- 
 ileo in visiting 151 
 
 Flowers, the Procession of the 503 
 
 Fountain of the Muses 521 
 
 Fourth of July, Glorifications of the. . 236 
 
 FRANKLIN, BENJAMIN i 
 
 Autobiography of. .... 2 
 
 Free-will, the Limits of. 368 
 
 French Conquest of Europe, the Fear of. 35 
 
 FKENEAU, PHILIP 593 
 
 FULLER, MARGARET 335 
 
 Future Life, the 143 
 
 GAIL HAMILTON 581 
 
 Galileo, Everett's Tribute to 151 
 
 Garden, Mitchell's Description of his. . 485 
 
 My Summer in a 541 
 
 Acquaintance, Lowell's. . . . 426 
 
 Genius and Study, the Relations of. . . 145 
 Obligations of the World to Men 
 
 of. 209 
 
 Geography and History, the Relations 
 
 between, 307 
 
 Gettysburg, the Battle of. 577 
 
 " Lincoln's Speech at .... 617 
 
 Girard, Stephen, a Portrait of. .... 488 
 
 Give me of your Bark, O Birch Tree. . 272 
 
 Gnosis > . . . . 379 
 
 GODWIN, PARKE 409 
 
 Good by, proud World; I am going 
 
 Home 235 
 
 Gospels, the Historical Method in the. 214 
 
 Grandfather gazes at the Sea 507 
 
 " Picture of, by Parker. . . 341 
 
 Great Britain, America to 67 
 
 Calhoun on a War with. 89 
 Greece, Advantages in the Geographical 
 
 Position of. 307 
 
 Greece, Influence of, upon Civilization. 187 
 
 Green River 139 
 
 GREENE, ALBERT G 600 
 
 GREENE, GEORGE W 349 
 
 HALE, EDWARD EVERETT 470 
 
 HALLECK, FITZ-GKEENE 158 
 
 HAMILTON, ALEXANDER 29 
 
 the Death of. 3 
 
 Hannah Binding Shoes 608 
 
 Hans Breitmann 59 
 
 HARTE, FRANCIS BP.ET 576 
 
 Hasty Pudding, the, by Barlow. .... 27 
 
 Haunts of the Muses, the 5*9 
 
 HAWTHORNE, NATHANIEL 241 
 
 Hayne, Webster's Speech in Reply to. . 85 
 
 Health the first Requisite 568 
 
630 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 HEDGE, FREDERICK H 253 
 
 Hedges, Quincy's experiments in, ... 306 
 
 Herbarium, To my 611 
 
 Hiawatha's Sailing 272 
 
 HIGGINSON, THOMAS W 501 
 
 HILDRETH, RICHARD 299 
 
 HILLARD, GEORGE S 307 
 
 Historical View of the American Revo- 
 lution 349 
 
 History should not be too minute. . . 212 
 
 HOFFMAN, CHARLES F 604 
 
 HOLMES, OLIVER WENDELL 314 
 
 HOLLAND, JOSIAH G 453 
 
 Holyoke, Mount 223 
 
 Home, Illustrations cf divine Truth 
 
 drawn from the 383 
 
 Homer and David, Comparison of. . . 470 
 
 Homer, Influence of, upon Civilization. 187 
 
 Honesty the best Policy, a low Maxim. 311 
 
 HOPKINS, MARK 217 
 
 Horseshoe Robinson. ........ 162 
 
 House in the Meadow, the 615 
 
 HOWE, JULIA WARD 448 
 
 HOWELL, ELIZABETH LLOYD, . . . . 611 
 
 i HOWELLS, WILLIAM D 572 
 
 Hudson, Ancient Navigation of the. . . 58 
 
 HUNT, HELEN 544 
 
 Hymn to Mars 472 
 
 Hyperion 259 
 
 I am Old and Blind 611 
 
 Iceberg, Picture of an 402 
 
 If and if. . . . 
 
 I feel a newer Life in every Gale. . . . 
 
 I fill this Cup to one, &c 
 
 I have a Cottage . 
 
 Iliad, the, and the Bible 
 
 Illinois Town, Fight between Indians at. 
 
 I love the old melodious Lays 
 
 Immortality 
 
 Parker's Discourse upon. 
 
 Indian Burying-ground, the 
 
 Lodge, Description of an. . . . 
 
 Indians, Palfrey's Character of the. . . 
 " Penn's Treaty with the. . . . 
 " Sprague's Reference to the. 127, 
 " Wirt on the Wrongs of the. . . 
 
 Infant School, Exhibition of an. . . . . 
 
 Infancy, Characteristics of. 
 
 Influence, Moral and Intellectual, the 
 Law of. 
 
 Influence, the Reach of. 
 
 Intemperance, Sprague on the Evils of. 131 
 
 W. Phillips on 360 
 
 In the Defences 552 
 
 In the greenest of our Valleys 344 
 
 Inventors, What the World owes to. . 209 
 
 Irony of Nature, the 253 
 
 Irving's Columbus, A. H. Everett's No- 
 tice of. 134 
 
 IRVING, WASHINGTON 92 
 
 Isles of Shoals . 570 
 
 Italian Landscape, an 546 
 
 Italy, Associations with the Ruins and 
 
 History of. 280 
 
 Italy Modern, contrasted with Ancient 
 
 Rome. 
 
 252 
 
 Jackson, Andrew, J. Q. Adams's Criti- 
 cism upon the Policy of. 40 
 
 JACKSON, GENERAL HENRY R 607 
 
 Japan in the Sixteenth Century. , . . 302 
 JEFFERSON, THOMAS 15 
 
 John Burns, of Gettysburg. 
 JUDD, SYLVESTER. . . . 
 
 577 
 
 Keats, After a Lecture on 325 
 
 KENNEDY, JOHN P 162 
 
 Key, Francis S 594 
 
 KING, THOMAS STARR 515 
 
 Kitchen, How to keep Order in a. . . 372 
 Knapp, Webster's Speech on lha Trial 
 
 of. 83 
 
 Knickerbocker's History of New York. 94 
 
 Lafayette, Everett's Tribute to 153 
 
 " Miss Sedgwick shakes Hands 
 
 with 122 
 
 Landscape, Water as a Part of. .... 484 
 
 Language, Emerson's Essay on. ... 228 
 
 " Importance of the Study of. 208 
 
 109 Languages blended in English 441 
 
 339 LARCOM, LUCY 608 
 
 593 Last Leaf, the 323 
 
 491 Last Walk in Autumn, the 290 
 
 Laurels. Among the 549 
 
 Learned Professions, the 225 
 
 Leather-Stocking, by Cooper 117 
 
 LEGARE, HUGH S 189 
 
 Legend of Sleepy Hollow 100 
 
 LELAND, CHARLES G 509 
 
 Lepanto, the Battle of. 176 
 
 Lettuce Salad 543 
 
 Liberal Education, the Meaning of a. . 224 
 
INDEX. 
 
 LINCOLN, ABRAHAM 617 
 
 Literary Men, Painful Experiences of. . 4:0 
 
 " Responsible for the Prev- 
 alence of a warlike Spirit 251 
 
 Literature, Influence cf Puritanism on. 189 
 Women upon. . 358 
 
 Little Beach Bird, the 108 
 
 LOWELL, JAMES RUSSELL 421 
 
 " MARIA WHITE 607 
 
 " ROBERT T. S 412 
 
 LONGFELLUW, HEXRY W 260 
 
 SAMUEL 606 
 
 LUNT, GEORGE 275 
 
 Lyceum, the, as a Source of Influence. 359 
 
 Magnolia Grandiflora, the 377 
 
 Manners of the Poultry Yard 486 
 
 MANN, HORACE, 172 
 
 Manse, Description of the 247 
 
 Manufactures, J. Q. Adams's Report on. 40 
 Margaret, a Talc of the Real and the 
 
 Ideal 389 
 
 Marion, General F., Life of. 257 
 
 M^ARSH, GEORGE P 206 
 
 Martyrs to Science 566 
 
 May-day in Albano, a, 544 
 
 Mr. Biglow's Opinions upon. 437 
 " Selections from Emerson's 
 
 Poem on 233 
 
 May, the Reign of. 167 
 
 McFingal, by Trumbull 21 
 
 Meerschaum Pipes 316 
 
 Meeting-house on Sunday, Fragrance of 
 
 the 512 
 
 Melanie 280 
 
 MELLEN, GRENVILLE 599 
 
 MELVILLE, HERMAN 458 
 
 Men and Women 582 
 
 Mexico, View of. 239 
 
 Mercantile Profession, the Dangers and 
 
 Duties of. 309 
 
 Michael Angelo, Sonnet on a falling 
 
 Group by 66 
 
 'Mid Pleasures and Palaces 597 
 
 MILLER, JOAQUIN 586 
 
 Milton, Channing's Essay on 73 
 
 Milton's Prayer of Patience 611 
 
 Milton, the Prose Works of. 77 
 
 MITCHELL, DONALD G 483 
 
 REV. WALTER 609 
 
 Model Farm, the Picture of a 148 
 
 Montaigne, Influences of. 224 
 
 Moral Ideas, Progress of. 221 
 
 Morning, Cranch's Sonnet on 378 
 
 Street, the 554 
 
 MORRIS, GEORGE P 602 
 
 Mosses from an old Manse 247 
 
 MOTLEY, JOHN LOTHROP 395 
 
 MOULTON, LOUISE CHANDLER 615 
 
 Mountains and the Sea compared. . . . 320 
 
 Mountains, Scenery among the 516 
 
 Mountain, the 616 
 
 Movers, the 574 
 
 Murder of Stephen White. . .* . . . 83 
 
 Muscular Christianity 568 
 
 Muses, the Haunts of the 519 
 
 Music in Church Service 313 
 
 Musical Rhythm of the Faerie Queene. 387 
 
 My Aunt 322 
 
 My Familiar 407 
 
 My Life is like the Summer Rose. . . 596 
 
 My Summer in a Garden 541 
 
 My Wife and Child 607 
 
 Nahant Beach 282 
 
 Napoleon. See Bonaparte. 
 
 National Greatness, the true Sources of. 364 
 
 Nations as well as Men mortal 367 
 
 Nature, Beauty of. 34 
 
 " destitute of Sympathy 256 
 
 " the baffling Pursuit of. .... 254 
 Navigation, Dutch Method of. .... 58 
 
 NEAL, JOHN 597 
 
 Nuremburg, Description of. ..... 510 
 
 New England, Three Eras of. 275 
 
 Newfoundland, a View in the Harbor of. 412 
 New Priest in Conception Bay, the. . . 412 
 
 Newspaper, the 428 
 
 New York, Knickerbocker's History of. 94 
 
 Niagara, by Mrs. Sigourney 124 
 
 Night, Cranch's Sonnet on 378 
 
 Nightfall 478 
 
 NORTON, ANDREWS 595 
 
 Notch of the White Mountains 23 
 
 November and April 606 
 
 Oblivion, the Uses of. 212 
 
 O Country, bleeding from the Heart. . 499 
 
 Odors of Sanctity 5" 
 
 Old Age, Parker's Discourse upon. . . 34 
 
 Old Clock on the Stairs, the 268 
 
 Old Ironsides 327 
 
 Old Oaken Bucket, the 594 
 
 Old Sergeant, the ... 613 
 
INDEX. 
 
 O Messenger, art thou the King or I. . 547 
 
 Oriental Life 525 
 
 Orrery, a Living 455 
 
 O Thou to whom in ancient Time. . . 106 
 
 Our Orders 449 
 
 Out-door Papers 502 
 
 Outre Mer. 261 
 
 Over the Hills 612 
 
 O, wild, enchanting Horn 549 
 
 Painted Columbine, to the 604 
 
 PALFREY, JOHN G 168 
 
 PALMER, JOHN W 524 
 
 Palmyra, the Approach to 191 
 
 PARK, EDWARDS A 311 
 
 PARKER, THEODORE 338 
 
 PARKMAN, FRANCIS 490 
 
 Parnassus, a Visit to. 5! 9 
 
 PARSONS, THOMAS W 451 
 
 PARTON, JAMES. 487 
 
 Passenger Pigeon, the 68 
 
 Passing Away 104 
 
 Patriotism 236 
 
 PAULDING, JAMES K 57 
 
 PAYNE, JOHN HOWARD 597 
 
 Peace between England and America. . 334 
 
 " Invocation to 596 
 
 " the Way of Progress 363 
 
 Peach Blossoms, the 555 
 
 Penn's Treaty with the Indians 201 
 
 PERCIVAL, JAMES G 165 
 
 PHELPS, EnzaBETH S 589 
 
 Philip II., History of. 176 
 
 " a Picture of. 399 
 
 PHILLIPS, WENDELL 357 
 
 Philosopher to his Love, the 328 ! 
 
 Physical Culture 566 j 
 
 PIATT. JOHN J 554 
 
 Pickering, Timothy, Ames's Letter to. 35 j 
 
 Picture Book, the 4 6 5 | 
 
 PIERPONT, JOHN 104 
 
 Pilot, the, by Cooper 113 I 
 
 Pilgrims, Oration on the Anniversary of 
 
 the Landing of the 82 j 
 
 PINKNEY, EDWARD C 601 | 
 
 Piscatnqua River 571 j 
 
 Plymouth, Webster's Oration at. ... 82 | 
 
 Pocahontas 48 j 
 
 Wreck of the 560 
 
 POE, EDGAR A 343 | 
 
 Poems acquire Beauty by Time. . . . 318 
 Poet, Birth of a 597 ; 
 
 Poetry, Charming on the Influence of. . 
 
 Dewey on 
 
 not altogether in the Country. . 
 
 Some of the Characteristics of. 
 
 PORTER, NOAH 
 
 Postal Facilities in 1806 
 
 Poultry Yard, Manners of the 
 
 Preacher, Modern Culture necessary to 
 
 the 
 
 PRESCOTT, WILLIAM H 
 
 " referred to by W. Phillips. . 
 
 Present Crisis, the 
 
 Press, Uses and Abuses of the 
 
 Problem, the 
 
 Procession of the Flowers, the 
 
 Progress of Moral Ideas 
 
 Progress, Saxe's Poem on 
 
 Proverbs, the Sources of. 
 
 Prue and I 
 
 Psalm xxiii., Beecher on 
 
 Psalm of Life, a 
 
 Puritan Worship, Characteristics of. . . 
 Puritanism, Influence of, on Litera- 
 ture 
 
 73 
 MS 
 
 263 
 386 
 354 
 34 
 486 
 
 3" 
 175 
 359 
 439 
 276 
 234 
 503 
 
 221 
 4 06 
 28l 
 55 
 
 266 
 313 
 
 189 
 
 QUINCY, EDMUND 304 
 
 JOSIAH 44 
 
 " Ames's Letters to. . 34 
 
 " the Life of. 305 
 
 Rain, Before and After the. 570 
 
 Randolph, Johrt, Calhoun's Speech in 
 
 Reply to 89 
 
 Raven, the 345 
 
 Reading, Porter on the Choice of. ... 354 
 
 READ, THOMAS B 476 
 
 Reforms, Who are Disturbed by. ... 319 
 
 Religion, a Harmony of the Faculties. . 384 
 
 Rise of the Dutch Republic, the. . . . 395 
 
 Robin, Good Appetite of the 426 
 
 Romance of the Sea 506 
 
 Rome, the Effect of Centuries of War 
 
 upon 251 
 
 Roost of Wild Pigeons, a 68 
 
 Rural Life, E. Everett on 148 
 
 Saco Valley, the 515 
 
 St. Lawrence, the River, by Miss Sedg- 
 
 wick 121 
 
 St. Paul preaching at Athens 285 
 
 Sandys, George, Translator of Ovid. . 204 
 
 SARGENT, EPES 603 
 
INDEX. 
 
 633 
 
 SAXE, JOHN G 406 
 
 Schiller's Fable of the Poverty of Au- 
 thors ... 410 
 
 Scholar's Country House, a 162 
 
 Scholar, the, Where he should live. . . 263 
 
 School-house, the Country 424 
 
 School-houses in ancient Times. . . .172 
 
 Sclavi, the warlike History of the. . . . 252 
 
 Scott, Margaret Fuller upon 336 
 
 Sea-fight. See English Channel and Le- 
 panto. 
 
 Sea- fowl at the Isles of Shoals 563 
 
 Sea from Shore 55 
 
 Sea-shore and Mountains compared. . 320 
 
 Seasons, Beauty of the 34 
 
 Sea-weed 273 
 
 SEDGWICK, CATHARINE M 120 
 
 September, a Song for 452 
 
 Sergeant, the Old 613 
 
 Shakespeare's Genius 481 
 
 Shurtleff School-house, Hymn at the 
 
 Dedication of. 602 
 
 SIGOURNEY, LYDIA H 123 
 
 Silent Partner, the 589 
 
 .^SIMMS, WILLIAM G 257 
 
 Sincere, not enough to be 382 
 
 Slavery, Jefferson on the Influence of. . 18 
 
 Sleep, Cranch's Sonnet on 378 
 
 " sweetly in your humble Graves. . 609 
 
 Sleepy Hollow, Legend of. 100 
 
 Smoking, Holmes on 317 
 
 Snow-bound 297 
 
 Snow-fall, the first 435 
 
 Society, its Growth like that of a Tree. 2 
 
 Socrates, the Teaching of. 286 
 
 Softly now the Light of Day 600 
 
 Sumthin in the Pastoral Line 436 
 
 Songs of the Sierras 586 
 
 Spain, the Effects of War upon 252 
 
 " the Journey into 261 
 
 Spanish Tavern, a 262 
 
 Sparkling and bright 604 
 
 Spenser's Faeris Queene, Dvvight's Es- 
 say on 3 S 3 
 
 Spirit of Beauty, the, by Mrs. Sigour- 
 
 ney , t2 6 
 
 SPOFFORD, MRS. HARRIET E. P. . . . 557 
 
 6PRAGUE, CHARLES 127 
 
 " CHARLES J 611 
 
 Springfield, the Arsenal at 264 
 
 Spring, the Tokens of 233 
 
 " Sights and Sounds of. .... 438 
 
 Star^spangled Banner, the 594 
 
 Staten Island, the Woods of. 223 
 
 State Sovereignty, Calhoun on 87 
 
 STEUMAN, EDMUND C 616 
 
 Steuben, the Baron 349 
 
 STODDARD, RICHARD H 521 
 
 Stone, an Overturned 319 
 
 STORY, JOSEPH 61 
 
 " WILLIAM W 440 
 
 STOWE, HARRIET E. BEECHER. ... 369 
 
 STREET, ALFRED B 351 
 
 Study and Genius, the Relations of. . . 145 
 
 Style, Channing's Opinion of. .... 77 
 
 Style in Writing, on the Value of ... 355 
 
 Suburban Sketches 573 
 
 Summer in the Heart *. . . . 603 
 
 Summsr Shower, Scene after a 595 
 
 SUMXER, CHARLES 361 
 
 Sunrise, a Picture of, by Cranch. . . . 378 
 
 Sunset and Moonrise, by Read 478 
 
 Sweet Home 597 
 
 Sylphs of the Seasons, the, by Allston. 64 
 
 Symbolism of Language 229 
 
 Tacking Ship off Shore. . ... . . . 609 
 
 Tappan Zee, Landscape on the 103 
 
 TAYLOR, BAYARD 518 
 
 Teachers, Indebtedness of the World to. 209 
 
 Tell me not in mournful Numbers. . . 266 
 
 Temperance, W. Phillips on 360 
 
 TERRY, ROSE. 528 
 
 Thackeray, Poem on the Death of. . . 522 
 
 Thanatopsis .136 
 
 THAXTER, MRS. CELIA 560 
 
 The Day is done 274 
 
 The Farmer sat in his Easy Chair. . . 605 
 
 The melancholy Days are come 142 
 
 Theological Strife, Beecher's Picture of. 382 
 
 THOREAU, HENRY D 414 
 
 Thought, a Sonnet 547 
 
 " is deeper than all Speech. . . 379 
 
 Thunder-storm at Sja in the Tropics, a. 403 
 
 TIMKOD, HENRY 609 
 
 Tide in the Bay of Funcly, a Race with a. 557 
 
 Titbottom, Grandfather 507 
 
 Tobacco, Holmes on 317 
 
 Tonty, Henri de 492 
 
 Three Eras of New England 273 
 
 Troubles of Mr. and Mrs. Ducldow. . . 531 
 
 TROWBRIDGE, JoH.vT 531 
 
 Truce of God, the 3> 
 
 True Grandeur of Nations, the 363 
 
634 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 TRUMBULL, JOHN 20 
 
 TUCKER, ST. GEORGE 593 
 
 TUCKERMAN, HENRY T 393 
 
 Turks, Defeat of the, at Lepanto. ... 176 
 
 TOWNSEND, ELIZA 596 
 
 Two Visages, the '. 530 
 
 Two Years Before the Mast 402 
 
 TYLER, MOSES COIT 566 
 
 Uncle Tom reads his Testament. . . . 370 
 
 Union and Liberty 326 
 
 United States, History of, by Bancroft. 201 
 
 Unseen Spirits 281 
 
 Uses and Abuses of the Daily Press. . 276 
 
 Vegetables,* Distinctions of Caste among. 543 
 
 Ventilation in School-houses 174 
 
 VERY, JONES 604 
 
 Villages, the Two 530 
 
 Violins compared to Poems 317 
 
 Virginia in Colonial Times, Picture of. . 203 
 
 Walden Pond 416 
 
 War and Loyalty 236 
 
 " the Evils of. 251 
 
 " Sumner on 362 
 
 " when justifiable 238 
 
 WARE, WILLIAM 191 
 
 WARNER, CHARLES D. ........ 541 
 
 Washington, Character of. 15 
 
 " Quincy's Personal Recol- 
 lections of. 306 
 
 Water-fowl, to a 138 
 
 Water in Landscape 484 
 
 WAYLAND, FRANCIS 186 
 
 Way to sing, the, 548 
 
 Wealth, Danger of too eager Pursuit of. 310 
 
 Weather-cock, to the 600 
 
 Weave no more Silks, ye Lyons Looms. 449 
 
 WEBSTER, DANIEL. ......... 78 
 
 Webster, Choate's Eulogy on ..... 196 
 
 " Intellectual Character of, by 
 Whipple ............ . . 446 
 
 Westminster Abbey, Evening in. ... 97 
 When Breezes are soft and Skies are 
 
 139 
 
 When Freedom from her Mountain 
 Height ............... 157 
 
 WHIPPLE, EDWIN P .......... 445 
 
 White Mountains, the ......... 515 
 
 " Description of, by T. 
 
 D wight ............... 23 
 
 WHITE, RICHARD GRANT ....... 481 
 
 White, Stephen, Murder of. ..... 83 
 
 WHITMAN, WALT .......... 461 
 
 WHITNEY, ADELINE D. T. ...... 512 
 
 WHITTIER, JOHN G .......... 287 
 
 WILDE, RICHARD H ......... 596 
 
 Willewemoc in Summer, the ...... 352 
 
 Williams, Roger ........... 205 
 
 AViLLiAMs, WILLIAM R. ....... 251 
 
 WILLIS, N. P ............ 278 
 
 WlLLSON, FORCEYTHE ........ 613 
 
 Wind Flower, the ........... 605 
 
 Winged Worshippers, the ....... 128 
 
 Winter, Moral and Physical Uses of. .215 
 WINTHROP, ROBERT C ........ 330 
 
 WIRT, WILLIAM ........... 47 
 
 Women, Influence of, upon Literature. . 358 
 Woodman, spare that Tree ....... 602 
 
 WOODSWORTH, SAMUEL, ....... 594 
 
 WOOLSEY, THEODORE D ....... 209 
 
 WOOLSON, ABBA G .......... 612 
 
 Wordsworth, Tribute to ........ 606 
 
 Wouter Van Twiller, the Description of. 94 
 Wreck of the Pocahontas ....... 560 
 
 Yet's Christmas Box ......... 557 
 
 Zenobia .............. igi, 195 
 
LIST OF AUTHORS. . 
 
 ADAMS, JOHN 
 
 ADAMS, JOHN QUINCY. . . 
 ALDRICH, THOMAS B. . . 
 ALLEN, ELIZABETH A. . . 
 ALLSTON, WASHINGTON. . . 
 
 AMES, FISHER 
 
 AUDUBON, JOHN J 
 
 BACON, LEONARD. . . . 
 BANCROFT, GEORGE. . . . 
 
 BARLOW, JOEL, 
 
 BEECHER, HENRY WARD. . 
 
 BIRD, ROBERT M 
 
 BOKER, GEORGE H. . . . 
 BROWNSON, ORESTES A. . 
 BRYANT, WILLIAM CULLEN. 
 BUSHNELL, HORACE. . . . 
 
 CALHOUN, JOHN C. . . . 
 
 GARY, ALICE 
 
 CHANNING, WILLIAM E. . . 
 CHILD, LYDIA MARIA. . . 
 
 CHOATE, RUFUS 
 
 CLAY, HENRY 
 
 CLINCH, REV. J. H. . . , 
 COOPER, J. FENIMORE. . . 
 CRANCH, CHRISTOPHER P. 
 CURTIS, GEORGE WM. . , 
 
 PAGE I 
 
 ii LDANA, RICHARD H. . 
 39 [DANA, RICHARD H., JR. 
 
 569 
 
 549 
 63 
 34 
 68 
 
 224 
 
 201 
 
 26 
 
 380 
 
 239 
 
 DEWEY, ORVILLE. . . . 
 
 DOANE, GEORGE W. . . 
 
 DRAKE, JOSEPH R. . . 
 
 DRAPER, JOHN W. . . 
 
 DWIGHT, JOHN S. . ^ . 
 
 DWIGHT, TIMOTHY. . . 
 
 EASTMAN, CHARLES G. . 
 EMERSON, RALPH WALDO. 
 EVERETT, ALEXANDER H. 
 
 PACK 
 107 
 402 
 144 
 600 
 
 154 
 366 
 
 385 
 22 
 
 60 5 
 227 
 132 
 
 147, 598 
 
 EVERETT, EDWARD. 
 496! 
 
 2361FELTON, CORNELIUS C. . . 284 
 135 ^IELDS, JAMES T. . .417, 606 
 
 2I2S^RANKLIN, BENJAMIN. . . I 
 
 FRENEAU, PHILIP. . 
 FULLER, MARGARET. 
 
 86 
 465 
 
 72 
 
 220 
 I 9 6 
 
 53 
 602 
 
 112 
 
 377 
 504 
 
 593 
 335 
 
 GAIL HAMILTON 581 
 
 GODWIN, PARKE 409 
 
 GREENE, ALBERT G. . . . 600 
 GREENE, GEORGE W. . . 349 
 
 HALE, EDWARD E. . . . 470 
 
 HALLECK, FITZ-GREENE. . 158 
 
 HAMILTON, ALEXANDER. . 29 
 
 (635) 
 
636 
 
 LIST OF AUTHORS. 
 
 HARTE, FRANCIS BRET. 
 HAWTHORNE, NATHANIEL. 
 HEDGE, FREDERICK H. . . 
 HIGGINSON, THOMAS W. 
 HILDRETH, RICHARD. . . 
 - HILLARD, GEORGE S. . . 
 HOFFMAN, CHARLES F. . . 
 HOLLAND, JOSIAH G. . . . 
 HOLMES, OLIVER WENDELL. 
 HOPKINS MARK 
 
 576 
 241 
 
 253 
 501 
 299 
 
 307 
 604 
 
 453 
 3H 
 217 
 
 448 
 611 
 
 572 
 544 
 
 92 
 
 607 
 
 15 
 
 388 
 
 162 
 594 
 5i5 
 
 608 
 189 
 509 
 617 
 260 
 606 
 421 
 607 
 412 
 275 
 
 20^ 
 
 599 
 458 
 
 MILLER, JOAQUIN 
 MITCHELL, DONALD G. . . 
 " REV. WALTER. . 
 MORRIS GEORGF P. ... 
 
 586 
 
 483 
 609 
 602 
 
 395 
 615 
 
 597 
 595 
 
 1 68 
 524 
 3ii 
 338 
 490 
 
 45i 
 487 
 
 57 
 597 
 165 
 589 
 357 
 554 
 104 
 60 1 
 343 
 354 
 175 
 
 304 
 44 
 
 476 
 
 603 
 
 406 
 
 120 
 123 
 
 257 
 
 557 x 
 
 MOTLEY, JOHN L 
 MOULTON, LOUISE C. . . 
 
 NORTON, ANDREWS. . . . 
 
 PALFREY, JOHN G. ... 
 PALMER, JOHN W. ... 
 PARK, EDWARDS A. ... 
 PARKER, THEODORE. . . . 
 PARKMAN, FRANCIS. . . . 
 PARSONS, THOMAS W. . . 
 PARTON JAMES 
 
 HOWE, JULIA WARD. . . . 
 HOWELL, ELIZABETH L. 
 HOWELLS, WILLIAM D. . . 
 HUNT, HELEN 
 
 IRVING, WASHINGTON. . . 
 
 JACKSON, GEN. HENRY R. . 
 JEFFERSON, THOMAS. . . . 
 JUDD, SYLVESTER. .... 
 
 KENNEDY, JOHN P. ... 
 KEY, FRANCIS S 
 KING, THOMAS STARR. . . 
 
 PAULDING, JAMES K. . . . 
 PAYNE, JOHN HOWARD. . . 
 PERCIVAL, JAMES G. . . . 
 PHELPS, ELIZABETH S. . . 
 PHILLIPS, WENDELL. . . . 
 PIATT, JOHN J 
 PIERPONT, JOHN 
 PINKNEY, EDWARD C. . . 
 POE EDGAR A 
 
 LEGARE, HUGH S 
 LELAND, CHARLES G. . . 
 LINCOLN, ABRAHAM. . . . 
 LONGFELLOW, HENRY W. . 
 . " SAMUEL. . . 
 Y LOWELL, JAMES RUSSELL. . 
 " MARIA WHITE. . 
 " ROBERT T. S. . . 
 
 PORTER, NOAH 
 PRESCOTT, WILLIAM H. . . 
 
 OUINCY, EDMUND 
 
 READ, THOMAS B 
 
 SARGENT, EPES 
 SAXE JOHN G 
 
 MANN, HORACE 
 
 SEDGWICK, CATHARINE M. 
 [-SIGOURNEY, LYDIA H. . . 
 SIAIMS, WILLIAM G. . . . 
 [ SPOFFORD. HARRIET E. P. . 
 
 MARSH, GEORGE P. . . . 
 M ELLEN, GRENVILLE. . . 
 MELVILLE, HERMAN. . . . 
 
LIST 
 
 SPRAGUE, CHARLES. . . . 
 SPRAGUE, CHARLES J. . . 
 STEDMAN, EDMUND C. . . 
 STODDARD, RICHARD H. 
 STORY JOSEPH 
 
 OF 
 
 127 
 611 
 616 
 521 
 61 
 440 
 369 
 35i 
 36i 
 
 518 
 
 I 
 
 609 
 53i 
 
 20 
 
 593 
 393 
 596 
 566 
 
 AUTHORS. 
 VERY JONES 
 
 637 
 
 WARE, WILLIAM. . . . 
 WARNER, CHARLES D. . 
 WAYLAND, FRANCIS. . . 
 WEBSTER, DANIEL. . . 
 WHIPPLE, EDWIN P. . . 
 WHITE, RICHARD GRANT. 
 WHITMAN, WALT. . . . 
 WHITNEY, ADELINE D. T. 
 WHITTIER, JOHN G. . . 
 WILDE, RICHARD H. . . 
 WILLIAMS, WILLIAM R. . 
 WILLIS, N. P 
 
 . 191 
 
 54i 
 . 186 
 . 78 
 
 445 
 . 481 
 . 461 
 . 512 
 . 287 
 . 596 
 . 251 
 278 
 
 " WILLIAM W. . . . 
 > STOWE, HARRIET E. B. . . 
 STREET, ALFRED B. . . . 
 SUMNER, CHARLES. . . . 
 
 - TAYLOR, BAYARD. . . . 
 TERRY ROSE 
 
 THAXTER, CELIA 
 THOREAU, HENRY D. . . 
 TIMROD, HENRY 
 TROWBRIDGE, JOHN T. . . 
 TRUMBULL, JOHN 
 TUCKER, ST. GEORGE. . . 
 
 TUCKERMAN, HENRY T. . . 
 
 TOWNSEND, ELIZA. . . . 
 TYLER, MOSES COIT. . . . 
 
 WlLLSON, FORCEYTHE. . 
 
 WINTHROP, ROBERT C. . 
 WIRT, WILLIAM. . . . 
 
 . 6 I3 
 
 330 
 
 WOODWORTH, SAMUEL. . 
 WOOLSEY, THEODORE D. 
 WOOLSON, ABBA G. . . 
 
 594 
 . 209 
 . 612 
 

 
 Y, 
 
 
 %-/ 5 . ^ 
 
 P 
 
 
WHAT TO READ. 
 
 [From a Familiar Letter to , astat. 16.] 
 
 " I HAVE seen many courses of reading laid down for young people, 
 but I never knew one to be followed. The growing tastes and wants 
 of each student soon lead him away from any predetermined plan, 
 and the literary adviser must be satisfied with giving a few general 
 hints. After the Bible and Shakespeare, I hold that the most gen- 
 erally useful and entertaining books (and no book is faithfully read 
 that is not entertaining) are Plutarch's Lives, Boswell's Life of John- 
 son, the Waverley Novels, Montaigne's Essays, Pepys's Diary, and 
 Don Quixote. If the mature reader has a turn for philosophy, he 
 will add the Dialogues of Plato, the works of Herbert Spencer and 
 ]. Stuart Mill, aud Porter on the Human Intellect. If more fiction 
 be desired, as will be quite likely, he can draw upon Thackeray, 
 Dickens, George Eliot, adding Gil Bias, Hawthorne, Cooper, 
 Goethe, La Motte Fouque, and Andersen. One of the chief uses 
 of fiction is for recreation after the study of more weighty books. 
 
 At soir.e time during youth should be read Gibbon, Hume, Ma- 
 caulay, Freeman, Grote, Niebuhr or Mommsen, Hallam, Motley, 
 Prescott, Bancroft or Hildreth not forgetting Burke, nor Carlyle, 
 probably the most prejudiced, but certainly the most picturesque 
 and powerful of them all. The claims of science must not be over- 
 looked. No person can be considered well-read who has not some 
 acquaintance with the works of such writers as Lyell, Hugh Miller, 
 Tyndall, Huxley, Humboldt, and Darwin. In poetry there is room 
 for a wide diversity of taste ; but all critics agree in the pre-eminence 
 of these authors : Chaucer, Spenser, Milton, Dryden, Pope, Gray, 
 Cowper, Goldsmith, Burns, Scott, Wordsworth, Byron, Coleridge, 
 Shelley, Tennyson, Bryant, Longfellow, Emerson, Whittier, Holmes, 
 and Lowell. Read the Brownings also, if you like them, and Wil- 
 liam Morris, if you have time. I would read Homer in Bryant's 
 
 639 
 
640 WHAT TO READ. 
 
 translation, Dante in the version of Longfellow or Parsons, and 
 Faust as rendered by Taylor or Brooks. Cranch's Virgil is also 
 highly commended. To supplement your knowledge of history and 
 geography you will need to read travels occasionally ; among them 
 those of the Abbe Hue, Captain Burton, Bayard Taylor, Eliot War- 
 burton, Kinglake, Dr. Kane, J. L. Stephens, Layard, Livingstone, 
 and G. W. Curtis. Criticism is best read late in your course, when 
 you have acquired some general knowledge and the power of inde- 
 pendent thought. The first of all modern critics is Carlyle, and, 
 next to him, Macaulay. Channing, Taine, and Ruskin are each 
 admirable in diverse ways. Examples of the Essay a form of com- 
 position which has been adopted by many of the finest writers may 
 be found in the works of Addison, Steele, Lamb, De Ouincey, Leigh 
 Hunt, Emerson, Irving, Holmes, and Lowell. You will become 
 acquainted with many other writers in this fascinating department 
 when once you begin to read. Biography should be regarded as a 
 branch of history, and, in many respects, the most instructive part 
 of it. There is not space to give even a tolerable list of the best 
 biogra-phies, and you must consult the library catalogues. 
 
 It is a good plan, if you have the time, to have two books on hand 
 at once, so that every day you may read history or popular science, 
 and refresh yourself afterwards with travels, fiction, poetry, or amus- 
 ing essays. The order of reading is not very important. It is only 
 important to begin, and to pursue what you have chosen until it be- 
 comes a pleasure and a daily necessity. Thirty pages a day will 
 in a year amount to twenty ordinary volumes. 
 
 I have not mentioned any works for your religious instruction, 
 because I prefer to leave that subject to the care and direction of 
 your parents. 
 
 I wish to add that the most pure and idiomatic English ever 
 written is to be found in Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, De Foe's 
 Robinson Crusoe, and Franklin's Autobiography. 
 
 You will need to have always at hand an unabridged dictionary, 
 Worcester's or Webster's and a large atlas. If you write or 
 speak you will find Soule and Wheeler's Manual of English Pronun- 
 ciation and Spelling indispensable ; and you can hardly do without 
 Wheeler's Dictionary of Noted Names of Fiction. For practice in 
 elocution you will find the lessons in Professor Munroe's Vocal 
 Culture of great service. For reference, an Encyclopaedia is very 
 essential." 
 
 Your friend faithfully. 
 

 
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